The priest who represented Christ approached the door with the multitude behind him and in a most solemn voice chanted the words of the psalmist: 'Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be ye lifted up, ye everlasting doors, and the King of Glory shall come in!' The man inside said in a sneering tone, 'Who is this King of Glory?' 'The Lord of Hosts,' said the priest, 'he is the King of Glory!' Thrice was the chant repeated; then the hindering Satan, vanquished, barked like a dog, and the priest forced the door open and marched in with the multitude, chanting, 'Let God arise and let his enemies be scattered!'

In those days my mother church was all-sufficient for me. The so-called 'period of storm and stress' in religion is unknown to sacramental worship. I was born into my faith; and my faith was ready-made for me. The confessional, fasts, and sacraments of the church met my every need. Reasoning about religion was never known to my forefathers, and I was not supposed to go so far as to indulge in it. But I did, and that early in my youth. Early in my youth I felt the inward urgency to reason, not only within the tenets of my faith, but about and beyond them. But the atmosphere of my early life was not favorable to such modes of thinking. Therefore, my battling with the issues of religion had to be postponed to a later time.

IV

When I was taken out of school, at the age of nine, and put to work with my father, he was at the height of his prosperity. He employed from thirty to fifty men, and was sought from far and near as a builder. The men under his control were classified on religious lines, following the Syrian custom from time immemorial. They numbered so

many Druses, so many Greek Orthodox, so many Maronites, and so forth. The common laborer received five piastres (20 cents) a day, and the master mason from twelve to fifteen piastres. My social environment as an industrial worker afforded no strong incentives to progress. From the days of the Pyramids and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon to this day no spark has ever disturbed the clod of the laboring masses of the East. Their lot gave no play to the imagination. They knew no common interest, no collective action, no citizenship, no political rights. Their day's work began at dawn and ended at dusk. The moral atmosphere I breathed among those men did not really blossom with lofty ideals. Owing to the complete segregation of the sexes in the Orient and the absence of education, male society is by no means 'holy in all manner of conversation.'

Of the hardships of my environment I also had my full share as a boy. The entire lack of machinery doubled the hardships of our work. The long hours of labor and the bad sanitation were a constant menace to both the soul and the body. When our work took us away from our home town, we generally traveled by night, 'to save time' and to escape the heat of the day. Sometimes we would travel all night, afoot, carrying our tools and other belongings on our backs. As the Master's son I was often relieved of carrying tools by the men, but it was hard enough for a tender youth to undergo even the ordinary hardships of such a life.

V

But my industrial career had a brighter side. As the Master's son I enjoyed privileges which seldom fall to an apprentice. I was second in command over the men, after my father, and for that reason they accorded me

the respect which my years did not really merit. The master masons under my father gave me every advantage to learn the trade. At the early age of fourteen I was allowed to 'mount the wall,' to do actual building,—and, at the age of sixteen, I was classed and paid wages as a 'master.' I was very thorough, very conscientious in my work, and was, therefore, in great demand. My father was very much. pleased with my progress and had no doubt but that I would continue the traditions of the family as a stonemason. But the mysteries of life are so deep and so numerous that, even in a static society such as that into which I was born, no one could tell which direction the current of destiny might take.

Already at the age of fourteen I had become mysteriously discontented with my lot. I had begun to dream, in a very vague way, to be sure, of better things. I distinctly remember that the thought of being a stone-mason all my life, oppressed me at that early age. 'Am I to be only a toiler all my life?' was a question which often pressed in my mind for an answer. Life under such conditions seemed to me to possess no permanent significance. My restlessness greatly disturbed my father. To him it was the result of pride and vanity, and nothing else.

It was about this time, I believe, that I first heard of America. The news of that remote and strange country came to me simply as a bit of indifferent knowledge. Some Syrians had gone to America and returned with much money. Money in America was of very little value. But the country was so far away, so difficult of access, that those who reached it must have done so by accident. The American missionaries were known to us as English.

But at the age of fourteen something of much greater significance came into

my life. I made the acquaintance of a boy of about my age who was attending an American boarding-school, about ten miles away from our town. Iskander was the only boy of our town who had ever been sent to such a school, and was therefore very conspicuous in the community for his dignity and 'learning.'

How I became acquainted with Iskander and how he allowed himself to become the most intimate friend of such a boy as I was, I cannot tell. It was simply destiny. Iskander was a fine penman. He knew much poetry, arithmetic, geography, and English, many things about the Bible, and many other mysteries. He knew a great deal about America, and much about other countries. When he came home for his summer vacation of three months, we practically lived together. Iskander would read poetry to me and teach me words in the classical Arabic. Our conversations covered every phase of thought in which he was interested, and brought me treasures of knowledge. Not infrequently we would stay up the whole night, engaged in such conversations. Here certainly a revolution came into my life. I loved knowledge and craved more of its higher pleasures. Of a truth, as it seemed to me, I was never made to be an ignorant toiler. I was an idealist. But such a life as that of my friend Iskander seemed far beyond me. I never could hope to become so learned as he, and never had the remotest idea of going to school.

My father was glad that the 'learned' Iskander was my friend, but he had no patience with 'the frills of poetry' for a stone-mason. 'There is no bread in the foolishness of poetry; tools, tools only can feed our hunger,' was one of his answers to my pretentious remarks. My good father was right, inasmuch as he knew only of

one hunger to feed. At the age of sixteen I became decidedly averse to working at the mason's trade. My discontent began to beget wickedness in my mind. In the absence of my friend Iskander, at school, I fell into the company of certain idlers who were no more or less than highway robbers. The stories of their adventures greatly fascinated me, and I was in great danger of taking the wrong course in life. My parents were greatly alarmed at this, and strained every effort to ease my difficulties and lead me in the way in which I should go. But the pitiable fact was that neither they nor I had any definite object in view. It was discontent on my part and anxiety on their part, and little or nothing else.

One day one of the wise men of the town, who knew of our predicament, said to my father, 'Your son is the intimate friend of the "school-boy" Iskander, and I feel certain that if you offered to send your son to the same school which his friend attends, he would go. Try it.' My father came home, and, in a half-hearted manner, made the suggestion, and, for the moment, we all laughed. School? For me? My mother, who was somewhat more in sympathy with my aspirations, spoke more seriously of the proposition, and I became interested in it. The moment was of supreme importance. It was one of those moments in which there is much more of God than in the ordinary particles of time. It was the gate-way of my destiny, and, most unexpectedly to my parents as to myself, I faced my father and said, 'I will go to school.'

My decision brought great relief to the whole family, and we all concluded that it was God's will. But when some of our fellow Greek Orthodox heard of it they urged my father to send me to the clerical school of our bishop and

VOL. 112-NO. 6

have me fitted for the priesthood, instead of sending me to the heretical Protestant school. That suggestion, of course, proved much more agreeable to my parents. A representative of the bishop resided in the same town, Suk-el-Gharb, in which the American school was situated, and, since it was necessary for us to go to Suk-el-Gharb early in the summer and make arrangements for my entering one of the two schools, my father decided that we should interview the representative of the bishop; which we did. My father was very favorably impressed by what he told us about the school. The 'holiness of the priestly office' and the spiritual security and certainty of salvation which 'the Holy Church of our Fathers' insured to us weighed very greatly with my father, but not so greatly with me. My friend Iskander was a Protestant, and I could not think that he would be damned for it. Besides, he knew a great deal more than our parish priest did. Of course, I had no thought of becoming a Protestant myself, but I craved more learning than the clerical school of our bishop could give.

Upon leaving the representative of the bishop, I decided that I would not go to the clerical school. Its twenty students looked to me 'as tame as girls'-Syrian girls. We proceeded to the home of the American missionary, discussed the matter with him, and, finding that I would be accepted as a student if I came in the autumn, I decided to enter the American school.

When it became known in Betater that I was to forsake my father's trade and become a 'scholar,' the news created a sensation among all classes. It was the 'talk of the town' for several days. 'Just think of it, Abraham, the Master's son, is going to school, at the advanced age of seventeen!'

I

THE scientific psychologists started on a new road yesterday. For a long time their chief interest was to study the laws of the mind. The final goal was a textbook which would contain a system of laws to which every human mind is subjected. But in recent times a change has set in. The trend of much of the best work nowadays is toward the study of individual differ

ences.

The insight into individual personalities was indeed curiously neglected in modern psychology. This does not mean that the declaration of psychological independence insisted that all men are born equal, nor did any psychologist fancy that education or social surroundings could form all men in equal moulds. But as scientists they felt no particular interest in the richness of colors and tints. They intentionally neglected the question how men differ, because they were absorbed by the study of the underlying laws which must hold for every one.

It is hardly surprising that the psychologists chose this somewhat barren way: it was a kind of reaction against the fantastic flights of the psychology of olden times. Speculations about the soul had served for centuries. Metaphysics had reigned, and the observation of the real facts of life and experience had been disregarded. When the new time came, in which the psychologists were fascinated by the spirit. of scientific method and exact study of

actual facts, the safest way was for them to imitate the well-tested and triumphant procedures of natural science. The physicist and the chemist seek the laws of the physical universe, and the psychologist tried to act like them, to study the elements of which the psychical universe is composed and to find the laws which control them.

But while it was wise to make the first forward march in this one direction, the psychologist finally had to acknowledge that a no less important interest must push him on an opposite way. The human mind is not important to us only as a type. Every practical aim reminds us that we must understand the individual personality. If we deal with children in the classroom or with criminals in the courtroom, with customers in the market or with patients in the hospital, we need not only to know what is true of every human being; we must above all discover how the particular individual is disposed and composed, or what is characteristic of special groups, nations, races, sexes, and ages. It is clear that new methods were needed to approach these younger problems of scientific psychology, but the scientists have eagerly turned with concerted efforts toward this unexplored region and have devoted the methods of test experiments, of statistics, and of laboratory measurements to the examination of such differences between various individuals and groups.

But in all these new efforts the psychologist meets a certain public re

sistance, or at least a certain disregard, which he is not accustomed to find in his routine endeavors. As long as he was simply studying the laws of the mind, he enjoyed the approval of the wider public. His work was appreciated, as is that of the biologist and the chemist. But when it became his aim to discover mental features of the individual and to foresee what he can expect from the particular groups of men, every layman told him condescendingly that it was a superfluous task, as instinct and intuition and the naïve psychology of the street would be more successful than any measurements with chronoscopes and kymographs. Do we not know how the skillful politician or the efficient manager looks through the mind of a man at the first glance? The life-insurance agent has hardly entered the door before he knows how this particular mind must be handled. Every commercial traveler knows more than any psychologist can tell him, and even the waiter in the restaurant foresees when the guest sits down how large a tip he can expect from him.

In itself it would hardly be convincing to claim that scientific efforts to bring a process down to exact principles are unnecessary because the pro

can be performed by instinct. We all can walk without needing a knowledge of the muscles which are used, and can find nourishment without knowing the physiology of nutrition. Yet the physiologist has not only brought to light the principles according to which we actually eat, but he has been able to make significant suggestions for improved diet, and in not a few cases his knowledge can render services which no instinctive appetite could replace. The psychological study of human traits, too, may not only find out the principles underlying the ordinary knowledge of men, but

may discover means for an insight which goes as far beyond the instinctive understanding of man, as the scientific diet prescribed by a physician goes beyond the fancies of a cook. The manager may believe that he can recognize at the first glance for which kind of work the laborer is fit; and yet psychological analysis by the methods of exact experiments may easily demonstrate that his judgment is entirely mistaken. Moreover, although such practical psychologists of the street or of the office may develop a certain art of recognizing particular features in the individual, they cannot formulate the laws and cannot lay down those permanent relations from which others may learn.

Yet even this claim of the psychological scholar seems idle pride. Had the world really to wait for his exact statistics and his formulæ of the correlation of mental traits in order to get general statements and definite descriptions of the human types and of the mental diversities? Are not the writings of the wise men of all times full of such psychological observations? Has not the consciousness of the nations expressed itself in an abundance of sayings and songs, of proverbs and philosophic words, which contain this naïve psychological insight into the characters and temperaments of the human mind? We may go back thousands of years to the contemplation of Oriental wisdom; we may read the poets of classic antiquity, or Shakespeare, or Goethe; we may study what the great religious leaders and statesmen, the historians and the jurists, have said about man and his behavior; and we find a superabundance of wonderful sayings with which no textbooks of psychology can be compared.

This is all true. And yet, is it not perhaps all entirely false? Can this naïve psychology of the ages, to which