t)S E. L. THORNDIKE. 



of the past and realize that it is the same, but simply feels on being 

 confronted with that situation the same impulse which she felt be- 

 fore. She does the thing now for just the same reason that she 

 did it before, namely, because pleasure has connected that act 

 above all others with that sense-impression, so that it is the one 

 she feels like doing. Her condition is that of the swimmer who 

 starts his summer season after a winter's deprivation. When he 

 jumps off the pier and hits the water he swims, not because 

 he remembers that this is the way he dealt with water last sum- 

 mer and so applies his remembrance to present use, but just be- 

 cause experience has taught him to feel like swimming when he 

 hits the water. All talk about recognition and memory in ani- 

 mals, if it asserts the presence of anything more than this, is a 

 gross mistake. For real memory is an absolute thing, including 

 everything but forgetfulness. If the cat had real memory it 

 would, when after an interval dropped into a box, remember 

 that from this box it escaped by doing this or that and conse- 

 quently, either immediately or after a time of recollection, go do 

 it, or else it would not remember and would fail utterly to do 

 it. On the contrary, we have all grades of partial ' forgetful- 

 ness,' just like the grades of swimming one might find if he 

 dropped a dozen college professors into the mill-ponds of their 

 boyhood, just like the grades of forgetfulness of the associations 

 once acquired on the ball-field which are manifested when on the 

 Fourth of July the ' solid men ' of a town get out to amuse 

 their fellow citizens. The animal makes attacks on a spot 

 around the vital one, or claws at the thing — but not so precisely 

 as before, or goes at it a while and then resorts to instinctive 

 methods of getting out. Its actions are exactly what would be 

 expected of an animal in whom the sense-impression aroused 

 the impulse imperfectly, or weakly, or intermittently, but are 

 not at all like the actions of one who felt, " I used to get out of 

 this box by pulling that loop down." In fact, the record of No. 

 ID given on page 96 seems to be final on this point. If at any 

 time in the course of the 50 trials it had remembered that ' I will 

 not feed them ' meant ' no fish,' it would thenceforth have failed 

 to react. It would have stopped short in the ' yes ' reactions, 

 instead of gradually decreasing their percentage. ' Memory ' 



