218 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 



treatment in early cWldhood is a case in point. During this period of 

 active habit formation, when the necessary sublimation of nascent in- 

 stinctive impulses is relatively an easy matter, the value of intelligent 

 guidance is too obvious to need further mention. 



As if to make up for the neglect of past years of the importance — the 

 extraordinary importance — of a fuller knowledge of the beginnings of 

 education and the dawn of intelligence of the young child, there has been 

 of recent years a concentration of investigation on this period by distin- 

 guished experts, which has fully compensated for the lack of adequate 

 research in earlier times. The manifest difficulty of discovering by direct 

 observation how the very young child approaches and overcomes obstacles 

 in the great adventure of becoming acquainted with the nature of his 

 strange environment, has to a very considerable extent been aided by 

 experiments with the more intelligent animals. 



The classical researches of Kohler in his arduous and remarkably 

 successful work, an account of which is given in his fascinating book on 

 ' The Mentality of Apes,' have cast a flood of light on the learning process. 

 The valuable monographs of Prof. Yerkes on ' The Mind of a Gorilla,' in 

 which he describes his investigation of the process of learning in this 

 animal, confirm and to some extent further elaborate the experiments of 

 Kohler. The great value of this type of investigation is that tasks of 

 varying difficulty can be given to the animals, such as the improvement on 

 repetition, the memory of success in an earlier experiment in attempting 

 a more difficult task of the same nature and so on, can be carried out and 

 conclusions reached. Obviously, it would be impossible to make a young 

 child go through a long series of conditioned experiments, and thus acquire 

 a knowledge which can be obtained so readily by experiments with animals. 

 When isolated experiments of a like nature were carried out with young 

 children, the similarities of response and the means adopted in reaching 

 the desired end were very significant. 



The fact that Kofika in his interesting book on ' The Growth of the 

 Mind ' — which is an admirable introduction to Child-Psychology — gives 

 such prominence to Kohler 's work, is indicative of the value he attaches 

 to it. His statement in this connection is of interest : — 



' If chimpanzees are able to solve original problems, not merely by 

 chance, but with insight, then the behaviour of these animals ought to 

 throw new light upon the nature of insight ; for modes of behaviour that 

 have become a matter of course with us adults may be expected to appear 

 in a more plastic form in the life of an ape. If the simplest-acts of intelli- 

 gence can in this way be brought under scientific experimental observa- 

 tion, the results must peld important data for theoretical purposes. 

 With adult man, on the contrary, an investigation of the simplest acts 

 of intelligence is no longer possible.' 



' Since Kohler's experiments provide us with the kind of information 

 we need, we shall find it worth while to examine them in detail. Indeed, 

 they furnish us with a significant contribution to the solution of our chief 

 problems, namely, the nature of learning in general, and the origin of the 

 first problems of achievement in particular.' 



The remarkable difference which exists between the child's world and 

 that of the adult presents very serious difficulties in the study of young 



