174 Animal Intelligence 



dinner. The outside world also is to them in large part a 

 multitude of definite percepts. They feel the environment 

 as trees, sticks, stones, chairs, tables, letters, words, etc. 

 I have called such definite presentations 'free ideas' to 

 distinguish them from the vague presentations such as 

 atmospheric pressure, the feeling of malaise, of the position 

 of one's body when falling, etc. It is such 'free ideas' 

 which compose the substance of thought and which 

 lead us to perhaps the majority of the different acts we 

 perform, though we do, of course, react to the vaguer sort 

 as well. I saw definitely in writing the last sentence the 

 words 'majority of the different acts' and thought 'we 

 perform ' and so wrote it. I see a bill and so take check 

 book and pen and write. I think of the cold outside and 

 so put on an overcoat. This mental function 'having free 

 ideas,' gives the possibility of learning to meet situations 

 properly by thinking about them, by being reminded of 

 some property of the fact before us or some element therein. 



We can divide all learning into (i) learning by trial and 

 accidental success, by the strengthening of the connections 

 between the sense-impressions representing the situation 

 and the acts or impulses and acts representing our 

 successful response to it and by the inhibition of similar 

 connections with unsuccessful responses; (2) learning by 

 imitation, where the mere performance by another of a 

 certain act in a certain situation leads us to do the same; 

 and (3) learning by ideas, where the situation calls up some 

 idea (or ideas) which then arouses the act or in some way 

 modifies it. 



The last method of learning has obviously been the means 

 of practically all the advances in civilization. The evidence 

 quoted a paragraph or so back from the Experimental 

 Study shows the typical mammalian mind to be one which 



