Experimental Study of Associative Processes 127 



extensive association of ideas and general powers compar- 

 able to those of men minus reason, to the brutes, and which 

 repeat the time-honored distinction by language, I do not, 

 in the least, agree. Association in animals does not equal 

 association in man. The latter is built over and permeated 

 and transformed by inference and judgment and comparison ; 

 it includes imitation in our narrow sense of transferred 

 association; it obtains where no impulse is included; it 

 thus takes frequently the form of long trains of thought 

 ending in no pleasure-giving act ; its elements are often 

 loose, existing independently of the particular association ; 

 the association is not only thought, but at the same time 

 thought about. None of these statements may be truthfully 

 made of animal association. Only a small part of human 

 association is at all comparable to it. My opinion of what 

 that small part is has already been given. Moreover, 

 further differences will be found as we consider the data 

 relating to the delicacy, complexity, number, and perma- 

 nence of associations in animals. I said a while ago that 

 man was no more an animal with language than an ele- 

 phant was a cow with a proboscis. We may safely broaden 

 the statement and say that man is not an animal plus rea- 

 son. It has been one great purpose of this investiga- 

 tion to show that even after leaving reason out of account, 

 there are tremendous differences between man and the 

 higher animals. The problem of comparative psychology is 

 not only to get human reason from some lower faculties, 

 but to get human association from animal association. 



Our analysis, necessarily imperfect because the first at- 

 tempted, of the nature of the association-process in animals 

 is finished, and we have now to speak of its limitations in 

 respect to delicacy, complexity, number and permanence. 



