Teacher Training Series
EDITED BY
W. W. CHARTERS
Professor of Education, Carnegie Institute of Technology
THE SCIENCE OF
HUMAN NATURE
A PSYCHOLOGY FOR BEGINNERS
BY
WILLIAM HENRY PYLE
PROFESSOR OF EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY
UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI
SILVER, BURDETT & COMPANY
BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO
Copyright, 1917,
By SILVER, BURDETT & COMPANY.
AUTHOR’S PREFACE
This book is written for young students in high schools and normalschools. No knowledge can be of more use to a young person than aknowledge of himself; no study can be more valuable to him than a studyof himself. A study of the laws of human behavior,—that is the purposeof this book.
What is human nature like? Why do we act as we do? How can we makeourselves different? How can we make others different? How can we makeourselves more efficient? How can we make our lives more worth while?This book is a manual intended to help young people to obtain suchknowledge of human nature as will enable them to answer these questions.
I have not attempted to write a complete text on psychology. There arealready many such books, and good ones too. I have selected fortreatment only such topics as young students can study with interest andprofit. I have tried to keep in mind all the time the practical worth ofthe matters discussed, and the ability and experience of the intendedreaders.
TO THE TEACHER
This book can be only a guide to you. You are to help your studentsstudy human nature. You must, to some extent, be a psychologist yourselfbefore you can teach psychology. You must yourself be a close andscientific student of human nature. Develop in the students the spiritof inquiry and investigation. Teach them to look to their own minds andtheir neighbor’s actions for verification of the statements of the text.Let the students solve by observation and experiment the questions andproblems raised in the text and the exercises. The exercises shouldprove to be the most valuable part of the book. The first two chaptersare the most difficult but ought to be read before the rest of the bookis studied. If you think best, merely read these two chapters with thepupils, and after the book is finished come back to them for carefulstudy.
In the references, I have given parallel readings, for the most part toTitchener, Pillsbury, and Münsterberg. I have purposely limited thereferences, partly because a library will not be available to many whomay use the book, and partly because the young student is likely to beconfused by much reading from different sources before he has worked outsome sort of system and a point of view of his own. Only the mostcapable members of a high school class will be able to profit much fromthe references given.
TO THE STUDENT
You are beginning the study of human nature. You can not study humannature from a book, you must s