Experimental Study of Associative Processes 23 
they have marvelous capacity of forming associations, and 
is likely to refer to the fact that human beings only rarely 
reason anything out, that their trains of ideas are ruled 
mostly by association, as if, in this latter, animals were on a 
par with them. The history of books on animals’ minds 
thus furnishes an illustration of the well-nigh universal tend- 
ency 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. They used to be wonderful because of the mysterious, 
God-given faculty of instinct, which could almost remove 
mountains. More lately they have been. wondered at be- 
cause of their marvelous mental powers in profiting by 
-experience. Now imagine an astronomer tremendously 
eager to prove the stars as big as possible, or a bacteriologist 
whose great scientific desire is to demonstrate the microbes 
to be very, very little! Yet there has been a similar eager- 
ness on the part of many recent writers on animal psychology 
to praise the abilities of animals. It cannot help leading to 
partiality in deductions from facts and more especially in 
the choice of facts for investigation. How can scientists 
who write like lawyers, defending animals against the charge 
of having no power of rationality, be at the same time 
impartial judges on the bench? Unfortunately the real 
work in this field has been done in this spirit. The level- 
headed thinkers who might have won valuable results 
have contented themselves with arguing against the theories 
of the eulogists. They have not made investigations of 
their own. 
- {1 In the second place, the facts have generally been derived 
from anecdotes.| Now quite apart from such pedantry as 
insists that a man’s word about a scientific fact is worthless 
