In 1929 Sapir published a brief study from which he concluded that certain vocalic and consonantal sounds have a definite symbolic significance unrelated to the associative and linguistic value commonly attached to words.' His method consisted in presenting two 'unfamiliar' words (e.g. mal and mil), to which a meaning (e.g. 'table') was arbitrarily attached. His subjects reported whether mal symbolized a larger or a smaller table when compared with the word mil. The results indicated that there was a tendency for vowels near the a-end of the vocalic scale to imply 'largeness' and for those near the i-end to imply 'smallness,' quite apart from linguistic uses of these sounds. A like reference was also discovered for certain consonants.In the immediately preceding article in this JOURNAL S. S. Newman has, at the instance of Professor Sapir, again attacked the problem of phonetic symbolism, applying to his research a method of statistical treatment not used in the earlier study, and using a much larger body of material than the earlier study commanded.2 Newman's results generally confirm Sapir's earlier conclusions, making the interpretation much more specific. Newman again makes phonetic symbolism apply differentially to 'large' and 'small' and adds also the contrasting pair 'bright' and 'dark.' The distribution of his vowel-sounds and consonant-sounds upon the scale of magnitude (large-small) and the scale of brilliance (dark-light) leads him to believe that it is determined by such mechanical factors as position of the tongue in articulation, resonance within the mouth, the size of the oral cavity, and length of the vowel sound. Some differences in these factors with respect to their influence upon the two scales are thought to be significant.Upon the appearance of the first article, we were led to undertake a bit of experimentation upon the subject, partly to adapt the method to the psychological laboratory and partly to discover how far "phonetic

Thanks are due to my parents and to those persons whose financial aid made possible these studies. And thanks are due to Professor Frank S. Freeman of Cornell University for his constant encouragement and his unwearying patience. CONTENTSChapter I. Binet as an Associationist Chapter II. The Transitional Period Chapter III. Individual Psychology Chapter IV. The Invention of the Scale and Its Use. The Evolution of a New System of Psychology Chapter V. Conclusion 115 Bibliography CHAPTER IBlNET AS AN ASSOCIATIONIST " The operations of the intelligence are only the diverse forms of the laws of association: it is to these laws that all psychology comes back, whether it appears simple or is recognized to be complex. Explanation in psychology, in its most scientific form, consists in showing that each mental fact is only a particular case of these general laws. As soon as this proof has been completed, one can consider the explanation as final, and as carried as far as it is possible to go; for the laws of association are the most general laws of psychology. They embrace all psychology, and there exists no superior principle under which one could include them. In applying these ideas to the subject which now occupies us, we come to say: to explain reasoning is to determine by what combination of the laws of association this mental operation took place; simple in appearance, it is in reality complex, and in the last analysis reducible to the two functions of resemblance and contiguity." ("Le raisonnement dans les perceptions," Revue phiiosophique, 1883, 15, p. 412.)x

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