Criticism of Previous Theories
We may now look for a moment at what previous writers have said about the nature of association in animals. The complaint was made early in this book that all the statements had been exceedingly vague and of no value, except as retorts to the ‘reason’ school. In the course of the discussion I have tried to extricate from this vagueness definite statements about imitation, association of ideas, association by ideas. There is one more theory, more or less hidden in the vagueness,—the theory that association in animals is the same as association in man, that the animal mind differs from the human mind only by the absence of reason and what it implies. Presumably, silence about what association is, means that it is the association which human psychology discusses. When the silence is broken, we get such utterances of this theory as the following:—
“I think we may say then that the higher animals are able to proceed a long way in the formation and definition of highly complex constructs, analogous to but probably differing somewhat from those which we form ourselves. These constructs, moreover, through association with reconstructs, or representations, link themselves in trains so that a sensation, or group of sensations, may suggest a series of reconstructs, or a series of remembered phenomena.” (C. L. Morgan, Animal Life and Intelligence, p. 341.)
“Lastly, before taking leave of the subject of the chapter, I am most anxious that it should not be thought that, in contending that intelligence is not reason, I wish in any way to disparage intelligence. Nine tenths at least of the actions of average men are intelligent and not rational. Do we not all of us know hundreds of practical men who are in the highest degree intelligent, but in whom the rational, analytic faculty is but little developed? Is it any injustice to the brutes to contend that their inferences are of the same order as those of these excellent practical folk? In any case, no such injustice is intended; and if I deny them self-consciousness and reason, I grant to the higher animals perceptions of marvelous acuteness and intelligent inferences of wonderful accuracy and precision—intelligent inferences in some cases, no doubt, more perfect even than those of man, who is often disturbed by many thoughts” (ibid., pp. 376-377).
“Language and the analytic faculty it renders possible differentiate man from the brute” (ibid., p. 376).
Here, as elsewhere, it should be remembered that Lloyd Morgan is not quoted because he is the worst offender or because he represents the opposite in general of what the present writer takes to be the truth. On the contrary, Morgan is quoted because he is the least offender, because he has taken the most advanced stand along the line of the present investigation, because my differences from him are in the line of his differences from other writers. With the theory of the passages just quoted, however, which attribute extensive association of ideas and general powers comparable to those of men minus reason, to the brutes, and which repeat the time-honored distinction by language, I do not, in the least, agree. Association in animals does not equal association in man. The latter is built over and permeated and transformed by inference and judgment and comparison; it includes imitation in our narrow sense of transferred association; it obtains where no impulse is included; it thus takes frequently the form of long trains of thought ending in no pleasure-giving act; its elements are often loose, existing independently of the particular association; the association is not only thought, but at the same time thought about. None of these statements may be truthfully made of animal association. Only a small part of human association is at all comparable to it. My opinion of what that small part is has already been given. Moreover, further differences will be found as we consider the data relating to the delicacy, complexity, number, and permanence of associations in animals. I said a while ago that man was no more an animal with language than an elephant was a cow with a proboscis. We may safely broaden the statement and say that man is not an animal plus reason. It has been one great purpose of this investigation to show that even after leaving reason out of account, there are tremendous differences between man and the higher animals. The problem of comparative psychology is not only to get human reason from some lower faculties, but to get human association from animal association.
Our analysis, necessarily imperfect because the first attempted, of the nature of the association-process in animals is finished, and we have now to speak of its limitations in respect to delicacy, complexity, number and permanence.