es some other creature do; or he
imitates his own instinctive actions by setting up before him in his
mind the memories of the earlier performance; or, yet again, after he
has struck a fortunate combination, he repeats that imitatively. Thus,
by the principle already spoken of, he stores up a great mass of
Kinaesthetic Equivalents, which linger in memory, and enable him to
act appropriately when the proper circumstances come in his way. He
also gets what we have called Associations established between the
acts and the pleasure or pain which they give, and so avoids the
painful and repeats the pleasurable ones.

The most fruitful field of this sort of imitative learning is in
connection with the "try-try-again" struggles of the young, especially
children. This is called Persistent Imitation. The child sees before
him some action to imitate--some complex act of manipulation with the
hand, let us say. He tries to perform it in an experimental way, using
the muscles of the hand and arm. With this he strains himself all
over, twisting his tongue, bending his body, and grimacing from head
to foot, so to speak. Thus he gets a certain way toward the correct
result, but very crudely and inexactly. Then he tries again,
proceeding now on the knowledge which the first effort gave him; and
his trial is less uncouth because he now suppresses some of the
hindering grimacing movements and retains the ones which he sees to be
most nearly correct. Again he tries, and again, persistently but
gradually reducing the blundering movements to the pattern of the
copy, and so learning to perform the act of skill.

The massive and diffused movements which he makes by wriggling and
fussing are also of direct use to him. They increase remarkably the
chances that among them all there will be some movements which will
hit the mark, and so contribute to his stock of correct Equivalents.
Dogs and monkeys learn to unlock doors, let down fence rails, and
perform relatively complex actions by experimenting; persistently
with many varied movements until the successful ones are finally
struck.

This is the type of all those acts of experimenting by which new
complex movements are acquired. In children it proceeds largely
without interference from others; the child persists of himself. He
has greater ability than the animals to see the meaning of the
completed act and to really desire to acquire it. With the animals the
acquisitions do not extend very fa