EDUCATION 251 



first it would stop whatever it was doing when the sound began; 

 letting even a piece of its favourite ice-wafer drop from its mouth ; 

 then it became accustomed to the sound and now just stops for 

 a second and resumes at once. I have tried it with other striking 

 clocks, and it seems to have classified all of them as harmless. 

 With the telephone bell it acts differently, rushing across the room 

 to the telephone table, climbing up to the instrument and waiting 

 there for me. I have tried it with an alarm clock, the sound of 

 which is much like that of a telephone bell, and it at once accepted 

 that as one of the things to be run to. So also the sound of passing 

 motors, of persons talking in the adjoining room, were noted, 

 acquired and put into categories. 



Curiosity, attention and memory do much for the education of 

 ! young animals, but the very strange faculty of imitation also plays 

 its part. I do not know of any term used of animals that is 

 more difficult to understand or to apply justly. The chief difficulty 

 is that we are disposed to interpret the actions of animals too much 

 in the same fashion as those of human beings, and to suppose the 

 presence of a conscious factor which may not exist. When we 

 speak of imitation in human beings, we think of the imitator as 

 forming an idea of the action, and of that idea suggesting corre- 

 sponding action on his own account. It would be going very far 

 indeed to assert such a mental process in the case of animals. Many 

 cases that are sometimes set down to imitation are no more than 

 instances of similar vital machines responding in the same way to 

 the same stimulus. A kitten washes itself or plays with a ball 

 precisely in the same fashion whether it has been brought up 

 by its mother with its brothers and sisters, or has been reared 

 jaway from all other cats. Animals left to themselves gain the 

 same lessons from the same experiences that they would have learnt 

 in association with their kind. I do not doubt but that my hyrax 

 climbs at least as well as if it had been running with its mother in 

 the tree-tops. The fact that so many young animals follow their 

 mother accounts for many of the circumstances that look like imita- 

 tion. When she runs, they run after her, and it is only by experience 

 that they learn to associate with running the stimulus that made 

 the mother run. They run, not because they are imitating her 

 action, but because it is their habit to run after her. So also when 

 she leads them to the proper food, and they follow her example 

 by eating it, all that it is necessary to suppose has happened is 

 that the food stimulus to which they have been led excites them 



