DELAYED REACTION 11 



"A cat was in the big box where they were kept (see p. 90) 

 very hungry. As I had been for a long time the source of all 

 food, the cats had grown to watch me very carefully. I sat 

 during the experiment, about eight feet from the box, and would 

 at intervals of two minutes clap my hands four times and say, 

 'I must feed those cats.' Of course the cat would at first feel 

 no impulse except perhaps to watch me more closely when this 

 signal was given. After ten seconds had elapsed I would take 

 a piece of fish, go up to the cage and hold it through the wire 

 netting, three feet from the floor. The cat would then, of course, 

 feel the impulse to climb up the front of the cage. In fact, 

 experience had previously established the habit of climbing 

 up whenever I moved toward the cage, so that in the experi- 

 ment the cat did not ordinarily wait until I arrived there with 

 the fish. In this experiment 



A=The sense -impression of my movements and voice when 

 giving the signal 



B=The sense -impression of my movements in taking fish, 

 rising, walking to box, etc. 



C=The act of climbing up, with the impulse leading there- 

 unto. 



"The question was whether after a while A would remind 

 the cat of B, and cause him to do C before he got the sense- 

 impression of B, that is, before the ten seconds were up. If A 

 leads to C through a memory of B, animals surely can have 

 association of ideas proper, and probably often do. Now, as a 

 fact, after from thirty to sixty trials, the cat does peform C 

 immediately on being confronted by A or some seconds later, 

 at all events before B is presented. And it is my present opinion 

 that their action is to be explained by the presence, through 

 association, of the idea B. But it is not impossible that A was 

 associated directly with the impulse to C, although that impulse 

 was removed from it by ten seconds of time. Such an associa- 

 tion is, it seems to me, highly improbable, unless the neurosis 

 of A, and with it the psychosis, continues until the impulse to 

 C appears But if it does so continue during the ten seconds, 

 and thus get directly linked to C, we have exactly a represen- 

 tation, an image, a memory, in the mind for eight of those ten 

 seconds. It does not help the deni"^rs of images to substitute 



