The Memory Idea 281 



stooping and picking it up will feel like; the sight of that 

 object in that position sets off the appropriate movement 

 directly. When the soldier hears the command "Halt!" 

 he does not first think of stopping; the sound stops him. 

 But the important consideration is not what conditions de- 

 termine old movements, movements that have been many 

 times performed by the individual. The superiority of an 

 animal consists largely in its power to learn new movements 

 rapidly. And whenever we ourselves learn really new 

 movements, we find that an essential part of the process is 

 the presence of a movement idea in the focus of attention. 



Such processes as those involved in learning the type- 

 writer, in learning to play golf, in acquiring any new set of 

 muscular adjustments, certainly involve calling up in the 

 form of ideas the sensory experiences obtained from actually 

 moving. We have to " think" where the fingers must go, 

 how the arms must swing ; the trainer who instructs us puts 

 forth every effort to suggest to us the proper look and feel of 

 the movements themselves. He must, of course, in so doing 

 recall to us the ideas of the movements already familiar to 

 us which are most nearly similar to the required new ones. 

 Where nothing similar can be found, the training is likely to 

 fail. The difficulty experienced by an average human being 

 in learning to move his ears consists essentially in the fact that, 

 never having done anything remotely similar to moving his 

 ears, he has no movement idea to call up. He cannot move 

 them because he cannot "imagine" how it would feel to 

 move them. 



Thus the power to attend to a memory idea of the sensa- 

 tions formerly involved in the performance of a movement is 

 a very important factor in the rapid acquisition of new move- 

 ments. And one reason why the lower animals in general 

 learn new movements but slowly may be connected with a 



