The spirit of Fechner, of evolution, and of our times joined to fall upon Wilhelm Wundt, who founded at Leipsic, in 1878, the first laboratory in the world for regular scientific mental experimentation. Professor Wundt is the greatest psychologist now living in Europe, and a majority of the noted psychological experts, both of Germany and of America, have been his pupils.
One of these pupils, G. Stanley Hall, now President of Clark University, opened the first American laboratory at Johns Hopkins in 1883, and the larger laboratory at Worcester in 1889. To him must be credited the founding of experimental psychology in this country, and an eminent share of its present successful growth.
A foremost figure in modern psychology is Professor William James, of Harvard, whose great text-book, the product of twelve years of labor, appeared in 1890. In 1891 he opened the present Harvard Laboratory, or, at least, expanded a previously slow growth to important dimensions.
In 1892 Harvard established a new chair of Experimental Psychology, and elected to the same, and to direct its new laboratory, Professor Hugo Münsterberg, previously Professor of Philosophy at Freyburg, Germany. Professor Münsterberg was at one time a pupil of Wundt, but is much more a man of original inspiration; and in his genius the hopes and destiny of experimental psychology at Harvard are now centred.
Some twenty laboratories are now actively at work in America, and about half that number in Europe. The twentieth century will be to mental what the sixteenth century was to physical science, and the central field of its development is likely to be America.
"It needs but a steady head and a clear conscience and the thing is done." Those were old Jacob's words.
"The clear conscience is not lacking, thank God! but all these weeks of watching by a sick bed, and the scanty meals, have made the head anything but steady. If it were but three months ago, my courage would not fail me, but now----"
The boy broke off abruptly, and, stepping back several feet, stood looking up at the stately spire that towered above him. Fair and shapely it rose, with gradually receding buttress and arch, until it terminated at a point over four hundred feet from the pavement.