MENTAL AND PHYSICAL FACTORS INVOLVED IN EDUCATION. 303 
elements may be either perception or imagery; the motor elements 
either actual movement or imagery. The writing-motor adjustment is 
less highly specialised, more artificial, and more lately acquired than 
the motor processes of speech. It is probable that its imagery does 
not pass over so readily or so definitely into actual movement. The 
impulse to image or actually to experience the writing movement on 
hearing a word is much more controllable than the tendency to articu- 
late on seeing it. The visual form of each letter carries a qualification 
due to the tactual and muscular experiences of writing it; but those 
experiences are not nearly so important for the comprehension of the 
visual form of a new word as are the speech-motor elements. They 
are probably more important with children than with adults. Writing 
movements do not appear to act as an independent medium of memory, 
as the speech movements may do; they rarely enter as a conscious 
factor into recall, and, when present, are so as a qualification of the 
visual memory. The intrinsic value of the writing memory appears 
greater than it strictly is by virtue of the extra aids it affords to 
visualism, to attention, and to the fusion of the visual and auditory 
elements. 
Articulation of syllables is usually introduced into any method of 
learning. The visual form does not become a ‘ word’ until it is pro- 
nounced, either aloud or internally. The tendency to pronounce on 
seeing the word is almost universally irresistible and essential to learn- 
ing, whatever the imaginal type of the observer. Anthropological con- 
siderations throw some light on this fact—spoken language precedes 
written. 
The wnit of spelling is usually the syllable—the syllable finds direct 
expression as one whole, even in spelling by speech. And the syllable 
is primarily a speech-unit; the letters are grouped by sound-synthesis, 
the visual form often showing syllabic grouping in correspondence. 
There is visual synthesis of the general form of the word, as a visual 
picture, apart from its sound-value, but the synthesis of syllabic group- 
ing is determined by and follows on articulation. With a perfectly 
familiar word, the articulatory syllable simply ‘is’ the visual form— 
the fusion is complete. As regards the correspondence of visual and 
auditory constituents, the English language is in a peculiar position. 
The visual word-whole contains its parts, the letters unchanged. The 
auditory-motor whole is a very different thing from the sum-total of 
the sound values of the letters (apart from letter-names); some of 
them are not represented at all, and many are quite changed in value. 
The auditory constituents of a word are strictly not the letters, but 
phonetic units. A complicated and highly variable system of corre- 
spondences between the spoken and written letters thus occurs. This 
Increases the strain on mechanical memory—a separate memory for 
almost every word being necessary. 
Articulation of the letters is thus no direct aid to the spelling 
memory and a wasteful method of learning. ~Drill of some form is, 
however, essential to spelling efficiency, since the spelling process is in 
the nature of a habit, and efficiency means a habit so fixed as to be 
almost unconscious. Articulation of the syllables simultaneously with 
