62 E. L. THORNDIKE. 



situation. Thus we have further restricted the association pro- 

 cess. Not only do animals not have associations accompanied, 

 more or less permeated and altered, by inference and judg- 

 ment ; they do not have associations of the sort which may be 

 acquired from other animals by imitation. What this implies 

 concerning the actual mental content accompanying their acts 

 will be seen later on. It also seems sure that we should give 

 up imitation as an a -priori explanation of any novel intelligent 

 performance. To say that a dog who opens a gate, for in- 

 stance, need not have reasoned it out if he had seen another dog 

 do the same thing, is to offer instead of one false explanation 

 another equally false. Imitation in any form is too doubtful a 

 factor to be presupposed without evidence. And if a general 

 imitative faculty is not sufficiently developed to succeed with 

 such simple acts as those of the experiments quoted, it must be 

 confessed that the faculty is in these higher mammals still rudi- 

 mentary and capable of influencing to only the most simple and 

 habitual acts, or else that for some reason its sphere of influence 

 is limited to a certain class of acts, possessed of some qualita- 

 tive difference, other than mere simplicity, which renders them 

 imitable. The latter view seems a hard one to reconcile with 

 a sound psychology of imitation or association at present, with- 

 out resorting to instinct. Unless a certain class of acts are by 

 the innate mental make-up especially tender to the influence of 

 imitation, the theory fails to find good psychological ground to 

 stand on. The former view may very well be true. But in 

 any case the burden of proof would now seem to rest upon the 

 adherents to imitation ; the promising attitude would seem to be 

 one which went without imitation as long as it could, and that 

 is, of coui-se, until it surely found it present. 



Returning to imitation considered in its human aspect, to 

 imitation as a transferred association in particular, we find that 

 here our analytical study of the animal mind promises important 

 contributions to general comparative psychology. If it is true, 

 and there has been no disagreement about it, that the primates 

 do imitate acts of such novelty and complexity that only this out- 

 and-out kind of imitation can explain the fact, we have located 

 one great advance in mental development. Till the primates 



