232 MIND IN EVOLUTION CHAP. 



chain, or lever, he passed in one trial 1 to the deliberate 

 attempt to pull out a skewer somewhat tightly rammed in, 

 and four or five inches long an action which required 

 definite and sustained effort. Another case was that of 

 the weight, where, from biting at a string and jumping up 

 at the box, Jack after having steadily looked at the 

 weight, came up and knocked it off. Equally definite was 

 the removal of the stopper, done neatly with the teeth 

 after the operation had once been seen. No less definite 

 was the pulling out of the sideboard drawer by the handle, 

 though this experiment was marred by the reluctance 

 described above. There is no sort of gradual transition 

 from a general scrabble of the paws about a drawer, to the 

 act of quietly seizing the handle with the teeth. Similarly, 

 the opening of the drawer by Teuf el and the Persian ; the 

 drawing of a bolt by my cat ; the upsetting of the tripod 

 and the pulling down of the string by the same animal, 

 were very definite actions, not emerging from a general 

 scratch, but, from the first, to all appearance definite in 

 their aim. The little fox-terrier's action with the tripod, 

 like the cat's, seemed to be a quite definite act, emerging 

 as it were out of pure nothingness, i.e., out of mere absence 

 of effort. It must be added that as the table (p. 246) 

 shows, both in these instances and in others, what was 

 once acquired was very rarely lost. In many cases 

 there was no complete failure after the first success. 

 In others, there were none in the same series. Where 

 there were failures, they were generally few, suggesting 

 a momentary forgetfulness rather than an imperfectly 

 formed habit. 



7. Evidence of guidance by "Ideas" 



Nor is this all. In some cases there were indications 

 that the animal was learning not merely to execute a 

 certain movement, but to do a certain thing : to move a 

 certain object in the way in which it had been shown. 

 Such, at least, was the impression left on my mind. When 

 the cat, for example, learnt to pull out a bolt, it learnt 

 not merely to paw, nor to paw at a particular thing, but 

 to pull that bolt right out, a thing requiring a certain 

 1 After one preliminary effort, in which he joined me in pulling. 



