THE MIND OF APES AND OF MAN
JUST as man's brain is enormously larger than that of the ordinary
monkeys, although his general make and anatomy is closely similar
to theirs, so we find that the rhinoceros has an enormous brain as
compared with extinct rhinoceros-like animals, the predecessors and
ancestors of those now living. The extinct Titanotherium of the lower
Miocene period managed to carry on its life in an efficient way and
to hold its own for a considerable period with a brain which was only
one-eighth the bulk of that of a modern rhinoceros, as did other
animals in the past with even greater bodies and smaller brains. To get
some suggestion as to the significance of this fact we must, in however
incomplete a way, distinguish some of the main features of the mental
processes which go on in man and animals and have their "seat" in the
brain.
Descartes and other philosophers have held that there is a great
difference in the mental processes of animals as compared with those of
man in this, namely, that man is "conscious," that is to say, conscious
of himself as "I," and, as it were, looks on at himself acting on and
being acted on by surrounding existences, whilst (so it is assumed)
animals have not this consciousness, but are "automata," going through
all the processes of life, and even behaving more or less as man does
in similar circumstances, yet without being "conscious." It is, no
doubt, true that many of the complicated actions of insects are carried
on without consciousness of the purpose or significance of what they
are doing. Such is the storing by certain wasps of smaller insects
in carefully-cut chambers, to serve as food for the wasp's young, to
be hatched from an egg to be laid in the "cold-storage chamber." The
mother wasp will go on doing this when she has had the hind part of
her body removed and has no eggs to lay. This mechanical unreasoning
behaviour in insects is without exception, so that we must accept M.
Fabre's conclusion that they are, in fact, unconscious "automata." I
have already referred to this subject in an earlier chapter, p. 197.
We at once place ourselves in difficulty in discussing this subject
by the use of the words "conscious" and "consciousness," for, as
so often happens, they are customarily applied in a vague and
uncertain way to the mental activities of man--without any precise
agreement as to what is meant by either of them. We are all agreed
that a rational human being may go through a series of elaborate
actions apparently directed by purpose and yet not be what we call
"conscious," that is to say, "aware" of what he is doing. This occurs
in "sleep-walking" and in "day-dreaming." And again, we know that a
man may be evidently conscious during a certain period, and yet forget
directly afterwards that he has been conscious and said and done
certain things during that period. This often happens after "concussion
of the brain." It is, as a matter of fact, uncertain whether one
ought to regard the condition of a man during that obliterated or
forgotten period of seeming consciousness as rightly to be described
by the term "conscious." And the reason why one has this doubt is
that we all recognize that consciousness without memory is really
a contradiction in terms. Memory--the inscription or record in our
brains of past experiences--exists without consciousness, as we all
know, by observation of ourselves and our fellows. But the very
essence of consciousness is memory. We cannot even be "conscious" of
the experience of a single moment without being also conscious of
the memory of some previous condition--however small, temporary, and
incomplete the memory may be. To be conscious we must _compare_ the
impressions reaching the brain at this moment with the memory of those
of a past moment. And in lower animals and infants beginning to be
conscious, the "recollections" available or accessible to consciousness
may not extend farther back than a few seconds! If the memory of past
experiences of which we are aware, that is to say, which are accessible
to consciousness, is large and extends over the impressions of days,
weeks, and years, then the conscious man or animal is in a totally
different position from that of the man or animal who has only a very
short and vague memory of which he or it is conscious. Thus it may be
true that an animal or an infant is "conscious" and is comparing the
present with the recollection of the past, and yet that the basis of
comparison--the reach of memory accessible to consciousness--is so
small as to be of little or no significance. Yet it is the beginning
of a process which, gradually enlarging the access of consciousness to
"memory," passes through a thousand degrees of increasing grasp and
complexity (due to increased complexity in the microscopic connexions
of the structural units, the branching nerve-corpuscles, which build up
the brain) until it gives us the "consciousness" of a Shakespeare, a
Newton, or a Darwin. The important fact in this consideration of what
we mean by "conscious" and "consciousness" is, that memory is always
for most lower animals, and during a period of growth in man, untouched
by consciousness, and much of it remains so in all of us. As the dawn
lights up a distant peak and then another and then a whole range and
spreads to valley and plain, giving greater detail and variety as the
moments pass--so does consciousness slowly invade in the course of
development, whether of the individual or the species, the territory
of memory. In the most man-like animals and the more ape-like men the
process has not gone very far. In the highest apes consciousness is
so limited in its access to memory that it is but a glimmer, a mere
rudiment, of what it becomes in the modern races of mankind. We must
not overlook the fact that it is only when we have to deal with men far
advanced from the state of primeval savagery that the memory itself
becomes rich and varied. Observation, memory, and record--the vast
tradition of taboo, knowledge, custom, law, and religion not inborn in
our structure but handed on by spoken or written word--are developed
and increased by the very fact that the daylight of consciousness has
reached the memory of them when less copious than they become in later
development, and has given them life-saving value.
There is no reason to doubt that consciousness--a beginning of
it--exists in such animals as dogs and monkeys. And it is equally true
that man not only exists for some months after he is born without being
"conscious," but for some years is so only in disconnected intervals.
As a matter of fact, he is very incompletely "conscious," even when
adult. He is quite unconscious of a great many of his elaborate
actions. He has, moreover, an "unconscious memory"--that is to say, a
memory of the existence of which he is not conscious--which guides
him to, and in, the most complicated proceedings, and astonishes
him when, by some chance, it is suddenly revealed to consciousness,
or is converted into "conscious memory," when he dreams. Every man
finds, sooner or later, that he has stored within him a register of
things, persons, and events of the existence of which he was totally
unaware. The gradual development of "consciousness" in higher ape-like
animals and lower men, in the course of ages, is not the unparalleled
thing which one is apt, at times, to consider it to be, since we can
all remember the dawning of our own consciousness and its gradual
development. We can also watch its growth in that most mysterious and
wonderful casket of ancestral secrets and unfathomable destiny--a human
infant.
Inscrutable as is the ultimate nature of "consciousness," we may put
its further consideration aside on the present occasion, since it
forms no actual barrier between men-like apes and ape-like men. On
the contrary, the higher apes, the lower living races of men and the
children of higher races, furnish us with evidence of transition from
the lower condition of automatism to the higher one of self-recognition
or consciousness in its most developed form. There is, however, a
leading difference in the mental organization and mental processes
of various animals, including man, which is of more importance in
the matter which we are considering, and is largely related to the
physical measurable difference in the size of the brain. The insects
of which Fabre says: "They know nothing about anything," inherit a
nervous mechanism--a brain and elongated mass of nerve-cells and
fibres, like our spinal cord--which works sharply and definitely like
a toy-automaton. Touch this part and that movement follows; excite the
sense of vision with this visible thing, and such and such a movement
of the limbs or jaws or other parts ensues. The stimulation of skin,
eye, ear, or nose conveys a "message" by nerves to the "brain," or
centre, and immediately by other nerves an "answer" is conveyed from
the brain or centre in the shape of an order to this and those muscles
to contract, the appropriate nerves being set at work and exciting the
related muscles to contraction. The number of possible excitations and
related responsive movements thus arranged is numerically very great
in many animals, but they are limited. They are inherited just as they
are, and come into action as soon as the necessary growth of the parts
involved is attained, without hesitation or tentative trial. They are
ready made. The terms "instinct" and "instinctive" should be limited to
the action of this inherited apparatus or mechanism.
All animals, including man, have more or less of such an inherited
instinctive nervous apparatus. Man, or for the matter of that an
animal, may be "conscious" (in the sense of being "aware") of the
stimulus given to this inherited apparatus, and of its related action,
or he may be "unconscious" of either. The point is that we have here
the "working" of an apparatus inherited in a complete working state;
it is, therefore, what we call instinctive. On the other hand, there
are in higher animals, and especially in man, a vast number of actions
performed which are not the outcome of an inborn ready-made nervous
mechanism. On the contrary, these actions are determined by a mechanism
built up in the animal during its individual existence--a mechanism
which is formed by its individual experience acting on its nerve-cells,
and is the outcome of observation, comparison, and, more or less, of
processes which we call judgment and reasoning. The persistence of
this mechanism built up by the individual, as well as its continuous
elaboration and development, is what we call "memory," unconscious or
conscious. It is misleading to speak of "inherited memory" or "race
memory," and to apply it in any way to the inherited mechanisms of
instinct; the word should be reserved in its ordinary limitation to
an individual's record. This new and superior apparatus appears to
require a much larger bulk of brain-substance for its elaboration than
that which is sufficient for the inherited mechanisms of instinct. It
works in closer response to the innumerable details of the individual
case, and so must be much more complicated, and we can well believe
must require a larger instrument. Obviously it is an advantage to its
possessor. He (be he animal or man) is provided not with a simple
response suitable for the average of incidents in his life, but has,
by the "education" due to the circumstances in which his individual
life is carried on, formed an ever-increasing store of special little
mechanisms, giving the useful or advantageous response which he has
himself discovered to be appropriate to this or that sign, sound,
colour, shape, smell, touch, or what not which may assail his senses.
In proportion as the brain increases in volume (especially that part
of it which is called "the cortex of the hemispheres") the animal to
which that brain belongs loses--gets rid of--inherited mechanisms
or instincts, and becomes "educable," that is to say, capable of
forming for itself new individual brain mechanisms based on memorized
experience.
"Educability" is the quality which distinguishes the brain of increased
size. Dogs are more "educable" than rabbits; monkeys more so than dogs;
and men more so--vastly more so--than monkeys and apes. The human
infant is born with a few inherited mechanisms of "instinct," such
as that which causes it to find its mother's nipple and to suck it,
and to cling and support its own weight as no full-grown child can do.
It is singularly free from any large number of inherited "instincts,"
and, to its own great advantage, has, during the many years in which it
is protected by its parents, to learn everything and to construct new
brain mechanisms--the results of "education" of the individual. We here
use the word "education" in its proper and widest sense.
Thus we get an indication of "the reason why" the modern rhinoceros
has a brain eight times as big as the titanotherium's. It is more
"educable." The ancestors of our modern armour-plated friend have
been surviving and beating their less "educable" brothers and sisters
and cousins through a vast geological lapse of time; and the brains
of the survivors have always been bigger, and they have become more
educable and more educated until the race has culminated in those
models of "sweet reasonableness," the modern rhinoceroses! It must be
confessed that this character attributed to the rhinoceros is a matter
of inference and not of direct observation of that animal when under
his native sky. We do not judge the survivor of a fine early Miocene
family by the fury and annoyance he shows when shot at, nor by the
stolid contempt with which he treats mankind at the Zoo. The same
signification--"educability"--attaches to the large brain of the higher
apes; and man's still larger brain means still greater educability and
resulting reasonableness.
In order that natural selection and the survival of the fittest should
have led to this increased size and accompanying educability of the
brain, it is necessary to suppose that the individuals with the
more educable brain as they appeared profited by it, that is to say,
did become more educated, and so defeated their rivals, and survived
and transmitted their increased size of brain little by little in
succeeding generations. There is no difficulty about admitting this
supposition in regard to the passage from higher ape-like creatures
to later forms having a full-sized brain, such as we find in the
Neanderthal man and in some Australians. But we are met here by what
looks, at first sight, as a fact inconsistent with our view. The
obvious increased educability and consequent increased education
of lower races of man by the circumstances of their lives, places
them clearly enough in a position of great advantage over the higher
surviving apes. But when we compare the actual mental accomplishments
of the highest civilized races of man with those of big-brained
savages, we find that a large proportion of individuals in the
civilized races are much farther ahead of the lower savage races than
most of these are ahead of the higher apes. Newton, Shakespeare, and
Darwin are in mental accomplishment farther away from an Australian
black, or even a Congo negro, than these "savages" are from a gorilla
or a chimpanzee. Yet the difference when we compare the size and the
abundance of the convolutions of the brain of the European philosopher
and the black-fellow does not seem, superficially, to be proportionate
to the difference in the mental performance of the two. No minute study
of the microscopic differences in the structure of the two brains
has, as yet, been made, and it is probable that there is a greater
difference here than in the mere shape of the brain-mass. It seems
that the "educability" of the brain measured by its size is little
greater in the one group of men than in the other. And it is found--so
far as observation and experiment have been carried--that individual
savages belonging to races showing very low mental accomplishments in
their native surroundings are yet capable of being "educated" to a far
higher level of mental performance, when removed in early youth from
their natural conditions and subjected to the same conditions as the
better-cared-for children of a civilized race, than any of them ever
reach in their own communities.
Very few really satisfactory experiments have been made in this
direction, but the history of the negroes in America shows that the
pure, unmixed negro brain is capable of showing high mathematical
power, musical gifts of the best, and moral and philosophic activities
equal to those of the best, or all but the exceptionally gifted,
individuals of European race. It seems that the large educable brain
gained by man in a relatively early period of his development from
the ape has now entered on a new phase of importance. The pressure
of natural selection no longer favours an increased educability (and
therefore size) of brain, but the later progress of man has depended
on the actual administration by each generation to its successors of
an increasingly systematized exercise of that brain; in short, it has
depended on education itself, and on the gigantic new possibilities
of education, which have followed from the development, first, of
language, then of writing, and lastly of printing, together with
the accompanying growth and development of social organization, the
inter-communication of all races, and the carrying on, by means of the
Great Record--the written and printed documents of humanity--of the
experience and knowledge of each passing generation of men from them to
the men of the present moment.
Huxley agreed with Cuvier in the opinion that the possession of
articulate speech is the grand distinctive character of man. It was
no sudden acquirement, but was slowly, step by step, evolved from
the significant grunts and cries of apes in the course of long ages,
and corresponded in its progress with a parallel progress in mental
capacities. Once attained, it led to the formation of vast educative
products, namely, to oral tradition, to written and then to printed
memorials and records. It is not desirable in our present state of
knowledge to speculate as to whether the transitional ape-man acquired
the use of fire before or after he had invented articulate speech.
It probably was acquired very soon after some skill in the flaking
of flints had been attained, and was of immense value, both as a
defence against predatory animals and as a means of preparing food.
Man probably learnt at a very early period to cover himself with
clothing made from the skins of other animals, and thus to tolerate
cold climates. The use of clothing was correlated with the diminution
of his natural hairy covering. As to the circumstances which led to
the reduction in size of his canine teeth and the diminution of the
projection of his jaws, it is impossible to say more than that this
was favoured by the increased skill of his hand and by the use of
weapons, and probably was directly correlated with an increased growth
of the brain. It is an interesting fact that very young children still
exhibit the ancestral tendency to bite when angry, and that the use of
the teeth as weapons of attack is more frequent among lower races with
"prognathous" jaws than among Europeans.
A definite habit of the human infant, that of "crying"--the peculiar
spasmodic howling of very young children--seems to be unknown in
any of the apes. I do not know what ingenious reason may have been
assigned for this difference. Apes laugh under the same circumstances
as do men, but with less production of sound than is the case with
man and the hyena. Man was, far back in his monkey-days, a social
and companion-loving animal, and the fact that his laughing and his
weeping are accompanied by noise is due to the desire for attention
and sympathy from his friends. A great difference between man and apes
is the greater power of expression of various feelings or emotions by
the face, and also the greater variety and significance in man of the
gestures both of the upper and the lower limbs. These again are methods
of seeking for and gaining sympathy and co-operation. Though not all
men and not all races in an equal degree have mobility and constantly
varying expression in the face, yet it is the fact that the man-like
apes which have been studied in life (the chimpanzee and orang) have
even less variety and range of expression than the most unintelligent
savages. Man seems to have developed in an ever-increasing degree
the habit of watching and interpreting the face and of giving by it
expression to his emotions and states of mind, thus establishing
a ready means of producing common feeling and interest in a group
of associated individuals. This seems to have led to a special
appreciation of the features of the face, and so to the exercise of
sexual selection, resulting in what we call "a standard of beauty" in
regard to both shape and expression. It is quite possible that the
reduction of the threatening canine teeth and projecting jaw may have
been furthered by sexual selection when once a bite had become less
effective than a blow with a sharp flint, and when persuasive sounds
and gestures gained more adherents than the display of tusks by a snarl.
What I have written in this and the preceding chapters, on the
differences and likenesses between apes and man and the probable steps
of the transition from ape to man, may assist the reader to form a
judgment as to the importance of such remains of extinct races of men
as the skeleton of the Sainte Chapelle, the Heidelberg jaw, and the
Piltdown jaw and cranium lately dug up in Sussex, in helping us to
further knowledge of those steps. It should be definitely noted that
we have not yet found any extinct animals, definitely to be classed
as apes, which come nearer to man than the chimpanzee and gorilla,
although we are led to infer that such creatures existed, and that
their fossil remains will probably some day be discovered. On the other
hand, we have in the jaw and skull recently discovered in the gravel of
Piltdown, in Sussex, evidence of a man-like creature which was in most
important features more ape-like than any fossil man yet discovered.