se be
excessive or his memory poor, many repetitions of the discipline may be
needed before the acquired reaction comes to be an ingrained habit; but
in an eminently educable child a single experience will suffice.

One can easily represent the whole process by a brain-diagram. Such a
diagram can be little more than a symbolic translation of the immediate
experience into spatial terms; yet it may be useful, so I subjoin it.

[Illustration: FIGURE 1. THE BRAIN-PROCESSES BEFORE EDUCATION.]

Figure 1 shows the paths of the four successive reflexes executed by the
lower or instinctive centres. The dotted lines that lead from them to
the higher centres and connect the latter together, represent the
processes of memory and association which the reactions impress upon the
higher centres as they take place.

[Illustration: FIGURE 2. THE BRAIN-PROCESS AFTER EDUCATION.]

In Figure 2 we have the final result. The impression _see_ awakens the
chain of memories, and the only reactions that take place are the _beg_
and _smile_. The thought of the _slap_, connected with the activity of
Centre 2, inhibits the _snatch_, and makes it abortive, so it is
represented only by a dotted line of discharge not reaching the
terminus. Ditto of the _cry_ reaction. These are, as it were,
short-circuited by the current sweeping through the higher centres from
_see_ to _smile_. _Beg_ and _smile_, thus substituted for the original
reaction _snatch_, become at last the immediate responses when the
child sees a snatchable object in some one's hands.

The first thing, then, for the teacher to understand is the native
reactive tendencies,--the impulses and instincts of childhood,--so as to
be able to substitute one for another, and turn them on to artificial
objects.

* * * * *

It is often said that man is distinguished from the lower animals by
having a much smaller assortment of native instincts and impulses than
they, but this is a great mistake. Man, of course, has not the
marvellous egg-laying instincts which some articulates have; but, if we
compare him with the mammalia, we are forced to confess that he is
appealed to by a much larger array of objects than any other mammal,
that his reactions on these objects are characteristic and determinate
in a very high degree. The monkeys, and especially the anthropoids, are
the only beings that approach him in their analytic curiosity and width
of imitativeness. His in