82 BIOLOGICAL LECTURES. 



aspect of these associations, the feelings which the animal has at 

 the time, if he has any. All along I have begged this question, 

 have refused to entertain the supposition that the animal's 

 activities were purely mechanical, automatic, unconscious. I 

 ought to defend this procedure, though probably most of you 

 agree with me that animals do in such cases have consciousness, 

 and have in your own minds good reasons for so thinking. 

 One good reason is that we infer consciousness in the animal 

 for just the same reasons that we do in men, viz., they act as 

 we act when we have thoughts and feelings. Another good 

 reason is that we know of no mechanism capable of changing 

 its reactions to situations, as animals do in the formation of 

 associations, save the human body ; and it does have pleasurable 

 feelings controlling its activities in just the way we supposed 

 such feelings to do in animals. Without stopping to argue on 

 this question, let me proceed with those who agree that con- 

 sciousness of some sort is present, to ascertain of just what 

 sort. The word "association" has been used by comparative 

 psychologists in the phrase "association of ideas," and animal 

 behavior of the kind we have been studying has been explained 

 by referring it to the association of ideas, a process which is in 

 a way the A-B-C of human psychology. I see before me a 

 dynamometer, think of Professor Cattell, its inventor ; of the 

 words "New York," then of the words "New Amsterdam," then 

 of the Dutch colonists and their multitudinous pantaloons, then 

 of the fitness of all this as an illustration, and end up by the 

 act of taking up my pen and writing. I hear a step, think, "It 

 is the postman," then, " I have a letter to post," and go to get 

 it. These are cases of the association of ideas, and the com- 

 parative psychologists would explain our cat's behavior by say- 

 ing, " When after a number of trials you put the cat in the 

 box, it thinks of the food outside, thinks of going out, thinks 

 of having clawed the button before going out, and so claws 

 at it." I believe that this explanation is totally wrong, that 

 the mental process involved is in no sense the association 

 of ideas of human psychology. It would crowd out more 

 strictly biological subject-matter if I introduced here the data 

 which lead to the rejection of this view, and all these data 



