218 The Animal Mind 



ing sensation; but this process is the natural accompani- 

 ment, as we have seen, of diminishing reaction, not of varied 

 and increasingly violent reaction. A decidedly disagreeable 

 stimulus acting repeatedly on a human being may produce 

 unpleasantness that grows more and more intense until it 

 is unbearable ; the behavior of a human being under such cir- 

 cumstances is much like the animal behavior we have just 

 been describing. Various movements calculated to get rid 

 of the stimulus are tried, each more energetic than the last. 

 Hence, if the lower animals behaving thus are conscious, we 

 may plausibly assert that their consciousness under these 

 circumstances is increasingly unpleasant. But the human 

 experience in such a case would be, or might be, further char- 

 acterized by the presence of ideas. That is, the human being 

 would think of the different ways to get rid of the stimulus 

 one after another. This many, at least, of the animals that 

 try different negative reactions are apparently incapable of 

 doing. We judge that they are so by the simple fact that on 

 being subjected after an interval to the same presumably dis- 

 agreeable stimulus, they do not at once make the reaction that 

 was previously successful in getting rid of it. A human being, 

 recalling that reaction in idea, would be able to do so. We 

 shall see in the next chapter that many animals, while they 

 do not learn the successful reaction from a single experience, 

 do gradually diminish the number of unsuccessful ones made 

 in a series of experiences. It may be that as more experimen- 

 tal evidence is accumulated, this will be found to be the case 

 throughout the whole animal kingdom, but at present it 

 looks as though the lowest forms may, when an injurious 

 stimulus is repeatedly given, pass through their whole reper- 

 toire of negative reactions in one experience after another, 

 without any shortening of the process. Trial and error this 

 may be called : learning it is not. 



