EMPLOYMENT PSYCHOLOGY DEFINED 
7 
philosophically was to solve all the problems of life. The 
mathematician and physicist also had their day. Archi 
medes could have pried the globe out of its orbit if he had 
had the necessary fulcrum. Medicine was a universal 
remedy for all maladies of the flesh and spirit long before 
it had passed the blood-letting stage. All of these pan 
aceas, however, survived their initial greatness, and to-day 
are contributing their modest bit to the collective progress 
of the race. 
Psychology, too, when the furor of its debut is over— 
if one may speak of it in such frivolous terms—will settle 
down into a less dazzling, but certainly more constructive, 
existence. It is difficult to predict how soon this will be. 
It is safe to predict that many fingers will be burned be 
fore it does happen. However, psychology will assume 
its distinct place among the applied sciences. It will also 
develop that professional caste and dignity which give 
to medicine and all other well-established professions their 
standing in the eyes of the world. 
But what is psychology? Having made the broad 
statement which most people will readily admit, that few 
of those who talk so glibly about psychology have an 
adequate conception of what it is—we must now answer 
the question: What is it? 
Psychology may perhaps be more clearly defined if it 
is compared with a similar science, for example, the science 
of medicine. The general nature of medicine is reason 
ably well understood, and there are no great illusions as 
to its powers. Nevertheless, medicine has passed through 
the same stage of nebulosity through which psychology 
is passing to-day. A thousand years ago, medicine was 
an art with almost unlimited powers. There was no ill 
of flesh or spirit for which the ancient healer did not