DELAYED REACTION 9 



the rational status of a group of animals can not be inferred 

 from the slope of a cur\'e in so far as this slope is dependent 

 upon the number of trials or the relative rate of elimination. 

 They indicate, moreover, that inferences as to intelligent status 

 are legitimate in so far as the slope is determined by the factor 

 of total values eliminated, but that the relation between the 

 abruptness of slope and the degree of rational ability is just the 

 inverse of that assumed by Thorndike and Hobhouse." 



5. Memory 



Arguments for the existence of ideas, have also been drawn 

 from behavior purporting to be guided by memory — in the 

 psychological sense. Let us use an example from Lloyd Mor- 

 gan. The quotation of a few sentences will adequately represent 

 his position when the Introduction to Comparative Psychology 

 was written. "In the first place we may notice that the exist- 

 ence of memory is implied in the association of ideas ; or rather 

 in the occurrence of ideas at all." "If, therefore, animals have 

 ideas at all — and if they have not we need not attempt to carry 

 any further our investigations into zoological psychology — they 

 must have memory, and there must be in them, as in us, some 

 anatomical and physiological basis for what is popularly termed 

 the retention of ideas." " By idea Morgan understands any 

 centrally aroused conscious process. Of course Thorndike 's 

 results showed long ago that the presence of ideas in an animal 

 requires vigorous proof rather than mere assumption. Now for 

 a concrete example: "When I was at the cape I used to take 

 my two dogs up the Devil's Peak, an outlying point of Table 

 Mountain. There were several places at which it was necessary 

 that I should lift them from ledge to ledge since they could not 

 scramble up by themselves. After the first ascent they always 

 remembered these places and waited patiently to be lifted up. 

 On one of our first ascents one of them put up a young coney 

 and they both gave chase. Subsequently, they always hurried 

 on to this spot, and though they never saw another coney there, 

 reiterated disappointment did not eftace the memory of that 

 first chase, or so it seemed. I think the last time I took them 

 up must have been about three and a half years after the coney . 



^^ Morgan, Lloyd. Intro, to Comp. Psych. London, 1898, p. 117. Thus Mor- 

 gan, as we noted for Hobhouse, seems to assume that ideas exist whether they 

 function in behavior or not. 



