6 The Animal Mind 



one day I made a notable discovery. During an absence 

 the slide had been accidentally left open for some little 

 while. When I came to shut it, I found that there was an 

 unusual resistance. As I looked more closely, I found that 

 the spider had drawn a large number of thick threads 

 directly under the lifted door, and that these were prevent- 

 ing my closing it. . . . " 



"What was going on in the spider's mind?" Wundt asks, 

 and points out that it is unnecessary to assume that she 

 understood and reasoned out the mechanical requirements 

 of the situation. The whole matter can be explained, he 

 thinks, in a simpler way. "I imagine that as the days went 

 by there had been formed in the mind of the spider a deter- 

 minate association on the one hand between free entry into 

 the cage and the pleasurable feeling attending satisfaction of 

 the nutritive impulse, and on the other between the closed 

 slide and the unpleasant feeling of hunger and inhibited im- 

 pulse. Now in her free life the spider had always employed 

 her web in the service of the nutritive impulse. Associa- 

 tions had therefore grown up between the definite positions 

 of her web and definite peculiarities of the objects to which 

 it was attached, as well as changes which it produced in 

 the positions of certain of these objects, — leaves, small 

 twigs, etc. The impression of the falling slide, that is, 

 called up by association the idea of other objects similarly 

 moved which had been held in their places by threads 

 properly spun ; and finally there were connected with this 

 association the other two of pleasure and raising, unpleas- 

 antness and closing, of the door" (797, pp. 351-352). 



The Peckhams remark in criticism of this observation: 

 "Had Wundt been familiar with the habits of spiders, he 

 would have known that whenever they are confined they 

 walk around and around the cage, leaving behind them lines 



