98 Animal Intelligence 



paw, or would you just leave the cat inside until it learned 

 the trick itself ?' : The second is certainly the better way, 

 as will be seen in a later part of this paper, and pushing the 

 latch with the cat's paw has absolutely no beneficial in- 

 fluence on the formation of the association, yet (a) and (b) 

 both chose the first way, and (c) answered ambiguously. 

 Further, the only reason given is, of course, no reason at all. 

 It proves too much, for if there were such imitation as that, 

 my cats and dogs would surely have done the far simpler 

 things required of them. I cannot find that trainers 

 make any practical use of imitation in teaching animals 

 tricks, and on the whole I think these replies leave the mat- 

 ter just where it was before. They are mere opinions 

 not records of observed facts. It seems arrogant and may 

 seem to some unjustifiable thus to discard testimony, to 

 stick to a theory based on one's own experiments in the face 

 of these opinions. If I had wished to gain applause and 

 avoid adverse criticism, I would have abstained from up- 

 holding the radical view of the preceding pages. At times 

 it seems incredible to me that the results of my experi- 

 ments should embody the truth of the matter, that there 

 should be no imitation. The theory based on them seems, 

 even to me, too radical, too novel. It seems highly improb- 

 able that I should be right and all the others wrong. But I 

 cannot avoid the responsibility of giving what seems to my 

 judgment the most probable explanation of the results of 

 the experiments; and that is the radical explanation al- 

 ready given. 



THE MENTAL FACT IN ASSOCIATION 



It is now time to put the question as to just what is in an 

 animal's mind when, having profited by numerous experi- 



