Preface

During the last twenty years I have from time to time attempted to explore the problem how far the knowledge accumulated by modern psychology can be made useful for the improvement of the thought-processes of a working thinker. I have published chapters dealing with various sections of that problem in my Human Nature in Politics (1908), Chapters II to V, The Great Society (1914), Chapters III, X, and XI, and Our Social Heritage (1921), Chapters II, III and IV.

This book is intended to be, not a summing up of my earlier attempts, but an extension of my inquiry, particularly as regards the less conscious factors in thought. In particular, I have not here dealt with the problem of organized co-operation in thought, which I discussed in Chapter XI of The Great Society. My footnotes and quotations will indicate the psychological books which have helped me. But my main material has been derived from my experience, during more than forty years, as a teacher and administrator, and from the accounts of their thought-processes given by poets and others who were not professed psychologists, by some of my students, and by friends in England and America.

If my book helps a few young thinkers in the practice of their art, or induces some other psychological inquirer to explore the problem with greater success than my own, I shall be more than content.

GRAHAM WALLAS. LONDON UNIVERSITY. London, S.W.7