DELAYED REACTION 7 



consciousness." " "The practical judgment is not independent 

 of associations, for association supplies the whole of its material. 

 But out of that material, it selects what it wants, and shapes it 

 as required." " This "material" that association presents is 

 ideational as the quotation from page 117 indicates. It seems, 

 though I would not be sure, as if Hobhouse assumed the exist- 

 ence of ideas and is only concerned with the possibility of their 

 functioning in behavior. As a basis for this imputation, I 

 point to his discussion of the association of ideas on page 114 

 and to that on pages 200-1. In the latter place, he makes 

 clear (?) that what he does not wish to attribute to animals is 

 the conscious analysis of the perceptual order. Such a dis- 

 tinction between existence and efficient functioning in behavior 

 seems to be theoretically permissible.'^ Images, ideas may 

 exist sporadically as has been claimed in the case of animal 

 dreams. But comparative psychologists have neither the right 

 nor the need to assume the existence of such processes save as 

 that may be forced upon them by the evidences of behavior. 



The question now is : Does the use of tools'* such as described 

 imply the presence of a centrally aroused factor? In the light 

 of the above analysis of imitation, the reply is no. Even if 

 Hobhouse 's results be fully accepted without raising the ques- 

 tion of careful controls, one need not accept his interpretations. 

 The behavior may have been controlled entirely by sensory 

 factors. As to the fertility shown by the animals in devising 

 methods, (see above, p. 6), this was very probably but a ran- 

 dom use of acquired co-ordinations. The use of the tools was 

 acquired as any habit and the sight of the individual objects 

 (ropes, etc.) aroused the type of reaction that had been taught. 

 This shows a higher grade of intelligent adaptability in the 

 animal than if it had been limited to the use of one object, but 

 it does not prove the existence of a central conscious factor. 

 It may be that such animals as the primates are able to give 

 similar responses to different sensory stimuli on account of a 

 factor of "hyper-excitability." I hesitate to use such a term, 

 but the general type of case held in mind is illustrated by the 



"Op. cit., p. 117. 

 " Op. cit., p. 264. 



'* "VVe shall see below (p. 9) that Morgan makes the same assumption. 

 '° Hobhouse cities (op. cit., p. 258) only one well authenticated case of the mak- 

 ing of a tool by an animal. The tool in this case was, as he notes, a very simple one. 



