Experimental Study of Associative Processes 147 



It is never 'a bit of direct experience/ but an abstraction 

 from our own life referred to that of another. 



I fancy that these feelings of others' feelings may be con- 

 nected pretty closely with imitation, and for that reason 

 may begin to appear in the monkeys. There we have some 

 fair evidence for their presence in the tricks which monkeys 

 play on each other. Such feelings seem the natural explana- 

 tion of the apparently useless tail-pullings and such like 

 which make up the attractions of the monkey cage. These 

 may, however, be instinctive forms of play-activity or 

 merely examples of the general tendency of the monkeys 

 to fool with everything. 



INTERACTION 



I hope it will not be thought impertinent if from the stand- 

 point of this research I add a word about a general psycho- 

 logical problem, the problem of interaction. I have spoken 

 all along of the connection between the situation and a cer- 

 tain impulse and act being stamped in when pleasure results 

 from the act and stamped out when it doesn't. In this fact, 

 which is undeniable, lies a problem which Lloyd Morgan 

 has frequently emphasized. How are pleasurable results able 

 to burn in and render predominant the association which led to 

 them ? This is perhaps the greatest problem of both human 

 and animal psychology. Unfortunately in human psy- 

 chology it has been all tangled up with the problems of free 

 will, mental activity, voluntary attention, the creation of 

 novel acts, and almost everything else. In our experiments 

 we get the data which give rise to the problem, in a very 

 elementary form. 



It should first be noted about the fact that the pleasure 

 does not burn in an impulse and act themselves, but an im- 



