1 92 Animal Intelligence 



to be too long. The first fact makes the curves have too 

 great a drop at the start, making them seem cases of too 

 sudden learning, but the second fact makes the learning 

 seem indefinite when it really is not. And in the long run 

 the times taken do represent fairly well the amount of 

 effort. I carefully recorded the amount of actual effort 

 in a number of cases and the story it tells concerning the 

 mental processes involved is the same as that told by the 

 time-curves. 



Still another explanation is this: The monkeys learn 

 quickly, it is true, but not quickly enough for us to suppose 

 the presence of ideas, or the formation of associations among 

 them. For if there were such ideas, they should in the com- 

 plex acts do even better than they did. The explanation 

 then is a high degree of facility in the formation of associa- 

 tions of just the same kind as we found in the chicks, dogs 

 and cats. 



Such an explanation we could hardly disapprove in any 

 case. No one can from objective evidence set up a standard 

 of speed of learning below which all shall be learning with- 

 out ideas and above which all shall be learning by ideas. 

 We should not expect any hard and fast demarcation. 



This whole matter of the rate of learning should be studied 

 in the light of other facts of behavior. My own judgment, 

 if I had nothing but these time-curves to rely on, would be 

 that there was in them an appearance of learning by ideas 

 which, while possibly explicable by the finer vision and 

 freer movements of the monkey in connection with ordinary 

 mammalian mentality, made it worth while to look farther 

 into their behavior. This we may now do. 



What leads the lay mind to attribute superior mental 

 gifts to an animal is not so much the rate of learning as 

 the amount learned. The monkeys obviously form more 



