It is now time to put the question as to just what is in an animal’s mind when, having profited by numerous experiences, he has formed the association and does the proper act when put in a certain box. The commonly accepted view of the mental fact then present is that the sight of the inside of the box reminds the animal of his _previous pleasant experience after escape_ and _of the movements_ which he made which were immediately followed by and so associated with that escape. It has been taken for granted that _if the animal remembered the pleasant experience and remembered the movement, he would make the movement_. It has been assumed that the association was _an association of ideas_; that when one of the ideas was of a movement the animal was capable of making the movement. So, for example, Morgan says, in the ‘Introduction to Comparative Psychology’: “If a chick takes a ladybird in its beak forty times and each time finds it nasty, this is of no practical value to the bird unless the sight of the insect suggests _the nasty taste_” (p. 90).
Again, on page 92, Morgan says, “_A race after the ball_ had been suggested through the channel of olfactory sensations.” Also, on page 86 “... the visual impression suggested the idea or representation of unpleasant gustatory experience.” The attitude is brought out more completely in a longer passage on page 118: “On one of our first ascents one of them put up a young coney, and they both gave chase. Subsequently they always hurried on to this spot, and, though they never saw another coney there, reiterated disappointment did not efface _the memory of that first chase_, or so it seemed.” That is, according to Morgan, the dogs thought of the chase and its pleasure, on nearing the spot where it had occurred, and so hurried on. On page 148 of ‘Habit and Instinct,’ we read, “Ducklings so thoroughly associated water with the sight of their tin that they tried to drink from it and wash in it when it was empty, nor did they desist for some minutes,” and this with other similar phenomena is attributed to the ‘association by contiguity’ of human psychology.
From these quotations it seems fairly sure that if we should ask Mr. Morgan, who is our best comparative psychologist, what took place in the mind of one of these cats of our experiments during the performance of one of the ‘tricks’ he would reply: “The cat performs the act because of the association of ideas. He is reminded by the sight of the box and loop of his experience of pulling that loop and of eating fish outside. So he goes and pulls it again.” This view has stood unchallenged, but its implication is false. It implies that an animal, whenever it thinks of an act, can supply an _impulse to do_ the act. It takes for granted that the performance of a cat who gets out of a box is mentally like that of a man who thinks of going down street or of writing a letter and then does it. The mental process is not alike in the two cases, for animals can _not_ provide the impulse to _do_ whatever act they think of. _No cat can form an association leading to an act unless there is included in the association an impulse of its own which leads to the act._ There is no general storehouse from which the impulse may be supplied after the association is formed.
Before describing the experiments which justify these statements, it will be worth while to recall the somewhat obvious facts about the composition of one of these associations. There might be in an association, such as is formed after experience with one of our boxes, the following elements:—
1. Sense-impression of the interior of the box, etc.
2. (_a_) Discomfort and (_b_) desire to get out.
3. Representation of oneself pulling the loop.
4. Fiat comparable to the human “I’ll do it.”
5. The impulse which actually does it.
6. Sense-impression of oneself pulling the loop, seeing one’s paw in a certain place, feeling one’s body in a certain way, etc.
7. Sense-impression of going outside.
8. Sense-impression of eating, and the included pleasure.
Also between 1 and 4 we may have 9, representations of one’s experience in going out, 10, of the taste of the food, etc. 6, 7 and 8 come after the act and do not influence it, of course, except in so far as they are the basis of the future 3’s, 9’s and 10’s. About 2 we are not at present disputing. Our question is as to whether 3 or 5 is the essential thing. In human associations 3 certainly often is, and the animals have been credited with the same kind. Whatever he _thinks_, Professor Morgan surely _talks_ as if 1 aroused 9 and 10 and 3 and leaves 5 to be supplied at will. We have affirmed that 5 is the essential thing, that no association without a specific 5 belonging to it and acquired by it can lead to an act. Let us look at the reasons.
A cat has been made to go into a box through the door, which is then closed. She pulls a loop and comes out and gets fish. She is made to go in by the door again, and again lets herself out. After this has happened enough times, the cat will of her own accord go into the box after eating the fish. It will be hard to keep her out. The old explanation of this would be that the cat associated the memory of being in the box with the subsequent pleasure, and therefore performed the equivalent of saying to herself, “Go to! I will go in.” The thought of _being in_, they say, makes her _go in_. _The thought of being in will not make her go in._ For if, instead of pushing the cat toward the doorway or holding it there, and thus allowing it to itself give the impulse, to innervate the muscles, to walk in, you shut the door first and drop the cat in through a hole in the top of the box, she will, after escaping as many times as in the previous case, _not_ go into the box of her own accord. She has had exactly the same opportunity of connecting the idea of being in the box with the subsequent pleasure. Either a cat cannot connect ideas, representations, at all, or she has not the power of progressing from the thought of being in to the act of going in. The only difference between the first cat and the second cat is that the first cat, in the course of the experience, has the impulse to crawl through that door, while the second has not the impulse to crawl through the door or to drop through that hole. So, though you put the second cat on the box beside the hole, she doesn’t try to get into the box through it. The impulse is the _sine qua non_ of the association. The second cat has everything else, but cannot supply that. These phenomena were observed in six cats, three of which were tried by the first method, three by the second. Of the first three, one went in himself on the 26th time and frequently thereafter, one on the 18th and the other on the 37th; the two last as well as the first did that frequently in later trials. The other three all failed to go in themselves after 50, 60 and 75 trials, respectively.
The case of No. 7 was especially instructive, though not among these six. No. 7 had had some trials in which it was put in through the door, but ordinarily in this particular experiment was dropped in. After about 80 trials it would frequently exhibit the following phenomena: It would, after eating the fish, go up to the doorway and, rushing from it, search for fish. The kitten was very small and would go up into the doorway, whirl round and dash out, all in one quick movement. The best description of its behavior is the paradoxical one that it went out without going in. The association evidently concerned what it had _done_, what it had an impulse for, namely, _coming out through that door_ to get fish, not what it remembered, had a representation of.
Still more noteworthy evidence is found in the behavior of cats and dogs who were put in these boxes, left one or two minutes, and then put through the proper movement. For example, a cat would be put in B (O at back) and left two minutes. I would then put my hand in through the top of the box, take the cat’s paw and with it pull down the loop. The cat would then go out and eat the fish. This would be done over and over again, and after every ten or fifteen such trials the cat would be left in alone. If in ten or twenty minutes he did not escape, he would be taken out through the top and not fed. In one series of experiments animals were taken and thus treated in boxes from which their own impulsive activity had failed to liberate them. The results, given in the table below, show that no animal who fails to perform an act in the course of his own impulsive activity will learn it by being put through it.
In these experiments some of the cats and all of the dogs but No. 1 showed no agitation or displeasure at my handling from the very start. Nor was there any in Dog 1 or the other cats after a few trials. It may also be remarked that in the trials alone which took place during and at the end of the experiment the animals without exception showed that they did not fail to perform the act from lack of a desire to get out. They all tried hard enough to get out and would surely have used the association if they had formed it.
