The Outline of Science, Volume 1

The front of the cage in which Professor Holmes kept Lizzie was made of vertical bars which allowed her to reach out with her arm. On a board with an upright nail as handle, there was[Pg 236] placed an apple—out of Lizzie's reach. She reached immediately for the nail, pulled the board in and got the apple. "There was no employment of the method of trial and error; there was direct appropriate action following the perception of her relation to board, nail, and apple." Of course her ancestors may have been adepts at drawing a fruit-laden branch within their reach, but the simple experiment was very instructive. All the more instructive because in many other cases the experiments indicate a gradual sifting out of useless movements and an eventful retention of the one that pays. When Lizzie was given a vaseline bottle containing a peanut and closed with a cork, she at once pulled the cork out with her teeth, obeying the instinct to bite at new objects, but she never learned to turn the bottle upside down and let the nut drop out. She often got the nut, and after some education she got it more quickly than she did at first, but there was no indication that she ever perceived the fit and proper way of getting what she wanted. "In the course of her intent efforts her mind seemed so absorbed with the object of desire that it was never focussed on the means of attaining that object. There was no deliberation, and no discrimination between the important and the unimportant elements in her behaviour. The gradually increasing facility of her performances depended on the apparently unconscious elimination of useless movements." This may be called learning, but it is learning at a very low level; it is far from learning by ideas; it is hardly even learning by experiment; it is not more than learning by experience, it is not more than fumbling at learning!