The Memory Idea 271 



rinth course would certainly be formed in a human mind after 

 a very few experiences. Thorndike's attempts to make cats 

 and dogs learn by inferential imitation, and by putting them 

 through the movements required, while they do not show 

 absence of ideas in the animals' minds, indicate that ideas 

 were not suggested to his subjects under circumstances which 

 would have suggested them to human beings. Cole's op- 

 posite results, however, weaken Thorndike's conclusions. 

 Further, the way in which instinctive actions are often per- 

 formed 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 involves 

 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, jsug- 

 gests a peculiar limitation of ideas in the wasp's mi*ra, at 

 least while this particular function was being performed (112). 

 rrhe cow, which had lamenteol 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 pro- 

 truded, when she calmly devoured the hay (^79, p. 334), had 

 perhaps experienced some dim ideas connected with her loss, 

 but certainly her consciousness was more absorbed by the 

 effects of present stimulation and less occupied with ideas 

 than a human mother's would have been. 



On the other hand, certain features of animal behavior are 

 held by most people to be indications that the creatures thus 

 acting have ideas of absent objects. Dogs and cats are sup- 

 posed to dream because they snarl and twitch their muscles 

 in sleep ; but, as Thorndike has pointed out, such movements 

 may be purely reflex and unaccompanied by any conscious- 



