THE MOTOR ACTIVITIES IN TEACHING. 6i 



nues of perception, of how it increases the number of judgments 

 and the accuracy of them. It enriches also in content our ideas 

 of form, of time, of distance, of place, of resistance, etc. 



Association, moreover, is very closely related to this side, and 

 the employment of the motor activities in mental acquirement 

 aids memory. Prof. Baldwin says very emphatically that associ- 

 ation has a motor foundation from the first, and that the elements 

 hold together in memory because they are used together in action, 

 and as action becomes one, but yet complex, so the mental content 

 tends to become one, yet complex. He says further : " We have 

 to-day got beyond the view that memory is a faculty which takes 

 up content and remembers it. It is, on the contrary, now known 

 to be a function of the content remembered." In my view this 

 function of the content depends upon the variety of association 

 and also upon volition, and both of these are best built up by that 

 which gives the fullest possible functioning of the nervous mech- 

 anism during its developing period namely, the fullest and most 

 varied use of the motor activities warrantable. This, bear in 

 mind, means a much more prominent use of these activities than 

 has yet been made in our schools. 



In the act of teaching or learning, old elements are constantly 

 revived through extrinsic stimulation and volition. But it is, 

 after all, the motor which sets those processes going that revive 

 the older mental elements, and it is through the motor that the 

 older elements have placed beside them images and judgments 

 containing a greater number of elements than they would other- 

 wise have had. Thus arises a more varied association. The new 

 impressions become blended with the old, but at the same time 

 the new have more elements in them because of the development 

 of the motor side. Accordingly, the new content is a fuller one 

 that is, it has more clews by which its revival may be produced. 

 For Donaldson, in those two remarkable chapters which close his 

 recent work. The Growth of the Brain, not only expressly says 

 that " education consists in modifications of the central nervous 

 system," but also that " the value of mental images appears also 

 as dependent on the number and balance of the secondary sensa- 

 tions which accompany them. The greater the number of these, 

 the more certain and precise is our thought," and " as the possi- 

 bility of forming the extra images is curtailed, the conception be- 

 comes weaker, more special, and less reliable." 



The reasons why we attribute such value to paper folding, 

 drawing, coloring, clay modeling, of late so largely introduced 

 into courses of study and with such profit both to pupil and to 

 teacher, must now be very evident. On the same grounds man- 

 ual training is appreciated to-day, and is winning wider adoption 

 because of its employment of the motor activities. It may be said. 



