486 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



sequentlj weariness and failure offset the occasional pleasure of get- 

 ting food, and after succeeding four and ten times respectively they 

 never again succeeded, though given numerous opportunities. 

 Their cases are almost a perfect proof of the claim that accident, 

 not inference, makes animals open doors. For they hit upon the 

 thing several times, but did not know enough to profit even by these 

 experiences, and so failed to open the door the fifth and eleventh 

 times. 



Accident is equally capable of helping a cat escape from an 

 inclosure whose door is held by a sw^ivel. 



" Out of six cats who were put in the box whose door opened 

 by a button, not one failed, in the course of its impulsive activ- 

 ity, to push tlie button around. Sometimes it was clawed one 

 side from below; sometimes vigorous pressure on the top turned 

 it around; sometimes it was pushed up by the nose. No cat who 

 was given repeated trials failed to form a perfect association be- 

 tween the sight of the interior of that box and the proper move- 

 ments." 



If, then, three cats out of eight can escape from a small box by 

 accidentally operating a thumb-latch, one cat in a hundred may 

 easily escape from a room by accident. If one hundred per cent 

 of all cats are sure to sooner or later turn a button around when 

 in a small box, one cat in a thousand may well escape from a room 

 by accidentally turning a swivel around. 



So far we have seen that when put in situations calculated to 

 call forth any thinking powers which they possess, the animal's con- 

 duct still shows no signs of anything beyond the accidental forma- 

 tion of an association between the sight of the interior of the box 

 and the impulse to a certain act, and the subsequent complete estab- 

 lishment of this association because of the power of pleasure to stamp 

 in any process which leads to it. We have also seen that samples 

 of the acts which have been supposed by advocates of the reason 

 theory to require reasoning for their accomplishment turn out to 

 be readily accomplished by the accidental success of instinctive 

 impulses. The decision that animals do not possess the higher men- 

 tal processes is re-enforced by several other lines of experiment — - 

 for example, by some experiments on imitation. 



The details of these experiments I will not take the time to de- 

 scribe. Suffice it to say that cats and dogs were given a chance to 

 see one of their fellows free himself from confinement and gain food 

 by performing some simple act. In each case they were where they 

 could see him do this from fifty to one hundred and fifty times, and 

 did actually watch his actions closely from ten to forty times. After 

 every ten chances to learn from seeing him, they were put into the 



