Experimental Study of Associative Processes 95 



content accompanying their acts will be seen later on. It 

 also seems sure that we should give up imitation as an a 

 priori explanation of any novel intelligent performance. 

 To say that a dog who opens a gate, for instance, need not 

 have reasoned it out if he had seen another dog do the same 

 thing, is to offer, instead of one false explanation, another 

 equally false. Imitation in any form is too doubtful a 

 factor to be presupposed without evidence. And if a 

 general imitative faculty is not sufficiently developed to 

 succeed with such simple acts as those of the experiments 

 quoted, it must be confessed that the faculty is in these 

 higher mammals still rudimentary and capable of influ- 

 encing to only the most simple and habitual acts, or else 

 that for some reason its sphere of influence is limited to 

 a certain class of acts, possessed of some qualitative difference 

 other than mere simplicity, which renders them imitable. 

 The latter view seems a hard one to reconcile with a sound 

 psychology of imitation or association at present, without 

 resorting to instinct. Unless a certain class of acts are by 

 the innate mental make-up especially tender to the in- 

 fluence of imitation, the theory fails to find good psychologi- 

 cal ground to stand on. The former view may very well be 

 true. But in any case the burden of proof would now seem 

 to rest upon the adherents to imitation; the promising 

 attitude would seem to be one which went without imitation 

 as long as it could, and that is, of course, until it surely found 

 it present. 



Returning to imitation considered in its human aspect, to 

 imitation as a transferred association in particular, we find 

 that here our analytical study of the animal mind promises 

 important contributions to general comparative psychology. 

 If it is true, and there has been no disagreement about it, 

 that the primates do imitate acts of such novelty and com- 



