212 Animal Intelligence 
We find anecdotes to that effect in fairly reputable 
authors. 
Of course, such anecdotes might be true and still not prove 
that the animals learned to do things because they saw them 
done. The animal may have been taught in other ways to 
respond to the particular sights in question by the particular 
acts. Or it may have been in each case a coincidence. 
If a monkey did actually form an association between a 
given situation and act by seeing some one respond to that 
situation by that act, it would be evidence of considerable 
importance concerning his general mental status, for it 
would go to show that ‘he could and often did form asso- 
ciations between sense-impressions and ideas and between 
ideas and acts. | i | Seeing some one turn a key in a lock might 
thus give him the idea of turning or moving the key, and this 
idea might arouse the act.. However, the mere fact that a 
monkey does something which you have just done in his 
presence need not demonstrate or even render a bit more 
probable such a general mental condition. For he perhaps 
would have acted i in just the same manner if you had offered 
him no model. |If you put two toothpicks on a dish, take 
one and put it in your mouth, a monkey will do the same, not 
because he profits by your example, but because he in- 
stinctively puts nearly all small objects in his mouth, \Be- 
cause of their general activity, their instinctive impulses to 
grab, drop, bite, rub, carry, move about, turn over, etc., any 
novel object within their reach, their constant movement 
and assumption of all sorts of postures, the monkeys per- 
form many acts like our own and simulate imitation to a far 
greater extent than other mammals. 
Even if a monkey which has failed of itself to do a certain 
thing does it after you have shown him the act, there need 
be no reason to suppose that he is learning by imitation, 
