ANIMAL ACTIVITIES: HABIT AND INSTINCT.
So soon as one of the higher animals comes into the world a number of
simple vital activities are already in progress or are at once
initiated. Some of these are what are termed "automatic actions," or
actions which take their origin within the organ which manifests the
activity; such are the heart-beat and the rhythmical contractions of the
intestines by which the food is pushed onwards through the alimentary
canal. Some are reflex, or responsive, actions, taking origin from a
stimulus coming from without; such are the contraction of the pupil of
the eye under bright light, the pouring forth of the secretions on the
presence of food in the alimentary canal, taking the breast, sneezing,
and so forth. Some are partly automatic and partly reflex; such is the
rhythm of respiration.
In addition to these vital activities, there is a vast body of more
complex activities, for the performance of which the animal brings with
it innate capacities. Some of these, which we term "instinctive," are
performed at once and without any individual training, as when a chicken
steps out into the world, runs about, and picks up food without learning
or practice. Others, which we term "habitual," are more or less rapidly
learnt, and are then performed without forethought or attention. The
store of innate capacity is often very large; and a multitude of
activities are ere long performed with ease and certainty so soon as the
animal has learnt to use the organization it thus inherits. And lastly,
built upon this as a basis, by recombining of old activities in new
modes, and by special application of the activities to special
circumstances, we have the activities which we term "intelligent;" and
here again the activities are sometimes divided into two classes,
answering respectively to the reflex and the automatic, but on a higher
plane, according as they are responsive to stimuli coming more or less
directly from without, or spontaneous and taking their origin from
within. But it is probably rather the remoteness and indirectness of the
responsive element than its absence that characterizes these spontaneous
activities.
Another classification of activities is into voluntary and involuntary.
Voluntary actions are consciously performed for the attainment of some
more or less definite end or object. Involuntary actions, though they
may be accompanied by consciousness, and though they may be apparently
purposive, are performed without intention. Notwithstanding the
conscious element, they may, perhaps, be regarded as rather
physiological than psychological. The simple vital activities belong to
this class. But some are much more complex. If, when I am watching the
cobra at the Zoo, it suddenly strikes at the glass near my face, I
involuntarily start back. The action is apparently purposive, that is to
say, an observer of the action would perceive that it was performed for
a definite end, the removal from danger; it is also accompanied by
consciousness; but it is unintentional, no representation of the end to
be gained or the action to be performed being at the moment of action
framed by the mind. On the other hand, if I perform a voluntary act,
such as selecting and lighting a cigar, there is first a desire or
motive directed to a certain end in view, involving an ill-defined
representation of the means by which that end may be achieved; and this
is followed by the fulfilment of the desire through the application of
the means to the performance of the act.
In the carrying out of voluntary activities, then, both perception and
emotional appetence are involved. There are construction and
reconstruction, memory and anticipation, and interwoven therewith the
motive elements of appetence or aversion. It is emotion that gives force
and power to the motive. And this must be regarded as the dynamic
element in voluntary activity, while intelligence is the directive
element. Feeling is the horse in the carriage of life, and Intelligence
the coachman.
Let us here note that, in speaking of the activities of animals and the
motives by which they are prompted, we are forced, if we would avoid
pedantry, to leap backwards and forwards across the chasm which
separates the mental from the physical. Motives, as we know them, are
mental phenomena; the activities, as we see them, are physical
phenomena. The two sets of phenomena belong to distinct phenomenal
categories. In ordinary speech, when we pass and repass from motives to
actions, and from actions to the feelings they may give rise to, we are
apt to be forgetful of the depth of the chasm we so lightly leap. And
this is no doubt because the chasm, though so infinitely deep, is so
infinitely narrow. There are, however, no physical analogies by which we
can explain the connection between the physical and the mental, between
body and mind. The so-called connection is, in reality, as I believe,
identity. Viewed from without, we have a series of physical and
physiological phenomena; felt from within, we have a series of mental
and psychological phenomena. It is the same series viewed from different
aspects. This is no explanation; it is merely a way, and, as I believe,
the correct way, of stating the facts. Why certain physiological
phenomena should have a totally different aspect to the organism in
which they occur from that which they offer to one who watches them from
without, is a question which I hold to be insoluble. All we have to
remember, however, is that, in passing from the mental to the physical,
we are changing our point of view. The series may be set down thus--
_External aspect_:
Physical stimulus--> interneural processes--> activities.
\ /
\ /
_Inner aspect_: \ /
\ /
Accompanying consciousness <--mental states--> accompanying consciousness
The physical stimulus and the resulting activities are occurrences in
the external world, and more or less lie open to our view. But the
intervening physical and physiological neural processes are hidden from
us. As occurring in ourselves, however, the mental states which are the
inner aspects of these neural processes stand out clearly in the light
of consciousness. When, therefore, we are watching the life-activities
of others, we naturally fill in between the physical stimulus and the
activities, not the neural processes of which we are so ignorant, but
mental states analogous to those of which we are conscious under similar
conditions. Thus we leap from the physical to the mental, and back again
to the physical, as represented by the diagonal lines in the above
scheme. And there can be no objection to our doing so if we bear in mind
that we are thus changing our point of view.
The human organism, then--for at present we may regard the matter from
man's own position--is a wonderfully delicate piece of organization,
with mental (inner) and physical (outer) aspects. It is in a condition
of the most delicate equipoise. Under the influence of a perception
associated with an appetence, or of a conception accompanied by a
desire, it is thrown into a state of unstable equilibrium; the
performance of the action which leads to the fulfilment or satisfaction
of the appetence or the desire restores the stability of the system. The
instability is caused by the conjoint action of an attraction towards
some state represented as desirable, and a repulsion from the existing
state which is relatively undesirable. In some cases the attraction, and
in others the repulsion, is predominant. When we are in an uncomfortable
position, the discomfort is predominant, and we seek relief by changing
our attitude. When the bright sunshine tempts us to go out for a walk,
the attraction is predominant. But if the uncomfortable attitude is
enforced and prolonged, we have a mental representation of the relief we
long for; and this is attractive. And if we have work which keeps us
indoors, the irksome restraint brings with it an aversion to our present
lot.
Inseparably associated with the appetence or aversion there is a
representation of the activity which constitutes the fulfilment of the
emotion. On the physiological side this is probably an incipient
excitation of the muscles or other organs concerned in the requisite
actions. The miser's fingers itch to clutch the gold, the possession of
which he desires. Our muscles twitch as we long to join in the race or
the active contention of a game of football. Our horse grows restive as
the hunt goes by. Our dog can scarce restrain himself from racing after
the rabbits in the park. Under the influence of emotion, then, the body
is prepared for activity, the organs and muscles are beginning to be
innervated, and, if the appetence or desire be sufficiently strong, the
appropriate actions are initiated, and the organism tends to pass from
the state of unstable equilibrium arising out of a pressing need to the
stable condition of satisfied appetence. The function of the will in
this process we shall have briefly to consider presently.
Let us here notice, with regard to the activities, what we have before
seen with regard to the process of perceptual construction. We there
noticed that, at the bidding of a relatively simple suggestion, a
complex object may be constructed by the mind. This presupposes a highly
complex mental organization ready to be set in motion by the appropriate
stimulus. The organization has been established by association and
through evolution in the individual and his ancestors. It is the same
with the activities. They, too, are the outcomes of associations and
experiences established and registered during generations of ancestral
predecessors. At the bidding of the appropriate stimulus arousing
impulse or appetence, a train of activities of great intricacy may be
set agoing with remarkable accuracy and precision. It is true that a
certain amount of individual education is required to draw out and
establish the latent powers of the body, as also of the mind; but _the
ability is inborn_, and only requires to be cultivated. Every one of us
inherits an organization rendering him capable of performing a vast
amount of mental construction and a great number of bodily activities.
All he has to do is to learn how to use it and to make himself master of
the powers that are given him.
At first, the acquisition of this mastery over the innate powers, even
in the performance of comparatively simple muscular adjustments, may
require a good deal of attention and practice. But, as time goes on, the
frequent repetition of the ordinary activities of everyday life leads to
their easier and easier performance. In simple responsive actions the
appropriate activity follows readily on the appropriate stimulus. And,
ere long, many acts which at first required intelligent attention are
performed easily and without consciousness of effort or definite
intention. A close association between certain oft-recurring stimuli and
the appropriate response in activity is thus established, and the action
follows on the stimulus without hesitation or trouble. With fuller
experience and further practice in the ordinary avocations of life, the
responsive activities link themselves more and more closely in
association, become more and more complex, are combined in series and
classes of activity of greater length and accuracy, and thus become
organized into _habits_. Under this head fall those activities which we
learn with difficulty in childhood, and perform with ease in after-life.
At first voluntary and intentional, they have become, or are becoming,
through frequency and uniformity of performance, more or less
involuntary and unintentional.
"The work of the world is," we are told, "for the most part done by
people of whom nobody ever hears. The political machine and the social
machine are under the ostensible control of personages who are well to
the front; but these brilliant beings would be sorely perplexed, and the
machinery would soon come to a standstill, but for certain experienced,
unambitious, and unobtrusive members of society." So is it also in the
economy of animal life. The work of life is--to paraphrase Mr. Norris's
words--for the most part done by habits of which nobody ever thinks. The
bodily organization is ostensibly under the control of intellect and
reason; but these brilliant qualities would be sorely perplexed, and the
machinery would soon come to a standstill, but for certain unobtrusive,
habitual activities which are already as well trained in the routine
work of life as are the permanent clerks in the routine work of a
Government office.
The importance of the establishment of these habitual activities is
immense. As the muscular and other responses of ordinary everyday life
become habitual, the mind is, so to speak, set free from any special
care with regard to their regulation and co-ordination, and can be
concentrated on the end to be attained by such activities. The cat that
is creeping stealthily upon the bird has all her attention rivetted on
the object of her appetence, and has not to trouble herself about the
movements of her body and limbs. When the swallows are wheeling over our
heads in the summer air, their sweeping curves and graceful evolutions
are not the outcome of careful planning, but are just the normal
exercise of activities which from long practice have become habitual. To
swim, to skate, to cycle, to row, to play the piano or the violin,--all
these require our full attention at first. But with practice they become
habitual, and during their performance the attention may be devoted to
quite other matters. This is a great gain. Without it complex trains of
activities could not be performed with ease by man or beast.
When once habits have been firmly established, their normal performance
is accompanied by a sense of satisfaction. But if their performance is
prevented or thwarted, there arises a sense of want or dissatisfaction.
The pining of a caged wild animal for liberty is a craving for the free
performance of its habitual activities. In an animal born into captivity
the craving is probably less intense, though, for reasons which will
presently become evident, it is presumably by no means absent. Animals
are, to a very large extent, creatures of habit. Much of the pleasure of
their existence lies in the performance of habitual activities. Our
zoological gardens, interesting as they are to us, are probably centres
of an amount of misery and discomfort, from unfulfilled promptings of
habit and instinct, which we can hardly realize.
From habitual activities we may pass by easy steps to those which are
instinctive. Both habits and instincts, or, to use a more convenient and
satisfactory mode of expression for our present purpose, both habitual
and instinctive activities, are based upon innate capacity. But whereas
habitual activities always require some learning and practice, and very
often some intelligence, on the part of the individual, instinctive
activities are performed without instruction or training, through the
exercise of no intelligent adaptation on the part of the performer, and
either at once and without practice (perfect instincts) or by
self-suggested trial and practice (incomplete instincts).[IN]
There is some little difficulty in distinguishing between instinctive
activities and reflex actions. Mr. Herbert Spencer defines or describes
instinct as compound reflex action. Mr. Romanes defines instinct as
reflex action into which there is imported the element of consciousness.
But, on the one hand, many instincts involve something more than
compound reflex action, since there is an organized sequence of
activities; and, on the other hand, the difficulty (which Mr. Romanes
admits) or impossibility (as I contend) of applying the criterion of
consciousness renders unsatisfactory the introduction of the mental
element as distinctive. I would say, therefore, that (1) reflex actions
are those comparatively isolated activities which are of the nature of
organic or physiological responses to more or less definite stimuli, and
which involve rather the several organs of the organism than the
activities of the organism as a whole; and that (2) instinctive
activities are those organized trains or sequences of co-ordinated
activities which are performed by the individual in common with all the
members of the same more or less restricted group, in adaptation to
certain circumstances, oft-recurring or essential to the continuance of
the species.
These instinctive activities may, as I have said, be performed at once
and without practice (perfect instincts) or by self-suggested trial and
practice (incomplete instincts). Most young mammals require some little
practice in the use of their limbs before they are able to walk or run.
But young pigs run about instinctively so soon as they are born.
Thunberg, the South African traveller, relates, on the testimony of an
experienced hunter, the case of a female hippopotamus which was shot the
moment she had given birth to a calf. "The Hottentots," he said, "who
imagined that after this they could catch the calf alive, immediately
rushed out of their hiding-place to lay hold of it; but, though there
were several of them, the new-born calf got away from them, and at once
made the best of its way to the river."
Even in cases where some practice is apparently necessary, the
activities may be, and often are, perfectly instinctive. They cannot,
however, be performed immediately on birth, because the nervous and
muscular mechanism is not at that time sufficiently developed. They
might, perhaps, with advantage be termed "deferred instincts." If time
be given for this development, the activities are carried out at once
and without practice. Throw a new-born puppy into the river, and, after
some helpless floundering, he will be drowned. Throw his brother when
fully grown into the river, and, though he may never have been in the
water in his life, he will swim to shore. He has not to learn to swim;
this is with him an instinctive activity. The dog inherits the power
which the boy must with some little difficulty acquire. He probably has
to pay no special attention to the muscular adjustments involved. The
act is accompanied by consciousness, but not that directed consciousness
we call "attention." When the boy has acquired the habit, he is scarcely
conscious of the special muscular co-ordinations as he swims across the
river; he is only conscious of a desire to pick the water-lilies near
the further bank.
Birds, especially those which are called pr[oe]coces, in
contradistinction from the altrices, which are hatched in a helpless,
callow condition, come into the world prepared at once to perform
complex activities. Mr. Spalding writes,[IO] "A chicken that had been
made the subject of experiments on hearing [having been blindfolded at
birth] was unhooded when nearly three days old. For six minutes it sat
chirping and looking about it; at the end of that time it followed with
its head and eyes the movements of a fly twelve inches distant; at ten
minutes it made a peck at its own toes, and the next instant it made a
vigorous dart at the fly, which had come within reach of its neck, and
seized and swallowed it at the first stroke; for seven minutes more it
sat calling and looking about it, when a hive-bee, coming sufficiently
near, was seized at a dart, and thrown some distance much disabled. For
twenty minutes it sat on the spot where its eyes had been unveiled
without attempting to walk a step. It was then placed on rough ground,
within sight and call of a hen with a brood of its own age. After
standing chirping for about a minute, it started off towards the hen,
displaying as keen a perception of the qualities of the outer world as
it was ever likely to possess in after-life. It never required to knock
its head against a stone to discover that there was 'no road that way.'
It leaped over the smaller obstacles that lay in its path, and ran round
the larger, reaching the mother in as nearly straight a line as the
nature of the ground would permit. This, let it be remembered, was the
first time it had ever walked by sight."[IP]
Mr. Spalding's experiments also proved that, even among the altrices,
young birds do not require to be taught to fly, but fly instinctively so
soon as the bodily organization is sufficiently developed to render this
activity possible. He kept young swallows caged until they were fully
fledged, and then allowed them to escape. They flew straight off at the
first attempt. They exhibited the instinctive power of flight in a
perfect but deferred form.
It is, however, among the higher invertebrates--especially among the
insects, and of them pre-eminently in the social hymenoptera, ants and
bees, that the most remarkable and complete instincts are seen. There
is, however, a tendency to ascribe all the habits of ants and bees to
instinct, often, as it seems to me, without sufficient evidence that
they are performed without instruction, and through no imitation or
intelligent adjustment. This is, perhaps, a survival of the
old-fashioned view that all the mental activities of the lower animals
are performed from instinct, whereas all the activities of human beings
are to be regarded as rational or intelligent. In popular writings and
lectures, for example, we frequently find some or all of the following
activities of ant-life ascribed to instinct: recognition of members of
the same nest; powers of communication; keeping aphides for the sake of
their sweet secretion; collection of aphid eggs in October, hatching
them out in the nest, and taking them in the spring to the daisies, on
which they feed, for pasture; slave-making and slave-keeping, which, in
some cases, is so ancient a habit that the enslavers are unable even to
feed themselves; keeping insects as beasts of burden, e.g. a kind of
plant-bug to carry leaves; keeping beetles, etc., as domestic pets;
habits of personal cleanliness, one ant giving another a brush-up, and
being brushed-up in return; habits of play and recreation; habits of
burying the dead; the storage of grain and nipping the budding rootlet
to prevent further germination; the habits described by Dr. Lincecum,
and to a large extent confirmed by Dr. McCook,[IQ] that Texan ants go
forth into the prairie to seek for the seeds of a kind of grass of which
they are particularly fond, and that they take these seeds to a clearing
which they have prepared, and then sow them for the purpose, six months
afterwards, of reaping the grain which is the produce of their
agriculture; the collection by other ants of grass to form a kind of
soil on which there subsequently grows a species of fungus upon which
they feed; the military organization of the ecitons of Central America;
and so forth. Now, the description of the habits of ants forms one of
the most interesting chapters in natural history. But to lump them
together in this way, as illustrations of instinct, is a survival of an
old-fashioned method of treatment. That they have to a very large extent
_an innate basis_ may be readily admitted. But at present we are hardly
in a position to say how far they are instinctive, that is, performed by
each individual straight off, and without imitation, instruction, or
intelligence; how far habitual, that is, performed after some little
training and practice; how far there is the intelligent element of
special adaptation to special circumstances; how far they are the result
of imitation; to what extent, if any, individual training and
instruction are factors in the process.
To put the matter in another way. Suppose that an intelligent ant were
to make observations on human activities as displayed in one of our
great cities or in an agricultural district. Seeing so great an amount
of routine work going on around him, might he not be in danger of
regarding all this as evidence of blind instinct? Might he not find it
difficult to obtain satisfactory evidence of the establishment of our
habits, of the fact that this routine work has to some extent to be
learnt? Might he not say (perhaps not wholly without truth), "I can see
nothing whatever in the training of the children of these men to fit
them for their life-activities. The training of their children has no
more apparent bearing upon the activities of their after-life than the
feeding of our grubs has on the duties of ant-life. And although we must
remember," he might continue, "that these large animals do not have the
advantage which we possess of awaking suddenly, as by a new birth, to
their full faculties, still, as they grow older, now one and now another
of their instinctive activities are unfolded and manifested. They fall
into the routine of life with little or no training as the period proper
to the various instincts arrives. If learning thereof there be, it has
at present escaped our observation. And such intelligence as their
activities evince (and many of them do show remarkable adaptation to
uniform conditions of life) would seem to be rather ancestral than of
the present time; as is shown by the fact that many of the adaptations
are directed rather to past conditions of life than to those which now
hold good. In the presence of new emergencies to which their instincts
have not fitted them, these poor men are often completely at a loss. We
cannot but conclude, therefore, that, although shown under somewhat
different and less favourable conditions, instinct occupies fully as
large a space in the psychology of man as it does in that of the ant,
while their intelligence is far less unerring and, therefore, markedly
inferior to our own."
Of course, the views here attributed to the ant are very absurd. But are
they much more absurd than the views of those who, on the evidence which
we at present possess, attribute all the varied activities of ant-life
to instinct? Take the case of the ecitons, or military ants, or the
harvesting ants, or the ants that keep draught-bugs as beasts of burden:
have we sufficient evidence to enable us to affirm that these activities
are purely instinctive and not habitual? That they are to a large extent
innate, few are likely to deny; but then our own habitual acts have a
basis that is, to a very large extent, innate. The question is not
whether they have an innate basis, but whether all the varied
man[oe]uvres of the military ants, for example, are displayed to the
full without any learning or imitation, without teaching and without
intelligence on the part of every individual in the army.[IR]
That in some cases there is something very like a training or education
of the ant when it emerges from the pupa condition is rendered probable
by the observations of M. Forel. As Mr. Romanes says,[IS] "The young ant
does not appear to come into the world with a full instinctive knowledge
of all its duties as a member of a social community. It is led about the
nest and 'trained to a knowledge of domestic duties, especially in the
case of larvæ.' Later on, the young ants are taught to distinguish
between friends and foes. When an ants' nest is attacked by foreign
ants, the young ones never join in the fight, but confine themselves to
removing the pupæ; and that the knowledge of hereditary enemies is not
wholly instinctive in ants is proved by the following experiment, which
we owe to Forel. He put young ants belonging to three different species
into a glass case with pupæ of six other species--all the species being
naturally hostile to one another. The young ants did not quarrel, but
worked together to tend the pupæ. When the latter hatched out, an
artificial colony was formed of a number of naturally hostile species,
all living together after the manner of the 'happy families' of the
showmen."
I have said that the varied activities of ants, though they may not in
all cases be truly instinctive, are nevertheless the outcome of certain
innate capacities. It seems to me necessary to distinguish carefully
between innate capacity and instinct. Every animal comes into the world
with an innate capacity to perform the activities which have been
necessary for the maintenance of the normal existence of its ancestors.
This is part of its inherited organization. Only when these activities
are performed at the bidding of impulse, through no instruction and from
no tendency to imitation, can they, strictly speaking, be termed
instinctive. The more uniform the conditions of ancestral life, and the
more highly developed the organism when it enters upon the scene of
active existence, the more likely are the innate capacities to manifest
themselves at once and without training as perfect instincts. Among
birds, the pr[oe]coces, which reach a high state of development within
the egg, and among insects, those which undergo complete metamorphosis,
and emerge from the pupa or chrysalis condition fully formed and fully
equipped for life, display the greatest tendency to exhibit activities
which are truly and perfectly instinctive. But man, whose ancestors have
lived and worked under such complex conditions, and who comes into the
world in so helpless and immature a state, though his innate capacities
are enormous, exhibits but few and rudimentary instincts.
One marked characteristic of many of the habits and instincts of the
lower animals is the large amount of blind prevision (if one may be
allowed the expression) which they display. By blind prevision I mean
that preparation for the future which, if performed through intelligence
or reason, we should term "foresight," but which, since it is performed
prior to any individual experience of the results, is done, we must
suppose, in blind obedience to the internal impulse. The sphex, a kind
of wasp-like insect, forms a little mud chamber in which she lays her
eggs. She goes forth, finds a spider, stings it in such a way that it is
paralyzed but not killed, and places it in the chamber for her unborn
young, which she will never see. The hen incubates her eggs, though she
may never have seen a chicken in her life. The caterpillars of an
African moth weave a collective cocoon as large as a melon. All unite to
weave the enveloping husk; each forms its separate cocoon within the
shell, and all these separate cocoons are arranged round branch-passages
or corridors, by which the moths, when they emerge from the chrysalis
condition, may escape. Another caterpillar, that of a butterfly
(_Thekla_) feeds within the pomegranate, but with silken threads
attaches the fruit to the branch of the tree, lest, when withered, it
should fall before the metamorphosis is complete. An ichneumon fly,
mentioned by Kirby and Spence, "deposits its eggs in the body of a larva
hidden between the scales of a fir-cone, which it can never have seen,
and yet knows where to seek;" and thus provision is made for young which
it will never know. Instances of such blind prevision might be quoted by
the score. It is idle to speculate as to the accompaniments of
consciousness of such acts. If it be asked--May there not be associated
with the performance of the instinctive activity of incubation an
inherited memory of a generalized chick? we can only answer that we do
not know, but that we guess not.[IT]
There is, however, one association, in the case of these and other
instincts, which we may fairly surmise to be frequent, though, for
reasons to be specified hereafter, it is probably not invariable. Just
as we saw to be the case with habits, so too with instinctive
activities, their performance is not infrequently associated with
pleasurable feeling, their non-performance with pain and discomfort and
a sense of craving or want. The animal prevented from performing its
instinctive activities is often apparently unquiet, uneasy, and
distressed. Hence I said that the animals in our zoological gardens,
even if born and reared in captivity, may exhibit a craving for freedom
and a yearning to perform their instinctive activities. This craving may
be regarded as a blind and vague impulse, prompting the animal to
perform those activities which are for its own good and for the good of
the race to which it belongs. The satisfaction of the craving, the
gratification of the blind impulse, is accompanied by a feeling of
relief and ease. Thus where a motive emerges at all into consciousness,
that from which we may presume that instinctive activities are performed
is not any foreknowledge of their end and purpose, but the gratification
of an immediate and pressing need, the satisfaction of a felt want.
* * * * *
We have, so far, been concerned merely with the various kinds of
activity presented by men and animals, and with some of their
characteristics. The organism, in virtue of its organization, has an
inherited groundwork of innate capacity. Surrounding circumstances and
commerce with the world draw out and develop the activities which the
innate capacity renders possible. First, there are automatic and reflex
actions, which are comparatively isolated activities in response to
definite stimuli, external or internal. Secondly, there are those
organized trains or sequences of co-ordinated activities which are
performed by the individual in common with all the members of the same
more or less restricted group, in adaptation to certain circumstances,
oft-recurring or essential to the continuance of the species. These are
the instinctive activities. But no hard-and-fast line can be drawn
between them and reflex actions. The instinctive activities may be
either perfect or relatively imperfect, according to the accuracy of
their adaptation to the purpose for which the activity is performed; but
in either case they are carried out without learning or practice. In
some cases, however, they cannot be performed until the organization is
more perfectly developed than it is at birth; but when the proper time
arrives they are perfect, and require no practice; these may be termed
"deferred instincts." Where some practice, but only a little, is
required, the instinctive activities may be regarded as incomplete; and
these pass into those activities which require at first a good deal of
practice, learning, and attention, but eventually run off smoothly and
without special attention, at times almost or quite unconsciously. These
are habitual activities. Finally, we have those activities which are
performed in special adaptation to special circumstances. These are
intelligent activities.
All of these may be, and the last, the intelligent actions, invariably
are, accompanied by consciousness. The habitual activities, and those
which are incompletely instinctive, are also, we may presume,
accompanied by consciousness during the process of their organization
and establishment. It is possible, however, that some of the perfectly
instinctive activities may be performed unconsciously. When we consider
how perfectly organized such activities are, and when we also remember
that perfectly organized habitual activities are frequently in us
unconscious, we shall see cause for suspecting that instinctive
activities may, at any rate in some cases, be unconscious. No doubt the
conditions of consciousness are not well understood. But let us accept
Mr. Romanes's suggestion, that a physiological concomitant is ganglionic
delay. "Now what," he asks,[IU] "does this greater consumption of time
imply? It clearly implies," he answers, "that the nervous mechanism
concerned has not been fully habituated to the performance of the
response required, and therefore that, instead of the stimulus merely
needing to touch the trigger of a ready-formed apparatus of response
(however complex this may be), it has to give rise in the nerve-centre
to a play of stimuli before the appropriate response is yielded. In the
higher planes of conscious life this play of stimuli in the presence of
difficult circumstances is known as indecision; but even in a simple act
of consciousness--such as signalling a perception--more time is required
by the cerebral hemispheres in supplying an appropriate response to a
non-habitual experience, than is required by the lower nerve-centres for
performing the most complicated of reflex actions by way of response to
their habitual experience. In the latter case the routes of nervous
discharge have been well worn by use; in the former case these routes
have to be determined by a complex play of forces amid the cells and
fibres of the cerebral hemispheres. And this complex play of forces,
which finds its physiological expression in a lengthening of the time of
latency, finds also a psychological expression in the rise of
consciousness." Now, since in many instinctive activities the stimulus
"merely needs to touch the trigger of a ready-formed apparatus of
response," I think that they _may_ be unconscious. And Mr. Romanes thus
himself supplies the reason for rejecting his own definition of instinct
as "reflex action into which there is imported the element of
consciousness." Of course, logically, Mr. Romanes can reply, "It is
merely a question of where we draw the line; if the activity is
unconscious, it is a reflex action; if conscious, it is an instinct." I
think this unsatisfactory, (1) because the criterion of consciousness,
from its purely inferential nature, is practically impossible of
application with accuracy; (2) because the same series of activities may
probably at one time be unconscious and at another time conscious; and
(3) because many actions which are almost universally regarded as reflex
actions may at times be accompanied by consciousness, and would then
have, on Mr. Romanes's view, to be regarded as instincts.
Having made this initial criticism, I may now state that I regard Mr.
Romanes's treatment of instinct as most admirable and masterly. Building
upon the foundation laid by Charles Darwin, he has worked out the theory
of instinct in a manner at once broad and yet minute, lucid and yet
close, definite in doctrine and yet not blind to difficulties. If I say
that it is a piece of work worthy of the great master whose devoted
disciple Mr. Romanes has proved himself, I am according it the highest
praise in my power. I have ventured in this volume to criticize some of
Mr. Romanes's conclusions in the field of animal intelligence. And lest
I should seem to undervalue his work, lest our few divergences should
seem to hide our many parallelisms, I take this opportunity of
testifying to my great and sincere admiration of the results of his
careful and exact observations, his patient and thoughtful inferences,
and his lucid and often luminous exposition.
I do not propose to go over the ground so exhaustively covered by Mr.
Romanes in his discussion of instinct. I shall first endeavour shortly
to set forth his conclusions, and then review the subject in the light
of modern views of heredity.
Admitting that some instincts may have arisen from the growth,
extension, and co-ordination of reflex actions, Mr. Romanes regards the
majority of instincts as of two-fold origin--first, from the natural
selection of fortuitous unintelligent activities which chanced to be
profitable to the agent (primary instincts); and, secondly, from the
inheritance of habitual activities intelligently acquired. These are the
secondary instincts, comprising activities which have become instinctive
through lapsed intelligence. In illustration of primary instincts, Mr.
Romanes cites the instinct of incubation. "It is quite impossible," he
says,[IV] "that any animal can ever have kept its eggs warm with the
intelligent purpose of hatching out their contents, so that we can only
suppose that the incubating instinct began by warm-blooded animals
showing that kind of attention to their eggs which we find to be
frequently shown by cold-blooded animals.... Those individuals which
most constantly cuddled or brooded over their eggs would, other things
equal, have been most successful in rearing progeny; and so the
incubating instinct would be developed without there ever having been
any intelligence in the matter."
Many of the instincts which exhibit what I have termed above "blind
prevision" must, it would seem, belong completely or in the main to this
class. The instincts of female insects, which lead them to anticipate by
blind prevision the wants of offspring they will never see; the
instincts of the caterpillars, which lead them to make provision for the
chrysalis or imago condition of which they can have no experience; the
instinct of a copepod crustacean, which lays its eggs in a brittle-star,
that they may therein develop, probably in the brood-sac, and may even
destroy the reproductive powers of the host for the future good of her
own offspring--these and many others would seem to have no basis in
individual experience.
In illustration of the second class of instincts, those due to lapsed
intelligence, Mr. Romanes cites the case of birds living on oceanic
islands, which at first show no fear of man, but which acquire in a few
generations an instinctive dread of him--for the wildness or tameness
may become truly instinctive. "If," says Dr. Rae,[IW] "the eggs of a
wild duck are placed with those of a tame one under a hen to be hatched,
the ducklings from the former, on the very day they leave the egg, will
immediately endeavour to hide themselves, or take to the water if there
is any water, should any person approach, whilst the young from the tame
duck's eggs will show little or no alarm, indicating in both cases a
clear instance of instinct or 'inherited memory.'"
It must not be supposed that these two modes of origin are mutually
exclusive, and that any particular instinct must belong either to the
one class or the other. On the contrary, many instincts have, as it
were, a double root--the principle of selection combining with that of
lapsing intelligence in the formation of a joint result. Intelligence
may thus give a new direction to a primary instinct, and, the
intelligent modification being inherited, what is practically a new
instinct may arise. Conversely, selection may tend to preserve those
individuals which perform some intelligent action, and may, therefore,
aid the lapsing of intelligence in establishing and stereotyping an
instinct.
Referring the reader to Mr. Romanes's work for the examples and
illustrations by which he enforces his views, we may now proceed to
consider the subject in the light of recently developed theories of
heredity.
We have seen that a school of biologists has arisen who deny the
inheritance of acquired characters. But Mr. Romanes's secondary
instincts depend upon the inheritance of habits intelligently acquired.
By the school of Professor Weismann, therefore (if we may so call it
without injustice to Mr. Francis Galton), secondary instincts, in so far
as any individual acquisition is concerned, are denied. Opposed to this
school are those who lay great stress on the inheritance of acquired
characters. Some of them seem driven to the opposite extreme in the
matter of instinct, and appear to hold that instincts are entirely (or
let us say almost entirely) due to lapsed intelligence. Professor Eimer,
of Tübingen, for example, says,[IX] "I describe as automatic actions
those which, originally performed consciously and voluntarily, in
consequence of frequent practice, come to be performed unconsciously and
involuntarily.... Such acquired automatic actions can be inherited.
Instinct is inherited faculty, especially is inherited habit." In his
discussion of the subject, Professor Eimer seems to make no express
allusion to primary instincts. And he regards at any rate some of those
which are classed by Mr. Romanes as primary, as due to lapsed
intelligence. "Every bird," he says,[IY] "must, from the first time it
hatches its eggs, draw the conclusion that young will also be produced
from the eggs which it lays afterwards, and this experience must have
been inherited as instinct." He says[IZ] that the infant takes the
breast and sucks "in accordance with its acquired and inherited
faculties." He believes[JA] that "the original progenitors of our
cuckoo, when they began to lay their eggs in other nests, acted by
reflection and with design." Regarding the mason-wasps and their allies,
which sting larvæ in the ganglia which govern muscular action, and thus
provide their young with paralyzed but living prey, he exclaims,[JB]
"What a wonderful contrivance! What calculation on the part of the
animal must have been necessary to discover it!" Of the storing
instincts of bees he remarks,[JC] "Selection cannot here have had much
influence, since the workers do not reproduce. In order to make these
favourable conditions constant, insight and reflection on the part of
the animals, and inheritance of these faculties, were necessary." And he
concludes,[JD] "Thus, according to the preceding considerations,
automatic action may be described as habitual voluntary action;
instinct, as inherited habitual voluntary action, or the capacity for
such action."
Professor Eimer would not probably deny the co-operation of natural
selection in the establishment of these instincts, but he throws it
altogether into the background. Now, such a view seems to me wholly
untenable. Many of the instincts of insects are performed only once in
the course of each individual life. Can it be supposed that the weaving
of a cocoon by the caterpillar is mainly a matter of lapsed
intelligence? Even if we credit the hen bird with the amount of
reflection supposed by Professor Eimer, can we grant to the ancestors of
the ichneumon fly such far-reaching observation and intelligence as
really to foresee (not by blind prevision, but through intelligent
foresight) the future development of the eggs which she lays in a
caterpillar? Are we to suppose that the instinctive action of the young
cuckoo, which, _the day after it is hatched_, will eject all the other
occupants of a hedge-accentor's nest,[JE] can have had its origin in
lapsed intelligence? If, because of their purposive character, we are to
regard such instincts as of intelligent origin, may we not be told that
through intelligent design the pike has beset its jaws, palate, and
gill-arches with innumerable teeth, all backwardly directed for the
purpose of holding its slippery prey; and the eagle has protected its
eye with a bony ring of sclerotic plates, like the holder of an
optician's watch-glass? If mimicry in form and colour is due to natural
selection, why not mimicry in habits and activities? If _structures_ of
a wonderfully purposive character have been evolved without the
intelligent co-operation of the organisms which possess them, why not
some of the highly purposive _activities_?
And here the disciple of the school of Professor Weismann will echo and
extend the question, and will say, "Yes! why not _all_ instinctive
activities? You are ready to admit," he will continue, "that many
instincts, wonderfully purposive in their nature, are of primary origin,
that is due to natural selection; why, then, invoke any other mode of
origin? If lapsed intelligence be excluded in these cases, why introduce
it at all? Why not admit, what our theory of heredity demands, that[JF]
'all instinct is entirely due to the operation of natural selection, and
has its foundation, not upon inherited experiences, but upon the
variations of the germ'?"
Professor Weismann's contention needs much more serious consideration
than that of Professor Eimer. I think there is force in the _à priori_
argument (as an _à priori_ argument) that since very complex instincts
are probably of primary origin, there is no _à priori_ necessity for the
introduction of the hypothesis of lapsed intelligence. Let me first
illustrate this further.
A certain beetle (_Sitaris_) lays its eggs at the entrance of the
galleries excavated by a kind of bee (_Anthophora_), each gallery
leading to a cell. The young larvæ are hatched as active little insects,
with six legs, two long antennæ, and four eyes, very different from the
larvæ of other beetles. They emerge from the egg in the autumn, and
remain in a sluggish condition till the spring. At that time (in April)
the drones of the bee emerge from the pupæ, and as they pass out through
the gallery the sitaris larvæ fasten upon them. There they remain till
the nuptial flight of the anthophora, when the larva passes from the
male to the female bee. Then again they await their chance. The moment
the bee lays an egg, the sitaris larva springs upon it. "Even while the
poor mother is carefully fastening up her cell, her mortal enemy is
beginning to devour her offspring; for the egg of the anthophora serves
not only as a raft, but as a repast. The honey, which is enough for
either, would be too little for both; and the sitaris, therefore, at its
first meal, relieves itself from its only rival. After eight days the
egg is consumed, and on the empty shell the sitaris undergoes its first
transformation, and makes its appearance in a very different form.... It
changes into a white, fleshy grub, so organized as to float on the
surface of the honey, with the mouth beneath and the spiracles above the
surface.... In this state it remains until the honey is consumed;"[JG]
and, after some further metamorphoses, develops into a perfect beetle in
August.
Now, it seems to me difficult to understand how, at any stage of this
long series of highly adaptive, instinctive activities, lapsed
intelligence can have been a factor. And therefore I say, if such a
complex series[JH] can have resulted from natural selection and
non-intelligent adaptation, I see no _à priori_ reason why any instinct,
no matter how complex, should not have had a like origin.
Let us, however, next consider whether Professor Weismann's theory of
the origin of instincts necessarily altogether excludes intelligence as
a co-operating factor. The essential point on which that theory is
absolutely insistent is that what is handed on through inheritance is
_an innate, and not an individually acquired, character_. Now, since
intelligent actions are characteristically individual, and performed in
special adaptation to special circumstances, it would seem, at first
sight, that the intelligent modification of an instinct could not, on
Professor Weismann's view, be handed on. Let us consider whether this
must be so.
Speaking of ants and bees, Darwin pointed out that their instincts could
not possibly have been acquired by inherited habit, since they are
performed by neuter insects, that is, by undeveloped females incapable
of laying eggs and continuing their race. For a habit to pass into an
instinct by inheritance, it is obviously necessary that the organism
which performs the habitual actions should be capable of producing
offspring by which these actions might be inherited. But in this case
the parental forms do not possess these instincts, while the neuter
insects which do possess them are sterile.
And how does Mr. Darwin meet this difficulty? "It is lessened, or, as I
believe, disappears," he says,[JI] "when it is remembered that selection
may be applied to the family as well as to the individual. Breeders of
cattle wish the flesh and fat to be well marbled together; an animal
thus characterized has been slaughtered, but the breeder has gone with
confidence to the same stock, and has succeeded. Such faith may be
placed in the power of selection, that a breed of cattle always yielding
oxen with extraordinarily long horns could, it is probable, be formed by
carefully watching which individual bulls and cows, when matched,
produced oxen with the longest horns; and yet no one ox would ever have
propagated his kind.... Hence we may conclude that slight modifications
of structure or of instinct, correlated with the sterile condition of
certain members of the community, have proved advantageous;
consequently, the fertile males and females have flourished, and
transmitted to their fertile offspring a tendency to produce sterile
members with the same modifications. This process must have been
repeated many times, until that prodigious amount of difference between
the fertile and sterile females of the same species has been produced
which we see in many social insects."
Now let us apply this illustration to the case of habits intelligently
acquired. Instead of the possession of long horns, suppose the
performance of some habitual action be observed in the oxen. Then, by
carefully watching which individual bulls and cows, when matched,
produced oxen which performed this intelligent habitual action, a breed
of cattle always yielding oxen which possessed this habit might, on
Darwin's principles, be produced. The intelligence of oxen might in this
way be enhanced. Such faith may be placed in the power of selection that
a breed of cattle always yielding oxen of marked intelligence could, it
is possible, be formed by carefully watching which individual bulls and
cows, when matched, produced the most intelligent oxen; and yet no ox
would ever have propagated its kind. Regarding, then, a nest of ants or
bees as a social community, mutually dependent on each other, and
subject to natural selection, that community would best escape
elimination in which the queen produced two sets of offspring--one set
in which the procreative faculty was predominant to the partial
exclusion of intelligence, and another in which intelligent activities
were predominant to the exclusion of propagation.
It is possible that I have weakened my case by introducing such a
difficult problem as the instincts of neuter insects. And I would beg
the reader to remember that this is only incidental. What I wish to
indicate is that among the many variations to which organisms are
subject, there are variations in their intelligent activities; that
these are of elimination value, those animals which conspicuously
possess them escaping elimination in its several modes; that those
survivors which thus escape elimination are likely to hand on, through
inheritance, that intelligence which enabled them to survive; that if,
throughout a series of generations, such intelligence be applied to some
definite end, nervous channels will tend to be definitely established,
and the intelligent activity will more and more readily become habitual;
that eventually, through the lapsing of intelligence, these habitual
activities may become so fixed and stereotyped as to become instinctive;
that intelligence has thus been a factor in the establishment of these
instinctive activities; that throughout the sequence there is no
inheritance of anything individually acquired, the intelligent
variations being throughout of germinal origin; and that, therefore, in
the origin of instincts, the co-operation of intelligence and the
lapsing of intelligence are not excluded on the principles advocated by
Professor Weismann.
What, then, is excluded? Any _individually acquired increment_, either
in the intelligence displayed or the stereotyping process. The subject
of instinct and of animal intelligence has not at present been
considered at any great length by Professor Weismann, but, judging by
the general tenor of his writings, I take it that what he demands is
definite proof that such individually acquired increment _is actually
inherited_.
As before indicated in the chapter on "Heredity," such proof it is, from
the nature of the case, almost impossible to produce. Suppose that we
find evidence of a gradually increasing application of intelligence to
some important life-activity, or a more and more defined stereotyping of
some incompletely habitual or instinctive action; how are we to prove
that the increment in either case is due to the inheritance of
individual acquisitions, not to the selection of favourable innate (that
is to say, germinal) variations? Such a hopeless task may at once be
abandoned.
Are we, then, to leave the question as insoluble? I think not. It is
still open to us to consider whether there are any cases in which the
inheritance of acquired modifications is a more probable hypothesis than
the selection of favourable germinal variations. Now, the acquisition of
an instinctive dread of man, and the loss of this instinctive timidity
under domestication, seem to be of this kind. And yet I doubt whether
the evidence on this head is _convincing_. For the loss of instinctive
timidity, Professor Weismann may invoke the aid of panmixia. But if
there is truth in what I have already urged on this head, panmixia will
not adequately account for the facts. On the other hand, he may contend
that the instinctive dread is not due to the inheritance of individually
acquired experience, but to the selection of the wilder birds and
animals through the persistent elimination of those which are tame. And
in support of this view, he may quote Darwin himself, who says,[JJ] "It
is surprising, considering the degree of persecution which they have
occasionally suffered during the last one or two centuries, that the
birds of the Falklands and Galapagos have not become wilder; it shows
that the fear of man is not soon acquired." It is questionable, however,
whether this persecution, admittedly occasional, can have much
elimination value. There is, however, the element of imitation and
instruction to be taken into account, and the difficulty of proving that
the timidity is really instinctive. It has frequently been observed that
birds become, after a while, quite fearless of trains. Here elimination
is practically excluded; but it has to be proved that this fearlessness
is truly instinctive. Professor Eimer says,[JK] "In my garden every
sparrow and every crow know me from afar because I persecute these
birds. Once, in the presence of a friend, I shot a crow from the roof of
my house, while the pigeons and starlings on the same roof, to the great
astonishment of my friend, to whom I had predicted it, remained
perfectly quiet. They had learned by frequent experience at what my gun
was aimed, and knew that it did not threaten them." There is nothing in
this interesting observation, however, to show that what the pigeons had
learnt had, by _inherited_ experience, become instinctive. And Professor
Weismann will not, in all probability, be prepared to accept as a
logical inference "that this instinct of fear, because it can be
dispelled by experience, must be founded on inherited, acquired
experience."[JL]
Fully admitting, then, that this is a matter of relative probability,
and that the observations and inferences in this matter are not by
themselves convincing, I still think that the balance of probability is
here on the side of some inheritance of experience. Take next such an
instinctive habit as that which dogs display of turning round in a
narrow circle ere they lie down. In its origin the instinct probably
arose with the object of preparing a couch in the long grass. Now, is
this habit of elimination value? Can we suppose that it arose through
the elimination of those ancestral animals which failed to perform this
habit? I find it difficult to accept this view, though it is just
possible that the animals which did this thereby escaped the observation
of their enemies. It is also possible that this originally was a merely
purposeless habit, a strange trick of manner, which has been inherited,
and rendered constant and fixed. Here again, however, I think the
balance of probability is that the habit was intelligently acquired and
inherited.
I have before drawn attention to the more or less incompletely
instinctive avoidance, by birds and lizards, of insects with warning
coloration. That the avoidance is not perfectly instinctive is shown by
the fact that young birds sometimes taste these caterpillars or insects.
But a very small basis of experience, often a single case, is sufficient
to establish the association. And in young chicks the avoidance of bees
and wasps seems to be perfectly instinctive. The effects on the young
birds, however, can hardly be of elimination value. Mr. Poulton offered
unpalatable insects "to animals from which all other food was withheld.
Under these circumstances, the insects were eaten, although often after
many attempts, and evidently with the most intense disgust."[JM] I have
caused bees to sting young chickens; the result was extreme discomfort,
but in no cases permanent injury or death. If, then, the instinct is not
of elimination value, that is to say, not such as to save the possessors
from elimination, how can it have been established by natural selection?
And if not due to natural selection, to what can it be due, save
inherited antipathy?
Natural selection is such a far-reaching and ubiquitous factor in
organic evolution, that it is not likely that many cases can be found in
which the play of elimination can be rigidly excluded. But there are not
a few in which elimination does not appear to be the most important
factor. Mr. G. L. Grant has recently observed that the sparrows near
Auckland, New Zealand, have taken to burrowing holes in sand-cliffs,
like the sand-martin. The cliff-swallow of the Eastern United States has
almost ceased to build nests in the cliffs, like its progenitors, and
now avails itself of the protection afforded by the eaves of houses. The
surviving beavers in Europe are said to have abandoned the instinct of
building huts and dams. The race being no longer sufficiently numerous
to live in communities, the survivors live in deep burrows. In Russian
Lapland, under the persecution of hunters, the reindeer are reported to
be abandoning the tundras, or open lichen-covered tracts, for the
forests. The kea (_Nestor notabilis_), a brush-tongued parrot of New
Zealand, which normally feeds on honey, fruits, and berries, has, since
the introduction of sheep, taken to a carnivorous diet. It is said to
have begun by pecking at the sheep-skins hung out to dry; subsequently
it began to attack living sheep; and now it has learnt to tear its way
down to the fat which surrounds the kidneys. This habit, far from being
the result of elimination, is rapidly leading to the elimination of the
bird that has so strangely adopted it.
Now, although in these cases elimination has, I think, been a quite
subordinate factor, I do not adduce them as convincing evidence that
acquired habits are hereditary. Instruction and imitation in each
successive generation may well have come into play. There is no proof
that they are even incompletely instinctive. But I think that these are
the kinds of activities, renewed and careful observations and, if
possible, experiments on which, may lead to more decisive results. It
would probably not be difficult to ascertain how far the carnivorous
habit of the kea has become hereditary, and how far it is performed in
the absence of instruction and without the possibility of imitation.
I confess that when I look round upon the varied habits of birds and
mammals, when I see the frigate bird robbing the fish-hawk of the prey
that it has captured from the sea, the bald-headed chimpanzee adopting a
diet of small birds, a _Semnopithecus_ in the Mergui Archipelago eating
crustacea and mollusca, and the koypu, a rodent, living on shell-fish;
when I consider the divergence of habits in almost every group of
organisms, the ground-pigeons, rock-pigeons, and wood-pigeons,
seed-eating pigeons and fruit-eating pigeons; the carrion-eating,
insect-eating, and fruit-eating crows; the aquatic and terrestrial
kingfishers, some living on fish, some on insects, some on reptiles;[JN]
the divergent habits of the ring-ousel and the water-ousel; and the
peculiar habits of blood-sucking bats;--when I see these and a thousand
other modifications and divergences of habit, I question whether the
theory that they have all arisen through the elimination of those forms
which failed to possess them may not be pushed too far; I am inclined to
believe that the inheritance of acquired modifications has been a
co-operating factor. It is not enough to say that these habits are all
useful to their several possessors. _It has to be shown that they are of
elimination value_--that their possession or non-possession has made all
the difference between survival and elimination.
On the whole, then, as the result of a careful consideration of the
subject of instinctive and habitual activities, and in accordance with
my general view of organic evolution as set forth in previous chapters,
I am disposed to accept the inheritance of individually acquired
modifications of habit as a working hypothesis. I do not think that
absolutely convincing evidence thereof can at present be produced. But
to the best of my judgment, the probabilities are in favour of the
inheritance of modifications of existing activities, due to
intelligence, instruction, and imitation; always provided that the
exercise of these modified activities is sufficiently frequent and
definite to give rise to habits in the individual.
I recognize three factors in the origin of instinctive activities--
1. Elimination through natural selection.
2. Selection through preferential mating.
3. The inheritance of individually acquired modifications.
Of these I consider the first quite incontrovertible; the second as
highly probable; and the third as probable in a less degree. In all
three, intelligence may or may not have been a factor. Some of the
habits which have survived elimination under the first factor may have
been originally intelligent, some of them from the first unintelligent.
Some of the love-antics (so called), which, through their tendency to
excite sexual appetence in the female, have been selected under the
second factor, may have had a basis in intelligence; many of them
probably have not. And though the great majority of individually
acquired modifications of habits have owed their origin to intelligent
direction, still it is conceivable that some of them have not. An animal
may have been forced by circumstances to modify its habits, without any
exercise of intelligence; and this modification, forced, through changed
conditions, upon all the members of a species, may, through inheritance,
have passed into the stereotyped condition of an instinct. Under each
factor, then, we have two several categories.
1. Elimination { _a._ of unintelligent activities.
{ _b._ of intelligent activities.
2. Selection { _a._ of unintelligent activities.
{ _b._ of intelligent activities.
3. Inheritance { _a._ of unintelligent activities.
{ _b._ of intelligent activities.
In all cases, however, where intelligence has been a co-operating
factor, this intelligence has lapsed so soon as the activity became
truly instinctive.
From the co-operation of the factors it is almost impossible to give
examples which shall illustrate the exclusive action of any one. The
following table must therefore be regarded as indicating the probable
predominance of the factor indicated:--
1. { _a._ Caterpillars spinning cocoons.
{ _b._ Instincts of social hymenoptera.
2. { _a._ Drumming of snipe.
{ _b._ Procedure of Queensland bower-bird.
3. { _a._ Ants forming nests in trees in flooded parts of Siam.
{ _b._ Instinctive fear of man.
In speaking of the instinct of caterpillars spinning cocoons as
unintelligent, I am regarding the final purpose of the activity.
Intelligence may very possibly have come into play in modifying the
details of procedure. In giving the drumming of snipe as an example of
unintelligent activities furthered by selection, I am assuming that it
has a sexual import, and that the activity correlated with a narrowing
of the tail-feathers was not, in its inception, intelligently performed
with the object of exciting sexual appetence in the hen. The case of the
ants of Siam is given by Mr. Romanes,[JO] on the authority of Lonbière,
who says "that in one part of that kingdom, which lies open to great
inundations, all the ants made their settlements upon trees; no ants'
nests are to be seen anywhere else." Now, this modification of habits
may have been the result of intelligence; or it may have been forced
upon the ants by circumstances. The floods drove them on to the trees;
the instinctive impulse to build a settlement was imperative; hence the
settlement had to be formed on the trees, because the ground was
flooded. The difficulty of ascertaining whether intelligence has or has
not been a factor is simply part of the inherent difficulty of
comparative psychology--a difficulty on which sufficient stress has
already been laid in an earlier chapter.
The great majority of the instinctive activities of animals have arisen
through a co-operation of the factors, and it is exceedingly difficult
in any individual case to assign to the factors their several values.
And here we must once more notice that the separation off of the
instinctive activities from the other activities of animals is merely a
matter of convenience in classification. In the living organism the
activities--automatic actions, reflex actions, incompletely and
perfectly established instincts, habits, and intelligent activities--are
unclassified and commingled. They are going on at the same time, shading
the one into the other, untrammelled by the limits imposed by a
scientific method of treatment.
Once more, too, we must notice that the activities of animals are
essentially the outcome and fulfilment of emotional states. When the
emotional sensibility is high, the resulting activities are varied and
vigorous. As we have before seen, this high state of emotional
sensibility is correlated with a highly charged and sensitive condition
of the organic explosives elaborated by the plasmogen of the cells.
After repose, and at certain periodic times, this state of exalted
sensibility is apt to occur. It is exemplified in the so-called instinct
of play, which manifests itself in varied activities in the early
morning, in early life, and in the returning warmth of spring--at such
times, in fact, as the life-tide is in full flood.
But perhaps the activities which result from a highly wrought state of
sensibility are best seen at the periodic return of sexual appetence or
impulse in animals of various grades of life and intelligence. Many
organisms, at certain periods of the year, and in presence of their
mates, are thrown into a perfect frenzy of sexual appetence. The
love-antics of birds have been so frequently described that I will
merely quote from Darwin[JP] Mr. Strange's account of the satin
bower-bird: "At times the male will chase the female all over the
aviary, then go to the bower, pick up a gay feather or a large leaf,
utter a curious kind of note, set all his feathers erect, run round the
bower, and become so excited that his eyes appear ready to start from
his head; he continues opening first one wing, and then the other,
uttering a low, whistling note, and, like the domestic cock, seems to be
picking up something from the ground, until at last the female goes
gently towards him." Instances might be quoted from almost all classes
of the animal kingdom. Many fish display "love-antics," for example, the
gay-suited, three-spine stickleback, whose excitement is apparently
intense. Newts display similar activities. Even the lowly snail makes
play with its love-darts (_spiculæ amoris_), practical tangible darts of
glistening carbonate of lime. Mr. George W. Peckham has recently
described[JQ] the extraordinary "love-dance" of a spider (_Saitis
pulex_). "On May 24 we found a mature female, and placed her in one of
the larger boxes; and the next day we put a male in with her. He saw her
as she stood perfectly still, twelve inches away; the glance seemed to
excite him, and he at once moved towards her; when some four inches from
her he stood still, and then began the most remarkable performances that
an amorous male could offer to an admiring female. She eyed him eagerly,
changing her position from time to time, so that he might be always in
view. He, raising his whole body on one side by straightening out the
legs, and lowering it on the other by folding the first two pairs of
legs up and under, leaned so far over as to be in danger of losing his
balance, which he only maintained by sidling rapidly towards the lowered
side. The palpus, too, on this side was turned back to correspond to the
direction of the legs nearest it. He moved in a semicircle for about two
inches, and then instantly reversed the position of the legs, and
circled in the opposite direction, gradually approaching nearer and
nearer to the female. Now she dashes towards him, while he, raising his
first pair of legs, extends them upward and forward as if to hold her
off, but withal slowly retreats. Again and again he circles from side to
side, she gazing towards him in a softer mood, evidently admiring the
grace of his antics. This is repeated until we have counted a hundred
and eleven circles made by the ardent little male. Now he approaches
nearer and nearer, and when almost within reach whirls madly around and
around her, she joining and whirling with him in a giddy maze. Again he
falls back and resumes his semicircular motions, with his body tilted
over; she, all excitement, lowers her head and raises her body, so that
it is almost vertical; both draw nearer; she moves slowly under him, he
crawling over her head, and the mating is accomplished."
It can scarcely be doubted that such antics, performed in presence of
the female and suggested at sight of her, serve to excite in the mate
sexual appetence. If so, it can, further, scarcely be doubted that there
are degrees of such excitement, that certain antics excite sexual
appetence in the female less fully or less rapidly than others; yet
others, perhaps, not at all. If so, again, it can hardly be questioned
that those antics which excite most fully or most rapidly sexual
appetence in the female will be perpetuated through the selection of the
male which performs them. This is sexual selection through preferential
mating. And, I think, the importance of these activities, their wide
range, and their perfectly, or at any rate incompletely instinctive
nature, justifies me in emphasizing this factor in the origin of
instinctive activities. It has hitherto, I think, not received the
attention it deserves in discussions of instinct.
A few more words may here be added to what has already been said on the
influence of intelligence on instinct. The influence may be twofold--it
may aid in making or in unmaking instincts. We have seen that instincts
may be modified through intelligent adaptation. A little dose of
judgment, as Huber phrased it, often comes into play. The cell-building
instinct of bees is one which is remarkably stereotyped; and yet it may
be modified in intelligent ways to meet special circumstances. When, for
example, honey-bees were forced to build their comb on the curve, the
cells on the convex side were made of a larger size than usual, while
those on the concave side were smaller than usual. Huber constrained his
bees to construct their combs from below upwards, and also horizontally,
and thus to deviate from their normal mode of building. The
nest-construction of birds, again, may be modified in accordance with
special circumstances. And, perhaps, it is scarcely too much to say
that, whenever intelligence comes on the scene, it may be employed in
modifying instinctive activities and giving them special direction.
Now, suppose the modifications are of various kinds and in various
directions, and that, associated with the instinctive activity, a
tendency to modify it _indefinitely_ be inherited. Under such
circumstances intelligence would have a tendency to break up and render
plastic a previously stereotyped instinct. For the instinctive character
of the activities is maintained through the constancy and uniformity of
their performance. But if the normal activities were thus caused to vary
in different directions in different individuals, the offspring arising
from the union of these differing individuals would not inherit the
instinct in the same purity. The instincts would be imperfect, and there
would be an inherited tendency to vary. And this, if continued, would
tend to convert what had been a stereotyped instinct into innate
capacity; that is, a general tendency to certain activities (mental or
bodily), the exact form and direction of which is not fixed, until by
training, from imitation or through the guidance of individual
intelligence, it became habitual. Thus it may be that it has come about
that man, with his enormous store of innate capacity, has so small a
number of stereotyped instincts.
But while intelligence, displayed under its higher form of originality,
may, in certain cases, lead to all-round variation, tending to undermine
instinct and render it less stereotyped, intelligence, under its lower
form of imitation, has the opposite tendency. For young animals are more
likely to imitate the habits of their own species than the foreign
habits of other species, and such imitation would therefore tend towards
uniformity.
Imitation is probably a by no means unimportant factor in the
development of habits and instincts. Mr. A. R. Wallace, in his
"Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection," contends that the
nest-building habit in birds is, to a large extent, kept constant by
imitation. The instinctive motive is there, but the stereotyped form is
maintained through imitation of the structure of the nest in which the
builders were themselves reared. Mr. Weir, however, writing to Mr.
Darwin, in 1868, says in a letter, which Mr. Romanes quotes,[JR] "The
more I reflect on Mr. Wallace's theory, that birds learn to make their
nests because they have themselves been reared in one, the less inclined
do I feel to agree with him.... It is usual with canary-fanciers to take
out the nest constructed by the parent birds, and to place a felt nest
in its place, and, when the young are hatched and old enough to be
handled, to place a second clean nest, also of felt, in the box,
removing the other. This is done to prevent acari. But I never knew that
canaries so reared failed to make a nest when the breeding-time arrived.
I have, on the other hand, marvelled to see how like a wild bird's the
nests are constructed. It is customary to supply them with a small set
of materials, such as moss and hair. They use the moss for the
foundation, and line with the finer materials, just as a wild goldfinch
would do, although, making it in a box, the hair alone would be
sufficient for the purpose. I feel convinced nest-building is a true
instinct." On the other hand, Mr. Charles Dixon, quoted[JS] in Mr.
Wallace's "Darwinism," speaking of chaffinches which were taken to New
Zealand and turned out there, says, "The cup of the nest is small,
loosely put together, apparently lined with feathers, and the walls of
the structure are prolonged for about eighteen inches, and hang loosely
down the side of the supporting branch. The whole structure bears some
resemblance to the nests of the hang-birds (_Icteridæ_), with the
exception that the cavity is at the top. Clearly these New Zealand
chaffinches were at a loss for a design when fabricating their nest.
They had no standard to work by, no nests of their own kind to copy, no
older birds to give them any instruction, and the result is the abnormal
structure I have just described."
There is more evidence in favour of the view that the song of birds is,
in part at least, imitative. That it has an innate basis is certain; and
that it may be truly instinctive is shown by Mr. Couch's observation of
a goldfinch which had never heard the song of its own species, but which
sang the goldfinch-song, though tentatively and imperfectly. On the
other hand, imitation is undoubtedly a factor. The Hon. Daines
Barrington says (1773), "I have educated nestling linnets under the
three best singing larks--the skylark, woodlark, and titlark--every one
of which, instead of the linnet's song, adhered entirely to that of
their respective instructors. When the note of the titlark linnet was
thoroughly fixed, I hung the bird in a room with two common linnets for
a quarter of a year. They were in full song, but the titlark linnet
adhered steadfastly to that of the titlark." Mr. Wallace, who quotes
this, adds,[JT] "For young birds to acquire a new song correctly, they
must be taken out of hearing of their parents very soon, for in the
first three or four days they have already acquired some knowledge of
the parent's notes, which they afterwards imitate." Dureau de la Malle,
as quoted by Mr. Romanes,[JU] describes how he taught a starling the
"Marseillaise," and from this bird all the other starlings in a canton
to which he took it are stated to have learned the air!
That dogs, monkeys, and other mammalia have powers of imitation needs no
illustration. And when we remember that it is only the imitation of
strange and unusual actions that arrests our attention, while the
imitation of normal activities is likely to pass unnoticed, we may, I
think, fairly surmise that imitation is by no means an unimportant
factor in the acquisition and development of habits. And where the young
animal is surrounded during the early plastic and imitative period of
life by its own kith and kin, imitation will undoubtedly have a
conservative tendency.
The education of young animals by their parents has also a conservative
tendency. Mr. Spalding's observations show that the flight of birds is
instinctive; but the parent birds normally aid the development of the
instincts by instruction. Ants, as we have seen, are instructed in the
business of ant-life. Dogs and cats train their young. And Darwin tells
us, on the authority of Youatt,[JV] that lambs turned out without their
mothers are very liable to eat poisonous herbs.
We may say, then, with regard to the influence of intelligence on
instinctive activities, that it may lead them to vary along certain
definite lines of increased adaptation; that it may, in some cases, lead
them to vary along divergent lines, and hence tend to render stereotyped
instincts more plastic; and that, through imitation and instruction, it
may tend to render instinctive habits more uniform in a community, and
hence, if the habits are tending to vary under changed circumstances in
a given direction, may tend to draw the habits of all the members of the
community in that given direction.
And with regard to the more general question of the variation of habits
and instincts, we may say that, in addition to those variations in the
origin and direction of which intelligence is a factor, there are other
variations which take their origin without the influence of intelligence
under the stress of changing circumstances, and yet others which may
arise as we say "fortuitively" or "by chance," that is, from some cause
or causes whereof we are at present ignorant, and which do not appear to
be evoked directly by the stress of environing circumstances.
Granting, however, the existence of these variations in whatsoever way
arising, and granting the influence of natural selection, of sexual
selection, and perhaps of the inheritance of individually acquired
modifications, those variations which are for the good of the race or
species in which they occur will have a tendency to be perpetuated,
while those which are detrimental will be weeded out and will tend to
disappear.
Passing on now to consider the characteristics of those activities which
we term "intelligent," we may first notice what Mr. Charles Mercier, in
"The Nervous System and the Mind," calls the four criteria of
intelligence. Intelligence is manifested, he says, first, in the novelty
of the adjustments to external circumstances; secondly, in the
complexity; thirdly, in the precision; and fourthly, in dealing with the
circumstances in such a way as to extract from them the maximum of
benefit.
Now, I think it is clear that, when it is our object to distinguish
intelligent from instinctive activities, the precision of the adjustment
cannot be regarded as a criterion of intelligence. Many instinctive acts
are wonderfully precise. The sphex is said to stab the spider it desires
to paralyze with unerring aim in the central nerve-ganglion. Other
species, which paralyze crickets and caterpillars, pierce them in three
and nine places respectively, according to the number of the ganglia.
And yet this seems to be a purely instinctive action. So, too, to take
but one more example, there is surely no lack of precision in the
cell-making instinct of bees. We may say, then, that, granting that an
action is intelligent, the precision of the adjustment is a criterion of
the level of intelligence; but that, since there may be instinctive
actions of wonderful precision, this criterion is not distinctive of
intelligence. Nay, more, there are many reflex actions of marvellous
precision and accuracy of adjustment; and there can be no question of
intelligence, individual or ancestral, in many of these.
Nor can we regard prevision (which is sometimes advanced as a criterion
of intelligence) as specially distinctive of intelligent acts regarded
objectively in the study of the activities of animals. For, as we have
already seen, there are many instincts which display an astonishing
amount of what I ventured to term "blind prevision"--instance the
instinctive regard for the welfare of unborn offspring, and the
instinctive preparation for an unknown future state in the case of
insect larvæ.
Nor, again, is the complexity of the adjustment distinctive of
intelligence as opposed to instinct. The case of the sitaris, before
given, the larva of which attaches itself to a male bee, passes on to
the female, springs upon the eggs she lays, eats first the egg and then
the store of honey,--this case, I say, affords us a series of
sufficiently marked complexity. This instinct, the paralyzing, but not
killing outright, of prey by the sphex; the marvellous economy of wax in
the cell-building of the honey-bee; the affixing to their body, by
crabs, of seaweed (_Stenorhynchus_), of ascidians (an Australian
_Dromia_), of sponge (_Dromia vulgaris_), of the cloaklet anemone
(_Pagurus prideauxii_); and other cases too numerous for
citation;--these show, too, that the circumstances may be dealt with in
such a way as to extract from them the maximum of benefit, probably
without intelligence. It would be quite impossible intelligently to
improve upon the manner of dealing with the circumstances displayed in
many instinctive activities, even those which we have reason to believe
were evolved without the co-operation of intelligence.
There remain, therefore, the novelty of the adjustment and the
individuality displayed in these adjustments. And here we seem to have
the essential features of intelligent activities. The ability to perform
acts in special adaptation to special circumstances, the power of
exercising individual choice between contradictory promptings, and the
individuality or originality manifested in dealing with the complex
conditions of an ever-changing environment,--these seem to be the
distinctive features of intelligence. On the other hand, in instinctive
actions there seems to be no choice; the organism is impelled to their
performance through impulse, as by a stern necessity; they are so far
from novel that they are performed by every individual of the species,
and have been so performed by their ancestors for generations; and, in
performing the instinctive action, the animal seems to have no more
individuality or originality than a piece of adequately wound clockwork.
It may be said that, in granting to animals a power of individual
choice, we are attributing to them free-will; and surely (it may be
added), after denying to them reason, we cannot, in justice and in
logic, credit them with this, man's choicest gift. I shall not here
enter into the free-will controversy. I shall be content with defining
what I mean by saying that animals have a power of individual choice.
Two weather-cocks are placed on adjoining church pinnacles, two clouds
are floating across the sky, two empty bottles are drifting down a
stream. None of these has any power of individual choice. They are
completely at the mercy of external circumstances. On the other hand,
two dogs are trotting down the road, and come to a point of divergence;
one goes to the right hand, the other to the left hand. Here each
exercises a power of individual choice as to which way he shall go. Or,
again, my brother and I are out for a walk, and our father's dog is with
us. After a while we part, each to proceed on his own way. Pincher
stands irresolute. For a while the impulse to follow me and the impulse
to follow my brother are equal. Then the former impulse prevails, and he
bounds to my side. He has exercised a power of individual choice. If any
one likes to call this yielding to the stronger motive an exercise of
free-will, I, for one, shall not say him nay. What I wish specially to
notice about it is that we have here a sign of individuality. There is
no such individuality in inorganic clouds or empty bottles. Choice is a
symbol of individuality; and individuality is a sign of intelligence.
But though I decline here to enter into the free-will controversy, I may
fairly be asked where I place volition in the series between external
stimulus and resulting activity; and what I regard as the concomitant
physiological manifestation. I doubt whether I shall be able to say
anything very satisfactory in answer to these questions. I shall have to
content myself with little more than stating how the problem presents
itself to my mind.
I believe that volition is intimately bound up and associated with
inhibition. I go so far as to say that, without inhibition, volition
properly so called has no existence. When the series follows the
inevitable sequence--
Stimulus: perception: emotion: fulfilment in action
--the act is involuntary. And such it must ever have remained, had not
inhibition been evolved, had not an alternative been introduced, thus--
/fulfilment in action.
Stimulus: perception: emotion
\inhibition of action.
At the point of divergence I would place volition. Volition is the
faculty of the forked way. There are two possibilities--fulfilment in
action or inhibition. I can write or I can cease writing; I can strike
or I can forbear. And my poor little wounded terrier, whose gashed side
I was sewing up, clumsily, perhaps, but with all the gentleness and
tenderness I could command, could close his teeth on my hand or could
restrain the action.
I have here, so to speak, reduced the matter to its simplest expression.
It is really more complex. For volition involves an antagonism of
motives, one or more prompting to action, one or more prompting to
restraint. The organism yields to the strongest prompting, acts or
refrains from acting according as one motive or set of motives or the
other motive or set of motives prevails; in other words, according as
the stimuli to action or the inhibitory stimuli are the more powerful.
And then we must remember that the perceptual volition of animals
becomes in us the conceptual volition of man. An animal can choose, and
is probably conscious of choosing. This is its perceptual volition. Man
not only chooses, and is conscious of choosing, but can _reflect upon
his choice_; can see that, under different circumstances, his choice
would have been different; can even fancy that, under the same
circumstances (external and internal), his choice might have been
different. This is conceptual volition. Just as Spinoza said that desire
is appetence with consciousness of self; so may we say that the volition
of contemplative man is the volition of the brute with consciousness of
self. No animal has consciousness of self; that is to say, no animal can
reflect on its own conscious states, and submit them to analysis with
the formation of isolates. Self-consciousness involves a conception of
self, persistent amid change, and isolable in thought from its states.
It involves the isolation in thought of phenomena not isolable in
experience. We can think about the self as distinct from its conscious
states and the bodily organization; but they are no more separable in
experience than the rose is separable from its colour or its scent. Such
isolation is impossible to the brute. An animal is conscious of itself
as suffering, but the consciousness is perceptual. There is no
separation of the self as an entity distinct from the suffering which is
a mere accident thereof; no conception of a self which may suffer or not
suffer, may act or may not act, may be connected with the body or may
sever that connection. Just as there is a vast difference between the
perception of an object as here and not there, of an occurrence as now
and not then, of a touch as due to a solid body; and the conception of
space, time, and causation; so is there a vast difference between a
perception of an injury as happening to one's self, and a conception of
self as the actual or possible subject of painful consciousness. This
difference is clearly seen by Mr. Mivart, who therefore speaks of the
_consentience_ of brutes as opposed to the _consciousness_ of man.
Consciousness he regards as conceptual; consentience as perceptual.[JW]
And, as before stated, I should be disposed to accept his nomenclature,
were it not for its philosophical implications. For Mr. Mivart regards
the difference between consciousness and consentience as a difference
_in kind_, whereas I regard it as a generic difference. I believe that
consentience (perceptual consciousness) can pass and has passed into
consciousness (conceptual consciousness); but Mr. Mivart believes that
between the two there is a great gulf fixed, which no evolutionary
process could possibly bridge or span.
The perceptual volition of animals, then, is a state of consciousness
arising when, as the outcome of perception and emotion, motor-stimuli
prompting to activity conflict with inhibitory stimuli restraining from
activity. The animal chooses or yields to the stronger motive, and is
conscious of choosing. But it cannot reflect upon its choice, and bother
its head about free-will. This involves conceptual thought. When
physiologists have solved the problem of inhibition, they will be in a
position to consider that of volition. At present we cannot be said to
know much about it from the physiological standpoint.
Still, as before indicated, the fact of inhibition is unquestionable and
of the utmost importance. It has before been pointed out that through
inhibition, through the suppression or postponement of action, there has
been rendered possible that reverberation among the nervous processes in
the brain which is the physiological concomitant of æsthetic and
conceptual thought. We have just seen that, in association with
inhibition, the faculty of volition has been developed. And we may now
notice that the postponement or suppression of action is one of the
criteria of intelligent as opposed to instinctive or impulsive
activities. This is, however, subordinate to the criterion of novelty
and individuality.
Granting, then, that an action is shown to be intelligent from the
novelty of the adjustments involved, and from the individuality
displayed in dealing with complex circumstances (instinctive adjustments
being long-established and lacking in originality), we may say that the
level of intelligence is indicated by the complexity of the adjustments;
their precision; the rapidity with which they are made; the amount of
prevision they display; and in their being such as to extract from the
surrounding conditions the maximum of benefit.
* * * * *
Before closing this chapter, I will give a classification of involuntary
and voluntary activities:--
---------------------------------------------------------------------
| |Initiation. |Motive. |Result. |
---------------------------------------------------------------------
|A. Involuntary |Sense-stimulus |Unconscious |Automatic or|
| (automatic and | | reaction |reflex act |
| reflex) | | of nerve-centres |reflex act |
---------------------------------------------------------------------
|B. Involuntary |Percept |Impulse (perhaps |Involuntary |
| (habitual and |(perhaps |lapsed) |activity |
| instinctive) |lapsed) | | |
---------------------------------------------------------------------
|C. Voluntary |Percept |Appetence |Voluntary |
|(perceptual) | | |activity |
---------------------------------------------------------------------
|D. Voluntary |Concept |Desire |Conduct |
|(conceptual) | | | |
---------------------------------------------------------------------
In the involuntary acts classed as automatic and reflex, the initiation
and the result may be accompanied by consciousness, but the intermediate
mental link which answers to the motive in higher activities is, I
think, unconscious. In habitual and instinctive activities the
consciousness of the percept and the impulse may in some cases have
become evanescent, or, to use G. H. Lewes's phrase, have lapsed. In the
case of some instincts, originating by the natural selection of
unintelligent activities, the perceptual element may never have emerged,
and the initiation may have been a mere sense-stimulus.
The division of voluntary activities into perceptual and conceptual
follows on the principles adopted and developed in this work. As to the
terminology employed, I agree with Mr. S. Alexander[JX] that it is
convenient to reserve the terms "desire" and "conduct" for use in the
higher conceptual plane. Animals, I believe, are incapable of this
higher desire and this higher conduct. It only remains to note that it
is within the limits of the fourth class (of voluntary activities
initiated by concepts) that morality takes its origin. Morality is a
matter of ideals. Moral progress takes its origin in a state of
dissatisfaction with one's present moral condition, and of desire to
reach a higher standard. The man quite satisfied with himself has not
within him this mainspring of progress. The chief determinant of the
moral character of any individual is the _ideal self_ he keeps steadily
in view as the object of moral desire--the standard to be striven for,
but never actually attained.
NOTES
[IN] I use the term "incomplete," and not "imperfect," because Mr.
Romanes, in his admirable discussion of the subject, applies the
term "imperfect instinct" to cases where the instinct is not
perfectly adapted to the end in view (see "Mental Evolution in
Animals," p. 167).
[IO] _Macmillan's Magazine_, February, 1873. Professor Eimer, in his
"Organic Evolution" (English translation, p. 245), narrates
similar experiences.
[IP] Mr. W. Larden states, in _Nature_ (vol. xlii.), that his brother
extracted, from the oviduct of a Vivora de la Cruz snake in the
West Indies, two young snakelets six inches long. Both, though
thus from their mother's oviduct untimely ripped, threatened to
strike, and made the burring noise with the tail, characteristic
of the snake.
[IQ] Dr. McCook confirms the observation that the clearings are kept
clean, that the ant-rice alone is permitted to grow on them, and
that the produce of this crop is carefully harvested; but he
thinks that the ant-rice sows itself, and is not actually planted
by the ants (see Sir John Lubbock's "Scientific Lectures," 2nd
edit., p. 112).
[IR] The experiments, both of Sir John Lubbock and Mr. Romanes, show
that the homing instinct of bees is largely the result of
individual observation. Taken to the seashore at no great distance
from the hive, where the objects around them, however, were
unfamiliar (since the seashore is not the place where flowers and
nectar are to be found), the bees were nonplussed and lost their
way. Similarly, the migration of birds "is now," according to Mr.
Wallace, "well ascertained to be effected by means of vision, long
flights being made on bright moonlight nights, when the birds fly
very high, while on cloudy nights they fly low, and then often
lose their way" ("Darwinism," p. 442). This, of course, does not
explain the migratory instinct--the internal prompting to
migrate--but it indicates that the carrying out of the migratory
impulse is, in part at least, intelligent.
[IS] "Animal Intelligence," p. 59.
[IT] The American expression, "I guess," is often far truer to fact
than its English equivalent, "I think."
[IU] "Mental Evolution in Animals," pp. 73, 74.
[IV] "Mental Evolution in Animals," p. 177.
[IW] _Nature_, vol. xxviii. p. 271, quoted in "Mental Evolution in
Animals," footnote, p. 196.
[IX] "Organic Evolution," pp. 223, 224.
[IY] Ibid. p. 263.
[IZ] Ibid. p. 303.
[JA] Ibid. p. 258.
[JB] Ibid. p. 279.
[JC] Ibid. p. 276.
[JD] "Organic Evolution," p. 298. The late G. H. Lewes held somewhat
similar views.
[JE] See Mr. John Hancock, Natural History Transactions,
Northumberland, Durham, and Newcastle-on-Tyne, vol. viii. (1886);
and _Nature_, vol. xxxiii. p. 519.
[JF] Weismann, "On Heredity," p. 91.
[JG] M. Fabre, as interpreted by Sir John Lubbock, "Scientific
Lectures," 2nd edit., p. 45.
[JH] In further illustration of the fact that purposiveness and complex
adaptation of activities is no criterion of present or past
direction by intelligence, we may draw attention to the action of
the leucocytes, or white blood-corpuscles. Metchnikoff found that
in the water-flea (_Daphnia_), affected by spores of _Monospora
bicuspidata_, a kind of yeast which passes from the intestinal
canal into the body-cavity, the leucocytes attacked and devoured
the conidia. If a conidium were too much for one cell, a
plasmodium, or compound giant-cell, was formed to repel the
invader. The same thing occurs in anthrax, the bacilli being
attacked and devoured by the leucocytes. "If we summarize," says
Mr. Bland Sutton ("General Pathology," pp. 127, 128), "the story
of inflammation as we read it zoologically, it should be likened
to a battle. The leucocytes are the defending army, their roads
and lines of communication the blood-vessels. Every composite
organism maintains a certain proportion of leucocytes as
representing its standing army. When the body is invaded by
bacilli, bacteria, micrococci, chemical or other irritants,
information of the aggression is telegraphed by means of the
vaso-motor nerves, and leucocytes rush to the attack;
reinforcements and recruits are quickly formed to increase the
standing army, sometimes twenty, thirty, or forty times the normal
standard. In the conflict, cells die and often are eaten by their
companions; frequently the slaughter is so great that the tissue
becomes burdened by the dead bodies of the soldiers in the form of
pus, the activity of the cell being testified by the fact that its
protoplasm often contains bacilli, etc., in various stages of
destruction. These dead cells, like the corpses of soldiers who
fall in battle, later become hurtful to the organism they were in
their lifetime anxious to protect from harm, for they are fertile
sources of septicæmia and pyæmia--the pestilence and scourge so
much dreaded by operative surgeons." Now, if the leucocytes were
separate organisms, whose habits were being described, some might
suppose that they were actuated by intelligence, individual or
inherited. But in this case the activities are purely
physiological. The marshalling of the cells during the growth of
tissue (e.g. the antler of a stag before described) is of like
import. And Dr. Verworn has shown that when a (presumably weak)
electric current is passed through a drop of water containing
protozoa, they will, when the current is closed, flock towards the
negative pole, and when the current is opened will travel towards
the positive pole. The implication of all this is that vital
phenomena may be intensely purposive, and yet afford no evidence
or indication of the present or ancestral play of intelligence.
[JI] "Origin of Species," p. 230.
[JJ] See Appendix to Mr. Romanes's "Mental Evolution in Animals," p.
361.
[JK] "Organic Evolution," p. 227.
[JL] Ibid. p. 228.
[JM] "Colours of Animals," p. 180.
[JN] Wallace's "Darwinism," p. 109.
[JO] "Mental Evolution in Animals," p. 244.
[JP] "Descent of Man," pt. ii. chap. xiii.
[JQ] George W. and Elizabeth G. Peckham, "Occasional Papers of the
Natural History of Wisconsin," vol. i. (1889), p. 37.
[JR] "Mental Evolution in Animals," p. 226.
[JS] "Darwinism," p. 76, from _Nature_, vol. xxxi. p. 533.
[JT] "Contributions," etc., p. 222.
[JU] "Mental Evolution in Animals," p. 222.
[JV] "On Sheep," p. 404.
[JW] In the sense in which I have used the word; not as he uses it
himself.
[JX] "Moral Order and Progress."