Interesting and valuable as these experiments are, they are open to the criticism to which, as we have seen, his other experiments are also open--that the conditions are abnormal and cramped. Apart from reflective imitation, which they tend to disprove, they do not conduce to the kind of conscious situation which appears to be most favourable for the development of intelligent imitation founded on hereditary tendencies and propensities. It is through such imitation that, as Herr Groos says,[80] “animals learn perfectly those things for which they have imperfect hereditary dispositions.” The kind of situation which conduces to such intelligent imitation is that which involves the attitude of attention and interest rising, when these are sufficiently varied in their direction, into what is spoken of as curiosity. These, in their natural occurrence in animals, are parts of, or in any case accompaniments of the conative attitude--they are connected with activities and impulsive tendencies to behaviour. If attention and interest are directed to the behaviour of another animal, the conative attitude is that of imitation. Miss Romanes has described how skilfully a capuchin imitated the actions necessary to unlock a trunk. It does not seem necessary to assume that reflective imitation is here exemplified. The monkey need not regard the key and lock as the related parts of a puzzle to be practically solved, need not have any free idea of the difficulty it presents, need not in unlocking the trunk grasp the true nature of the difficulty or have any conception of its solution. Every several act of the capuchin, the seizing the key, the directing it here or there, and so on, is already supplied with the impulse of which Dr. Thorndike speaks. Attention, itself charged with impulse, directs and combines these pre-existing impulses to a new end. And since that which directs the attention is the act of another, we call the procedure imitative. But the varied and persistent effort differs in no essential respect from that of a two days’ chick, which pecks again and again at some speck which catches its eye, or that of a nestling jay, which will peck for long at some nail or piece of wire in its cage, twisting and turning its bill in many and varied ways. And success in opening the trunk is reached by the capuchin, not, it would seem, through any real appreciation of the essential kernel of the practical problem, but through the chance results of many varied efforts. Although in no other animals is it developed to so high a degree as in the monkeys, interest in the doings of others is an attitude by no means rare, and affords the basis of intelligent imitation. Perhaps the conditions in Dr. Thorndike’s experiments were not the best for the development of such interest in the procedure of another. And in any case the imitation of a particular mode of procedure, reached by the gradual defining of the impulse, could hardly