Laws and Hypotheses for Behavior 263 



ideas of acts and yet perform no one of them, save those in 

 the case of which he has learned to do the thing when he 

 thinks of doing it. Again, how can the mere addition of 

 the idea of a future date to the idea of an act so utterly 

 deprive it of present potency. 



In view of all these facts it seems probable that ideas of 

 responses act in connection just as do any other situations, 

 and that the phenomena of suggestion and ideo-motor 

 action really mean that any idea will, except for competing 

 ideas, produce the response, not that is like it, but that has 

 gone with it, or with some idea like it. 



Rational connections are, in their causation, like any 

 others, the difference being in what is connected. 



It remains to ask whether situation and response are 

 bound together in the case of reasoning by any other forces 

 than the forces of repetition, energy and satisfaction ? Do 

 the laws of inferential thinking transcend the laws of exer- 

 cise and effect ? Or does the mind, even in these novel and 

 constructive responses, do only what it is forced to do by 

 original nature or has done without discomfort ? 



To defend the second alternative involves the reduction 

 of the processes of abstraction, association by similarity and 

 selective thinking to mere secondary consequences of the 

 laws of exercise and effect. This I shall try to do. 



The gist of the fact of abstraction is that response may be 

 made to some elements or aspects of a situation which have 

 never been experienced in isolation, and may be made to the 

 element in question regardless of the gross total situation in 

 which it inheres. A baby thus learns to respond to its 

 mother's face regardless of what total visual field it is a part 

 of. A child thus learns to respond by picking out any red 

 object, regardless of whether the redness be in an apple, a 



