The child at kindergarten receives a few blocks. It admires and
plays with them. Then it is taught to notice their form. After a
time it arranges them in groups and learns the first elements of
number. But when it has advanced to higher mathematics, the blocks,
or figures on the blackboard, become only symbols or means of
illustrating the great theorems and propositions of that science.
Thus the animal has begun in the kindergarten way to dimly perceive
that there are real, though intangible and invisible, relations
between objects. But what is all human science but the clearer
vision, and farther search into, and tracing of these same
relations? And what is all advance of knowledge but a perception of
ever subtler relations? What is even the knowledge of right but the
perception of the subtlest and deepest and widest relations of man
to his environment? The animal seems to be steadily advancing along
the path toward the perception of abstract truth, though man alone
really attains it.
And the higher power of association and inference which we call
understanding, aided by memory, results in the power of learning by
experience, so characteristic of higher vertebrates. The hunted bird
or mammal very quickly becomes wary. A new trap catches more than a
better old one until the animals have learned to understand it, and
young animals are trapped more easily than old.
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