The analysis of human mind and the comparison of its elements or
powers with the powers of non-human mind corroborate the conclusions
already arrived at through observation and deductive inference. The
chief powers of the mind of man are _sensation_, _memory_,
_emotion_, _imagination_, _volition_, _instinct_, and _reason_. All
of these faculties are found in non-human beings, some of them
developed to a much higher degree than they are in man, and some of
them to a much lower.
_Sensation_ is the effect produced on the mind when a sense organ is
affected in some way by external stimuli. Sensation is the lumber of
the mind, the raw material out of which are elaborated all other
forms of consciousness. The chief species of sensation are those of
sight, sound, smell, taste, and feeling. The original sense was
feeling, and out of this sense were evolved the other four. The
organs of seeing, hearing, smelling, and tasting are therefore
modifications of the skin, which is the organ of original sense. The
fact that in all animals, down almost to the very beginnings of
life, sense organs exist, suggests that sensation may be almost, if
not quite, coextensive with animal life. All mammals, birds,
reptiles, amphibians, and fishes have the same special sense organs
as man, and the organs of sight, sound, taste, and smell occupy in
all vertebrates the same relative positions in the head. Birds see
better than any other animals, and carnivora smell better. Ruminants
see, hear, and smell with great acuteness. Fishes also see and hear
well; and the wings of the bat are so exceedingly sensitive that it
will move about blindfolded and with ears stopped with cotton almost
as unerringly as when aided by sight and sound. Insects have smell,
sight, and taste well developed, as is shown by their keen
appreciation of the colours, perfumes, and flavours of flowers. They
also hear. Stridulation proves this. Worms have eyes and ears, and
land-leeches scent the approach of their prey at a long distance.
The starfish and the medusa respond to all the five classes of
stimuli which affect the five senses of man, and nervous substance
is found in all animals above the sponge.
_Memory_ is the power of retaining or recognising past states of
consciousness. The power to retain impressions follows in origin
close upon the power to receive impressions. Memory is the historic
faculty of the mind—the power of the mind to store up its
experiences—and is found in nearly all animals. The lowly limpet,
whose world is a seaside rock, will come back from its little
roamings time after time to the same rude lodge from which it set
out. Bees remember where they get honey or sugar months afterwards,
and when it is necessary will sometimes go back to the old home hive
which they left the year before. Ants retrace their steps after
making long journeys from their nest, and are able in some way to
recognise their friends after months of separation. The stickleback
(fish) knows the way back to his nest, although he has been absent
several hours. Fishes return and hatch their young year after year
in the same waters; birds come back to their old nesting-places; and
horses remember their way along devious roads over which they have
not been for years. Horses used in the delivery of milk, or in other
occupations in which they are accustomed to travel daily over about
the same route, come in time to remember every alley, street, and
stopping-place of the whole round almost as accurately as their
drivers. Darwin’s dog remembered and obeyed him after an absence
of five years. The power of dogs, squirrels, and other animals of
remembering where they have long before cached food is indeed
wonderful. A squirrel will come down out of a tree when the earth is
covered to a depth of several inches with lately fallen snow and hop
away, without the slightest hesitancy or mistake, to the exact spot
where it has months before stored its mid-winter acorns. A lion has
been known to recognise its keeper after seven years of separation,
and an elephant obeyed all his old words of command on being
recaptured after fifteen years of jungle life. The similarity of
memory in other animals to the same faculty in man is shown by the
fact that memory everywhere is governed by the same laws. In all
animals, including man, memory is strengthened by repetition—that
is, impressions are always deepened and confirmed by being made over
and over. A parrot or a raven masters a new sentence by working at
it and saying it over and over again, just as a boy memorises his
rules and catechisms.
_Imagination_ is the picturing power of the mind. In its lowest
stages of manifestation it is akin to memory. Imagination, however,
in its higher reaches, not only reimages previous impressions, but
combines them in new and original relations. Imagination is
displayed in dreams, images, delusions, anticipation, and sympathy.
It also furnishes wings for speculation and reason. Spiders, when
they attach stones to their webs to steady them during anticipated
gales, probably exercise imagination. The tame serpent which was
carried away from its master’s house and found its way back again,
though the distance was one hundred miles, no doubt carried in its
imagination vivid pictures of its old home.[1] Cats, dogs, horses,
and other animals dream, and parrots talk in their sleep. Horses and
cattle sometimes stampede at imaginary objects, and often distort
real objects into imaginary monsters. When a horse at night takes
fright at a big black stump by the roadside, he no doubt imagines it
to be some terrible creature ready to eat him up if he should go
near it, just as a timid child does in the same circumstances. There
is a great difference in horses in this respect, just as there is
among children and men, some of them taking fright at every unusual
thing, while others are more bold or stolid. The cat playing with a
ball of yarn converts it by means of its imagination into an object
of prey, just as a girl converts a doll into a baby, or a boy
changes a stick into a steed. Sympathy is the putting or picturing
of one’s self in the place of another, and by means of the
imagination sharing or simulating the psychic conditions of that
other. This high and holy exercise of the imagination is exhibited
by horses, cattle, dogs, deer, elephants, monkeys, and birds—in
fact, by nearly all animals as far down as the fishes and insects.
_Emotion_ is the stirring of the sensibilities by way of the
intellect or the imagination. The following emotions are found in
non-human beings: fear, surprise, affection, pugnacity, play, pride,
anger, jealousy, curiosity, sympathy, emulation, resentment,
appreciation of the beautiful, grief, hate, cruelty, joy,
benevolence, revenge, shame, remorse, and appreciation of the
ludicrous. Excepting the emotions of conscience and religion, which
are really compounds, with fear as the main ingredient, this list of
non-human emotions is coextensive with the list of human emotions.
Many of these emotions germinate low down in the animal kingdom,
fear, anger, sexuality, and jealousy all being found in fishes and
in the higher invertebrates. In the higher vertebrates many of these
emotions are almost as strong as they are in men. Does anyone who
has felt the throbbing sides of a frightened puppy or hare have any
doubt that these creatures suffer the keenest agony of fear? Apes
have been known to fall down and faint when suddenly confronted by a
snake, so great is their instinctive horror of serpents; and gray
parrots, which are extremely nervous birds, have been known to drop
from their perch unconscious under the influence of great fear.[2]
The horse is, perhaps, of all animals, the one which occasionally
gives itself over most completely to the emotion of fear, as
everyone who has witnessed the terrible abandon of a runaway team
can testify. Ants, fishes, birds, cats, dogs, horses, monkeys,
porpoises, and many other animals play. Young kittens, colts, and
puppies enjoy a scuffle about as well as boys do. Pugnacity
originates among the spiders and insects, and is highly developed in
the ant, cock, and bulldog. This emotion is strong in the males of
nearly all vertebrates. Anyone who has observed the vigilance
displayed by fishes in protecting their nests can have little doubt
that these comparatively primitive beings possess pugnacity. I was
one evening floating in a boat by the edge of a Long Island pond
just over a village of perches. Each nest was guarded by an
assiduous male, who hovered over it vigilantly, or darted this way
and that to drive off the piscatorial _hoi polloi_ hanging about the
neighbourhood, ready to slip in at the first opportunity and eat the
eggs. Just to see what would happen, I put my hand down into the
water and moved it slowly toward one of the nests. To my surprise,
the guardian of the nest, instead of fleeing in alarm, proceeded to
show fight. It chased my hand away time after time, and when the
hand was not removed it would nip it vigorously, not once simply,
but two or three times if necessary, and each time with increasing
energy. It contended with the courage of a little hero. I pushed it
and jostled it about, and even took it in my hand and lifted it
clear out of the water. To my amazement, on getting back into the
water, it returned promptly to the attack. It fought until it was
really fagged, for its onsets were at last much feebler than at
first. I came away after twenty minutes, leaving the little hero in
triumphant possession of his charge.
Among some species of monkeys several individuals will join together
in overturning a stone for the possible ants’ eggs under it; and,
when a burying beetle has found a dead mouse or bird, it goes and
gets its companions to help it in the interment.[3] Crows show
benevolence by feeding their blind and helpless companions, and
monkeys adopt the orphans of deceased members of their tribe. Brehm
saw two crows feeding in a hollow tree a third crow which was
wounded. They had evidently been doing this for some time, for the
wound was several weeks old. Darwin tells of a blind pelican which
was fed upon fishes, which were brought to it by its friends from a
distance of thirty miles.[4] The devotion of cedar-birds to each
other and their kindness to all birds in distress are well known to
every student of ornithology. Olive Thorne Miller tells of a
cedar-bird that raised a brood of young robins that had been left
orphans by the accidental killing of the parents. Weddell saw more
than once during his journey to Bolivia that when a herd of vicunas
were closely pursued the strong males covered the retreat of the
weaker and less swift members of the herd by lagging behind and
protecting them.[3]
A remarkable instance of altruism which he once saw exhibited by the
king-crabs in a London aquarium is mentioned by Kropotkin in his
work on ‘Mutual Aid a Factor in Evolution.’ One of these crabs
had fallen on its back in a corner of the tank. And for one of these
great creatures, with its saucepan carapace, to get on its back is,
even in favourable circumstances, a serious matter. The seriousness
was increased in this instance by an iron bar, which hindered the
normal activities of the unfortunate crustacean. ‘Its comrades
came to the rescue, and for one hour’s time I watched how they
endeavoured to help their fellow-prisoner. They came two at once,
pushed their friend from beneath, and after strenuous efforts
succeeded in lifting it upright. But then the iron bar prevented
them from achieving the work of rescue, and the crab again fell
heavily on its back. After many attempts, one of the helpers went
into the depth of the tank and brought two other crabs, who began
with fresh forces the same pushing and lifting of their helpless
comrade. We stayed in the aquarium for more than two hours, and,
when leaving, came to cast a glance upon the tank. The work of
attempted rescue still continued. Since I saw that I cannot refuse
credit to the observation quoted by Dr. Erasmus Darwin that the
common crab during the moulting season stations a sentinel, an
unmolted or hard-shelled individual, to prevent marine enemies from
injuring moulted individuals in their unprotected state.’ Walruses
go to the defence of a wounded comrade when summoned by its cries
for help. Romanes tells of a gander who acted as a guardian to his
blind consort, taking her neck gently in his mouth and leading her
to the water when she wanted to take a swim, and after allowing her
to cruise for a time under his guidance and care, conducting her
back home again in the same thoughtful manner. When goslings were
hatched, this remarkable gander seemed to realise the inability of
the mother to look after them, for he took charge of them as if they
were his own, convoying them to the waterside, and lifting them
carefully out of the ruts and pits with his bill whenever they got
into difficulty.[1]
The disposition to go to the aid of a fellow in trouble is one of
the most characteristic traits in the psychology of the swine. A
single squeal of distress from even the scrawniest member of a swine
herd will bring down on the one who causes this distress the
hair-raising wrath of every porker within hearing. This trait has
been considerably reduced by domestication, and in those varieties
in which degeneracy has gone farthest it scarcely exists. But it is
exceedingly strong in all wild hogs. Animals as low in the scale of
development and as proverbially cold as snakes have been known, when
educated and treated with kindness, to manifest considerable
affection for their friends and masters. Nearly all domestic animals
display a good deal of affection, not only to their young, but to
adult members of their own kind and to their human masters. The
devotion of the dog to man is without a parallel anywhere. It has
been said that ‘the dog is the only thing on this earth that loves
you more than he loves himself.’ When dogs become so much attached
to their masters or mistresses that they pine and die on being
separated from them, they show beyond any question that they have
feelings which, in intensity, are not inferior to those possessed by
the more highly developed men and women. And this has happened time
after time.
A pathetic story of love and of its tragic close came last year out
of the Maine woods. Two moose, who had been tracked all day by a
couple of human tigers, were finally overtaken, when one of them
fell pierced by two rifle-balls. The remaining moose, instead of
dashing off into the forest, stood still, lowered its head, and
sniffed at its fallen companion. Then, raising its antlers high into
the air, it bellowed loudly. As the cry of the great creature echoed
through the forest, it also fell at the discharge of the rifles. It
was found on examination afterwards that the first moose was blind,
and that the second one, which had neglected to leave it for safety,
was its pilot.
My father once owned a cow who contracted a strong affection for my
sister. This cow, who showed on many occasions and in many ways her
highly developed emotional nature, would scarcely allow anyone else
than my sister to milk her. She always presented herself to my
sister as soon as she was let into the lot in order to be milked
first, and she was so jealous of this privilege that if it were not
accorded to her she would stand with her head down and give vent to
her unhappiness in low moans. After she was milked she would follow
her human friend around from one cow to another, in order to be as
near her as possible. She knew my sister’s voice from that of
everyone else, and would always low a response and come to her when
called by name, even though she were a quarter of a mile away in the
pasture. Romanes tells somewhere of a band of apes that were being
pursued by dogs when a young ape was cut off from the rest and was
about to be killed by the dogs. The chief of the band, seeing the
peril of the young one, went deliberately back and rescued it.
Many animals show that they possess a rudimentary sense of humour by
the pranks and tricks which they play on each other and on human
beings. The monkey is the prince of nonhuman jokers, but dogs, cats,
horses, elephants, and other animals have enough of this sense to
have books written about it. A monkey has been observed to slyly
pass his hand back of a second monkey and tweak the tail of a third
one, and then composedly enjoy himself while the resentment of the
injured monkey expended itself on the innocent middle one. Many
monkeys enjoy entertaining their friends with grimaces, by carrying
a cane, putting a tin dish on their heads, or other droll antics.
These intelligent animals have a sufficiently high appreciation of
the ludicrous to dislike ridicule. Like human beings, they can’t
endure being laughed at, and get mad if they are made the victims of
a joke. Romanes’ monkey was one day asked to crack a nut for the
amusement of a visitor. The nut turned out to be a bad one, and the
melancholy look of disappointment on the monkey’s face caused the
visitor to laugh. The insulted monkey flew into a rage, and hurled
the nut at the offending scoffer, then the hammer, and finally the
coffee-pot which simmered on the grate fire.[1] Darwin tells of a
baboon in the Zoological Gardens of London who always became
infuriated every time his keeper took out a letter or book and read
aloud to him. On one occasion when Darwin was present the baboon
became so furious that he bit his own leg until it bled.[4]
The emotion variously known as shame, regret, repentance, and
remorse, is not common among the non-human races. It is found
sometimes in dogs and monkeys, and especially in educated
anthropoids. But this emotion is exceedingly rare among savages, and
is not at all universal even among civilised societies of men. Some
animals manifest self-restraint, which is an exceedingly elite
quality of mind, and one not so common as it might be even among the
higher breeds of mankind. By restraint is meant the inhibition of a
desire or instinct in the presence of circumstances tending to
render the desire or instinct active—and this is obedience, and
the beginning of morality. A dog that will not chase a hare in the
presence of his master may do so in his absence. I taught my
guinea-pigs to abstain from certain food in their presence which
they wanted very much, and which they would have eaten if they had
not been educated to let it alone. Sympathy is the most beautiful of
all terrestrial emotions. It is manifested, sometimes to an
exceedingly touching degree, by all the highest races of animals. No
other instances than those already given can be mentioned here. It
is sufficient to say that the difference between the savage—whose
sympathies are so feeble that he has been known to knock his own
child’s brains out for dropping a basket, and who puts his aged
parents to death in order to avoid the burden of maintaining them,
and whose sympathies seldom extend beyond his family or tribe—and
civilised men and women, who feel actual pain when in the presence
of those who suffer, and whose sympathies sometimes include all
sentient creation, is much greater than that between the savage and
many nonhuman animals. The frail, narrow, fantastic character of
human sympathy is the most mournful fact in human nature. ‘Man’s
inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn,’ and his
inhumanity to not-men makes the planet a ball of pain and terror.
_Volition_ is the power of the mind to act executively. Or, perhaps,
it is the resultant of the impulses actuating a mind at any
particular instant. Whatever volition is, it is the same thing in
the insect as in the man. Non-human beings have been observed to
pause and deliberate and to make wise and momentous decisions in the
twinkling of an eye. A chased hare will decide to squat, to go
straight ahead, or to do something else which the emergency demands,
just as unmistakably as a human fugitive. In the sense of being the
power to act differently from the manner in which a being actually
does act, there is no such thing as freewill. The will of the worm
is just as free as the will of the judge—not in the sense that it
is as varied in the directions of its activity, but in the sense
that the character of its activities is determined inevitably by the
character of its antecedents. All will, whether human or non-human,
invariably acts in the direction of the strongest motive, just as a
stone or a river invariably moves, if it moves at all, in the
direction of the strongest tendency or force. It is impossible that
this should be otherwise. For, if the will in any case elects to
overthrow this fact by arbitrarily discarding a stronger motive for
a feebler, in the very motive of the election are concealed elements
which transform the feebler motive into the stronger. All motion,
voluntary and involuntary—the motion of bullets, beings,
societies, and suns—takes place along the lines of least arrest.
Every being is compelled to decide as he does decide and to act as
he does act by the inherited tendencies of his own nature and the
tendencies of the environment in which he exists. And if any being,
after having passed through life, were again placed back at the
beginning of life and endowed with the same nature as before, and
were acted upon through life by surroundings identical with those he
had previously met, he would act—that is, he would exercise his
will—in precisely the same way in every particular as he had
previously done. To deny these things is to assert that the conduct
of living beings is without law, and that psychology and sociology
are not sciences.
Non-human beings, all of the higher ones, have the same brain and
nervous apparatus as man, and in their involuntary phenomena they
closely resemble human beings. Aim a pretended blow near the eyes of
a dog or a horse and it will wink involuntarily, just as a human
being does. Sever the spinal cord of a man or a frog, and irritate
the feet of each, and they will each manifest the same phenomena of
reflex action, drawing their feet away each time from the stimulus.
_Instinct_ and _reason_ are forms of intelligence. Intelligence is
the adaptation of acts to ends. Intelligence is manifested by all
organisms, both plants and animals, and may be either conscious or
unconscious. Plant intelligence and reflex action are forms of
_unconscious_ intelligence. Plant intelligence, or the adaptation of
acts to ends by plants, is manifested by plants in the shifting of
their positions when in need of light in order to obtain as large a
supply as possible of the essential sunshine; in devices, such as
traps and flowers, for utilising the juices and services of insects;
in germinating and growing away from, instead of toward, the centre
of the earth; in discriminating between this and that kind of food;
and in a thousand other ways. Plant intelligence is all explicable
in terms of chemistry and physics, and is, so far as is known,
unaccompanied by consciousness. Reflex action is chemical affinity
aided by the co-ordinating powers of nerve tissue. The vital
processes of all animals, from the lowest to the highest, and many
other highly habitual and highly essential operations, are carried
on by reflex action. Reflex action in animals, like plant
intelligence, is unconscious.
Instinct and reason are _conscious_. Instinct is inherited
intelligence—intelligence manifested independently of, and prior
to, experience and instruction. ‘Instinct,’ says Romanes, ‘is
reflex action into which has been imported the element of
consciousness’.[5] It is exhibited by the babe when it nurses the
mother’s breast; by the chick when it pecks its way out through
the shell of the egg; by animals generally, including man, in their
solicitude for their young; by the parent bird in incubation; and by
all beings when they seek food in obedience to the impulse of
hunger. Our conception of the mental processes of non-humans is as
yet very primitive, owing to our limited means of information and
the erroneous influence on our judgments of traditional ways of
thinking; and much that is attributed by us to instinct is not
instinct at all, but is acquired by the young through education
imparted by the elders. Parent birds have often been seen teaching
their young ones to fly, and no doubt a good deal of the migratory
acumen manifested by birds is nothing but custom and tradition
handed down to each younger generation by the old and experienced. A
large part of the knowledge of mankind (or what passes for
knowledge) consists of habits and hobbies, customs and traditions,
impressed upon each new generation by the generation which produced
it. Each generation of men seems to feel that whenever it creates a
new generation it has got to pile on to this new generation all of
the fool notions which have been acquired from the past, amplified
by its own inventions. And when we come to know other animals
better, there is practically no doubt that we shall find that a
large part of what we now call instinct and look upon as congenital
will, on closer and more rational examination, be found to be
nothing but the pedagogical effects of early environment. Professor
Poulton, of Oxford, who has made many experiments on just-born
birds, says that young chicks learn to fear the hawk and to
interpret the oral warnings of the mother. Cats teach their young to
play with their prey in that cruel manner so characteristic of all
the Felidae, as I have myself observed more than once. A mother cat
will carry a live mouse into the presence of her kittens and lie
down and play with it, tossing it playfully into the air, poking it
with her paw when it does not move, and arresting it when it starts
to run away, the kittens all the time looking on, but never once
attempting to take the mouse. After awhile the mother hands the
captive over to the kittens, who go through the same performance one
after another. After they have practised on it until the unfortunate
creature is almost dead, the old cat will probably walk over to
where the mouse is and eat it up. The whole thing is a _school_. The
mouse is obviously not intended as food for the young, but to be
used simply to impart instruction to them.
‘In popular writings and lectures some or all of the following
activities of ant-life are commonly ascribed to instinct: The
recognition of members of the same nest; powers of communication;
keeping aphides for the sake of their sweet secretions; collection
of aphid eggs in October, hatching them out in the nest, and taking
them in the spring to the daisies on which they feed, for pasture;
slave-making and slave-keeping, which, in some cases, is so ancient
a habit that the enslavers are unable even to feed themselves;
keeping insects as beasts of burden—_e.g._ a kind of plant-bug to
carry leaves; keeping beetles, etc., as domestic pets; habits of
personal cleanliness—one ant giving another a brush-up, and being,
brushed up in return; habits of play and recreation; habits of
burying their dead; the storage of grain and nipping the budding
rootlet to prevent further germination; the habit of Texan ants of
preparing a clearing around their nest, and, six months later,
harvesting the ant-rice—a kind of grass of which they are
particularly fond—even seeking and sowing the grain which shall
yield the harvest; the collection by other ants of grass to manure
the soil, on which there grows a species of fungus upon which they
feed; the military organisation of the ecitons of Central America;
and so forth. But to class all of these activities of the ant as
illustrations of instinct is a survival of an old-fashioned method
of treatment.
‘Suppose that the intelligent ant were to make observations on
human behaviour as displayed in one of our great cities or in an
agricultural district. Seeing so great an amount of routine work
going on around him, might he not be in danger of regarding all this
as evidence of hereditary instinct? Might he not find it difficult
to obtain satisfactory evidence of the fact that this routine work
has to some extent to be learned? Might he not say (perhaps not
wholly without truth), “I can see nothing whatever in the training
of these beings to fit them for their life-work. The training of
their children has no more apparent bearing upon the activities of
their after-life than the feeding of our grubs has on the duties of
ant-life. They seem to fall into the routine of life with little or
no preparatory training as the periods for the manifestation of the
various instincts arrive. If learning thereof there be, it has so
far escaped our observation. And such intelligence as their
activities evince (and many of them do show remarkable adaptations
to uniform conditions of life) would seem to be rather ancestral
than of the present time, as is shown by the fact that many of the
adaptations are directed rather to past conditions of life than to
those which now hold good. In the presence of new emergencies to
which their instincts have not fitted them, these poor creatures are
often completely at a loss. We cannot but conclude, therefore, that,
although acting under somewhat different and less favourable
conditions, instinct occupies fully as large a space in the
psychology of man as it does in that of the ant, while human
intelligence is far less unerring and hence markedly inferior to our
own.”
‘Are these views much more absurd than the views of those who, on
the evidence which we at present possess, attribute all the
activities of ant-life to instinct?’[6]
_Reason_ is the power of adapting means to ends which is acquired
from experience or instruction. All animals that profit by
experience, therefore, or that learn from instruction—that is, are
teachable—exercise reason.
The line of demarkation between instinct and reason is a mezzotint,
reason being often instinctive, and instinct being as frequently
flavoured with judgment, ‘Instinct is usually regarded as a
special property of the lower animals, and contrasted with the
conscious reason of man. But just as reason may be looked upon as a
higher form of the understanding or intellect, and not as something
essentially distinct from them, so a closer examination shows that
instinct and the conscious understanding do not stand in absolute
contrast, but rather in a complex relation, and cannot be sharply
marked off from each other.’ It is instinct that urges the bird to
build its nest; but when birds whose habit it is to build on the
ground learn, on the introduction of cats into the neighbourhood, to
change their nesting-places to the tree-tops, intelligence and
thought are necessary. The first time Cavy (one of my guinea-pigs)
smelled a cat, she was almost scared to death. She jumped back from
it as if she had come in contact with a red-hot stove, and screamed
and kept on screaming, and shot down under my coat as if she were
about to be crucified. After a little while I tried to pull her out,
but she refused, and kept hiding. The second time the kitten was
presented to her the result was the same. But after two or three
days of association, she paid little more attention to it than to
the other guinea-pigs. She had never seen a cat before. _It was the
odour of the carnivore_ that terrified her, and the effect was
purely instinctive. But instinct was soon modified by intelligent
experience. (_Poor dear little Cavy! I wonder where she is now!_)
Both instinct and reason (and one, too, just as much as the other)
are absolutely dependent upon processes that are purely
mechanical—that is, upon brain processes; and brain processes
depend upon brain structure, which is inherited. Hence, reason is,
in a certain sense, as truly inherited as instinct is. A being must
be born with the particular nervous apparatus by means of which
reasoning is carried on, or with the power or disposition to develop
this apparatus, or he will never reason. The genius of the partridge
in cajoling the passer-by from her nest is called instinct, but it
is not more inherited than was the genius of Shakspere. Experience
simply calls into being that, whatever it is in each particular
being, which is inherited. Sir Isaac Newton took to philosophy and
Ole Bull to music not less inevitably than the duck takes to water
or the hound to hunting. Reason is, hence, inherited by every man,
who has it as truly as his erect posture and plantigrade feet. There
is something in the past of all of us and of everything which has
determined, and which may be used to account for, everything that
to-day exists or happens, even to the style and behaviour of every
leaf that flutters in the forest, and to the eccentricities of our
opinions and handwritings.
Reason, in the sense in which it is here used, is found feebly in
the oyster. Oysters taken from a depth never uncovered by the sea
open their shells, lose their water, and quickly perish. But oysters
taken from the same depths, if kept where they are occasionally left
uncovered for short intervals, learn to keep their shells closed and
to live a much longer period out of the water. On the coast of
France ‘oyster schools’ exist, where oysters intended for inland
cities are educated to keep their shells closed when out of the
water in order to enable them to survive the desiccating exposures
of the overland journey.[1] This act of the bivalve is probably the
result of something like a vague form of reason. It is an act
adapted to the accomplishment of a definite end, and the adapting
power is acquired from experience. It is, moreover, reason which in
its final analysis does not differ from the reason displayed by the
wisest being that thinks. Judgment, forethought, common-sense,
inference, ingenuity, genius, reason, and abstract thought, are all
exercises of the cognitive or perceptive power of mind, and consist,
all of them, in nothing more nor less than the discerning of
relations among stimuli. The dog who adopts a cut-off in order to
intercept a fleeing hare performs exactly the same kind of
intellectual process as the mechanic who erects a windmill in order
to divert the energies of the breeze, or the politician who adopts a
particular platform to catch votes. ‘A perception is always in its
essential nature what logicians term a _conclusion_, whether it has
reference to the simplest memory of the past sensation or to the
highest product of abstract thought. For, when the highest product
of abstract thought is analysed, the ultimate elements must always
be found to consist in material given directly by the senses; and
every stage in the symbolic construction of ideas, in which the
process of abstraction consists, depends on acts of perception
taking place in the lower stages’.[5]
The difference among the perceptive acts of different individuals
consists, not in the different kinds of intellectual exercise, but
in differences among the _materials_ with which the perceptive
faculty deals. There are perceptions of simple sensations, and there
are perceptions of composite sensations, or concepts—perceptions
of elementary relations, and perceptions of compound and elaborate
relations. But all displays of rational faculty, from the simple
judgment of distance by the dimness and distinctness of definition
and the size of the visual angle, which all higher animals are
compelled to make, to the labyrinthic abstractions of the logician,
consist in nothing in addition to discriminations among stimuli.
Brehm one day gave one of his apes a paper bag with a lump of sugar
and a wasp in it. The ape in getting the sugar was stung by the
wasp. From that day, whenever Brehm gave that ape, or any other ape
in that cage, a paper package, the animal, before opening it, took
the precaution to shake the package at his ear and listen to find
out whether or not there was a wasp inside.[7]
Now, such an act of intelligence implies several inferences. A train
of thoughts something like this must have passed through this
ape’s mind: ‘Now, if one wasp can sting, so can another; and, if
a man can deceive me once by wrapping a wasp in a paper with a lump
of sugar, he may try it again; and, if one man will attempt such a
thing, so may another; and, if men will attempt it on me, they may
attempt it on my friends; so I will warn my friends to look out for
those villainous chaps outside.’ These inferences of the ape are
the same kind of generalisations exactly as are made by men
everywhere in their daily lives. And the common-sense inferences
made by ordinary people in their every-day affairs are precisely the
same processes of reasoning as those used by scientists and
philosophers. Many people, like the character in Moliere’s plays
who was surprised and delighted to learn that he had been talking
prose all his life, are surprised on hearing for the first time that
they use _induction_ and _deduction_ every hour almost of their
waking lives. They imagine that philosophers must have some secret
and superior way of acquiring their conclusions, different from what
ordinary mortals have. ‘But there is no more difference,’ says
Huxley, ‘between the mental operations of a man of science and
those of an ordinary person than there is between the operations and
methods of a grocer weighing out his goods in common scales and the
operations of a chemist in performing a difficult and complex
analysis by means of his balance and finely graduated weights. It is
not that the scales in the one case and the balances in the other
differ in the principles of their construction or manner of working;
but the beam of the one is set on an infinitely finer axis than the
other, and, of course, turns by the addition of a much smaller
weight’.[8] And the difference in mental method between the man of
learning and the ordinary man or woman is the same as the difference
between mature men and children and between men generally and other
animals. It is one of _degree_, _not_ of _kind_. The philosopher,
the clodhopper, and the ape, all use precisely the same methods of
reasoning, differing only in exactness and in the materials of
consciousness dealt with.
Nearly all animals, from mollusks to men, reason—not once or twice
in a lifetime, but the most of them every day and every hour of
their existence. In fact, it would be impossible for any animal
addicted to moving about, and with a delicate and easily wrecked
organism, to long survive in a world like this without that
elasticity of action which reason alone can impart. Since they live
in the same world-conditions as human beings, and are seeking
providence for substantially the same wants, non-human beings
manifest reason in the same general directions as human beings
do—in the location and construction of their homes and fortresses,
in the arrest of their prey, in circumventing their enemies, in
overcoming obstacles and surmounting dangers, in protecting and
educating their young, in meeting the emergencies of food and
climate, in the wooing of mates and the waging of wars, and in the
thousand other cases where they are called upon in their daily
wanderings and doings to deal with novel and unprecedented
situations.
When wild geese are feeding there is said to be always one of them
that acts as sentinel. This one never takes a grain of corn while on
duty. When it has acted awhile it gives the bird next to it a sharp
peck and utters a querulous kind of cry, and the second one takes
its turn. This is prudence, or forethought, which is a form of
reason. When swans are diving there is generally one that stays
above the water and watches. Sentinels have alarm sounds of various
kinds, which they give to signify ‘enemy.’ ‘Ibex, marmots, and
mountain-sheep whistle; prariedogs bark; elephants trumpet; wild
geese and swans have a kind of bugle call; rabbits and sheep stamp
on the ground; crows caw: and wild ducks utter a low, warning
quack.’
In the _Popular Science Monthly_ for March, 1901, is an account of a
series of experiments on the intelligence of the turtle made by
Professor Yerkes, of Harvard. The turtle was placed in a labyrinth,
at the farther end of which was a comfortable bed of sand. It took
just thirty-five minutes of wandering for the turtle to reach the
nest the first time. But in the second trial the nest was reached in
fifteen minutes, and by the tenth trip the turtle was familiar
enough with the route to go through in three and one-half minutes,
making but two mistakes. The turtle was afterwards placed in a more
complex labyrinth, containing, among other features, a blind alley
and two inclines. The inclines were puzzles, and it took one hour
and thirty-five minutes of aimless rambling for the wanderer to
reach its nest the first time. But the fifth trip was made in
sixteen minutes, and the tenth in four minutes, which was not far
from direct.
These experiments show that animals of almost proverbial density may
learn with surprising quickness. English sparrows and other avian
inhabitants of the city learn to live tranquilly along the busiest
thoroughfares, exposed to all sorts of dangers, and subjected to
what would be to many birds the most terrifying circumstances.
Whizzing trolleys, tramping multitudes, and screaming engines have
no terrors for them. They simply exercise the caution necessary to
keep from being run over. They boldly build their nests right under
passing elevated cars, where the roar is sufficient to scare the
life out of an ordinary country bird. I have seen these testy little
chaps sit and feed and jabber to each other in a perfectly
unconcerned way within ten or fifteen feet of a thundering express
train. They do not do these things from instinct: they _learn_ to do
them. They know that a diabolical-looking locomotive is harmless,
because they have seen it before; and they know that an
insignificant urchin with a savage heart and a sling is not
harmless, and they know it simply because they have previously had
dealings with him. English sparrows will disappear completely from a
neighborhood if a few of them are killed. Cats, dogs, horses—all
animals, in fact—acquire during life a fund of information as to
how to act in order to avoid harm and extinction. If they did not,
they would not live long. And they do it just as man does it, by
memory and discrimination, by retaining impressions made upon them,
and acting differently when an impression is made a second, third,
or thirteenth time.
Animals of experience (including men) are more skilful in adjusting
themselves to environmental exigencies than the young and
inexperienced, because of their store of initial impressions. It is
a matter of common observation that young animals are more easily
caught or killed or otherwise victimised than the old and
experienced. Many animals, however, (and a good many men) are able
to profit by a single impression. One dose of tartar emetic is
generally sufficient to cure an egg-sucking dog, and it is a very
stupid canine indeed that does not understand perfectly after one or
two experiences with a porcupine or an unsavory skunk. ‘The burnt
child dreads the fire,’ but so does the burnt puppy. Rengger
states that his Paraguay monkeys, after cutting themselves only once
with any sharp tool, would not touch it again, or would handle it
with the greatest caution.[1] Older trout are more wary than young
ones, and fishes that have been much hunted and deceived become
suspicious of traps. Rats, martins, and other animals cannot long be
trapped in the same way, and partridges and other birds seldom fly
against telegraph-wires the second season after the wires are put
up. These animals, however, cannot learn to avoid these dangers from
experience, for only a few of them are ever caught or struck. They
must learn it from observing their unfortunate companions. Everyone
who has read the story of Lobo, the big gray wolf of the Carrumpaw,
cannot but wonder at the remarkable shrewdness shown by this old
leader in baffling for years the tigers that hung upon his
tracks.[9] Nansen states that the seals, before man invaded the
Arctics, occupied the inner ice-floes to avoid the polar bear, but
after man came they took to living on the outer floes in order to
escape the persecutions of this new and more fearful enemy. Domestic
animals, when first turned out in new regions, often die from eating
poisonous weeds, but in some way soon learn to avoid them. Many
animals, when pursuing other animals, or when being pursued, display
a knowledge of facts very little understood by the majority of
mankind, such as of places where scent lies or is obliterated, and
the effects of wind in carrying evidence of their presence to their
enemies. The hunted roebuck or hare will make circles, double on its
own tracks, take to water, and fling itself for considerable
distances through the air as cleverly as if it had read up all the
theory of scent in a book. According to the London _Spectator_ one
of the large African elephants in the Zoological Gardens of that
city restores to its entertainers all the bits of food which on
being thrown to him fall alike out of his reach and theirs. He
points his proboscis straight at the food, and blows it along the
floor to the feet of those who have thrown it. He clearly knows what
he is about, for if he does not blow hard enough to land the food
the first time, he blows harder and harder until he does. The
cacadoos (parrots) of Australia, before descending upon a field or
orchard in search of food, send out a scouting party to reconnoitre
the region and see that ‘all is well.’ Sometimes a second party
is sent. If the report is favourable, the whole band advance and
plunder the field in short order. These birds are exceedingly wary
and intelligent, and seldom make mistakes. But ‘if man once
succeeds in killing one of them, they become so prudent and watchful
that they henceforward baffle all stratagems’.[3] A short time ago
a parrot at Washington, New Jersey, saved the life of its owner by
summoning the neighbours to his relief. Cries of ‘Murder!’
‘Help!’ ‘Come quick!’ coming from the home of the parrot,
attracted the attention of neighbours, who ran to the house to find
out the cause. ‘They found the owner of the parrot lying on the
floor unconscious, bleeding from a great gash in his neck. He had
been repairing the ceiling, and had fallen and struck his head
against the stove. It required six stitches to close the wound, and
the surgeon said that in only a few minutes the injured man would
have been dead. A few years ago this parrot’s screams awakened its
owner in time to arouse his neighbours and save them from a fire
which started in the house next door.’
A friend of mine, who is thoroughly reliable, tells me that when he
was a student at the University of Michigan a few years ago one of
the professors of zoology there had a dog who was used by the
department for experiments in digestion. The dog was compelled to
wear a tube opening downward out of his stomach, and soon grew very
weak and emaciated from the constant loss of food, which leaked out
through this tube. After a time, however, the dog was observed to be
growing unaccountably hale and strong. He was watched, and the poor
creature was found to have struck upon an ingenious expedient to
save his life. On eating his meal, he would go out to the barn, and,
in order to prevent the artificial escape of the contents of his
stomach, would lie down flat on his back between two boxes and
remain there until his digested food had passed safely beyond the
pylorus.
A few months ago, John, one of the monkeys at Lincoln Park, Chicago,
was suffering from a terrible abscess on the cheek, and an operation
became necessary in order to save the little fellow’s life. It was
a pathetic sight to see the look of trust in the monkey’s eyes
when the surgeon was ready to begin the operation, and the courage
and fortitude displayed by the sufferer were almost human. At the
first touch of the knife the monkey pressed his head hard against
the knee of the assistant and grabbed the forefinger of each of the
assistant’s hands, just as a person does who is about to undergo a
painful operation. The swelling was first cut open and washed with
antiseptic, when the cheek-bone was scraped and a small piece of it
removed. After being again washed in antiseptic, the wound was sewed
up, and John was lifted gently back into his cage—not, however,
until he had licked the hands of the surgeon and kissed his face in
gratitude. The little hero never uttered a sound from the time the
knife first touched his face until he was put back into his cage. A
similar act of intelligence is recorded of an orang. Having been
once bled on account of illness, and not feeling well some time
afterward, this orang went from one person to another, and, pointing
to the vein in his arm, signified his desire to have the operation
repeated. Both of these instances are examples of reason of a very
high order—of a higher order, indeed, than many children and some
grown people exhibit in similar circumstances. The chimpanzee,
Mafuca, learned how to unlock her cage, and stole the key and hid it
under her arm for future use. After watching the carpenter boring
holes with his brad-awl, she took the brad-awl and bored holes in
her table. She poured out milk for herself at meals, and always
carefully stopped pouring before the cup ran over.
When baboons go on marauding expeditions, they show that they
realise perfectly what they are doing by moving with great stealth.
Not a sound is uttered. If any thoughtless youngster so far forgets
the necessities of the occasion as to utter a single chatter, he is
given a reminder in the shape of a box on the ear. ‘A certain Mr.
Cops, who had a young orang, gave it half an orange one day, and put
the other half away out of its sight on a high press, and lay down
himself on the sofa. But the ape’s movements, attracting his
attention, he only pretended to go to sleep. The creature came
cautiously and satisfied himself that his master was asleep, then
climbed up the press, ate the rest of the orange, carefully hid the
peel among the shavings in the grate, examined the pretended sleeper
again, and then went and lay down on his own bed.’ This incident
is recorded by Tylor in his ‘Anthropology.’ ‘And such
behaviour,’ he adds, ‘is to be explained only by supposing a
train of thought to pass through the brain of the ape somewhat
similar to what we ourselves call reason.’ These instances of
undoubted intelligence and thought might be added to almost without
number if there was room. Every person nearly who has been in the
world any length of time, and has had occasion to associate with
these so-called ‘machines,’ has seen for himself, often
unexpectedly, many flashes of brightness among them.
It has been said that man differs from other animals, and is
superior to them in the fact that he modifies his environment while
other animals do not, but are modified by environment. Mr. Lester F.
Ward makes this distinction in his ‘Pure Sociology.’ The
distinction is no nearer the truth than other distinctions of like
character that have from time to time been drawn between men and
other animals. It is not much more than half true, if it is that,
and does not by any means deserve the italics awarded to it by this
writer. Many races of non-human beings have a far greater influence
on their environment than many races of men have. Many tribes of men
wander about naked, build no habitations, make no weapons, and feed
upon the fruits, roots, insects, and such other chance morsels as
they can pick up from day to day in their wanderings. Such races are
far inferior in constructive activity to the birds, who build
elaborate houses, and to the beavers, who not only construct
substantial dwellings, but dam rivers, and cut down trees and
transport them long distances, and dig artificial waterways, to be
used as aids in their engineering enterprises. Compare the elaborate
compartments of the Australian bower-birds, surrounded with
ornamented and carefully-kept grounds, with the lean-to of many
savage tribes, made by sticking two or three palm-leaves in the
ground and leaning them against a pole. Even ants plant crops, make
clearings, build roads and tunnels, etc. It must be remembered, too,
that, however affirmative and masterful a race of men may become, it
never succeeds, and never can succeed, in emancipating itself from
the influences of environment. It is true that with the growth of
intelligence among organic forms there has been a constant transfer
of influence from the environment to the organism; but this transfer
began, not with man by any means, but low down in the scale of
animal life.
It has been said that man is the only animal that uses tools. But
this is not true either, for animals as low in the scale of
development as insects have been known to use tools. At least two
different observers testify to having seen ground-wasps use small
stones as hammers in packing the dirt firmly over their nests.
Spiders use stones as weights to steady their webs in times of
storm. Orangs throw sticks and stones at their pursuers, and certain
tribes of Abyssinian baboons, when they go to battle with each
other, carry stones as missiles. Monkeys often use stones to crack
nuts with, and tame monkeys know very well how to use a hammer when
it is given to them. In the London Zoological Gardens a monkey with
poor teeth kept a stone hidden in the straw of its cage to crack its
nuts with, and it would not allow any other monkey to touch the
stone. ‘Here,’ says Darwin, in speaking of this case, ‘is the
idea of property.’ Monkeys also use sticks as levers in prying
open chests and lifting heavy objects. Cuvier’s orang used to
carry a chair across the room and stand on it to lift the
door-latch. Chimpanzees, who are very fond of making a noise, have
been seen standing around a hollow log in the forest, beating it
with sticks; and if we are to believe Emin Pasha, these ingenious
parodies of men sometimes carry torches when they go at night on
foraging expeditions. The Indian elephant, when travelling, will
sometimes turn aside and break off a leafy branch from a roadside
tree and carry it along in its trunk to sweep off the flies. As Dr.
Wesley Mills says in his work on ‘The Nature and Development of
Animal Intelligence,’ ‘It was formerly believed that animals
cannot reason, but only those persons who do not themselves reason
about the subject, with the facts before them, can any longer occupy
such a position.’
1. Romanes: _Animal Intelligence_; New York, 1899.
2. Cornish: _Animals of To-day_; London, 1898.
3. Kropotkin: _Mutual Aid a Factor of Evolution_; New York, 1902.
4. Darwin: _Descent of Man_, 2nd edit.; London, 1874.
5. Romanes: _Mental Evolution in Animals_; New York, 1898.
6. Morgan: _Animal Behaviour_; London, 1900.
7. Brehm: _Thierleben_; Leipzig, 1880.
8. Huxley: _On the Origin of Species_, lecture iii.
9. Thompson: Wild Animals I have Known; New York, 1900.