ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE. 99 



in animals, if one still chooses to use the word, \s permanence of 

 associations, not the presence of an idea of an experience at- 

 tributed to the past. 



To this proposition two corollaries ma}- be added. First, 

 these phenomena of incomplete forgetfulness extend the evi- 

 dence that animals do not have a stock of independent ideas, 

 the return of which plus past associates equals memory. Second, 

 there is, properly speaking, no continuity in their mental streams. 

 The present thought does not clutch the past to its bosom or 

 hold the future in its womb. The animal's self is not a being 

 * looking before and after,' but a direct practical association of 

 feelings and impulses. So far as experiences come continu- 

 ously they may be said to form a continuous mental life, but 

 there is no continuity imposed from within. The feelings of its 

 ow^n body are always present and impresssions from outside 

 may come as they come to us. When the habit of attending 

 to the elements of its associations and raising them up into the 

 life of free ideas is acquired, these permanent bodily associa- 

 tions may become the basis of a feeling of self-hood and the 

 trains of ideas may be felt as a continuous life. 



Inhibition of Instincts by Habit. 

 One very important result of association remains to be con- 

 sidered, its inhibition of instincts and previous associations. 

 An animal who has become habituated to getting out of a box 

 by pulling a loop and opening the door will do so even though 

 the hole in the top of the box be uncovered, whereas, if, in early 

 trials, you had left any such hole, he would have taken the 

 instinctive way and crawled through it. Instances of this sort 

 of thing are well-nigh ubiquitous. It is a tremendous factor in 

 animal life, and the strongest instincts may thus be annulled. 

 The phenomenon has been already recognized in the literature 

 of the subject, a convenient account being found in James' 

 Psychology, Vol. II., pages 394-397- I" addition to such ac- 

 counts, one may note that the intluence of association is exerted 

 in two ways. The instinct may wane by not being used, be- 

 cause the animal forms the habit of meeting the situation in 

 a different way, or it may be actually inhibited. An instance 



