Experimental Study of Associative Processes 141 



did it before, namely, because pleasure has connected that 

 act above all others with that sense-impression, so that it 

 is the one she feels like doing. Her condition is that of the 

 swimmer who starts his summer season after a winter's 

 deprivation. When he jumps off the pier and hits the water, 

 he swims, not because he remembers that this is the way he 

 dealt with water last summer and so applies his remembrance 

 to present use, but just because experience has taught him 

 to feel like swimming when he hits the water. All talk 

 about recognition and memory in animals, if it asserts the 

 presence of anything more than this, is a gross mistake. 

 For real memory is an absolute thing, including everything 

 but forgetfulness. If the cat had real memory, it would, 

 when after an interval dropped into a box, remember that 

 from this box it escaped by doing this or that and conse- 

 quently, either immediately or after a time of recollection, 

 go do it, or else it would not remember and would fail 

 utterly to do it. On the contrary, we have all grades of 

 partial 'forgetfulness/ just like the grades of swimming one 

 might find if he dropped a dozen college professors into the 

 mill ponds of their boyhood, just like the grades of forget- 

 fulness of the associations once acquired on the ball field 

 which are manifested when on the Fourth of July the 

 ' solid men ' of a town get out to amuse their fellow citizens. 

 The animal makes attacks on a spot around the vital one, 

 or claws at the thing but not so precisely as before, or 

 goes at it a while and then resorts to instinctive methods 

 of getting out. Its actions are exactly what would be 

 expected of an animal in whom the sense-impression aroused 

 the impulse imperfectly, or weakly, or intermittently, but 

 are not at all like the actions of one who felt, "I used to 

 get out of this box by pulling that loop down." In fact, 

 the record of No. 10 given on page 139 seems to be final on 



