260 Animal Intelligence 



atives of a response to produce it may be tempted to com- 

 plain at this point that what the laws of exercise and effect 

 do is to reduce the strength of competing ideas, and leave the 

 idea, say of getting up, free to exercise its direct potency. 

 The complaint shows a weak sense for fact. The ordinary 

 child is not a Hamlet, nor is he beguiled by the imagined 

 delights of staying in bed, nor repelled by the image of get- 

 ting up out of it. On the contrary, he may be entirely will- 

 ing to think of getting up. It is the actual delights that 

 hold him, the actual discomforts that check him, and the 

 only way to be sure that he will get up is so to arrange mat- 

 ters that it is more satisfactory to him to get up than not to 

 when the situation, whatever it be, that is to suggest that 

 response, makes its appearance. 



The experience of every schoolroom shows that it is not 

 enough to get the idea of an act. The act must have gone 

 with that idea or be now put with it. The bond must be 

 created. Responses to the suggestions of language, whether 

 addressed to us by others or by ourselves in inner speech, 

 in a very large majority of cases owe their bonds to the laws 

 of exercise and effect. We learn to do what we are told, 

 or what we tell ourselves, by doing something and rejecting 

 or retaining what we do by virtue of its effects. So also in 

 the case of a majority of responses to the suggestions of other 

 than verbal imagery. 



The idea of a response, like the perception of a response 

 by another, acts often as a guide to response ex post facto by 

 deciding what shall be satisfying. Where superficial inspec- 

 tion leaves the impression that the idea creates the act, a 

 little care often shows it to have only selected from the acts 

 produced by instinct and habit. For example, let the reader 

 think of some act never performed hitherto, such as putting 

 his left middle finger upon the upper right hand corner of 



