ductive and analytic methods and those of induction. Any single analysis of a verse of poetry as regards its rhythmic constituents involves a working definition of rhythm in general and of verse rhythms in particular. One can not analyze these things without knowing what to look for.

The inductive procedure on the contrary is perfectly direct and requires no presuppositions whatever. If the sounds of a verse are admitted to be rhythmical nothing remains but the comparatively simple description of what the verse is made of acoustically. Admittedly no inductive procedure ever gives final results and no one denies the necessity of an analysis and generalization from the ascertained facts. But far too much effort has been wasted on vain attempts to analyze verse without any facts at all or with the most loose and inaccurate observations. Such analyses are bound to fail, and it is no wonder that the theory of versification is burdened with a mass of contradictory and ill-grounded generalization. For the most part such generalizations rest on individual observation and more or less chimerical theories of the nature of rhythm and time. The accurate records of concrete instances of rhythmical verses are so few as to be utterly lost in the verbiage of the philologists and metrists.

(f) Experimental Method

The method of the experimental psychologist with its peculiar excellencies also has its own defects like all the other methods. The psychologist may indeed feel envious at times of the rapidity and seeming success of methods more systematic and theoretical than his. The experimental method at best seems to be all too slow and when one must carry it to the still further degree of considering the human elements in the obscure phenomena the restraint becomes onerous. None the less the demands of scientific exactness must be met sooner or later. A few well sifted theories may endure for a long time but all at last will be brought to the bar of human experience and made to give an account of themselves. In so far as the method of psychology is first of all that of determining the characteristics of any given particular human experience it is to psychology and psychologists that the task falls of examining and criticizing those theories which pretend to formulate any given set of experiences or aspect of an experience.17

"Experiments which have to do with the esthetic attitude of the subject toward a rhythmical series; with his appreciation of rhythm; his ability to discover rhythm in a regular or irregular series; or with his reactions to supposedly rhythmical situations fall without the scope of a study of the actual rhythmical series. Such work will be referred to in these pages only as it has suggested and led up to more strictly empirical methods.

The experience of rhythm is one of those which can profitably be made the subject of theoretical and schematic discussion up to a certain point. Beyond that point nothing can take the place of a sober consideration of the facts experienced and the resulting experience. The judgment of an observer is final upon the question of the existence or non-existence of a rhythm, just as it is final on the existence of any other phenomena of consciousness. Whatever the definition of rhythm, the occurrence of the state of mind can not be doubted. Others may claim that there are rhythms which go on unperceived by the particular observer and not affecting him. And from some point of view that may be true. But the psychologist is only concerned with a rhythm that is felt. Here as always it is the duty of the psychologist to take account of the positive cases irrespective of the number of negative cases. The latter may be made use of under particular conditions of experimentation but most of them are without significance. For a man who has had one vivid hallucinatory experience, the absence of them during the rest of his life is irrelevant; and the psychologist above all, is concerned with the particular conditions of that particular experience. When difference tones are heard with two notes of a certain interval or when colored after-images are present for some time after looking at a bright white light it is the positive phenomena which are made the object of investigation. It matters very little that some individuals can never hear such difference tones or that most of us live through similar conditions with respect to bright lights a hundred times without being conscious of the after-images which a little attention could make vivid. The psychologist can do nothing with difference tones and after-images that are not heard and seen. His business has to do with the phenomena that are heard and seen. The judgment of an observer is the one indispensable requisite for the pursuit of the psychological method.

So it is with the case of rhythm. Its presence must be recognized before it has psychological existence. And, on the other hand, its existence can not be denied when it is present according to some one's deliberate judgment. An observer's judgment must receive just as much consideration no matter how divergent it may be from the consensus of opinion or from established doctrine.

In questions of esthetic appreciation the difference is most striking between the ordinary unscientific method and the method of psychology. The common distinction of "good" and "bad" taste in matters of art stands in direct opposition to the eminently more psychological dictum, de gustibus non disputandum. The conditions

under which esthetic feelings occur can be defined more or less accurately, but this can be done only by observing actual cases of their occurrence; never by laying down rules about what ought and what ought not to be appreciated. Such rules rest on a consideration of the subject-matter. The only valid conclusions rest on the description of phenomena experienced.

Rhythm and verse are so closely related to art forms that their theory has been exposed to much the same abuses as the theory of the corresponding art products. When poetry is defined a priori it is easy to go on to a definition of verse in the same way. In fact one definition demands the other generally, as a prop. Verse and verse rhythm, however, can not be defined a priori.

Such being the case, the psychologist is bound to seek out the actual facts, and build up from them an empirical description of the phenomena. Experimentation is the method which the scientifically minded psychologist adopts to secure observations as free as possible from error. Fortunately it is no longer necessary to defend experimentation as a method of approaching many of the questions which were made the subject of uncontrolled observation in the past. It is sufficient to say that we employ experiments because only by so doing is it possible to secure measurements under conditions permitting of repetition at will. The extension of this method to the study of verse is justified, therefore, by the failure of any other method to maintain those two requisites of scientific exactness.

CHAPTER II

GRAPHIC METHOD AND MECHANICAL AIDS

ONCE granted that there is profit in experimentally analyzing verse with regard to its sounds apart from its sense, the question arises how mechanical means can be adapted to the purpose, thereby eliminating the illusions and errors of observation to which unaided human ears are liable. Attempts to record the voice automatically in such a way that the record can be subsequently studied at leisure have been numberless. Many have failed, others have had a certain measure of success. But in so far as they are all attempts to translate the temporal sound series into a visible record in space they fall under what has come to be known as the "graphic method." The name "graphic method" is applied to two very different things. So far as it refers to graphic methods of presenting quantitative facts in the form of plots and various kinds of graphs it does not concern us at the moment. More strictly the term is applied to any kind of direct registration upon paper or a similar surface by a stylus or pen. The facts which are registered in this way include changes of temperature; time series; the velocity and force of movement both of bodies and muscles; the pressure of gases and liquids; wave movements in various media; and a great number of physiological cycles such as respiration, pulse, etc. Under registration of waves of course comes sound registration. Another very interesting field is that of stroboscopic photography. Ordinary photography would not be classed as a graphic method, but it is often of great assistance as a secondary aid in the application of the method proper. No mere record of a static fact is included in the scope of the graphic method. It applies only to the registration of changes or movements of some kind.

The earliest application was in the registration of meteorological data, and in that field its successful employment has gradually spread until at the present time almost all scientific measurements of these facts are made automatically. In the Weather Bureau stations for instance measurements of temperature, barometric pressure, wind velocity and humidity are seldom or never read directly from the instruments. In fact many of the instruments do not permit of direct reading. Nevertheless the measurements obtained are even more accurate than the most careful direct reading. One of the most interesting examples of this type of graphic record is

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the seismograph in its different forms, serving to record the amplitude and directions of tremors in the earth's crust.

The graphic method was applied to meteorology before the middle of the eighteenth century, particularly in the form of curves for temperature and wind pressure recorded on a continuous roll of paper (le Marquis d'Ous-en-Bray 1734), or on smoked paper (Rutherford 1774).

Next to the invention of the method itself in importance stands the control of it by the introduction of a time record on the same sheet. When the revolution of the clock or other mechanism commonly used is perfectly regular the time can be read off from the space between any two marks of the pen upon the paper; but it is generally safer to make use of a distinct time record writing a line along beside the others which are being made. Without such a time record the apparatus is, technically speaking "uncontrolled." For this indispensible contribution we are indebted to Thos. Young who employed the oscillations of a simple vibrating reed. Duhamel replaced this by a tuning fork, and later Helmholtz, Regnault and Foucault introduced the electrically controlled tuning fork; and finally Marcel Deprez developed the "signal magnet," which has become one of the indispensable accessories of the modern laboratory. James Watt used the graphic method to record steam pressure and its employment in the physical sciences has steadily extended in scope. The Ludwig kymograph (not the drum alone) was invented in 1847. The principle was applied by Volkmann, Helmholtz, Vierordt, and others in Germany, to the registration of the heart beat, respiration, and muscle action. In 1857 Vierordt and Tubingen announced the sphygmograph, and it was this that interested the Frenchman, Marey in the possibilities of such registration. To him we owe much of the later development of precise methods not only in application to physiological problems but to nearly every field of experimental investigation. Thanks to his ceaseless devotion the method is now available not only for the recording and presenting of facts in a compact and convincing form but for the recording of many facts too minute or too ephemeral for direct observation. In Marey's hands a registering instrument is transformed into an instrument of precision, an indispensable tool.

In no one field has the graphic method afforded such diverse applications as in the recording of sound. The manometric flame. makes it possible to analyze all the most complex compound musical notes and on the other hand the phonograph makes it possible to reproduce sounds of all sorts with extreme accuracy. The one method makes possible an accurate science of acoustics; the other