150 Animal Intelligence 
hitherto unknown. The best way with children mary often 
be, in the pompous words of an animal trainer, ‘ to arrange 
everything in connection with the trick so thatthe animal 
will be compelled by the laws of his own nature to perform 
Ite 
This does not at all imply that I think, as a present school 
of scientists seem to, that because a certain thing kas been in 
phylogeny we ought to repeat it in ontogeny. Heaven 
knows that Dame Nature herself in ontogeny abbreviates 
and skips and distorts the order of the appearance of organs 
and functions, and for the best of reasons. We ought to 
make an effort, as she does, to omit the useless and anti- 
quated and get to the best and most useful as soon as possible ; 
we ought to change what is to what ought to be, as far as we 
can. And I would not advocate this animal-like method of 
learning in place of the later ones unless it does the same 
work better. I simply suggest that in many cases where 
at present its use is never dreamed of, it may be a good 
method. As the fundamental form of intellection, every 
student of theoretical pedagogy ought to take it into account. 
There is one more contribution, this time to anthropology. 
Af the method of trial and error, with accidental success, be 
the method of acquiring associations among the animals, the 
slow progress of primitive man, the long time between stone 
age and iron age, for instance, becomes suggestive. Primi- 
tive man probably acquired knowledge by just this process, 
aided possibly by imitation. At any rate, progress was not 
by seeing through things, but by accidentally hitting upon 
them.) Very possibly an investigation of the history of 
primitive man and of the present life of savages in the light 
of the results of this research might bring out old facts in a 
new and profitable way. 
Comparative psychology has, in the light of this research, 
