546 STUDIES ON THE MENTAL LIFE OF ANIMALS. 



inclined to views tliat are too synthetical. We must study the for- 

 mation of associations in a more fragmentary and analytical manner. 

 We too easily content ourselves with words and vague formulas; it 

 is common sense, not the scientitic spirit, the spirit of criticism and 

 analysis, that still makes laws in this very special domain of psychol- 

 ogy. 1 call my cat to give her a saucer of milk to drink. What is 

 the exact series of images developed in her mind from the moment 

 when the sound strikes her ear to that when she decides to obey? To 

 say that the animal has present in her intelligence a more or less com- 

 plex process of association is to be contented with very little. We 

 limit ourselves to saying that she does not reason — which appears 

 quite evident — and yet that her acts accord with elements other timn 

 purely instinctive phenomena. To fix the meaning of the expression 

 "process of 'association " as applied to animals, to give it a positive 

 signification, to ascertain what processes of this kind can be formed in 

 their minds, and of what degree of complexity and delicacy, what 

 would be the duration of such processes and the conditions of their 

 formation — such is the problem, precise and clearly limited, that Mr. 

 Thorndike" set himself to solve. He has given us a clear statement 

 of his method and a very complete illustration of it. Two qualities 

 are found united in his work: On the one hand, the faculty of making 

 us grasp the detail of his facts; on the other, that of bringing out 

 clearly the scope and interest that this question presents for general 

 and comparative psychology. 



Strictly from the point of view of m('tht)d the older or even con- 

 temporary psychology pi-esents a numl)er of grave defects. It tends 

 toward a perpetual eulog}' of animals, as- with Romanes, for instance. 

 Psychologists are too easily moved to astonishment and admiration. 

 This disposition, which tends toward puerility, ends by falsifying tlie 

 method itself, l)y leading to the choice of thos'e facts only that excite 

 admiration or enthusiasm. A more objective attitude is necessary. 



In the lirst jilace, most of the books do not give us a psychology, but rather an 

 eulogy of animals. They have all been about animal intelligence, never about 

 animal stupidity. Though a writer derides the notion that animals have reason, he 

 hastens to add that they have marvelous capacity of forming associations; that 

 human beings only rarely reason anything out; that their trains of ideas are ruled 

 mostly by association, as if, in this respect, animals were on a par with them. The 

 history of books on animals' minds thus furnishes an illustration of the well-nigh 

 universal tendency in human nature to find the marvelous wherever it can. We 

 wonder that the stars are so big and so far apart, that the microbes are so small and 

 so thick together, and for much the same reason wonder at the things animals do. 

 Now, imagine an astronomer tremendously eager to prove the stars as big as possi- 

 ble, or a bacteriologist whose great scientific desire is to demonstrate the inicrobesto 

 be very, very little. Yet there has been a similar eagerness on the part of many 



« Edward L. Thorndike: Animal intelligence; an experimental study of the asso- 

 ciative processes in animals. Series of monograph supplements to Psychological 

 Review. Vol. II, No. 4, June, 1898. 



