Motor Aspect of Language.-Every idea-process gets interwoven with a great variety of muscular co-ordinations, and among the most prominent are those involved in our use of language. The words and symbols are not only means of mental economy, expression, and of understanding others, but they become in reality a part of the ideational process. The idea could never have attained the same clearness without the use of words; in fact full-fledged abstractions could not have been gained at all without the use of language and they cannot be revived without employing language symbols. Consequently, in considering motor training we must not overlook these most refined of all motor relations between thought and language. There must be adequate opportunity for expressing ideas not only for the purpose of rendering the ideas permanent, but equally important and more fundamental, for the purpose of making the ideas themselves clear and vivid. Real ideas are not something added to one's mind, but a part of the mind itself. Halleck says to speak of "motor ideas" is as tautological as to speak of "wet water." One of the specific purposes of the recitation is to afford opportunity for expression. The recitation may demand oral expression, dramatization, written exercises, drawing, constructing apparatus, moulding, or some form of manual training. The motor activity serves not only to fix ideas, but also to clarify and enlarge them, and even to furnish new ideas. To abolish the recitation and depend entirely upon the absorptive process is to fail to utilize one of the most important means of education.

Vocal speech, for example, requires the nicest sort of motor adjustments, and the ability to talk fluently, accurately, and in a pleasing manner is no mean accomplishment. The possession of this ability implies accuracy and clearness of ideas as well as training in expression. Oral speech is often one's most valuable asset. It is usually the best index of what we know and what we are. No motor training is harder to acquire, rarer to be observed, and worthier of cultivation than perfect oral speech. Much time in the child's early life is occupied with acquiring

speech. The process is largely one of subconscious imitation, but the results are no less certain and valuable than when gained through painful, conscious attention to the process. The child who hears correct language in the home is fortunate indeed. He is saved many painful hours of unlearning. The schools also are relieved of the burden of undoing undesirable habits. Language training in the lower school grades should be largely oral and is a fundamental problem in motor adjustment. When teaching written expression, of course, the problem is also one of motor training, and even a most important kind of manual training. Learning a foreign language demands the acquisition of many motor adjustments. The memorizing of a vocabulary is for certain types of individuals very largely a task of motor memory. Acquiring accuracy and facility in speaking the foreign language is pre-eminently a motor task. To write it demands still other muscular training.

Training of Defectives.-The methods of dealing with defectives have been very radically modified during the last few years, and one of the directions of change is in the greater employment of motor activities. Formerly the first attempt to train the feeble-minded consisted in an effort to teach them reading and writing the very last things that they needed. Now, with greater wisdom, motor training is made the first consideration. The unfortunates are taught to walk, run, stand, throw and catch a ball, climb ladders, use simple tools, put on their own clothing, to wrestle, etc. These activities give control of the larger movements of the body and gradually finer co-ordinations are introduced. If they master these activities they are given exercises in gaining sense-perceptions through a variety of motor activities. Manual training occupies an important place. Abstract intellectual work like reading and arithmetic are taken up only if sufficient progress has been made in the foregoing to warrant the belief that intelligent progress can be made. Methods of dealing with the criminal classes have also been transformed in many reformatories. Manual training occupies the foreground there.1

1 See the Elmira Reformatory Year Book for 1897, pp. 57-121.

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General Suggestions.-James says concerning the necessity for reactions: "If all this be true, then immediately one general aphorism emerges which ought by logical right to dominate the entire conduct of the teacher in the class-room. No reception without reaction, no impression without correlative expression— this is the great maxim which the teacher ought never to forget. An impression which simply flows in at the pupil's eyes or ears, and in no way modifies his active life, is an impression gone to waste. It is physiologically incomplete. It leaves no fruits behind it in the way of capacity acquired. Even as a mere impression, it fails to produce its proper effect upon the memory; for, to remain fully among the acquisitions of this latter faculty, it must be wrought into the whole cycle of our operations. Its motor consequences are what clinch it. Some effect due to it in the way of an activity must return to the mind in the form of the sensation of having acted, and connect itself with the impression. The most durable impressions are those on account of which we speak or act, or else are inwardly convulsed. The older pedagogic method of learning things by rote, and reciting them parrot-like in the school-room, rested on the truth that a thing merely read or heard, and never verbally reproduced, contracts the weakest possible adhesion in the mind. Verbal recitation or reproduction is thus a highly important kind of reactive behavior on our impressions."

If it is a law of life that expression naturally follows impressions, we may rightly be challenged with the query why education needs to concern itself with producing reactions? The answer is: although ideo-motor action is the rule, we must keep in mind the fact that in experiencing any new impressions, children, and even adults, are much like primitive organisms. Energy tends to be diffused and reactions are so scattered that the effects are lost or else the reaction may be wholly at variance with the idea. A given stimulus may become coupled with an undesirable response as, for example, the child may be asked to spell a word and happen upon a misspelling and this misspell1 Talks to Teachers, pp. 33, 34.

ing tends to stick unless education furnishes the right response. An incorrect pronunciation, a bad method of holding the pen, or an improper posture may be fixed upon by chance, and training must be given to guard against them or eradicate them if once established.

Again, the response may be so diffused and general as to be very indefinite and inexact, as when the child is beginning to talk. He hears words and is stimulated to speak, but only a long process of trial and error establishes correctness of response. The habit once fixed is a means of mental enslavure. We are by no means certain either that stimuli have been perceived accurately until they produce the right response. When the child fails to pronounce a word correctly we have reason to be suspicious of his perception of the proper sounds. Of course it is possible to perceive relations that cannot be expressed, but in general the more accurate and refined the expression the more exact the perception. Education must then secure reactions for the purpose of understanding, clarifying, and refining perceptions, concepts, and other mental processes.

XXII

THE NATURE OF THINKING

Preliminary Meaning of Thinking. In the older books on psychology which divided the mind very definitely into separate and distinct "faculties," thinking was considered as wholly different from other intellectual processes. But when we analyze the process and find that it consists of carefully considering, weighing, comparing, and forming judgments concerning given data, we notice that this is not wholly different from what takes place in perception. In fact, in any effective process of recognition or of identification, similar processes take place. The child that recognizes its mother or a toy as familiar must go through the mental act of comparing the object present to the senses with the mental idea of it and then judge that it agrees with that idea. If not recognized it would be because the sensations did not correspond to any mental product in stock. Whatever we perceive definitely must be marked off from all other objects. For example, in perceiving my lamp on the table before me I must differentiate that from the table and from the books strewn around. I must also compare it with my idea of my lamp and conclude that it corresponds with my remembered idea. Then only do I know this object to be my lamp.

Thinking in Other Processes.-In remembering or imagining effectively we must likewise note resemblances and differences, make analyses, compare, weigh, and judge whether the remembered or imagined thing is the one desired. In reciting a lesson the child mind, by virtue of mechanical associations so characteristic of childhood, recalls many things that are irrelevant. To recite properly he must scrutinize these ideas and exclude those that do not bear upon the point under discussion. This is to

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