250 Animal Intelligence 



nature or previous experience, may connect with whatever 

 response is bound to some situation much like it, and (2) 

 by the law of partial activity that more or less of the 

 total situation may be specially active in determining the 

 response. 



The first of these laws is a result of the facts that conduc- 

 tion in the neurones follows the line of least resistance or 

 closest connection, that the action-system is so organized 

 that certain responses tend to be made in their totality if 

 at all, and that slightly different situations may, therefore, 

 produce some one response, the effects of their differences 

 being in the accessories of that response. 



The second law is a result of the facts that the situation, 

 itself a compound, produces a compound action in the neu- 

 rones, and that by reason of inner conditions, the relative 

 intensities of different parts of the compound may vary. 

 The commonest response will be that due to the modal 

 condition of the neural compound, but every condition 

 of the compound will have its response. 



THE ADEQUACY OF THE LAWS OF EXERCISE AND 



EFFECT 



Behavior has been supposed to be modified in accordance 

 with three other principles or laws besides the law of exercise 

 and the law of effect. Imitation is often used as a name 

 for the supposed law that the perception of a certain re- 

 sponse to a situation by another animal tends in and of it- 

 self to connect that response to that situation. Common 

 acceptance has been given to more or less of the law that 

 the idea of an act, or of the result of an act, or of the im- 

 mediate or remote sensations produced by the act, tends 

 in and of itself to produce the act. Such a law of 'sugges- 



