That mind has evolved, and that there is a psychical kinship, an
actual consanguinity of feelings and ideas, among all the forms of
animal life is proved incontestably by the following facts:
1. The evolution of mind is implied by the fact of the evolution of
structures. ‘I hold,’ says Romanes, in the introduction to his
great work on ‘Mental Evolution,’ ‘that, if the doctrine of
organic evolution is accepted, it carries with it, as a necessary
corollary, the doctrine of mental evolution.’ It makes no
difference what theory we adopt regarding the essential natures of
the physical and the psychical—whether we agree with the
materialist that mind is an attribute of matter, with the idealist
that matter is a creation of mind, with the monist that mind and
body are only different aspects of the same central entity, or with
the dualist that body and soul are two distinct but temporarily
dependent existences—we must in any case recognise the fact, which
is perceived by all, that there is an ever-faithful parallel between
the neural and psychical phenomena of every organism. And if the
elements which enter into and make up the physical structure of man
have been derived from, and determined by, preceding forms of life,
the elements which enter into and make up the psychical counterpart
of the physical have also, without any doubt, been inherited from,
and determined by, ancestral life forms.
2. Closely allied to the foregoing reason for a belief in the
evolution of mind is that derived from a comparative survey of the
nervous system in man and other animals. In man, mind is closely
associated with a certain tissue or system of tissues—_nerve
tissue or the nervous system_. That mind is correlated with nerve
structure, and that mental anatomy may be learned from a study of
the anatomy of the nervous system, especially of the brain, is the
basic postulate of the science of physiological psychology. Now,
nerve cells exist in all animals above the sponge, and a
comparatively well-developed nervous system is found even among many
of the invertebrates, as the higher worms, crustaceans, insects, and
mollusks. The nervous system of invertebrates, though composed of
the same kind of tissue, is constructed according to a somewhat
different plan of architecture from that of the vertebrates. But in
all of the great family of backboned animals the nervous system is
built on the same general plan as in man, with a cerebro-spinal
trunk extending from the head along the back and motory and sensory
nerves ramifying to all parts of the body. There is also a
sympathetic nervous system in all animals down as far as the
insects. The brain, which is the most important part of the nervous
system, and which has been called the ‘organ of consciousness,’
presents throughout the animal kingdom, from its beginning in the
worms to man, a graduated series of increasing complication
proceeding out of the same fundamental type. This is especially true
of the vertebrates. Fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and
mammals, all have in their brains the same primary parts, the same
five fundamental divisions, as are found in the brain of man. Hence,
whatever may be thought about the mental states of invertebrates, we
have the right, in the case of the vertebrate orders of life, to
infer, from the general similarity of their nervous system to our
own, that they have a corresponding similarity to ourselves in
mental constitution and experience.
3. The evolution of mind is suggested by the existence in the animal
world of all grades of intelligence, from almost mindless forms to
forms even exceeding in some respects the mental attainments of men.
The jelly-fish and the philosopher are not mental aliens. They are
linked to each other by a continuous gradation of intermediate
intelligences. The existence of these grades of mental development
suggest psychical evolution and kinship, just as the existence of
like grades of structural development suggest physical evolution.
4. In the mental life of animals the same factors of evolution exist
as those by means of which organic structures have been brought into
existence, and it is reasonable to suppose that the operation of
these factors have produced in the mental world results analogous to
those produced by the operation of the same factors among organic
structures.
Men and other animals _vary_ in their natures and mental faculties
quite as much as they do in colour, size, and shape. It is commonly
supposed that the mental and temperamental variety existing among
individual men does not exist among individual birds, quadrupeds,
insects, etc. But a little observation or reflection ought to be
enough to convince anyone that such a supposition belongs to that
batch of pre-Darwinian mistakes presented to us by an over-generous
past. We are _not acquainted_ with the inhabitants of our fields and
barn-yards. We are almost as ignorant of the mental life and
personality of these door-yard neighbours and friends of ours as we
would be if they were the inhabitants of another continent. That is
why our obtuse minds lump them together so indiscriminately—we do
not know anything about them. We never take the trouble, or think it
worth while, to get acquainted with them, much less to study and
know them. We have grown up in the falsehood that they are
altogether different from what we are, and that it is really not
worth while to bother our gigantic heads about them, except to use
them when it comes handy, or kick them to one side, or execute them,
when they get in the way. Everybody else looks at the matter in
about the same way, so we just let it go at that.
There is a sameness about foreigners and other classes of _human_
beings with whom we are but slightly, or not at all, acquainted,
until we come to know them and can discriminate one from another. I
remember once asking my sister, if her baby, which looked to me like
all other babies I had ever seen, were mixed up with a lot of other
babies of about the same age, whether she could pick hers out from
all the rest, and she gave me an unmistakable affirmative by
answering, ‘What a foolish question!’
There is less variety among the individuals of non-human races than
among individual men, just as there is less variety among individual
savages than among the members of a civilised community. But there
is mental diversity among all beings, and we only need to whittle
our observation a little to recognise the fact. You never hear the
keeper of a menagerie or any intelligent associate of dogs, horses,
birds, or insects say there is no individuality among these animals.
Brehm, the great German naturalist, assures us that each individual
monkey of all those he kept tame in Africa had its own peculiar
temper and disposition. And this is no more than what everyone who
knows anything about it knows to be true of dogs, horses, cats,
cattle, birds, and even fishes and insects. Any intelligent
dog-fancier or pigeon-fancier can tell you the personal
peculiarities of every one of the fifty or a hundred dogs or pigeons
in his charge. He has watched and studied them since they came into
existence, and through this continuous association he has come to
_know_ them. He simply makes discriminations that are not made by
the casual or superficial observer. The Laplander knows and names
each reindeer in his herd, though to a stranger they are all as much
alike as the multitudes on an ant-hill. The Peckhams of Milwaukee,
those indefatigable investigators of spiders and insects, are
constantly telling us of the wonderful individuality possessed by
these lowly lessees of our fields and gardens. In their work on
‘The Habits and Instincts of the Solitary Wasps,’ speaking of
the ammophiles, these authors say: ‘In this species, as in every
one that we have studied, we have found a most interesting variation
among the different individuals, not only in methods, but in
character and intellect. While one was beguiled from her hunting by
every sorrel blossom she passed, another stuck to her work with
indefatigable perseverance. While one stung her caterpillars so
carelessly and made her nest in so shiftless a way that her young
could survive only through some lucky chance, another devoted
herself to these duties not only with conscientious earnestness, but
with an apparent craving after artistic perfection that was touching
to see.’ The variation in the mental phenomena of animals,
including man, is partly innate, and partly the result of
environment or education.
Animals not only vary in their mental qualities, but they also
_inherit_ these variations, just as they do physical properties and
peculiarities. Evidence of this is furnished by every new being that
comes into the world. Insanity runs in families, and so does genius
and criminality. Even the most trifling idiosyncrasies are often
transmitted, not only by men, but also by dogs, horses, and other
animals. Such qualities of mind as courage, fidelity, good and bad
temper, intelligence, timidity, special tastes and aptitudes, are
certainly transmitted in all the higher orders of animal life.
Animals are also _selected_, are enabled to survive in the struggle
for life quite as much through the possession by them of certain
mental qualities as on account of their physical characters. Whether
the selections are made by nature or by man, they are not determined
by the physical facts of size, strength, speed, and the like, more
than by cunning, courage, sagacity, skill, industry, devotion,
ferocity, tractability, and other mental properties. The fittest
survive, and the fittest may be the most timid or analytic as well
as the most powerful. No better illustration of this truth can be
found than that furnished by man himself. Man is by nature a
comparatively feeble animal. He is neither large nor powerful. Yet
he has been selected to prosper over all other animals because of
his ingenuity, sympathy, and art. The great feeling and civilisation
of higher men have been built up by slow accretion due to the
operation of the law of survival extending over vast measures of
time. Creeds and instincts, governments and impulses, forms of
thought and forms of expression, have struggled and survived just as
have cells and species. A struggle for existence is constantly going
on, as Max Müller has pointed out, even among the words and
grammatical forms of every language. The better, shorter, easier
forms are constantly gaining the ascendancy, and the longer and more
cumbrous expressions grow obsolete.
If, therefore, the higher types of mind have not come into existence
as have the higher types of structure, through evolution from
simpler and more generalised forms, it has not been due to the
absence of the factors necessary for bringing about this evolution.
5. The presumption created by the existence of the factors of
psychic evolution is strengthened by the facts of artificial
selection. We _know_ mind _can_ evolve, _for it has done so in many
cases_. The races of domesticated animals, the races whom man has
exploited and preyed upon during the past several thousand years,
have, many of them, been completely changed in character and
intelligence through human selection. Old instincts have been wiped
out and new ones implanted. In many instances the psychology has
been not only revolutionised, but remade.
Take, for instance, the dog. The dog is a reformed bandit. It is a
revised wolf or jackal. It has been completely transformed by human
selection; indeed, it may be said that the dog in the last ten or
fifteen thousand years has made greater advances in sagacity and
civilisation than any other animal, scarcely even excepting man. Man
has made wonderful strides along purely intellectual lines, but in
the improvement of his emotions he has not been so successful. The
rapid development of the dog in feeling and intelligence has no
doubt been due to the fact that his utility to man has always
depended largely on his good sense and fidelity, and man has
persistently emphasised these qualities in his selection. Fierceness
and distrust—two of the most prominent traits in the psychology of
the primitive dog—have been entirely eradicated in the higher
races of dogs. There is not anywhere on the face of the earth a more
trustful, affectionate, and docile being than this one-time
cut-throat. Whether the dog has been derived from the wolf or from
some wild canine race now extinct, or from several distinct
ancestors, he must have had originally a fierce, distrustful, and
barbaric nature, for all of the undomesticated members of the dog
family wolves, foxes, jackals, etc.—have natures of this sort.
There are about 175 different races of domestic dogs. They represent
almost as great a range of development as do the races of men. Some
of them are exceedingly primitive, while others are highly
intelligent and civilised. The Eskimo dogs are really nothing but
wolves that have been trained to the service of man. They look like
wolves, and have the wolf psychology. They are not able to bark,
like ordinary dogs; they howl like wolves, and their ears stand up
straight, like the ears of all wild Canidae. Some of the more
advanced of the canine races—like the sheep-dogs, pointers, and
St. Bernards—are animals of great sympathy and sensibility. When
educated, these dogs are almost human in their impulses and in their
powers of discernment. In patience, vigilance, and devotion to duty,
they are superior to many men. At a word, or even a look, from its
master, the loyal collie will gather the sheep scattered for miles
around to the place designated, and do it with such tact and
expedition as to command admiration. It has been said that if it
were not for this faithful and competent canine the highlands of
Scotland would be almost useless for sheep-raising purposes, because
of the greater expense that would be entailed if men were employed.
One collie will do the work of several men, and will do it better,
and the generous-hearted creature pours out its services like water.
It requires no compensation except table refuse and a straw bed. In
South America sheep-dogs are trained to act as shepherds and assume
the whole responsibility of tending the flock. ‘It is a common
thing,’ says Darwin, ‘to meet a large flock of sheep guarded by
one or two dogs, at a distance of some miles from any house or
man.’ When the dogs get hungry, they come home for food, but
immediately return to the flock on being fed. ‘It is amusing,’
remarks this writer, ‘to observe, when approaching a flock, how
the dog immediately advances barking, while the sheep all close in
his rear as around the oldest ram.’ Romanes relates an incident
which well illustrates the high character and intelligence of the
dog and its wonderful devotion to a trust. ‘It was a Scotch
collie. Her master was in the habit of consigning sheep to her
charge without supervision. On this particular occasion he remained
behind or proceeded by another road. On arriving at home late in the
evening, he was astonished to learn that his faithful animal had not
made her appearance with the drove. He immediately set out in search
of her. But on going out into the streets, there she was coming with
the drove, not one missing, and, marvellous to relate, she was
carrying a young puppy in her mouth. She had been taken in travail
on the hills, and how the poor creature had contrived to manage her
drove in her condition is beyond human calculation, for her road lay
through sheep all the way. Her master’s heart smote him when he
saw what she had suffered and effected. But she was nothing daunted,
and after depositing her young one in a place of safety she again
set out full speed for the hills, and brought another and another,
till she brought the whole litter, one by one; but the last one was
dead’.[1]
What a wonderful transformation in canine character! The very beings
whose blood the dog once drank with ravenous thirst it now protects
with courage and fidelity. And this transformation in character is
not due to education simply. It is innate. Young dogs brought from
Tierra del Fuego or Australia, where the natives do not keep such
domestic animals as sheep, pigs, and poultry, invariably have an
incurable propensity for attacking these animals.
The feeling of ownership possessed by so many dogs is an entirely
new element in canine character, a trait implanted wholly by human
selection. Bold and confident on his own premises, the dog
immediately becomes weak and apologetic when placed in circumstances
in which he feels he has no rights.
The pointers and setters have been developed as distinct breeds by
human selection during the past 150 or 200 years.
What is true of the dog is true also, to a large extent, of the cat,
cow, horse, sheep, goat, fowl, and other domestic animals. Serene
and peaceful puss is the tranquillised descendant of the wild cat of
Egypt, one of the most untamable of all animals. The migratory
instinct, so strong in wild water-fowl, is almost absent from our
geese and ducks, as is the fighting propensity (prominent in the
Indian jungle-bird) from most varieties of the domesticated chicken.
There are now as many as a hundred different kinds of domesticated
animals, and there is scarcely one of these animals that has not
been profoundly changed in character during the period of its
domestication. There are much greater changes in some races than in
others. Some races have been much longer in captivity than others.
And then, too, there is great difference in the degree of plasticity
in different races, the races of ancient origin being much more
fixed in their psychology than those of more recent beginnings. In
some races, too—as in the sheep—the selections made by man have
been made primarily with reference to certain physical qualities,
and in these cases the mental qualities have been only incidentally
affected. In Polynesia, where it is selected for its flavour instead
of for its fleetness or intelligence, the dog is said to be a very
stupid animal. But in most cases of domestication the changes
wrought by selection in the mental make-up of the race have been
fully as great as the changes in body, and in some instances much
greater. And the process by which these great changes in psychology
have been effected is in principle identically the same as that by
which mental evolution in general is assumed to have been brought
about.
History everywhere has come out of the night, out of the deep gloom
of the unrecorded. But it has not leaped forth like lightning out of
the darkness. It has dawned, night being succeeded by the amorphous
shadows of legend and tradition, and these in turn by the attested
events of true history. Almost every civilised people can trace back
its genealogy to a time when it was represented on the earth by one
or more tribes of savage or half-savage ancestors. The Anglo-Saxons
go back to the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, three semi-savage tribes
who came to England from the borderlands of the Baltic fourteen or
fifteen centuries ago. The French are the descendants of the Gauls,
who formed the scattered population of warring and superstitious
tribes referred to by Julius Caesar in the opening lines of his
‘Commentaries.’ The blue-eyed Germans came from the Cimbri, the
Goths, and the Vandals, those bold, wild hordes who charged out of
the north to battle with the power of Rome. And all of the Aryan
races—English, German, Italian, Scandinavian, Russian, Roman,
Greek, and Persian—trace their ancestry back, by means of common
languages and legends, to a time when they were wandering tribes of
nomads tenting somewhere on the plains of transcaspian Asia.
6. The evolution of mind in the animal world in general is suggested
by the fact that mind in man has evolved. The rich, luminous
intellect of civilised man, with its art, science, law, literature,
government, and morality, has been evolved from the rude, raw,
demon-haunted mind of the savage. Evidence of this evolution is
furnished by the recorded facts of human history, by the antiquarian
collections of our museums, and by a study of existing savages.
In all our museums there are collections of the relics of
prehistoric peoples. These collections consist of objects upon which
men in distant ages of the world have wrought—their weapons,
ornaments, utensils, implements, and playthings—which have been
saved from the teeth of Time by their durability. The character of
the minds which operated on these objects, which produced and used
them, may be inferred from the character of the objects, just as the
life and surroundings of an ancient animal or plant may be inferred
from its fossil. These relics are of stone, bone, bronze, and iron.
They are found in almost every region of the earth—all over Europe
and its islands, in western and central Asia, in China and Japan, in
Malay, Australia, and New Zealand, in the islands of the Pacific,
and throughout the length and breadth of America. They antedate
human history by thousands of years. They are the ruins of the Stone
Age, the Bronze Age, and the Iron Age of mankind. In all of these
remains there is evidence of a slow but gradual improvement as we
approach the present. There are places on the earth where the
evolution of human implements, from the rudest chipped stones to the
comparatively finished products of historic peoples, is epitomised
in the deposits of a few feet in depth. One of these occurs at
Chelles, a suburb of Paris, and was made the subject of a paper by
Professor Packard in the _Popular Science Monthly_ for May, 1902.
Here three distinct layers, containing human remains entirely
different in character from each other, appear within a depth of 30
feet from the surface. The lowest bed, a layer of pebbles and sand,
and probably preglacial in origin, contains the famous Chellean
‘axes,’ rude almond-shaped implements of chipped flint, and used
by these ancient inhabitants by being held in the hand. In this bed
are also found the bones of the straight-tusked elephant, cave-bear,
big-nosed rhinoceros, and other species now extinct. The next bed is
the interglacial, and contains implements entirely different from
the one below it, among which are skin-scrapers and lance-points.
The animal remains of this bed are also different from those found
in the bed below, and include animals like the musk-ox and the
reindeer, which were probably driven to this southern clime from
more northern regions by the excessive cold of the time. The third
bed, which lies just below the surface soils, contains polished
stone axes and other remains of human industry cotemporaneous with
the Swiss lake-dwellers. From the swamps and loams are sometimes dug
up the remains of Gallo-Roman civilisations—Gallic coins,
serpentine axes, and bronzes of the time of the Antonines.
No one can fully realise the vast advance that has been made by the
human mind until he has looked upon a savage—has seen the savage
in his native haunts attacking the problems of his daily life, and
has tasted of his philosophy and disposition. The savage is the
ancestor of all higher men. When we look upon the savage, we look
upon the infancy of the human world. All of the laws, languages,
sciences, governments, religions, and philosophies of civilised man,
or nearly all of them at any rate, are the exfoliated laws,
languages, sciences, governments, religions, and philosophies of
savages. It is impossible to understand the laws of civilised
societies without a knowledge of the laws of savage societies. The
same thing is true of government, religion, and philosophy—and of
human nature itself. Human nature as exhibited by civilised men and
women—I mean men and women with a veneering of civility, not
really civilised folks, for there are none of them on the earth—is
a perpetual enigma unless it is illumined by retrospection, by a
comparative study of human nature, by a study of human nature as
seen in more and more primitive men and women. The mind of the
savage, as compared with that of civilised man, is exceedingly
primitive. The picture drawn by Gilbraith of the North American
Sioux is a typical picture of savage life and character. Gilbraith
lived among these tribes for several years, and was thoroughly
acquainted with them. He says:
‘They are bigoted, barbarous, and exceedingly superstitious. They
regard most of the vices as virtues. Theft, arson, rape, and murder
are regarded by them as the means of distinction. The young Indian
is taught from childhood to regard killing as the highest of
virtues. In their dances and at their feasts, the warriors recite
their deeds of theft, pillage, and slaughter as precious things; and
the highest, indeed the only, ambition of the young brave is to
secure “the feather,” which is but the record of his having
murdered, or participated in the murder of, some human
being—whether man, woman, or child, it is immaterial’.[2]
‘Conscience,’ says Burton, ‘does not exist in East Africa, and
“repentance” simply expresses regret for missed opportunities
for crime. Robbery makes an honorable man; and murder, the more
atrocious the crime the better, makes the hero’.‘Conscience,’
says Burton, ‘does not exist in East Africa, and “repentance”
simply expresses regret for missed opportunities for crime. Robbery
makes an honorable man; and murder, the more atrocious the crime the
better, makes the hero’.[3]
Many things appear natural and self-evident to the savage which seem
to us actually revolting. When the Fuegians are hard pressed by
want, they kill their old women for food rather than their dogs,
saying: ‘Old women no use; dogs kill otters.’ ‘What I’ said
a negro to Burton, ‘am I to starve while my sister has children
whom she can sell?’
Lubbock, in his great work on ‘The Origin of Civilisation,’
cites hundreds of instances of savage rudeness and simplicity which
seem almost incredible to one accustomed all his life to types of
human character such as are found in Europe and America. For
instance, ‘when the natives of the Lower Murray first saw
pack-oxen, some of them were frightened and took them for demons
with spears on their heads, while others thought they were the wives
of the settlers, because they carried the baggage.’ Speaking of
the wild men in the interior of Borneo, this writer says: ‘They
live absolutely in a state of nature, neither cultivating the ground
nor living in huts. They eat neither rice nor salt, and do not
associate with each other, but rove about the woods like wild
beasts. The sexes meet in the jungle. When the children are old
enough to shift for themselves, they usually separate, neither one
afterwards thinking of the other. At night they sleep under some
large tree whose branches hang low. They fasten the children to the
branches in a kind of swing, and build a fire around the tree to
protect them from snakes and wild beasts. The poor creatures are
looked on and treated by the other Dyaks as wild beasts.’ Lubbock
sums up his conclusions on the morality of savages in the following
pathetic acknowledgment: ‘I do not remember a single instance in
which a savage is recorded as having shown any symptoms of remorse;
and almost the only case I can call to mind in which a man belonging
to one of the lower races has accounted for an act by saying
explicitly that it was right, was when Mr. Hunt asked a young Figian
why he had killed his mother’.[4]
A few pages further on, the same author adds, regarding the
deplorable state of morality among savages: ‘That there should be
races of men so deficient in moral feeling was altogether opposed to
the preconceived ideas with which I commenced the study of savage
life, and I have arrived at the conviction by slow degrees, and even
with reluctance. I have, however, been forced to this conclusion,
not only by the direct statements of travellers, but also by the
general tenor of their remarks, and especially by the remarkable
absence of repentance and remorse among the lowest races of men.’
Among ourselves the words used to distinguish right and wrong are
metaphors. Right originally meant ‘straight,’ and wrong meant
‘twisted.’ Language existed, therefore, before morality; for if
moral ideas had preceded language, there would have been original
words to stand for them. Religion, according to Lubbock, has no
moral aspect or influence except among the more advanced races of
men. ‘The deities of savages are evil, not good; they may be
forced into compliance with the wishes of man; they generally
delight in bloody, and often require human, sacrifices; they are
mortal, not immortal; they are to be approached by dances rather
than by prayers; and often approve what we call vice rather than
what we esteem as virtue. In fact, the so-called religion of the
lower races of mankind bears somewhat the same relation to religion
in its higher forms as astrology does to astronomy or alchemy to
chemistry’.[4]
Savages have few general ideas of any kind, as is evidenced by the
almost total absence among them of words denoting general ideas.
Many savage races cannot comprehend numbers greater than five or
six, and are unable to make the simplest mathematical computations
without using the fingers. The languages of savages are extremely
rude, words being freely pieced out with pantomime. Savages talk
with difficulty in the dark, because of their great reliance on
gesture in conversation. The rich vocabularies of the languages of
Europe and America have grown up step by step with the evolution of
European and American mind. Every language is an evolution. The
languages of many primitive peoples lack the verb to be entirely,
and all nouns are proper nouns. Words are often little more than
grunts or clucks, and are without the euphony and articulation found
in the languages of the civilised. Darwin says that the language of
the Fuegians sounds like a man clearing his throat. Not only every
language, but every word, both in its form and meaning, is in
process of evolution. _Spirit_, for instance, originally meant
‘blowing,’ _understanding_ meant ‘getting beneath,’ and
_development_ the physical act of ‘unfolding.’ Words are
continually drifting from their original meanings under the stress
of incessant use, as ships drag their anchors in a gale. Those words
that are exposed to common use undergo the most rapid changes, while
words sheltered from the rush of human affairs, like harboured
ships, hold to their moorings forever. _Let_, for instance, once
meant ‘hinder’; now it means ‘allow.’ _Bisect_, on the other
hand, a word of rare and technical use, has remained unaltered in
significance for twenty centuries.
Even our alphabet has been evolved. The twenty-six symbols composing
it have been eroded into the peculiar forms in which they appear at
present by the various peoples through whose hands they have come to
us. The originals were pictographs such as are still found on the
aged monuments of earth’s earliest civilisations. The English got
their alphabet from the Romans, who obtained it, along with almost
everything else they had, from the Greeks. The Greeks received it
from the Phenicians, and the Phenicians from the papyrus writers of
Egypt, who in turn procured it from those hieroglyph chiselers who
carved their curious literature on the granite tombs of the Nile in
the remotest dawn of human history. _A_, the first letter of our
alphabet, is a figure which has been evolved, as the result of long
wear and tear, from the picture of an eagle; _B_ was originally the
picture of a crane; _C_ represents a throne; _D_ a hand; _F_ an asp;
_H_ a sieve; _K_ a bowl; _L_ a lioness; _M_ an owl; _N_ a
water-line; _R_ a mouth; _S_ a garden; _T_ a lasso; _X_ a chairback;
and _Z_ a duck.
The psychology of civilised man, though derived from that of the
savage, and hence resembling it fundamentally, is, nevertheless,
very different from it, both in character and in what it contains.
The mind of the savage is rude, unresourceful, vicious, and
childlike, while that of the civilised man or woman may be
overflowing with wisdom and benignity. This gulf has not been
covered by a stride, but by the slow operation of the same laws of
Inheritance, Variation, and Selection by which all progress has been
brought about.
7. Degeneration is a necessary part of the process of organic
evolution. All progress, whether anatomical, intellectual, or
social, takes place through selection, and selection means the
pining and ultimate passing away of that which is left. In
individual evolution it is organs, ideas, and traits of character
that are eliminated, and in social evolution it is customs and
institutions. One of the reasons given in the preceding chapter for
the belief in the evolution of structures is the existence in man
and other animals of _vestigial organs_, organs which in lower forms
of life are useful, but which in higher forms are represented by
useless or even injurious remnants. Similar remnants are found in
the _psychology_ of man and other animals. These vestiges of mind
are not so easily recognised as the vestiges of structure, but they
are everywhere. We find them in the antiquated instincts of man and
the domestic animals, in the silent letters and worn-out words of
languages, and in the emaciated remains of abandoned beliefs and
institutions.
The hunting and fishing instinct of civilised man is a vestigial
instinct, normal in the savage, but without either sense or decency
among men devoted to industrial pursuits. The savage hunts and
fishes because he is hungry, never for pastime; civilised men and
women do so because they are too mechanical to assort their
impulses. Civilised man is a mongrel, a cross between a barbarian
and a god. His psychology is a compound of the jungle and the sky.
In their loftier moments, many men are able to obscure the cruder
facts of their origin and to put into temporary operation those more
splendid processes of mind which characterise their ideals. But even
the most civilised are forever haunted by the returning ghosts of
departed propensities—propensities which grew up in ages of hate,
which are now out-of-date, but which in the trying tedium of daily
life come back and usurp the high places in human nature. Revenge,
hate, cruelty, pugnacity, selfishness, vanity, and the like, are all
more or less vestigial among men who have entered seriously on the
life of altruism. Like the vermiform appendix and the human tail,
these old obsolete parts of the human mind are destined, in the
ripening of the ages, to waste away and disappear through disuse.
The practice of the dog of turning round two or three times before
lying down is in response to an instinct which was no doubt
beneficial to it in its wild life, when it was wont to make its bed
in the grasses, but which is now a pure waste of time. Darwin
records it as a fact, that he has himself seen a simple-minded dog
turn round twenty times before lying down. The sheep-killing mania,
which sometimes comes over dogs when three or four of them get
together and become actuated by the ‘mob’ spirit, is a vestige
of the old instinct of the carnivore which centuries of
domestication have not yet quite erased. Goodness, if too prolonged,
becomes irksome to dogs for the same reason that it does to men.
Dogs have come from savages just as men have, and, while the
civilised nature of the dog is more constitutional than that of
civilised man, the old deposed instincts mount to the throne once in
awhile, and the faithful collie is for the time being a wolf again.
The instinct of domestic sheep to imitate their leader in leaping
over obstacles is another probable survival of wild life. If a bar
or other obstacle be placed where the leader of a flock of sheep is
compelled to leap over it, and the obstacle is then removed, the
entire band of followers will leap at the same place regardless of
the fact that the obstruction is no longer there. No other animals
do this. The instinct is probably a survival of wild life, when
these animals, pursued by their enemies over chasms and precipices,
were compelled to imitate in the flight those in front of them in
order to live. Darwin thinks the donkey shows its aboriginal desert
nature in its aversion for crossing the smallest stream, and its
relish for rolling in the dust. The same aversion for everything
aquatic exists also in the camel. Quails kept in captivity, I am
told, persist in scratching at the pan when they are feeding, just
as they would need to do, and were accustomed to do, among the
leaves and grasses of the groves. The restlessness of cage-birds and
domestic fowls at migrating time, the mimic dipping and sporting of
ducks when confined to a terrestrial habitat, the grave marshalling
of geese by the chief gander of the band, the ferocity of cows,
ewes, and the females of other domestic animals during the first few
days of motherhood, the hunting instinct of dogs kept as shepherds
and pets, the squatting of young pigs when suddenly alarmed—all of
these are vestigial instincts, functional in the wild state, but now
useless and absurd.
The silent letters and superannuated words and phrases found
everywhere in literature are the vestigial parts of language. Every
silent letter was originally sounded, and every obsolete word was at
one time used. In the French word, _temps_, for instance, which
means ‘time,’ neither the _p_ nor the _s_ is sounded. But in the
Latin word _tempus_, from which the French word is derived, all of
the letters are sounded.
Man has been defined as a creature of habit. As he has done a thing
once, or as his ancestors have done a thing, so he does it again. By
precept and example he transmits to each new generation the customs,
beliefs, and points of view which he has invented. Social changes
take place with extreme moderation. The drowsy ages take plenty of
time to get anywhere. Civilisation is lazy, deliberate,
unimpassioned. It loafs and hesitates. It holds on to the past.
Living civilisations always drag behind them a trail of traditions
from dead civilisations. Religions and philosophies change, and
creeds and governments flow into strange and undreamed-of forms; but
their personalities survive, their souls live on, their remnants,
transmitted as traditions from generation to generation, defy the
meddlings of innovators. Hence in every society there are forms and
ceremonies, laws and customs, games and symbols, etc., which have
been completely diverted from their original purposes, or which have
become so reduced in importance as to be of no use. Spencer has
shown that the forms of salutation in vogue among civilised
societies are the vestiges of primitive ceremonial used to denote
submission. The May Day festivals with which the opening spring is
usually hailed are the much-modified survivals of pagan festivals in
honour of plant and animal fecundity. Superstition and folklore are
vestigial opinions. The gorgeous Easter egg is a survival of a dawn
myth older than the Pyramids, and our Christmas dinner is a
reminiscence of a cannibal carnival celebrating the turning back of
the sun at the winter solstice (Brinton). In the English government,
where democracy has in recent centuries made such inroads on the
monarchy, there are numerous examples of vestigial
institutions—institutions which continue to exist purely because
they have existed in the past, but which were functional a few
centuries ago. The supreme office itself is one of these. The King
represents the petered-out tail-end of a privilege which in the time
of the early Stuarts was almost unlimited. Similar vestiges exist in
the United States, where the national spirit during the last century
and a half has so completely wiped out colonialism. Such are the
Town Meetings of Boston and of New Haven. The earliest form of human
marriage was marriage by capture. The man stole the woman and
carried her away by force. This form of marriage was in the course
of evolution succeeded by marriage through purchase. A man anxious
to become a husband could do so by paying to the father a stipulated
amount of cash or cattle for his daughter. This second form of
marriage finally evolved into marriage arranged by direct and
peaceful negotiation between the prospective husband and wife. This
is the form most commonly employed at the present time among the
more advanced societies of men. But in the ceremonies which surround
the nuptial event among civilised peoples survive vestiges of many
of the facts associated with aboriginal marriages. A marriage in
high life is a sort of epitome of the evolution of the institution.
The coyness and hesitancy of the woman in accepting the offers of
her proposed spouse are the lineal descendants of the original
reluctance of her savage sisters. The wedding-ring is the old token
accepted by the woman when she gave her pledge of bondage. The
coming of the groom with his aids to the marriage is a figurative
marauding expedition. The honeymoon is the abduction. And the
charivari and missile-throwing indulged in by friends and relatives
on the departure of the wedded twain is a good-humoured counterfeit
of the armed protest made by relatives of old when a bride-snatcher
came among them.[5]
The vestiges found everywhere in the mental and social phenomena of
man and other animals have arisen as necessary facts in the process
of mental evolution. _They are the vermiform appendices of the mind_.
8. One of the strongest reasons for a belief in the physical
evolution of animal species is that furnished by individual
evolution. Each individual animal recapitulates in a wonderful
manner the phylogenesis of its species. Now, it is extremely
significant that a similar parallel exists in the case of mental
evolution. Each individual mind ascends through a series of mental
faculties which epitomises in a remarkable manner the psychogenesis
of the animal kingdom.
The human child is not born with a full-grown mind any more than
with a full-grown body. It grows. It exfoliates. It ripens with the
years. It begins in infancy at the zero-point, and in manhood or
womanhood may blaze with genius and philanthropy.
But the mind of the child not only unfolds: it unfolds in a certain
order, the more complex parts and the more civilised emotions
invariably appearing last. The initial powers of the newborn babe
are those of sensation and perception. The babe cannot think. It has
no feeling of fear, no affection, no sympathy, and no shame. It can
see, and hear, and taste, and feel pain and satisfaction—and these
are about all. Even these are vague and confused. In a week the
perceptions are more sharp and vivid, more distinct and orderly.
Memory arises. Memory is the power of reproducing past impressions.
At three weeks the emotions begin to sprout. The first to make their
appearance are fear and surprise. When the babe is seven weeks old
the social affections show themselves, and the simplest acts of
association are performed. At the age of twelve weeks jealousy and
anger may be expected, together with simple exhibitions of
association by similarity. At fourteen weeks affection and reason
dawn. Sympathy germinates at about the age of five months; pride and
resentment germinate at eight months; grief, hate, and benevolence
at ten months; and shame and remorse at fifteen months.
Now, the remarkable thing about this is that this is the order, or
very much like the order, in which mind in the animal kingdom as a
whole has apparently evolved. The lower orders of animal life have
none of the higher emotions and none of the more complicated
processes of mind. There is no shame in the reptile, no
dissimulation in the fish, no sympathy in the mollusk, and no memory
in the sponge. Memory dawns in the echinoderms, or somewhere near
the radiate stage of development, and fear and surprise in the
worms. Pugnacity makes its appearance in the insects, imagination in
the spiders, and jealousy in the fishes. Pride, emulation, and
resentment originate in the birds: grief and hate in the carnivora;
shame and remorse among dogs and monkeys; and superstition in the
savage.[1]
It is also an important fact bearing on the general problem of
evolution, that the civilised child, from about the age of one on,
is a sort of synopsis, rude but unmistakable, of the historic
evolution of the human race. The child is a savage. It has the
emotions of the savage, the savage’s conceptions of the world, and
the desires, pastimes, and ambitions of the savage. It hates work,
and takes delight in hunting, fishing, fighting, and loafing, like
other savages. The hero of the child is the bully, just as the
demigod of primitive man is a blood-letting Caesar or Achilles. The
children of the civilised are savages—some more so than
others—and if they ever become civilised—some do, and some do
not—they do so through a process of rectification and selection
similar to that through which the Aryan races have passed during the
ages of human history.
There is a similar evolution in the young of other animals,
especially of the higher animals. Each individual begins in a
perfectly mindless form, and grows mentally as it develops
physically. The young puppy has a very different thinking and
feeling apparatus from the grown-up mastiff. It is controlled almost
exclusively by sense and instinct. It is devoid of common-sense, and
divides its time impartially between play and sleep. It is easily
frightened, and cries at every little thing. It has the rollicking,
awkward, irresponsible personality of a boy of six. About the same
thing is true of kittens, colts, calves, bear cubs, the whelps of
wolves, and other young quadrupeds. A kitten will chase shadows, try
to catch flies crawling on the other side of a windowpane, sit and
watch in wonder the moving objects about it, and do many other
things which it never thinks of doing when it has grown to be a wise
and sophisticated puss trained in the ways of the world about it.
Doghood, cathood, and horsehood, like manhood and womanhood, are the
ripened products of long processes of growth and exfoliation.
The parallel is, of course, imperfect. There are many abbreviations,
many breaks and ambiguities, in the summary presented by the
individual mind of the evolution of the race. And, in the present
state of psychogeny, only the barest outline can be traced. _But
enough is known to render the fact unquestionable_.
9. If human mind has been evolved, it is logical to expect to find
in other animals, especially in those more closely resembling
ourselves in structure, mind elements similar to those we find in
ourselves.[6] And this is precisely what we do find. The same great
trunk impulses that animate men animate also those more rudimentary
but not less real individuals below and around men. The great
primary facts of sex, of self-preservation, of pleasure and pain, of
life and death, of egoism and altruism, of motherhood, of
alimentation, etc.—all of these are found everywhere, down almost
to the very threshold of organic life. And they are the antecedents
of the same great tendencies as those that control the lives of men.
It is often supposed by the superficial that the facts of sex and
alimentation, which are so prominent in other animals, have been
relegated to a very subordinate place in the nature of man. But
nothing could be much farther from the truth. It has been said that
there are only two things that will induce the typical African or
Australian to undergo prolonged labour—hunger and the sex
appetite. It is probable that men—not only primitive men, but the
most evolved races, including even poets and philosophers—will do
more desperate and idiotic things and undergo more trying
experiences when actuated by the sex impulse than from the effects
of any other impulse in human nature. This impulse is especially
overmastering in races like the Italian and Spanish, and has been
mentioned by ethnologists as a probable factor in the deterioration
of these races. The sentiments of love, marital affection, and
family life control mankind more completely than any other motives.
And next to these comes hunger. Let anyone who imagines that only
the non-human creatures are carnal observe with what uniformity
almost every function in both savage and civilised life gravitates
toward eating and drinking. If it is a picnic, a convention, a
national holiday, a Christmas celebration, a meeting of a fraternal
society, a thanksgiving ceremony, or what not, eating is one of the
main things, and the one exercise into which four-fifths of those
present probably enter with the greatest enthusiasm.
The human soul is the blossom, not the beginning, of psychic
evolution. Mother-love compassionated infancy long before a babe
came from the stricken loins of woman. The inhabitants of the earth
had been seeking pleasure and seeking to avoid pain, and seeking
ever with the same sad futility, long before man with his retinue of
puny philosophies strutted upon the scene. Hate poisoned the
cisterns of the sea and dropped its pollutions through the steaming
spaces ages before there was malice among men. Altruism is older
than the mountains, and selfishness hardened the living heart before
the continents were lifted. There was wonder in the woods and in the
wild heart of the fastnesses before there were waitings in
synagogues and genuflections about altar piles. The frogs, crickets,
and birds had been singing love a thousand generations and more when
the first amoroso knelt in dulcet descant to a beribboned Venus.
Human nature is not an article of divine manufacture, any more than
is the human form. It came out of the breast of the bird, out of the
soul of the quadruped. The human heart does not draw back from the
mysterious dissolutions of death more earnestly than does the hare
that flees before resounding packs or the wild-fowl that reddens the
reeds with its flounderings. Bowerbirds build their nest-side
resorts, decorate them with gay feathers, and surround them with
grounds ornamented with bright stones and shells, for identically
the same reason as human beings design drawing-rooms, hang them with
tapestries, and surround them with ornamented lawns. The scarlet
waistcoat of the robin and the flaming dresses of tanagers and
humming-birds, which seem, as they flash through the forest aisles,
like shafts of cardinal-fire, serve the same vanities and minister
to the same instincts as the plumage of the dandy and the tints and
gewgaws of gorgeous dames. Art is largely a manifestation of sex,
and it is about as old and about as persistent as this venerable
impulse. How did Darwin’s dog know his master on his master’s
return from a five-years’ trip around the world? Just as the boy
remembers where the strawberries grow and the philosopher recalls
his facts—by that power of the brain to retain and to reproduce
past impressions. Why does the thinker search his soul for new
theories and the spaces for new stars? For the same reason that the
child asks questions and the monkey picks to pieces its toys. What
is reason? A habit of wise men—an expedient of ants—a mania the
fools of all ages are free from. All of the activities of men,
however imposing or peculiar, are but elaborations in one way or
another of the humble doings of the animalcule, whose home is a
water-drop and whose existence can be discovered by human senses
only by the aid of instruments.
10. Mind has evolved because the universe has evolved. Whether mind
is a part of the universe, or all of it, or only an attribute of it,
it is, in any case, inextricably mixed up with it. And, since the
universe as a whole has evolved, it is improbable that any part of
it or anything pertaining to it has remained impassive to the
general tendency. There are no solids. Nothing stands. The whole
universe is in a state of fluidity. Even the ‘eternal hills,’
the ‘unchanging continents,’ and the ‘everlasting stars,’
are flowing, flowing ever, slowly but ceaselessly, from form to
form. So is mind. Indeed, if there is anywhere in the folds of
creation a being such as the one whom man has long accused of having
brought the universe into existence, we may rest assured that even
he is not sitting passively apart from the enormous enterprise which
he has himself inaugurated.
The evidence is conclusive. The evolution of mind is supported by a
series of facts not less incontrovertible and convincing than that
by which physical evolution is established. The data of mental
evolution are not quite so definite and plentiful as those of
physical evolution. But this is due to the greater intangibility of
mental phenomena and to the backward condition of the psychological
sciences, especially of comparative psychology. Mental phenomena are
always more difficult to deal with than material phenomena, and
hence are always more tardily attended to in the application of any
theory. But taking everything into account, including the close
connection between physical and psychical phenomena, it may be
asserted that it is not more certain that the physical structure of
man has been derived from sub-human forms of life than it is that
the human mind has also been similarly derived.
Man is the adult of long evolution. The human soul has ancestors and
consanguinities just as the body has. It is just as reasonable to
suppose that the human physiology, with its definitely elaborated
tissues, organs, and systems, is unrelated to the physiology of
vertebrates in general, and through vertebrate physiology to the
physiology of invertebrates, as to suppose that the states and
impulses constituting human nature and consciousness began to exist
in the anthropic type of anatomy and are unrelated to the states and
impulses of vertebrate consciousness in general, and through
vertebrate consciousness to those remoter types of sentiency lying
away at the threshold of organic life. Human psychology is a part of
universal psychology. It has been evolved. It has been evolved
according to the same laws of heredity and adaptation as have
physiological structures. And it is just as impossible to understand
human nature and psychology unaided by those wider prospects of
universal psychology as it is to understand the facts of human
physiology unaided by analogous universalisations.
1. Romanes: _Mental Evolution in Animals_; New York, 1898.
2. Gilbraith: _Ethnological Journal_, 1869, p. 304.
3. Burton: _First Footsteps in East Africa_; London, 1856.
4. Lubbock: _Origin of Civilisation_; New York, 1898.
5. Demoor: _Evolution by Atrophy_; New York, 1899.
6. This topic is more fully presented in the chapter “The elements
of the human and non-human mind compared.”