THORNDIKE'S ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE 445 



(p. 245). In other words, we have to formulate a principle to 

 explain the process of elimination and selection in a series of 

 acts directed toward the solution of some problem, and we are 

 told that the animal neglects, eliminates, avoids and rejects 

 those acts which it avoids and abandons, and preserves and 

 selects that act which it attains or preserves. This sounds 

 suspiciously like the simplicity of alleged feminine logic which 

 asserts that a thing is so because it is so. (c) That acts are 

 selected according to their affective consequences may be ad- 

 mitted. Any explanation in terms of neural mechanics is a 

 difficult problem, but one that should be attempted. A solu- 

 tion that fails to give the detailed mechanics of the process 

 fails to simplify matters. I do not see that the principle of 

 "utility to the neurones," which may be correct for all I know, 

 gives this needed touch of simplification to the process. 



(3) The doctrine that an idea of a response in and of itself is 

 unable to produce that response already possesses a history of 

 acrimonious discussion in the field of human psychology. The 

 reviewer possesses no set of fixed ideas upon the subject, and 

 the proposition hardly lends itself to an adequate critique in a 

 short paragraph. It may not be amiss to state briefly what, I 

 conceive, would be the answer of some of Thorn dike's antago- 

 nists to this proposition. The author contends that the idea 

 itself can not produce the act. The idea can do so only when 

 a "bond of association" between the idea and the act has been 

 established in past experience. The antagonists would assent 

 to this latter proposition, and assert that that is exactly the 

 reason why an idea of an act always does tend to eventuate 

 into the act, that ideas of acts always do possess these "bonds" 

 with the acts because an idea of an act can arise only from 

 past experiences with that act. They would assert that it is 

 this bond with a particular act that makes the idea an idea of 

 that particular act rather than an idea of something else. In 

 other words, they would assert that "this idea of an act with- 

 out a bond" is a mythical entity of Thorndike's creation which 

 no more exists than does the Jack of Spades. Such a mythical 

 idea might for the sake of the argument be called an idea, but 

 it could not properly be termed an idea of anything. While 

 all ideas of acts do have bonds with those acts because of past 

 experience, yet there is a sense in which an idea of an act can 



