1 88 MIND IN EVOLUTION CHAP. 



unmistakable. When one says that the dog attends, one 

 means that he assumes an attitude of this kind, and where 

 there is attention, there seems to be a mental digestion of 

 the fact attended to, a working of it into the mass of 

 experience so that it becomes available as a guide to action. 

 Whatever else may be said of human attention, this will, 

 I imagine, be allowed to be its normal effect, and this is, 

 I think, also its normal effect in the animal world. 



3. Besides showing the thing to be done, then, I also tried 

 to attract attention. Further, after the trick was shown, 

 in case of failure on the part of the animal, I used two 

 supplementary methods. The first, which I call Sugges- 

 tion, consisted in pointing to the object to be attacked by 

 way of reminder. It was used rarely. 1 The second, 

 which I call Encouragement, was used habitually, and 

 consists in stimulating the animal to persevere by a <c good 

 dog " or a " get it, pussy," or by pointing, not to the 

 object to be seized, but to the place where the food is. 

 Encouragement is distinct from Suggestion as merely 

 stimulating the animal to effort, and not helping in anyway 

 to direct its efforts. I also used Discouragement, when an 

 animal became rough in his excitement. 



The time of each trial was not regularly taken. Times 

 are apt to be quite as misleading as instructive. Suppose, 

 for example, that a cat begins without any delay to pull out a 

 bolt which sticks a little. It is an open question whether 

 she will persist or not. If not, she will probably take to 

 her ablutions, and after washing her face with great 

 elaboration while the experimenter waits with what 

 patience he can command, will deign to return to the 



1 Suggestion is to be distinguished from inducement. I might teach 

 my dog to bite at a string by waving my hand with a piece of meat 

 towards it so that he would jump after my hand and accidentally catch 

 the string. I might get him to raise a catch by smearing the box below 

 and at the side of it with meat, so that in smelling at it he would knock 

 the catch up. Then, if he discovered that to bite the string or raise 

 the catch gained him meat, he would, of course, repeat the act. This 

 would be a simple case of learning the thing by doing it, and bears no 

 relation to learning by seeing. Mere pointing could only be an induce- 

 ment if there were a previous association through which an animal had 

 learnt to interpret the sign. Apart from such association its function is 

 to direct attention to the proper object, and so revive the " ideas " 

 associated therewith. 



