142 Animal Intelligence 



this point. If at any time in the course of the 50 trials it 

 had remembered that 'I will not feed them' meant 'no fish/ 

 it would thenceforth have failed to react. It would have 

 stopped short in the 'yes' reactions, instead of gradually 

 decreasing their percentage. ' Memory ' in animals, if one 

 still chooses to use the word, is permanence of associations, 

 not the presence of an idea of an experience attributed to 

 the past. 



To this proposition two corollaries may be added. First, 

 these phenomena of incomplete forgetfulness extend the 

 evidence that animals do not have a stock of independent 

 ideas, the return of which, plus past associates, equals 

 memory. Second, there is, properly speaking, no continuity 

 in their mental streams. The present thought does not 

 clutch the past to its bosom or hold the future in its womb. 

 The animal's self is not a being 'looking before and after/ 

 but a direct practical association of feelings and impulses. 

 So far as experiences come continuously, they may be said 

 to form a continuous mental life, but there is no continuity 

 imposed from within. The feelings of its own body are 

 always present, and impressions from outside may come as 

 they come to us. When the habit of attending to the 

 elements of its associations and raising them up into the 

 life of free ideas is acquired, these permanent bodily associa- 

 tions may become the basis of a feeling of self-hood and the 

 trains of ideas may be felt as a continuous life. 



INHIBITION OF INSTINCTS BY HABIT 



One very important result of association remains to be 

 considered, its inhibition of instincts and previous associa- 

 tions. An animal who has become habituated to getting 

 out of a box by pulling a loop and opening the door will 



