The Mental Life of the Monkeys 207 



fail in one trial out of four for a hundred or more trials. If 

 the 27 successes were due to ideas, why was there regression ? 

 If the animal came to respond by staying still on seeing the 

 K (card 104), because that sight was associated with the idea 

 of no food or the idea of staying still, why did he, in his 

 memory trial, act sometimes rightly, sometimes wrongly, for 

 eleven trials after his acting rightly twice. If he stayed still 

 because the idea was aroused, why did he not stay still as 

 soon as he had a few trials to remind him of the idea ? It is 

 easy, one may say, to see why, with a capacity to select 

 movements and associate them with sense-presentations 

 very quickly, in cases where habit provides only two move- 

 ments for selection and where the sense-presentation is very 

 clear and simple, an animal should practically at once be 

 confirmed in the one act on an occasion when he does it 

 with the sense-impression in the focus of attention. It is 

 easy, therefore, to explain the sudden change in i, 1, m, B, C 

 and E. But our critic may add, " It is very hard to suppose 

 that an animal that learned by connecting the sight of a card 

 with the idea ' stay still ' or the idea ' no food/ should be so 

 long in making the connection as was the case in some of 

 these experiments, should take 10, 20 or 40 trials to change 

 from a high percentage of wrong to a high percentage of 

 right reactions." 



If we take the second view, we have to face the fact that 

 many of the records are nothing like the single one we have 

 for comparison, that of the kitten shown in Fig. 30, and that 

 the appeal to a capacity to form animal associations very 

 quickly seems like a far-fetched refuge from the other view 

 rather than a natural interpretation. If we take the rec- 

 ords to be summation points in a more gradual process, this 

 difficulty is relieved. 



If further investigation upheld the first view, we should 



