Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 85.djvu/35

Rh in cages which could be opened from the inside by turning a button, or pressing upon a lever, or pulling a cord, they at first clawed around all sides of the cage until by chance they happened to operate the mechanism which opened the door. Thereafter they gradually learned by experience, that is, by trial and error, and finally by trial and success, just where and how to claw in order to get out at once. When a dog has learned to turn a button at once and open a door we say he is intelligent, and if he can learn to apply his knowledge of any particular cage to other and different cages, a thing which Thorndike denies, we should be justified in saying that he reasons, though in this case intelligence and reason are founded upon memory of many past experiences, of many trials and errors and of a few trials and successes.

There is every evidence that human beings arrive at intelligence and reason by the same process, a process of many trials and errors and a few trials and successes, a remembering of these past experiences and an application of them to new conditions. A baby grasps for things which are out of its reach, until it has learned by experience to appreciate distances; it tests all sorts of pleasant and unpleasant things until it has learned to avoid the latter and seek the former; it experiments with its own body until it has learned what it can do and what it can not do. Is not this learning by experience akin to the same process in the dog and more remotely to the trial and error of the earthworm or the adaptive reflexes of Paramecium? Is not intelligence and reason in all of us, and upon all subjects, based upon the same processes of trial and error, memory of past experiences and application of this to new conditions? Surely this is true in all experimental and scientific work. Indeed the scientific method is the method of trial and error, and finally trial and success—the method recommended by St. Paul to "try all things and hold fast that which is good."

In Paramecium the reflex type of behavior is relatively complete; there is no associative memory and no ability to learn by experience. In the earthworm associative memory is but slightly developed and the animal learns but little by experience and can make no application of past experiences to new conditions. In the dog associative memory is well developed; the animal learns by experience and can, to a limited extent, apply such memory of past experiences to new conditions. In adult man all of these processes are fully developed and particularly the last, viz., the ability to reason. But in his development the human individual passes through the more primitive stages of intelligence, represented by the lower animals named; the germ cells and embryo represent only the stages of reflex behavior, to these trial and error and associative memory are added in the infant and young child, and to these the application of past experience to new conditions, or reason, is added in later years.

5. Will.—Another characteristic, which many persons regard as the supreme psychical faculty, is the will. This faculty also undergoes