The Outline of Science 



placed an apple out of Lizzie's reach. She reached immediately 

 for the nail, pulled the board in and got the apple. "There was 

 no employment of the method of trial and error; there was direct 

 appropriate action following the perception of her relation to 

 hoard, nail, and apple/' Of course her ancestors may have been 

 adepts at drawing a fruit-laden branch within their reach, 

 but the simple experiment was very instructive. All the more 

 instructive because in many other cases the experiments indicate 

 a gradual sifting out of useless movements and an eventful reten- 

 tion of the one that pays. When Lizzie was given a vaseline 

 bottle containing a peanut and closed with a cork, she at once 

 pulled the cork out with her teeth, obeying the instinct to bite 

 at new objects, but she never learned to turn the bottle upside 

 down and let the nut drop out. She often got the nut, and after 

 some education she got it more quickly than she did at first, but 

 there was no indication that she ever perceived the fit and proper 

 way of getting what she wanted. "In the course of her intent 

 efforts her mind seemed so absorbed with the object of desire 

 that it was never focussed on the means of attaining that object. 

 There was no deliberation, and no discrimination between the 

 important and the unimportant elements in her behaviour. The 

 gradually increasing facility of her performances depended on 

 the apparently unconscious elimination of useless movements." 

 This may be called learning, but it is learning at a very low level ; 

 it is far from learning by ideas; it is hardly even learning by 

 experiment; it is not more than learning by experience, it is not 

 more than fumbling at learning! 



Trial and Error 



A higher note is struck in the behaviour of some more highly 

 endowed monkeys. In many experiments, chiefly in the way of 

 getting into boxes difficult to open, there is evidence ( 1 ) of atten- 

 tive persistent experiment (2) of the rapid elimination of ineffec- 

 tive movements, and (3) of remembering the solution when it 



