BEHAVIOR OF VERTEBRATES 459 



Szymanski's in which a rat learned a very simple maze in five 

 trials, shortening its path somewhat at each trial. His analysis 

 of this experiment is something of a mental atavism. The rat 

 was trained to run through the maze to a dish of water, and 

 Cornetz, after describing the first two trials of the experiment, 

 proceeds as follows: 'He (the rat) thus recognizes that the 

 water dish is a little to the left (of the entrance to the maze) ; 

 yet I do not feel the need of supposing that he wished to sup- 

 press the useless movements of his former path." After the 

 rat has made two more trials: — "Now the rat has grasped the 

 position of the water dish in space much more clearly, confirm- 

 ing the path of the third trial by that of the fourth, and is able 

 to go directly to the water. It is not, it seems to me, for the 

 useful purpose of reaching the water dish more quickly that the 

 rat shortens his fifth path but because his representation (con- 

 scious?) of the position of the dish has finally become clear. I 

 believe that for every being that gives evidence of memory the 

 external world, space, has the form that the being's sensations 

 give it. The external medium is projected into the being in 

 the form of a complex of persistent images." Such speculation 

 scarcely needs comment. It offers nothing helpful in the inter- 

 pretation of behavior. The author was evidently led astray by 

 the misunderstanding which he has expressed in the following 

 quotation. In discussing the dropping of useless movements in 

 habit formation, he says, "According to this finalistic idea 

 (dropping of useless movements) the rat, knowing by its first 

 trial the position of the water dish, for it must know this in 

 order to modify its path, suppresses its useless movements 

 little by little." This statement reveals an entirely false con- 

 ception of what is meant by the dropping of useless movements. 

 The expression has been employed to describe what is actually 

 observed in habit formation and to avoid exactly what Cornetz 

 reads into it, the implication that there is conscious purposive- 

 ness in the process. 



But all this is aside from the chief object of the comparison, 

 which is to show that the rat depends upon the relative position 

 of objects for its orientation, and that .the ant probably does 

 not. The first may be admitted without question, but it is 

 extremely doubtful whether the ant possesses a sense of abso- 

 nte direction in sDace as the author is inclined to believe. The 



