414 'Journal of Comparative Neurology and Psychology. 



conclusions which the experiments do not warrant. He reminds 

 us that, "A dog may show not merely highly developed hunting 

 instincts, but real cleverness in the adaptation of past experience 

 when it is a question of catching a hare, but may also be an intol- 

 erable dullard about opening a box To test an animal's 



intelligence by mechanisms, seems to be about on a par with gaug- 

 ing the nature of a man's intelligence by certain puzzles, in which, 



as is well known, many able men are, indeed, dullards 



What Mr.TnoRNDiKE's experiments prove so far is, not that cats 

 and dogs are invariably educated by the association process, that 

 is by habituation, but, on the contrary, that at least some cats and 

 dogs conform, in at least one point, to the method of acquisitions 



by concrete expertences In some cases they not only 



merely learn to meet a given perception with a given motor reac- 

 tion, but also to combine and adapt their actions so as to effect 

 physical changes which, as they have learned, aid them in gain- 

 ing their ends." 



HoBHOUSE further reminds us that habits are generally formed 

 gradually by many repetitions and that, where the act is the result 

 of habituation, the time curve should gradually descend. Indeed, 

 Thorndike himself lays stress upon this same point; for he says 

 {loc. cit., p. 45) : "And if there were in these animals any power of 

 inference, however rudimentary, however sporadic, however dim, 

 there should have appeared among the multitude some cases where 

 an animal, seeing through the situation, knows the proper act and 

 does it, and from then on does it immediately upon being con- 

 fronted with the situation. There ought then to be a sudden verti- 

 cal descent of the time curve. Of course, where the act resulting 

 from the impulse is very simple, very obvious, and very clearly 

 defined, a simple experience may make the association perfect 

 and we may have an abrupt descent in the time curve without 

 needing to suppose inference. But if in a complex act, one found 

 such a sudden consummation in the associative process, one might 



well claim that reason was at work The gradual slope 



of the time curve, then, shows the absence of reasoning. They 

 represent the wearing smooth of a path in the brain, not the deci- 

 sions of a rational consciousness." 



If a gradual descent of the time curve be a sure test that a crea- 

 ture has learned by the method of trial and error and if an abrupt 

 descent is an indication of perceptual learning, we must conclude 



