Works by WILLIAM JAMES, M.D., Ph. et Litt.D., LL.D.; Correspondent of the Institute of France and of the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences; Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University.

The Principles of Psychology. 2 vols. 8vo. New York: Henry Holt & Co. 1890.

A Text-book of Psychology. 12mo. New York: Henry Holt & Co. 1892.

The Will to Believe, and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy. New York: Longmans, Green & Co. 1897.

Is Life Worth Living? 18mo. Philadelphia: S. B. Weston, 1305 Arch Street. 1896. Human Immortality: Two Supposed Objections to the Doctrine. 16mo. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1898.

The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature. Gifford Lectures delivered at Edinburgh in 1901-1902. 8vo. New York: Longmans, Green & Co. 1902.

The Literary Remains of Henry James. Edited, with an Introduction, by WILLIAM JAMES. With Portrait. Crown 8vo. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1885.

TALKS TO TEACHERS

ON PSYCHOLOGY: AND TO STUDENTS ON SOME OF LIFE'S IDEALS. By WILLIAM JAMES

NEW YORK

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY

1910

LB

54462

PREFACE.

IN 1892 I was asked by the Harvard Corporation to give a few public lectures on psychology to the Cambridge teachers. The talks now printed form the substance of that course, which has since then been delivered at various places to various teacher-audiences. I have found by experience that what my hearers seem least to relish is analytical technicality, and what they most care for is concrete practical application. So I have gradually weeded out the former, and left the latter unreduced; and now, that I have at last written out the lectures, they contain a minimum of what is deemed 'scientific' in psychology, and are practical and popular in the extreme.

Some of my colleagues may possibly shake their heads at this; but in taking my cue from what has seemed to me to be the feeling of the audiences I be lieve that I am shaping my book so as to satisfy the more genuine public need.

Teachers, of course, will miss the minute divisions, subdivisions, and definitions, the lettered and numbered headings, the variations of type, and all the

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other mechanical artifices on which they are accustomed to prop their minds. But my main desire has been to make them conceive, and, if possible, reproduce sympathetically in their imagination, the mental life of their pupil as the sort of active unity which he himself feels it to be. He doesn't chop himself into distinct processes and compartments; and it would have frustrated this deeper purpose of my book to make it look, when printed, like a Baedeker's handbook of travel or a text-book of arithmetic. So far as books printed like this book force the fluidity of the facts upon the young teacher's attention, so far I am sure they tend to do his intellect a service, even though they may leave unsatisfied a craving (not altogether without its legitimate grounds) for more nomenclature, head-lines, and subdivisions.

Readers acquainted with my larger books on Psychology will meet much familiar phraseology. In the chapters on habit and memory I have even copied several pages verbatim, but I do not know tha apology is needed for such plagiarism as this.

The talks to students, which conclude the volume, were written in response to invitations to deliver 'addresses' to students at women's colleges. The first one was to the graduating class of the Boston Normal School of Gymnastics. Properly, it contin