150 Animal Intelligence 



hitherto unknown. The best way with children may often 

 be, in the pompous words of an animal trainer, ' to arrange 

 everything in connection with the trick so that the animal 

 will be compelled by the laws of his own nature to perform 

 it' 



This does not at all imply that I think, as a present school 

 of scientists seem to, that because a certain thing has been in 

 phylogeny we ought to repeat it in ontogeny. Heaven 

 knows that Dame Nature herself in ontogeny abbreviates 

 and skips and distorts the order of the appearance of organs 

 and functions, and for the best of reasons. We ought to 

 make an effort, as she does, to omit the useless and anti- 

 quated and get to the best and most useful as soon as possible ; 

 we ought to change what is to what ought to be, as far as we 

 can. And I would not advocate this animal-like method of 

 learning in place of the later ones unless it does the same 

 work better. I simply suggest that in many cases where 

 at present its use is never dreamed of, it may be a good 

 method. As the fundamental form of intellection, every 

 student of theoretical pedagogy ought to take it into account. 



There is one more contribution, this time to anthropology. 

 If the method of trial and error, with accidental success, be 

 the method of acquiring associations among the animals, the 

 slow progress of primitive man, the long time between stone 

 age and iron age, for instance, becomes suggestive. Primi- 

 tive man probably acquired knowledge by just this process, 

 aided possibly by imitation. At any rate, progress was not 

 by seeing through things, but by accidentally hitting upon 

 them. Very possibly an investigation of the history of 

 primitive man and of the present life of savages in the light 

 of the results of this research might bring out old facts in a 

 new and profitable way. 



Comparative psychology has, in the light of this research, 



