"What  I  have  called  the  primitive  method  of
psychological  inquiry  is  also  the  obvious  and  natural
one.  It  takes  man  as  it  finds  him,  accepts  his
mind  for  what  it  professes  to  be,  and  examines  into
its  processes  by  introspection  of  a  direct  and  simple
kind.  It  is  necessarily  subject  to  the  conditions
that  the  object  of  study  is  also  the  medium  through
which  the  observations  are  made,  and  that  there
is  no  objective  standard  by  which  the  accuracy  of
transmission  through  this  medium  can  be  estimated
and  corrected.  In  the  result  the  materials  collected
are  subjected  to  a  very  special  and  very  stringent
kind  of  censorship.  If  an  observation  is  acceptable
and  satisfactory  to  the  mind  itself,  it  is  reported  as
true  ;  if  it  contains  material  which  is  unwelcome
to  the  mind,  it  is  reported  as  false  ;  and  in  both
cases  the  failure  is  in  no  sense  due  to  any  conscious
dishonesty  in  the  observing  mind,  but  is  a  fallacy
necessarily  inherent  in  the  method.  A  fairly  charac-
teristic product  of  inquiries  of  this  type  is  the  con-
ception, which  seems  so  obvious  to  common  sense,
that  introspection  does  give  access  to  all  mental
processes,  so  that  a  conscious  motive  must  be  dis-
coverable for  all  the  acts  of  the  subject.     Experience


IN   PEACE  AND  WAR  69

with  more  objective  methods  has  shown  that  when
no  motive  is  found  for  a  given  act  or  no  motive
consistent  with  the  mind's  pretensions  as  to  itself,
there  will  always  be  a  risk  of  a  presentable  one
being   extemporized.
