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 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!