the doctrine of the struggle for existence, torn from its biological
context, isolated and over-emphasized, is wholly unwarranted. On the
other hand, a struggle does continue, both of the direct and indirect
type defined by Darwin: and there is no prospect of it ceasing to play
an important part in human biology. Co-operation is not, any more than
competition, to be taken as the sole desirable principle. Panaceas of
this sort do not exist, except to make bubble reputations and quack
fortunes. Even within such a highly organized co-operative unit as
the mammalian body a struggle continues--the different tissues are
in competition with each other for food, and if the available supply
diminishes below the necessary level, some tissues will be drawn upon
by other more successful competitors, and the struggle will lead to an
end-result in which the proportion of the various kinds of cells comes
to be very different from what they were in the normal well-nourished
body.[24] That is a purely biological example. In man, since the
unification of the community is of a low order, it is inevitable that
individuals and sections will continue in some form of competition with
each other: not only this, however, but the additional fact that man’s
mental organization reacts strongly to the stimulus of competition make
it probable that a “struggle” of some sort will not only be inevitable
but up to a point beneficial in any form of society. What is more, once
co-operation exists, competition between the co-operative units is
necessary to bring out the full efficiency of their combination.
All that the biologist can do is to point out that neither the
one-sided application of the principle of struggle nor of that of
co-operation is biologically sound. But, as everywhere else in human
conduct, after the broad principles have been grasped, success lies
always in a delicate, continuous adjustment of conflicting claims, in
what one may call a personal conscious effort. Struggle is universal:
but by itself it can only lead to a certain stage of evolutionary
progress.
The half-baked moralist may lay down the law about right and wrong
with the most positive assurance; but, by not paying attention to the
necessity for sweet reasonableness, give-and-take, unselfishness, for
thought about the thousand and one details of daily conduct, he may be
making himself and his wife thoroughly unhappy, ruining his family’s
chances, and, as a matter of fact, be thoroughly immoral without once
suspecting it.
It is in a very similar way that the militarist, for instance,
fortifying himself in the doctrine of the struggle for existence with
what he regards as an impregnable sanction for his theories, is in
reality acting immorally because not attempting to envisage the whole
problem.
There is one very interesting evolutionary point which well illustrates
the difference between pure biology and pure sociology, and yet
emphasizes the natural connection between the two. Once again it has
a connection with the greater flexibility of human mind. As we have
seen, in the lowest animals behaviour is for the most part unvarying,
hereditarily determined: the organism is capable of a number of
definite reactions, and if these do not suffice to extricate it from
difficulties, it perishes. The first step towards gaining is the
power of learning. “Once bitten, twice shy” is applicable to all
higher vertebrates; and it is not only the burnt child who dreads the
fire (although a study of moths and candles will convince us that
“Lepidopteran” cannot be substituted as subject of the proverb).
When, as in the higher mammals, the power of learning by experience is
rapid, the individual organism is better able to adjust itself to the
dangers of life, and once more there is less sacrifice of individuals
in the struggle. The same organism persists: but of two possible types
of behaviour, the unmodified innate type is eliminated, the type
modified by experience survives. If we like to put it in a way which
is perhaps not wholly justifiable, there comes into being, besides the
struggle for existence between individuals, a struggle for existence
between different possible modes of reaction of one and the same
organism.
With the advent of man upon the scene, still new possibilities arise.
First of all, he is capable of ideas, which, biologically speaking, are
to be regarded as potentialities of behaviour. There is no evidence at
present that even the highest animals possess ideas or even images.[25]
Secondly, these ideas are transmissible by speech and writing, and
accordingly tradition has come into being, so that modification of
behaviour by experience can be operative not only within the individual
life, not only from one generation to the next immediately succeeding,
as in many mammals, but for an indefinite period. The experience of
Moses, Archimedes, or Charlemagne, of Jesus, Newton, or James Watt is
modifying our behaviour to-day.
The result, both for individuals and communities, is that a selection
of ideas instead of a selection of organic units can to an ever greater
extent take place; and thus the actual extinction of living matter
be increasingly avoided. For instance, we find the substitution of
judicial procedure, in which the ideas of two disputants about the
matter in dispute are weighed and a selection made in favour of one,
for various forms of violence and combat in which one or other of the
actual disputants was often eliminated. Or again, in struggles between
communities, even though warfare is still resorted to, yet it does
not operate in the same way as in earlier stages of human evolution. A
salient example of this is afforded by the result of the recent war to
Germany; although an equally good instance can be seen, for example,
in the Boer War. In primitive wars, the defeated tribe was wherever
possible exterminated or enslaved: it ceased to exist as an independent
unit, and the great majority of its male members were killed. This is
impossible under present conditions: and all those who preserve, or
have ever possessed, any political sanity aim, for instance, neither at
the physical nor the economic destruction or subordination of Germany,
but--to use one of those attractive catchwords that sounded so well in
war-time--at her “change of heart”--in other words, the extermination,
not of a nation, but of a national tradition.
To what extent this substitution of mental for physical will continue
it is hard to say; already, to take another field, the multiplication
of cheap books has led to an ever increasing number of men and women
finding most of their adventure and romance in books instead of in the
life that we are accustomed to call real. But that would lead us away
from our main point--enough to have indicated another great difference
between processes above and below the human level.
There are numerous important questions concerning our right to apply
biological ideas of heredity directly to human beings which I would
have liked to touch upon. But for one thing I have not the time, and
for another, Mr. Carr-Saunders in his recent book on the Population
Problem has dealt so fully with the relation between biological
inheritance and what may be called tradition-inheritance, that I omit
them with a good conscience.
In this brief treatment I have had to ask you to take conclusions on
trust, without presenting the evidence on which they are based; this,
however, is inevitable when transferring ideas from one science to
another. I have attempted to show, first, that biology can profit by
incorporating certain conclusions of sociology and so rounding off and
completing certain of its own principles: on the other hand, I have put
before you my belief that there are certain basic biological principles
which must be taken into account by the sociologist--principles which
hold good in sociology because man too is an organism.
By now, however, we can see more clearly the way in which the various
sciences with which we are concerned, of whose relations we had
something to say at the beginning of this essay, properly interlock.
They interlock thus. The physico-chemical sciences are basic to
biology. Organisms are made of the same substances as are non-living
compounds; their processes are therefore conformable to certain
physico-chemical laws, such as the indestructibility of matter, the
conservation of energy, and so forth; and in so far as we analyse the
material aspect of life, physico-chemical concepts are _adequate_.
On the other hand, physico-chemical concepts--or at least our
present ones--are not _all-sufficient_. In the first place, the very
complicated arrangement of matter which is found in living substance
has not been yet sufficiently analysed by physics and chemistry:
accordingly we find many processes occurring in biology--such as the
directional changes in evolution of which we have spoken--which could
not have been foretold on our present physico-chemical knowledge,
but must be investigated separately as adding to our store of facts
and principles, in the confident hope that a synthesis will one
day be possible. Secondly, a whole new category of phenomena, the
psychological, is first met with in biology, and to this we cannot as
yet apply physical or chemical ideas at all.
For a combination of these two reasons, biology deals with certain
concepts which are not implicit in current physico-chemical ideas.
Physics and chemistry are basic for biology, but they are not
exhaustive.
In a very similar way, biology is basic for sociology, but again not
exhaustive. Certain limits are set to human life through man’s organic
nature. Certain of his activities can be completely analysed in terms
of biology. But other of his activities, especially those concerned
with his new type of mental organization, find no counterpart in
the rest of the biological kingdoms, and must be studied in and for
themselves.
Bergson would have us believe that evolution is creative. It is better
to say, with Lloyd Morgan, that it is emergent. With new degrees of
complexity, new qualitative differences emerge. Thus the sciences are
a hierarchy, the subject-matter of one constituting the foundation for
the next in the series. All that biology can do for sociology is to
help her to build her foundations solidly and correctly: but we all
know that without good foundations no building is safe.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bury, J. B., ’20. “The Idea of Progress.” London, 1920.
Carr-Saunders, A. M., ’22. “The Population Problem.” Oxford, 1922.
Hobhouse, L. T., ’01. “Mind in Evolution.” London, 1901.
Huxley, J. S., ’12. “The Individual in the Animal Kingdom.”
Cambridge, 1912.
Keyser, ’21. “Science” (N.S.) New York, 1921.
Kropotkin, Prince, ’08. “Mutual Aid, A Factor in Evolution.”
London, 1908.
Lloyd Morgan, C., ’23. “Emergent Evolution.” London, 1923.
Marvin, F. S. “Progress and History” (5th Imp.). Oxford, 1921.
Radl, E., ’09. “Geschichte der biologischen Theorien,” vol. ii.
Leipzig, 1909.
Ritchie, ’01. “Darwinism in Politics” (4th Ed.). London, 1901.
Roberts, Morley, ’20. “Warfare in the Human Body.” London, 1920.
Roux, W., ’81. “Der Kampf der Teile im Organismics.” 1881.
Sherrington, ’22. “The Advancement of Science, 1922.” London, 1922.
Spencer, Herbert. “First Principles,” “Principles of Biology,”
“Principles of Sociology.”
Thorndike, E. L., ’11. “Animal Intelligence.” New York, 1911.
Trotter, W., ’19. “Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War” (2nd
Ed.). London, 1919.
Wells, H. G., ’21. “The Outline of History.” London, 1921.
FOOTNOTES:
[18] For a remarkable critical history of biological thought during
this period, see Radl, ’09.
[19] Morley Roberts is a recent exception. See his interesting book,
_Warfare in the Human Body_.
[20] _Science_, September 1921.
[21] See Thorndike, ’11.
[22] See J. S. Huxley, ’12, for a discussion of the grades of
biological individuality.
[23] See, e.g., Wells, ’21, pp. 558, 666.
[24] See Roux, ’81, for a discussion of this important extension of
Darwinism.
[25] See Thorndike, _op. cit._; Washburn, _The Animal Mind_. New York,
1913.
III
ILS N’ONT QUE DE L’ÂME: AN ESSAY ON BIRD-MIND
THE BIRDS
To most of us, a bird’s a feathered song
Which for our pleasure gives a voice to spring.
We make a symbol of its airy wing
Bright with the liberty for which we long.
Or we discover them with love more strong
As each a separate, individual thing
Which only learns to act, or move, or sing
In ways that wholly to itself belong.
But some with deeper and more inward sight
See them a part of that one Life which streams
Slow on, towards more mind--a part more light
Then we; unburdened with regrets, or dreams,
Or thought. A winged emotion of the sky,
The birds through an eternal Present fly.
OXFORD, _April 1923_.
ILS N’ONT QUE DE L’ÂME: AN ESSAY ON BIRD-MIND
“O Nightingale, thou surely art
A creature of a fiery heart.”
--W. WORDSWORTH.
“The inferior animals, when the conditions of life are favourable,
are subject to periodical fits of gladness, affecting them
powerfully and standing out in vivid contrast to their ordinary
temper.... Birds are more subject to this universal joyous
instinct than mammals, and ... as they are much freer than
mammals, more buoyant and graceful in action, more loquacious,
and have voices so much finer, their gladness shows itself in a
greater variety of ways, with more regular and beautiful motions,
and with melody.”--W. H. HUDSON.
“How do you know but ev’ry Bird that cuts the airy way
Is an immense world of delight, clos’d by your senses five?”
--BLAKE.
“_Ils n’ont pas de cerveau--ils n’ont que de l’âme._” A dog was
being described, with all his emotion, his apparent passion to make
himself understood, his failure to reach comprehension; and that was
how the French man of letters summed up the brute creation--“_pas de
cerveau--que de l’âme_.”
Nor is it a paradox: it is a half-truth that is more than half
true--more true at least than its converse, which many hold.
There is a large school to-day who assert that animals are “mere
machines.” Machines they may be: it is the qualification which does
not fit. I suppose that by saying “mere” machines it is meant to imply
that they have the soulless, steely quality of a machine which goes
when it is set going, stops when another lever is turned, acts only in
obedience to outer stimuli, and is in fact unemotional--a bundle of
operations without any quality meriting the name of a self.
It is true that the further we push our analysis of animal behaviour,
the more we find it composed of a series of automatisms, the more we
see it rigorously determined by combination of inner constitution
and outer circumstance, the more we have cause to deny to animals
the possession of anything deserving the name of reason, ideals, or
abstract thought. The more, in fact, do they appear to us as mechanisms
(which is a much better word than machines, since this latter carries
with it definite connotations of metal or wood, electricity or steam).
They are mechanisms, because their mode of operation is regular; but
they differ from any other type of mechanism known to us in that their
working is--to put it in the most non-committal way--accompanied by
emotion. It is, to be sure, a combination of emotion with reason that
we attribute to a soul; but none the less, in popular parlance at
least, the emotional side is predominant, and pure reason is set over
against the emotional content which gives soul its essence. And this
emotional content we most definitely find running through the lives of
higher animals.
The objection is easily and often raised that we have no direct
knowledge of emotion in an animal, no direct proof of the existence of
any purely mental process in its life. But this is as easily laid as
raised. We have no direct knowledge of emotion or any other conscious
process in the life of any human being save our individual selves;
and yet we feel no hesitation in deducing it from others’ behaviour.
Although it is an arguable point whether biological science may not for
the moment be better served by confining the subject-matter and terms
of analysis to behaviour alone, it is a very foolhardy “behaviorist”
indeed who denies the _existence_ of emotion and conscious process!
But the practical value of this method of thinking is, as I say, an
arguable point; it is indeed clear that a great immediate advance,
especially in non-human biology, has been and may still be made
by translating the uncertain and often risky terms of subjective
psychology into those based upon the objective description of directly
observable behaviour. However, it is equally easy to maintain, and I
for one maintain it, that to omit a whole category of phenomena from
consideration is unscientific, and must in the long run lead to an
unreal, because limited, view of things; and that, when great detail of
analysis is not required, but only broad lines and general comparison,
the psychological terminology, of memory, fear, anger, curiosity,
affection, is the simpler and more direct tool, and should be used
to supplement and make more real the cumbersome and less complete
behavioristic terminology, of modification of behaviour, fright,
aggression, and the rest.
It is at least abundantly clear that, if we are to believe in the
principle of uniformity at all, we must ascribe emotion to animals as
well as to men: the similarity of behaviour is so great that to assert
the absence of a whole class of phenomena in one case, its presence in
the other, is to make scientific reasoning a farce.
“_Pas de cerveau--que de l’âme._” Those especially who have studied
birds will subscribe to this. The variety of their emotions is greater,
their intensity more striking, than in four-footed beasts, while their
power of modifying behaviour by experience is less, the subjection
to instinct more complete. Those who are interested in the details
can see from experiments, such as those recorded by Mr. Eliot Howard
in his _Territory in Bird Life_, how limited is a bird’s power of
adjustment; but I will content myself with a single example, one of
nature’s experiments, recorded by Mr. Chance last year by the aid of
the cinematograph--the behaviour of small birds when the routine of
their life is upset by the presence of a young Cuckoo in the nest.
When, after prodigious exertions, the unfledged Cuckoo has ejected its
foster-brothers and sisters from their home, it sometimes happens that
one of them is caught on or close to the rim of the nest. One such
case was recorded by Mr. Chance’s camera. The unfortunate fledgling
scrambled about on the branches below the nest; the parent Pipit flew
back with food; the cries and open mouth of the ejected bird attracted
attention, and it was fed; and the mother then settled down upon the
nest as if all was in normal order. Meanwhile, the movements of the
fledgling in the foreground grew feebler, and one could imagine its
voice quavering off, fainter and fainter, as its vital warmth departed.
At the next return of the parent with food the young one was dead.
It was the utter stupidity of the mother that was so impressive--its
simple response to stimulus--of feeding to the stimulus of the young’s
cry and open mouth, of brooding to that of the nest with something warm
and feathery contained in it--its neglect of any steps whatsoever to
restore the fallen nestling to safety. It was almost as pitiable an
exhibition of unreason as the well-attested case of the wasp attendant
on a wasp-grub, who, on being kept without food for some time, grew
more and more restless, and eventually bit off the hind end of the grub
and offered it to what was left!
Birds in general are stupid, in the sense of being little able to
meet unforeseen emergencies; but their lives are often emotional, and
their emotions are richly and finely expressed. I have for years been
interested in observing the courtship and the relations of the sexes
in birds, and have in my head a number of pictures of their notable and
dramatic moments. These seem to me to illustrate so well the emotional
furnishing of birds, and to provide such a number of windows into that
strange thing we call a bird’s mind, that I shall simply set some of
them down as they come to me.
First, then, the coastal plain of Louisiana; a pond, made and kept as
a sanctuary by that public-spirited bird-lover Mr. E. A. McIlhenny,
filled with noisy crowds of Egrets and little egret-like Herons.
These, in great flocks, fly back across the “Mexique Bay” in the
spring months from their winter quarters in South America. Arrived in
Louisiana, they feed and roost in flocks for a time, but gradually
split up into pairs. Each pair, detaching themselves from the flocks,
choose a nesting-site (by joint deliberation) among the willows and
maples of the breeding pond. And then follows a curious phenomenon.
Instead of proceeding at once to biological business in the shape of
nest-building and egg-laying, they indulge in what can only be styled
a honeymoon. For three or four days both members of the pair are
always on the chosen spot, save for the necessary visits which they
alternately pay to the distant feeding grounds. When both are there,
they will spend hours at a time sitting quite still, just touching
one another. Generally the hen sits on a lower branch, resting her
head against the cock bird’s flanks; they look for all the world like
one of those inarticulate but happy couples upon a bench in the park
in spring. Now and again, however, this passivity of sentiment gives
place to wild excitement. Upon some unascertainable cause the two birds
raise their necks and wings, and, with loud cries, intertwine their
necks. This is so remarkable a sight that the first time I witnessed
it I did not fully credit it, and only after it had happened before my
eyes on three or four separate occasions was I forced to admit it as
a regular occurrence in their lives. The long necks are so flexible
that they can and do make a complete single turn round each other--a
real true-lover’s-knot! This once accomplished, each bird then--most
wonderful of all--runs its beak quickly and amorously through the just
raised aigrettes of the other, again and again, nibbling and clappering
them from base to tip. Of this I can only say that it seemed to bring
such a pitch of emotion that I could have wished to be a Heron that
I might experience it. This over, they would untwist their necks and
subside once more into their usual quieter sentimentality.
This, alas! I never saw with the less common little White Egrets, but
with the Louisiana Heron (which should, strictly speaking, be called an
egret too); but since every other action of the two species is (in all
save a few minor details) the same, I assume that the flashing white,
as well as the slate and vinous and grey birds, behave thus.
The greeting ceremony when one bird of the pair, after having been
away at the feeding grounds, rejoins its mate is also beautiful. Some
little time before the human watcher notes the other’s approach, the
waiting bird rises on its branch, arches and spreads its wings, lifts
its aigrettes into a fan and its head-plumes into a crown, bristles up
the feathers of its neck, and emits again and again a hoarse cry. The
other approaches, settles in the branches near by, puts itself into
a similar position, and advances towards its mate; and after a short
excited space they settle down close together. This type of greeting is
repeated every day until the young leave the nest; for after the eggs
are laid both sexes brood, and there is a nest-relief four times in
every twenty-four hours. Each time the same attitudes, the same cries,
the same excitement; only now at the end of it all, one steps off the
nest, the other on. One might suppose that this closed the performance.
But no: the bird that has been relieved is still apparently animated
by stores of unexpended emotion; it searches about for a twig, breaks
it off or picks it up, and returns with it in beak to present to the
other. During the presentation the greeting ceremony is again gone
through; after each relief the whole business of presentation and
greeting may be repeated two, or four, or up even to ten or eleven
times before the free bird flies away.
When there are numerous repetitions of the ceremony, it is extremely
interesting to watch the progressive extinction of excitement. During
the last one or two presentations the twig-bringing bird may scarcely
raise his wings or plumes, and will often betray an absent air, turning
his head in the direction in which he is proposing to fly off.
No one who has seen a pair of Egrets thus change places on the nest,
bodies bowed forward, plumes a cloudy fan of lace, absolute whiteness
of plumage relieved by gold of eye and lore and black of bill, and the
whole scene animated by the repeated, excited cry, can ever forget it.
But such unforgettable scenes are not confined to other countries. Here
in England you can see as good; I have seen them on the reservoirs of
Tring, and within full view of the road by Frensham Pond--the courtship
forms and dances of the Crested Grebe.