N 
Experimental Study of Associative Processes 121 
behavior and Professor James’ theory of the nature of and 
presumable brain processes going with the abstractions and 
conceptions of human consciousness, but it is justified chiefly 
by its harmony with the view that conception, the faculty 
of having general notions, has been naturally selected by 
reason of its utility. The first thing is for an animal to learn 
to react alike only to things which resemble each other in the 
essential | qualities. i On an artificial, analytic basis, feelings 
of abstract qualities might grow out of reacting alike to ob- 
jects similar in such a respect that the reaction would be 
useless or harmful. But in the actual struggle for existence, 
starting with the mammalian mind as we have found it, 
you will tend to get reactions to the beneficial similarities 
by selection from among these so-called mistakes, before 
you get any general faculty of noticing similarities.iIn 
order that this faculty of indifferent reaction to different 
things shall grow into the useful faculty of indifferent reac- 
tion to different things which have all some quality that makes 
the reaction a fit one, there must be a tremendous range of 
associations., For a lot of the similarities which are non- 
essential have to be stamped out, not by a power of feeling 
likeness, but by their failure to lead to pleasure... With 
such a wide range of associations we may get reactions on 
the one hand where impulses have been connected with one 
particular sense-impression because when connected with 
all others they had failed to give pleasure, and on the other 
hand, reactions where an impulse has been connected with 
numerous different impressions possessing one common 
quality, and disconnected with all impressions, otherwise 
like these, which fail to have that one quality. | 
Combined with this multiplication of associations, there is, 
I think, an equally important factor, the loosening of the 
elements of an association from one another and from it as a 
