In opposition to this contention, it may be urged that a prolonged

exercise of intellectual activity results in the condition commonly

known as brain-fag. But this fatigue of the brain is not, as a matter

of fact, the _direct_ effect of intellectual activity; rather it is the

direct effect of the activity of the imagination, and only _indirectly_

the effect of intellectual thought. The intellect, as we have seen,

requires a constant flow of associated and aptly coördinated imagery

as the substrate of its contemplation. Now, the imagination, which

supplies this imagery, is a cerebral sense, whose activity is directly

proportionate to, and commensurate with, the metabolic processes at

work in the cortical cells. Its exercise is directly dependent upon

the energy released by the decomposition of the cerebral substance.

Prolonged activity of the imagination, therefore, involves the

destruction of a considerable amount of the cortical substance, and

results in temporary incapacitation or paralysis of the imagination,

which must then be compensated by a process of repair in the cortical

neurons, before the imagination can resume its normal mode of

functioning. Brain-fag, then, is due to the activity of the imagination

rather than that of the intellect. That such is the case appears from

the fact that after the initial exertion, which results from the

imagination being forced to assemble an appropriate and systematized

display of illustrative imagery as subject-matter for the contemplation

of the intellect, the latter is henceforth enabled to proceed with ease

along the path of a given science, its further progress being smooth

and unhampered. Once the preliminary work imposed upon the imagination

is finished, the sense of effort ceases and intellectual investigation

and study may subsequently reach the highest degrees of concentration

and intensity, without involving corresponding degrees of fatigue or

depression on the part of the cerebral imagination, just as, conversely

speaking, the activity of the cerebral imagination may reach degrees

of intensity extreme enough to induce brain-fag in psychic operations

wherein the concomitant intellectual activity is reduced to a minimum,

_e. g._, in the task of memorizing a poem, or recitation. Here, in the

all but complete absence of intellectual activity, the same fatigue

results as that induced by a prolonged period of analytic study or

investigation, in which imaginative activity and rational thinking are

concomitant. The point to be noted, in this latter case, is that the

intellect does not show the same dependence upon the physiological

vicissitudes as the imagination. The imagery of our imagination, being

rigidly correlated with the metabolic processes of waste and repair

at work in the cerebral cortex, manifests correspondingly variable

degrees of intensity and integrity, but the intensity of thought is

not dependent upon this alternation of excitation and inhibition in

the cortex. Hence, while the concomitant imagery is fitful, sporadic,

and fragmentary, intellectual thought itself is steady, lucid,

and continuous. The intensity of thought does not vary with the

fluctuations of neural metabolism, and may reach a maximum without

involving corresponding fatigue in the brain. The brain-fag, therefore,

which results from study does not correspond to the height of our

intellectual vision, but is due to the intensity of the concomitant

imaginative process.

The intellect, therefore, is not subject to the metabolic laws

which rigidly regulate organic functions like sense-perception

and imagination. Man’s capacity for logical thought is frequently

unaffected by the decline of the organism which sets in after maturity.

All organic functions, however, such as sight, hearing, sense-memory,

are impaired in exact proportion to the deterioration of the organism,

which is the inevitable sequel of old age. The intellectual powers, on

the contrary, remain unimpaired, so long as the cortex is sound enough

to furnish the required minimum of imagery, upon which intellectual

activity is objectively dependent. There are, in fact, many cases on

record where men have remained perfectly sane and rational, despite the

fact that notable portions of the cerebral cortex had been destroyed by

accident or disease (_e. g._, tumors). Intellectual thought, therefore,

is a superorganic function, having its source in a spiritual principle

and not in a corruptible organ.

Such is the spiritualism of Aristotle. That this conception differs

profoundly from the ultraspiritualism of Descartes, it is scarcely

necessary to remark. The position assumed by the latter was always

untenable, but it is now, more than ever, indefensible in the face

of that overwhelming avalanche of facts whereby modern physiological

psychology demonstrates the close interdependence and correlation

existent between psychic and organic states. Such facts are exploited

by materialists as arguments against spiritualism, though it is evident

that they have force only against Cartesian spiritualism, and are

bereft of all relevance with respect to Aristotelian spiritualism,

which they leave utterly intact and unscathed. In the latter system,

sense-perception, imagination, and emotion are acknowledged to be

directly dependent on the organism. Again, spiritual functions like

thinking and willing are regarded as objectively or extrinsically

dependent upon the imagination, which, in turn, is directly dependent

on a material organ, namely: the brain. Hence even the rational

operations of the mind are indirectly dependent upon the cerebral

cortex. The spiritualism of Aristotle, therefore, by reason of its

doctrine concerning the direct dependence of the lower, and the

indirect dependence of the higher, psychic functions upon the material

organism, is able to absorb into its own system all the supposedly

hostile facts amassed by Materialism, thereby rendering them futile

and inconsequential as arguments against the spirituality of the human

soul. In confronting this philosophy, the materialistic scientist finds

himself disarmed and impotent, and it is not to be wondered at, that,

after indulging in certain abusive epithets and a few cant phrases,

such as “metaphysics” or “medieval” (invaluable words!), he prudently

retires from the lists without venturing to so much as break a lance in

defense of his favorite dogma, that nothing is spiritual, because all

is matter. In this predicament, the Cartesian caricature proves a boon

to the materialist, as furnishing him with the adversary he prefers,

a man of straw, and enabling him to demonstrate his paltry tin-sword

prowess. Of a truth, Descartes performed an inestimable service for

these modern “assassins of the soul,” when he relieved them of the

necessity of crossing swords with the hylomorphic dualism of Aristotle

by the substitution of a far less formidable antagonist, namely, the

psychophysical dualism of mind and matter.

The proofs advanced, in the previous pages, for the spirituality of

the human soul are based upon the superorganic function of rational

thought. A parallel series of arguments can be drawn from the

superorganic function of rational volition. The cognitive intellect

has for its necessary sequel the appetitive will, which may be defined

as spiritual tendency inclining us toward that which the intellect

apprehends as good. The objects of such volition are frequently

abstract and immaterial ideals transcendent to the sphere of concrete

and material goods, _e. g._, virtue, glory, religion, etc. The will of

man, moreover, is free, in the sense that it can choose among various

motives, and is not compelled to follow the line of least resistance,

as is the electric current when passing through a shunt of steel and

copper wire. Like the self-knowing intellect, the self-determining

will is capable of reflective action, that is, it can will to will.

Having its own actions within its own control, it is itself the

principal cause of its own decisions, and thus becomes responsible for

its conduct, wherever its choice has been conscious and deliberate.

External actions, which escape the control of the will, and even

internal actions of the will itself, which are indeliberate, are not

free and do not entail responsibility. Our courts of law and our whole

legal system rests on the recognition of man’s full responsibility for

his deliberate voluntary acts. The distinction between premeditated

murder, which is punished, and unpremeditated homicide, which is not,

is purely moral, and not physical, depending for its validity upon the

fact of human freedom. It is this exemption from physical determinism,

that makes man a moral agent, subject to duties, amenable to moral

suasion, and capable of merit or demerit. Finally, the will of man

is insatiable, invincible, and inexhaustible. The aspirations of the

will are boundless, whereas our animal appetites are easily cloyed by

gratification. There is no freezing point for human courage. The animal

or sensual appetites wear out and decline with old age, but virtue and

will-power do not necessarily diminish with the gradual deterioration

of the material organism. Willing, therefore, is a superorganic or

spiritual function. Activity which is bound to a material organ cannot

tend towards supersensible ideals, cannot escape physical determinism,

cannot achieve the reflective feat of spurring itself to action, cannot

avoid exhaustion, cannot elude rigid regulation by the laws of organic

metabolism. For this reason, the brute, whose psychic functions are

of the organic type exclusively, is destitute of freedom, morality,

and responsibility. Deliberate volition, therefore, like conceptual

thought, has its source and subject in man’s spiritual soul, and is not

a function of the material organism.[12]

[12] To develop the argument drawn from rational volition

for the spirituality of the human soul would carry us too

far afield. Those who wish to pursue the subject further

may consult Chapter VIII of Gründer’s monograph entitled

“Psychology without a Soul,” also his monograph on “Free Will.”

G. H. Parker of Harvard, though admitting the fact of human

freedom, tries to explain it away in terms of materialism. The

following is the description which he gives of his theory: “It

is a materialist view which, however, recognizes in certain

types of organized matter a degree of free action consistent

with human behavior and the resultant responsibility.”

(_Science_, June 13, 1924, p. 520.) Freedom, in other words,

“emerges” from matter having a peculiar “type of organization.”

This view must be interpreted in the light of the philosophy

of “Emergent Evolution,” which Parker holds in common with C.

Lloyd Morgan and R. W. Sellars. The philosophy in question

recognizes in nature an ascending scale of more and more

complexly organized units, starting with protons and electrons,

at the bottom, and culminating in the human organism, at the

top. At each higher level of this cosmic scale we find higher

units formed by coalescence of the simpler units of a lower

level. These higher units, however, are _something more_ than

a mere summation of the lower units; for, in addition to

_additive_ properties that can be predicted from a knowledge

of the components, they exhibit genuinely _new_ properties

which, not being mere sums of the properties of the component

units, are unpredictable on that basis. Given, for example, the

weight of two volumes of hydrogen and one volume of oxygen, we

could predict an _additive_ property such as the _weight_ of

the compound, _i.e._ the water, formed by their combination.

Other properties, of the compound, however, such as liquidity,

are not foreshadowed by the properties of the component

gases. Similarly, the weight of carbon disulphid (CS₂) is

an additive function of the combining weights of sulphur and

carbon, but the other properties of this mobile liquid are

not predictable on the basis of the properties of sulphur and

carbon. Hence _two_ kinds of properties are distinguished: (1)

_additive_ (quantitative) properties called _resultants_, which

are predictable; (2) _specificative_ (qualitative) properties

called _emergents_, which are unprecedented and unpredictable.

Freedom and intelligence, accordingly, are pronounced to be

_emergents_ of matter organized to that degree of complexity

which we find in man.

This dualism of resultance and emergence is merely a new

verbal vesture for the hylomorphic dualism of Aristotle. The

_additive_ properties (_resultants_) are based on _matter_,

which is the principle of _continuity_. The _specificative_

(constituitive or qualitative) properties called emergents

are rooted in _entelechy_ (form), which is the principle of

_novelty_. In fact, entelechy (form) itself is _an emergent of

matter_ just as the specificative properties are _emergents_

of matter, with the sole difference that _entelechy_ is

_the primary emergent_ of matter, whereas the specificative

or qualitative properties are _secondary emergents_. For

in Aristotelian philosophy, entelechy is not, as it is in

Neo-vitalism, “an alien principle inserted into matter”

abruptly and capriciously “at the level of life,” but a

_primary emergent_ and _constituent_ of matter both living

and non-living. In fine, entelechy is an _emergent_ of matter

in all the units of nature from the simplest atom to the

most complex plant or animal organism. The only entelechy,

which is not an _emergent_, but an _insert_ into matter, is

the _spiritual human soul_. Neither the human soul nor the

_superorganic_ functions rooted in it, namely, abstraction,

reflection, and election, are _emergents_. Here we have

_novelty without continuity_, and therefore not _emergence_

(eduction), but _insertion_ (infusion).

In his “Emergent Evolution,” 1923, Lloyd Morgan lays it down

as axiomatic that _emergence involves continuity_—“There

may often be resultants,” he says, “without emergence; but

there are no emergents that do not involve resultant effects

also. Resultants give quantitative continuity which underlies

new constitutive steps in emergence.” (_Op. cit._, p. 5.)

Now our proofs for human spirituality consist precisely in

the _complete exclusion of quantitative continuity_ between

_organic_ functions (_e. g._ sensation) and _superorganic_

functions (_e. g._ conceptual thought and free volition).

Hence, by the very axiom which Morgan himself formulates,

the human soul and its _superorganic functions_ are excluded

from the category of material _emergents_. If there can be no

emergence without quantitative continuity, then the human soul

is not an _emergent from_, but an _insert into_, matter. _Free

choice_, too, it is needless to say, is not an _emergent of

matter_, but an _expression of the supermaterial nature of the

human soul_. So much for the new-old dualism of emergence and

resultance.

Two additional facts may be cited as bringing into strong relief

the basic contrast existing between the higher or rational, and the

lower or animal psychosis in man. The first is the occurrence of

irreconcilable opposition or conflict. The imagination, for example,

antagonizes the intellect by visualizing as an extended speck of chalk

or charcoal the mathematical point, which the intellect conceives

as destitute of extension and every other property except position.

Similarly, the effort of our rational will to be faithful to duty

and to uphold ideals is antagonized by the sensual impulses of the

animal appetite, which seek immediate gratification at the expense of

remote considerations that are higher. Such antagonism is incompatible

with any identification of the warring factors, that is, of our

rational, with our sentient, functions; for, wherever opposition is in

evidence, there _a fortiori_ a real distinction must be recognized.

The understanding and the will, therefore, differ radically from sense

and sensual appetite. The second significant fact is the domination

exerted by reason and will over the cognitive and appetitive functions

of the organic or sentient order. Our intellect criticizes, evaluates

and corrects the data of sense-perception, it discriminates between

objective percepts and illusions and hallucinations, it distinguishes

dreams from realities, it associates and dissociates imagery for

purposes of comparison, contrast, illustration, or analysis. Moreover,

it not only shows its superiority to sense by supervising, revising,

and appraising the data of sentient experience, but it manifests its

discontent at the inaccuracy and limitation of sense by the invention

and use of instrumentation (_e. g._ ear trumpets, spectacles,

microscopes, telescopes, spectroscopes, polariscopes, periscopes,

etc.) to remedy the defects or increase the range of sense-perception,

etc. This phenomenon is without parallel among brute animals, and is

a patent manifestation of the superiority of human psychology. In

like manner, the will demonstrates its preeminence over the organic

or animal appetite, by exerting supreme control over the passions and

impulses of our lower nature. In fact, it is able to bridle and repress

the impulses of sensuality even in the immediate presence of sensible

stimuli that would irresistibly determine the brute to a gratification

of its animal lusts; and it can force the struggling and reluctant

flesh to undergo a crucifixion for supersensible motives that make

no appeal to the beast. The understanding and the will, therefore,

are essentially superior to the organic psychosis that they control,

namely, the sentient consciousness and sensual appetite, which we share

in common with the brute, but which, in the latter, give no evidence

whatever of rational or moral control.

§ 4. Darwinian Anthropomorphism

The spiritual mind of man represents an eminence to which evolving

matter can never attain. This, then, is the hill that must needs be

laid low, if the path of Darwinian materialism is to be a smooth one.

There is, therefore, nothing very surprising in the fact that Darwin

and his followers, from Huxley down to Robinson, have done all in

their power to obscure and belittle the psychological differences

between man and the brute. The objective of their strategy is twofold,

namely, the _brutalization of man_ and its converse, the _humanization

of the brute_. The ascent will be easier to imagine, if man can be

depressed, and the brute raised, to levels that are not far apart.

To this end, the Darwinian zealots have, on the one hand, spared no

pains to minimize the superiority and dignity of human reason by the

dissemination of sensistic associationism, psychophysical parallelism,

and various other forms of “psychology without a soul”; and they have

striven, on the other hand, to exalt to the utmost the psychic powers

of the brute by means of a crude and credulous anthropomorphism, which,

for all its scientific pretensions, is quite indistinguishable from the

naïveté of the author of “Black Beauty”[13] and the sentimentality of

S. P. C. A. fanatics, vegetarians, anti-vivisectionists, etc. The first

of these tendencies we have already discussed, the second remains to be

considered.

[13] Title of a horse’s autobiography by Anna Sewall, the

horse’s _alter ego_.

When it comes to anthropomorphizing the brute, Darwin has not been

outdistanced by the most reckless of his disciples. Three entire

chapters of the “Descent of Man” are filled with this “vulgar

psychology” (as Wundt so aptly styles it). It is the sum and substance

of the entire fabric of argumentation, which he erects in support of

his thesis that “the difference in mind between man and the higher

animals is certainly one of degree and not of kind.” (_Cf._ _op.

cit._, chs. III-V.) Haeckel, Huxley, and Clifford attained to equal

proficiency in the sport. Subsequent philosophers parroted their bold

metaphors and smart aphorisms, and the game went on merrily till

the close of the century. Then a badly needed reaction set in under

the auspices of Wundt, Lloyd Morgan, and Thorndike, who insisted on

abandoning this naïve impressionism in favor of more critical methods.

In his “Vorlesungen über die Menschen und Tierseele” (cf. 2nd ed., p.

370), Wundt proclaims his rupture with the impressionistic school in

the following terms: “The one great defect of this popular psychology

is that it does not take mental processes for what they show themselves

to be to a direct and unprejudiced view, but imports into them the

reflections of the observer about them. The necessary consequence for

animal psychology is that the mental actions of animals, from the

lowest to the highest, are interpreted as acts of the understanding.

If any vital manifestation of the organism is capable of possible

derivation from a series of reflections and inferences, that is taken

as sufficient proof that these reflections and inferences actually led

up to it. And, indeed, in the absence of a careful analysis of our

subjective perceptions we can hardly avoid this conclusion. Logical

reflection is the logical process most familiar to us, because we

discover its presence when we think about any object whatsoever. So

that for popular psychology mental life in general is dissolved in

the medium of logical reflection. The question whether there are not

perhaps other mental processes of a simpler nature is not asked at

all, for the one reason that whenever self-observation is required, it

discovers this reflective process in the human consciousness. The same

idea is applied to feelings, impulses, and voluntary actions which are

regarded, if not as acts of intelligence, still as effective states

which belong to the intellectual sphere.

“This mistake, then, springs from ignorance of exact psychological

methods. It is unfortunately rendered worse by the inclination of

animal psychologists to see the intellectual achievements of animals

in the most brilliant light.... Unbridled by scientific criticism the

imagination of the observer ascribes phænomena in perfectly good faith

to motives which are entirely of its own invention. The facts reported

may be wholly true; the interpretation of the psychologist, innocently

woven in with his account of them, puts them from first to last in a

totally wrong light. You will find a proof of this on nearly every page

of the works on animal psychology.” (English Translation by Creighton &

Titchener, p. 341.)

Wundt’s warning against taking at their face value popular, or even

so-called scientific, accounts of wonderful feats performed by animals

is very salutary. The danger of subjective humanization of bestial

conduct is always imminent. We are unavoidably obliged to employ

the analogy of our own animal nature and sentient consciousness as

our principal clue to an understanding of brute psychology, but we

must beware of pressing this analogy based on our own consciousness

to the uncritical extreme of interpreting in terms of our highest

psychic operations animal behavior that, in itself, admits of a far

simpler explanation. According to the principle of the minimum, it is

unscientific to assume in a given agent the presence of anything that

is not rigidly required for the explanation of its observed phenomena.

We must refrain, therefore, from reading into the consciousness of an

animal what is not really there. We must abstain from transporting

our own viewpoint and personality into a brute, by imagining, with

Darwin, that we discern a “sense of humor,” or a “high degree of

self-complacency” in some pet animal, like a dog. In general, we can

rest assured that animals are quite innocent of the motivation we

ascribe to them. All their manifestations of the psychic order are

adequately explicable in terms of sensory experience, associative

memory, instinct, and the various automatisms of their innate and

conditioned reflexes. There is no ground whatever for supposing the

brute to possess the superorganic power of understanding commonly known

as _intelligence_.

Etymologically speaking, the abstract term “intelligence,” together

with the corresponding concrete term “intellect,” is derived from the

Latin: _intus-legere_, signifying to “read within,” the fitness of the

term being based upon the fact that the intellect can penetrate beneath

the outer appearances of things to _inner_ aspects and relations,

which are hidden from the senses. In its proper and most general

usage, intelligence denotes a cognoscitive power of abstraction and

generalization, which, by means of conceptual comparison, discovers the

supersensible relationships existent between the realities conceived,

in such wise as to apprehend substances beneath phenomena, causes

behind effects, and remote ends beyond proximate means.

Certain animal psychologists, however, refuse to reserve the

prerogative of intelligence for man. Bouvier’s “La Vie Psychique des

Insectes” (1918), for example, contains the following statement:

“Choice of a remarkably intellectual nature, is even more noticeable

in the instinctive manifestations of individual memory. The animal,

endowed with well-developed senses and nervous system, not only

reacts to new necessities by new acts, but associates the stored

up impressions of new sensations and thereby appropriately directs

its further activities. Thus, by an intelligent process, new habits

are established, which by heredity become part of the patrimony of

instinct, modifying the latter and constituting elements essential

to its evolution. Of these instincts acquired through an intelligent

apprenticeship Forel was led to say that they are reasoning made

automatic, and it is to them particularly that we may apply the idea

of certain biologists that instincts are habits which have become

hereditary and automatic.” (Smithson. Inst. Rpt. for 1918, p. 454.)

It is extremely doubtful, however, whether Bouvier is here using the

term intelligence in its proper sense. Indeed, his words convey the

impression that what he means by intelligence is an _ability to profit

by experience_. Now, ability to profit by experience may, under one

set of circumstances, involve the power of logical reflection and

inference, while, under another set of circumstances, it may imply

nothing more than the power of associative memory. In the latter case,

the facts are explicable without any recourse to psychic powers of

a superorganic nature, and, in point of fact, it often happens that

the very zoöpsychologists, who insist on attributing this sort of

“intelligence” to brutes, are most emphatic in denying that brutes are

endowed with _reason_. In any case, it is unfortunate that the word

intelligence is now used in two entirely different senses. This new and

improper sense, being unrelated to the etymology, and out of harmony

with the accepted use of the term, serves only to engender a confusion

of ideas. It should be suppressed, in order to avoid misunderstandings.

That men should be deluded, however, into crediting animals with

“intelligence” (properly so-called) is not at all surprising, when

we reflect on the source of this misapprehension; for we find

combined in the animal two important factors, whose association

closely simulates intelligence, namely, _sentient consciousness_

and _unconscious teleology_. Now teleology is not _inherent_ or

_subjective_ intelligence, but rather an _objective expression_ and

_product_ of intelligence. It exists in unconscious mechanisms like

phonographs and adding machines, and it is, likewise, manifest in

unconscious organisms like plants. Here, however, there is no danger of

confounding it with conscious intelligence, because machines and plants

do not possess consciousness in any form whatever. But in animals,

on the contrary, teleology is intimately associated with sentient

consciousness. Here the teleological automatisms of instinct are not

wholly blind and mechanical, but are guided by sense-perception and

associative memory. It is this combination of teleology with sentient

“discernment” (as Fabre styles it) that conveys the illusory impression

of a conscious intelligence. Careful analysis, however, of the facts,

in conjunction with judicious experiments, will, in every instance,

enable the observer to distinguish between this deceptive semblance

of intelligence and that inherent rational power of abstraction,

classification, and inference which is the unique prerogative of the

human being. A genuine intelligence of this sort need not be invoked to

explain any of the phenomena of brute psychology. All of them, from the

highest to the lowest, are explicable in terms of the sensitivo-nervous

functions. To illustrate the truth of this statement let us cite a few

typical examples of animal behavior, that are sometimes regarded as

manifestations of intelligent or rational consciousness on the part of

the brute.

Animals, it is pointed out, learn by experience. The tiny chick that

has been stung by a wasp, for instance, learns to avoid such noxious

creatures for the future. This is, indeed, “learning by experience.”

Obviously, however, it does not consist in an inference of a new truth

from an old truth. On the contrary, it amounts to nothing more than

a mere association of imagery, formed in accordance with the _law of

contiguity in time_, sanctioned by the animal’s sensual appetite, and

persistently conserved in its sentient memory. A bond of association is

formed between the visual image of the wasp and the immediately ensuing

sensation of pain. Thereafter the wasp and the pain are associated in

a single complex, which the sensile memory of the animal permanently

retains. We are dealing with a mere _association of contiguity_,

and nothing further is required to explain the future avoidance of

wasps by the chick. The abilities acquired by animals through the

trial and error method are to be explained in the same way. A horse

confined within an enclosure, for example, seeks egress to the fresh

grass of the pasture. The fact that repeated exits through the gate

of the enclosure have associated the image of its own access to the

pasture with the particular spot where the gate is located induces

it to approach the gate. Its quest, however, is balked by the fact

that the gate is closed and latched. Thereupon, it begins to chafe

under the urge of frustrated appetite. Certain actions ensue, some

spontaneous and others merely reflex movements. It paws the ground,

prances about, and rubs its nose against the gate. Its futile efforts

to pass through the closed gate continue indefinitely and aimlessly,

until, by some lucky accident, its nose happens to strike against the

latch and lift it sufficiently to release the gate. This causes the

gate to swing ajar, and the horse rushes out to food and freedom. By

the law of contiguity, the vision of free egress through the gate is

thereafter firmly associated in the horse’s sense-memory with the

final sensation experienced in its nose just prior to the advent

of the agreeable eventuation of its prolonged efforts. Henceforth

the animal will be able to release itself from the enclosure by

repeating the concatenated series of acts that memory associates with

the pleasurable result. On the second occasion, however, the more

remote of its futile acts will have been forgotten, and the process

of opening the gate will occupy less time, though probably a certain

amount of useless pawing and rubbing will still persist. Gradually,

however, the number of inefficacious actions will diminish, until,

after many repetitions of the experience, only those actions which

directly issue in the desirable result will remain in the chain of

impressions retained by memory, all others being eliminated. For, by

a teleological law, making for economy of effort, all impressions

not immediately and constantly connected with the gratification of

animal appetites tend to be inhibited. Pawlow’s experiments on dogs

show that impressions which coincide in time with such gratification

tend to be recalled by a return of the appetitive impulse, but are

soon disconnected from such association and inhibited, if they recur

independently of the recurrence of gratification. For this reason,

the horse tends to remember more vividly those actions which are more

closely connected with the pleasurable result, and, as its superfluous

actions are gradually suppressed by a protective process of inhibition,

it gradually comes to run through the series of actions necessary to

open the gate with considerable accuracy and dispatch.

The point to be noted, however, is that the horse does not

_discursively analyze_ this concatenated series of associated

stimulators and actions; for, let the concrete circumstances be changed

never so little, the horse will at once lose its laboriously acquired

ability to open the gate. Such, for example, will be the result, if the

position of the gate be transferred to another part of the enclosure.

The horse, therefore, is incapable of adapting its acquired ability to

new conditions. It can only rehearse the original series in all its

initial concreteness and stereotyped specificity; and it must, whenever

the circumstances are changed, begin once more at the beginning, and

rearrive by trial and error at its former solution of the problem. The

reason is that the horse merely _senses_, but does not _understand_,

its own solution of the problem. The sense, however, cannot abstract

from the here and now. Consequently, the human infant of two summers is

enabled by its dawning intelligence to _adapt old means to new ends_,

but the ten-year-old horse cannot adjust its abilities to the slightest

change in the concrete conditions surrounding the original acquisition

of a useful habit. The cognitive powers of an animal are confined to

the sphere of concrete singularity, it has no power to abstract or

generalize.

The selfsame observation applies to the tricks which animals “learn”

through human training. Their sensitive memory is very receptive and

retentive. Hence, by means of a judicious alternation of “rewards” and

“penalties” (_e.g._ of sugar and the whip), a man can, as it were,

inscribe his own thoughts on the tablets of the brute’s memory, in such

a way as to force the latter to form habits that appear to rest upon a

basis of intelligence. And so, indeed, they do, but the intelligence is

that of the trainer and not that of the animal, which is as destitute

of intrinsic intelligence as is a talking phonograph, upon whose

records a man can inscribe his thoughts far more efficiently than he

can write them in terms of the neurographic imagery of the canine,

equine, or simian memory.

The trained monkey always renders back without change the original

lesson imparted by its human trainer. The lesson as first received

becomes an immutable reaction-basis for the future. With a school

child, however, the case is quite different. It does, indeed, receive

“an historical basis of reaction,” when the teacher illustrates the

process of multiplication by means of an example on the blackboard.

But it does not receive this information passively and render it back

in the original stereotyped form. On the contrary, it analyzes the

information received, and is able thereafter to reapply the analyzed

information to new problems differing in specificity from the problem

that the teacher originally worked out on the blackboard. The human

pupil does not, like the monkey or the phonograph, render back what

it has received in unaltered specificity. His reaction differs from

its original passive basis. To borrow the words of Driesch, he “uses

this basis, but he is not bound to it as it is. He dissolves the

combined specificities that have created the basis.” (“The Problem of

Individuality,” pp. 27, 28.) The brute, therefore, cannot “learn,”

or “be taught” in the sense of intellectual comprehension and

enlightenment. “We see,” says John Burroughs somewhere, “that the caged

bird or beast does not reason because no strength of bar or wall can

convince it that it cannot escape. It cannot be convinced because it

has no faculties that are convinced by evidence. It continues to dash

itself against the bars not until it is convinced, but until it is

exhausted. Then slowly a new habit is formed, the cage habit. When we

train an animal to do stunts, we do not teach it or enlighten it in any

proper sense, but we compel it to form new habits.”

Human beings, however, can be _taught_ and _enlightened_ under the most

adverse circumstances. Even those unfortunates are susceptible to it,

who, like Laura Bridgman, Helen Keller, Martha Obrecht, Marie Heurtin,

and others, have been blind and deaf and dumb from infancy or birth.

With nearly all the light of sensibility extinguished, there was,

nevertheless, latent within them something of which a perfectly normal

ape, for all the integrity of its senses, is essentially destitute,

namely, the superorganic power of reason. Reason, however, is

extrinsically dependent on organic sensibility, and, consequently, “the

gates of their souls” were closed to human converse, until such a time

as the patient kindness and ingenuity of their educators devised means

of reciprocal communication on a basis of tactile signals. Thereupon

they revealed an intelligence perfectly akin to that of their rescuers.

Years of similar education, however, would be futile in the case of an

ape. The “gates of the soul” would never open, because the ape has no

rational soul, to which the most ingenious trainer might gain access,

in which respect it differs fundamentally from even the lowest savage.

A being that lacks reason may be _trained_ by means of instruction, but

it can never be _enlightened_ by it.

Another consideration, that is occasionally urged in proof of bestial

intelligence, is the fact that birds, mammals, and even insects

communicate with one another by means of sounds or equivalent signals,

which are sometimes remarkably diversified in quality and consequent

efficacy. “Since fowls,” writes Darwin, “give distinct warnings for

danger on the ground, or in the sky, from hawks ..., may not some

unusually wise ape-like animal have imitated the growl of a beast of

prey, and thus told his fellow monkeys the nature of the expected

danger? This would have been a first step in the formation of a

language.” (“Descent of Man,” 2nd ed., ch. III, pp. 122, 123.) This is

saltatory logic with a vengeance! Darwin leaps at one bound across the

entire chasm between irrationality and rationality, without pausing

to build even the semblance of a bridge. Given an animal with the

foresight and inventiveness requisite to employ onomatopœia for the

_purpose_ of specifying the _nature_ of an expected _danger_, in the

_interest_ of its fellows, and we need not trouble ourselves further

about plausibleizing any transition; for so “unusually wise” an ape

is already well across the gap that separates reason from unreason,

and far on its way towards the performance of all the feats of which

reason is capable. After swallowing the camel of so much progress, it

would be straining at a gnat to deny such a paragon of simian genius

the mere power of articulate speech. Of course, if imagination rather

than logic, is to be the dominant consideration in science, there is

no difficulty in imagining animals to be capable of thinking or doing

anything we choose to ascribe to them, as witness _Æsop’s Fables_.

But, if sober and critical judgment be in order, then, evidently, from

the simple fact that an animal has diversified cries manifestative

of different emotions or degrees of emotion (_e.g._ of fear or rage)

and capable of arousing similar emotions in other animals of the

same species, it by no means follows that such an irrational animal

can _adapt a means to an end_ by using mimicry _in order to give

notification_ of approaching danger, and _to specify the nature of the

danger_ in question.

This stupid anthropomorphism arises from Darwin’s failure to appreciate

the fundamental distinction that exists between the “language” of

animals, which is indicative, emotional, and inarticulate, and human

language, which is descriptive, conceptual, and articulate. Brute

animals, under the stress of a determinate passion or emotion, give

vent impulsively and unpremeditatedly to instinctive cries indicative

of their peculiar emotional state. Moreover, these emotionalized sounds

are capable of arousing kindred emotions in the breasts of other

animals of the same species, since organisms of the same species are

syntonic with (_i.e._ attuned to) one another. Hence these reflex or

instinctive cries have, no doubt, a teleological value, inasmuch as

they serve to protect the race by inciting a peculiar flight-reaction

in those that are not in immediate contact with the fear-inspiring

object. This so-called warning, however, is given without reflection or

intention on the part of the frightened animal, and is simply sensed,

but not interpreted, by the other animals that receive it.

This premised, it is easy to discriminate between bestial and human

language. The former is not articulate, that is to say, the sounds of

which it is composed have not been elaborated by analysis and synthesis

into phonetic elements and grammatical forms. In the second place, it

is emotional and not conceptual, because it is manifestative of the

emotions or passions (which are functions of the organic or sensual

appetite), and not of rational concepts. In the third place, it is

indicative, that is, it merely signalizes a determinate emotional

state, as a thermometer indicates the temperature, or a barometer

the atmospheric pressure. It is not, therefore, descriptive, in the

sense of being selected and arranged in syntactic sequence for the

express purpose of making others realize one’s own experiences. The

rational language of man, on the contrary, is not emotional. Only a

negligible portion of the human vocabulary is made up of emotional

interjections. It consists, for the most part, of sounds descriptive of

thought, to express which an elaborate system of vowels and consonants

are discriminated and articulated on the basis of social agreement,

the result being a conventional vocal code invented and used for the

express purpose of conveying, not emotions or imagery, but general and

abstract concepts.

§ 5. The True Significance of Instinct

A third class of facts commonly cited as evidence of bestial

intelligence are the remarkable phenomena of _instinct_.[14] The beaver

acts as though it were acquainted with the principles of hydraulics

and engineering, when it maintains the water at the height requisite

to submerge the entrance to its dwelling by building a dam of mud,

logs, and sticks across the stream at a point below the site of its

habitation. The predatory wasp _Pompilius_ is endowed with surgical

art, that suggests a knowledge of anatomy, inasmuch as it first disarms

and afterwards paralyzes its formidable prey, the _Lycosa_ or black

Tarantula. Another predatory wasp, the _Stizus ruficornis_, disables

Mantids in a similar fashion. One of the American Pompilids, the black

wasp _Priocnemis flavicornis_, is an adept in the art of navigation,

since it adopts the principle of the French hydroglissia (an air-driven

boat which skims the water under the propulsion of an aeroplane

propeller). This insect tows a huge black spider several times its own

size and too heavy to be carried, propelling its prey with buzzing

wings along the open waterway, and leaving behind a miniature wake

like that of a steamer. It thus avoids the obstacles of the dense

vegetation, and saves time and energy in transporting the huge carcass

of its paralyzed quarry to the haven of its distant burrow. Spiders

like the _Epeira_, for example, are endowed with the mathematical

ability of constructing their webs on the patterns of the logarithmic

spiral of Jacques Bernouilli (1654-1705), a curve which it took _man_

centuries to discover. The dog infested with parasitic tapeworms

(_Taenia_) evinces a seeming knowledge of pharmaceutics, seeing that it

will avidly devour Common Wormwood (_Artemisia absynthium_), an herb

which it never touches otherwise.

[14] J. Henri Fabre and Erich Wasmann, S.J., have formulated

very sound and critical views on the subject of instinct. The

works of these authors are now available in English. (_Cf._

de Mattos’ translation of the _Souvenirs etymologiques_: “The

Mason Bees,” Ch. VII; “The Bramble Bees,” Ch. VI; “The Hunting

Wasps,” Chs. IX, X, XX; _cf._ also Wasmann’s _Instinct and

Intelligence_, and _Psychology of Ants and of Higher Animals_,

Engl. translation by Gummersbach.)

In all these cases, however, as we have previously remarked, the

illusion of intelligence is due to the combination of teleology or

objective purposiveness with sentient consciousness. But teleology

is nothing more than a material expression of intelligence, not to

be confounded with subjective intelligence, which is its causal

principle. When the cells of the iris of the eye of a larval salamander

regenerate the lens in its typical perfection, after the latter has

been experimentally destroyed, we behold a process that is objectively,

but not subjectively, intelligent. In like manner the instinctive

acts of an animal are teleological or objectively purposive, but do

not proceed from an intelligence _inherent in the animal_, any more

than the intelligent soliloquy delivered by a phonograph proceeds

from a conscious intelligence inherent in the disc. In the animal,

sentient consciousness is associated with this teleology or objective

purposiveness, but such consciousness is only aware of what can be

sensed, and is, therefore, _unconscious of purpose_, that is, of the

supersensible link, which connects a means with an end. “Instinct,”

to cite the words of Wm. James, “is usually defined as the faculty of

acting in such a way as to produce certain ends, without foresight

of the ends, and without previous education in the performance.”

(“Principles of Psychology,” vol. II, c. xxiv, p. 383.) Hence the

unconscious and objective purposiveness, which the human mind discerns

in the instinctive behavior of brutes, is manifestative, not of an

intelligence within the animal itself, but only of the infinite

intelligence of the First Cause or Creator, Who imposed these laws

replete with wisdom upon the animal kingdom, and of the finite

intelligence of man, who is capable of recognizing the Divine purpose

expressed, not only in the instincts of animals, but in all the telic

phenomena of nature. Such marvels are not the fortuitous result of

uncoördinated contingencies. Behind these correlated teleologies

of the visible universe there is a Supreme Intelligence, which has

“ordered all things in measure, and number, and weight.” (_Wisdom_:

XI, 21.) “And this universal geometry,” says Fabre, in allusion to the

mathematics of the Epeira’s web, “tells of an Universal Geometrician,

whose divine compass has measured all things. I prefer that, as an

explanation of the logarithmic curve of the Ammonite and the Epeira,

to the Worm screwing up the tip of its tail. It may not perhaps be in

accordance with latter-day teaching, but it takes a loftier flight.”

(“Life of the Spider,” p. 400.)

But, though the teleology of instinct is wonderful in the extreme, the

element of psychic regulation is so subordinate and restricted, that,

far from postulating _intelligent_ control, certain scientists go so

far as to deny even _sentient_ control, in the case of instinctive

behavior. Animals, in their opinion, are nothing more than “reflex

machines,” a view which coincides with that of Descartes, who regarded

animals as unconscious automatons. “The instincts,” says Pawlow, “are

also reflexes but more complex.” (_Science_, Nov. 9, 1923, p. 359.) The

late Jacques Loeb was a protagonist of the view that instincts are

simply _metachronic chain-reflexes_, in which one elementary process

releases another, each preceding phase terminating in the production

of the succeeding phase, until the entire gamut of concatenated arcs

has been traversed. Hence, John B. Watson, the Behaviorist disciple

of Loeb, defines instinct as “a combination of congenital responses

unfolding serially under appropriate stimulation.”

But, if Darwinian anthropomorphism sins by excess, Loeb’s mechanism

sins by defect, and fails to account for the indubitable variability of

instinctive behavior. For, however fixed and stereotyped such behavior

may be, it manifests unmistakable adaptation to external circumstances

and emergencies, as well as subordination to the general physiological

condition of the organism, phenomena that exclude the idea of fatal

predetermination according to the fixed pattern of a determinate series

of reflex arcs. As Jennings has shown, synaptic coördination in the

neural mechanism cannot be more than a partial factor in determining

serial responses. The state of the organism as a whole must also be

taken into account. (Cf. “Behavior of the Lower Organisms,” p. 251.)

Thus an earthworm may turn to the right simply because it has just

turned to the left, but this so-called “chain-reflex” does not involve

an invariable and inevitable sequence of events, since the earthworm

may turn twice or thrice to the left, before the second reaction of

turning to the right comes into play. Any animal, when sated, will

react differently to a food stimulus than it will when it is starved,

by reason of its altered organic condition. We have something more,

therefore, to reckon with than a mere system of reflexes released by a

simple physical stimulus.

The second type of variability manifested by instinct is its capacity

for complex and continuous adjustment to variable environmental

circumstances. Thus predatory animals, such as wasps, crabs, spiders,

and carnivorous mammals, accommodate themselves appropriately and

uninterruptedly to the changing and unforeseeable movements of the

prey they are engaged in stalking, giving evidence in this way of the

regulation of their hunting instincts by sensory impressions. Whether

this element of psychic control is based upon object-perception,

or simple sensation, and whether it involves a sensual impulse, or

is merely sensori-motor, we have, naturally, no direct means of

ascertaining. But the presence of some sort of sensory regulation is

evident enough, _e.g._ in the prompt and unerring flight of vultures

to distant carrion. Moreover, there is a close analogy between our

sense organs and those of an animal. Particularly, in the case of the

higher animals, the resemblance of the sense organs and nervous system

to our own is extremely close, so much so that even the localization

of sensory and motor centers in the brain is practically identical in

dogs, apes, and men. Moreover, the animals make analogous use of their

sense organs, orientating them and accommodating them for perception,

and using them to inspect strange objects, etc., _e.g._ they turn

their eyes, prick up their ears, snuff the wind, etc. Again, analogous

motor and emotional effects result from the stimulation of their sense

organs, and brutes make emotional displays of anger, exultation, fear,

etc., similar to our own. Hence it is to be presumed that they have

similar sensuous experiences. The analogy, however, must not be pressed

further than the external manifestations warrant. With brute animals,

the manifestations in question are confined exclusively to phenomena of

the sensuous order.

Another indication of sensory control is found in the repair-work

performed by animals endowed with the constructive instinct. C. F.

Schroeder, for instance, experimenting on certain caterpillars, found

that they repaired their weaving, whenever it was disturbed by the

experimenter. Fabre, too, discovered that a Mason-bee would plaster

up holes or clefts marring the integrity of its cell, provided that

the bee was actually engaged in the process of plastering at the time,

and provided that the experimenter inflicted the damage at the level,

and within the area, of the construction work on which the bee was

then engaged. In a word, if the damage inflicted could be repaired by

a simple continuation or extension of its actual work of the moment,

the bee was able to cope with the emergency. There are other ways,

too, in which the animal adapts its constructive instincts to external

circumstance. Fabre tells us that the Bramble-bee _Osmia_, which builds

a train of partitioned cells in snail shells or in hollow reeds, will

victual first and then plaster in a partition, if the reed be narrow,

but will first plaster a partition, and then introduce honey and

pollen through a hole left unclosed in the partition, whenever the

reed is of greater diameter. This reversal of the procedure according

to the exigencies of the external situation does not suggest the

chain-reflex of Loeb. (Cf. “The Bramble-Bee,” pp. 214-217.) Another

kind of adaptation of instinct to external circumstances consists in

the economical omission of the initial step of a serial construction,

in cases where the environmental conditions provide a ready-made

equivalent. “The silkworm,” says Driesch, “is said not to form its

web of silk if it is cultivated in a box containing tulle, and some

species of bees which normally construct tunnels do not do so if they

find one ready made in the ground, they then only perform their second

instinctive act: separating the tunnel into single cells.” (“Science &

Phil. of the Organism,” vol. II, p. 47.)

Driesch’s analysis of the constructive instinct shows that these

facts of adaptation or regulation fit in with the idea of sensory

control rather than with that of a chain-reflex. In the supposition

that the successive stages of instinctive construction are due to a

chain-reflex, consisting of a series of elementary motor reactions

_a_, _b_, _c_, etc., in which _a_ produces the external work A and,

on terminating, releases _b_, which, in turn, produces external work

B and releases _c_, etc., clearly _b_ could never appear before _a_,

and the sight of A ready-made would not inhibit _a_, nor would the

removal of A defer the advent of _b_. In other words, regulation

would be impossible. But, if we suppose that not the elemental act

_a_, but rather the sensory perception of A, the first state of the

external construction, is the stimulus to _b_ and, consequently, to the

production of the second state of construction B, then we understand

why _b_ is released independently of _a_, when, for example, an

insect discovers a ready-made substitute for A, the initial step in

its construction, and we also understand why, in cases of accidental

damage resulting in the total or partial removal of A, the reaction

_b_ is deferred and the reaction _a_ prolonged, until the repair or

reconstruction of A is complete; for, in this supposition, the addition

of A will inhibit _a_ and release _b_, whereas the subtraction of A

will inhibit the appearance of _b_ and consequently defer B, until the

state of construction A, the sight of which is the stimulus to _b_, is

complete. The fact of regulation, therefore, entails _sensory_ control

of the serial responses involved in the constructive instinct. Hence,

as H. P. Weld of Cornell expresses it: “We may safely assume that even

in the lowest forms of animal life some sort of sensory experience

releases the (instinctive) disposition and to an extent determines the

subsequent course of action.” (Encycl. Am., v. 15, p. 168.)

But it would be going to the opposite extreme to interpret these

adjustments of instinct to external contingencies as evidence of

_intelligent_ regulation. The animal’s ability, for example, to

repair accidental damage to a construction, which instinct impels

it to build, is rigidly limited to repairs that can be accomplished

by a simple continuation of the actual and normal occupation of

the moment. If, however, the damage affects an already completed

portion of the instinctive structure, and its present occupation is

capable of continuance, the animal is impotent to relinquish this

actual occupation of the moment, in order to cope with the emergency.

Suppose, for illustration, that the instinctive operations _a_ and _b_

are finished and the animal is in the _c_-stage of its instinctive

performance, then, if the damage is inflicted in the A-portion of the

structure, and _c_ can be continued independently of A, the animal

cannot relinquish _c_ and return to _a_, in order to restore the

marred integrity of A. This shows that the animal is guided, in its

repair-work, by _sense_, which is bound to the here and now, and not

by intelligence, which is an abstractive faculty that emancipates from

the actual and concrete present, and enables the possessor to hark back

to the past of its performance, should necessity require. Thus Fabre

found that the Mason-bee, after it had turned from building to the

foraging of honey and pollen, would no longer repair holes pricked in

its cell, but suffered the latter to become a veritable vessel of the

Danaïdes, which it vainly strove to fill with its liquid provender.

Though the holes affected portions extremely close to the topmost

layer of masonry, and although it frequently sounded and explored

these unaccustomed holes with its antennæ, it took no steps to check

the escape of the honey and pollen by recurring to its mason craft of

earlier stages. And, finally, when it did resume the plasterer’s trade

in constructing a lid for the cell, it would spare no mortar to plug

the gaping breaches in the walls of its cell, but deposited its egg in

a chamber drained of honey, and then proceeded to perform the useless

work of closing with futile diligence _only the topmost aperture_ in

this much perforated dwelling. Obviously, therefore, the bee failed

to perceive the connection which existed between these breaches and

the escape of the honey, and it was unable to apply its instinctive

building skill to _new uses_ by abstraction from the definite

connection, in which the latter is normally operative.

Sense, therefore, and not intelligence, is the regulatory principle

of instinct. To recognize causal and telic relationships is the

prerogative of a superorganic intelligence. The transcendental link

by which a useful means is referred to an ulterior end is something

that cannot be _sensed_, but only _understood_. An animal, therefore,

acts _toward_ an end, not _on account of_ an end. Nature, however,

has compensated for this ignorance by implanting in each species of

animal a special teleological disposition, by reason of which objects

and actions, which are, under normal conditions, objectively useful

to the individual, or the species, become invested for the animal

with a subjective aspect of agreeableness, while objects and actions,

which are normally harmful, are invested with a subjective aspect

of repulsiveness. The qualities of serviceableness and pleasantness

_happen_, so far as the animal is concerned, to be united in one

and the same concrete object or action, but the animal is only

aware of the pleasantness, which appeals to its senses, and not of

the serviceableness, which does not. Thus, in the example already

cited, the dog suffering from tapeworms eats the herb known as Common

Wormwood, not because it is aware of the remedial efficacy of the herb,

but simply because the odor and flavor of the plant appeal to the

animal in its actual morbid condition, ceasing to do so, however, when

the latter regains the state of health. How different is the action

of the man whose blood is infected with malarial parasites and who

takes quinine, not because the bitter taste of the alkaloid appeals

to his palate, but solely because he has his future cure explicitly

in view! “Finally,” says Weld, “the more we learn about instincts the

more apparent it becomes that the situations from which they proceed

are meaningful, but we need not suppose that the organism is aware of

the meaning. The chick in the egg feels (we may only guess as to its

nature) a vague discomfort, and the complicated reaction by which it

makes its egress from the shell is released.” (Encycl. Am., v. 15, p.

169.)

Recapitulating, then, we may define instinct as a psycho-organic

propensity, not acquired by education or experience, but congenital

by inheritance and identical in all members of the same zoölogical

species, having as its physical basis the specific nervous organization

of the animal and as its psychic basis a teleological coördination

of the cognitive, emotional, and motor functions, in virtue of

which, given the proper physiological state of the organism and the

presence of an appropriate environmental stimulus, an animal, without

consciousness of purpose, is impelled to the inception, and regulated

in the performance, of complicated behavior which is sensually

gratifying and, under normal circumstances, simultaneously beneficial

to the individual, or the race.

Instinctive acts are performed without previous experience or training

on the part of the animal, and are, nevertheless, at least in the

majority of cases, _perfect in their first performance_. A few, like

the pecking-instinct of young chickens, are slightly improvable through

sentient experience, _e.g._ the young chick, at first undiscriminating

in the choice of the particles which it picks up, learns later by

associative memory to distinguish what is tasty and edible from what

is disagreeable and inedible, but, for the most part, the perfection

of instinctive acts is independent of prior experience. Hence instinct

is entirely different from human reason, which, in the solution of

problems, is compelled to begin with reflection upon the data furnished

by previous experience, or education. The animal, however, in its

instinctive operations, without pausing to investigate, deliberate,

or calculate, proceeds unhesitatingly on the very first occasion

to a prompt and perfect solution of its problems. Hence, without

study, consultation, planning, or previous apprenticeship of any

sort, and in the complete absence of experimental knowledge, that

might serve as matter for reflection or as a basis for inference, the

animal is able to solve intricate problems in engineering, geometry,

anatomy, pharmaceutics, etc., which the combined intelligence of

mankind required centuries upon centuries of schooling, research, and

reflection in order to solve. Of two things, therefore, one: either

these actions do not proceed from an intelligent principle inherent in

the animal; or they do, and in that case we are compelled to recognize

in brute animals _an intelligence superior to our own_, because they

accomplish deftly and without effort ingenious feats that human

reason cannot duplicate, save clumsily and at the price of prolonged

discipline and incessant drudgery. “Perhaps the strongest reason,” says

an anonymous writer, “for not regarding the activities of instinct

as intelligent is that in such enormously complex sequences of action

as, for instance, the emperor moth carries out in the preparing of an

escape-opening for itself on its completing the larval and passing

into the imago state, the intelligence needed would be so great that

it could not be limited to this single activity, and yet it is so

limited.”[15]

[15] Cf. Nelson’s Encyclopedia, v. 6, p. 452.

Intelligence is essentially a _generalizing_ and _abstracting_ power;

hence, from its very nature, it could not be _limited to a single

activity_. Bestial instincts, however, though frequently so amazingly

complex and ingeniously purposive as to seem the fruit of profound

meditation, are, nevertheless, confined exclusively to this or that

determinate ability. They operate within narrow and preëstablished

grooves, from which they never swerve to any appreciable degree,

being but little modifiable or perfectible by experience. Bees always

construct hexagonal cells, spiders stick to the logarithmic spiral,

and beavers never attempt to put their engineering skill to new uses.

Instincts have but little pliancy, their regularity and uniformity

being such as to make the instinctive abilities definitely predictable

in the case of any given species of animal. Now, the distinctive mark

of intelligence is _versatility_, that is, aptitude for many things

without determinate restriction to this or that. A man who is expert

in one art may, by reason of his intelligence, be equally proficient

in a dozen others. The biologist may be a competent chemist, and the

astronomer an excellent physicist. Michel Angelo was a sculptor, a

frescoer, a painter, an anatomist, an engineer, and an architect,

while Leonardo da Vinci had even more arts to his credit. To predict

before birth the precise form that a man’s ability will take is an

impossibility. Certain aptitudes, such as a musical gift, are no doubt

inherited, but it is an inheritance which imposes no rigid necessity

upon inheriter; since he is free to neglect this native talent, and to

develop others for which he has no special innate aptitude. With man,

the fashion in clothing and the styles of architecture vary from day

to day. The brute, however, never emerges from the rut of instinct,

and each generation of a given animal species monotonously reproduces

the history of the previous generation. Man, on the contrary, is

capable of indefinite _progress_, as the march of human cultures

and civilizations shows. Gregarious animals are restricted by their

instincts to determinate types of aggregation, as we see in the case of

ants and bees. Hence these insect communities are unacquainted with our

sanguinary revolutions which overturn monarchies in favor of republics,

or set up dictatorships in place of democracies; for, fortunately or

unfortunately, as one may choose to regard it, man is not limited to

one form of government rather than another.

Animals, then, notwithstanding their wonderful instincts, are

deficient in precisely that quality which is the unique criterion of

intelligence, namely, versatility. Each species has but one stereotyped

ability, outside of which it is woefully stupid and inefficient. “So

long,” says Fabre, “as its circumstances are normal the insect’s

actions are calculated most rationally in view of the object to be

attained” (“The Mason-Bees,” p. 167), but let the circumstances

cease to be normal, let them vary never so little from those which

ordinarily obtain, and the animal is helpless, while its instinctive

predisposition becomes, not merely futile, but often positively

detrimental. Thus the instinct, which should, in the normal course of

events, guide night-flying moths to the white flowers that contain

the life-sustaining nectar of their nocturnal banquets, proves

their undoing, when they come into contact with the white lights of

artificial illumination. In fact, the fatal fondness of the moth for

the candle flame has become in all languages a proverb for the folly of

courting one’s own destruction.

The animal may employ an exquisitely efficient method in accomplishing

its instinctive work, but is absolutely impotent to apply this

ingenious method to more than one determinate purpose. Man, however,

is not so restricted. He varies at will both his aims and his

methods. He can adapt the _same means_ (a pocketknife, for instance)

to _different ends_, and, conversely, he can obtain the _same end_

by the use of _different means_ (_e.g._ communicate by mail, or

telegraph, or radio). Man, in a word, is _emancipated from limitation

to the singular and the concrete_ by virtue of his unique prerogative,

reason, or intelligence, the power that enables him _to generalize

from the particular and to abstract from the concrete_. This is

the secret of his unlimited versatility. This is the basis of his

capacity for progress. This is the root of his freedom; for his

will seeks happiness in general, happiness in the abstract, and is

not, therefore, compelled to choose any particular form or concrete

embodiment of happiness, such as this or that style of architecture,

this or that form of government, this or that kind of clothing, etc.,

etc. Teleology is but a material expression of intelligence, and may,

therefore, occur in things destitute of intelligence, but versatility

is the inseparable concomitant and infallible sign of an inherent and

autonomous intelligence. Lacking this quality, instinct, however telic,

is obviously not intelligence.

Another indication of the fact that no intelligence lies behind

the instinctive behavior of brutes is manifest from their evident

_unconsciousness of purpose_. That the animal is ignorant of the

purpose implied in its own instinctive actions appears from the fact

that it will carry out these operations with futile diligence and

exactitude, even when, through accident, the purpose is conspicuously

absent. Thus the hen deprived of her eggs will, nevertheless, continue

the now futile process of incubation for twenty-one days, or longer,

despite the fact that her obstinacy in maintaining the straw of the

empty nest at a temperature of 104° F. serves no useful purpose

whatever. She cannot but sense the absence of the eggs; she has not,

however, the intelligence to realize that incubation without eggs is

vain. The connection between the latter and the former is something

that mere sense cannot apprehend. Hence the hen is not troubled by

the purposelessness of her performance. Fabre gives many examples

of this futile persistence in instinctive operations, despite their

complete frustration. Alluding to the outcome of his experiments on

the Mason-wasp _Pelapaeus_, he says: “The Mason bees, the Caterpillar

of the Great Peacock Moth, and many others, when subjected to similar

tests, are guilty of the same illogical behaviour: they continue, in

the normal order, their series of industrious actions, though accident

has now rendered them all useless. Just like millstones unable to cease

revolving though there be no corn left to grind, let them once be given

the compelling power and they will continue to perform their task

despite its futility.” (“Bramble Bees,” pp. 192, 193.)

The instance cited by Dr. H. D. Schmidt is an excellent illustration

of this inability of an animal to appreciate either the utility or

futility of its instinctive behavior. Having described the instinct

of squirrels to bury nuts by ramming them into the ground with their

teeth, and then using their paws to cover them with earth, he continues

as follows: “Now, as regards the young squirrel, which, of course,

never had been present at the burial of a nut, I observed that, after

having eaten a number of hickory nuts to appease its appetite, it

would take one between its teeth, then sit upright and listen in all

directions. Finding all right, it would scratch upon the smooth blanket

on which I was playing with it as if to make a hole, then hammer with

the nut between its teeth upon the blanket, and finally perform all the

motions required to fill up a hole—_in the air_; after which it would

jump away, leaving the nut, of course, uncovered.” (_Transactions of

the Am. Neurological Ass’n_, 1875, vol. I, p. 129—italics his.) This

whole pantomime of purposeless gesticulations, from the useless “Stop,

look and listen!” down to the final desertion of the uncovered nut, is

overwhelming evidence of the fact that the brute is destitute of any

rational faculty capable of recognizing the telic aspect of its own

instinctive conduct.

The claim is sometimes made that certain forms of animal behavior

are not unconsciously, but _consciously_, telic. Bouvier, for

example, claims that in the rare cases of the _use of tools_ among

the Arthropoda, we have evidence of the existence of intelligent

inventiveness of a rudimentary kind. Thus the crab _Melia_ carries a

sea-anemone in its chela as a weapon wherewith to sting its prey into a

condition of paralysis. The leaf-cutting ants of India and Brazil use

their own thread-spinning larvæ as tools for cementing together the

materials out of which their nests are constructed. The predatory wasp

_Ammophila urnaria_ uses a pebble to tamp the filling of its burrow.

According to the Wheelers (cf. _Science_, May 30, 1924, p. 486), the

hunting wasp _Sphex_ (_Ammophila_) _gryphus_ (Sm.) makes similar use

of a pebble. As Bouvier notes, however, this use of tools appears “to

be rather exceptional ..., showing itself only in the primitive state

consisting of the use of foreign bodies as implements.” (Smithson.

Inst. Rpt. for 1918, p. 456.) Moreover, the animals in question

are limited to a concretely determinate kind of tool, which their

environment supplies ready-made. Such a use of implements _does not

presuppose any power of abstraction and generalization_. In fact, the

presence of such a power is expressly excluded by the consideration

that the animal’s so-called “inventiveness” is confined exclusively to

_one particularized manifestation_.

At times the behavior of animals so closely simulates the consciously

telic or intelligent conduct of men, that only severely critical

methods enable us to discriminate between them. An experiment, which

Erich Wasmann, S.J., performed upon ants will serve to illustrate this

point. In one of his glass nests, Father Wasmann constructed an island

of sand surrounded by a moat filled with water. He then removed from

their “nursery” a certain number of the ant larvæ and placed them on

the island. Thereupon the ants were observed to build a bridge of sand

across the moat “for the purpose,” apparently, of rescuing the marooned

larvæ. Such behavior seemed to imply an intelligent ordination of a

means to an end. Wasmann’s second experiment, however, proved this

inference to be wholly unwarranted; for, when he excavated a hole in

the sand of the nest and filled it with water, the ants, stimulated

by what to them was the disagreeable dampness of the marginal sand,

were impelled to perform the reflex act of kicking about in the sand.

This impulse persisted until all traces of the hole, the dampness and

the water had been buried under a carpet of drier sand. Then, and then

only, was the aforesaid impulse inhibited. Applying these results to

the interpretation of the first experiment, we see that the “building

of a bridge” in the first experiment was not intentional, but merely

an accidental result of a kicking-reflex, with damp sand acting as

a stimulator. Once the moat was bridged, however, the ants happened

to find the larvæ, and were then impelled by instinct to carry the

larvæ to their proper place in the nest. To see in such an incident a

planned and premeditated rescue of the marooned larvæ would be grossly

anthropomorphic. Nevertheless, had only the first experiment been

performed, such an anthropomorphic interpretation would have seemed

fully justified, and it was only by an appropriate variation of the

conditions of the original experiment that this false interpretation

could be definitively excluded.

Consciously telic behavior is distinguishable from unconsciously

telic conduct only to the extent that it implies an agent endowed

with the power of abstraction. Unless an agent can vary radically the

specificity of the procedure, whereby it attains a given end, the

purposiveness of its behavior is no evidence of its intelligence.

“Among animals,” says Bergson, “invention is never more than a

variation on the theme of routine. Locked up as it is within the habits

of its species, the animal succeeds no doubt in broadening these by

individual initiative; but its escape from automatism is momentary

only, just long enough to create a new automatism; the gates of its

prison close as soon as they are opened; dragging the chain merely

lengthens it. Only with man does consciousness break the chain.” (Cf.

Smithson. Inst. Rpt. for 1918, p. 457.)

In vain, then, do our Darwinian humanizers of the brute exalt instinct

at the expense of intelligence. Their attempt to reduce to a difference

of degree the difference of kind that separates the irrational from

the rational, fails all along the line. Indeed, far from being able to

account for the appearance of intelligence in the world, transformistic

theories are impotent to account for so much as the development of

instinct, all forms of the evolutionary theory, the Lamarckian, the

Darwinian, the De-Vriesian, etc., being equally inadequate to the task

of explaining the origin of animal instincts.

The complex instinctive behavior of predatory wasps, for example, is

absolutely essential for the preservation of their respective races,

and yet these indispensable instincts are completely useless in any

other than the _perfect state_. From their very nature, therefore,

they do not admit of _gradual development_. The law of all, or none,

holds here. “Instinct developed by degrees,” says Fabre, “is flagrantly

impossible. The art of preparing the larva’s provisions allows none

but masters, and suffers no apprentices; the Wasp must excel in it

from the outset or leave the thing alone.” (“The Hunting Wasps,” p.

403.) To be useful at all, the instinctive operation must possess an

indivisible perfection, which cannot be partitioned into degrees.

The _Pompilius_ (_Calicurgus_), for instance, must, under penalty of

instant death, take the preliminary precaution to sting into inaction

the ganglion that controls the poison forceps of her formidable prey,

the Black Tarantula (_Lycosa_), before she proceeds to paralyze it

by stabbing its thoracic ganglion. The slightest imperfection or

shortcoming in her surgery would be irretrievably disastrous. Such an

instinct never existed in an imperfect form. The first wasp to possess

it must have been an expert, or she would never have lived to serve the

limp body of the huge spider as living provender for her tiny grub.

“The first to come to grips with the Tarantula,” says Fabre, “had an

unerring knowledge of her dangerous surgery. The least hesitation, the

slightest speculation, and she was lost. The first teacher would also

have been the last, with no disciples to take up her art and perfect

it.” (“Bramble Bees,” p. 354.)

Another hunting wasp, the Hairy Ammophila, subdues a large caterpillar

into a state of coma by pricking with its sting nine of the ventral

ganglia, while it spares the cervical ganglion, merely compressing

the latter with its mandibles, so as not to destroy life altogether.

This nice discrimination rules out Loeb’s hypothesis of a so-called

“chemotaxis.” As a result of this elaborate surgical operation, the

power of movement is suppressed in every segment, and the tiny larva

of the wasp emerging from the egg laid on the ventral surface of the

caterpillar can devour this huge living, but motionless, victim in

peace and safety. Dead meat would not agree with the larva, and any

movement of the caterpillar would be fatal to the delicate grub. To

eliminate these contingencies, the Wasp’s surgery must be perfect

from the very outset. “There is,” says Fabre, “no _via media_, no

half success. Either the caterpillar is treated according to rule and

the Wasp and its family is perpetuated; or else the victim is only

partially paralyzed and the Wasp’s offspring dies in the egg. Yielding

to the inexorable logic of things, we will have to admit that the

first Hairy Ammophila, after capturing a Grey Worm to feed her larva,

operated on the patient by the exact method in use today.” (“The

Hunting Wasps,” pp. 403, 404.)

Certain meticulous critics of our day cite the fact of the diffusion

of the poison as indicating that the surgery of the hunting wasps need

not be so perfectly accommodated to the nervous system of their prey,

and they attempt in this way to discredit Fabre as having failed to

take the occurrence of diffusion into account. A careful reading of

his works, however, will serve to vindicate him in this respect. In a

chapter on the poison of the bee, for instance, we read: “The local

effect is diffused. This diffusion, which might well take place in the

victims of the predatory insects, plays no part in the latter’s method

of operation. The egg, which will be laid immediately afterwards,

demands the complete inertia of the prey from the outset. Hence all the

nerve-centers that govern locomotion must be numbed instantaneously

by the virus.” (“Bramble Bees,” p. 347.) Bouvier, therefore, very

justly remarks: “After all, when Fabre’s work is examined there is no

trouble in seeing that none of these details escaped him. He never

disputed the paralytic action of the poison inoculated by the insect,

and the wonderful researches by the Peckhams on the Pompilids, which

hunt Lycosids, have clearly established the fact that the thrusts of

the sting given by the predatory insect produce two different kinds

of paralysis, one functional, and often temporary, resulting from the

action of the venom, the other structural and persistent, produced by

the dart which more or less injures the nervous centers.” (Smithson.

Inst. Rpt. for 1916, p. 594.)

In the case of predatory insects, therefore, the instinct must be

_perfect at the outset_, or survival is impossible. For the origin

of such instincts, Darwinism, which stresses the _gradualness_ of

evolutionary progress, has no explanation that will hold water.

Lamarckism, which sees in _acquired habits_ transmitted by inheritance,

the origin of instinct, the “memory of the race,” is equally at a

loss to account for these instincts. The formation of habits requires

_practice_ and _repetition_. The predatory insect must be perfect at

the start, and yet it only exercises its remarkable instinct _once a

year_. Where is the practice and reiteration requisite for canalizing

its nervous system into the conduction-paths of habit? How did one

particular set of rarely performed acts happen to gain precedence over

all others, and to be alone successful in stamping themselves indelibly

upon the nerve plasm as habits, and upon the germ plasm as instincts?

De-Vriesianism, which would make the acquisition and perfecting of

instinct dependent upon the rare and accidental contingency of a

_fortuitous mutation_, is even more objectionable. These instincts are

vital to the insect. If their acquisition and improvement depend upon

the lucky chance of a series of favorable mutations, its prospects of

survival are nil; for it cannot afford to wait at all. “In order to

live,” says Fabre, “we all require the conditions that enable us to

live: this is a truth worthy of the famous axioms of La Palice. The

predatory insects live by their talent. If they do not possess it to

perfection, their race is lost.” (“Bramble Bees,” p. 364.)

Recently, there has been a revival of Lamarckism hitherto regarded

as defunct. Guyer, Kammerer, and Pawlow profess to find factual

justification for it, and Bouvier adopts it in his “La vie psychique

des insectes” (1918), to account for the origin of instinct. Of the

alleged facts of Kammerer and Guyer, we have spoken in a previous

chapter. Here we shall content ourselves with few remarks on the

experiments of Ivan Pawlow, as being especially relevant to the subject

under consideration. The Russian physiologist has experimented on

white mice, and claims that the mice of the fifth generation learned

to answer a dinner bell in the space of five lessons, whereas their

ancestors of the first generation had required a hundred lessons to

answer the same signal. Hence he concludes: “The latest experiments ...

show that conditioned reflexes, _i.e._, the highest nervous activity,

are inherited.” (_Science_, Nov. 9, 1923, p. 360.) His results,

however, do not tally with those recently obtained by E. C. MacDowell

of the Carnegie Institution, by H. G. Bragg, and by E. M. Vicari of

Columbia. MacDowell found that white rats trained in a circular maze

did not improve in their susceptibility to training from generation to

generation. “Children from trained parents,” he says, “or from trained

parents and grandparents, take as long to learn the maze habit as the

first generation used.” (_Science_, March 28, 1924, p. 303.) Having

cited the similar results of Bragg, who experimented with white mice,

he concludes: “The results are in full accord with those given above;

they indicate that the training of the ancestors did not facilitate the

learning of the descendants.” (_Ibidem._) E. M. Vicari, using a simple

maze and white rats, obtained the same results. “It seems clear,” she

says, “that the latter generations have not been aided by the training

of their ancestors.” (_Ibidem._)

Bouvier’s conception, then, that the automatisms of instinct originate

as automatisms of acquired habit, the latter being appropriated

by inheritance, still stands in need of reliable experimental

confirmation. Moreover, a theory of this sort could never account,

as Weismann points out, for such phenomena as the specific instincts

of worker bees, which are _excluded from propagation_. Nor can the

theory explain, as originating in acquired _habit_, those instinctive

operations of enormous complexity, like the complicated method of

emergence employed by the larva of the emperor moth, which only occur

_once in a lifetime_, and could not, therefore, fasten themselves on

the organism as a _habit_.

An evolutionary origin of instinct, however, though extremely

improbable, is, at any rate, not absolutely inconceivable. Its

teleology, as we have seen, does not imply inherent intelligence, but

is explicable as an innate law involving appropriate coördination

of the sensory, emotional, and motor functions, all of which are

intrinsically dependent on the organism. But intelligence, as we

have seen, is a superorganic power, having its source in a spiritual

principle, that, from the very nature of things, cannot be evolved from

matter. Human reason, therefore, owes its origin, not to any evolution

of the human body, but to the creation of the human soul, which is the

source and subject of that unique prerogative of man, namely: the power

of abstract thought.