amusing illustrations of this fact of our two sights; but it is not
necessary to go so far afield for illustrations, or to insist on a
thing so familiar. "The shepherd knows his sheep," is a saying just as
true of this country--of Scotland, at all events--as of the far East.
Detectives, also military men who take an interest in their profession,
see faces more sharply than most people, and remember them as distinctly
as others remember the faces of a very limited number of individuals--of
those they love or fear or constantly associate with. Sailors see
atmospheric changes which are not apparent to others; and, in like
manner, the physician detects the signs of malady in faces which to the
uninstructed vision seem healthy enough. And so on through the whole
range of professions and pursuits which men have: each person inhabits a
little world of his own, as it were, which to others is only part of the
distant general blueness obscuring all things, but in which, to him,
every object stands out with wonderful clearness, and plainly tells its
story.
All this may sound very trite, very trivial and matter of common
knowledge--so common as to be known to every schoolboy and to the boy
that goeth not to school; yet it is because this simple familiar fact
has been ignored, or has not always been borne in mind by our masters,
that they have taught us an error, namely, that savages are our
superiors in visual power, and that the difference is so great that ours
is a dim decaying sense compared with their brilliant faculty, and that
only when we survey the prospect through powerful field-glasses do we
rise to their level and see the world as they see it. The truth is that
the savage sight is no better than ours, although it might seem natural
enough to think the contrary, on account of their simple natural life in
the desert, which is always green and restful to the eye, or supposed to
be so; and because they have no gas nor even candlelight to irritate the
visual nerve, and do themselves no injury by poring over miserable
books.
Possibly, then, the beginning of the error was in this preconceived
notion, that greenness and the absence of artificial light, with other
conditions of a primitive life, kept the sight from deteriorating. The
eye's adaptiveness did not get sufficient credit. We know how the
muscles may be developed by training, that the blacksmith and
prizefighter have mightier arms than others; but it was perhaps assumed
that the complex structure and extreme delicacy of the eye would make it
less adaptive than other and coarser organs. Whatever the origin of the
error may have been, it is certain that it has received the approval of
scientists, and that they never open their lips on the subject except to
give it fresh confirmation. Their researches have brought to light a
great variety of eye-troubles, which, in many cases, are not troublesome
at all, until they are discovered, named with a startling name and
described in terms very alarming to persons of timid character.
Frequently they are not maladies, but inherited defects, like bandy
legs, prominent teeth, crushed toes, tender skin and numberless other
malformations. That such eye-defects are as common among savages as
among ourselves, I do not say, and to this matter I shall return later
on; but until the eyes of savages are scientifically examined, it seems
a very bold thing to say that defective colour-sense is due to the
inimical conditions of our civilization; for we know as little about the
colour-sense of savages as we do about the colour-sense of the old
Greeks. That the savage sight is vastly more powerful than ours was
perhaps not so bold a thing to say, seeing that in this matter our
teachers were misled by travellers' tales, and perhaps by other
considerations, as, for instance, the absence of artificial aids to
sight among the children of nature. The redskin may be very old, but as
he sits sunning himself before his wigwam in the early morning he is
never observed to trombone his newspaper.
The reader may spare himself the trouble of smiling, for this is not
mere supposition; in this case observation came first and reflection
afterwards, for I happen to know something of savages from experience,
and when they were using their eyes in their way and for their purposes,
I used mine for my purpose, which was different. It is true that the
redskin will point you out an object in the distance and tell its
character, and it will be to your sight only a dark-coloured object,
which might be a bush, or stone, or animal of some large kind, or even a
house. The secret of the difference is that his eye is trained and
accustomed to see certain things, which he looks for and expects to
find. Put him where the conditions are new to him and he will be at
fault; or even on his native heath, set before him an unfamiliar or
unexpected object, and he will show no superiority over his civilized
brother. I have witnessed one instance in which not one but five men
were all at fault and made a wrong guess; while the one person of our
party who guessed correctly, or saw better perhaps, was a child of
civilization and a reader of books, and, what is perhaps even more, the
descendant of a long line of bookish men. This amazed me at the moment,
for until then my childlike faith in the ideas of Humboldt and of the
world generally on the subject had never been disturbed. Now I see how
this curious thing happened. The object was at such a distance that to
all of us alike it presented no definite form, but was merely something
dark, standing against a hoary background of tall grass-plumes. Our
guides, principally regarding its size, at once guessed it to be an
animal which they no doubt expected to find in that place--namely, a
wild horse. The other, who did not have that training of the eye and
mind for distant objects in the desert which is like an instinct, and,
like instinct, is liable to mistakes, and who carefully studied its
appearance for himself, pronounced it to be a dark bush. When we got
near it turned out to be a clump of tall bulrushes, growing in a place
where they had no business to grow, and burnt by drought and frosts to
so dark a brown that at a distance they seemed quite black.
In the following case the savage was right. I pointed out an object,
dark, far off, so low down as to be just visible above the tall grasses,
passing with a falling and rising motion like that of a horseman going
at a swinging gallop. "There goes a mounted man," I remarked. "No--a
traru," returned my companion, after one swift glance; the traru being a
large, black, eagle-like bird of the plains. But the object was not
necessarily more distinct to him than to me; he could not see wings and
beak at that distance; but the traru was a familiar object, which he was
accustomed to see at all distances--a figure in the landscape which he
looked for and expected to find. It was only a dark blot on the horizon;
but he knew the animal's habits and appearance, and that when seen far
off, in its low down, dilatory rising and falling flight, it simulates
the appearance of a horseman in full gallop. To know this and a few
other things was his vocation. If one had set him to find a reversed
little _s_ in the middle of a closely-printed page the tears would have
run down his bronzed cheeks, and he would have abandoned the vain quest
with aching eyeballs. Yet the proofreader can find the little _s_ in a
few moments, without straining his sight. But it is infinitely more
important to the savage than to us to see things quickly and guess their
nature correctly. His daily food, the recovery of his lost animals and
his personal safety depend on it; and it is not, therefore, strange that
every blot of dark colour, every moving and motionless object on the
horizon tells its story better to him than to a stranger; especially
when we consider how small a variety of objects he is called on to see
and judge of in the level monotonous region he inhabits.
This quick judging of dimly seen distant things, the eye and mind
achievement of the mounted barbarian on the unobstructed plains, is not
nearly so admirable as that of his fellow-savage in sub-tropical regions
overspread with dense vegetation, with animal life in great abundance
and variety and where half the attention must be given to species
dangerous to man, often very small in size. In some hot humid forest
districts, the European who should attempt to hunt or explore with bare
feet and legs would be pricked or lacerated at almost every step of his
progress, and probably get bitten by a serpent before the day's end. Yet
the Indian passes his life there and, naked or half-naked, explores the
unknown wilderness of thorns and has only his arrows to provide food for
himself and his wife and children. He does not get pierced with thorns
and bitten by serpents, because his eye is nicely trained to pick them
out in time to save himself. He walks rapidly, but he knows every shade
of green, every smooth and crinkled leaf in that dense tangle, full of
snares and deceptions, through which he is obliged to walk; and much as
leaf resembles leaf, he sets his foot where he can safely set it, or,
quickly choosing between two evils, where the prickles and thorns are
tenderest, or, for some reason known to him, hurt least. In like manner
he distinguishes the coiled-up venomous snake, although it lies so
motionless--a habit common to the most deadly kinds--and in its dull
imitative colouring is so difficult to be distinguished on the brown
earth, and among gray sticks and sere and variegated leaves.
A friend of mine, Fontana of Buenos Ayres, who has a life-long
acquaintance with the Argentine Indians, expresses the opinion that at
the age of twelve years the savage of the Pampas has completed his
education and is thereafter able to take care of himself; but that the
savage of the Gran Chaco--the sub-tropical Argentine territory bordering
on Paraguay and Bolivia,--if left to shift for himself at that age would
speedily perish, since he is then only in the middle of his long,
difficult and painful apprenticeship. It was curious and pitiful, he
says, to see the little Indian children in the Chaco, when their skins
were yet tender, stealing away from their mother and trying to follow
the larger ones playing at a distance. At every step they would fall and
get pricked with thorns or cut with sharp-edged rushes and tangled in
the creepers, and hurt and crying they would struggle on and in this
painful manner at last learn where to set their feet.
The snake on the ground, coloured like the ground and shaped like the
dead curved sticks or vines seen everywhere on the ground, and
motionless like the vine, does not more closely assimilate to its
surroundings than birds in trees often do--the birds which the Indian
must also see. A stranger in these regions, even the naturalist with a
sight quickened by enthusiasm, finds it hard to detect a parrot in a
lofty tree, even when he knows that parrots are there; for their
greenness in the green foliage and the correlated habit they possess of
remaining silent and motionless in the presence of an intruder, make
them invisible to him, and he is astonished that the Indian should be
able to detect them. The Indian knows how to look for them; it is his
trade, which is long to learn; but he is obliged to learn it, for his
success in life, and even life itself, depends on it, since in the
savage state Nature kills those who fail in her competitive
examinations.
The reader has doubtless often seen those little picture-puzzles,
variously labelled "Where's the Cat?" or "Mad Bull," or "Burglar," or
"Policeman," or "Snake in the Grass," etc., in which the thing named and
to be discovered is formed by branches and foliage and by running water
and drapery and lights and shadows in the sketch. At first one finds it
extremely difficult to detect this picture within a picture; and at
last, with the suddenness with which one invariably detects a
dull-coloured snake, seen previously but not distinguished--the object
sought for appears, and is thereafter so plain to the eye that one
cannot look at the sketch, even held at a distance, without seeing the
cat or policeman, or whatever it happens to be. And after patiently
studying some scores or hundreds of these puzzles one gets to know just
how to find the thing concealed, and finds it quickly--almost at a
glance at last. Now, the ingenious person that first invented this
pretty puzzle probably had no thought of Nature, with her curious
imitative and protective resemblances, in his mind; yet he might very
well have taken the hint from Nature, for this is what she does. The
animal that must be seen to be avoided, and the animal that must be seen
to be taken, are there in her picture, sketched in with such cunning art
that to the uninstructed eye they form only portions of branch and
foliage and shadow and sunlight above, and dull-hued or variegated earth
and stones and dead and withering herbage underneath.
It is possible that slight differences may exist in the seeing powers of
different nations, due to the effect of physical conditions: thus, the
inhabitants of mountainous districts and of dry elevated tablelands may
have a better sight than dwellers in low, humid and level regions,
although just the reverse may be the case. Among European nations the
Germans are generally supposed to have weak eyes, owing, some imagine,
to their excessive indulgence in tobacco, while others attribute the
supposed decay to the form of type used in their books, which requires
closer looking at than ours in reading. That they will deteriorate still
further in this direction, and from being a spectacled people become a
blind one, to the joy of their enemies, is not likely to happen, and
probably the decadence has been a great deal exaggerated. Animals living
in darkness become near-sighted, and then nearer-sighted still and so on
progressively until the vanishing point is reached. In a community or
nation a similar decline might begin from much reading of German books,
or perpetual smoking of pipes with big china bowls, or from some other
unknown cause; but the decay could not progress far, because there is
nothing in man to take the place of sight, as there is in the blind cave
rats and fishes and insects. And if we could survey mankind from China
to Peru with all the scientific appliances which are brought to bear on
the Board-school children in London and on the nation generally, the
differences in the powers of vision in the various races, nations and
tribes would probably appear very insignificant. The mistake which eye
specialists and writers on the eye make is that they think too much
about the eye. When they affirm that the conditions of our civilization
are highly injurious to the sight, do they mean all the million
conditions or sets of conditions embraced by our system, with the
infinite variety of occupations and modes of living which men have, from
the lighthouse-keeper to the worker underground, whose day is the dim
glimmer of a miner's lamp? "An organ exercised beyond its wont will grow
and thus meet increase of demand by increase of supply," Herbert Spencer
says; but, he adds, there is a limit soon reached, beyond which it is
impossible to go. This increase of demand with us is everywhere--now on
this organ and now on that, according to our work and way of life, and
the eye is in no worse case than the other organs. There are among us
many cases of heart complaint; civilization, in such cases, has put too
great a strain on that organ, and it has reached the limit beyond which
it cannot go. And so with the eye. The total number of the defective
among us is no doubt very large, for we know that our system of life
retards--it cannot effectually prevent--the healthy action of natural
selection. Nature pulls one way and we pull the other, compassionately
trying to save the unfit from the consequences of their unfitness. The
humane instinct compels us; but the cruel instinct of the savage, who
hates the sick and the unfit as the inferior animals do, is less painful
to contemplate than that mistaken or perverted compassion which seeks to
perpetuate unfitness, and in the interest of suffering individuals
inflicts a lasting injury on the race.
Pelleschi, in his admirable book on the Chaco Indians, says that
malformations are never seen in these savages, that physically they are
all perfect men; and he remarks that in their exceedingly hard struggle
for existence in a thorny wilderness, beset with perils, any bodily
defect or ailment would be fatal. And as the eye in their life is the
most important organ, it must be an eye without flaw. In this
circumstance only do savages differ from us--namely, in the absence or
rarity of defective eyes among them; and when those who, like Mr.
Brudenell Carter, believe in the decadence of the eye in civilized man
quote Humboldt's words about the miraculous sight of South American
savages, they quote an error. It is not strange that Humboldt should
have fallen into it, for, after all, he had only the means which we all
possess of finding out things--a limited sight and a fallible mind. Like
the savage, he had trained his faculties to observe and infer, and his
inferences like those of the savages, were sometimes wrong.
The savage sight is no better than ours for the simple reason that a
better is not required. Nature has given to him, as to all her
creatures, only what was necessary and nothing for ostentation. Standing
on the ground, his horizon is a limited one; and the animals he preys
on, if often sharper-eyed and swifter than he, are without intelligence,
and thus things are made equal. He can see the rhea as far as the rhea
can see him; and if he possessed the eagle's far-seeing faculty it would
be of no advantage to him. The high-soaring eagle requires to see very
far, but the low-flying owl is near-sighted. And so on through the
whole animal world: each kind has sight sufficient to find its food and
escape from its enemies, and nothing beyond. Animals that live close to
the surface have a very limited sight. Moreover, other faculties may
usurp the eye's place, or develop so greatly as to make the eye of only
secondary importance as an organ of intelligence. The snake offers a
curious case. No other sense seems to have developed in it, yet I take
the snake to be one of the nearest-sighted creatures in existence. From
long observation of them I am convinced that small snakes of very
sluggish habits do not see distinctly farther than from one to three
yards. But the snake is the champion faster in the animal world and can
afford to lie quiescent until the wind of chance blows something eatable
in its way; hence it does not require to see an object distinctly until
almost within striking distance. Another remarkable case is that of the
armadillo. Of two species I can confidently say that, if they are not
blind, they are next door to blindness; yet they are diurnal animals
that go abroad in the full glare of noon and wander far in search of
food. But their sense of smell is marvellously acute, and, as in the
case of the mole, it has made sight superfluous. To come back to man:
if, in a state of nature, he is able to guess the character of objects
nine times in ten, or nineteen in twenty, seen as far off as he requires
to see anything, his intellectual faculties make a better sight
unnecessary. If the armadillo's scent had not been so keen and man had
not been gifted with nimble brains, the sight in both cases would have
been vastly stronger; but the sharpening of its sense of smell has
dimmed the armadillo's eyes and made him blinder than a snake; while man
(from no fault of his own) is unable to see farther than the wolf and
the ostrich and the wild ass.
MECHANISM IN THOUGHT AND MORALS
DR. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
[Dr. Holmes was at once a distinguished physician, poet,
novelist, and wit. His "Autocrat of the Breakfast Table" is
one of the most charming books ever written, his poetry and
essays are of even greater popularity. Dr. Holmes's Works are
published in fourteen volumes by Houghton, Mifflin & Co.,
Boston and New York, copyright in various editions. The essay
from which extracts follow is in the eighth volume.]
Do we ever think without knowing that we are thinking? The question may
be disguised so as to look a little less paradoxical. Are there any
mental processes of which we are unconscious at the time, but which we
recognize as having taken place by finding certain results in our minds?
That there are such unconscious mental actions is laid down in the
strongest terms by Leibnitz, whose doctrine reverses the axiom of
Descartes into _I am, therefore I think_. The existence of unconscious
thought is maintained by him in terms we might fairly call audacious,
and illustrated by some of the most striking facts bearing upon it. The
"insensible perceptions," he says, are as important in pneumatology
[spiritual philosophy] as corpuscles are in physics.--It does not
follow, he says again, that, because we do not perceive thought, it
does not exist.--Something goes on in the mind which answers to the
circulation of the blood and all the internal movements of the
viscera.--In one word, it is a great source of error to believe that
there is no perception in the mind but those of which it is conscious.
This is surely a sufficiently explicit and peremptory statement of the
doctrine, which, under the names of "latent consciousness," "obscure
perceptions," "the hidden soul," "unconscious cerebration," "reflex
action of the brain," has been of late years emerging into general
recognition in treatises of psychology and physiology.
His allusion to the circulation of the blood and the movements of the
viscera, as illustrating his paradox of thinking without knowing it,
shows that he saw the whole analogy of the mysterious intellectual
movement with that series of reflex actions so fully described half a
century later by Hartley, whose observations, obscured by wrong
interpretation of the cerebral structure and an insufficient theory of
vibrations which he borrowed from Newton, are yet a remarkable
anticipation of many of the ideas of modern physiology, for which credit
has been given so liberally to Unzer and Prochaska. Unconscious activity
is the rule with the actions most important to life. The lout who lies
stretched on the tavern bench, with just mental activity enough to keep
his pipe from going out, is the unconscious tenant of a laboratory where
such combinations are being constantly made as never Wöhler or
Berthelot could put together; where such fabrics are woven, such colours
dyed, such problems of mechanism solved, such a commerce carried on with
the elements and forces of the outer universe, that the industries of
all the factories and trading establishments in the world are mere
indolence and awkwardness and unproductiveness compared to the
miraculous activities of which his lazy bulk is the unheeding centre.
All these unconscious or reflex actions take place by a mechanism never
more simply stated than in the words of Hartley, as "_vibrations_ which
ascend up the sensory nerves first, and then are detached down the
motory nerves, which communicate with these by some common trunk,
plexus, [network] or ganglion [knot]." The doctrine of Leibnitz, that
the brain may sometimes act without our taking cognizance of it, as the
heart commonly does, as many internal organs always do, seems almost to
belong to our time. The readers of Hamilton and Mill, of Abercrombie,
Laycock and Maudsley, of Sir John Herschel, of Carpenter, of Lecky, of
Dallas, will find many variations on the text of Leibnitz, some new
illustrations, a new classification and nomenclature of the facts; but
the root of the matter is all to be found in his writings.