Experimental Study of Associative Processes 151 
o tasks of prime impotent One is to study the passage ' 
of the child mind from a life of immediately practical associa- 
tions to the life of free ideas ; the other is to find out how far | 
the anthropoid primates advance toward a similar passage, 
and to ascertain accurately what faint beginnings or prepara- : 
tions for such an advance the early mammalian stock may | 
be supposed to have had.) In this latter connection I think 
it will be of the utmost importance to bear in mind the pos- 
sibility that the present anthropoid primates may be men- 
tally degenerate. Their present aimless activity and inces- 
sant, but largely useless, curiosity may be the degenerated 
vestiges of such a well-directed activity and useful curios- 
ity as led homo sapiens to important practical discoveries, 
such as the use of tools, the art of making fire, etc. It is 
even a remote possibility that their chattering is a relic 
of something like language, not a beginning of such. Com- 
parative psychology should use the phenomena of the 
monkey mind of to-day to find out what the primitive mind 
from which man’s sprung off was like. That is the impor-; 
tant thing to get at, and the question whether the present} 
monkey mind has not gone back instead of ahead is an al 
important question. A natural and perhaps sufficient cause 
of degeneracy would be arboreal habits. The animal that 
found a means of survival in his muscles might well lose the 
means before furnished-by his brain. 
To these disconnected remarks still another must be added, 
addressed this time to the anecdote school. Some member 
of it who has chanced to read this may feel like saying: 
“This experimental work is all very well. Your cats and 
dogs represent, it is true, specimens from the top stratum 
of animal intelligence, and your negations, based on their 
conduct, may be authoritative so far as concerns the 
average, typical mammalian mind. But our anecdotes 
