The Mental Life of the Monkeys 207 
fail in one trial out of four for a hundred or more trials. If 
the 27 successes were due to ideas, why was there regression ? _ 
If the animal came to respond by staying still on seeing the 
K (card 104), because that sight was associated with the idea 
of no food or the idea of staying still, why did he, in his 
memory trial, act sometimes rightly, sometimes wrongly, for 
eleven trials after his acting rightly twice. | If he stayed still 
because the idea was aroused, why did he not stay still as 
soon as he had a few trials to remind him of the idea? | It is 
easy, one may say, to see why, with a capacity to select 
movements and associate them with sense-presentations 
very quickly, in cases where habit provides only two move- 
ments for selection and where the sense-presentation is very 
clear and simple, an animal should practically at once be 
confirmed in the one act on an occasion when he does it 
with the sense-impression in the focus of attention. It is 
easy, therefore, to explain the sudden change in i, 1, m, B, C 
and E. But our critic may add, “It is very hard to suppose 
that an animal that learned by connecting the sight of a card 
with the idea ‘stay still’ or the idea ‘no food,’ should be so 
long in making the connection as was the case in some of 
these experiments, should take 10, 20 or 40 trials to change 
from a high percentage of wrong to a high percentage of 
right reactions.” 
If we take the second view, we have to face the fact that 
many of the records are nothing like the single one we have 
for comparison, that of the kitten shown in Fig. 30, and that 
the appeal to a capacity to form animal associations very 
quickly seems like a far-fetched refuge from the other view 
rather than a natural interpretation., If we take the rec- 
ords to be summation points in a more gradual process, this 
difficulty is relieved.’ 
If further investigation upheld the first view, we should 
