74 WALTER S. HUNTER 



This is the defect in all of the arguments and experiments which 

 we have examined in the historical section above. Ideas may 

 have been present, but since all of the behavior can be inter- 

 preted in terms of stimulus and response, the arguments are 

 inconclusive. 



From this point of view, there are from the standpoint of 

 function two classes of ideas: — ideas of objects or those repre- 

 senting the stimulus aspect of the situation, and ideas of move- 

 ment or those representing some aspect of the movement or 

 its sensory consequences. Theoretically, the problem of ideas 

 can be attacked from either point of view. • Many discussions 

 and experiments do approach the topic exclusively from the 

 movement side, but practically such a procedure involves 

 almost insuperable difficulties. Washburn," e.g., makes the 

 number of ideas of movement possessed by an animal more or 

 less of a rough index of that animal's place in the scale of in- 

 telligence.' But the presence of such ideas is as yet an assump- 

 tion of very uncertain validity. Furthermore, an experimental 

 technique that would isolate and control the movement factor 

 would be extremely difficult, if not impossible to devise. When, 

 e.g., an animal is brought along a path in a maze to a point 

 where two possible reactions are presented, both responses are 

 for the moment inhibited. But the two movements need not 

 be represented, they may be actually there, although in an 

 incipient form only, i.e., the conffict may be between the motor 

 impulses themselves and the conflict may be resolved on this 

 level without the influence of any factor representative of the 

 effects of the movements. I doubt whether experimental tech 

 nique can ever control this movement factor. Quite the reverse 

 is true with respect to controlHng the presence of the object, 

 i.e., of the determining stimulus. This latter may be given or 

 withheld at the investigator's pleasure. It is the merit of the 

 experiments here set forth to have followed such a procedure. 

 In the present case, there seems to be no room for doubt that 

 the object reacted to was the light. Now if a representative 

 function were involved in the behavior of the reagents, as seems 

 to have been the case with the raccoons and children, it must, 

 in part at least, have been representative of the lighted box, 

 because all else — including the three possibilities of movement — ■ 



5» Washburn, M. F. Op. cit., pp. 279-284. 



