To 2 the answers were: (_a_) “Very much easier.” (_b_) “It is always easier if they see another one do it often.” (_c_) “This would also depend on certain conditions. In teaching to jump out of a box and in again, seeing another might help, but in teaching something very difficult, I do not think it would be the case.” (_d_) “It is not.” To 3 the answers were: (_a_) “Yes. Some. More than either dogs or cats.” (_b_) “Yes. Yes. Yes.” (_c_) “In certain things, yes; mostly in those things which are in compliance to the laws of their own nature.” (_d_) “No. No. Yes, they are born imitators.” The only definite answer to question 4 was: “Take a dog or cat and close them up in a room and go in and out several times, and you will find that they will go to the door and stand up on their hind legs with front paws on the door knob and try to open the door to get out. I could also give you a hundred more such reasons.” This was given by (_b_). The replies to a test question, however, go to show that these opinions regarding imitation may be mistaken. Question 8 was: “If you wanted to teach a cat to get out of a cage by opening an ordinary thumb latch and then pushing the door, would you take the cat’s paw and push down the thumb piece with it and then push the door open with the paw, or would you just leave the cat inside until it learned the trick itself?” The second is certainly the better way, as will be seen in a later part of this paper, and pushing the latch with the cat’s paw has absolutely no beneficial influence on the formation of the association, yet (_a_) and (_b_) both chose the first way, and (_c_) answered ambiguously. Further, the only reason given is, of course, no reason at all. It proves too much, for if there were such imitation as that, my cats and dogs would surely have done the far simpler things required of them. I cannot find that trainers make any practical use of imitation in teaching animals tricks, and on the whole I think these replies leave the matter just where it was before. They are mere opinions—not records of observed facts. It seems arrogant and may seem to some unjustifiable thus to discard testimony, to stick to a theory based on one’s own experiments in the face of these opinions. If I had wished to gain applause and avoid adverse criticism, I would have abstained from upholding the radical view of the preceding pages. At times it seems incredible to me that the results of my experiments should embody the truth of the matter, that there should be no imitation. The theory based on them seems, even to me, too radical, too novel. It seems highly improbable that I should be right and all the others wrong. But I cannot avoid the responsibility of giving what seems to my judgment the most probable explanation of the results of the experiments; and that is the radical explanation already given. THE MENTAL FACT IN ASSOCIATION