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RATIONAL LIVING

SOME PRACTICAL INFERENCES
FROM MODERN PSYCHOLOGY

BY

HENRY CHURCHILL KING

PRESIDENT OF OBERLIN COLLEGE; AUTHOR OF "RECONSTRUCTION IN THEOLOGY
"THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS," "PERSONAL AND
IDEAL ELEMENTS IN EDUCATION"

New York

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.

1917

All rights reserved

COPYRIGHT, 1905,

BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1905. Reprinted December, 1905; March, 1906; April, June, October, November, 1906; February, August, 1907; January, 1908; February, June, 1908; February, 1912; June, 1914; April, December, 1915; September, 1916; September, October, 1917.

RIZI K52 1917

PREFACE

IT is with considerable hesitancy that one undertakes to point out the practical suggestions of modern psychological investigations. Scientific workers in this field have a natural prejudice against attempts to make their science quickly useful; and this feeling is so strong on the part of many, that one almost seems to proclaim himself to such as a charlatan at once, if he attempts to draw practical inferences from this study, and to make these inferences generally available. But is it not possible that we might well heed just here Hilty's illuminating word? "Truth, wherever it may be sought, is, as a rule, so simple that it often does not look learned enough."

It is true that the full significance of the inferences will hardly be felt apart from a reasonable presentation of their psychological grounds; and it is also true that many attempts so practically to use psychological results have been fanciful and extravagant,

and have tended to lay extreme emphasis upon the least assured results of recent investigations. Still, it were extraordinary if such extended and thorough study of human nature as the recent years have shown had no valuable suggestions for living, that all men would do well to heed; and James and Sully and Baldwin and Royce-to mention no others have certainly left us no room for doubt upon that point. And it ought not to be impossible to present the psychological facts, even in somewhat popular form, with sufficient accuracy and fullness to give weight and point to the practical suggestions involved, provided these practical inferences are drawn with sanity and moderation, and from assured results. And it is only with such inferences that this book intends to deal. It makes no appeal to the mere love of novelty or mystery. It intends to build soberly upon the whole broad range of psychological investigation.

If I may be allowed frankly to express in these introductory words my personal feeling and conviction, I should say that I have not been able to doubt the seriousness and value of the counsels lying back of this modern psychological study. Even where the coun;

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