108 Animal Intelligence 
Another question was, “‘How would you teach a cat to 
get out of a box, the door of which was closed with a thumb 
latch?” 
A answered, “I should use a puffball as a plaything for 
the cat to claw at.” This means, I suppose, that he would get 
the cat to claw at the puffball and thus direct its clawings 
to the vicinity of the thumb piece. 
B answered, ‘‘T would put the cat in and get it good and 
hungry and then open the door by lifting the latch with my 
finger. Then put some food that the cat likes outside, and 
she will soon try to imitate you and so learn the trick.” 
C answered, ‘‘I would first adjust all things in connection 
with the surroundings of the cat so they would be applicable 
to the laws of its nature, and then proceed to teach the 
trick.” 
I suppose this last means that he would fix the box so that 
some of the cat’s instinctive acts would lead it to perform 
the trick, The answer given by B means apparently that 
he would simply leave the thing to accident, for any such 
imitation as he supposes is out of the question. At all 
events, none of these would naturally start to teach the 
trick by putting the animal through the motions, which, 
were it a possible way, would probably be a traditional 
one among trainers. : On the whole, I see in these data no 
reason for modifying our dogma that animals cannot learn 
acts without the impulse. 
Presumably the reader has already seen budding out of 
this dogma a new possibility, a further simplification of 
our theories about animal consciousness. | The possibility 
is that animals may have no images or memories at all, no 
ideas to associate. ‘Perhaps the entire fact of association 
in animals is the presence of sense-impressions with which 
are associated, by resultant pleasure, certain impulses, 
