VI. NATIVE REACTIONS AND ACQUIRED REACTIONS


We are by this time fully launched upon the biological conception. Man
is an organism for reacting on impressions: his mind is there to help
determine his reactions, and the purpose of his education is to make
them numerous and perfect. _Our education means, in short, little more
than a mass of possibilities of reaction,_ acquired at home, at school,
or in the training of affairs. The teacher's task is that of supervising
the acquiring process.

This being the case, I will immediately state a principle which
underlies the whole process of acquisition and governs the entire
activity of the teacher. It is this:--

_Every acquired reaction is, as a rule, either a complication grafted on
a native reaction, or a substitute for a native reaction, which the same
object originally tended to provoke._

_The teacher's art consists in bringing about the substitution or
complication, and 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