From the preface when this work was originally published in 1888: "I have endeavored, in the following essay upon Micro-organisms, to show that psychological phenomena begin among the very lowest classes of beings; they are met with in every form of life from the simplest cellule to the most complicated organism. It is they that are the essential phenomena of life, inherent in all protoplasm." French psychologist Alfred Binet (1859-1911) took a different tack than most psychologists of his day: he was interested in the workings of the normal mind rather than the pathology of mental illness....

Originally published in 1907, this book explores the distinction between mind and matter. Although Alfred Binet is best known for his contributions to the study of intelligence he had other extensive research interests and published widely in many areas of psychology. This reissue is an opportunity to explore some of that work, which includes consciousness and cognition as well as definitions of psychology.

This book is a prolonged effort to establish a distinction between what is called mind and what is called matter. Nothing is more simple than to realise this distinction when you do not go deeply into it; nothing is more difficult when you analyse it a little. At first sight, it seems impossible to confuse things so far apart as a thought and a block of stone; but on reflection this great contrast vanishes, and other differences have to be sought which are less apparent and of which one has not hitherto dreamed.

"La Suggestibilite" de Alfred Binet. Pedagogue et psychologue francais (1857-1911)."

This book is a prolonged effort to establish a distinction between what is called mind and what is called matter. Nothing is more simple than to realise this distinction when you do not go deeply into it; nothing is more difficult when you analyse it a little. At first sight, it seems impossible to confuse things so far apart as a thought and a block of stone; but on reflection this great contrast vanishes, and other differences have to be sought which are less apparent and of which one has not hitherto dreamed.

The Binet-Simon tests of children's intelligence have been the subject of much discussion during the past few years, both in this country and in America. Much of this discussion seems to have been carried on, at times, without any knowledge of the original aim or purpose for which these tests were devised, and as if, so to speak, they were invented as a means for ascertaining the relative intellectual powers of all children, and so of affording to the teacher a ready and sure means of accurately classifying and grading the children under his charge.

..".Une tres forte suggestibilite est naturelle a l'enfant, elle fait partie de sa psychologie normale, au meme titre que le sentiment de la peur; et le developpement regulier des fonctions intellectuelles et morales diminue progressivement cette suggestibilite enfantine, sans qu'il soit le plus souvent necessaire d'aider l'oeuvre de la nature. Du reste, la suggestibilite est, pour l'enfant, qui ne sait rien encore et qui est incapable de raisonner, une forme de la confiance, et sans la confiance de l'eleve, sans l'autorite du maitre, il n'y a pas d'education possible. Le pedagogue doit...

Dans ce dernier livre, Alfred Binet s'interesse aux causes de l'echec scolaire qui peuvent etre psychologiques. Il etablit une etude brillante de l'intelligence, de la memoire, des aptitudes et du caractere des enfants en proposant des epreuves de mesure appropriees.