Modification by Experience 291 



remained motionless in this position during the interval. 

 Clearly we get no indication from such behavior that the 

 rat is able to recall a memory image of the light. His 

 failure to run in the right direction when he did not keep 

 his nose pointed in the right direction plainly suggests the 

 absence of such ideas as influences on his behavior. 



Again, the nature of the errors which animals occasionally 

 make in experiments strongly suggests the absence of mem- 

 ory ideas. Thus the two rats which learned the Hampton 

 Court maze under Small's (685) tuition both continued, 

 after they had reached their highest point of excellence in 

 running the maze, to take the wrong turning at the outset. 

 Precisely this error would have been, probably, the first 

 one eliminated in the learning of a human being, who would 

 be able to recall some kind of memory idea of the first 

 turning owing to its especial hold upon attention. Fur- 

 ther, the way in which instinctive actions are often performed 

 by animals indicates that ideas are not present as they 

 would be to a human being's consciousness. Human beings 

 do some things from instinct, but the doing of them may be 

 accompanied by ideas; a mother's care for her child in- 

 volves ideas of the child's happiness or suffering, and of its 

 future. Enteman's account of the worker wasp which, 

 lacking other food to present to a larva, bit off a portion of 

 one end of the larva's body and offered it to the other end 

 to be eaten, suggests a peculiar limitation of ideas in the 

 wasp's mind, at least while this particular function was being 

 performed (206). The cow, which had lamented at being 

 deprived of her calf, and on having the stuffed skin of her 

 offspring given to her, licked it with maternal devotion 

 until the hay stuffing protruded, when she calmly devoured 

 the hay (504, p. 334), had perhaps experienced some 

 dim ideas connected with her loss, but certainly her con- 



