Experimental Study of Associative Processes 151 



two tasks of prime importance. One is to study the passage 

 of the child mind from a life of immediately practical associa- 

 tions to the life of free ideas ; the other is to find out how far 

 the anthropoid primates advance toward a similar passage, 

 and to ascertain accurately what faint beginnings or prepara- 

 tions for such an advance the early mammalian stock may 

 be supposed to have had. In this latter connection I think 

 it will be of the utmost importance to bear in mind the pos- 

 sibility that the present anthropoid primates may be men- 

 tally degenerate. Their present aimless activity and inces- 

 sant, but largely useless, curiosity may be the degenerated 

 vestiges of such a well-directed activity and useful curios- 

 ity as led homo sapiens to important practical discoveries, 

 such as the use of tools, the art of making fire, etc. It is 

 even a remote possibility that their chattering is a relic 

 of something like language, not a beginning of such. Com- 

 parative psychology should use the phenomena of the 

 monkey mind of to-day to find out what the primitive mind 

 from which man's sprung off was like. That is the impor- 

 tant thing to get at, and the question whether the present 

 monkey mind has not gone back instead of ahead is an all- 

 important question. A natural and perhaps sufficient cause 

 of degeneracy would be arboreal habits. The animal that 

 found a means of survival in his muscles might well lose the 

 means before furnished by his brain. 



To these disconnected remarks still another must be added, 

 addressed this time to the anecdote school. Some member 

 of it who has chanced to read this may feel like saying : 

 "This experimental work is all very well. Your cats and 

 dogs represent, it is true, specimens from the top stratum 

 of animal intelligence, and your negations, based on their 

 conduct, may be authoritative so far as concerns the 

 average, typical mammalian mind. But our anecdotes 



