Pedagogical and Age Psychology

[Modern psychology] appears as the sickly offspring of average common sense when it is taken as what it professes to be—a science of the inner life. The entire achievements of the so-called science in this respect is outweighed by a single page of Goethe’s or of Jean Paul’s psychology; and it is impossible to evade the bitter truth which Novalis already has summed up, when he says that so-called psychology is one of those idols which have usurped the place in the sanctuary where true images of the gods should stand.

He has grown aged in this world of woe,
In deeds, not years, piercing the depths of life.
So that no wonder waits him.

Nature in you stands on the very verge
Of her confine.