The lowest races of men use tools, but no other animal does this. This
is so universally admitted by science that the presence of the rudest
tools of stone is considered a sufficient trace of the presence of man.
If stone hatchets or hammers or arrowheads are found in any stratum,
though no human bones are detected, anthropologists regard this as
a sufficient proof of the existence of human beings in the period
indicated by such a geologic formation. The only tools used by animals
in procuring food, in war, or in building their homes, are their
natural organs: their beaks, teeth, claws, etc. It may be added that
man alone wears clothes; other animals being sufficiently clothed by
nature. No animals make a fire, though they often suffer from cold; but
there is no race of men unacquainted with the use of fire.[20]
No animals possess a verbal language. Animals can remember some of the
words used by men, and associate with them their meaning. But this is
not the use of language. It is merely the memory of two associated
facts,--as when the animal recollects where he found food, and goes to
the same place to look for it again. Animals have different cries,
indicating different wants. They use one cry to call their mate,
another to terrify their prey. But this is not the use of verbal
language. Human language implies not merely an acquaintance with the
meaning of particular words, but the power of putting them together in
a sentence. Animals have no such language as this; for, if they had,
it would have been learned by men. Man has the power of learning any
verbal language. Adelung and Vater reckon over three thousand languages
spoken by men, and any man can learn any of them. The negroes speak
their own languages in their own countries; they speak Arabic in North
Africa; they learn to speak English, French, and Spanish in America,
and Oriental languages when they go to the East. If any animals had a
verbal language, with its vocabulary and grammar, men would long ago
have learned it, and would have been able to converse with them.
Again, no animal except man is capable of self-culture, as an
individual. Animals are trained by external influences; they do not
teach themselves. An old wolf is much more cunning than a young one,
but he has been made so by the force of circumstances. You can teach
your dog tricks, but no dog has ever taught himself any. Yet the lowest
savages teach themselves to make tools, to ornament their paddles
and clubs, and acquire certain arts by diligent effort. Birds will
sometimes practice the tunes which they hear played, till they have
learned them. They will also sometimes imitate each other's songs.
That is, they possess the power of vocal imitation. But to imitate
the sounds we hear is not self-culture. It is not developing a new
power, but it is exercising in a new way a natural gift. Yet we must
admit that in this habit of birds there is the rudiment, at least, of
self-education.
All races of men are capable of progress in civilization. Many,
indeed, remain in a savage state for thousands of years, and we cannot
positively prove that any particular race which has always been
uncivilized is capable of civilization. But we are led to believe
it from having known of so many tribes of men who have emerged from
apathy, ignorance, and barbarism into the light of science and art.
So it was with all the Teutonic races,--the Goths, Germans, Kelts,
Lombards, Scandinavians. So it was with the Arabs, who roamed for
thousands of years over the deserts, a race of ignorant robbers, and
then, filled with the great inspiration of Islam, flamed up into a
brilliant coruscation of science, literature, art, military success,
and profound learning. What great civilizations have grown up in
China, India, Persia, Assyria, Babylon, Phœnicia, Egypt, Greece,
Rome, Carthage, Etruria! But no such progress has ever appeared among
the animals. As their parents were, five thousand years ago, so,
essentially, are they now.
Nor are animals religious, in the sense of worshiping unseen powers
higher than themselves. My horse showed a sense of the supernatural,
but this is not worship.
These are some of the most marked points of difference between man and
all other animals. Now these can all be accounted for by the hypothesis
in which Locke and Leibnitz both agreed; namely, that while animals are
capable of reasoning about facts, they are incapable of abstract ideas.
Or, we may say with Coleridge, that while animals, in common with man,
possess the faculty of understanding, they do not possess that of
reason. Coleridge seems to have intended by this exactly what Locke
and Leibnitz meant by their statement. When my dog Don heard the word
"apple," he thought of the particular concrete apple under the tree;
and not of apples in general, and their relation to pears, peaches,
etc. Don understood me when I told him to go and get an apple, and
obeyed; but he would not have understood me if I had remarked to him
that apples were better than pears, more wholesome than peaches, not so
handsome as grapes. I should then have gone into the region of abstract
and general ideas.
Now it is precisely the possession of this power of abstract thought
which will explain the superiority of man to all other animals. It
explains the use of tools; for a tool is an instrument prepared, not
for one special purpose, but to be used generally, in certain ways.
A baboon, like a man, might pick up a particular stone with which to
crack a particular nut; but the ape does not make and keep a stone
hammer, to be used on many similar occasions. A box of tools contains a
collection of saws, planes, draw-knives, etc., not made to use on one
occasion merely, but made for sawing, cutting, and planing purposes
generally.
Still more evident is it that the power of abstraction is necessary
for verbal language. We do not here use the common term "articulate
speech," for we can conceive of animals articulating their vocal
sounds. But "a word" is an abstraction. The notion is lifted out of the
concrete particular fact, and deposited in the abstract general term.
All words, except proper names, are abstract; and to possess and use a
verbal language is impossible, without the possession of this mental
faculty.
In regard to self-culture, it is clear that for any steady progress
one must keep before his mind an abstract idea of what he wishes to
do. This enables him to rise above impulse, passion, instinct, habit,
circumstance. By the steady contemplation of the proposed aim, one can
arrange circumstances, restrain impulse, direct one's activity, and
become really free.
In like manner, races become developed in civilization by the impact
of abstract ideas. Sometimes it is by coming in contact with other
civilized nations, which gives them an ideal superior to anything
before known. Sometimes the motive power of their progress is the
reception of truths of science, art, literature, or religion.
It is not necessary to show that without abstract, universal, and
necessary ideas no religion is possible; for religion, being the
worship of unseen powers, conceived as existing, as active, as
spiritual, necessarily implies these ideas in the mind of the worshiper.
We find, then, in the soul of animals all active, affectionate,
and intelligent capacities, as in that of man. The only difference
is that man is capable of abstract ideas, which give him a larger
liberty of action, which enable him to adopt an aim and pursue it,
and which change his affections from an instinctive attachment into a
principle of generous love. Add, then, to the animal soul the capacity
for abstract ideas, and it would rise at once to the level of man.
Meantime, in a large part of their nature, they have the same faculties
with ourselves. They share our emotions, and we theirs. They are made
"a little lower" than man, and if we are souls, so surely are they.
Are they immortal? To discuss this question would require more space
than we can here give to it. For my own part, I fully believe in the
continued existence of all souls, at the same time assuming their
continued advance. The law of life is progress; and one of the best
features in the somewhat unspiritual theory of Darwin is its profound
faith in perpetual improvement. This theory is the most startling
optimism that has ever been taught, for it makes perpetual progress to
be the law of the whole universe.
Many of the arguments for the immortality of man cannot indeed be
used for our dumb relations, the animals. We cannot argue from their
universal faith in a future life; nor contend that they need an
immortality on moral grounds, to recompense their good conduct and
punish their wickedness. We might indeed adduce a reason implied in
our Saviour's parable, and believe that the poor creatures who have
received their evil things in this life will be comforted in another.
Moreover, we might find in many animals qualities fitting them for a
higher state. There are animals, as we have seen, who show a fidelity,
courage, generosity, often superior to what we see in man. The dogs
who have loved their master more than food, and starved to death on
his grave, are surely well fitted for a higher existence. Jesse tells
a story of a cat which was being stoned by cruel boys. Men went by,
and did not interfere; but a dog, that saw it, did. He drove away the
boys, and then took the cat to his kennel, licked her all over with his
tongue, and his conduct interested people, who brought her milk. The
canine nurse took care of her till she was well, and the cat and dog
remained fast friends ever after. Such an action in a man would have
been called heroic; and we think such a dog would not be out of place
in heaven.
Yet it is not so much on particular cases of animal superiority that
we rely, but on the difficulty of conceiving, in any sense, of the
destruction of life. The principle of life, whether we call it soul
or body, matter or spirit, escapes all observation of the senses. All
that we know of it by observation is that, beside the particles of
matter which compose an organized body, there is something else, not
cognizable by the senses, which attracts and dismisses them, modifies
and coördinates them. The unity of the body is not to be found in
its sensible phenomena, but in something which escapes the senses.
Into the vortex of that life material molecules are being continually
absorbed, and from it they are perpetually discharged. If death means
the dissolution of the body, we die many times in the course of our
earthly career, for every body is said by human anatomists to be
changed in all its particles once in seven years. What then remains,
if all the particles go? The principle of organization remains, and
this invisible, persistent principle constitutes the identity of every
organized body. If I say that I have the _same_ body when I am fifty
which I had at twenty, it is because I mean by "body" that which
continues unaltered amid the fast-flying particles of matter. This life
principle makes and remakes the material frame; that body does not
make it. When what we call death intervenes, all that we can assert
is that the life principle has done wholly and at once what it has
always been doing gradually and in part. What happens to the material
particles, we see: they become detached from the organizing principle,
and relapse into simply mechanical and chemical conditions. What has
happened to that organizing principle we neither see nor know; and we
have absolutely no reason at all for saying that it has ceased to exist.
This is as true of plants and of animals as of men; and there is no
reason for supposing that when these die their principle of life
is ended. It probably has reached a crisis, which consists in the
putting on of new forms and ascending into a higher order of organized
existence.