8o 



E. L. THORNDIKE. 



thinkers do presuppose. A bird, for instance, dives in the same 

 manner into a river of yellow water, a pond or an ocean. It 

 has a general notion, they say, of water. It knows that river 

 water is one thing and pond-water another thing, but it knows 

 that both are water, ergo^ fit to dive into. The cat who reacts 

 to a loop of small wire of a blue color knows just what that loop 

 is, and when it sees a different loop knows its differences, but 

 knows also its likeness, and reacts to the essential. Thus 

 crediting the cat with our differentiation and perception of indi- 

 viduality, they credit it with our conceptions and perceptions of 

 similarity. Unless the animal has the first there is no reason 

 to suppose the last. Now, the animal does ?iot have either. It 

 does not in the first place react to that particular loop in A, 

 with recognition of its qualities. It reacts to a vague, ill-defined 

 sense-impression, undiscriminated and even unperceived in the 

 technical sense of the word. Morgan's phrase, " a bit of pure 

 experience," is perhaps as good as any. The loop is to the cat 

 what the ocean is to a man, when thrown into it when half- 

 asleep. Thus the cat who climbed up the front of the cage 

 whenever I said, " I must feed those cats," would climb up just 

 as inevitably when I said, " My name is Thorndike," or " To- 

 day is Tuesday." So cats would claw at the loop or button 

 when the door was open. So cats would paw at the place 

 where a loop had been, though none was there. The reaction 

 is not to a well-discriminated object, but to a vague situation, and 

 any element of the situation may arouse the reaction. The 

 whole situation in the case of man is speedily resolved into ele- 

 ments ; the particular elements are held in focus, and the non- 

 essential is systematically kept out of mind. In the animal the 

 whole situation sets loose the impulse ; all of its elements, in- 

 cluding the non-essentials, get yoked with the impulse, and the 

 situation may be added to or subtracted from without destroying 

 the association, provided you leave something which will set off 

 the impulse. The animal does not think one is like the other, 

 nor does it, as is so often said, mistake one for the other. It 

 does not think abojit it at all ; it just thinks //, and the it is the 

 kind of "pure experience" we have been describing. In 

 human mental life we have accurate, discriminated sensa- 



