Pleased to find that her two distinguished guests were congenial, Alicia left them to themselves and joined her other guests.
"Yes," said the lawyer musingly, "man has studied for centuries the mechanism of the body, but he has neglected entirely the mechanism of the mind."
Dr. Bernstein smiled approvingly.
"We are just waking up," he replied quickly. "People are beginning to look upon psychology seriously. Up to comparatively recently the layman has regarded psychology as the domain of the philosopher and the dreamer. It did not seem possible that it could ever be applied to our practical everyday life, but of late we have made remarkable strides. Although it is a comparatively new science, you will probably be astonished to learn that there are to-day in the United States fifty psychological laboratories. That is to say, workshops fully equipped with every device known for the probing of the human brain. In my laboratory in California alone I have as many as twenty rooms hung with electric wires and equipped with all the necessary instruments—chronoscopes, kymographs, tachistoscopes, and ergographs, instruments which enable us to measure and record the human brain as accurately as the Bertillon system."
"Really, you astonish me!" exclaimed the judge. "This is most interesting. Think of laboratories solely devoted to delving into mysteries of the human brain! It is wonderful!"
He was silent for a moment, then he said:
"It is quite plain, I think, that psychology can prove most useful in medicine. It is, I take it, the very foundation of mental healing, but what else would it do for humanity? For instance, can it help me, the lawyer?"
Dr. Bernstein smiled.
"You gentlemen of the law have always scoffed at the very suggestion of bringing psychology to your aid, but just think, sir, how enormously it might aid you in cross-examining a witness. You can tell with almost scientific accuracy if the witness is telling lies or the truth, and the same would be clear to the judge and the jury. Just think how your powers would be increased if by your skill in psychological observation you could convince the jury that your client, who was about to be convicted on circumstantial evidence alone, was really innocent of the crime of which he was charged. Why, sir, the road which psychology opens up to the lawyer is well-nigh boundless. Don't you use the Bertillon system to measure the body? Don't you rely on thumb prints to identify the hand? How do you know that we psychologists are not able to-day to test the individual differences of men?"
"In a word," laughed the judge, "you mean that any one trained to read my mind can tell just what's passing in my brain?"