70 HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT 



learn to apply his knowledge of any particular 

 cage to other and different cages, a thing 

 which Thorndike denies, we should be justified 

 in saying that he reasons, though in this case 

 intelligence and reason are founded upon 

 memory of many past experiences, of many 

 trials and errors and of a few trials and 

 successes. 



There is every evidence that human beings 

 arrive at intelligence and reason by the same 

 process, a process of many trials and errors 

 and a few trials and successes, a remembering 

 of these past experiences and an application 

 of them to new conditions. A baby grasps for 

 things which are out of its reach, until it has 

 learned by experience to appreciate distances; 

 it tests all sorts of pleasant and unpleasant 

 things until it has learned to avoid the latter 

 and seek the former; it experiments with its 

 own body until it has learned what it can do 

 and what it can not do. Is not this learning 

 by experience akin to the same process in the 

 dog and more remotely to the trial and error 

 of the earthworm or the adaptive reflexes of 

 Paramecium'? Is not intelligence and reason 



