230 The Animal Mind 



not have proved that the cards had played no part in forming 

 the habit. 



In the same way, it is not likely that a thoroughly prac- 

 tised animal needs to have in consciousness even kinaesthetic 

 sensations. Watson attempts to describe the processes in 

 the mind of a practised rat as follows : " What leads up to 

 the act of turning ? The ' feeling ' (probably only vaguely 

 ' sensed ') which may be expressed anthropomorphically in 

 these terms: *I have gone so far, I ought to be turning 

 about now ! ' " " If the turn is made at the proper stage 

 . . . the animal may be supposed thereby to get a * reassur- 

 ing feeling,' which is exactly comparable from the stand- 

 point of control to the experience which we get when we 

 touch a familiar object in the dark" (431, pp. 95-6). I do 

 not think these before and after ' feelings ' are necessarily 

 present at all in the consciousness of an animal whose 

 labyrinth habit is fully formed. Such an animal has be- 

 come a little machine which takes so many steps along a 

 straight path, turns to the right, takes so many more steps, 

 and so on until the performance is complete. If, indeed, 

 it makes an error in this process, then the kinaesthetic sen- 

 sations may come into play, but otherwise there would seem 

 to be no reason for assuming in the fully practised animal 

 consciousness of any stimulus except the initial one which 

 starts it on its path. 



Very curious are the results obtained by Watson when the 

 entire labyrinth was turned through an angle of 90 degrees. 

 Although no turn which the animals had to take was in any 

 way altered by this proceeding, the rats showed decided con- 

 fusion, the blind rats as much as the others. This latter 

 fact would indicate that alteration in the direction of the 

 light was not the source of the confusion ; but when the maze 

 was rotated through 180 degrees, the blind rats were not 



