i 4 o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



already referred incidentally to a learned pig, and to the parallelism 

 "between its training and some kinds of human education. Persons 

 familiar with the tricks taught to animals are aware that these may all 

 be described as muscular actions performed each consecutively to its 

 proper signal. On hearing the finger-nails of the master click together, 

 the animal does something in obedience to the sensation ; nods its 

 head, or shakes its head, or stands erect, as the case may be. It has 

 no idea that the nod is an affirmation, or the shake a negation, and 

 probably has no thirst for knowledge about the matter, being content 

 to play its part correctly, and to escape the whip. In the case of chil- 

 dren, the medium of communication is different, and the kind of re- 

 sponse is different ; but the faculty in action is commonly the same. The 

 words of the pig's master are mere by-play, intended to amuse the 

 audience, and the signal is conveyed by other sounds. The words of 

 the human teacher or examiner, his questions, for instance, are the sig 

 nals to the child, each requiring its appropriate answer ; but, like the 

 signals to the pig, they are aural sensations, capable, as such, of pro- 

 ducing muscular action through the medium of the sensorium alone. 

 The responses of the child are in words that is to say, in sounds that 

 he has been taught, and that he remembers, but of which he need not 

 understand one iota in order to repeat them, any more than the pig 

 need understand the affirmative or negative character of its nod or 

 shake. In the human species, articulate speech is an act precisely 

 analogous to locomotion, requiring the combined and harmonious work- 

 ing of several muscles, and the guidance of sense, but in no way essen- 

 tially connected with the intelligence ; and the child may make the 

 right noises in the right order, just as the pig does not nod its head 

 when the signal requires it to be shaken. 



A general idea of the facts, which we have endeavored to s*tate, 

 was conveyed to the public many years age by a phrase now almost 

 forgotten. Educationists found, by experience, that children managed 

 to retain sounds without meaning, and they called the process "learn- 

 ing by rote." Books, pamphlets, and speeches, bore witness to the 

 practical inutility of such learning, and were full of suggestions for 

 improving upon it. But these suggestions, to the best of our recollec- 

 tion of them, did not go to the root of the matter, and were mainly 

 based on the assumption that learning by rote was characterized by 

 some sort of deficiency only, and not by a radical error in the kind of 

 impression made upon the pupil. It was not distinctly stated, or com- 

 monly conceded (although often implied in phraseology), that the ac- 

 tion of the child's mind was of a nature essentially distinct from that 

 which it would be the object of a wise instructor to excite ; and the 

 cause of the error was mainly sought in teaching not carried far 

 enough to be beneficial, or not continued sufficiently long to produce 

 permanent results. We conceive that the recent development of ner- 

 vous physiology entitles us to maintain that learning by rote is at once 



