210 Animal Intelligence 



but only to certain instincts or habits differing from others 

 only in that the situation calling forth the act was the same 

 act performed by another. 



If the monkeys do not learn in these ways, we must, until 

 other evidence appears, suppose them to be in general desti- 

 tute of a life of free ideas, must regard their somewhat am- 

 biguous behavior in learning by their own unaided efforts 

 as of the same type as that of the dogs and cats, differing 

 only in the respects mentioned on pages 190 and 191. 



The general method of experimentation was to give mon- 

 keys who had failed of their own efforts to operate some 

 simple mechanism, a chance to see me do it or see another 

 monkey do it or to see and feel themselves do it, and then 

 note any change in their behavior. The chief question is 

 whether they succeed after such tuition when they have 

 failed before it, but the presence of ideas would also be 

 indicated if they attacked, though without success, the 

 vital point in the mechanism when they had not done so 

 before. On the other hand, mere success would not prove 

 that the tuition had influenced them, for if they made a dif- 

 ferent movement or attacked a different spot, we could not 

 attribute their behavior to getting ideas of the necessary act. 



The results of the experiments as a whole are on their face 

 value a trifle ambiguous, but they surely show that the mon- 

 keys in question had no considerable stock of ideas of the 

 objects they dealt with or of the movements they made and 

 were not in general capable of acquiring, from seeing me or 

 one of their comrades attack a certain part of a mechanism 

 and make a certain movement, any ideas that were at all 

 efficacious in guiding their conduct. They do not acquire 

 or use ideas in anything that approaches the way human 

 adults do. Whether the monkeys may not have some few 

 ideas corresponding to habitual classes of objects and acts 



