162 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 
unaided by past learning shows more inferiority in the case of adults 
than was indicated by the experiments taken as a whole. Actual learning 
of such things as adults commonly have to learn shows, however, con- 
siderably less. 
(6) The curve of ability to learn from 22 to 42 is a very slow decline, 
and this decline is no greater for inferior intelligence than for superior. 
Thorndike studied all sorts of learning and in each case analysed the 
curve of ability to learn in relation to age. Although he realises that 
a curve of total or average ability may be unattainable, yet he was able to 
conclude in general that nobody under 45 should restrain himself from 
trying to learn anything because of a belief that he is too old to be able to 
learn it. ‘ If he fails in learning it, inability due directly to age will very 
rarely, if ever, be the reason. ‘The reason will commonly be one or 
more of these: He lacks and always has lacked the capacity to learn that 
particular thing. His desire to learn it is not strong enough to cause him 
to give proper attention to it. ‘The ways and means which he adopts are 
inadequate, and would have been so at any age, to teach him anything. 
He has habits or ideas or other tendencies which interfere with the new 
acquisition, and which he is unable or unwilling to alter. In the last 
case mere age may have some influence.’ 
Thorndike’s conclusions are particularly important when we consider 
schemes for adult education, and it is interesting to see how well his 
experimental findings agree with Cicero’s dicta on age: ‘ But, you argue, 
the memory grows feebler. I believe it does unless you practise it, or if 
you are by nature rather dull. . . . What of lawyers, pontiffs, augurs, 
philosophers when they are old ? How much they remember! The old 
retain their wits, provided their earnestness and energy lasts; and this 
happens not only with men who are illustrious and who have held high 
office, but also in a life of privacy and repose.’ 
Having reported facts concerning the relation of adult learning to age 
we may pass on to consider some of the most important human abilities 
in their relation to age, and important in this respect are the Stanford 
Later Maturity Publications which have appeared from 1931 onwards 
under the direction of Prof. Walter R. Miles, and which were aided by 
a grant from the Carnegie Corporation. A reference to some of these 
abilities is now necessary. 
SENSORY AND Motor ABILITIES. 
The importance of abilities such as reaction speed and co-ordination of 
movements in the various industries and sports hardly needs mention. 
Motor skills are so varied that each has to be studied by itself, and although 
some evidence for group factors in this field has been obtained, yet in the 
main it is the specificity of each ability which is striking ; and this is not 
surprising when it is considered that some demand considerable visual 
acuity, others visual attention, others muscular power, others neuro- 
muscular speed of reaction, and so forth. 
Probably visual acuity is at its maximum in the teens. It is probably 
one of the first physiological functions to show a very slight deterioration 
with age. About the age of fifty on the average this deterioration may 
