Experimental Study of Associative Processes 137 
associations perfectly inhand. The horse Mascot is claimed 
to know the meaning of fifteen hundred signals! He 
certainly knows a great many, and such as are naturally 
difficult of acquisition. It would be an enlightening 
investigation if some one could find out just how many 
associations a cat or dog could form, if he were carefully 
and constantly given an opportunity. The result would 
probably show that fhe number was limited only by the 
amount of motive available and the time taken to acquire 
each. For there is probably nothing in their brain structure 
which limits the number of connections that can be formed, 
or would cause such connections, as they grew numerous, 
to become confused. 
In their anxiety to credit animals with human powers, 
the psychologists have disregarded or belittled, perhaps, 
the possibilities of the strictly animal sort of association. 
They would think it more wonderful that a horse should 
respond differently to a lot of different numbers on the black- 
board than that he should infer a consequence from prem- 
ises. But if it be made a direct question of pleasure or 
pain to an animal, he can associate any number of acts with 
different stimuli. Only’ he does not form any associations 
until he has to, until the direct benefit is apparent, and, for 
his ordinary life, comparatively few are needed, 
‘On the whole our judgment from a comparison of man’s 
associations with the brutes’ must be that a man’s are nat- 
urally far more delicate, complex and numerous, and that 
in as far as the animals attain delicacy, complexity, or a 
great number of associations, they do it by methods which 
man uses only in a very limited part of the field. ' 
