THE ASSOCIATIVE PROCESSES IN ANIMALS. 75 



thus arousing its act, and so on to the end. Three chicks thus 

 learned to go through a sort of long labyrinth without mistakes, 

 the " learning " representing twenty-three associations. 



The next matter to examine is the set of feelings in the 

 animal which we have called " feelings of the situation," or, 

 more simply, "the situation." The important thing about 

 them is their vagueness, indefiniteness. The kitten did not 

 have in mind every bar of the box confining it, and feel the 

 impulse to turn the button in connection with such a precise 

 sense-impression. It felt the whole environment in an extremely 

 hazy way, and would still have turned the button if you had 

 planed off one-quarter of each bar, or painted the button, or 

 put the box in a different place, or sprinkled the bottom with 

 sawdust, though any of these acts would have vastly altered 

 the situation from our point of view. Cats tha,t climbed up a 

 certain screen when I whistled three times and said, " I must 

 feed those cats," would climb up just as surely if I whistled 

 only or spoke the words only, or even used any short sentence 

 with the same voice and manner. If I took the button off in 

 the box referred to above, the animals that had formed the 

 association would often claw as before, though the (to us) essen- 

 tial part of the situation was absent. Cats that had often 

 obtained food in consequence of being made to go into a certain 

 box, from which they liberated themselves by pulling down a 

 wire loop, would go in and pull the loop and then come out, 

 though no food was there and the door was open all the time. 

 All these facts witness to the vague, indefinite character of the 

 animal's feelings of any of these situations, and to the conse- 

 quent fact that much may be added to or subtracted from the 

 external situation without essentially modifying the animal's 

 reaction to it. Thus the kitten that in the first place responded 

 with the act of approach to the situation, " smell and sight of 

 milk in a certain dish," might later respond similarly to the 

 sight of the dish, though it was empty; thus the kitten that in 

 the first place responded to the situation, " sight or smell of 

 food plus hearing of certain sounds," might later respond 

 similarly to the sounds alone, might come, that is, at our call. 

 It is by virtue of this power of a single element in a situation 



