210 Animal Intelligence 
but only to certain instincts or habits differing from others 
only in that the situation calling forth the act was the same 
act performed by another. 
If the monkeys do not learn in these ways, we must, until 
other evidence appears, suppose them to be in general desti- 
tute of a life of free ideas, must regard their somewhat am- 
biguous behavior in learning by their own unaided efforts 
as of the same type as that of the dogs and cats, differing 
only in the respects mentioned on pages 190 and ro1. 
The general method of experimentation was to give mon- 
keys who had failed of their own efforts to operate some 
simple mechanism, a chance to see me do it or see another 
monkey do it or to see and feel themselves do it, and then 
note any change in their behavior. The chief question is 
whether they succeed after such tuition when they have 
failed before it, but the presence of ideas would also be 
indicated if they attacked, though without success, the 
vital point in the mechanism when they had not done so 
before. On the other hand, mere success would not prove 
that the tuition had influenced them, for if they made a dif- 
ferent movement or attacked a different spot, we could not 
attribute their behavior to getting ideas of the necessary act. 
The results of the experiments as a whole are on their face 
value a trifle ambiguous, but they surely show that the mon- 
keys in question had no considerable stock of ideas of the 
objects they dealt with or of the movements they made and 
were not in general capable of acquiring, from seeing me or 
one of their comrades attack a certain part of a mechanism 
and make a certain movement, any ideas that were at all 
efficacious in guiding their conduct. They do not acquire 
or use ideas in anything that approaches the way human 
adults do. Whether the monkeys may not have some few 
ideas corresponding to habitual classes of objects and acts 
