ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE. 65 



The Mental Fact in Association. 



It is now time to put the question as to just what is in an 

 animal's mind when, having profited by numerous experiences, 

 he has formed the association and does the proper act when put 

 in a certain box. The commonly accepted view of the mental 

 fact then present is that the sight of the inside of the box re- 

 minds the animal of his previous -pleasant experience after es- 

 cape and of the movements which he made which were immedi- 

 ately followed by and so associated with that escape. It has 

 been taken for granted that if the animal remembered the pleas- 

 ant experience and remembered the movement, he zvould make 

 the movement. It has been assumed that the association was an 

 association of ideas; that when one of the ideas was of a move- 

 ment the animal was capable of making the movement. So, 

 for example, Morgan says, in the ' Introduction to Comparative 

 Psychology ' : "If a chick takes a lady-bird in its beak forty 

 times and each time finds it nasty, this is of no practical value to 

 the bird unless the sight of the bird suggests the nasty taste^'" 

 p. 90. 



Again, on page 92, Morgan says, " A race after the ball had 

 been suggested through the channel of olfactory sensations." 

 Also on page 86 " * * * the visual impression suggested the idea 

 or representation of unpleasant gustatory experience." The atti- 

 tude is brought out more completely in a longer passage on page 

 118 : "On one of our first ascents one of them put up a young 

 coney, and they both gave chase. Subsequently they always hur- 

 ried on to this spot, and, though they never saw another coney 

 there, reiterated disappointment did not efface the memory of that 

 first chase, or so it seemed." That is, according to Morgan, the 

 dogs thought of the chase and its pleasure, on nearing the spot 

 where it had occurred, and so hurried on. On page 14S of 

 ' Habit and Instinct,' w^e read, " Ducklings so thoroughly asso- 

 ciated water with the sight of their tin that they tried to drink 

 from it and wash in it when it was empty, nor did they desist 

 for some minutes," and this with other similar phenomena is 

 attributed to the ' association by contiguity ' of human psy- 

 chology. 



