wings, moving as one to a definite goal. Their keen eyes caught the
first wave of your handkerchief in the distance; and now they see their
own kind on the ground, as they think, and their babel changes as they
begin to talk to them. Suddenly, and so instantaneously that it makes
you blink, there is a change of some kind in every quivering pair of
wings. At first, in the soft light of dawn, you are sure that the
plover are still coming, for you did not see them turn; but the lines
grow smaller, dimmer, and you know that every bird in the flock has
whirled, as if at command, and is now heading straight away. You put
your fingers to your lips and send out the eery plover call again and
again; but it goes unheeded in that tumult of better whistling. The
quivering lines are now all blurred in one; with a final flicker they
disappear below a rise of ground; the birds are gone, and you cease
your vain calling. Then, when you are thinking you will never see that
flock again, a cloud of wings shoot up from the plain against the
horizon; they fall, wheel, rise again in marvelous flight, not as a
thousand individuals but as a unit, and the lines grow larger, clearer,
as the plover come sweeping back to your decoys once more.
Such is the phenomenon as I witnessed it repeatedly on the Nantucket
moors, many years ago. The only way I can explain the instantaneous
change of flight is by the assumption, no longer strange or untested,
that from some alarmed plover on the fringe or at the center of the
flock a warning impulse is sent out, and the birds all feel and obey it
as one bird. That the warning is a silent one I am convinced, for it
seems impossible that any peculiar whistle could be heard or understood
in that wild clamor of whistling. Nor is it a satisfactory hypothesis
that one bird sees the danger or suspects the quality of the decoys,
and all the others copy his swift flight; for in that case there must
be succession or delay or straggling in the turning, and the impression
left on the eye is not of succession, but of almost perfect unity of
movement.
The only other explanation of the plovers’ action is the one commonly
found in the bird-books, to which I have already briefly referred, and
which we must now examine more narrowly. It assumes that all the birds
of a migrating flock are moved not by individual wills, but by a
collective impulse or instinct, which affects them all alike at the
same instant. In support of this favorite theory we are told to
consider the bees, which are said to have no individual motives, and no
need for them, since they blindly follow a swarm or hive instinct that
makes them all precisely alike in their actions. The same swarm
instinct appears often in the birds, but less strongly, because they
are more highly developed creatures, with more need and therefore more
capacity for individual incentive.
This illustration of the hive is offered so confidently and accepted so
readily, as if it were an axiom of natural history, that one hesitates
to disturb the ancient idol in its wonted seat. Yet one might argue
that any living impulse, whether in bees or birds, must proceed from a
living source, and, if that be granted, speculate on the absorbing
business of a nature or a heaven that should be perpetually interfering
in behalf of every earthly flock or swarm or herd by sending the
appropriate impulse at precisely the right moment. And when our
speculation is at an end, I submit the fact that, when I have broken
open a honey-tree in the woods, one bee falls upon the sweets to gorge
himself withal, while another from the same swarm falls angrily upon me
and dies fighting; which seems to upset the collective-impulse idol
completely.
I must confess here that I know very little about bees. They are still
a mystery to me, and I would rather keep silence about them until I
find one bee that I fancy I understand, or one man who offers something
better than a very hazy or mystical explanation of a bee’s
extraordinary action. Yet I have watched long hours at a hive, have
handled a swarm without gloves or mask, and have performed a few
experiments—enough to convince me that the collective-impulse theory
does not always hold true to fact even among our honey-makers. Indeed,
I doubt that it ever holds true, or that there is in nature any such
mysterious thing as a swarm or flock or herd impulse.
In the first place, the bees of the same swarm do not look alike or act
alike except superficially; at least I have not so observed them. Study
the heads or the feet of any two bees under a glass, and you shall find
as much variety as in the heads or feet of any other two creatures of
the same kind, whether brute or human. The lines of difference run
smaller, to be sure; but they are always there. In action also the bees
are variable; they do marvelously wise things at one moment, or
marvelously stupid things at another; but they do not all and always do
the same thing under the same circumstances, for when I have
experimented with selected bees from the same hive I have noticed very
different results; which leads me to suspect that even here I am
dealing with individuals rather than with detached fragments of a
swarm. It is hard, for example, to make a trap so simple that an
imprisoned bee will find his way out of it; but when by great ingenuity
you do at last make a trap so very simple that it seems any creature
with legs must walk out by the open door, perhaps one bee in five will
do the trick; while the other four wait patiently until they die for
more simplicity.
Again, while your eye often sees unity of action among the wild
creatures, neither your reading nor your own reason will ever reveal a
scrap of positive evidence that there is in nature any such convenient
thing (humanly convenient, that is, for explanations) as a swarm or
flock instinct; though, like the mythical struggle for existence, we
are forever hearing about it or building theories upon it. So far as we
know anything about instinct, it is neither collective nor incorporeal.
It is, to use the definition of Mark Hopkins, which is as good as
another and beautifully memorable, “a propensity prior to experience
and independent of instruction.” And the only needful addition to this
high-sounding definition is, that it is a “propensity” lodged in an
individual, every time. It is not and cannot be lodged in a swarm or a
hive; you must either put it into each of two bees or else put it
between them, leaving them both untouched. In other words, the swarm
instinct has logically no abiding-place and no reality; it is a castle
in the air with no solid foundation to rest on.
On its practical or pragmatic side also the theory is a failure, since
the things bees are said to do in obedience to an incorporeal swarm
instinct are more naturally and more reasonably explained by other
causes. Bees swarm, apparently, in the lead or under the influence of
individuals; and it needs only a pair of eyes to discover that there
are plenty of individual laggards and blunderers in the process. They
grow angry not all at once, but successively; not because a swarm
instinct impels them to anger, but because one irritated bee gives off
a pungent odor or raises a militant buzzing, and the others smell the
odor or hear the buzzing and are inflamed by it, each through his own
senses and by the working of his own motives. On a hot day you will see
a few bees fanning air into the hive with their wings, and when these
grow weary others take their places; but if it were a swarm instinct
that impelled them, you would see all the bees fanning or all
sweltering at the same moment. As for the honey-making instinct, on any
early-spring day you will find a few bees working in the nearest
greenhouse, while the others, which are supposed to be governed by the
same collective impulse, are comfortably torpid in the hive or else
eating honey faster than these enterprising ones can make it.
I judge, therefore, that the communistic bees have some individual
notions, and any show of individuality is so at variance with the
common-impulse theory that it seems to illustrate Spencer’s definition
of tragedy, which is, “a theory slain by a fact.” In short, bees have
our common social instinct highly developed, or overdeveloped, and
possibly they have also, like all the higher orders, a stronger or
weaker instinct of imitation; but these are very different matters,
more natural and more consistent with the facts than is the alleged
swarm instinct.
A scientific friend, the most observant ornithologist I have ever met,
has just offered an interesting explanation of the flock or herd
phenomena we are here considering. He finds little evidence of a swarm
instinct, as distinct from our familiar social instinct; but he has
often marveled at the wing drill of birds, and has twice witnessed an
alarm or warning of danger spread silently among a herd of scattered
beasts; and he accounts for the observed facts by the supposition that
the minds (or what corresponds to the minds) of the lower orders are
often moved not from within, but from without—that is, not by instinct
or by sense impressions, not by what they or others of their kind may
see or hear, but by some external and unknown influence. My caribou
rushed away, he thinks, and my incoming plover turned as one bird from
my decoys, because a warning impulse fell upon them at a moment when
they were in danger, but knew it not; and they obeyed it, as they obey
all their impulses, without conscious thought or knowledge of what they
are doing or why they are doing it.
Here is some suggestion of a very modern psychology which is inclined
to regard the mind as a thought-receiving rather than as a
thought-producing instrument, and with that I have some sympathy; but
here is also a rejuvenation of the incorporeal swarm instinct and other
fantastic or romantic notions of animals which preclude observation. If
the anima of a bird or beast is so constituted that it can receive
impulses from a mysterious and unknown source, what is to prevent it
from receiving such silent impulses from another anima like itself? And
why seek an unseen agent for the warning to my caribou or my plover
when one of the creatures saw the danger and was enough moved by it to
sound a mental tocsin?
The trouble with my friend’s explanation, and with all others I have
thus far heard or read, is twofold. First, like the swarm-impulse
theory, it really explains nothing, but avoids one mystery or
difficulty by taking refuge in another. There was a Hindu philosopher
who used to teach, after the manner of his school, that the earth stood
fast because it rested on the back of a great elephant; which was
satisfactory till a thoughtful child asked, “But the elephant, what
does he stand on?” So when I see intelligent caribou or plover fleeing
from an unsensed danger, and am told that they have received an impulse
from without, I am bound to ask, “Where did that impulse come from, and
who sent it?” For emotional impulses do not drop like rain from the
clouds, or fall like apples from unseen trees; they must have their
source in a living, intelligent being of some kind, who must feel the
impulse before sending it to others. No other explanation is humanly
comprehensible.
This leads to the second objection to the theory of external impulse,
and to every other notion of a collective or incorporeal swarm
instinct—namely, that it contradicts all the previous experience of the
wild creature, or at least all educative experience, which lies plain
and clear to our observation. To each bird and animal are given
individual senses, individual wit and a personal anima; and each begins
his mortal experience not in a great flock or herd, but always in
solitary fashion, under the care and guidance of a mother animal that
has a saving knowledge of a world in which the little one is a
stranger. Thus, I watch the innocent fawn when it begins to follow the
wary old doe, or the fledgling snipe as it leaves the nest under expert
guidance, or the wonder-eyed cub coming forth from its den at the call
of the gaunt old she-wolf. In each case I see a mother intelligently
caring for her young, leading them to food, warding them from danger,
calling them now to assemble or now to scatter; and before my eyes
these ignorant youngsters quickly learn to adapt themselves to the
mother’s ways and to obey her every signal. Sometimes I see them
plainly when some manner of silent communication passes among them
(something perhaps akin to that which passes when you catch a friend’s
eye and send your thought or order to him across a crowded room), and
it has even seemed to me, as recorded elsewhere in our observation of
wolf and fox dens, that the young understand this silent communication
more readily than they learn the meaning of audible cries expressive of
food or danger.
Such is the wild creature’s earliest experience, his training to
accommodate himself to the world, and to ways that wiser creatures of
his own kind have found good in the world. When his first winter draws
near he is led by his mother to join the herd or pack or migrating
flock; and he is then ready not for some mysterious new herd or flock
instinct, but for the same old signals that have served well to guide
or warn him ever since he was born. I conclude, therefore, naturally
and reasonably, that my caribou broke away and my incoming plover
changed their flight because one of their number detected danger and
sent forth a warning impulse, which the others obeyed promptly because
they were accustomed to just such communications. There was nothing
unnatural or mysterious or even new in the experience. So far as I can
see or judge, there is no place or need for a collective herd or flock
impulse, and the birds and beasts have no training or experience by
which to interpret such an impulse if it fell upon them out of heaven.
Our human experience, moreover, especially that which befalls on the
borderland of the subconscious world where the wild creatures mostly
live, may give point and meaning to our natural philosophy. There are
emotions, desires, impulses which may be conveyed by shouting; and
there are others which may well be told without shouting, or even
without words. A cheerful man radiates cheerfulness; a strong man,
strength; a brave man, courage (we do not know to what extent or with
what limitations); and a woman may be more irritated by a man who says
nothing than by a man who says too much. These common daily trials may
be as side-lights on the tremendous fact that love, fear, hate,—every
intense emotion is a force in itself, a force to be reckoned with,
apart from the cry or the look by which it is expressed; that all such
emotions project themselves outward; and that possibly, or very
probably, there is some definite medium to convey them, as an unknown
medium which we call “ether” conveys the waves of light.
It is true that we habitually receive such emotional impulses from
others by means of our eyes or ears; but sometimes we apparently imbibe
them through our skin, as Anthony Trollope said he learned Latin, and
once in a way we receive them from another without knowing or thinking
of the process at all. It is noteworthy that the most companionable
people in the world are silent people, especially a silent friend, and
that the silence of any man is invariably more eloquent than his
speech. The silence of one man rests you like a melody; the silence of
another bores you to yawning, perhaps because it is a “dead” silence;
the quietude of a third excites your curiosity to such an extent that,
for once in your life, you behave like a perfectly natural animal; that
is, you go round the silent one, as it were, view him mentally from all
sides, sniff at his opinions from leeward, whir your wings in his face
like a sparrow, or stamp your foot at him like a rabbit—all this to
stir him up and to uncover what interesting thing lies behind his
silence. And why? Simply because every living man is silently,
unconsciously projecting his real thought or feeling, and you are
unconsciously understanding it or else making a vain conscious effort
in that direction.
Such experiences are commonly confined to a room, to the circle of an
open fire; but they are not limited by necessity to any narrow reach,
since there is nothing in a wall to hinder a man’s love or hate from
passing through, or in the air to check its far-going, or in the nature
of another man to prevent its reception. The influence of one person’s
unvoiced will or purpose or warning or summons upon another person at a
distance, should it turn out more common than we now believe possible
because of our habit of speech, would be nothing unnatural or
mysterious, but rather a true working of the subconscious or animal
mind, which had its own way of communication before ever speech was
invented.
Whitman, who sometimes got hold of the tail end of philosophy (and who
was wont to believe he could drag it out, like a trapped woodchuck, and
whirl it around his head with barbaric whoops), was often seen at the
burrow of this thought-transference doctrine:
These yearnings why are they? these thoughts in the darkness why
are they?
Why are there men and women that while they are near me the
sunlight expands my blood?
Why when they leave me do my pennants of joy sink flat and lank?
Why are there trees I never walk under but large and melodious
thoughts descend upon me?
What is it that I interchange so suddenly with strangers?
What with some driver as I ride on the seat by his side?
What with some fisherman drawing his seine by the shore as I walk
by and pause?
What gives me to be free to woman’s and man’s good-will? what gives
them to be free to mine?
Again, our familiar human experience may throw some clearer light than
ever comes from the laboratory of animal psychologists upon the action
of gregarious brutes in their so-called blind panics, when they are
said to be governed by some extraneous or non-individual herd impulse.
How such a theory originated is a puzzle to one who has closely
observed animals in the open, since their panics are never “blind,” and
their “extraneous” impulse may often be traced to an alarmed animal of
their own kind, or even to an excited human being, whose emotions are
animal-like both in their manifestation and in their irritating effect.
A dog is more easily roused by human than by canine excitement. A
frightened rider sends his fear or irresolution in exaggerated form
into the horse beneath him. The herd of swine that ran down a steep
place into the sea were possessed, I should say, not by exorcised
demons, but by the hysteria received directly from some man or woman of
the excited crowd in the immediate neighborhood. Panic is more
infectious than any fever, and knows no barriers between brute and
human. Indeed, in a frightened crowd in the Subway, in a theater where
smoke appears, or in any other scene of emotional excitement, you may
in a few minutes observe actions more panicky, more suggestive of a
herd impulse (if there be such a fantastic thing in orderly nature),
than can be seen in a whole lifetime of watching wild animals.
In my head at this moment is the vivid impression of a night when I was
caught and carried away by a crowd of Italian socialists, twenty
thousand frenzied men and a few ferocious women, that first eddied like
a storm-tide about the great square under the cathedral at Milan,
howling, shrieking, imprecating, and then poured tumultuously through
choked streets to hurl paving-blocks at the innocent roof of the
railroad station, as at a symbol of government. The roof was of glass,
and the clattering smash of it seemed to get on the nerves of men, like
the cry of sick-em! to an excited dog, rousing them to a senseless fury
of destruction. Clear and thrilling above the tumult a bugle sang, like
a note from heaven, and into the seething mass of humanity charged a
squadron of cavalry, striking left or right with the flats of their
sabers, raising a new hubbub of shrieks and imprecations as the weaker
were trampled down. Fear? That crowd knew no more of fear just then
than an upturned hive of bees. They met the charge with a roar, a
hoarse, solid shout that seemed to sweep the cavalry away like smoke in
the wind. Unarmed men swarmed at the horses like enraged baboons,
hurling stones or curses as they went. The rush ended in a triumphant
yell, and riderless horses, their eyes and nostrils aflame, went
plunging, kicking, squealing through the pandemonium.
There must have been something tremendously animal in the scene, after
all; for when I recall it now I see, as if Memory had carved her statue
of the event, an upreared horse with a crumpled rider toppling from the
saddle; and I hear not the shouts or curses of men, but the horrible
scream of a maddened brute.
It was the night, many years ago, when news of disaster to the Italian
army at Adowa broke loose, after being long suppressed, and I learned
then for the first time what emotional excitement means when the gates
are all down. One had to hold himself against it, as against a flood or
a mighty wind. To yield, to lose self-control even for an instant, was
to find oneself howling, reaching for paving-blocks, seeking an enemy,
lifting a bare fist against charging horse or swinging steel, like the
other lunatics. I caught a man by the shoulders, held him, and bade him
in his own language tell me what the row was about; but he only stared
at me wildly, his mouth open. I caught another, and he struck at my
face; a third, and he shrieked like a trapped beast. Only one gave me a
half-coherent answer, a man whom I dragged from under a saber and
pushed into a side-street. His dear Ambrogio had been conscripted by
the government, he howled (I suppose they had sent his son or brother
with a disaffected Milanese regiment on the African adventure), and
they were all robbers, oppressors, murderers—he finished by jerking
loose from my grasp and hurling himself, yelling, into the mob again.
Had I been a visiting caribou, watching that amazing scene and knowing
nothing of its motive, I might easily have concluded that some
mysterious herd impulse was driving all these creatures to they knew
not what; but, being human, I knew perfectly well that even this
unmanageable crowd had taken its cue from some leader; that the
senseless emotion which inflamed them had originated with individuals,
who had some ground for their passion; and that from the individual the
excitement spread in pestilential fashion until the whole mob caught it
and bent to it, as a field of grass bends to the storm.
Therefore (and I hope you keep the thread of logic through a long
digression), when I go as a man among caribou or wolves or plover or
crows, and see the whole herd or pack or flock acting as one, as if
swayed by a single will, I see no reason why I should evoke an
incorporeal swarm impulse, or “call a spirit from the vasty deep” of
the unknown to explain their similarity of action, since there are
natural causes which may account for the matter perfectly—familiar
causes, too, which still influence men and women as they influence the
remote wood folk.
No, this is not a new animal psychology; it is rather an attempt to
banish the delusion that there is any such thing as a distinct animal
psychology. Science has many forms, and still plenty of delusions, but
there is a basic principle to which she holds steadily—namely, that
Nature is of one piece because her laws are constant. It follows that,
if you know anything of a surety about your own mind, you may
confidently apply the knowledge to any other mind in the universe,
whether in the heavens above or the earth beneath or the waters under
the earth. The only question is, How far may the term “mind” be
properly applied to the brute?
That unanswered question does not immediately concern us, for in
speaking of mind we commonly mean the conscious or reasoning human
article, and we are dealing here with the subconscious mind, which
seems to work after the same fashion whether it appears on two legs or
four. A dog does not know why he becomes excited in a commotion that
does not personally concern him, or why he feels impelled to hasten to
an outcry from an unknown source, or why he looks up, contrary to all
his habits, when everybody else is looking up; and neither does a man
know why he does just such things. Man and brute both act in obedience
to something deeper, more primal and more dependable than reason, and
in this subconscious field they are akin; otherwise it would be
impossible for a man ever to train or to understand a brute, and our
companionable dogs would be as distant as the seraphim.