AN/AfAL INTELL1GE\CE. 



get a large number of associations perlccily in hand. The 

 horse Mascot is chiimed to know the meaning of fifteen hundred 

 signals ! He certainly knows a great many, and sucli as arc 

 naturally difficult of acquisition. It would be an enlightening 

 investigation if some one could find out just how many associa- 

 tions a cat or dog could form, if he were carefully and con- 

 stantly given an opportunity. The result would probably show 

 that the number was limited only by the amount of motive avail- 

 able and the time taken to acquire each. For there is probably 

 nothing in their brain structure which limits the number of con- 

 nections that can be formed, or would cause such connections, 

 as they grew numerous, to become confused. 



In their anxiety to credit animals with human powers, the 

 psychologists have disregarded or belittled, perhaps, the pos- 

 sibilities of the strictly animal sort of association, ""j-hey would 

 think it more wonderful that a horse should respond dift'erenlly 

 to a lot of different numbers on the black-board than that he 

 should infer a consequence from premises. But if it be made 

 a direct question of pleasure or pain to an animal, he can asso- 

 ciate any number of acts with different stimuli. Only he does 

 not form any association until he has to, until the direct benefit 

 is apparent, and, for his ordinary life, comparatively few are 

 needed. 



On the whole our judgment from a comparison of man's as- 

 sociations with the brutes' must be that man's are naturally far 

 more delicate, complex and numerous, and that in as far as the 

 animals attain delicacy, complexity, or a great number of as- 

 sociations, the)^ do it by methods which man uses only in a ver}- 

 limited part of the field. 



Permanenxe of Associations. 



Once formed, the connections by which, when an animal 



feels a certain sense-impression, he does a certain thing, persist 



over considerable intervals of time. With the curves on pages 



i8 to 26 and 33 to 34 are given in many instances' additional 



' See 10 in A, 3 in A, 10 in D ; 10 in C, 4 in C, 3 in C ; 6. 2, 5, 4 in E ; 4 in 

 F; 10 in II, 3 in II; 3,4,5, in I ; 4 in G, 3 >" G ; 3 >" K ; 10 in L; dog 1 In N 

 and CC ; dog i in G and O. 



