90 BIOLOGICAL LECTURES. 



sense-impressions. The chicks that learned the series of twenty- 

 three associations did not find it a task beyond their powers to 

 retain them. Several three-days-old chicks, which I caused to 

 learn ten simple associations in the same day, kept the things 

 apart and on the next morning went through each act at the 

 proper stimulus. In the hands of animal trainers some animals 

 get a large number of associations perfectly in hand. The 

 horse Mascot is claimed to know the meaning of fifteen hun- 

 dred signals ! He certainly knows a great many, and such as 

 are naturally difficult of acquisition. It would be an enlight- 

 ening investigation if some one could find out just how many 

 associations a cat or dog could form if he were carefully and 

 constantly given an opportunity. The result would probably 

 show that the number was limited only by the amount of motive 

 available and the time taken to acquire each. For there is 

 probably nothing in their brain structure which limits the 

 number of connections that can be formed, or would cause 

 such connections, as they grew numerous, to become confused. 



" In their anxiety to credit animals with human powers, the 

 psychologists have disregarded or belittled, perhaps, the possi- 

 bilities of the strictly animal sort of association. They would 

 think it more wonderful that a horse should respond differently 

 to a lot of different numbers on the blackboard than that he 

 should infer a consequence from premises. But if it be made 

 a direct question of pleasure or pain to an animal, he can asso- 

 ciate any number of acts with different stimuli. Only he does 

 not form any association until he has to, until the direct benefit 

 is apparent, and, for his ordinary life, comparatively few are 

 needed." 1 



The very fact of the formation of associations is evidence 

 that the connection between situation and impulse and act is 

 permanent. If the influence of the first few successes did not 

 remain to work on the next, there would be no association 

 formed at all. But such permanence is even more clearly wit- 

 nessed by the behavior of animals who are put in situations 

 with which they have in times past associated certain acts, but 



1 Animal Intelligence, an Experimental Study of the Associative Processes 

 in Animals, pp. 93-95- 



