While scholars may differ concerning the precise membership of the first generation of American psychologists, it would seem that a good case can be made for including George Trumbull Ladd in this distinguished group. Self-taught and influential in the first days of our field, Ladd played a special role in the development of the new mental science. Perhaps even more noteworthy was his feverish effort to synthesize classical learning and, as he often phrased it, "the best that the new mental science has to offer." No one tried harder to reconcile the old and the new, but the subsequent development of American psychology has made clear that Ladd was something less than totally successful in this great effort at reconciliation.
In order to understand Ladd's self-ordained role as a mediator and the highly personal route that he chose to advance this perilous work, it is necessary to recall some of the essential features of his background. He was a child of the Western Reserve, born in the middle of the nineteenth century to pious Congregational stock and reared in a family that stressed religious values, independence and the supreme importance of the work ethic. His education a t Western Reserve College was thorough in the subjects of religion, philosophy and the classics, and virtually nonexistent in scientific areas. Though he would contribute to the development of the new mental science during his mature years, following a decade in the Congregational ministry, it is not hard to understand why, throughout his life, his preferred methods for solving complex problems were those of philosophical analysis.
Ladd left the ministry in 1879 following several years of growing dissatisfaction with the dogmatic constraints of a theological life. A two-year stint on the faculty of Bowdoin College led to an invitation from Noah Porter to come to Yale. Porter's invitation found Ladd immersed in a self-instruction program that illustrates the problem that the new psychologists had when they were without formal curricula from which to learn. It is interesting a t this historical distance to picture Ladd systematically buying all of the books and periodicals that he could locate in order to become a psychologist. He read McCosh, Porter, Bain, J. S. Mill, Lotze and Locke; but soon he became acquainted with the works of Weber, Fechner, Helmholtz and Wundt. His personal documents make clear that the discovery of these new scientific views was an exciting personal experience.
*This paper is one of four delivered at the Eastern Psychological Association symposium, "The First Generation of American Ps chologlsts," held May 4, 1973 in Washington, D. C., chaired by John J. Sullivan with Robert I. datson as discussant.
. . . a summons is issued to the forces of the soul to rally, to marshal themselves, to submit to discipline, to do in a definite and purposeful way a certain piece of work.13 Ladd rallied and worked and our field has been the better for it.