444 WALTER S. HUNTER 



tiation of the complex qualities into lesser complex qualities. 

 The development of the pecking instinct in the chick foreshadows 

 the larger development. At first the chick will peck at any- 

 thing of the proper size. As it grows older, it learns by experi- 

 ence to peck at certain objects only. 



A number of telling criticisms can be directed against Volkelt's 

 position as outlined above: (1) His central problem is the ignis 

 fatuus of comparative psychology, viz., knowledge of the struc- 

 ture of animal consciousness. The student can only designate 

 certain functions which experimental evidence indicates are 

 present in behavior. It is not even possible to speak definitely 

 of conscious functions; for in any particular case, the processes 

 in question may be neurological only, i.e., sub-liminal to any 

 consciousness that is present. It is for this reason that the 

 term sensory, e.g., is preferable to the term sensation. (2) This 

 difficulty is well illustrated where the author says that the 

 leading moments or aspects of the complex quality determine 

 behavior without themselves being explicit. It is useless to 

 ask whether animal consciousness is unitary or compounded and 

 whether its aspects are clear and distinct. All that one can say 

 is that certain factors in the environment condition a reaction. 

 It is impossible to say whether these are sub-liminal to con- 

 sciousness, whether they do fuse with and into a complex qual- 

 ity, or whether they form states which are just as discrete as 

 occur in human consciousness. Either hypothesis can account 

 for the facts because from the nature of the case we may never 

 know conditions which will exclude the truth of either. (3) Vol- 

 kelt makes much use of the notion that an animal's responses 

 are made to the ' whole situation." Thorndike is quoted in 

 support. Now it should be pointed out that while this was a 

 justifiable hypothesis at one time, what we need now are experi- 

 mental analyses of the ' whole situation " in order to deter- 

 mine just what are the stimuli to which the animal responds. 

 As a matter of fact, such work has been and is going on in con- 

 nection with discrimination tests. The results are not acces- 

 sible at this writing, but they will undoubtedly do much to put 

 our theories of the stimuli determining animal reactions upon a 

 factual basis. It does not follow because animals, through their 

 reactions, probably break up their world into different types of 

 things than ours that therefore their reactions are conditioned 



