Experimental Study of Associative Processes 137 



associations perfectly in hand. The horse Mascot is claimed 

 to know the meaning of fifteen hundred signals ! He 

 certainly knows a great many, and such as are naturally 

 difficult of acquisition. It would be an enlightening 

 investigation if some one could find out just how many 

 associations a cat or dog could form, if he were carefully 

 and constantly given an opportunity. The result would 

 probably show that the number was limited only by the 

 amount of motive available and the time taken to acquire 

 each. For there is probably nothing in their brain structure 

 which limits the number of connections that can be formed, 

 or would cause such connections, as they grew numerous, 

 to become confused. 



In their anxiety to credit animals with human powers, 

 the psychologists have disregarded or belittled, perhaps, 

 the possibilities of the strictly animal sort of association. 

 They would think it more wonderful that a horse should 

 respond differently to a lot of different numbers on the black- 

 board than that he should infer a consequence from prem- 

 ises. But if it be made a direct question of pleasure or 

 pain to an animal, he can associate any number of acts with 

 different stimuli. Only he does not form any associations 

 until he has to, until the direct benefit is apparent, and, for 

 his ordinary life, comparatively few are needed. 



On the whole our judgment from a comparison of man's 

 associations with the brutes' must be that a man's are nat- 

 urally far more delicate, complex and numerous, and that 

 in as far as the animals attain delicacy, complexity, or a 

 great number of associations, they do it by methods which 

 man uses only in a very limited part of the field. 



