264 Animal Intelligence 



block, a pencil, a ribbon or a ball. A student thus learns to 

 respond to any plane surface inclosed by three straight lines 

 regardless of its size, shape, color or other than geometrical 

 meaning. 



What happens in such cases is that the response, by being 

 connected with many situations alike in the presence of the 

 element in question and different in other respects, is bound 

 firmly to that element and loosely to each of its concomitants. 

 Conversely any element is bound firmly to any one response 

 that is made to all situations containing it and very, very 

 loosely to each of those responses that are made to only a 

 few of the situations containing it. The element of triangu- 

 larity, for example, is bound firmly to the response of saying 

 or thinking 'triangle' but only very loosely to the response 

 of saying or thinking white, red, blue, large, small, iron, steel, 

 wood, paper and the like. A situation thus acquires bonds 

 not only with some response to it as a gross total, but also 

 with responses to each of its elements that has appeared in 

 any other gross totals. 



Appropriate response to an element regardless of its con- 

 comitants is a necessary consequence of the laws of exercise 

 and effect if an animal learns to make that response to the 

 gross total situations that contain the element and not to 

 make it to those that do not. Such prepotent determination 

 of the response by one or another element of the situation 

 is no transcendental mystery, but, given the circumstances, 

 a general rule of all learning. The dog who responds ap- 

 propriately to ' beg ' no matter when, where, or by whom 

 spoken, manifests the same laws of behavior. There is no 

 difficulty in understanding how each element of a situation 

 may come to tend to produce a response peculiar to it as 

 well as to play its part in determining the response to the 

 situation as a total. There may be some difficulty in under- 



