the mind of one of the lowest savages, who has no words to express any
number higher than four, and who uses hardly any abstract terms for
common objects or for the affections, with that of the most highly
organized ape. The difference would, no doubt, still remain immense,
even if one of the higher apes had been improved or civilized as
much as a dog has been in comparison with its parent-form, the wolf
or jackal. The Fuegians rank among the lowest barbarians; but I was
continually struck with surprise how closely the three natives on
board H. M. S. Beagle, who had lived some years in England, and could
talk a little English, resembled us in disposition and in most of our
mental faculties. If no organic being excepting man had possessed any
mental power, or if his powers had been of a wholly different nature
from those of the lower animals, then we should never have been able
to convince ourselves that our high faculties had been gradually
developed. But it can be shown that there is no fundamental difference
of this kind. We must also admit that there is a much wider interval
in mental power between one of the lowest fishes, as a lamprey or
lancelet, and one of the higher apes than between an ape and man; yet
this interval is filled up by numberless gradations.
Nor is the difference slight in moral disposition between a barbarian,
such as the man described by the old navigator Byron, who dashed his
child on the rocks for dropping a basket of sea-urchins, and a Howard
or Clarkson; and in intellect between a savage, who uses hardly any
abstract terms, and a Newton or Shakespeare. Differences of this kind
between the highest men of the highest races and the lowest savages,
are connected by the finest gradations. Therefore it is possible that
they might pass and be developed into each other.
* * * * *
[Page 66.]
In what manner the mental powers were first developed in the lowest
organisms is as hopeless an inquiry as how life itself first
originated. These are problems for the distant future, if they are ever
to be solved by man.
FUNDAMENTAL INTUITIONS THE SAME IN MAN AND THE OTHER ANIMALS.
[Page 66.]
As man possesses the same senses as the lower animals, his fundamental
intuitions must be the same. Man has also some few instincts in common,
as that of self-preservation, sexual love, the love of the mother for
her new-born offspring, the desire possessed by the latter to suck,
and so forth. But man, perhaps, has somewhat fewer instincts than
those possessed by the animals which come next to him in the series.
The orang in the Eastern islands and the chimpanzee in Africa build
platforms on which they sleep; and, as both species follow the same
habit, it might be argued that this was due to instinct, but we can
not feel sure that it is not the result of both animals having similar
wants, and possessing similar powers of reasoning. These apes, as we
may assume, avoid the many poisonous fruits of the tropics, and man has
no such knowledge: but, as our domestic animals, when taken to foreign
lands, and when first turned out in the spring, often eat poisonous
herbs, which they afterward avoid, we can not feel sure that the apes
do not learn from their own experience or from that of their parents
what fruits to select. It is, however, certain, as we shall presently
see, that apes have an instinctive dread of serpents, and probably of
other dangerous animals.
The fewness and the comparative simplicity of the instincts in the
higher animals are remarkable in contrast with those of the lower
animals. Cuvier maintained that instinct and intelligence stand
in an adverse ratio to each other; and some have thought that the
intellectual faculties of the higher animals have been gradually
developed from their instincts. But Pouchet, in an interesting essay,
has shown that no such inverse ratio really exists. Those insects
which possess the most wonderful instincts are certainly the most
intelligent. In the vertebrate series, the least intelligent members,
namely, fishes and amphibians, do not possess complex instincts; and
among mammals the animal most remarkable for its instincts, namely, the
beaver, is highly intelligent, as will be admitted by every one who has
read Mr. Morgan’s excellent work.
MAN AND THE LOWER ANIMALS EXCITED BY THE SAME EMOTIONS.
[Page 69.]
The fact that the lower animals are excited by the same emotions as
ourselves is so well established that it will not be necessary to weary
the reader by many details. Terror acts in the same manner on them as
on us, causing the muscles to tremble, the heart to palpitate, the
sphincters to be relaxed, and the hair to stand on end. Suspicion, the
offspring of fear, is eminently characteristic of most wild animals. It
is, I think, impossible to read the account given by Sir E. Tennent, of
the behavior of the female elephants, used as decoys, without admitting
that they intentionally practice deceit, and well know what they are
about. Courage and timidity are extremely variable qualities in the
individuals of the same species, as is plainly seen in our dogs. Some
dogs and horses are ill-tempered, and easily turn sulky; others are
good-tempered; and these qualities are certainly inherited. Every one
knows how liable animals are to furious rage, and how plainly they
show it. Many, and probably true, anecdotes have been published on
the long-delayed and artful revenge of various animals. The accurate
Rengger and Brehm state that the American and African monkeys which
they kept tame certainly revenged themselves. Sir Andrew Smith, a
zoölogist whose scrupulous accuracy was known to many persons, told me
the following story of which he was himself an eye-witness: At the Cape
of Good Hope an officer had often plagued a certain baboon, and the
animal, seeing him approaching one Sunday for parade, poured water into
a hole and hastily made some thick mud, which he skillfully dashed over
the officer as he passed by, to the amusement of many by-standers. For
long afterward the baboon rejoiced and triumphed whenever he saw his
victim.
* * * * *
[Page 70.]
The love of a dog for his master is notorious; as an old writer
quaintly says, “A dog is the only thing on this earth that luvs you
more than he luvs himself.”
In the agony of death a dog has been known to caress his master, and
every one has heard of the dog suffering under vivisection, who licked
the hand of the operator; this man, unless the operation was fully
justified by an increase of our knowledge, or unless he had a heart of
stone, must have felt remorse to the last hour of his life.
* * * * *
[Page 71.]
Most of the more complex emotions are common to the higher animals and
ourselves. Every one has seen how jealous a dog is of his master’s
affection, if lavished on any other creature; and I have observed the
same fact with monkeys. This shows that animals not only love, but
have desire to be loved. Animals manifestly feel emulation. They love
approbation or praise; and a dog carrying a basket for his master
exhibits in a high degree self-complacency or pride. There can, I
think, be no doubt that a dog feels shame, as distinct from fear,
and something very like modesty when begging too often for food. A
great dog scorns the snarling of a little dog, and this may be called
magnanimity. Several observers have stated that monkeys certainly
dislike being laughed at; and they sometimes invent imaginary offenses.
In the Zoölogical Gardens I saw a baboon who always got into a furious
rage when his keeper took out a letter or book and read it aloud to
him; and his rage was so violent that, as I witnessed on one occasion,
he bit his own leg till the blood flowed.
All animals feel _wonder_, and many exhibit _curiosity_. They sometimes
suffer from this latter quality, as when the hunter plays antics and
thus attracts them; I have witnessed this with deer, and so it is with
the wary chamois, and with some kinds of wild-ducks. Brehm gives a
curious account of the instinctive dread which his monkeys exhibited
for snakes; but their curiosity was so great that they could not desist
from occasionally satiating their horror in a most human fashion, by
lifting up the lid of the box in which the snakes were kept. I was so
much surprised at his account, that I took a stuffed and coiled-up
snake into the monkey-house at the Zoölogical Gardens, and the
excitement thus caused was one of the most curious spectacles which I
ever beheld.
ALL ANIMALS POSSESS SOME POWER OF REASONING.
[Page 75.]
Of all the faculties of the human mind, it will, I presume, be admitted
that _reason_ stands at the summit. Only a few persons now dispute that
animals possess some power of reasoning. Animals may constantly be seen
to pause, deliberate, and resolve. It is a significant fact that the
more the habits of any particular animal are studied by a naturalist,
the more he attributes to reason and the less to unlearned instincts.
In future chapters we shall see that some animals extremely low in the
scale apparently display a certain amount of reason. No doubt it is
often difficult to distinguish between the power of reason and that
of instinct. For instance, Dr. Hayes, in his work on “The Open Polar
Sea,” repeatedly remarks that his dogs, instead of continuing to draw
the sledges in a compact body, diverged and separated when they came to
thin ice, so that their weight might be more evenly distributed. This
was often the first warning which the travelers received that the ice
was becoming thin and dangerous. Now, did the dogs act thus from the
experience of each individual, or from the example of the older and
wiser dogs, or from an inherited habit, that is, from instinct? This
instinct may possibly have arisen since the time, long ago, when dogs
were first employed by the natives in drawing their sledges; or the
Arctic wolves, the parent-stock of the Esquimaux dog, may have acquired
an instinct, impelling them not to attack their prey in a close pack,
when on thin ice.
* * * * *
[Page 79.]
Archbishop Sumner formerly maintained that man alone is capable of
progressive improvement. That he is capable of incomparably greater and
more rapid improvement than is any other animal, admits of no dispute;
and this is mainly due to his power of speaking and handing down his
acquired knowledge. With animals, looking first to the individual,
every one who has had any experience in setting traps knows that young
animals can be caught much more easily than old ones; and they can
be much more easily approached by an enemy. Even with respect to old
animals, it is impossible to catch many in the same place and in the
same kind of trap, or to destroy them by the same kind of poison; yet
it is improbable that all should have partaken of the poison, and
impossible that all should have been caught in a trap. They must learn
caution by seeing their brethren caught or poisoned.
* * * * *
[Page 80.]
Our domestic dogs are descended from wolves and jackals, and though
they may not have gained in cunning, and may have lost in wariness
and suspicion, yet they have progressed in certain moral qualities,
such as in affection, trustworthiness, temper, and probably in general
intelligence.
THE POWER OF ASSOCIATION IN DOG AND SAVAGE.
[Descent of
Man, page 77.]
The savage and the dog have often found water at a low level, and the
coincidence under such circumstances has become associated in their
minds. A cultivated man would perhaps make some general proposition
on the subject; but from all that we know of savages it is extremely
doubtful whether they would do so, and a dog certainly would not.
But a savage, as well as a dog, would search in the same way, though
frequently disappointed; and in both it seems to be equally an act
of reason, whether or not any general proposition on the subject
is consciously placed before the mind. The same would apply to the
elephant and the bear making currents in the air or water. The savage
would certainly neither know nor care by what law the desired movements
were effected; yet his act would be guided by a rude process of
reasoning, as surely as would a philosopher in his longest chain of
deductions. There would no doubt be this difference between him and
one of the higher animals, that he would take notice of much slighter
circumstances and conditions, and would observe any connection between
them after much less experience, and this would be of paramount
importance. I kept a daily record of the actions of one of my infants,
and when he was about eleven months old, and before he could speak a
single word, I was continually struck with the greater quickness with
which all sorts of objects and sounds were associated together in his
mind, compared with that of the most intelligent dogs I ever knew. But
the higher animals differ in exactly the same way in this power of
association from those low in the scale, such as the pike, as well as
in that of drawing inferences and of observation.
THE LOWER ANIMALS PROGRESS IN INTELLIGENCE.
[Page 81.]
To maintain, independently of any direct evidence, that no animal
during the course of ages has progressed in intellect or other mental
faculties, is to beg the question of the evolution of species. We have
seen that, according to Lartet, existing mammals belonging to several
orders have larger brains than their ancient tertiary prototypes.
It has often been said that no animal uses any tool; but the
chimpanzee, in a state of nature, cracks a native fruit, somewhat like
a walnut, with a stone. Rengger easily taught an American monkey thus
to break open hard palm-nuts; and afterward, of its own accord, it used
stones to open other kinds of nuts, as well as boxes. It thus also
removed the soft rind of fruit that had a disagreeable flavor. Another
monkey was taught to open the lid of a large box with a stick, and
afterward it used the stick as a lever to move heavy bodies; and I have
myself seen a young orang put a stick into a crevice, slip his hand to
the other end, and use it in the proper manner as a lever. The tamed
elephants in India are well known to break off branches of trees and
use them to drive away the flies; and this same act has been observed
in an elephant in a state of nature.
* * * * *
[Page 82.]
The Duke of Argyll remarks that the fashioning of an implement for a
special purpose is absolutely peculiar to man; and he considers that
this forms an immeasurable gulf between him and the brutes. This is
no doubt a very important distinction; but there appears to me much
truth in Sir J. Lubbock’s suggestion that, when primeval man first used
flint-stones for any purpose, he would have accidentally splintered
them, and would then have used the sharp fragments. From this step it
would be a small one to break the flints on purpose, and not a very
wide step to fashion them rudely. This latter advance, however, may
have taken long ages, if we may judge by the immense interval of time
which elapsed before the men of the neolithic period took to grinding
and polishing their stone tools. In breaking the flints, as Sir J.
Lubbock likewise remarks, sparks would have been emitted, and in
grinding them heat would have been evolved; thus the two usual methods
of “obtaining fire may have originated.” The nature of fire would have
been known in the many volcanic regions where lava occasionally flows
through forests.
THE POWER OF ABSTRACTION.
[Page 83.]
If one may judge from various articles which have been published
lately, the greatest stress seems to be laid on the supposed entire
absence in animals of the power of abstraction, or of forming general
concepts. But when a dog sees another dog at a distance, it is often
clear that he perceives that it is a dog in the abstract; for when he
gets nearer his whole manner suddenly changes, if the other dog be a
friend. A recent writer remarks that in all such cases it is a pure
assumption to assert that the mental act is not essentially of the same
nature in the animal as in man. If either refers what he perceives
with his senses to a mental concept, then so do both. When I say to
my terrier, in an eager voice (and I have made the trial many times),
“Hi, hi, where is it?” she at once takes it as a sign that something
is to be hunted, and generally first looks quickly all around, and then
rushes into the nearest thicket, to scent for any game, but, finding
nothing, she looks up into any neighboring tree for a squirrel. Now, do
not these actions clearly show that she had in her mind a general idea
or concept that some animal is to be discovered and hunted?
It may be freely admitted that no animal is self-conscious, if by
this term it is implied that he reflects on such points as whence
he comes or whither he will go, or what is life and death, and so
forth. But how can we feel sure that an old dog with an excellent
memory and some power of imagination, as shown by his dreams, never
reflects on his past pleasures or pains in the chase? And this would
be a form of self-consciousness. On the other hand, as Büchner has
remarked, how little can the hard-worked wife of a degraded Australian
savage, who uses very few abstract words, and can not count above
four, exert her self-consciousness, or reflect on the nature of her
own existence! It is generally admitted that the higher animals
possess memory, attention, association, and even some imagination
and reason. If these powers, which differ much in different animals,
are capable of improvement, there seems no great improbability in
more complex faculties, such as the higher forms of abstraction, and
self-consciousness, etc., having been evolved through the development
and combination of the simpler ones. It has been urged against the
views here maintained that it is impossible to say at what point in the
ascending scale animals become capable of abstraction, etc.; but who
can say at what age this occurs in our young children? We see at least
that such powers are developed in children by imperceptible degrees.
THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE.
[Page 84.]
This faculty (language) has justly been considered as one of the chief
distinctions between man and the lower animals. But man, as a highly
competent judge, Archbishop Whately, remarks, “is not the only animal
that can make use of language to express what is passing in his mind,
and can understand, more or less, what is so expressed by another.” In
Paraguay the _Cebus azaræ_ when excited utters at least six distinct
sounds, which excite in other monkeys similar emotions. The movements
of the features and gestures of monkeys are understood by us, and they
partly understand ours, as Rengger and others declare. It is a more
remarkable fact that the dog, since being domesticated, has learned to
bark in at least four or five distinct tones. Although barking is a
new art, no doubt the wild parent-species of the dog expressed their
feelings by cries of various kinds. With the domesticated dog we have
the bark of eagerness, as in the chase; that of anger, as well as
growling; the yelp or howl of despair, as when shut up; the baying at
night; the bark of joy, as when starting on a walk with his master; and
the very distinct one of demand or supplication, as when wishing for a
door or window to be opened. According to Houzeau, who paid particular
attention to the subject, the domestic fowl utters at least a dozen
significant sounds.
The habitual use of articulate language is, however, peculiar to man;
but he uses, in common with the lower animals, inarticulate cries
to express his meaning, aided by gestures and the movements of the
muscles of the face. This especially holds good with the more simple
and vivid feelings, which are but little connected with our higher
intelligence. Our cries of pain, fear, surprise, anger, together with
their appropriate actions, and the murmur of a mother to her beloved
child, are more expressive than any words. That which distinguishes man
from the lower animals is not the understanding of articulate sounds,
for, as every one knows, dogs understand many words and sentences. In
this respect they are at the same stage of development as infants,
between the ages of ten and twelve months, who understand many words
and short sentences, but can not yet utter a single word. It is not the
mere articulation which is our distinguishing character, for parrots
and other birds possess this power. Nor is it the mere capacity of
connecting definite sounds with definite ideas; for it is certain that
some parrots, which have been taught to speak, connect unerringly words
with things, and persons with events. The lower animals differ from man
solely in his almost infinitely larger power of associating together
the most diversified sounds and ideas; and this obviously depends on
the high development of his mental powers.
As Horne Tooke, one of the founders of the noble science of philology,
observes, language is an art, like brewing or baking; but writing would
have been a better simile. It certainly is not a true instinct, for
every language has to be learned. It differs, however, widely from all
ordinary arts, for man has an instinctive tendency to speak, as we see
in the babble of our young children; while no child has an instinctive
tendency to brew, bake, or write. Moreover, no philologist now supposes
that any language has been deliberately invented; it has been slowly
and unconsciously developed by many steps. The sounds uttered by
birds offer in several respects the nearest analogy to language, for
all the members of the same species utter the same instinctive cries
expressive of their emotions; and all the kinds which sing exert their
power instinctively; but the actual song, and even the call-notes, are
learned from their parents or foster-parents. These sounds, as Daines
Barrington has proved, “are no more innate than language is in man.”
The first attempts to sing “may be compared to the imperfect endeavor
in a child to babble.” The young males continue practicing, or, as
the bird-catchers say, “recording,” for ten or eleven months. Their
first essays show hardly a rudiment of the future song; but as they
grow older we can perceive what they are aiming at; and at last they
are said “to sing their song round.” Nestlings which have learned the
song of a distinct species, as with the canary-birds educated in the
Tyrol, teach and transmit their new song to their offspring. The slight
natural differences of song in the same species inhabiting different
districts may be appositely compared, as Barrington remarks, “to
provincial dialects”; and the songs of allied though distinct species
may be compared with the languages of distinct races of man. I have
given the foregoing details to show that an instinctive tendency to
acquire an art is not peculiar to man.
With respect to the origin of articulate language, after having read on
the one side the highly interesting works of Mr. Hensleigh Wedgwood,
the Rev. F. Farrar, and Professor Schleicher, and the celebrated
lectures of Professor Max Müller on the other side, I can not doubt
that language owes its origin to the imitation and modification of
various natural sounds, the voices of other animals, and man’s own
instinctive cries, aided by signs and gestures.
* * * * *
[Page 87.]
It is, therefore, probable that the imitation of musical cries by
articulate sounds may have given rise to words expressive of various
complex emotions. The strong tendency in our nearest allies, the
monkeys, in microcephalous idiots, and in the barbarous races of
mankind, to imitate whatever they hear, deserves notice, as bearing on
the subject of imitation. Since monkeys certainly understand much that
is said to them by man, and, when wild, utter signal-cries of danger
to their fellows; and since fowls give distinct warnings for danger on
the ground, or in the sky from hawks (both, as well as a third cry,
intelligible to dogs), 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.
As the voice was used more and more, the vocal organs would have been
strengthened and perfected through the principle of the inherited
effects of use; and this would have reacted on the power of speech.
* * * * *
[Page 89.]