122 Animal Intelligence 



whole. Probably the idea of the look of the loop or lever or 

 thumb latch never entered the mind of any one of my cats 

 during the months that they were with me, except when the 

 front end of the association containing it was excited by put- 

 ting the cat into the box. In general, the unit of their con- 

 sciousness, apart from impulses and emotions, is a whole 

 association-series. Such soil cannot grow general ideas, for 

 the ideas, so long as they never show themselves except for 

 a particular practical business, will not be thought about or 

 realized in their nature or connections. If enough associa- 

 tions are provided by a general curiosity, such as is seen 

 among the monkeys, if the mental elements of the associa- 

 tion are freed, isolated, felt by themselves, then a realization 

 of the ideas, feelings of their similarity by transition from 

 one to the other, feelings of qualities and of meanings, may 

 gradually emerge. Language will be a factor in the isola- 

 tion of the ideas and a help to their realization. But when 

 any one says that language has been the cause of the change 

 from brute to man, when one talks as if nothing but it were 

 needed to turn animal consciousness into human, he is speak- 

 ing as foolishly as one who should say that a proboscis added 

 to a cow would make it an elephant. 



This is all I have to say, in this connection, about associa- 

 tion by similarity and conception, and with it is concluded 

 our analysis of the nature of the association-process in ani- 

 mals. Before proceeding to treat of the delicacy, com- 

 plexity, number and permanence of these associations, it 

 seems worth while to attempt to describe graphically, not by 

 analysis, the mental fact we have been studying, and also 

 to connect our results with the previous theories of associa- 

 tion. 



One who has seen the phenomena so far described, who 

 has watched the life of a cat or dog for a month or more 



