to be
more logical in all respects, for one element of being logical
in all respects is to realize that facts can be absolutely
proven and to admire and desire this certain and
unquestionable sort of demonstration...." (Thorndike, '06, pp.
243-245, _passim_.)

"Mental discipline is the most important thing in education,
but it is specific, not general. The ability developed by
means of one subject can be transferred to another subject
only in so far as the latter has elements in common with the
former. Abilities should be developed in school only by means
of those elements of subject-matter and of method that are
common to the most valuable phases of the outside environment.
In the high school there should also be an effort to work out
general concepts of method from the specific methods used."
(Heck, '09, Edition of '11, p. 198.)

"... No study should have a place in the curriculum for which
this general disciplinary characteristic is the chief
recommendation. Such advantage can probably be gotten in some
degree from every study, and the intrinsic values of each
study afford at present a far safer criterion of educational
work than any which we can derive from the theory of formal
discipline." (Angell, '08, p. 14.)

These writers also believe in transfer of training, but they believe the
transfer to be never complete, to be in general a very small percentage
of the special improvement gained and at times to be negative and to
interfere with responses in other fields instead of being a help. They
also emphasize the belief that when the transfer does occur, it is for
some perfectly valid reason and under certain very definite conditions.
They reject utterly the machine-like idea of the mind and its elemental
faculties held by the writers first quoted. They hold the view of mental
activity which has been emphasized in the discussion of original
tendencies and inheritance from near ancestry, _i.e._, that the physical
correlate of all types of mental activity is a definite forming of
connections between particular bonds-these connections, of course,
according to the laws of readiness exercise, and effect, would be
determined by the situation acting as a stimulus and would, therefore,
vary as the total situation varied. They believe in a highly specialized
human brain, which reacts in small groups of nerve tracts