cunning displayed in keeping the secret afterward. How careful it is
not to betray the precious locality to the supposed enemy! Even the
domestic turkey, when she hides her nest in the bush, if watched,
approaches it by all manner of delays and indirections, and when she
leaves it to feed, usually does so on the wing. I look upon these and
kindred acts as exhibiting only the resourcefulness of instinct.
We are not to forget that the resourcefulness and flexibility of
instinct which all animals show, some more and some less, is not
reason, though it is doubtless the first step toward it. Out of it the
conscious reason and intelligence of man probably have been evolved. I
do not object to hearing this variability and plasticity of instinct
called the twilight of mind or rudimentary mentality. It is that, or
something like that. What I object to is hearing those things in
animal life ascribed to reason that can be easier accounted for on the
theory of instinct.
I must differ from the ornithologist of the New York Zoölogical Park
when he says in a recent paper that a bird's affection for her young
is not an instinct, an uncontrollable emotion, but I quite agree with
him that it does not differ, in kind at least, from the emotion of the
human mother. In both cases the affection is instinctive, and not a
matter of reason, or forethought, or afterthought at all. The two
affections differ in this: that one is brief and transient, and the
other is deep and lasting. Under stress of circumstances the bird will
abandon her helpless young, while the human mother will not. When the
food supply fails, the lower animal will not share the last morsel
with its young; its fierce hunger makes it forget them. During the
cold, wet summer of 1903 a vast number of half-fledged birds--orioles,
finches, warblers--perished in the nest, probably from scarcity of
insect food and the neglect of the mothers to hover them.
In interpreting the action of the animals, we so often do the thinking
and reasoning ourselves which we attribute to them. Thus Mr. Beebe in
the paper referred to says: "Birds have early learned to take clams or
mussels in their beaks or claws at low tide and carry them out of the
reach of the water, so that at the death of the mollusk, the
relaxation of the adductor muscle would permit the shell to spring
open and afford easy access to the inmate." No doubt the advancing
tide would cause the bird to carry the shell-fish back out of the
reach of the waves, where it might hope to get at its meat, but where
it would be compelled to leave the shell unopened. But that the bird
knew the fish would die there and that its shell would then open--it
is in such particulars that the observer does the thinking.
Two other writers upon our birds have stated that pelicans will gather
in flocks along the shore, and by manoeuvring and beating the water
with their wings, will drive the fish into the shallows, where they
easily capture them. Here again the observer thinks for the observed.
The pelicans see the fish and pursue them, without any plan to corner
them in shoal water, but the inevitable result is that they are so
cornered and captured. The fish are foolish, but the pelicans are not
wise. The wisdom here attributed to them is human wisdom and not
animal wisdom.
To observe the actions of the lower animals without reading our own
thoughts into them is not an easy matter. Mr. Beebe thinks that when
in early spring the peacock, in the Zoölogical Park, timidly erects
its plumes before an unappreciative crow, it is merely practicing the
art of showing off its gay plumes in anticipation of the time when it
shall compete with its rivals before the females; in other words, that
it is rehearsing its part. But I should say that the peacock struts
before the crow or before spectators because it can't help it. The
sexual instinct begins to flame up and master it. The fowl can no more
control it than it can control its appetite for food. To practice
beforehand is human. Animal practice takes the form of spontaneous
play. The mock battles of two dogs or of other animals are not
conscious practice on their part, but are play pure and simple, the
same as human games, though their value as training is obvious enough.
Animals do not have general ideas; they receive impressions through
their various senses, to which they respond. I recently read in
manuscript a very clear and concise paper on the subject of animal
thinking compared with that of man, in which the writer says: "There
is a rudimentary abstraction before language. All the higher animals
have general ideas of 'good-for-eating' and 'not-good-for-eating,'
quite apart from any particular objects of which either of these
qualities happens to be characteristic." It is at this point, I
think, that the writer referred to goes wrong. The animal has no idea
at all about what is good to eat and what is not good; it is guided
entirely by its senses. It reacts to the stimuli that reach it through
the sight or smell, usually the latter. There is no mental process at
all in the matter, not the most rudimentary; there is simple reaction
to stimuli, as strictly so as when we sneeze on taking snuff. Man
alone has ideas of what is good to eat and what is not good. When a
fox prowls about a farmhouse, he has no general idea that there are
eatable things there, as the essayist above referred to alleges. He is
simply following his nose; he smells something to which he responds.
We think for him when we attribute to him general ideas of what he is
likely to find at the farmhouse. But when a man goes to a restaurant,
he follows an idea and not his nose, he compares the different viands
in his mind, and often decides beforehand what he will have. There is
no agreement in the two cases at all. If, when the bird chooses the
site for its nest, or the chipmunk or the woodchuck the place for its
hole, or the beaver the spot for its dam, we make these animals think,
compare, weigh, we are simply putting ourselves in their place and
making them do as we would do under like conditions.
Animal life parallels human life at many points, but it is in another
plane. Something guides the lower animals, but it is not thought;
something restrains them, but it is not judgment; they are provident
without prudence; they are active without industry; they are skillful
without practice; they are wise without knowledge; they are rational
without reason; they are deceptive without guile. They cross seas
without a compass, they return home without guidance, they communicate
without language, their flocks act as a unit without signals or
leaders. When they are joyful, they sing or they play; when they are
distressed, they moan or they cry; when they are jealous, they bite or
they claw, or they strike or they gore,--and yet I do not suppose they
experience the emotions of joy or sorrow, or anger or love, as we do,
because these feelings in them do not involve reflection, memory, and
what we call the higher nature, as with us.
The animals do not have to consult the almanac to know when to migrate
or to go into winter quarters. At a certain time in the fall, I see
the newts all making for the marshes; at a certain time in the spring,
I see them all returning to the woods again. At one place where I
walk, I see them on the railroad track wandering up and down between
the rails, trying to get across. I often lend them a hand. They know
when and in what direction to go, but not in the way I should know
under the same circumstances. I should have to learn or be told; they
know instinctively.
We marvel at what we call the wisdom of Nature, but how unlike our
own! How blind, and yet in the end how sure! How wasteful, and yet how
conserving! How helter-skelter she sows her seed, yet behold the
forest or the flowery plain. Her springs leap out everywhere, yet how
inevitably their waters find their way into streams, the streams into
rivers, and the rivers to the sea. Nature is an engineer without
science, and a builder without rules.
The animals follow the tides and the seasons; they find their own; the
fittest and the luckiest survive; the struggle for life is sharp with
them all; birds of a feather flock together; the young cowbirds reared
by many different foster-parents all gather in flocks in the fall;
they know their kind--at least, they are attracted by their kind.
A correspondent asks me if I do not think the minds of animals capable
of improvement. Not in the strict sense. When we teach an animal
anything, we make an impression upon its senses and repeat this
impression over and over, till we establish a habit. We do not bring
about any mental development as we do in the child; we mould and stamp
its sense memory. It is like bending or compressing a vegetable growth
till it takes a certain form.
The human animal sees through the trick, he comprehends it and does
not need the endless repetition. When repetition has worn a path in
our minds, then we, too, act automatically, or without conscious
thought, as we do, for instance, in forming the letters when we write.
Wild animals are trained, but not educated. We multiply impressions
upon them without adding to their store of knowledge, because they
cannot evolve general ideas from these sense impressions. Here we
reach their limitations. A bluebird or a robin will fight its
reflected image in the window-pane of a darkened room day after day,
and never master the delusion. It can take no step beyond the evidence
of its senses--a hard step even for man to take. You may train your
dog so that he will bound around you when he greets you without
putting his feet upon you. But do you suppose the fond creature ever
comes to know why you do not want his feet upon you? If he does, then
he takes the step in general knowledge to which I have referred. Your
cow, tethered by a long rope upon the lawn, learns many things about
that rope and how to manage it that she did not know when she was
first tied, but she can never know why she is tethered, or why she is
not to crop the shrubbery, or paw up the turf, or reach the corn on
the edge of the garden. This would imply general ideas or power of
reflection. You might punish her until she was afraid to do any of
these things, but you could never enlighten her on the subject. The
rudest savage can, in a measure, be enlightened, he can be taught the
reason why of things, but an animal cannot. We can make its impulses
follow a rut, so to speak, but we cannot make them free and
self-directing. Animals are the victims of habits inherited or
acquired.
I was told of a fox that came nightly prowling about some deadfalls
set for other game. The new-fallen snow each night showed the
movements of the suspicious animal; it dared not approach nearer than
several feet to the deadfalls. Then one day a red-shouldered hawk
seized the bait in one of the traps, and was caught. That night a fox,
presumably the same one, came and ate such parts of the body of the
hawk as protruded from beneath the stone. Now, how did the fox know
that the trap was sprung and was now harmless? Did not its act imply
something more than instinct? We have the cunning and suspicion of the
fox to start with; these are factors already in the problem that do
not have to be accounted for. To the fox, as to the crow, anything
that looks like design or a trap, anything that does not match with
the haphazard look and general disarray of objects in nature, will put
it on its guard. A deadfall is a contrivance that is not in keeping
with the usual fortuitous disarray of sticks and stones in the fields
and woods. The odor of the man's hand would also be there, and this of
itself would put the fox on its guard. But a hawk or any other animal
crushed by a stone, with part of its body protruding from beneath the
stone, has quite a different air. It at least does not look
threatening; the rock is not impending; the open jaws are closed. More
than that, the smell of the man's hand would be less apparent, if not
entirely absent. The fox drew no rational conclusions; its instinctive
fear was allayed by the changed conditions of the trap. The hawk has
not the fox's cunning, hence it fell an easy victim. I do not think
that the cunning of the fox is any more akin to reason than is the
power of smell of the hound that pursues him. Both are inborn, and are
quite independent of experience. If a fox were deliberately to seek to
elude the hound by running through a flock of sheep, or by following
the bed of a shallow stream, or by taking to the public highway, then
I think we should have to credit him with powers of reflection. It is
true he often does all these things, but whether he does them by
chance, or of set purpose, admits of doubt.
The cunning of a fox is as much a part of his inherited nature as is
his fleetness of foot. All the more notable fur-bearing animals, as
the fox, the beaver, the otter, have doubtless been persecuted by man
and his savage ancestors for tens of thousands of years, and their
suspicion of traps and lures, and their skill in eluding them, are the
accumulated inheritance of ages.
In denying what we mean by thought or free intelligence to animals, an
exception should undoubtedly be made in favor of the dog. I have else
where said that the dog is almost a human product; he has been the
companion of man so long, and has been so loved by him, that he has
come to partake, in a measure at least, of his master's nature. If the
dog does not at times think, reflect, he does something so like it
that I can find no other name for it. Take so simple an incident as
this, which is of common occurrence: A collie dog is going along the
street in advance of its master's team. It comes to a point where the
road forks; the dog takes, say, the road to the left and trots along
it a few rods, and then, half turning, suddenly pauses and looks back
at the team. Has he not been struck by the thought, "I do not know
which way my master is going: I will wait and see"? If the dog in such
cases does not reflect, what does he do? Can we find any other word
for his act? To ask a question by word or deed involves some sort of a
mental process, however rudimentary. Is there any other animal that
would act as the collie did under like circumstances?
A Western physician writes me that he has on three different occasions
seen his pointer dog behave as follows: He had pointed a flock of
quail, that would not sit to be flushed, but kept running. Then the
dog, without a word or sign from his master, made a long détour to the
right or to the left around the retreating birds, headed them off, and
then slowly advanced, facing the gunner, till he came to a point
again, with the quail in a position to be flushed. After crediting the
instinct and the training of the dog to the full, such an act, I
think, shows a degree of independent judgment. The dog had not been
trained to do that particular thing, and took the initiative of his
own accord.
Many authentic stories are told of cats which seem to show that they
too have profited in the way of added intelligence by their long
intercourse with man. A lady writing to me from New York makes the
following discriminating remarks upon the cat:--
"It seems to me that the reason which you ascribe for the
semi-humanizing of the dog, his long intercourse with man, might apply
in some degree to the cat. But it is necessary to be very fond of cats
in order to perceive their qualities. The dog is 'up in every one's
face,' so to speak; always in evidence; always on deck. But the cat is
a shy, reserved, exclusive creature. The dog is the humble friend,
follower, imitator, and slave of man. He will lick the foot that kicks
him. The cat, instead, will scratch. The dog begs for notice. The cat
must be loved much and courted assiduously before she will blossom out
and humanize under the atmosphere of affection. The dog seems to me to
have the typical qualities of the negro, the cat of the Indian. She is
indifferent to man, cares nothing for him unless he wins her by
special and consistent kindness, and throughout her long domestication
has kept her wild independence, and ability to forage for herself when
turned loose, whether in forest or city street. It is when she is much
loved and petted that her intelligence manifests itself, in such quiet
ways that an indifferent observer will never notice them. But she
always knows who is fond of her, and which member of the family is
fondest of her."
The correspondent who had the experience with his pointer dog relates
this incident about his blooded mare: A drove of horses were pasturing
in a forty-acre lot. The horses had paired off, as horses usually do
under such circumstances. The doctor's thoroughbred mare had paired
with another mare that was totally blind, and had been so since a
colt. Through the field "ran a little creek which could not well be
crossed by the horses except at a bridge at one end." One day when the
farmer went to salt the animals, they all came galloping over the
bridge and up to the gate, except the blind one; she could not find
the bridge, and remained on the other side, whinnying and stamping,
while the others were getting their salt a quarter of a mile away.
Presently the blooded mare suddenly left her salt, made her way
through the herd, and went at a flying gallop down across the bridge
to the blind animal. Then she turned and came back, followed by the
blind one. The doctor is convinced that his mare deliberately went
back to conduct her blind companion over the bridge and down to the
salt-lick. But the act may be more simply explained. How could the
mare have known her companion was blind? What could any horse know
about such a disability? The only thing implied in the incident is the
attachment of one animal for another. The mare heard her mate calling,
probably in tones of excitement or distress, and she flew back to her.
Finding her all right, she turned toward the salt again and was
followed by her fellow. Instinct did it all.
My own observation of the wild creatures has revealed nothing so near
to human thought and reflection as is seen in the cases of the collie
and pointer dogs above referred to. The nearest to them of anything I
can now recall is an incident related by an English writer, Mr.
Kearton. In one of his books, Mr. Kearton relates how he has
frequently fooled sitting birds with wooden eggs. He put his
counterfeits, painted and marked like the originals, into the nests of
the song thrush, the blackbird, and the grasshopper warbler, and in no
case was the imposition detected. In the warbler's nest he placed
dummy eggs twice the size of her own, and the bird proceeded to brood
them without the slightest sign of suspicion that they were not of her
own laying.
But when Mr. Kearton tried his counterfeits upon a ring plover, the
fraud was detected. The plover hammered the shams with her bill "in
the most skeptical fashion," and refused to sit down upon them. When
two of the bird's own eggs were returned to the nest and left there
with two wooden ones, the plover tried to throw out the shams, but
failing to do this, "reluctantly sat down and covered good and bad
alike."
Now, can the action of the plover in this case be explained on the
theory of instinct alone? The bird could hardly have had such an
experience before. It was offered a counterfeit, and it behaved much
as you or I would have done under like conditions, although we have
the general idea of counterfeits, which the plover could not have had.
Of course, everything that pertains to the nest and eggs of a bird is
very vital to it. The bird is wise about these things from instinct.
Yet the other birds were easily fooled. We do not know how nearly
perfect Mr. Kearton's imitation eggs were, but evidently there was
some defect in them which arrested the bird's attention. If the
incident does not show powers of reflection in the bird, it certainly
shows keen powers of perception; and that birds, and indeed all
animals, show varying degrees of this power, is a matter of common
observation. I hesitate, therefore, to say that Mr. Kearton's plover
showed anything more than very keen instincts. Among our own birds
there is only one, so far as I know that detects the egg of the
cowbird when it is laid in the bird's nest, and that is the yellow
warbler. All the other birds accept it as their own, but this warbler
detects the imposition, and proceeds to get rid of the strange egg by
burying it under a new nest bottom.
Man is undoubtedly of animal origin. The road by which he has come out
of the dim past lies through the lower animals. The germ and
potentiality of all that he has become or can become was sleeping
there in his humble origins. Of this I have no doubt. Yet I think we
are justified in saying that the difference between animal
intelligence and human reason is one of kind and not merely of degree.
Flying and walking are both modes of locomotion, and yet may we not
fairly say they differ in kind? Reason and instinct are both
manifestations of intelligence, yet do they not belong to different
planes? Intensify animal instinct ever so much, and you have not
reached the plane of reason. The homing instinct of certain animals is
far beyond any gift of the kind possessed by man, and yet it seems in
no way akin to reason. Reason heeds the points of the compass and
takes note of the topography of the country, but what can animals know
of these things?
And yet I say the animal is father of the man. Without the lower
orders, there could have been no higher. In my opinion, no miracle or
special creation is required to account for man. The transformation
of force, as of heat into light or electricity, is as great a leap and
as mysterious as the transformation of animal intelligence into human
reason.
XIII
READING THE BOOK OF NATURE
In studying Nature, the important thing is not so much what we see as
how we interpret what we see. Do we get at the true meaning of the
facts? Do we draw the right inference? The fossils in the rocks were
long observed before men drew the right inference from them. So with a
hundred other things in nature and life.
During May and a part of June of 1903, a drouth of unusual severity
prevailed throughout the land. The pools and marshes nearly all dried
up. Late in June the rains came again and filled them up. Then an
unusual thing happened: suddenly, for two or three days and nights,
the marshes about me were again vocal with the many voices of the
hyla, the "peepers" of early spring. That is the fact. Now, what is
the interpretation? With me the peepers become silent in early May,
and, I suppose, leave the marshes for their life in the woods. Did the
drouth destroy all their eggs and young, and did they know this and so
come back to try again? How else shall one explain their second
appearance in the marshes? But how did they know of the destruction
of their young, and how can we account for their concerted action?
These are difficulties not easily overcome. A more rational
explanation to me is this, namely, that the extreme dryness of the
woods--nearly two months without rain--drove the little frogs to seek
for moisture in their spring haunts, where in places a little water
would be pretty certain to be found. Here they were holding out,
probably hibernating again, as such creatures do in the tropics during
the dry season, when the rains came, and here again they sent up their
spring chorus of voices, and, for aught I know, once more deposited
their eggs. This to me is much more like the ways of Nature with her
creatures than is the theory of the frogs' voluntary return to the
swamps and pools to start the season over again.
The birds at least show little or no wit when a new problem is
presented to them. They have no power of initiative. Instinct runs in
a groove, and cannot take a step outside of it. One May day we started
a meadowlark from her nest. There were three just hatched young in the
nest, and one egg lying on the ground about two inches from the nest.
I suspected that this egg was infertile and that the bird had had the
sense to throw it out, but on examination it was found to contain a
nearly grown bird. The inference was, then, that the egg had been
accidentally carried out of the nest some time when the sitting bird
had taken a sudden flight, and that she did not have the sense to
roll or carry it back to its place.