Wallace that the reason or mind of man, as well as his body, has
attained its present complete excellence through gradual development.
No one denies that, between a man’s birth and his prime of life, time
is required for the intellectual powers to unfold; but it demands an
effort which few have as yet made to see in this progression of the
individual mind a compendious history of the indefinitely slow process
by which the human mind itself has been formed, passing upward, step by
step, from simple vitality, dawning consciousness, the various grades
of so-called instinct, to the full capacities of the most enlightened
reason.
The theory of development or evolution has excited immense opposition
and distrust, because of its obvious application to the human body. Its
application to the human mind, which, though less obvious at the first
glance, almost inevitably follows, seems to have inspired Mr. Wallace
himself with alarm. He winds up the admirable series of essays in
which he supports the theory under discussion with one that earnestly
propounds ‘the _limits_ of natural selection as applied to man.’ His
arguments on this subject are drawn from physical science, though his
mind is evidently, and even confessedly, swayed throughout by other
than physical considerations. He represents, in fact, and endeavours to
reconcile to his own scientific views, the weight of popular prejudice
which has hitherto condemned those views with some vehemence of
opposition.
The sentiment in question amounts to this, that certain powers or
faculties of the human mind are so wonderful and so unique, that they
could not have originated in the ordinary processes of nature without
some special intervention. Antecedents conforming to the usual observed
order in other living productions are not sufficiently magnificent
for the soul of man. Something sudden, something mysterious, is
demanded in the agency of its creation. It must be like Pallas Athene,
springing from the brain of Zeus, a goddess fully armed from her birth
in the panoply of wisdom and virtue. Yet the whole feeling thus to be
described of what is fit and worthy must be accredited, as we desire to
show, simply to prejudice. Nothing can really depend for its intrinsic
grandeur upon our knowledge or ignorance of its origin. A single cause
instantaneously producing its effect does not make the result in any
way more admirable or magnificent than the like result coming at the
close of an indefinitely extended chain of causation. Feelings of
surprise and wonder are excited when we find that ten thousand copies
of the _Times_ newspaper can be printed within a single hour; but the
same feelings move us in the granite-yards of Scotland, when we learn
that many months are required for cutting through a single block. At
the first proposal of railways, a pace of twenty or five-and-twenty
miles an hour was thought too wonderful for belief; while now, from
familiarity with far higher rates of speed, we think it miserably slow.
A child is surprised to learn that the light of the sun requires time
to reach the eye; but a new and even greater surprise is aroused by the
information that the time so required is only a few minutes for ninety
millions of miles. The swiftness of thought is proverbial. A single act
of thought is commonly supposed to be absolutely instantaneous; and
yet presence of mind, which depends on rapidity of thought, is fully
recognized as an uncommon quality, while it has now been ascertained by
experiment that every thought requires a definite, and in many cases
measurable, length of time for its production and exercise. Following
the analogy of these illustrations, we may expect that the popular
opinion or prejudice as to the instantaneous creation of the human mind
will vanish and subside when men become familiar with the idea of its
slow development. It will at least be seen that there is no special
dignity and grandeur in the supposed suddenness of its introduction
into the universe. The general scheme of nature, so far as we can
penetrate its working, seems to show that there is some proportion
observed between the time spent in producing and the perfection of
the thing produced. Religion itself is an unquestionable witness to
this method of procedure. There is no great religion of which the
adherents claim to have had it revealed to them from the first in its
full perfection. What is true of religion, is true of all arts and
sciences. Their progress has been gradual. The greatness of nations,
even when it seems to blaze forth in history most suddenly, ever
finds its true origin in numerous steps of slow preparation. A hardy,
frugal tribe of warriors is nursed in some obscure mountain cradle.
The struggle for existence fosters their preservative virtues. A line
of rulers is evoked, forced by the circumstances of their tenure to
acquire, as their leading qualities, cunning, prudence, self-control,
fertility of resource, promptitude of action, till at length the hour
and the man coincide, and a handful of barbarians give their name
to a great empire. The same rule prevails with languages, and the
literatures that adorn them. So fully is this established in regard to
literature, that men who examine the subject deeply are almost led to
disbelieve in originality of genius altogether, from the invariable
indebtedness of the noblest authors to the thoughts and imaginings
of earlier minds. There is, therefore, no antecedent improbability
that can fairly be pleaded against the gradual development of the
human mind. On the contrary, every possible analogy is in its favour.
A supposition so favoured becomes at least a lawful and reasonable
subject of enquiry. If it be true that the theory of evolution applies
to the mind of man, we should expect to find in that mind itself traces
of the earlier steps, or grades of development, through which it has
passed, and also in the world around creatures lower than humanity in
some sort representing those earlier stages of slowly unfolding reason.
In other words, we should expect to find in human nature itself those
very inequalities, that very conflict of the higher and the lower
elements on which moralists so urgently insist, and we should expect
to find affinities and resemblances, more or less close, pervading
the whole animal creation, and exhibiting human reason and brute
intelligence as, upon a broad view, one in kind, however different in
degree.
The first requisite for intelligence is the possession of memory.
Without this faculty, intelligence is impossible; but, on the other
hand, memory that does not subserve some sort of intelligence, is a
useless faculty; and in this the old theory of creation agrees with the
new, that nothing obtains a footing in the world without a use. It may
be urged, that the human memory is incomparably superior to that of
the lower animals; but there are surprising differences in the powers
of memory among human beings, and the effects of cultivation, with the
facilities for that cultivation supplied by language, should be taken
into account. It is important to observe also, that with brutes, as
with men, some individuals are quicker than others; that the memory of
brutes, like our own, can be improved by training; and that its powers
are not equally distributed to all classes. The dog, the horse, the
parrot, the elephant, are probably not further below mankind in the
faculty of memory, than they are superior in it to the oyster and the
jelly-fish.
To make the most of humanity, without introducing the question of
man’s material form and structure, one would naturally insist upon
his docility or power of being taught; upon his versatility or power
of adapting various means to the same or various ends; upon his
moral nature, embracing the different passions and affections, and
the knowledge of good and evil; and, lastly, no doubt, one would be
inclined and one would have a right to insist on the grandeur of his
aspirations. A crafty rhetorician would perhaps dwell on the collective
value of these endowments, and then exhibit them, separately, rising
to their height and fulness in men like Archimedes, and Chrysostom,
and Dante. He would dare us to trace back the mental ancestry of these
true heroes to apes and fishes. Yet the reason, piety, and imagination
of such men, are themselves developed between childhood and maturity;
their very pre-eminence shows that improvement in such qualities is
possible from one generation to another, and that therefore meanness of
origin needs only to be coupled with remoteness in time to reconcile
the supremacy of man’s intelligence with its ultimate derivation from
the lowest powers of consciousness.
Mr. Wallace has pointed out very clearly and conclusively the
fallacious character of the evidence on which the old theory of
instinct was founded. Starting with the notion that wild animals had
none of that docility and versatility which man possesses through his
reasoning powers, yet seeing them produce effects like those which
man produces by the help of teachers or his own choice of means, we
inferred the existence of as many separate faculties as there are kinds
of animals. Each of these faculties was thought to resemble reason
about as much as a jack-in-the-box resembles a man. The faculty came
into exercise in one invariable way without any choice on its owner’s
part, just as the jack starts up, whether he will or no, when his lid
is taken off. We wondered at the admirable contrivance and design
by which these very limited faculties were adapted in each case to
the wants and preservation of the species to which they belonged. At
times, it is true, with some inconsistency, we permitted ourselves to
upbraid the goose with its stupidity; to speak of the sheep as silly,
and the ostrich as wanting intelligence; we even expunged the dodo,
with its self-preserving instinct, from the face of the earth; but in
spite of these slips and mischances, we still kept gaping and wondering
at our own explanation of things, and calling it an excessively wise
and ingenious contrivance that every species of animal should have a
separate faculty to itself, when one and the same faculty for them
all would not only do just as well, but a great deal better. We were
far from perceiving how strong a support to Materialism our theory
involved, since if the lower animals without reason produce effects
like those of reason, then effects like those of reason in a number of
cases beyond calculation must be the result of bodily structure. It
might not follow that the effects of reason itself were the results of
bodily structure, but it would become startlingly probable.
The history of domesticated animals is a continuous proof that some at
least of the lower creatures are capable of learning, and how learning
can be achieved without intelligence has never yet been explained,
and is never likely to be. But Mr. Wallace points out that we have
made a gratuitous assumption, unsupported by evidence, in supposing
birds, for example, to build their nests by instinct rather than by
following the example and instruction of their parents. Many things,
he remarks, which we ourselves are said to do instinctively, such as
putting out our hands to save ourselves from falling, are acquired
habits, not instinctive actions, and in fact not possessed by infants.
Mr. Darwin[31] tells us of a species of ant which behaves differently
towards its slaves in England and in Switzerland respectively. In his
memorable account of the busy bee, he shows that some species of bees
are less clever at their work than others, and that the accuracy even
of the most advanced cell-makers has been overrated. This is the more
worthy to be noted, because the same persons who are extremely zealous
to set forth reason as superior in kind to what they call instinct,
are yet often eager to extol the effects of the lower faculty above
those of the higher. An interesting account has recently been given
of baboons in the neighbourhood of the Cape of Good Hope combining
to pursue, and after a chase of two days and a night, successfully
destroying a leopard which had invaded their haunts. Two tribes
of baboons in the same locality, the occupants of separate rocky
strongholds, are described as upon one occasion meeting in battle, the
result being, that nearly a hundred were afterwards found dead or
dying on the scene of action[32]. The shape of the creature, and the
combination for warlike purposes, which carries with it such a tinge
of humanity, can scarcely fail to affect the imagination. Yet these
isolated instances must be far less telling than the comparison which
Mr. Wallace has so ingeniously instituted between man as a builder and
birds in the same capacity. The shelter of the savage is in many cases
a less finished contrivance than the nest which the bird prepares for
its young. The featherless biped, like the feathered one, takes the
materials readiest to its digits. Generations upon generations follow
one another without improvement or signs of inventive skill. Even
in the days of enlightenment, and in nations which pride themselves
most upon it, the human nest is repeatedly constructed without the
smallest attention to comfort, health, or beauty. Men, whose fathers
before them have built long rows of red-brick boxes to live in, build,
by instinct if you will, for it can scarcely be by reason, more
lengthening chains of red-brick boxes. There is no reason, indeed,
for supposing that the bird consults any principle of beauty in the
construction of its nest, but a principle of expedience some birds
certainly do consult; the orchard oriole, for example, building its
nest shallow or deep, according as it is placed among firm and stiff
branches, or suspended from the slender wind-swayed twigs of the
weeping-willow[33]. The fact that birds build in human habitations,
and make use of human manufactures, is a proof that they are capable
of choice both as to locality and materials. The often-observed
circumstance, that animals in a newly-discovered country are without
fear of man,--a fear which they speedily acquire from experience of his
mischievous propensities,--is a clear proof that they are capable of
learning caution. It cannot be pretended that a caution which thus only
comes in conjunction with experience is instinctive, or anything else
than the result of observation, and therefore a sign of intelligent
judgment. The lower animals, then, can learn prudence; can profit by
experience. In the training of domesticated animals, the same motives
of pleasure and pain are applied, and applied effectually, as are used
in the education of human beings by parents and schoolmasters and
lawgivers. This could not be if the groundwork of the moral nature were
not the same in man and the lower animals. Addison was inclined to
hold the old opinion, that ‘God himself is the soul of brutes,’ _Deus
est anima brutorum._ ‘One would wonder,’ he says, ‘to hear sceptical
men disputing for the reason of animals, and telling us it is only
our pride and prejudices that will not allow them the use of that
faculty[34].’ And yet his charming essays upon the natural history
of animals, in which he took so keen a personal pleasure, with very
little alteration, might be read as arguments in defence of the opinion
he thus condemns. He remarks that birds, which ordinarily drive away
their young as soon as they are able to get their own livelihood,
nevertheless continue to feed them if they are tied to the nest, or
confined within a cage, or by any other means appear to be out of a
condition of supplying their own necessities. He observes, that the
brood-hen will leave her eggs longer in summer than in winter, because
in summer they will cool less speedily. But apart from the ingenuity
necessary for the propagation of the species, he considers the same
bird to be a very idiot, without the least glimmering of thought or
common sense, mistaking a piece of chalk for an egg, and sitting upon
it as though it were one, insensible of an increase or diminution
in the number of those she lays, not distinguishing between her own
and those of another species; and when the birth appears of never so
different a bird, cherishing it for her own.
It is curious that we should abuse the hen for being now and then
deceived by our impostures, considering the immense quantities of
counterfeit coin we ourselves accept as currency, and the strange
compounds of chalk and mud and alum and poisonous herbs and minerals
which, according to the analysts, we contentedly swallow down as
milk and butter, bread and beer. But the hen in a wild state is not
subject to our impositions, and possibly the domestic hen finds it
better for herself to overlook them. At any rate, as the mistakes
concern her progeny, if her conduct is other than beneficial, it is
an argument _against_ the perfection of instinct, which it tends to
bring down to the level of imperfect human reason. It is commonly
supposed that ducklings take to the water by instinct. And Addison
tells us that on one occasion, as he was walking in the yard of
his friend’s country-house, he ‘was wonderfully pleased to see the
different workings of instinct in a hen followed by a brood of ducks.
The young, upon the sight of a pond, immediately ran into it; while
the step-mother, with all imaginable anxiety, hovered about the
borders of it, to call them out of an element that appeared to her so
dangerous and destructive[35].’ In order to test the real force of
nature in this matter, as distinct from experience and education, I
ventured on the experiment of placing some little orphan ducklings,
which had been reared away from any pond, in a shallow bath of water
just deep enough for them to swim in. The experiment was two or three
times repeated, but in each case with a sort of impiety, or, at any
rate, gross disrespect towards the grand principle of instinct, the
ducklings, instead of enjoying themselves in their appropriate element,
made the most violent and unceasing efforts to escape from it. The
whole theory of instinct, indeed, probably rests on a multitude of
evidences which have themselves been taken for granted. At every point
minute observation, or actual questioning of the facts asserted,
undermines it. Addison himself must have begun to waver, before he
inserted in the numbers of the ‘Guardian[36]’ the French philosopher’s
account of the ant, and its wonderful ingenuity and perseverance. Nor
are passages wanting in his works, which might have been expressly
written in support of the theory of development. After commenting on
the various insensible gradations of perceptive being, ‘If we look,’
he says, ‘into the several inward perfections of cunning and sagacity,
or what we generally call instinct, we find them rising after the same
manner, imperceptibly one above another, and receiving additional
improvements, according to the species in which they are implanted.
This progress in nature is so very gradual, that the most perfect of an
inferior species comes very near to the most imperfect of that which is
immediately above it.’ Again: ‘The whole chasm in nature, from a plant
to a man, is filled up with divers kinds of creatures, rising one over
another, by such a gentle and easy ascent, that the little transitions
and deviations from one species to another are almost insensible;’ and
he quotes with approbation a passage from Locke, in which we read,
‘There are some brutes that seem to have as much knowledge and reason
as some that are called men[37].’ Pope, who pursues much the same track
in his ‘Essay on Man,’ permits himself to speak of ‘the half-reasoning
elephant.’ Any one who doubts the appropriateness of such an epithet,
not only to the elephant but to many other animals, should begin to
study the ways and doings of the lower creatures with an eye to this
very question,--at every turn asking himself how the action observed
can be accounted for by a blind irrational instinct. A stumbling
horse, for example, that is generally beaten for stumbling, starts
after a false step before the lash is applied. How ridiculous will it
be to ascribe to horses an instinct of starting after stumbling--a
conditional instinct, that appears only in those horses that have
been previously beaten when they stumbled! We need not suppose, as
Lord Bacon appears to have done, that ‘dogs know the dog-killer’ by a
kind of power of divination[38]. By their watchful habits, and quick
inference from acute observation of the few particulars they are able
to comprehend, it can scarcely be doubted that dogs learn something of
the dispositions and intentions of mankind, recognize their humours,
and distinguish those who are friendly to themselves from those who are
hostile.
Numberless writers have noticed the different dispositions of the lower
animals, differing not merely in separate species, but in various
individuals of the same. There has been no scruple in taking the brutes
themselves as types and emblems of moral qualities. Almost every vice
and virtue has been unsparingly assigned to one or other of the brute
creation. They are brave or cowardly, savage and treacherous, gentle
and generous, industrious, idle, obedient, wayward, affectionate,
malicious, working always for the common good, or full of rapacity
and selfishness. It is likely enough that we often misapply these
epithets, and call that courage which is only consciousness of
strength, and that malignant ferocity which is really a hungry stomach
and a badly-furnished larder; for such mistakes we commit also in
judging of our fellow-men. But there are many beautiful instances on
record in which dumb creatures have shown themselves capable beyond
question of faithful friendship, and therefore as possessing at least
the beginnings, if not any high advancement, of a moral nature. None
perhaps is more beautiful than that told by Henry Brookes, a writer
of the last century, about one of the lions in the Tower of London.
A little spaniel picked up in the streets was thrown into the cage
of the largest of these beasts, called for his size the king’s lion.
‘Immediately the little animal trembled, and shivered, and crouched,
and threw itself on its back, and put forth its tongue, and held up
its paws, in supplicatory attitudes, as an acknowledgment of superior
power, and praying for mercy. In the meantime the lordly brute, instead
of devouring it, beheld it with an eye of philosophic inspection.
He turned it over with one paw, and then turned it over with the
other, and smelled to it, and seemed desirous of courting a further
acquaintance. From this day the strictest friendship commenced between
them, a friendship consisting of all possible affection and tenderness
on the part of the lion, and of the utmost confidence and boldness on
the part of the dog, insomuch that he would lay himself down to sleep,
within the fangs and under the jaws of his terrible patron.’
The sequel of the story is pathetic. To tell it briefly, in twelve
months the little spaniel sickened and died. The lion at first supposed
him to be asleep, but finding that all his efforts to awaken him were
in vain, he was filled with intense anguish, would not allow the dead
body to be removed, refused all sustenance or comfort, spending his
time between rage and grief, till after five days of such an existence,
one morning he was found dead, with his head lovingly reclined on the
carcase of his little friend[39].
Were this only a fable instead of an actual incident, there is nothing
in it revolting to our sense of probability, because we are perfectly
aware that the lower animals constantly give indications of what in
ourselves we call the moral feelings. We continually see them behaving
as we ourselves behave when we submit to self-sacrifice for the sake of
those we love.