success in the art presupposes a sympathetic
acquaintance with the reactive tendencies natively there_.

Without an equipment of native reactions on the child's part, the
teacher would have no hold whatever upon the child's attention or
conduct. You may take a horse to the water, but you cannot make him
drink; and so you may take a child to the schoolroom, but you cannot
make him learn the new things you wish to impart, except by soliciting
him in the first instance by something which natively makes him react.
He must take the first step himself. He must _do_ something before you
can get your purchase on him. That something may be something good or
something bad. A bad reaction is better than no reaction at all; for, if
bad, you can couple it with consequences which awake him to its badness.
But imagine a child so lifeless as to react in _no_ way to the teacher's
first appeals, and how can you possibly take the first step in his
education?

To make this abstract conception more concrete, assume the case of a
young child's training in good manners. The child has a native tendency
to snatch with his hands at anything that attracts his curiosity; also
to draw back his hands when slapped, to cry under these latter
conditions, to smile when gently spoken to, and to imitate one's
gestures.

Suppose now you appear before the child with a new toy intended as a
present for him. No sooner does he see the toy than he seeks to snatch
it. You slap the hand; it is withdrawn, and the child cries. You then
hold up the toy, smiling and saying, "Beg for it nicely,--so!" The child
stops crying, imitates you, receives the toy, and crows with pleasure;
and that little cycle of training is complete. You have substituted the
new reaction of 'begging' for the native reaction of snatching, when
that kind of impression comes.

Now, if the child had no memory, the process would not be educative. No
matter how often you came in with a toy, the same series of reactions
would fatally occur, each called forth by its own impression: see,
snatch; slap, cry; hear, ask; receive, smile. But, with memory there,
the child, at the very instant of snatching, recalls the rest of the
earlier experience, thinks of the slap and the frustration, recollects
the begging and the reward, inhibits the snatching impulse, substitutes
the 'nice' reaction for it, and gets the toy immediately, by eliminating
all the intermediary steps. If a child's first snatching impul