xii ARTICULATE IDEAS 295 



in which one point is correlated with another, and this 

 perhaps with a third or fourth, on the basis of past 

 experience and present perception, yet without being 

 dominated by either, with a certain degree of precision, in 

 such a way as to bring about the gratification of an 

 impulse. The empirical basis of such a plan is often more 

 or less indirect. In the use of the stick as a rake, there 

 was for the chimpanzee his own experience with the rug, 

 and the hint which I gave him by using the stick myself. 

 To transfer the act, and apply it to himself and his own 

 needs, was, at lowest, a strong case of <c reflective 

 imitation." But the use of the term imitation in this 

 connection is really misleading. At most, my act served 

 as a hint. It would be impossible to use a stick under 

 such circumstances with success merely from seeing another 

 do it, and without grasping for one's self the way in which 

 it is to be done. And all the detailed adjustments by which 

 the use of the stick was perfected, were worked out by the 

 monkey for himself. The same animal's use of the stick, 

 and afterwards the iron rod, in the pipe, is another example 

 of a very accurate adjustment of means to ends, to the 

 latter of which it is difficult to think that there could have 

 been any close parallel in his previous experience. One 

 must rather imagine his general knowledge of objects 

 reacting on his immediate perception and desire, and 

 together engendering an essentially novel kind of act. 1 



In the case of the little monkey, the adjustment of the 

 footstool, and the removal of obstacles from his chain, 

 seem again to rest rather on a kind of common sense than 

 on any specific experience, and to imply a tolerably 

 accurate judgment of the spatial relations of the objects 

 concerned. The furtiveness which I have discussed above 

 suggests similarly a certain power of combining inferences 

 as to how I should act, and how he could act, and how the 

 potato might be the result. 



1 Cf. Kinnaman. As his experiments proceeded " it appears that there 

 was improvement in dealing with fastenings in general. All locks towards 

 the last were attacked with definiteness, and as if the animals had a dim 

 realisation that they were the proper objects for attack, a thing which was 

 not true at first (Amer. Journ. Psych., XIII. 122). Cf. his account, too 

 long to quote, of the plan by which a monkey obtained a piece of apple in 

 a difficult position (op. tit., p. 208). 



