Science: Psychologists

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Before James McKeen Cattell became a journalist* and a pundit honored among the cognoscenti, he was a teaching psychologist at Pennsylvania and Columbia universities. Apt was his presidency of the International Congress of Psychology at Yale last week and witty, despite length, his speech of welcome. Said he: "In so far as psychologists are concerned, America was [prior to the last 50 years] like Heaven, for there was not a damned soul there." Another Cattell truism: ''The motions of the solar system since its beginning are less complicated than the play of a child for a day." A Cattell social irritant, which excited dark newspaper head lines: "The objects of the sciences are more ideal than the objects of the churches; their practices are more Christian. When in the fullness of time there is a family of the nations, when each will give according to its ability and receive according to its needs, when war among them will be as absurd as it would now be for members of this congress to begin mur dering one another,— this will be due in no small measure to co-operation among scientific men of all nations in their com mon work."

Yale's President James Rowland Angell added amen to these idealistic sentiments, and the sessions went on.

Happy Folks. Peter Pan's happy light flitted about Columbia's Teachers' College. Professor Goodwin Barbour Watson there trapped it under the lattice bushel of his studies. "In general." said he, "the happy student is likely to be a healthy, popular, married man who thinks that he can tell a joke well, lead a discussion, act in a play, talk on sex, or lead a group. . . . He has had a harmonious home, enjoys his job, prefers adventure to peace, responsibility to direction. Not essential to happiness are intelligence, race, nationality, self-support, religious participation, ability in algebra, cleverness in writing poetry."

Personality. Physique, dress, manners, quality of voice, choice of language and characteristic social relations all go to make your personality. But they are useful only to the extent to which they affect the people you come in touch with. Thus decided Yale's Mark Arthur May, trying to develop a scale to measure personality. Zero would be a person who does not count for anything to anyone. High grade would be he whose presence or absence has the greatest influence on others.

Born Criminals do not exist, said George Washington University's Fred August Moss. But many a person has tendencies which predispose him to crime, viz., epilepsy, paranoia, paresis, dementia praecox, senile dementia. Smalltown children are less apt to become criminals than children of large communities, added Columbia's Hugh Hartshorne. A friendly classroom atmosphere is one of the most powerful influences on child character. "Moving pictures do not contribute to delinquency," said Philadelphia's Phyllis Blanchard. "I have sat in motion picture theatres and marveled. . . . When the villain is caught, as is always the case under the policy of those who make American motion pictures, the applause of the children is swiftest and most enthusiastic."