But it is not necessary to be learned in Darwinian science in order
to know that non-human beings have souls. Just the ordinary
observation of them in their daily lives about us—in their comings
and goings and doings—is sufficient to convince any person of
discernment that they are beings with joys and sorrows, desires and
capabilities, similar to our own. No human being with a
conscientious desire to learn the truth can associate intimately day
after day with these people—associate with them as he himself
would desire to be associated with in order to be interpreted,
without presumption or reserve, in a kind, honest, straightforward,
magnanimous manner; make them his friends and really enter into
their inmost lives—without realising that they are almost unknown
by human beings, that they are constantly and criminally
misunderstood, and that they are in reality beings actuated by
substantially the same impulses and terrorised by approximately the
same experiences as we ourselves. They eat and sleep, seek pleasure
and try to avoid pain, cling valorously to life, experience health
and disease, get seasick, suffer hunger and thirst, co-operate with
each other, build homes, reproduce themselves, love and provide for
their children, feeding, defending, and educating them, contend
against enemies, contract habits, remember and forget, learn from
experience, have friends and favourites and pastimes, appreciate
kindness, commit crimes, dream dreams, cry out in distress, are
affected by alcohol, opium, strychnine, and other drugs, see, hear,
smell, taste, and feel, are industrious, provident and cleanly, have
languages, risk their lives for others, manifest ingenuity,
individuality, fidelity, affection, gratitude, heroism, sorrow,
sexuality, self-control, fear, love, hate, pride, suspicion,
jealousy, joy, reason, resentment, selfishness, curiosity, memory,
imagination, remorse—all of these things, and scores of others,
the same as human beings do.
The anthropoid races have the same emotions and the same ways of
expressing those emotions as human beings have. They laugh in joy,
whine in distress, shed tears, pout and apologise, and get angry
when they are laughed at. They protrude their lips when sulky or
pouting, stare with wide open eyes in astonishment, and look
downcast when melancholy or insulted. When they laugh, they draw
back the corners of their mouth and expose their teeth, their eyes
sparkle, their lower eyelids wrinkle, and they utter chuckling
sounds, just as human beings do.[1] They have strong sympathy for
their sick and wounded, and manifest toward their friends, and
especially toward the members of their own family, a devotion
scarcely equalled among the lowest races of mankind. They use rude
tools, such as clubs and sticks, and resort to cunning and
deliberation to accomplish their ends. The orang, when pursued, will
throw sticks at his pursuers, and when wounded, and the wound does
not prove instantly fatal, will sometimes press his hand upon the
wound or apply grass and leaves to stop the flow of blood. The
children of anthropoids wrestle with each other, and chase and throw
each other, just as do the juveniles of human households. The
gorilla, chimpanzee, and orang all build for themselves lodges made
of broken boughs and leaves in which to sleep at night. These
lodges, rude though they are, are not inferior to the habitations of
many primitive men. The Puris, who live naked in the depths of the
Brazilian forests, do not even have huts to live in, only screens
made by setting up huge palm-leaves against a cross-pole.[2] Some of
the African tribes are said to live largely in caves and the
crevices of rocks. This is the case with many primitive men.
According to a writer in the _Journal_ of the Anthropological
Institute of Great Britain and Ireland (January, 1902), ‘common
forms of dwelling among the wild tribes of the Malay Peninsula are
rock-shelters (sometimes caves, but more commonly natural recesses
under overhanging ledges) and leaf-shelters, which are sometimes
formed on the ground and sometimes in the branches of trees. The
simplest form of these leaf-shelters consists of a single palm-leaf
planted in the ground to afford the wanderer some slight shelter for
the night.’
When they sleep, the anthropoids sometimes lie stretched out,
man-like, on their backs, and sometimes they lie on their side with
their hand under their head for a pillow. The orang retires about
five or six o’clock in the evening, and does not rise until the
morning sun has dissipated the mists of the forest. The gorilla and
chimpanzee seem to mate for life. The former lives, as a rule, in
single families, each family consisting of a male and a female and
their children. During the day this primitive family roams through
the forests of equatorial Africa in search of food. They live on
fruits and nuts and the tender shoots and leaves of plants. They are
especially fond of sugar-cane, which they eat in small-boy fashion
by chewing and discarding the juiceless pulp. Among the foods of the
gorilla is a walnut-like nut which it cracks with stones. As evening
comes on, the head of the family selects a sleeping-place for the
night. This is usually some low tree with a dense growth at the top,
and protected as much as possible by higher trees from the chilly
night wind. Here, on a bed of broken branches and leaves, the mother
and little ones go to sleep, while the father devotedly crouches at
the foot of the tree, with his back against the trunk to guard his
family from leopards and other nocturnal cut-throats who eat
apes.[3] When the weather is stormy, they cover themselves with
broad pandanus leaves to keep off the rain. Koppenfels relates an
incident of a gorilla family which makes one think of things he
sometimes sees among men. The family consisted of the parents and
two children. It was meal-time. The head of the family reposed
majestically on the ground, while the wife and children hustled for
fruits for him in a near-by tree. If they were not sufficiently
nimble about it, or if they were so wanton as to take a bite
themselves, the paterfamilias growled and gave them a cuff on the
head.[3] Notwithstanding the sensational tales of the ferocity of
this being, the gorilla never attacks anyone at any time unless he
is molested.[3] He much prefers to attend to his own business. But
if he is not allowed to do so, if he is attacked, he is as fearless
as a machine. He approaches his antagonist walking upright and
beating his breast with his fists. He presents one of the most
terrifying of all spectacles, as, with gleaming eyes, hair erect,
and resounding yells, he bears down on the object of his resentment.
The natives fear the gorilla more than they fear any other animal.
The chimpanzee in his native wilds lives in small tribes consisting
of a few families each. Like the gorilla, it passes the most of its
time on the ground, going among the trees only for food or sleep. It
builds a sleeping-place at night in the trees, as in the case of the
gorilla. Brehm, who brought up a number of chimpanzees in his own
home as comrades and playmates of his children, and who studied them
and associated with them for years, says: ‘The chimpanzee is not
only one of the cleverest of all creatures, but a being capable of
deliberation and judgment. Everything he does is done consciously
and deliberately. He looks upon all other animals, except man, as
very inferior to himself. He treats children entirely different from
grown-up people. The latter he respects; the former he looks upon as
comrades and equals. He is not merely inquisitive: he is greedy for
knowledge. He can draw conclusions, can reason from one thing to
another, and apply the results of experience to new circumstances.
He is cunning, even wily, has flashes of humour, indulges in
practical jokes, manifests moods, and is entertained in one company
and bored in another. He is self-willed but not stubborn,
good-natured but not wanting in independence. He expresses his
emotions like a human being. In sickness he behaves like one in
despair, distorts his face, groans, stamps, and tears his hair. He
learns very easily whatever is taught him, as, for instance, to sit
upright at table, to eat with knife and fork and spoon, to drink
from a glass or cup, to stir the sugar in his tea, to use a napkin,
to wear clothes, to sleep in a bed, and so on. Exceedingly
appreciative of every caress, he is equally sensitive to blame and
unkindness. He is capable of deep gratitude, and he expresses it by
shaking hands or kissing without being asked to do so. He behaves
toward infants with touching tenderness. The behaviour of a sick and
suffering chimpanzee is most pathetic. Begging piteously, almost
humanly, he looks into his master’s face, receives every attempt
to help him with warm thanks, and soon looks upon his physician as a
benefactor, holding out his arm to him, stretching out his tongue
whenever told, and even doing so of his own accord after a few
visits from his physician. He swallows medicines readily, and even
submits to surgical operations—in short, behaves very like a human
patient in similar circumstances. As his end approaches, he becomes
more gentle, and the nobler traits of his character stand out
prominently’.[4]
_The New York Herald_, in its issue of July 2, 1901, contained an
account of the death of Charlemagne, a chimpanzee who died a short
time before at Grenoble, France. This anthropoid at the time of his
death was the most popular inhabitant of the town. His popularity
was due to his good-nature and intelligence, and especially to the
fact that a few years before his death he had saved a child from
drowning in a well. The ape saw the child fall, and without a
moment’s hesitation climbed down the rope used for the buckets,
seized the child, and climbed out again by the same rope by which he
had descended. The people of the town thought so much of him that
they followed his remains to the grave, and the municipal council
voted to erect a bronze statue to his memory.
A heartless hunter—maybe one of those assassins who fill the wilds
with widows and orphans in the name of Science—tells of the murder
of a mother chimpanzee and her baby in Africa. The mother was high
up in a tree with her little one in her arms. She watched intently,
and with signs of the greatest anxiety, the hunter as he moved about
beneath, and when he took aim at her the poor doomed thing motioned
to him with her hand precisely in the manner of a human being, to
have him desist and go away.
According to Emin Pasha, who was for a number of years Governor of
an Egyptian province on the Upper Nile, and whom Stanley made his
last expedition to ‘rescue,’ chimpanzees sometimes make use of
fire. He told Stanley that, when a tribe of chimpanzees who resided
in a forest near his camp came at night to get fruit from the
orchards, they always came bearing torches to light them on their
way. ‘If I had not seen it with my own eyes,’ he declares, ‘I
never could have believed that these beings have the power of making
fire’.[5] This same authority relates that on one occasion a band
of chimpanzees descended upon his camp and carried off a drum. The
marauders went away in great glee, beating the drum as they
retreated. He says he heard them several times after that, at night,
beating their drum, in the forest.
The monkeys are little inferior to the man-like races in their
intelligence and in the general similarity of their feelings and
instincts to those of men. Monkeys live in tribes, and at the head
of each tribe is an old male chief who has won his place by his
strength, courage, and ability. Monkeys have excellent memories and
keen observation, and are able to recognise their friends in a crowd
even after long absences. They are proverbially imitative, have a
strong desire for knowledge, and are exceedingly sensitive and
sympathetic in their natures. Sympathy and curiosity, the two most
prominent traits in simian psychology, are, significantly, the two
most important facts in the psychology of man. Sympathy and
curiosity lie at the foundation of human civilisation, sympathy at
the foundation of morals, and curiosity of invention and science.
The monkey whose diary appears in the closing pages of Romanes’
‘Animal Intelligence’ was possessed of an almost ravenous desire
to know. He spent hour after hour in exploration, examining with the
indomitable patience of a scientist everything that came within the
bounds of his little horizon. And when he had found out any new
thing, he was as delighted over it as a boy who has solved a hard
problem, repeating the experiment over and over until it was
thoroughly familiar to him. Among the many things he discovered for
himself was the use of the lever and the screw. Monkeys are the most
affectionate of all animals excepting dogs and men. This affection
reaches its culmination, as among men, in the love of the mother for
her child. The mother monkey’s little one is the object of her
constant care and affection. She nurses and bathes it, licks it and
cleans its coat, and folds it in her arms and rocks it as if to lull
it to sleep, just as human mammas do. She divides every bite with
her little one, but does not hesitate to chastise it with slaps and
pinches when it is rude. The monkey child is generally very
obedient, obedient enough for an example to many a human youngster.
‘Very touching,’ says Brehm, from whom many of the foregoing
facts are gleaned, ‘is the conduct of the mother when her baby is
obviously suffering. And if it dies she is in despair. For hours,
and even for days, she carries the little corpse about with her,
refuses all food, sits indifferently in the same spot, and often
literally pines to death’.[4]
Orphan monkeys, according to Brehm, are often adopted by the tribe,
and carefully looked after by the other monkeys, both male and
female. The great mass of human beings, who know about as much about
the real emotional life of monkeys as wooden Indians do, are
inclined to pass over lightly all displays of feeling by these
people of the trees. But the poet knows, and the prophet knows, and
the world will one day understand, that in the gentle bosoms of
these wild woodland mothers glow the antecedents of the same
impulses as those that cast that blessed radiance over the lost
paradise of our own sweet childhood. The mother monkey who gathered
green leaves as she fled from limb to limb, and frantically stuffed
them into the wound of her dying baby in order to stanch the cruel
rush of blood from its side, all the while uttering the most pitiful
cries and casting reproachful glances at her human enemy, until she
fell with her darling in her arms and a bullet in her heart, had in
her simian soul just as genuine mother-love, and love just as
sacred, as that which burns in the breast of woman.
The affection of monkeys is not confined to the love of the mother
for her child, but exists among the different members of the same
tribe, and extends even to human beings, especially to those who
make any pretensions to do to them as they would themselves be done
by. The monkey kept by Romanes, already referred to, became so
attached to his master that he went into the wildest demonstrations
of joy whenever his master, after an absence, came into the room.
Standing on his hind-legs at the full length of his chain, and
reaching out both hands as far as he could reach, he screamed with
all his might. His joy was so hysterical that it was impossible to
carry on any kind of conversation until he had been folded in his
master’s arms, when he immediately grew quiet.
‘After I took this monkey back to the Zoological Gardens,’ says
Romanes, ‘and up to the time of his death, he remembered me as
well as the day he was returned. I visited the monkey-house about
once a month, and whenever I approached his cage he saw me with
astounding quickness—indeed, generally before I saw him—and ran
to the bars, through which he thrust both hands with every
expression of joy. When I went away he always followed me to the
extreme end of the cage, and stood there watching me as long as I
remained in sight.’
The following account of the attachment of a male monkey for his
murdered consort is a pitiful tale of human inhumanity and of simian
tenderness and devotion:
‘A member of a shooting-party killed a female monkey, and carried
her body to his tent under a banyan-tree. The tent was soon
surrounded by forty or fifty of the tribe, who made a great noise
and threatened to attack the aggressor. When he presented his
fowling-piece, the fearful effects of which they had just witnessed,
and appeared perfectly to understand, they retreated. The leader of
the troop, however, stood his ground, threatening and chattering
furiously. At last, finding threats of no avail, the broken-hearted
creature came to the door of the tent and began a lamentable
moaning, and by the most expressive signs seemed to beg for the dead
body of his beloved. It was given to him. He took it sorrowfully in
his arms and bore it away to his expecting companions’.[6]
The chattering of monkeys is not, as is vulgarly supposed,
meaningless vocalisation. It is language. It is meaningless to human
ears for the same reason that the chattering of Frenchmen is
meaningless to Americans—_because human beings are foreigners_.
The conversation of monkeys is to convey thought. Every species that
thinks and feels has means for conveying its thoughts and feelings,
and the means for this exchange, whether it be sounds, symbols,
gestures, or grimaces, is language. As Wundt somewhere says: ‘If
psychologists of to-day, ignoring all that an animal can express
through gestures and sounds, limit the possession of language to
human beings, such a conclusion is scarcely less absurd than that of
many philosophers of antiquity who regarded the languages of
barbarous nations as animal cries.’ Mr. Garner, who has so long
and so sympathetically associated with monkeys, has been able to
translate a number of their words and to enter into slight
communication with them. Among the words he has been able to
understand are the words for ‘alarm,’ ‘good-will,’
‘listen,’ ‘food,’ ‘drink,’ ‘monkey,’ and
‘fruit.’ According to him, the simian tongue has about eight or
nine sounds which may be changed by modulation into three or four
times that number, and each different species or kind has its own
peculiar tongue slightly shaded into dialects. There may be more
discriminating students than Garner, but few certainly who have
approached their favourite problem with more feeling and humanity.
Every one should read his beautiful book on ‘The Speech of
Monkeys.’ ‘Among the little captives of the simian race,’ says
he tenderly, in closing his chapter on the emotional character of
these people, ‘I have many little friends to whom I am attached,
and whose devotion to me is as warm and sincere, so far as I can
see, as that of any human being. I must confess that I cannot
discern in what intrinsic way the love they have for me differs from
my own for them; nor can I see in what respect their love is less
divine than is my own.’
Dogs are distinguished for their great intelligence, the
pre-eminence of the sense of smell, fidelity to duty, nobleness of
nature, patience, courage, and affection. In all of these
particulars many individual dogs are superior to whole races of men.
Dogs are more sensitive to physical suffering than savages, and will
cry piteously from slight wounds or other injuries. Dogs of high
life have genuine feelings of dignity and self-respect, and are
easily wounded in their sensibilities. Such dogs have considerable
sense of propriety, and suffer, like sensitive children, from
disapprobation. Romanes had a dog that was so sensitive that he
resented insult, and so sympathetic that he always fought in defence
of other dogs when they were punished or attacked. When out driving
with his master, this dog always caught hold of his master’s
sleeve every time the horse was touched with a whip.[6] Romanes also
tells of a Scotch terrier who, having grown old and useless, and
been supplanted by a younger dog, Jack, became painfully jealous,
and imitated his rival in everything that he did, even to ridiculous
details, in order to retain the attentions of the household. When
Jack was tenderly caressed, the old dog would watch for a time, and
then burst out whining as if in the deepest distress.[6] Dogs
communicate their ideas to each other and to human beings, generally
by means of sounds and gestures. They growl in anger, yelp in
eagerness, howl in despair, bark in joy or warning, bay in wonder,
wail in bitterness and pain, whine in supplication, and prostrate
themselves in submission or apology. It has been said that there
never was a man who possessed the stateliness of a St. Bernard, the
unerring sagacity of the collie, or the courage and tenacity of the
bulldog. The vainest dandy is not more delicate in his ways than the
Italian greyhound, nor more soft and affectionate than the Blenheim.
Many a deed of heroism has been done by dogs which would, if done by
men, have been honoured by the Order of the Victoria Cross. The St.
Bernards belonging to the monks on the passes between Switzerland
and Italy are especially celebrated for their devotion to the
business of saving human life. They often lose their own lives in
their efforts to rescue travellers baffled and overcome by storm.
One particularly sagacious individual, who lost his life in this way
some years ago, wore a medal stating that he had been the means of
saving twenty-two human lives. In devotion the dog is superior to
all other animals, not even excepting man. ‘How could one get
relief from the endless dissimulation, falsity, and malice of
mankind,’ exclaimed Schopenhauer in one of his inspired moments,
‘if there were no dogs into whose honest faces he could look
without distrust?’ A dog will follow a handful of rags wrapped
around a homeless beggar, day after day, through heat and cold and
storm and starvation, just as faithfully as he will follow the
purple of a king. The dog who stood over the lifeless body of his
master, grieving for recognition and starting at every flutter of
his garments, till he himself died of starvation, had in his
faithful breast a nobler heart than that which beats in the bosom of
most men. And the devotion of Greyfriars Bobby, who every night for
twelve years, in all kinds of weather, slept on his master’s
grave, was well worthy the marble tribute which to-day stands in
Edinburgh to his memory. There has never been recorded in the
history of the world an instance of more extravagant trust and
devotion than that told of the canine companion of a certain
vivisector, which licked the hand of his master while undergoing the
crime of being cut to pieces. Such deeds of self-sacrifice remind
one of the tales told of imaginary saints. But they are the deeds of
_only dogs_—of beings whom half the world look upon with
indifference and contempt, and whom the other half would feel, if
they came within reach, under the strictest obligations to kick.
‘When some proud son of man returns to earth,
Unknown to glory but upheld by birth,
The sculptor’s art exhausts the pomp of woe,
And storied urns record who rests below;
When all is done, upon the tomb is seen,
Not what he was, but what he should have been;
But the poor dog, in life the firmest friend,
The first to welcome, foremost to defend,
Whose honest heart is still his master’s own.
Who labours, fights, lives, breathes, for him alone,
Unhonoured falls, unnoticed all his worth—
Denied in heaven the soul he had on earth.’
I am not one of those who regard the evidence for the post-mortem
existence of the human soul as being either abundant or conclusive.
But of one thing I am positive, and that is, that there are the same
grounds precisely for believing in the immortality of the bird and
the quadruped as there are for the belief in human immortality. And
it is delightful to find great thinkers like Haeckel, great
biologists and philosophers, holding the same conviction. Haeckel is
the giant of the Germans, and in his brilliant book ‘The Riddle of
the Universe’ appears this rather poetical paragraph: ‘I once
knew an old head-forester, who, being left a widower and without
children at an early age, had lived alone for more than thirty years
in a noble forest of East Prussia. His only companions were one or
two servants, with whom he exchanged merely a few necessary words,
and a great pack of different kinds of dogs, with whom he lived in
perfect psychic communion. Through many years of training this keen
observer and friend of nature had penetrated deep into the
individual souls of his dogs, and he was as convinced of their
personal immortality as he was of his own. Some of his most
intelligent dogs were, in his impartial estimation, at a higher
stage of psychic development than his old stupid maid and his rough
and wrinkled man-servant. Any unprejudiced observer who will study
the psychic phenomena of a fine dog for a year, and follow
attentively the processes of its thought, judgment, and reason, will
have to admit that it has just as valid a claim to immortality as
man himself.’
Fido was a shaggy terrier who lived years ago in the old home on the
farm by the beautiful brook. He was one of the very first
acquaintances the writer of these lines made on coming into
existence. In his earlier years, before age had dimmed his mind and
rheumatism had fastened upon him, he was an exceedingly agreeable
and clever canine, active in all the affairs of the farm. He knew
the old homestead by heart, and he took about as much interest in
having everything go right as anybody—more, perhaps, even than we
boys did. He chased the pigs out of the orchard without being asked
to do so, and guarded the house at night with the vigilance of a
hired watchman. He seemed to realise the demands of everyday
situations about as well as any of us. He could distinguish between
neighbours who were accustomed to come on the premises and strangers
who were not. He always knew when company came, for he invariably
attempted to profit by the fact. He had been taught early the
propriety of keeping in the background when his tyrants were
feeding, and ordinarily on such occasions he slept dutifully by the
kitchen stove. But just as sure as a guest sat at table, Fido would
turn up, and, tapping the visitor gently to get his attention, would
sit up perfectly straight, with his paws pendent and a peculiar grin
on his face, in expectation of a morsel. Dear old Fido! How much he
thought of all of us! And how meagerly, as I know now, were his
matchless love and services requited; On Sundays sometimes the human
members of the household would go away and stay all day, and Fido
and the cat would be left alone to get along the best way they
could. He knew as well as any of us when these days came around, and
he dreaded them. I suppose he had learned from experience to
associate cessation of farm work and peculiar preparations with a
day alone. The long, lonely hours probably affected him somewhat as
they do a human being who is compelled to stay alone all day with
nothing to do. But what a welcome he gave us in the evening when we
came back! This was indubitable evidence of his loneliness. The
first familiar object we would see in the evening, on coming in
sight of home, was faithful Fido, sitting out in the road on the
hill above the house—sitting straight up in that peculiar way of
his—watching and waiting for our home-coming. He knew, or seemed
to know, the direction from which to expect us, and was able to
recognise us a long way off. The years have been many, and Fido’s
dust has long been scattered by the gusts over the farms of
north-west Missouri; but now, in fancy, I can see this faithful
creature bounding down the road in the sunset to meet us, as he used
to do in the golden long-ago, leaping and smiling and wagging his
tail, and wriggling and barking in a perfect ecstasy of gladness.
Well, I _know_ Fido could feel and think, that he loved and feared
and longed and dreaded and dreamed and hated and grieved and
sympathised and reasoned and rejoiced—in short, that he was moved
by about the same passions and considerations as human beings
usually are. He gave the same evidence of it precisely as a human
being does.
The dog is the oldest of human associates. Long before the
historical period the dog was domesticated in Europe, Asia, and
Africa. No race of men is too primitive to be without the dog. The
bones of the dog are found in the middens of the Baltic, and rude
representations of it are chiseled on the oldest monuments of Egypt
and Assyria. The dog was the servant of man away in paleolithic
times, when the mastodon was on earth, and man was a naked
troglodyte, and Europe extended westward to the Azores. And he has
been a faithful friend, a tireless ally, and an enthusiastic slave
of a thankless and inhuman master ever since.
Birds are pre-eminently emotional and artistic. This is shown by
their fondness for singing, their fine dress, their pining for their
dead, their dainty architecture, their pretty forms and manners of
life, their joyousness, and their love for their young. Birds are
the most beautiful and engaging of all terrestrial beings. Endowed
with the power of flight, eminently active, light-hearted and free,
attired in all the colours of the rainbow, and with voices of
unrivalled richness and melody, birds are the admiration and envy of
all of those that dwell on the earth. Birds possess naturally and in
marvellous perfection that power of locomotion which has been so
long sought for by slow-shuffling man. Birds are also incomparable
musicians, no other animals, not even men, approaching them in the
surpassing brilliancy and sweetness of their song. No human musician
in high-sounding hall can equal the artless lay of the wild bird
ringing melodiously through the leafy colonnades of the woods. Like
men, birds sing chiefly of love; but they also sing for pastime or
pleasure. Their singing is sweetest during the season of courtship,
and attains its highest development in the males. Birds are ardent
lovers. To win their brides, the males contend with each other, and
display their charms of plumage and song with the wildness of human
Romeos.
The song of birds is generally acquired by inheritance from the
species, but is sometimes borrowed by imitation from other birds, or
even from other animals. Birds taken from their species when young,
before they have heard their native song, sing generally the song of
their kind, but it is likely to be interspersed with notes and
phrases from the birds around them. Birds thus isolated have been
known to adopt entirely the song of their surroundings. Olive Thorne
Miller vouches for the fact that an English sparrow she once knew
grew up in company with a canary, and came in time to sing the song
of its more talented companion to perfection. It must have been a
Shakspere of a bird, however, to have soared so high above the
excruciating accomplishments of the generality of its species.
The songs of birds can be set to music just as the melodies of men
can. The songs of several birds were published in the _American
Naturalist_ a few years ago. And Winchell, the well-known English
student of birds, has written a clever book on the ‘Cries and
Call-notes of Wild Birds,’ in which he prints the calls and songs
of most of the native birds of England. According to this writer,
who has perhaps studied the music of birds more critically than
anyone else, the song of the nightingale, when printed in the
notation of ordinary human music, is like a piano solo. It is made
up of a score or so of different strains, with trills and
crescendos, and all executed in so inimitable a manner that it is
unrecognisable when repeated on a musical instrument or the human
voice. One of these strains, curiously enough, is identical with the
song of a certain bush-warbler of western Canada—as if the English
vocalist had plagiarised the song of its humbler cousin in compiling
its incomparable repertoire. The song of the mocking-bird is a
magnificent medley, made up of the calls, trills, twitters, warbles,
warnings, and love-songs, of a score or more of other birds. I have
heard this bird along the Solomon and Arkansas valleys repeat in the
most perfect manner the notes and songs of the pewee, purple martin,
kingbird, flicker, blue jay, catbird, canary, crow, English sparrow,
red-headed woodpecker, quail, cardinal, cuckoo, robin, red-wings,
grackle, meadowlark, night-hawk, whip-poor-will, besides many other
calls and notes, perhaps of birds I did not know. In the case of
some of these birds the mocker made all of the different sounds of
each bird. The song of the mocking-bird is delivered at any time,
day or night, and generally in a state of high ecstasy and
excitement, the performer flying from tree to tree and from
house-top to barn-top, occasionally throwing himself into the air in
the most absurd manner, and all the time pouring forth such a stream
of melody that one would think all the birds in the neighbourhood
had suddenly come together and let loose in a grand festival of song.
According to Chapman, many of the notes of birds are language notes
rather than sounds expressive of sentiment. Of the robin this
well-known student of birds says: ‘The song and call-notes of this
bird, while familiar to everyone, are in reality understood by no
one, and offer excellent subjects for the student of bird language.
Its notes express interrogation, suspicion, alarm, and caution, and
it signals to its companions to take wing. Indeed, few of our birds
have a more extended vocabulary.’ Winchell says that the common
English sparrow has as many as seven different notes, which it uses
to express the thoughts and feelings passing through its rather
active but not very highly honoured head: (1) The common note of
address of the male to the female; (2) a note of alarm used by both
male and female adults, but never by the young; (3) an emphatic
alarm note, always uttered by sentinels when a hawk is near or when
a man approaches with a gun; (4) the note of the female when
surrounded by several noisy and contending male rivals; (5) an
autumn cry uttered by the first one of the company perceiving danger
and flying up from the hedges and fields—never uttered by young,
but by adults of both sexes; (6) the love note of both male and
female, used mostly by the female, and generally with a fluttering
or shaking accompaniment of her wings; (7) a curious note sometimes
heard in London—meaning not well understood, but supposed to be a
sort of chuckle or sign of contentment. Each one of these several
different notes may be used to stand for various ideas depending on
the circumstances by being given different emphasis and inflection,
just as in the languages of many primitive races of men a small
vocabulary of words is used to stand for a much larger number of
ideas by being pronounced differently. In the Chinese language, for
instance, the words are increased to three or four times the
original number by modulation; but the same thing is observed in all
languages, both human and non-human. Verbal poverty is pieced out by
verbal variation. We say ać-cent or ac-cent́, depending on whether
we wish to express the idea of a noun or a verb.
The memory of birds is well developed. Many of them remember the
very grove or meadow, and even the very knot-hole or bush, in which
they built their nest the season before, although in the meantime
they have journeyed over lands and seas and sojourned thousands of
miles away. Every year, for several seasons past, in late summer and
early fall, after the nesting-time is over and the young ones are
all grown, the purple martins have gathered in large numbers about
the Field Columbian Museum, in Jackson Park, Chicago. They stay here
for a few weeks, foraging the surrounding air for insects by day,
and sleeping on the great dome of the Museum by night, finally
flying away to be seen no more in such numbers till next year. These
birds, many of them anyway, must remember from one year to another
this annual assembly here by the big waters, else why would they
come together at this particular spot from all over the country? I
have no doubt that some of them, having sojourned here year after
year for some time, remember well the great ugly building where they
meet, and are more or less familiar with the surrounding locality
from having searched it so often. I wonder what led to the
establishing of the custom in the first place. Customs do not fall
from the skies. And what advantage is there in the practice? What
are they up to as they chirp and wheel in the air, and flutter up
the slopes and sail down again, and perch on the pinnacles and
twitter? Maybe it is a sort of Saratoga for them, where they all
come together ostensibly to dip their bills in the blue waves, but
where sons swell in their new feathers, and sly mammas find
prospects for unmarketable misses.
A parrot has been known to remember the voice of its mistress after
an absence of a year and a half—a very remarkable feat even for
the grey matter of a bird. A flock of geese mentioned by Romanes
showed their knowledge of the arrival of market-day, which came
every two weeks, by assembling regularly on such days, early in the
morning, in front of the town inn where the market was held, to pick
up the corn. They never came on the wrong day; and on one occasion,
when the market was omitted on account of a holiday, here came the
unfailing fowls cackling and shouting as usual in merry anticipation
of their fortnightly feast, but ignorant of the national necessities
which had doomed them to be disappointed.[6]
Parrots remember and call for their absent friends, and mumble
phrases in their dreams which have been taught to them. These gifted
birds learn long poems by heart, and sing songs with considerable
art. A parrot belonging to the canon of the Cathedral of Salzburg
was given instruction regularly two hours every day for ten years,
from 1830 to 1840. The bird became very proficient in speech and
exceedingly intelligent. It took part in conversations, whistled
tunes, and was able to sing a number of popular songs, among them an
entire aria from Flotow’s opera of ‘Martha’.[7]
Educated birds though, like educated dogs, horses, cats, mice, men,
and everything else, are very different beings from the uneducated.
Cultivation is a key that unlocks all sorts of miracles. Cats are
cultivated tigers; and the richest grains that ripen in the fields
of men, and the loveliest flowers that blow, are only educated
weeds. Even the flea may be taught to exchange leaping for walking,
to draw a tiny wagon, to ride on the seat, to fire a toy cannon, and
do many other feats.
There is one family of birds in which the superior size,
gorgeousness, and vivacity, usual to the males, are found in the
other sex, the females being the larger and more brightly
coloured—the Phalarope family. Indeed, the members of this small
family not only reverse the usual arrangement of the sexual
characters of birds, but completely upset many of the most cherished
traditions of the avian household. The female does the wooing, and
takes the lead in selecting the nest site. And while she lays the
eggs, the privilege of incubation she hands over magnanimously to
her dull-coloured mate.
Birds have a keen observation and a good deal of that invaluable
faculty known as common-sense. It is wonderful how quickly they
learn to avoid telegraph-wires when these invisible but deadly
gossamers are first stretched across a country, and how unerringly
they keep at safe distances when hunted with firearms. An
experienced crow can tell a cane from a gun-barrel almost as far as
he can see it.
Nearly all birds build nests of some kind in which to cradle their
eggs and young. The cow-bird and cuckoo (European), however, are
exceptions. These birds have the rather human practice of turning
their cares and labours over to somebody else. They are loafers and
parasites. They lay their eggs secretly in the nests of other birds,
where their eggs are hatched and their young cared for by an alien
mother. I have seen a mother song-sparrow hustling about among the
shrubs and grasses for an hour at a time almost, gathering food for
a young cow-bird nearly twice as big as she was, while her foundling
sat phlegmatically at the foot of a tree chirping and fluttering its
wings, and acting as a thankless and apparently bottomless
receptacle for the morsel after morsel laboriously harvested for it
by its tireless little foster-mother. Sand-martins and kingfishers
burrow in the earth and rear their broods in subterranean cradles;
gulls and gamebirds build on the ground; the flamingoes and
barn-swallows build mud nests; the woodpeckers mine holes in trees;
doves and eagles make platforms of sticks; the tailor-bird bastes
living leaves together; the social weavers construct great straw
roofs covering the top of a tree, and build their nests on the limbs
beneath; most singing birds build daintily-lined baskets, and swing
them in trees and bushes.
It is often said that all the birds of a species build their nests
in precisely the same way, and that, while men change and improve
their dwelling-places from generation to generation, birds build
their abodes in the same old way, just as their ancestors built
theirs centuries and centuries ago. This is a favourite thought with
the fogies, with those who change not in their thinking from the
ways hacked out for them centuries and centuries ago. Birds are like
men. Some of them—some races and some individuals—are much more
given to initiative than others. There is as wide a difference
between the hang-bird and the auk in the construction of their
domiciles as between the millionaire and the savage. And the
hang-bird has come by her home-making art through centuries of
improvement, just as the millionaire has arrived at his. It is
believed by ornithologists that the first nests of birds were the
niches of rocks or simple hollows scooped in the sand and soil, such
as are still seen among the more primitive bird races, and that from
these aboriginal beginnings have come, through ages of evolution,
the elaborate creations of the cotton-bird, weaver-bird, tailorbird,
oven-bird, the baya-sparrow, the finches, and the orioles. The
savage who lives unmolested generation after generation in the same
land and country builds his simple hut in just the same way as his
ancestors built theirs, and thinks the same things his ancestors
thought a thousand years before him. Sir Samuel Baker, in a paper on
‘The Races of the Nile Basin,’ points out that each tribe of men
in eastern Africa, like each species of bird, has its own peculiar
style of hut, and that the huts of the various tribes are as
constant in their types as are the nests of birds. The same thing is
true of their headdresses as of their huts; and this fixed character
exists also in their languages, customs, and religions. It is only
some races of men that are given to growth and fluidity, and only
some men of these special races.
Right in our own country, among the remote mountain recesses of
Appalachia, surrounded on all sides by the most wonderful
development, material and intellectual, the world has ever seen,
lives a race of rude mountain folk almost as aboriginal in their
ways and views of life, and as unaffected by civilisation, as if
they were in the heart of Africa. They live huddled together in
one-room log-cabins without windows or floors, eat bacon and
cornmeal, carry on almost constant wars, and execute the deputies of
civilisation who happen to stray into their illicit dominions, just
as they have done from the time these mountain silences were first
broken by them 150 or 200 years ago.
Birds, as a rule, use a great deal of care and thought in the
location of their nests. After they have selected a certain grove or
field as the one best suited to their purposes, or as the one around
which cluster the happiest memories, it usually requires several
days of flying and peeping about, of spying and exploration, before
the exact spot for the precious domicile is finally settled upon. It
is a delicate matter for many birds, for security from sun, storm,
and enemies must all be taken into account. Old birds, as has been
frequently observed, build better nests and select more clever
locations for their nests than the young and inexperienced. The
nest-building habits of many birds are known to have changed during
the past few hundred years. The American house-swallow did most
certainly not build under the eaves of human houses 300 years ago,
nor did the hair-bird in her nest with horsehair as she invariably
does now. The fact that wrens, swifts, and martins now build almost
altogether in boxes and chimneys shows that birds are able and
willing to adapt themselves to new conditions. The chimney-swift and
purple martin, it is said, still cling to their aboriginal custom of
rearing their young in hollow trees in the unsettled parts of
America. The indomitable house-sparrow builds its nest almost
anywhere, from knot-holes and tin cans to electric-light globes and
tree-tops. Its original dwelling was probably an arboreal affair,
like that of other sparrows, and different nesting-places have been
adopted as a result of its association with man. Not only in its
architecture, but in several other ways, this bird has departed from
the traditions of its tribe. The Fringillidae (the sparrow family of
birds) are seed-eaters, both in structure and practice. But the
house-sparrow, since it left the fields and groves to become a gamin
on human streets, has learned to eat almost anything, and one thing,
too, about as cheerfully as another. The varied habits of this bird
are probably due to its natural elasticity in the first place,
supplemented by the unsettling influences of its rather
kaleidoscopic experiences during the past few hundred years.
The fear of birds for man is an acquired trait due to ages of
persecution. If man would treat birds kindly, they would act toward
him as they do toward any other friendly animal. When unfrequented
islands are first visited by man, the birds are found to be
perfectly fearless of him, flying about him, feeding from his hand,
and manifesting no more timidity than if he were a big-hearted bird
himself. Darwin states that, when he stopped at the Galapagos
Islands on his famous trip around the world in the _Beagle_, he
found the birds there so tame that he could push them from the
branches of the trees with his gun-barrel. Professor Cutting, of the
State University of Iowa, in an article in the _Popular Science
Monthly_ for August, 1903, tells of the almost absolute fearlessness
of the birds on the island of Laysan, an isolated atoll in the
Pacific west of the Hawaian Islands, which he visited during that
summer. The island swarms with bird life—petrels, albatrosses, and
tropical birds of various kinds—and these birds betray no more
fear in the presence of man than if he were a cow. The albatrosses
were so numerous and so indifferent to the presence of man that it
was necessary to shove them aside with one’s foot to keep from
stepping on them when one went for a walk along the sand-stretches
of the shore. Professor Cutting took photographs of birds which
literally posed for him in all sorts of positions, and half-savage
jackies amused themselves by going about and pulling the pretty tail
feathers from the tropical birds as they sat on their nests. I have
known of two cases where persons, by going to the same place day
after day with food and kindness, have in the course of a few weeks
taught robins, sparrows, and other birds, to lose all fear of them,
so much so as to sit on their shoulders and arms and eat out of
their hands. This is the spirit all birds would show all the time
toward their featherless lords if these featherless ones would only
treat them with half the consideration they merit.
The love of a bird for the treasures of her nest is one of the most
beautiful things of this world. Mother-like, the parent bird will do
anything almost for the sake of her little ones. Who has not seen
the kildeer strive with all the tact of her clever little soul to
allure some big giant of a human being, who has wandered into her
neighbourhood, away from her nest of precious young? Many a time as
a boy on the farm I have followed one of these birds limping and
tumbling and fluttering along on the ground a few feet ahead of me,
utterly disabled, as I supposed, but always managing to keep just a
little beyond the reach of my eager hands. And when the artful
mother has led me far from the sacred spot where lay all there was
in this world to her, how triumphantly she has lifted herself on her
unharmed wings and, to my utter astonishment, sailed away. The
partridge and the mourning-dove are, if possible, even more artful
in their acting than the kildeer. After I became a large boy and had
been told the meaning of these exhibitions by parent birds, I often
followed the mourning-dove, thinking the bird must be really wounded
after all, so perfectly did it pretend. But the cunning of the
kildeer is not confined to luring one away from the nest. If by some
accident one finds her nest (and the nest is so cleverly concealed
that, if it is discovered at all, it will be by pure accident), the
resourceful mother is ready with other expedients to outwit you. She
watches you all the time from the proper distance, and knows by your
conduct the moment you have found her nest. And before you have even
had time to admire the skill displayed by the mother in blending so
perfectly her abode with its surroundings, a single peculiar note
from her has caused the whole nestful of cuddling young ones to dart
out of their cradle and disappear among the surrounding clods as if
by magic. No amount of searching can find one of them. They have
vanished as effectually as if they had evaporated. And it is enough
to touch the heart of the most indifferent to see the anxious mother
bird, as I have seen her from the cranny of a neighbouring
rock-pile, come back to her nest and call her scattered children
together again after they have once dispersed at her command.
Circling around the nest two or three times to assure herself that
no one is nigh, she alights and begins a low clucking sound like
that of a hen calling her brood. The little ones come out of their
hiding-places one after another as mysteriously as they vanished.
You can’t see for the life of you where they come from. They seem
to just _emanate_. And if one of them fails to come at her
call—for the devoted mother knows very well just how many she
has—she extends her search farther out from her nest, looking all
around and keeping up that peculiar little cluck, until the
half-scared-to-death little slyboots finally comes creeping out from
his improvised snuggery somewhere. If a kildeer’s nest has once
been found, and the mother feels that it is in danger of future
visits, she will move her family at night to some other locality,
and it is practically impossible ever to find it again. The family
relations of the ring-dotterels are said to be ‘so charming and
touching that even hunters recoil from shooting a female surrounded
by her young ones.’
Human beings, true to their instinct never to call into action their
ability to think if they can employ their faculty for nonsense
instead, call this love of the mother bird ‘machinery.’ But
there are some of us (and our numbers are increasing) who are
disposed to put off the adoption of this conclusion until we go mad.
The bird builds her nest, weaving it of the rarest fibres. She hides
it in the copse or prudently hangs it far out on some inaccessible
bough. She lays her beautiful eggs, and hatches them with the warmth
and life of her own breast. She tends her young, bringing them food
and drink, and watching over them with a tender and tireless
vigilance. She protects them in storm with her own little body,
worries about them when danger lurks, and dreams of them, no doubt,
as she rocks and sleeps under the silent stars. She sings to them in
the overflow of her gladness and hope, and risks her very existence
to shield them from harm. She teaches them to fly, to find their
food, and to detect their enemies. She is true to her mate, and her
mate is true and kind to her. As the days of summer shorten, and the
cool, long nights warn of approaching autumn, she leads her children
away from the old place, she and her faithful mate, out into the
wide old world. And I say there is love in the heart of that mother
as truly as in the heart of woman, and there are joy and genuineness
and sorrow and fidelity in that sylvan home more sacred than may
sometimes bloom in the cold mansions of men.
Conjugal love is also very strong in many of the feathered races,
especially among those in which the wedding is for successive
seasons or for life. The pining of love-birds for their dead
sweethearts is well known. The mandarin duck is proverbial for its
marital faithfulness, and a pair of these fowls is carried by the
Chinese in their marriage processions as an emblem of constancy.
Many instances are recorded of birds, after having been deprived of
their mates, refusing steadfastly the attentions of other birds, and
even sometimes separating themselves entirely from the society of
their kind. The following account of the devotion of a widowed
pigeon for her deceased consort sounds like a tale of human woe:
‘A man set to watch a field much patronised by pigeons shot an old
male pigeon who had long been an inhabitant of the farm. His mate,
around whom he had for many a year cooed, whom he had nourished with
his own crop and had assisted in rearing numerous young ones
immediately settled on the ground by his side She refused to leave
him, and manifested her grief in the most expressive manner. The
labourer took up the dead bird and hung it on a stake. The widow
still refused to forsake her husband, and continued day after day
slowly walking around the stake on which his body hung. The
kind-hearted wife of the farmer heard of the matter, and went to the
relief of the stricken bird. On arriving at the spot, she found the
poor bird still watching at the side of her dead, and making an
occasional effort to get to him. She was much spent with her long
fasting and grief. She had made a circular beaten path around the
corpse of her companion’.[8]
And these are the beings whose bones men jest over at their feasts,
and brutes shoot for pastime on human holidays. Much has been said
of the sorrow of birds for their deceased mates, but not too much.
For the avian soul may be smothered by the gloom and loneliness that
come upon the heart, when the great light of love and companionship
has gone out, quite as completely as the soul of a bereaved human.
In not many human homes where loved ones lie sick and dying are felt
the pangs of more genuine grief than those sometimes suffered by
birds when their friends and companions are stricken in death. The
following incident, vouched for by Dr. Franklin, who observed it, is
only one among many such instances recorded in the literature on
birds:
A pair of parrots had lived together on the most loving terms for
four years, when the female was taken with a serious attack of gout.
She grew rapidly worse, and was soon so weak as to be unable to
leave her perch for food, when the male, faithful and tender as a
human spouse, took it upon himself to carry food to her regularly in
his beak. ‘He continued feeding her in this way for four months,
but the infirmities of his companion increased day by day, until at
last she was no longer able to support herself on the perch. She
remained cowering down in the bottom of the cage, making from time
to time ineffectual efforts to regain her perch. The male was always
near her, and did everything in his power to aid the feeble efforts
of his dear better-half. Seizing the poor invalid by the beak or the
upper part of her wing, he tried his best to enable her to rise, and
repeated his efforts several times. His constancy, his gestures, and
his continued solicitude, all showed in this affectionate bird the
most ardent desire to relieve the sufferings and assist the weakness
of his sinking companion. But the scene became still more affecting
when the female was dying. Her unhappy consort moved about her
incessantly, his attentions and tender cares redoubled. He even
tried to open her beak to give some nourishment. He ran to her, and
then returned with a troubled and agitated look. At intervals he
uttered the most plaintive cries; then, with his eyes fixed on her,
kept a mournful silence. At length his companion breathed her last.
From that moment he pined away, and in the course of a few weeks
died’.[6]
Even the rough-looking ostrich has sensibility enough to die of a
broken heart, as was the case in the Jardin des Plantes at Paris a
few years ago. There is many a heart with a slabless grave far from
the haunts of men, and many a tear in secret brews that never wets
the eye.
The individual who has never acquired the enthusiasm for a knowledge
of the birds and a love for their presence and association has
omitted some of the richest emotions of life. ‘The sight of a bird
or the sound of its voice is at all times an event of such
significance to me,’ says Chapman, ‘a source of such unfailing
pleasure, that when I go afield with those to whom birds are
strangers I am deeply impressed by the comparative barrenness of
their world, for they live in ignorance of a great store of
enjoyment that might be theirs for the asking.’
‘I cannot love the man who does not love, As men love light, the
song of happy birds.’
I have seen a mother mouse in a moment of peril flee from her home
among the falling pieces of a cord-wood pile, and disappear under
the roots of a neighbouring oak. I have seen her a little later,
recovered from her initial dismay, making her way back again,
clambering along among the tangled timbers, stopping now and then to
look and listen, her eyes wild and anxious, and her whole little
body quaking with excitement. I have seen her go among the ruins of
her dwelling, take a poor little squeaking young one in her mouth,
and hurry away with it to the gloomy refuge in the roots of the oak.
I have watched her return again and again, each time taking in her
careful teeth the tiny body of a babe, until five mouthfuls of
precious pink were safely lodged within the fortress of the oak. And
I could as soon believe that woman, when she saves her children from
some fearful harm, is a soulless machine as think that that brave
little wood-mother, out there alone under the trees, snatching her
darlings from the jaws of death, was a heroine without sense or
feeling. That little hairy mother with four feet and bead-like eyes
loved her young ones in just the same way and for just the same
reason as a human mother loves her young ones. She looked upon her
babies, in all probability, with the same mother-love and tenderness
as a human mother looks upon hers, and felt in miniature, with evil
hovering above them, the same consternation a woman feels when
destruction reaches out after those that are nearest and dearest.
And when it was all over, when the good angel of deliverance had
finally spread its healing white wings over that afflicted family,
the heart of that little rodent was doubtless soothed by the same
joy as that which, in the hour of deliverance, calms the hearts of
humankind.
Ants tend their fields, gather their harvests, domesticate other
insects, and keep slaves. They help each other bear heavy burdens,
extricate each other from misfortune, speak to each other when they
meet, and bury their dead. They build roads and bridges, and
manifest wonderful engineering skill in their construction. They
even tunnel under rivers. They go far from home, and find their way
back again. They inhabit towns, and build splendid and spacious
palaces. Each ant knows every other citizen of its own town, and an
ant from any other town is immediately recognised as a foreigner.
Ants have their overseers of industrial enterprises, and regular
hours for work and sleep. The ant is the most pugnacious of all
animals, and the most muscular compared with its size. It will
boldly attack the biggest creature that walks if this creature
invades its home. It will fasten its mandibles into an enemy, and
allow itself to be torn to pieces without relaxing its hold. Among
some savage tribes, certain species of ants are said to be used as
surgeons. Infuriated ants are allowed to fasten their mandibles on
the opposite edges of a gash, and in this way the wound is closed.
The ants are decapitated, and their bodiless heads with their
relentless jaws serve as stitches to the wound. Ants have holidays
and athletic festivals. On such occasions they romp and chase each
other and play hide-and-seek like children. They stand on their
hind-legs, embrace each other with their fore-limbs, grasp each
other by the feet or antennae, pull each other down the entrances to
their towns, wrestle and roll over on the sand, and so on—all in
the friendliest manner. It is greatly to the credit of these little
people that no observer has ever yet known them to become so
inventively helpless or so athletically hard up as to play
slug-ball. Ants educate their young, and practise the fundamental
principles of human states and societies. Forel, the great Swiss
student of ants, says that several hundred nests are sometimes
united into a single confederation. Each ant knows every other ant
of the entire confederation, and they all take part in the common
defence. Haeckel says, speaking of social evolution in ants, that
the aboriginal ants of the Chalk Age had as little idea of the
division of labour and organisation of modern ant states as
paleolithic flint-chippers had of the complexity and organisation of
twentieth-century civilisation. ‘If we take an ant’s nest, we
not only see that work of every description—rearing of progeny,
foraging, building, rearing of aphides, and so on—is performed
according to the principles of voluntary mutual aid, but we must
also recognise, with Forel, that the fundamental feature of the life
of many species of ants is the obligation of every ant to share its
food, already swallowed and partly digested, with every member of
the community which may apply for it. Two ants belonging to the same
nest or to the same confederation of nests will approach each other,
exchange a few movements with the antennae, and if one of them is
hungry or thirsty—and especially if the other has its crop
full—it immediately asks for food. The individual thus requested
never refuses. It sets apart its mandibles, takes a proper position,
and regurgitates a drop of transparent fluid, which is licked up by
the hungry ant. Regurgitating food for others is so prominent a
feature in the life of the ants, and it so constantly recurs both
for feeding hungry comrades and for feeding larvae, that Forel
considers the digestive tube of ants to consist of two different
parts, one of which—the posterior—is for the special use of the
individual, and the other—the anterior part—is chiefly for the
use of the community. If an ant which has its crop full has been
selfish enough to refuse to feed a comrade, it will be treated as an
enemy. If the refusal has been made while its kinsfolks were
fighting with some other species, they will fall upon the greedy
individual with greater vehemence even than upon the enemies
themselves. All this has been confirmed by the most accurate
observations and experiments’.[9]
Ants keep slaves. And the slaves, in some instances, carry their
masters about, feed them, groom them, and attend to their every
want, just as human lackeys do helpless aristocrats. In some species
the institution of slavery is so old that the physical structures of
the masters have been modified until the masters are physically
unable to feed themselves, and will perish from hunger, though
surrounded by food, if they are left to themselves. The brain of the
ant, as Darwin says, is one of the most wonderful bits of matter in
the universe. It is scarcely one-fourth the size of the head of a
pin, yet it is the seat of the most astonishing wisdom and activity.
If human intelligence were as great, compared with the mass of the
human brain, as is the ant’s, man would be several hundred times
as wise as he is now, and would then probably not fall far short of
that state of erudition which the average man imagines he already
represents. Ants remember, and a fact becomes impressed by
repetition, showing that the faculty of memory in ants is governed
by the same laws as is this faculty in man. Sir John Lubbock found
it necessary to teach his ants the way by repeating the lesson where
the way was long or unusual. ‘Sensation, perception, and
association follow in the social insects, on the whole, the same
fundamental laws as in the vertebrates, including ourselves.
Furthermore, attention is surprisingly developed in insects’
(Forel). Ants keep standing armies, make alliances, and maraud
neighbouring states. They have their wars, civil and foreign, and
their massacres and enslavements of the conquered. But they have
never got so low yet, so far as anyone knows, as to hypocritically
prosecute their conquests in the name of God and humanity. The
battlefields of ants resemble the carnage-plains of men, strewn with
ghastly corpses and covered with the headless and dying. And the
accounts of their expeditions—their going forth in regular
columns, with captains, scouts, and skirmish lines, their battles,
and their return laden with plunder and captives—read like the
grisly tales of human history. Ants perform, in short, about all the
antics of civilised man, except maltreating the females and drinking
gin. And shall we say their civilisation is less real because it is
miniature and because it is carried on far below the Brobdingnagian
contemplations of man? ‘When we see an ant-hill tenanted by
thousands of industrious inhabitants, excavating chambers, forming
tunnels, making roads, guarding their home, gathering food, feeding
the young, tending their domestic animals, each one fulfilling its
duties industriously and without confusion, it is difficult
altogether to deny them the gift of reason or to escape the
conviction that their mental powers differ from those of men not so
much in kind as in degree’ (Lubbock).
The industrious and gifted bee, with its wonderful social system, in
advance even of that of the most enlightened societies of men; the
generous horse, who thinks and feels so much more than the clowns
who maul him ever suspect; the artful spider, that confirmed
waylayer lurking in his lair of silk; the soft and predaceous cat;
the timid-hearted hare, poor hounded little dweller of the fields
and stream-sides; the beautiful and vivacious squirrel; the lowly
lady-bug; the cautious fox; the irascible serpent, so cruelly
misunderstood by men; the patient camel; the scornful peafowl; the
indomitable goat; the grave and vindictive elephant; the ingenious
beaver, the woodman of the primeval wilderness; the lordly and
polygamous cock; the maternal hen; the wary trout, beset everywhere
by the villainous traps of impostors; the bride-like butterfly; the
delicate antelope and deer; and the sturdy, incorruptible ox—all
of these beings have within them souls composed primarily of the
same elements as those that compose the souls of men.
Ground-wasps have been observed to use tiny stones as hammers in
packing the dirt firmly over their nests—a very remarkable act of
intelligence, since the use of tools is not common even among the
higher mammals.[10]
Fishes have been taught to assemble at the ringing of a bell, and
toads and tortoises to come at the call of their favourite friends.
An alligator which was kept tame for several years became so much
attached to its master that ‘it followed him about the house like
a dog, scrambling up the stairs after him, and showing much
affection and docility.’ The favourite friend and companion of
this alligator was the cat; and, whenever the cat stretched herself
on the floor in front of the fire, the alligator would lie down
beside her, with its head on the cat, and go to sleep. ‘When the
cat was absent, the alligator was restless, but it always appeared
happy when the cat was near it’.[8]
Wolves and foxes sometimes cooperate with each other in their
hunting expeditions, somewhat as men do in theirs. One of their
number will crouch in ambush by the side of a road known to be used
by hares or other small animals, and leap on the unsuspecting
fugitives when driven that way by others of the hunting band. Many
animals post sentinels when they eat or sleep or engage in other
hazardous undertakings, and these sentinels show a good deal of
discrimination in distinguishing between animals that are friendly
and those that are not. Beavers not only build lodges to live in,
but also construct dams to keep the water in which the villages are
located at a certain height. The outlet of these dams is carefully
regulated, being regularly lessened and enlarged to suit the supply
of water in the stream. The trees used by the beavers in their
enterprises are felled by them along the margins of the stream, and
floated to the place where they are used. In old communities, where
the supply of timber near the stream has been exhausted, artificial
canals are cut by these indomitable engineers for use in the
transportation of their materials. These excavations are made at a
great cost of labour and for the deliberate purpose of enabling the
builders to accomplish that which they could not accomplish in any
other way. ‘In executing this purpose,’ says Romanes, ‘there
is sometimes displayed a depth of engineering forethought over
details of structure required by the circumstances of special
localities which is even more astonishing than the execution of the
general idea’.[6] When, for instance, a canal has been carried so
far from the original water-supply that, owing to the rising ground,
it cannot be continued without a very great expenditure of effort in
digging, a second dam is built higher up-stream, and with water
drawn from this the canal is continued on at a higher level.
Sometimes a third dam is built above the second, and the canal again
continued at a still higher level before the valuable timber of the
higher grounds is reached. These enterprising rodents also carve
sometimes enormous channels across the necks of land formed by
winding rivers, to serve as cut-offs in travel and transportation.
And yet all of these things—all of the intelligence, feeling, and
ingenuity displayed by the non-human races—are still lumped
together by belated psychologists under the head of ‘instinct,’
by which is meant a blind, unconscious knack of doing the right
thing without in any way realising what is being done or what it is
being done for! The principle in accordance with which mind is
denied to non-human beings would, if carried to its legitimate
conclusions, make machines out of all of us, and limit the
possession of conscious intelligence to the individual who
promulgates the theory. The attitude assumed by many psychologists
toward the mental faculties of inferior races reminds one of
Heine’s interview with the old lizard at Lucca. In the discussion
which ensued between the poet and the reptile, the poet dropped the
words, ‘I think.’ ‘Think!’ snapped the lizard with a sharp,
aristocratic tone of profound contempt—‘think! Which of you
thinks? For 3,000 years, wise sir, I have investigated the spiritual
functions of animals, and I have made men and apes the special
objects of my study. I have devoted myself to these queer creatures
with as great zeal and diligence as Lyonnet to his caterpillars. And
as the result of my researches, I can assure you no man thinks. Now
and then something occurs to him, and these accidentally occurring
somethings he calls thoughts, and the stringing of them together he
calls thinking. But you can take my word for it, no man thinks—no
philosopher thinks. And, so far as philosophy is concerned, it is
mere air and water, like pure vapours in the sky. There is, in
reality, only one true philosophy, and that is engraven in eternal
hieroglyphics on my own tail’.[7]
This attitude of the lordly saurian toward the human race is a
stinging burlesque on the anthropocentric conceit which perverts all
of man’s views of the other orders of life.
It is not contended that non-human beings are psychically identical
with human beings. The races of men are not psychically identical
with each other. The difference between the intellectual splendours
of a Spencer evolving volumes of the profoundest philosophy and the
mind of an Australian who cannot count six, or between the
understanding of an Edison, the wizard of the electrical world, and
that of the South Sea islanders, who, when Captain Cook gave them
some English nails, planted them in the hope of raising a new crop,
is almost infinite. The lowest races of men have neither
superstition nor the power of abstract thought as have the higher
races. They have a word for black stone, white stone, and brown
stone, but no word for stone; for elm-tree, oak-tree, and the like,
but no word for tree. As Kingsley says, ‘It is difficult to
believe that a dog does not form as clear an abstract idea of a tree
as these people do.’ There are human beings living in the forests
of Asia, Africa, and Australasia that wander about from place to
place in herds without chief, law, weapons, or fixed habitations.
They go naked, mate by chance, and climb trees like monkeys. Some of
these races know nothing of fire, religion, or a moral world,
chatter to each other like apes, and live on such natural products
as roots, fruits, serpents, mice, ants, and honey. One of these
creatures, we are told, will lie flat on his front for an hour by
the runway of a field-mouse, waiting for a chance to snatch up the
little creature when it comes along and eat it. Dozens of such
degraded races are mentioned by Blichner in his ‘Man: Past,
Present, and Future,’ and by Sir John Lubbock in his ‘Origin of
Civilisation.’
Non-human beings have, as a rule, neither the psychic variety nor
the intensity of higher humans. And it is not contended that in
language, science, and superstition they are capable of being
compared with the foremost few of civilised societies, any more than
savages, especially the lowest savages, are capable of such
comparison. But it is maintained that the non-human races of the
earth are _not_ the metallic and soulless lot of fixtures they are
vulgarly supposed to be; that they are just as real living beings,
with just as precious nerves and just as genuine feelings, rights,
heartaches, capabilities, and waywardnesses, as we ourselves: and
that, since they are our own kith and kindred, we have no right
whatever, higher than the right of main strength (which is the right
of devils), to assume them to be, and to treat them as if they were,
our natural and legitimate prey.
1. Darwin: _Expression of Emotions in Men and Animals_; New York,
1899.
2. Starr: _Human Progress_; Pennsylvania, 1895.
3. Hartmann: _Anthropoid Apes_; New York, 1901.
4. Brehm: _From North Pole to Equator_; London, 1896.
5. Stanley: _In Darkest Africa_, vol i.; New York, 1890.
6. Romanes: _Animal Intelligence_; New York, 1899.
7. Evans: _Evolutional Ethics and Animal Psychology_; New York, 1898.
8. Jesse: _Gleanings in Natural History_, vol. i.; London, 1832.
9. Kropotkin: _Mutual Aid a Factor of Evolution_; New York, 1902.
10. Peckham and Peckham: _Instincts and Habits of the Solitary
Wasps_; Madison, Wisconsin, 1898.