ANIMAL SENSATION AND PERCEPTION.
All animals communicate with each other and with the external world
through their senses, and by means of their perception, both internal
and external, they possess knowledge and apprehension of one another. In
the vast organic series of the animal kingdom, some are better provided
than others with methods, instruments, and apparatus fit for effecting
such communication. The senses of relation are not found in the same
degree in all animals, nor when such senses are the same in number are
they endowed with equal intensity, acuteness, and precision. But the
fundamental fact remains the same in all cases; they communicate with
themselves and with the external world through their senses.
We must now inquire what value the external object of perception,
considered in itself, has for the animal, what character it has and
assumes with respect to his inner sense in the act of perception or
apprehension. Man, and especially man in our days, after so many ages
of reflection, and through the influence of contemporary science, is so
far removed from the primitive and simple exercise of his psychical
life, that he finds it difficult to picture to himself the ancient and
spontaneous conditions under which his senses communicated with the
world and with himself. And therefore, without further consideration, he
thinks and believes that in primeval times everything took place in the
same way as it does at present, and, which is a still greater error, as
it takes place in the lower animals.
This identification of the complex machinery of human perception with
that of animals must not be regarded as an absurd paradox, since, as we
have shown in an earlier work, they were originally and in themselves
the same.[8] By pursuing an easy mode of observation, divested of
prejudice, we may revert to that primeval state of human nature, and may
also comprehend with truth and certainty the condition of animals. For
the animal nature has not ceased to exist in man, and it may be
discerned by those who care to look for it; and careful study, with the
constant aid of observation and experiment, will reveal to us the hidden
life of sensation and intelligence in the lower animals.
There is a continual self-consciousness in all animals; it is
inseparable from all their internal and external acts, from every fact,
passion, and emotion; and this is clear and obvious. This fundamental
and persistent self-consciousness--persistent in dreams, and even in the
calmest sleep, which is always accompanied by a vague sensation--is the
consciousness of a living subject, active, impressionable, exercising
his will, capable of emotions and passions. It is not the consciousness
of an inert thing, passive, dead, or extrinsic; for animal life consists
in sensation of greater or less intensity, but always of sensation.
Consequently, such a consciousness signifies for the animal a constant
apprehension of an active faculty exercised intrinsically in himself,
and it makes his life into a mobile drama, of which he is implicitly
conscious, of acts and emotions, of impulses, desires, and suspicions.
This inward form of emotional life and psychical and organic action,
into which the whole value of personal existence is resolved, may be
said to invest and modify all the animal's active relations to the
external world, which it vivifies and modifies according to its own
image. The subsequent act of doubling the faculties which takes place in
man does not occur in the animal; a process which modifies through the
intellect the spontaneous and primitive act. Consequently, the active
and inward sense which is peculiar to the animal is renewed in him by
the external things and phenomena of nature which stimulate and excite
him.
Two kinds of things present themselves to his perception: other animals,
of whatever species, and the inanimate objects of the world. As far as
the other animals are concerned, which are obvious to his perception, it
is perfectly evident that upon these he will project his whole internal
life of consciousness and emotions, and will feel their identity with
himself by his implicit and intuitive judgment. And in fact, the
movements, sounds, gestures, and forms of other animals necessarily
cause this sense of inward psychical identity, whence arises the
implicit notion of an animated and personal subject. Any one who
observes, however superficially, the conduct of animals to each other
when they first meet, cannot doubt this truth for an instant.
Although the external form and character of the animal perceived are
important factors of the implicit notion of an animated personal
subject, this belief is even more due to the animal's inward
consciousness of himself as a living subject which is reflected in the
extrinsic form of the other and is identified with it. The spontaneous
and personal psychical effort does not decompose the object perceived
into its proper elements by means of reflex attention, but it is
immediately projected on those phenomena which assume a form analogous
to the sentient subject.
The fact of this law must never be forgotten in the analysis of animal
intelligence and sensation. All those who do not keep clearly in view
the real and genuine character of the sentient and intelligent faculty
in animals are liable to error.
In addition to the perceptions we have mentioned, animals have a
perception of inanimate things, that is, of various bodies and phenomena
of nature. Although the form, motion, and gestures of an analogous and
personal subject are wanting in these cases, so that they do not cause
extrinsically the same implicit idea, neither do they remain, as with a
cultivated and rational man, things and qualities of independent
existence, disconnected with the life of the animal which perceives
them, exerting no intentional efficacy, and governed by necessary laws
by means of which they act and exist.
A cultivated and rational man, by the reflex and calm examination of
things, can correctly distinguish these two classes of subjects and
phenomena, and cannot as a rule be deceived as to their real and
relative value with respect to them and to himself. But when he forgets
his primary intellectual condition, and does not perfectly understand
the permanent condition of animals, he believes that their faculties are
identical, and that things, qualities, and phenomena present the same
appearance to the human and the animal perception. Yet the actual nature
of the thing, so far as it is estimated by our perception as an object
different from ourselves and from any other animal, cannot be so
apprehended by animals which lack the analytical faculty in the
perennial flow of their perceptions; the actual and inanimate thing is
presented to them only by the intrinsic, peculiar, personal, and
psychical quality of the animal itself.
If form, and characteristic and deliberate action, are wanting to the
substances and phenomena of inanimate nature, qualities which more
readily arouse in animals the idea of a subject resembling and analogous
to themselves, yet there always remains the apprehension of some sort of
form in which--not distinguished from the others by reflex action--the
inward faculty of sensation and emotion is repeated and impersonated by
the perceiving animal. Thus every form, every object, every external
phenomenon becomes vivified and animated by the intrinsic consciousness
and personal psychical faculty of the animal itself. Every object, fact,
and phenomenon of nature will not merely appear to him as the real
object which it is, but he will necessarily perceive it as a living and
deliberating power, capable of affecting him agreeably or injuriously.
Every one is aware of the jealous, suspicious nature of animals, and
that they are not only inquisitive about other animals, but about every
material object which they see unexpectedly, which moves in an unusual
way, or which interferes with or injures them.
It must have been often observed how they turn against any object which
has chanced to hurt them, or which has annoyed them by regular and
repeated motions, how they start at the sudden appearance or oscillation
of some unlooked-for thing, at an unusual light, a colour, a stone, a
plant, at the fluttering of branches, of clothes, or weathercocks, at
the rush of water, at the slightest movement or sound in the twilight,
or in the darkness of night. They look about, and consider all things
and phenomena as subjects actuated by will, and as having an immediate
influence on their lives, either beneficent or injurious.
Undoubtedly they do, as a rule, by means of their implicit judgment,
distinguish animals as of a different type from other objects, but they
transfuse into everything their own personality and their intrinsic
consciousness. This is the case with the whole animal kingdom, at least
with those whose internal emotion can be gathered from their external
movements and gestures.
An animal is sometimes aware that an enemy which may lie in wait for and
destroy him has approached the neighbourhood of his haunts, or at any
rate may interfere with the freedom of his ordinary life, and he
withdraws as far as he can from this new peril or injury, and seeks to
defend himself from the malice of his enemy by special arts. In this
case, the external subject or thing is what his own objective sense
conceives it to be, and his inward perception corresponds to an actual
cosmic reality.
Suppose that instead of this, the neighbourhood of a fierce fire, or
violent rain and hail, or a stormy wind, or some other natural
phenomenon, surprises or injures such creatures; these facts do not
affect them as if they were merely occurrences in accordance with cosmic
laws, for such a simple conception of things is not grasped by them.
Such phenomena of nature are regarded by animals as living subjects,
actuated by a concrete and deliberate purpose of ill-will towards them.
Any one who has observed animals as I have done for many years, both in
a wild and domestic state, and under every variety of conditions and
circumstances, will readily admit the fact.
This truth, which clearly appears from an accurate analysis of facts,
and from experiments, can also be demonstrated by the arguments of
reason. Since animals have no conception of the purely cosmic reality of
the phenomena and laws which constitute nature, it follows that such a
reality must appear to their inner consciousness in its various effects
as a subject vaguely identical with their own psychical nature. Hence
they regard nature as if she were inspired with the same life, will, and
purpose, as those which they themselves exercise, and of which they have
an immediate and intrinsic consciousness.
It is true that after long experience animals become accustomed to
regard as harmless the phenomena, objects, and forces by which they were
at first sympathetically excited and terrified. Of this we have
innumerable examples both among wild and domestic animals; but although
suspicion and anxiety are subdued by habit and experience, yet these
objects and phenomena are not thereby transformed into pure and simple
realities. In the same way, if they are at first frightened by the sight
and companionship of some other species or object, habit and experience
gradually calm their fears and suspicions, and the association or
neighbourhood may even become agreeable to them. I have often observed
that different species, both when at liberty and in confinement, are
affected by the most lively surprise and perturbation when some new
phenomenon has startled them; they act as if it were really a living and
insidious subject, and then they gradually become calm and quiet, and
regard it as some indifferent or beneficent power.
I must adduce some observations and experiments from the many I have
made on this subject. It may be objected that if animals in their
spontaneous perception personify the object in question, they would give
signs of this fact with respect to all the objects with which they come
in contact, and among which they live, and yet they remain indifferent
to many of them, which is a proof that they distinguish the animate from
the inanimate. In fact it cannot be disputed that a vast number of the
phenomena and objects of nature are regarded by animals with
indifference; they are perceived by them, but it does not appear that
they suppose these things to be endowed with life. It is, however,
necessary in the first place to distinguish two modes and stages in this
animation of things, one of which we may term static, and the other
dynamic. In the first instance, the sentient subject remains tranquil at
the very moment when he vivifies the phenomenon or the thing perceived;
while the act is accomplished with so much animating force, and with an
implicit and fugitive consciousness, it exerts no immediate and sudden
influence on the perceiving animal, and consequently he gives no
external signs of the personifying character of his perception. In the
second instance, which we have termed dynamic, that is, when the
phenomenon or object has a direct and sudden effect on the animal
himself, he expresses by his movements; gestures, cries, and other
signs, how instantaneously he considers and feels the object in question
to be alive, for he behaves in exactly the same way towards real
animals.
Animals are accustomed to show such indifference towards numerous
objects that it might be supposed that they have an accurate conception
of what is inanimate; but this arises from habit, from long experience,
and partly also from the hereditary disposition of the organism towards
this habit. But if the object should act in any unusual way, then the
animating process which, as we have just said, was rendered static by
its habitual exercise, again becomes dynamic, and the special and
permanent character of the act is at once revealed. We have experience
of this fact in ourselves, although we are now capable of immediately
distinguishing between the animate and the inanimate, and man alone has,
or can have, a rational conception of what are really cosmic objects or
things. Yet if we suddenly and unexpectedly see some object move in a
strange way, which we know from experience to be inanimate, the innate
inclination to personify it takes effect, and for a moment we are
amazed, as if the phenomenon were produced by deliberate power proper to
itself.
I have kept various kinds of animals for several years, in order to
observe them and try experiments at my convenience. I have suddenly
inserted an unfamiliar object in the various cages in which I have kept
birds, rabbits, moles, and other animals. At first sight the animal is
always surprised, timid, curious, or suspicious, and often retreats from
it. By degrees his confidence returns, and after keeping out of the way
for some time, he becomes accustomed to it, and resumes his usual
habits. If then, by a simple arrangement of strings already prepared, I
move the object to and fro, without showing myself, the animal scuttles
about and is much less easily reconciled to its appearance. I have tried
this experiment with various animals, and the result is almost always
the same.
In the cage of a very tame thrush, I made a movable bottom to his
feeding trough, so arranged that by suddenly pulling a cord, the food
which it contained could be raised or lowered. When everything remained
stationary in its place the thrush ate with lively readiness, but as
soon as I raised the food he nearly always flew off in alarm. When the
experiment had been often repeated, he did not like to come near the
feeding trough, and--which is a still stronger proof that he imagined
the food itself to be endowed with life--he often refused to approach,
or only approached in fear the sopped bread which was placed outside the
trough. I tried the same experiment with other birds, and nearly always
with the same result.
On another occasion I repeatedly waved a white handkerchief before a
spirited horse, bringing it close to his eyes; at first he looked at it
suspiciously and shied a little, but without being much discomposed, and
I continued the experiment until he became accustomed to its ordinary
appearance. One day I and a friend went out driving with this horse, and
I directed a man, while we were passing at a moderate pace, to wave the
same handkerchief, attached to a stick, in such a way that his person on
the other side of the hedge was invisible. The horse was scared and
shied violently, and even in the stable he could not see the
handkerchief without trembling, and it was difficult to reconcile him to
the sight of it. I repeated the experiment with slight variations on
other horses, and the issue was always more or less the same.
Again, I placed a scarecrow or bogey in a parti-coloured dress in the
spacious kennel of a hound while he was absent from it. When the dog
wished to return to his kennel, he drew back at the sight of it, and
barked for a long while. After going backwards and forwards, snuffing
suspiciously, he decided to enter, but he remained on the threshold of
the kennel, anxiously inspecting the bogey. In a few days, however, he
became accustomed to it, and was indifferent to its presence. I ought to
add that I had taught him on the first day, by punishment and
admonition, that he must not destroy the bogey. One day when the dog was
lying down I violently moved the puppet's arms by a cord, and he jumped
up and ran barking out of the kennel, soon returning to bark as he had
done at first. Finally, he again became accustomed to it, but whenever I
repeated the movement with greater violence, it took a long while for
him to become reconciled to it.
I put into a room various kinds of wild birds, which had been taken in
nets after they were full grown. The window, which looked upon a garden,
was unglazed, and closed by a wire netting, through which the outer air
entered and was constantly renewed. I placed in the middle of the room a
pot containing a shrub of some size, on which the birds used to perch.
Since they had been reared in the open air they were certainly
accustomed to the wind, and to the way in which it moves trees and
branches, so that they were not alarmed by a phenomenon which they
recognized from experience. I fastened a cord to the head of the shrub
which I passed through a hole in the door, making another to look
through, and in this way I moved it to and fro as the wind might have
done. One day when there was a high wind which could be heard in the
room, and when the current of air through the window was perceptible, I
tried the experiment when the conditions of resemblance were perfect.
And yet when the violent movement and oscillation of the shrub was
combined with the noise of the wind, the frightened birds all fluttered
about, and after repeating the movement, and then allowing it to
subside, they kept away from the shrub and did not dare to settle on it.
At another time, aided by an ingenious young friend, I constructed a toy
windmill, of which the vanes were moved by weights. I placed this toy in
a cage, so arranged that its motions could be regulated from the
outside, and I put into the cage a sparrow, which had been taken from
the nest, and which consequently had no experience of the external
world. Much patience was needed, since the toy required careful
adjustment and was easily thrown out of gear, but I managed it at last.
The sparrow pecked at the little mill as soon as he was put into the
cage, and he grew up accustomed to its motions. I then took the sparrow
out of the cage and put in a finch, which had also been taken from the
nest, but was reared far from such a machine, and he was frightened and
did not reconcile himself to it for some time. I exchanged this bird for
a goldfinch which had been caught after he was full grown, and his alarm
at the little mill was so great that he did not dare to move.
In a ground floor room which I used as my study, I hung an old sheet,
which reached to the ground, on a long spear inserted in a heavy wooden
disk; I surmounted it with a ragged hunting cap, and so arranged the
sheet as to give it some resemblance to the human form. When my dog came
in as usual, he looked suspiciously at the object, snuffing about and
gradually approaching to walk round and observe it. At last he was
satisfied, and curled himself up by the skirts of the bogey, where I had
placed the mat on which he was accustomed to lie when he was with me.
One evening when the moon shone doubtfully and there was just light
enough to distinguish the outline of things, I carried the shapeless
bogey into the garden near my room, and placed it among some shrubs and
bushes. I went back to the house and called my dog, who followed me
quietly until he reached the spot from which he could see the bogey
distinctly enough for him to recognize its identity with the one with
which he was already familiar. As soon as he saw the apparition he
stood still, growling furiously; he began to bark, and when I encouraged
him to come on, he turned round and ran back to the house. I shut up the
dog in another room, brought back the bogey to its former place, and
threw a strong light upon it before recalling the dog. At the first
sight of the bogey the dog paused suspiciously for an instant, but when
I sat down to the table as usual, he hesitated a little and after
snuffing at it went back to his couch.
I have made similar experiments with dogs, rabbits, birds, and other
animals. I took long wooden poles, and put them inside their cages or
hutches in such a way that the animals got to know and feel reconciled
to the sight of them. After some days had elapsed, I contrived, while
screened from sight, to take the poles from their usual place and to
make them touch and annoy the animals with more or less violence, thus
causing them to flutter or scamper about and to shrink away, as if from
the touch of a living person, although they were unable, as I have said,
to see me or my hand. Those which were least agitated sprang forward
with little leaps and looked about them, doubtful and excited. I might
go on to describe many other experiments made with the same object, and
always with the same result, but these are enough to show that I went to
work cautiously and conscientiously, that the spontaneous and innate
personification of the objects perceived by animals is clearly
apparent, and also how we may account for their indifference to those to
which they become accustomed.
Among animals the necessity of finding food is the great and unfailing
stimulus towards the exercise of their vital functions; food which may,
as we all know, be vegetable, animal, or a combination of both kinds. It
is evident that in the case of carnivorous animals the object which
satisfies this desire is a living subject, of which it is necessary to
become possessed by arts, wiles, sometimes by a fierce and cruel
conflict. In these cases, animals are in constant communication with an
animal world resembling their own, and the objective reality is for the
most part resolved into living subjects, endowed with consciousness and
will. But neither is the vegetable food of herbivorous, frugivorous, and
graminivorous animals regarded by them, as it is by us, as a material
and unconscious satisfaction of their wants; these grasses, grains, and
leaves appear to animals to be living powers which it is necessary to
conquer, animated subjects endowed with life, but for the most part
inoffensive, and which, unlike the living prey of carnivora, offer no
resistance.
Observe the way in which an herbivorous or graminivorous animal becomes
excited and angry when the branch or the ear of corn obstinately adheres
to the ground, or offers any other difficulty to his immediate desire of
obtaining food; he acts like one who has to do with a resisting power.
Observe how, when they are quietly stripping the bough, picking out the
grains, or eating the grass, they become suspicious, or fly away if
there should be any unusual movement in the bough, the ears of corn, or
the grass. In one way or another their food is regarded as a subject
endowed with sympathetic and deliberate consciousness. And every one
must have observed that animals at play act towards inanimate objects as
if they were conscious and endowed with will.
Every object of animal perception is therefore felt, or implicitly
assumed, to be a living, conscious, acting subject. This is due to the
external reflection and projection of the intrinsic and sentient
faculty, and therefore--since an animal has not the duplex faculty of
deliberate and reflex attention--he cannot attain to the conception of
simple external reality, of cosmic things and phenomena. Every object,
every phenomenon is for him a deliberating power, a living subject, in
which consciousness and will act as they do in himself. There are
undoubtedly in the vast series of beings which compose the order of
nature, and which he is able to perceive, degrees, differences, and
varieties of energy, power, and efficacy with respect to himself and to
the normal exercise of his life. But he transfuses into all, in
proportion to the effects which result from them, his own nature, and
modifies them in accordance with the intrinsic form of his
consciousness, his emotions, and his instincts.
The external world appears to animals to be a great and mighty movement
and congeries of living, conscious, deliberating beings, and the value
of the phenomenon or thing is great in proportion to its effect on the
animal itself. The objective and simple reality, as it appears to man,
has no existence for animals; from the nature of their intelligence they
cannot attain to any explicit conception of it, so that this reality is
resolved and modified into their own image. The eternal and infinite
flux, by which all things come and go in obedience to laws which are
permanent and enduring, appears to animals to be a vast and confused
dramatic company in which the subjects, with or without organic form,
are always active, working in and through themselves, with benign or
malignant, pleasing or hurtful influence. It is for this reason, and
this reason only, that their life of consciousness and of relation is so
deeply seated and so readily excited. Nor do animals ever believe
themselves to be alone among inanimate things; even when not surrounded
by allied or different species, they have the sense of living amid the
manifold forms of conscious and deliberating life which the world
contains.
This constant and deliberate animation of all the objects and phenomena
of nature is spontaneous and necessary owing to the psychical and
organic constitution of the animal kingdom, and it resolves itself into
a universal personification of the phenomena themselves. In fact, the
animal's intrinsic psychical personality is infused and transformed
into each of them with more or less intensity and vigour; the phenomena
are perceived by each individual just as far as he assimilates them, and
he is constantly assimilating himself to them. His communication with
the external world is in proportion with its internal reflection on
himself, and he understands just as much as his own nature enables him
to grasp.
A careful consideration therefore shows that the conditions of animal
knowledge consist in endowing the phenomena and objects of nature with
consciousness and will. I think that this truth will prove a certain
guide and beacon in the interpretation of the origin of myth and science
in man.