know a fine picture when you see it? Is your will weak, yielding,
vacillating, or firm, strong, stubborn? Do you like to be with people
and do they like to be with you?"--and so on. It is clear that the
replies to questions of this kind can be of psychological value only
when the questioner knows beforehand the mind of the youth, and can
accordingly judge with what degree of understanding, sincerity, and
ability the circular blanks have been filled out. But as the questions
are put for the very purpose of revealing the personality, the entire
effort tends to move in a circle.

To break this circle, it indeed becomes necessary to emancipate one's
self from the method of ordinary self-observation and to replace it by
objective experiment in the psychological laboratory. Experimentation
in such a laboratory stands in no contrast to the method of
introspection. A contrast does exist between self-observation and
observation on children or patients or primitive peoples or animals.
In their case the psychologist observes his material from without. But
in the case of the typical laboratory experiment, everything is
ultimately based on self-observation; only we have to do with the
self-observation under exact conditions which the experimenter is able
to control and to vary at will. Even Parsons sometimes turned to
little experimental inquiries in which he simplified some well-known
methods of the laboratory in order to secure with the most elementary
means a certain objective foundation for his mental analysis. For
instance, he sometimes examined the memory by reading to the boys
graded sentences containing from ten to fifty words and having them
repeat what they remembered, or he measured with a watch the rapidity
of reading and writing, or he determined the sensitiveness for the
discrimination of differences by asking them to make a point with a
pencil in the centres of circles of various sizes. But if such