Experimental Study of Associative Processes 119 
Now, the animal does not have either. _It does not in the first 
“place react to that particular loop in A, with recognition | of. 
its qualities. /It reacts to a vague, ill-defined sense-impres- . 
sion, undiscriminated and even unperceived in the technical 
sense of the word. Morgan’s pines, “a bit of pure experi- 
ence,” is perhaps as good as any.|| The loop is to the cat 
what the ocean is to a man, when Tieowiit into it when half- 
asleep. Thus the cat who climbed up the front of the cage 
whenever I said, ‘“‘I must feed those cats,”” would climb up 
just as inevitably when I said, ‘“My name is Thorndike,” 
r ‘To-day is Tuesday.” } So cats would claw at the loop 
or button when the door was open. So cats would paw at 
the place where a loop had been, though none was there. 
_ The reaction is not to a well-discriminated object, but to a 
“vague situation, and any element of the situation may 
arouse the reaction. ‘The whole situation in the case of man 
is speedily resolved’ into elements; the particular elements 
are held in focus, and the non-essential is systematically kept 
out of mind. In the animal the whole situation sets loose : 
the impulse; all of its elements, including the non-essen- 
tials, get yoked with the impulse, and the situation may be 
added to or subtracted from without destroying the asso- 
ciation, provided you leave something which will set off 
the impulse. ) The animal does not think one is like the other, 
nor does {t;s is so often said, mistake one for the other. LIt 
does not think about it at all; it just thinks zt, and the it is 
the kind of “pure experience ” we have been describing.. In 
human mental life we"have accurate, discriminated sensa- 
tions and perceptions, realized as such, and general notions, 
also realized as such.’ Now, what the phenomena in ani- 
mals which we have been considering show is that they 
have neither. | Far from showing an advanced stage of men- 
tality, ithey show a very primitive and unspecialized stage. 
