RELATIONS OF COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY 707 



at that place on a second journey. People say that it remembers 

 being fed here before, and infers that it will be fed here again. In 

 all probability these words with their human implications [on the 

 ideational plane] are quite misleading. Suppose that the master 

 of the horse is a bibulous person, who takes a drink as a matter of 

 course whenever he comes to a public-house on the road. In order 

 to do this he need not go through the process of remembering that 

 he has had a drink at a public-house before, or of inferring that he 

 can have a drink at a public-house again. He simply has a bias to 

 stop at a public-house whenever he comes to one. Probably the horse's 

 act implies just as little of remembering or inferring." 



It will be noticed that the difficulty which Dr. Stout indicates, 

 does not apply only to the mental processes of the horse, but also 

 to some at least of those which are characteristic of his bibulous 

 master. No doubt, taking men and women as we find them, there 

 is the closest interaction between ideational and perceptual pro- 

 cess, just as there is between instinctive and intelligent procedure. 

 But there is, I conceive, an analogous relation. Just as the instinct- 

 ive factor provides data which intelligence deals with so as to 

 shape it to more adaptive ends, so does the perceptual factor provide 

 the more complex data which, through ideational process, are 

 raised to a yet higher level in rational conduct. And in both cases 

 notwithstanding, nay largely in consequence of, the closeness of 

 the interaction, it is the business of analysis to distinguish with the 

 utmost clearness the essential features of the constituent factors. 



I take it that the leading characteristic of perceptual process 

 is the dealing with situations as wholes in their unanalyzed en- 

 tirety. When the integration of which I have spoken has been 

 carried far, any relatively new situation is assimilated to the past 

 experience gained in similar situations wherein certain salient 

 features have been differentiated through their intimate relation 

 to practical activities. The associations thus begotten are not 

 associations between separate ideas, but in every case essentially 

 between the situation and the practical behavior it calls forth. Even 

 this expression savors too much of analysis. Let us rather say 

 that the type of association distinctive of perceptual process is 

 that between an early phase of a situation and the succeeding 

 phase, so that what is suggested in any given case is a mode of 

 development of the situation as a whole through practical behavior. 

 That is the essential feature of the doctrine of meaning in percept- 

 ual process. It is meaning in terms of a specific development of 

 the situation as a whole; it is meaning closely bound up with a felt 

 impulse to act in a certain way; it is the meaning which attaches 

 to the public-house as the result of practical experience on the part 

 of the horse and of his bibulous master. 



