176 MIND IN EVOLUTION CHAP. 



that method of action and " stamped it in " in other 

 words, that the action assimilated the character of its result 

 and became in itself attractive to the dog. 



2. Mr. Thorndikes Experiments. 



This method of explanation, which, it will be seen, 

 virtually dispenses not only with a knowledge of relations, 

 but with association of ideas, and carries us back to the 

 stage of assimilation, 1 has been applied as a sort of universal 

 solvent by Mr. Thorndike. 2 Mr. Thorndike's view, based 

 upon a number of ingenious experiments with cats, dogs, 

 and chicken, is, roughly, that the acquired actions of all 

 animals below the primates are to be explained upon that 

 principle of the selection of the successful act and elimina- 

 tion of failures which we applied in Chapter VII. to explain 

 retrogressive associations. Mr. Thorndike does not go 

 quite as far as to deny animals all images or ideas whatever, 

 but his general position and tendency are not unfairly 

 represented by the following passage. 



"The possibility is that animals may have no images or memories 

 at all, no ideas to associate. Perhaps the entire fact of association 

 in animals is the presence of sense-impressions with which are 

 associated, by resultant pleasure, certain impulses, and that there- 

 fore, and therefore only, a certain situation brings forth a certain 

 act." 3 



In any case, he seems pretty clear that the association of 

 ideas is not the important point, but rather the impulse- 

 feeling association. 



"The groundwork of animal associations is not the association 

 of ideas, but the association of idea or sense-impression with 

 impulse" 4 



The general conception of the life of the higher animals 

 that results is so interesting as to deserve quotation in full. 



" One who had seen the phenomena so far described, who has 

 watched the life of a cat or dog for a month or more under test 

 conditions, gets, or fancies he gets, a fairly definite idea of what 



1 This method of learning, depending on repeated blundering efforts 

 with fortuitous successes that are gradually selected, has been called by 

 Mr. Lloyd Morgan the Method of Trial and Error. 



2 "Animal Intelligence," Psych. Rev. Mon. Supp., Vol. II. No. 4. 



3 P. 73- 4 P. 7i- 



