Experimental Study of Associative Processes 123 



under test conditions, gets, or fancies he gets, a fairly defi- 

 nite idea of what the intellectual life of a cat or dog feels 

 like. It is most like what we feel when consciousness con- 

 tains little thought about anything, when we feel the sense- 

 impressions in their first intention, so to speak, when we feel 

 our own body, and the impulses we give to it. Sometimes 

 one gets this animal consciousness while in swimming, for 

 example. One feels the water, the sky, the birds above, but 

 with no thoughts about them or memories of how they looked 

 at other times, or aesthetic judgments about their beauty; 

 one feels no ideas about what movements he will make, but 

 feels himself make them, feels his body throughout. Self- 

 consciousness dies away. Social consciousness dies away. 

 The meanings, and values, and connections of things die 

 away. One feels sense-impressions, has impulses, feels the 

 movements he makes ; that is all. 



This pictorial description may be supplemented by an ac- 

 count of some associations in human life which are learned in 

 the same way as are animal associations ; associations, there- 

 fore, where the process of formation is possibly homologous 

 with that in animals. When a man learns to swim, to play 

 tennis or billiards, or to juggle, the process is something like 

 what happens when the cat learns to pull the string to get 

 out of the box, provided, of course, we remove, in the man's 

 case, all the accompanying mentality which is not directly 

 concerned in learning the feat. 1 Like the latter, the former 



1 A man may learn to swim from the general feeling, "I want to be able to 

 swim." While learning, he may think of this desire, of the difficulties of the 

 motion, of the instruction given him, or of anything which may turn up in 

 his mind. This is all extraneous and is not concerned in the acquisition of 

 the association. Nothing like it, of course, goes on in the animal's mind. 

 Imagine a man thrown into the water repeatedly, and gradually floundering 

 to the shore in better and better style until finally, when thrown in, he swims 

 off perfectly, and deprive the man of all extraneous feelings, and you have 



