ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE. 



79 



influence of practice in reacting to one mechanism upon llie 

 time taken to react to a mechanism at all similar. It naturally 

 takes a cat a longer time to accidentally claw a loop in tiie 

 back than in the front, yet a comparison of these curves with 

 those on page i8, Figure 2, shows the opposite to have been 

 the case with 10, 11 and 12. The same remarkable quickness 

 was noted in Cats i and 3 when put into B (o at back) after 

 learning A (o at front). Moreover, the loops were not alike. 

 The loop in A was of smaller wire, covered with a bluish 

 thread, while the loop in B was covered with a black rubber 

 compound, the diameter of the loop being three times that of 

 A's loop. 



10UB> 



12.W.0I. 



llUwBi. 



W^ 



Fig. 19. 



If any advocate of reason in animals has read so far, 1 doubt 

 not that his heart has leaped with joy at these two preceding 

 paragraphs. "How," he will say, "canyon explain these 

 facts without that prime factor in human reason, association by 

 similarity? Surely they show the animal perceiving likenesses 

 and acting from general ideas." This is the very last thing 

 that they show . Let us see why they do not show this and what 

 they do show. He who thinks that these animals had a general 

 notion of a loop-like thing as the thing to be clawed, that they 

 felt the loop in B, different as it was in size, color and position, 

 to be still a loop, to have the essential quality of the other, must 

 needs presuppose that the cat has a clear, accurate sensation 

 and representation of both. Only if the cat discriminates can 

 it later associate by noticing similarities. This is what such 



