ABSTRACT
The Need of Motor Responses.—General psychology teaches that the function of mental life is to modify our bodily responses so as to fit them to the environment and secure life, satisfaction and efficiency. Only in so far as a man’s education produces changes in his actual motor responses does it make him of more value to society as a whole; for men influence other people only through their acts. No information or interest or ideal or habit of thought or feeling has done its work until it issues in conduct, until it does something. Moreover, the motor responses which an individual makes react upon his own intellect and character. Not only is his thought worth nothing to anyone else until it alters his acts; it is also worth little to him. Our own movements are perhaps our greatest educators. At any rate they deserve a place beside the impressions made by the physical world and by the conduct of other human beings.
