90 



E. L. THORNDIKE. 



experiment shows beautifully the animal method of acquisition. 

 If at any stage the animal could have isolated the two ideas of 

 the two sense-impressions, and felt them together in comparison, 

 this long and tedious process would have been unnecessary. 



k 



(ij a.j 



Fig. 20. 



It might be stated here that the animals also acquired asso- 

 ciations of moderate delicacy in discriminating between the 

 different boxes. No cat tried to get out of A or B by licking 

 herself, for instance. 



The question may naturally be raised that if naturally asso- 

 ciations are thus vague, the common phenomenon of a dog 

 obeying his master's commands, and no one else's, is inexplica- 

 ble. The difference between one man and another, one voice 

 and another, it may be said, is not much of a difference, yet is 

 here uniformly discriminated, although we cannot suppose any 

 such systematic training to reject the other slightly differing 

 commands. My cats did not so discriminate. If anyone else 

 sat in my chair and called out, "I must feed the cats," they 

 reacted, and probably very many animals would, if untroubled 

 by emotions of curiosity or fear at the new individual, go 

 through their tricks as well at another's voice as at that of their 

 master. The other cases exemplify the influence of attention. 

 Repeated attention to these sense-impressions has rendered 

 them clear-cut and detailed, and the new impression conse- 

 quently does not equal them in calling forth the reaction. 



The main thing to carry away from this discission is the 

 assurance that the delicacy of the animal in associating acts 

 with impressions is nothing like the delicacy of the man who 

 feels that a certain tone is higher, or weight is heavier, than 

 another, but is like the delicacy of the man who runs to a cer- 

 tain spot to hit one tennis ball and to a different spot to hit one 

 coming with a slightly different speed. 



