266 Animal Intelligence 
The reduction of all learning to making and rewarding 
or avoiding and punishing connections between situation 
and response allows changes in intellect and character to 
be explained by changes in the neurones that are known 
either to be or to be possible. I have elsewhere sketched 
one such possible neural mechanism for the law of effect. 
On the contrary, imitation, suggestion and reasoning, 
as commonly described, put an intolerable burden upon 
the neurones. To any one who has tried to imagine a 
possible action in the neurones to parallel the traditional 
power of the mere perception of an act in another or of 
the mere representation of an act as done by oneself to 
produce that act, this is a great merit: For the only 
adequate psychological parallel of traditional imitation 
and suggestion would be the original existence or the gratui- 
tous formation of a connection between (1) each neurone- 
action corresponding to a percept of an act done by another 
or to the idea of an act done by oneself and (2) the neurone- 
action arousing that act. It is incredible that the neurone- 
action corresponding to the perception of a response in 
another, or to the idea of a response in oneself, or to the first 
term in an association by similarity, should have, in and 
of itself, a special power to determine that the next neurone- 
action should be that paralleling the response in question. 
And there is no possible physiological parallel of a power 
to jump from premise to conclusion for no other reason 
than the ideal fitness of the sequence. 
SIMPLIFICATIONS OF THE LAWS OF EXERCISE AND EFFECT 
There has been one notable attempt to explain the facts 
of learning by an even simpler theory than that represented 
1In Essays Philosophical and Psychological in Honor of William James, 
PP. 591-599. 
