DO ANIMALS REASON? 489 



hension of the situation, for the time taken to learn the thing is 

 much longer than all three elements would take if tackled sepa- 

 rately; and even after the animal has reached a minimum time in 

 doing the acts, he does not do the things in the same order, and often 

 repeats one of the acts over and over again, though it has already 

 attained its end. 



The second set comprised experiments on the so-called " mem- 

 ory " of animals. I will describe only one out of many which agree 

 with it. A kitten had been trained to the habit of climbing the 

 wire-netting front of its cage whenever I approached. I then 

 trained her to climb up at the words " I must feed those cats." This 

 was done by uttering them and then in ten seconds going up to the 

 cage and holding a bit of fish to her at its top. After this had been 

 done about forty times she reached a point where she would climb 

 up at the signal about fifty per cent of the times. I then introduced 

 a new element by sometimes saying, " I must feed those cats," as be- 

 fore, and feeding her, and at other times saying, " I will not feed 

 them," and remaining still in my chair. At first the kitten felt no 

 difference, and would climb up just as often at the wrong signal as 

 at the right. But gradually (it took about four hundred and fifty 

 trials) the failure to get any pleasure from the act of climbing up 

 at the wrong signal stamped out the impulse to do so, while the 

 pleasure sequent upon the act of climbing up at the other signal 

 made that her invariable response to it. Here, as elsewhere, the 

 absence of reason was shown by the cat's failure at any point in these 

 hundreds of trials to think about the matter, and make the easy in- 

 ference that one set of sounds meant food, while the other did not. 

 But still better proof appears in what is to follow. After an in- 

 terval of eighty days I tried her again to see how permanent the 

 association between the signal and act was. It was permanent to 

 the extent that what took three hundred and eighty trials before 

 took only fifty this time, for after fifty trials with the " I will not 

 feed them " signal, mixed up with a lot of the other, the cat once 

 more attained perfect discrimination. But it was not permanent 

 in the sense that the cat at the first or tenth or twentieth trial felt, 

 as a remembering, reasoning consciousness surely ought to feel, 

 " Why, that lot of sounds means that he won't come up with fish." 

 For instead of at first forgetting and for a while climbing up at the 

 I will not feed them, and then remembering its previous experience 

 and at once stopping the performance it had before learned was use- 

 less, the cat simply went through the same gradual decreasing of 

 the percentage of wrong responses until finally it always responded 

 rightly. 



What has so far been said is true regardless of any prejudice or 



