64 SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY OF THE ORGANISM 



knowing how to open it. You first try all sorts of 

 manipulations familiar to you from your experience about 

 the effects of moving your hands with regard to opening 

 other trunks, but no success attends this " trying." At 

 last by chance you press a certain plain knob, and the 

 opening of the box is the " effect." The second time you 

 will press the knob at once ; there is no " trying " any 

 more, but the new experience assists you in " trials ' in 

 the future. The whole process has a great similarity to 

 what we know already from the analysis of the first 

 actions in the child, though, of course, differences must 

 not be overlooked. 



Experience based upon stimuli alone is no less familiar 

 to all of you than our last instance. The learning of 

 languages and all cases of imitation are typical instances 

 of this class. The general scheme of this type of 

 " historical basis of reacting " is this : you learn by 

 experience that a certain simple secondary phenomenon 

 always accompanies the primary one which is the proper 

 motor stimulus of your acting, and you then, in response 

 to that secondary or indicating phenomenon, perform the 

 same action that at first only followed the primary stimulus. 

 In this way you learn to identify different tramway lines 

 by the coloured boards or coloured lights they bear. 



All of you know, of course, that it is "association," 

 as the psychologists call it, of which we have here given 

 a rather complicated but not incorrect description. 



A good popular illustration of the difference between 

 an " historical basis ' concerned with previous stimuli 

 and effects and one concerned with stimuli alone is given 

 by the two following instances. If in a strange town 



