_SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR_
I.--IMITATION
The characteristic feature of social behaviour is that it is in large
degree determined by the behaviour of other members of the social
community. In all animals which mate there is a temporary or more
lasting influence on each other of the individuals which unite to
procreate their kind; and in those which foster their young there
is a social relation of parents and offspring. Some of these mutual
relationships will be discussed, in their emotional aspects, in the
next chapter. Here we will consider the more general factors which
serve to determine the course of social evolution.
Among these is commonly reckoned imitation. M. Tarde says, “La
société c’est l’imitation.” But this word, like so many others which
are employed alike in popular speech and in more or less technical
discussions, carries a somewhat wide range of meaning, and is by
some writers used in a broader, by others in a narrower sense. Thus
Professor Mark Baldwin[74] says, “that all organic adaptation in a
changing environment is a phenomenon of _biological_ or _organic
imitation_,” under which category will fall, therefore, the organic
behaviour of the protozoa and of plants. On the other hand, Professor
E. L. Thorndike, though he admits in the lower animals “certain
pseudo-imitative or semi-imitative phenomena,” has been led by
experiments, to be presently noticed, to the conclusion that animals
as high in the scale of life as cats and dogs cannot form new
associations under the influence of imitation. “It seems sure,” he
says,[75] “from these experiments, that the animals were unable to
form an association leading to an act from having seen another animal,
or animals, perform the act in a certain situation.” In face of such
apparently diverse usage it is necessary to show within what limits
and with what qualifications the word may profitably here be used to
indicate a factor in social evolution.
Professor Mark Baldwin’s use of the term “imitation” can only be
understood in its relation to an hypothesis of organic and mental
evolution, which he develops with no little skill and brilliancy.[76]
He regards the processes of life as issuing in a great twofold
adaptation, due to expansions and contractions,--the former
representing waxing, the latter waning vitality; and he holds that
all special adaptations are secured by the new hold upon beneficial
stimulations reached by the expansive out-reaching movements. “Among
the variations in organic forms,” he says, “it is easy to see that
some of them might react in such a way as to keep in contact with the
stimulus, to lay hold of it, and so keep on reacting to it again and
again--just as our rhythmic action in breathing keeps the organism in
vital contact with the oxygen of the air. These organisms will get all
the benefit or damage of the repetition or persistence of the stimulus,
or of their own reactions, again and again; and it is self-evident that
the beneficial stimulations are the ones which should be maintained
in this way, and that the organisms which did this would live. The
organisms which reacted in such a way as to retain the damaging
stimulations, on the other hand, by this same process, would aid nature
in killing themselves. If this be true, only those organisms would
survive which had the variation of retaining useful stimulations in
what I have called, in speaking of imitation elsewhere, a ‘circular
way’ of reacting.... So, when we come to consider phylogeny and
ontogeny together, we find that if by an organism we mean a thing of
contractility or irritability, whose round of movements is kept up by
some kind of nutritive process supplied by the environment--absorption,
chemical action of atmospheric oxygen, etc.--and whose existence is
threatened by dangers of contact and what not, the first thing to do
is to secure a regular supply to the nutritive processes, and to avoid
these contacts. But the organism can do nothing but move, as a whole
or in some of its parts. So, then, if one of such creatures is to be
fitter than another to survive, it must be the creature which, by its
movements, secures more nutritive processes and avoids more dangerous
contacts. But movements toward the source of stimulation keep hold
on the stimulation, and movements away from the contacts break the
contacts; that is all. Nature selects these organisms; how could she do
otherwise?”
“Thus a ‘circular’ activity is found in operation; life-processes
issuing in increased movements, by which in turn the stimulations to
the life-processes are kept in action.” But when a child imitates,
himself reproducing the “copy” set for imitation, the reaction at which
imitative suggestion aims is one which will _reproduce the stimulating
impression_, and so tend to perpetuate itself. The stimulus starts a
motor process, which tends to reproduce the stimulus, and, through it,
the motor process again. It is a “circular activity.” Thus “we are able
to reconstruct the theory of adaptation in such a way as to show that
this kind of organic selection by movement, and this kind of imitative
selection by consciousness, are the same thing. Organic imitation
and conscious imitation--each a circular process tending to maintain
certain stimulations and to avoid others--here is one thing;” and to
this one thing the common term “imitation” is applied by Mr. Baldwin.
This extended usage is admitted by the author to be somewhat of an
innovation. But if his hypothesis be sound this need be no bar to its
acceptance. Two salient questions must, however, receive satisfactory
answers. First, is all organic adaptation in a changing environment a
circular process--a phenomenon of organic imitation? Secondly, does
all conscious imitation tend to reproduce the imitating stimulus?
Professor Baldwin speaks of organic imitation and conscious imitation
as “each a circular process tending to maintain certain stimulations
and to avoid others.” Now, it may be granted that the tendency to
maintain or repeat certain stimulations may be regarded as a “circular
process.” But can the avoidance or non-repetition of others be so
regarded? A large proportion alike of the hereditary adaptations and
the acquired accommodations of behaviour are directed to this avoidance
or non-repetition of hurtful stimulations. The instinctive shrinking
of a chick from an aggressive animal is just as much adaptive as the
repeated cuddling beneath the warm wing of the mother. The avoidance of
nauseous cinnabar caterpillars is just as much an accommodation to the
constitution of the environment as the reiterated seizing of palatable
grubs. Even low down in the scale of animal life, Dr. Jennings’s
observations on Paramecia seem to show that the retention of favourable
stimulation is not due to its direct influence, but is the indirect
result of a reaction to the relatively unfavourable stimulation
which occurs when the Paramecium passes away from more satisfactory
surroundings. A favourable environment is secured through the avoidance
of the unfavourable. Unless, therefore, we exclude adaptive avoidance
from the category of adaptations, we cannot regard all organic
adaptation in a changing environment as a phenomenon of organic
imitation due to a circular process tending to the reinstatement of
stimulation.
Passing to the second question--Does all conscious imitation tend
to reproduce the initiating stimulus?--we cannot unreservedly give
an affirmative answer. It is true that when a child more or less
successfully reproduces a sound which falls upon its ear, a like
sound stimulus is afforded which may by a circular process incite to
renewed effort, and lead to yet more successful reproduction. But
when Professor Baldwin’s child, between nine and ten months old,
imitated certain movements of the lips, there was no reproduction of
the initiating visual stimulus. A chick seeing its companions run away
or crouch will follow suit; and this would commonly be termed an
imitative action; but there is here no reproduction of the initiating
stimulus. Very much of the behaviour which is usually ascribed to
imitation produces effects in consciousness quite different from that
of the original stimulation. It is only by selecting one’s examples
that one finds in them evidence in favour of Professor Baldwin’s
“circular process.”
Since, therefore, this circular mode of activity is neither a
characteristic of all conscious imitation, nor a distinguishing mark
of all adaptive organic action, the grounds on which Professor Baldwin
bases his extended usage of the term appear to be fallacious. And in
this usage we cannot follow him.
Turning now to Professor Thorndike’s very different contention--that
animals even so high as the cat and dog do not imitate in the sense
of forming an association leading to an act from having seen another
animal perform the act in a certain way--we may first describe some of
his ingenious experiments designed to submit the matter to the test of
observation under controlled conditions.[77]
Experiments were made with chicks in several ways. They were, for
example, placed in pens, from which, in each case, “there was only one
possible way of escape, to see if they would learn it more quickly
when another chick did the thing several times before their eyes. The
method was to give some chicks their first trial with an imitation
possibility, and their second without, while others were given their
first trial without and their second with. If the ratio of the average
time of the first trial to the average time of the second is smaller in
the first class than it is in the second class, we may find evidence of
this sort of influence by imitation. Though imitation may not be able
to make an animal do what he would otherwise not do, it may make him
do _quicker_ a thing he would have done sooner or later anyway. As a
fact, the ratio is _much longer_. This is due to the fact that a chick,
when in a pen with another chick, is not afflicted by the discomfort
of loneliness, and so does not try to get out. So the other chick,
who is continually being put in with him to teach him the way out,
really prolongs his stay in. This factor destroys the value of these
quantitative experiments, and I do not,” says Mr. Thorndike, “insist
upon them as evidence against imitation, though they certainly offer
none for it.”
Chicks, from sixteen to thirty days old, were also placed in boxes from
which escape was open to them by such acts as pecking at the door,
stepping on a platform, or pecking at a tack. The method of experiment
was to put a chick in, leave him from sixty to eighty seconds, then
put in another who knew the act, and on his performing it to let both
escape. No cases were counted unless the imitator apparently saw the
other do the thing. After about every ten such chances to learn the
act, the imitator was left in alone for ten minutes. Out of thirteen
cases tabulated only once was the act performed, in spite of the ample
chance for imitation. “I have no hesitation,” adds Mr. Thorndike, “in
declaring this one’s act in stepping on the platform the result of mere
accident, and am sure that any one who had watched the experiments
would agree.”
To test the influence, if any, of imitation in cats, the following
method was adopted. A box was arranged with two compartments separated
by a wire screen. “The larger of these had a front of wooden bars
with a door which fell open when a string stretched across the top
was bitten or clawed down. The smaller was closed by boards on three
sides and by the wire screen on the fourth. Through the screen a
cat within could see the one to be imitated pull the string, go out
through the door thus opened, and eat the fish outside. When put in
this compartment, the top being covered by a large box, a cat soon
gave up efforts to claw through the screen, quieted down, and watched
more or less the proceedings going on in the other compartment. Thus
this apparatus could be used to test the power of imitation. A cat who
had no experience with the means of escape from the large compartment
was put in the closed one; another cat, who would do it readily, was
allowed to go through the performance of pulling the string, going
out, and eating the fish. Record was made of the number of times he did
so, and of the number of times the imitator had his eyes clearly fixed
on him.... After the imitatee had done the thing a number of times, the
other was put in the big compartment alone, and the time it took him
before pulling the string was noted and his general behaviour closely
observed. If he failed in five or ten or fifteen minutes to do so, he
was released and not fed. This entire experiment was repeated a number
of times. From the times taken by the imitator to escape and from
observation of the way that he did it, we can decide whether imitation
played any part.... No one, I am sure, who had seen the behaviour of
the cats would have claimed that their conduct was at all influenced by
what they had seen. When they did hit the string the act looked just
like the accidental success of the ordinary association experiment.
But, besides these personal observations, we have in the impersonal
time-records sufficient proofs of the absence of imitation.” Some
observations on dogs are also described. From these it appears that
the three individuals on which experiments were made failed to learn
the way of getting out of a cage from seeing another dog escape. One
of them was also allowed to see another dog beg for meat 110 times.
But he never tried to imitate him and thus secure a piece of meat as a
reward. It therefore “seems sure,” says Mr. Thorndike, “that we should
give up imitation as an _a priori_ explanation of any novel intelligent
performance. To say that a dog who opens a gate, for instance, need
not have reasoned it out if he had seen another dog do the same thing,
is to offer instead of one false explanation another equally false.
Imitation in any form is too doubtful a factor to be presupposed
without evidence.”
Professor Thorndike is of opinion that monkeys are probably imitative
in ways beyond the capacity of dogs and cats; but, at the time
of writing, he had not substantiated his opinion, by analogous
experiments. If so, it will perhaps prove that they are rational
beings in the narrower sense defined in a previous chapter of this
work. For it appears that the kind of imitation which Mr. Thorndike’s
experiments go far to disprove, is what we may term reflective
imitation. A cat with no experience of the means of escape, one that
has tried to get out of the box by chance efforts in many directions
and has failed, sees another cat perform an act acquired in this way,
and learns nothing from the sight. This, no doubt, proves that the cat
had not in any sense grasped the nature of the problem before it, had
no notion of just where the difficulty lay, had not the wit to see that
the performance of the other cat supplied the missing links in its own
previous behaviour. It is questionable whether such missing links could
be supplied in this way in the absence of some powers of reflection.
The cat is unable to form an association, leading to an appropriate
act, from having seen another animal perform the act in a certain way,
partly because it cannot perceive the reason of its previous failure,
and see that the other’s performance affords the requisite clue. The
whole gist of the chance experience interpretation of animal behaviour
is that there must be chance experience to build on. The cat cannot
gain this by looking on never so intently, unless it be provided with
a rational as well as a sensory eye. The act of pulling the string has
been reached by the successful cat through the gradual elimination
of many failures; it is a differentiated act, having no place in the
previous experience of the kitten. It has never entered into the
conscious situation, and cannot be supplied at will by a non-rational
being.
As Mr. Thorndike himself says, “no cat can form an association leading
to an act unless there is included in the association an _impulse_
of its own which leads to the act.”[78] By “impulse,” Mr. Thorndike
“means the consciousness accompanying a muscular innervation apart
from that feeling of the act which comes from seeing one’s self move,
from feeling one’s body in a different position, etc. It is the direct
feeling of doing as distinguished from the idea of the act done gained
through eye, etc.... The act in this respect of being felt as to be
done or as doing is in animals the important thing, is the thing which
gets associated, while the act as done, as viewed from outside, is a
secondary affair.” I take it that by “impulse” is here meant what Dr.
Stout would term the direct experience involved in conation.[79] If it
have a place in experience distinguishable from that of stimulation
and response it is included in what I have on a former page spoken
of as the consciousness of behaviour as such, which was said to be
essential. And I am surprised that Mr. Thorndike should have supposed
that I believe that this could by any animal be “supplied at will.” In
any case it seems probable, as the result of observation, that unless
the consciousness of behaving in a specific manner has entered into the
situation as developed in experience it cannot in animals enter into
any subsequent representative complex. And it is the absence of such
consciousness of behaving in a specific manner which the sight of the
escaping cat fails to supply in Mr. Thorndike’s experiments.
Interesting and valuable as these experiments are, they are open
to the criticism to which, as we have seen, his other experiments
are also open--that the conditions are abnormal and cramped. Apart
from reflective imitation, which they tend to disprove, they do not
conduce to the kind of conscious situation which appears to be most
favourable for the development of intelligent imitation founded on
hereditary tendencies and propensities. It is through such imitation
that, as Herr Groos says,[80] “animals learn perfectly those things
for which they have imperfect hereditary dispositions.” The kind of
situation which conduces to such intelligent imitation is that which
involves the attitude of attention and interest rising, when these
are sufficiently varied in their direction, into what is spoken of as
curiosity. These, in their natural occurrence in animals, are parts
of, or in any case accompaniments of the conative attitude--they are
connected with activities and impulsive tendencies to behaviour. If
attention and interest are directed to the behaviour of another animal,
the conative attitude is that of imitation. Miss Romanes has described
how skilfully a capuchin imitated the actions necessary to unlock a
trunk. It does not seem necessary to assume that reflective imitation
is here exemplified. The monkey need not regard the key and lock as
the related parts of a puzzle to be practically solved, need not have
any free idea of the difficulty it presents, need not in unlocking the
trunk grasp the true nature of the difficulty or have any conception of
its solution. Every several act of the capuchin, the seizing the key,
the directing it here or there, and so on, is already supplied with
the impulse of which Dr. Thorndike speaks. Attention, itself charged
with impulse, directs and combines these pre-existing impulses to a new
end. And since that which directs the attention is the act of another,
we call the procedure imitative. But the varied and persistent effort
differs in no essential respect from that of a two days’ chick, which
pecks again and again at some speck which catches its eye, or that
of a nestling jay, which will peck for long at some nail or piece of
wire in its cage, twisting and turning its bill in many and varied
ways. And success in opening the trunk is reached by the capuchin,
not, it would seem, through any real appreciation of the essential
kernel of the practical problem, but through the chance results of
many varied efforts. Although in no other animals is it developed to
so high a degree as in the monkeys, interest in the doings of others
is an attitude by no means rare, and affords the basis of intelligent
imitation. Perhaps the conditions in Dr. Thorndike’s experiments were
not the best for the development of such interest in the procedure
of another. And in any case the imitation of a particular mode of
procedure, reached by the gradual defining of the impulse, could hardly
be expected in the absence of the series of experiences by which that
definition had been reached, unless the cat were capable of what has
been above spoken of as reflective imitation.
If, then, we agree to exclude from the category of imitative behaviour
in animals, on the one hand, any “circular process” which may occur in
the same individual, and on the other hand any reflective imitation,
such as is so important a factor in human education, it remains to be
seen what may be fairly included in this category.
It is probable that in animals imitation has its foundations
in instinctive behaviour, of which it may be regarded as the
characteristically social type. If one of a group of chicks learn by
casual experience to drink from a tin of water, others will run up and
peck at the water, and thus learn to drink. A hen teaches her little
ones to pick up grain or other food by pecking on the ground and
dropping suitable materials before them, while they seemingly imitate
her action in seizing the grain. One may make chicks and pheasants
peck by simulating the action of a hen with a pencil point or pair
of fine forceps. According to Mr. Peal, the Assamese find that young
jungle pheasants will perish if their pecking responses are not thus
stimulated; and Professor Claypole tells me that this is also the case
with young ostriches hatched in an incubator. A little pheasant and
guinea-fowl followed two older ducklings, one wild, the other tame, and
seemed to wait upon their bills, to peck when they pecked, and to be
guided by their actions. It is certainly much easier to bring up young
birds if older birds are setting an example of eating and drinking; and
instinctive acts, such as scratching the ground, are performed earlier
if imitation be not excluded. If a group of chicks have learnt to avoid
cinnabar caterpillars, and if then two or three from another group
are introduced and begin to pick up the caterpillars, the others will
sometimes again seize them, though they would otherwise have left them
untouched. One of my chicks, coming upon a dead bee, gave the danger
or alarm note; another at some little distance at once made the same
sound. A number of similar cases might be given; but what impresses
the observer as he watches the early development of a brood of young
birds, is the presence of an imitative tendency which is exemplified
in many little ways not easy to describe in detail. It is probable,
however, that these imitative tendencies or propensities are not wholly
indefinite. The young birds do not imitate any actions, but behaviour
of certain specific types, the imitation of which has been engrained
through the action of natural selection.
What generalization, then, can be drawn from this somewhat indefinite
group of facts, to which many others of like import could be added
from observations on the young of mammals? What is their relation
to instinctive procedure in general? It would seem that they are
characterized by a special relation of the external stimulus to the
response. When this stimulus is afforded by the behaviour of another
animal, and the responsive behaviour it initiates is similar to that
which affords the stimulus, such behaviour may be termed imitative. A
chick sounds the danger note; this is the stimulus under which another
chick sounds a similar note, and we say that the one imitates the
other. Such an action may be described as imitative in its effects,
but not imitative in its purpose. Only from the observer’s standpoint
does such instinctive behaviour differ from other modes of congenital
procedure. It may be termed biological, but not psychological,
imitation. And if it be held that the essence of imitation lies in the
purpose so to imitate, we must find some other term under which to
describe the facts. This does not seem necessary, however, if we are
careful to qualify the term “imitation” by the adjective “instinctive”
or “biological.” And the retention of the term serves to indicate that
this is the stock on which deliberate imitation is eventually grafted.
The fact that instinctive imitation leads, under natural conditions,
to behaviour which is already familiar to us in the species concerned,
prevents us from recognizing the influence of this social factor
so easily as might otherwise be the case. The abnormal arrests our
attention more readily than the normal, and hence the cases commonly
cited are generally those which strike us as unusual, such as the
imitation of human sounds by the parrot. But if the young inherit a
tendency to imitate certain actions of their parents, and if there is
among the members of a gregarious species such instinctive imitation
as shall tend to keep them gregarious, we have here a social factor
in animal life of no slight importance. Just as the higher type of
reflective imitation is of great value in bringing the human child to
the level of the adults who form the family and social environment,
so, too, does the sub-conscious instinctive imitation of the lower
animals bring the young bird or other creature into line with the
members of its own species. In broods of chicks brought up under
experimental conditions, there are often one or two more active,
vigorous, intelligent, and mischievous birds. These are the leaders
of the brood; the others are their imitators. Their presence raises
the general level of intelligent activity. Remove them, and the others
show a less active, less inquisitive, less adventurous life. They seem
to lack initiative. From which one may infer that imitation affords
to some extent a means of levelling up the less intelligent to the
standard of the more intelligent; and of supplying a stimulus to the
development of habits which would otherwise be lacking. When a mongrel
pup, whose development Dr. Wesley Mills watched and has described, was
introduced to the society of other dogs, its progress was, he tells us,
“extraordinarily rapid.”
Instinctive imitation thus introduces into the conscious situation
certain modes of behaviour, and if the development of the situation as
a whole is pleasurable, there will be a tendency to its redevelopment,
under the guidance of intelligence, on subsequent occasions. As in
the case of other instincts and propensities, there is given through
inheritance a more or less definite outline sketch of social procedure,
which intelligence further defines, and refines, and shapes to more
delicate issues. As a rule, however, intelligence does not tend to
make the imitation as such more perfect. It may perfect the behaviour,
but not necessarily on imitative lines. In the case, however, of
the song and call-notes of birds, and not improbably the sounds
of other animals, there does seem a predisposition to render the
imitation as such more perfect. The facts, as afforded by such birds
as the magpie, jay, starling, marsh-warbler, and mocking-bird, are
familiar; and I have elsewhere[81] given some account of them. It
may be specially noted that we have in this case that circular mode
of activity on which, as we have seen, Professor Mark Baldwin lays
so much stress. Professor Thorndike seems to regard the phenomena
presented by imitative birds as somewhat of a mystery, and as the
result of a specialization removed from the general course of mental
development. And he says that, until we know whether there is in birds
which repeat sounds any tendency to imitate in other lines, we cannot
connect these phenomena with anything found in the mammals, or use them
to advantage in a discussion of animal imitation as the forerunner
of human. Upon the view, however, that such imitation is primarily
instinctive and only secondarily intelligent, there seems no reason
why we should expect to find imitation in birds running along any
other lines than those which the hereditary instinct has marked out.
And so far from being unable to use the phenomena to advantage in a
discussion of animal imitation as a forerunner of human, we may perhaps
see in them the best examples, other than those afforded by apes, of
that intelligent imitation which is the precursor of the rational and
reflective imitation of the boy or girl.
In the case of the human child we may see the three stages in the
development of vocal imitation. First, the instinctive stage, where the
sound which falls upon the ear is a stimulus to the motor-mechanism of
sound production. Secondly, the intelligent stage of the profiting by
experience. Intelligence, as we have seen, aims at the reinstatement
of pleasurable situations, and the suppression of those which are
the reverse. The sound-stimulus, the motor effects in behaviour, and
the resulting sound-production coalesce into a conscious situation,
which appears to be pleasurable or the reverse, according as the sound
produced resembles or not the initiating sound-stimulus. If we assume
that the resemblance of the sounds he utters to the sounds he hears is
itself a source of pleasurable satisfaction (and this certainly seems
to be the case), intelligence, without the aid of any higher faculty,
will secure accommodation and render imitation more and more perfect.
And this appears to be the stage reached by the mocking-bird or the
parrot. But the child soon goes further. He reflects upon the results
he has reached; he at first dimly, and then more clearly realizes that
they are imitative; and his later efforts at imitation are no longer
subject to the chance occurrence of happy results, but are based on a
scheme of behaviour which is taking form in his mind, are deliberate
and intentional, and are directed to a special end more or less clearly
perceived as such. He no longer imitates like a parrot; he begins
to imitate like a man, and may, by the study of good models and the
maintenance of a high ideal, acquire the moving cadences of an orator.
According to our interpretation, instinctive imitation is a factor of
wide importance in animal behaviour, intelligent imitation, arising
in close connection with interest in the doings of others, is a
co-operating factor, but of intentional and reflective imitation there
is at present no satisfactory evidence in any animal below man.
II.--INTERCOMMUNICATION
The foundations of intercommunication, like those of imitation, are
laid in certain instinctive modes of response, which are stimulated by
the acts of other animals of the same social group. These have been
fostered by natural selection as a means of social linkage furthering
the preservation, both of the individual and of the group.
Some account has already been given of the sounds made by young birds,
which seem to be instinctive and to afford an index of the emotional
state at the time of utterance. That in many cases they serve to evoke
a like emotional state and correlated expressive behaviour in other
birds of the same brood cannot be questioned. The alarm note of a chick
will place its companions on the alert; and the harsh “krek” of a
young moor-hen, uttered in a peculiar crouching attitude, will often
throw others into this attitude, though the maker of the warning sound
may be invisible. That the cries of her brood influence the conduct
of the hen is a matter of familiar observation; and that her danger
signal causes them at once to crouch or run to her for protection is
not less familiar. No one who has watched a cat with her kittens,
or a sheep with her lambs, can doubt that such “dumb animals” are
influenced in their behaviour by suggestive sounds. The important
questions are, how they originate, what is their value, and how far
such intercommunication--if such we may call it--extends.
There can be but little question that in all cases of animals under
natural conditions such behaviour has an instinctive basis. Though
the effect may be to establish a means of communication, such is not
their conscious purpose at the outset. They are presumably congenital
and hereditary modes of emotional expression which serve to evoke
responsive behaviour in another animal--the reciprocal action being
generally in its primary origin between mate and mate, between parent
and offspring, or between members of the same family group. And it
is this reciprocal action which constitutes it a factor in social
evolution. Its chief interest in connection with the subject of
behaviour lies in the fact that it shows the instinctive foundations on
which intelligent and eventually rational modes of intercommunication
are built up. For instinctive as the sounds are at the outset, by
entering into the conscious situation and taking their part in the
association-complex of experience, they become factors in the social
life as modified and directed by intelligence. To their original
instinctive value as the outcome of stimuli, and as themselves
affording stimuli to responsive behaviour, is added a value for
consciousness in so far as they enter into those guiding situations by
which intelligent behaviour is determined. And if they also serve to
evoke, in the reciprocating members of the social group, similar or
allied emotional states, there is thus added a further social bond,
inasmuch as there are thus laid the foundations of sympathy.
“What makes the old sow grunt and the piggies sing and whine?” said
a little girl to a portly substantial farmer. “I suppose they does
it for company, my dear,” was the simple and cautious reply. So far
as appearances went, that farmer looked as guiltless of theories as
man could be. And yet he gave terse expression to what may perhaps be
regarded as the most satisfactory hypothesis as to the primary purpose
of animal sounds. They are a means by which each indicates to others
the fact of his comforting presence; and they still, to a large extent,
retain their primary function. The chirping of grasshoppers, the song
of the cicada, the piping of frogs in the pool, the bleating of lambs
at the hour of dusk, the lowing of contented cattle, the call-notes of
the migrating host of birds--all these, whatever else they may be, are
the reassuring social links of sound, the grateful signs of kindred
presence. Arising thus in close relation to the primitive feelings of
social sympathy, they would naturally be called into play with special
force and suggestiveness at times of strong emotional excitement, and
the earliest differentiations would, we may well believe, be determined
along lines of emotional expression. Thus would originate mating
cries, male and female after their kind; and parental cries more or
less differentiated into those of mother and offspring, the deeper
note of the ewe differing little save in pitch and timbre from the
bleating of her lamb, while the cluck of the hen differs widely from
the peeping note of the chick in down. Thus, too, would arise the notes
of anger and combat, of fear and distress, of alarm and warning. If we
call these the instinctive language of emotional expression, we must
remember that such “language” differs markedly from the “language” of
which the sentence is the recognized unit.
It is, however, not improbable that, through association in the
conscious situation, sounds, having their origin in emotional
expression and evoking in others like emotional states, may acquire
a new value in suggesting, for example, the presence of particular
enemies. An example will best serve to indicate my meaning. “In the
early dawn of a grey morning,” says Mr. H. B. Medlicott,[82] “I was
geologizing along the base of the Muhair Hills in South Behar, when
all of a sudden there was a stampede of many pigs from the fringe of
the jungle, with porcine shrieks of _sauve-qui-peut_ significance.
After a short run in the open they took to the jungle again, and in a
few minutes there was another uproar, but different in sound and in
action; there was a rush, presumably of the fighting members, to the
spot where the row began, and after some seconds a large leopard sprang
from the midst of the scuffle. In a few bounds he was in the open, and
stood looking back, licking his chaps. The pigs did not break cover,
but continued on their way. They were returning to their lair after
a night’s feeding on the plain, several families having combined for
mutual protection; while the beasts of prey were evidently waiting for
the occasion. I was alone, and, though armed, I did not care to beat
up the ground to see if in either case a kill had been effected. The
numerous herd covered a considerable space, and the scrub was thick.
The prompt concerted action must in each case have been started by
the special cry. I imagine that the first assailant was a tiger, and
the case was at once known to be hopeless, the cry prompting instant
flight, while in the second case the cry was for defence. It can
scarcely be doubted that in the first case each adult pig had a vision
of a tiger, and in the second of a leopard or some minor foe.”
If we accept Mr. Medlicott’s interpretation as in the main correct,
we have in this case: (1) common action in social behaviour, (2)
community of emotional state, and (3) the suggestion of natural
enemies not unfamiliar in the experience of the herd. Under uniform
conditions of experience the alarm-notes of some birds may well call
up, re-presentatively, salient features in previous situations.
Unquestionably, in the parrot, the word-sounds they imitate become
associated with definite objects of sense-experience. In the following
case, a particular sound appeared to be suggestive of a particular
sense-idea in the dog. The parent blackbirds, which built near a
house in Clifton, were wont to give the alarm-note when marauding
cats appeared in sight. This sound, it would seem, became definitely
associated, in the experience of a terrier, with the animals the
presence of which called it forth; and on hearing the alarm note the
dog would rush out into the garden, apparently, as I am informed by
his mistress, in fullest expectation of a pleasant worry. It is a not
improbable hypothesis, therefore, that in the course of evolution
the initial value of uttered sounds is emotional; but that on this
may be grafted in further development the indication of particular
enemies. If, for example, the cry which prompts instant flight among
the pigs is called forth by a tiger, it is reasonable to suppose
that this cry would give rise to a representative generic image of
that animal having its influence on the conscious situation. But if
the second cry, for defence, was prompted sometimes by a leopard
and sometimes by some other minor foe, then this cry would not give
rise to a re-presentative image of the same definiteness. Whether
animals have the power of intentionally differentiating the sounds
they make to indicate different objects, is extremely doubtful. Can a
dog bark in different tones to indicate “cat” or “rat,” as the case
may be? Probably not. It may, however, be asked why, if a pig may
squeak differently, and thus, perhaps, incidently indicate on the one
hand “tiger” and on the other hand “leopard,” should not a dog bark
differently, and thus indicate appropriately “cat” or “rat”? Because it
is assumed that the two different cries in the pig are the instinctive
expression of two different emotional states, and Mr. Medlicott could
distinguish them; whereas, in the case of the dog, we can distinguish
no difference between his barking in the one case and the other, nor do
the emotional states appear to be differentiated. Of course, there may
be differences which we have failed to detect. What may be regarded,
however, as improbable, is the _intentional_ differentiation of sounds
by barking in different tones with the _purpose_ of indicating “cat”
or “rat.” Mr. R. L. Garner, in a work[83] which unfortunately contains
much hasty and immature generalization, distinguished nine sounds
made by capuchins. But none of these, so far as can be gathered from
the data given, is necessarily indicative of a particular object. All
of them may be emotional expressions of satisfaction, discontent,
alarm, apprehension, and so forth. In any case, there is no evidence
for that intentional employment of sounds, to the realized end of
intercommunication, which would involve the exercise of an incipient
rational faculty. Such powers of intercommunication as animals possess
are based on direct association, and refer to the here and the now.
A dog may be able to suggest to his companion the fact that he has
descried a worriable cat; but can a dog tell his neighbour of the
delightful worry he enjoyed the day before yesterday in the garden
where the man with the biscuit-tin lives? Probably not, bark he never
so expressively.
Although some anecdotes are commonly interpreted as affording evidence
of descriptive intercommunication among animals, we need the decisive
results of experiment before this view can be unreservedly accepted.
Sir John Lubbock, now Lord Avebury, made careful experiments with
ants, and discusses the question with his customary lucidity and
impartiality. “Much of what has been said,” he writes,[84] “as to the
powers of communication possessed by bees and ants depends on the fact
that if one of them in the course of her rambles has discovered a
supply of food, a number of others soon find their way to the store.
This, however, does not necessarily imply any power of describing
localities. If the ants merely follow a more fortunate companion, or
if they hunt her by scent, the matter is comparatively simple; if, on
the contrary, the others have the route described to them, the case
becomes very different.” Experiments were therefore made to decide the
question. For example, when an ant returned from the discovered store
of food to the nest, and then emerged with a following of other ants,
she was taken up on a slip of paper and transferred to the food. The
followers, thus deprived of their leader, in nearly all cases failed to
find the store. “I conclude, then,” says Lord Avebury, “that when large
numbers of ants come to food they follow one another, being also, to a
large extent, guided by scent. The fact, therefore, does not imply any
considerable power of intercommunication.” There are, moreover, some
circumstances which seem to strengthen this conclusion. For instance,
“if a number of slave-ants are put in a box, and if in one corner a
dark place of retreat be provided for them, with some earth, one soon
finds her way to it. She then comes out again, and going up to one
of the others, takes her by the jaws and carries her to the place of
shelter. They then both repeat the same manœuvre with other ants, and
so on until all their companions are collected together. Now, it seems
difficult to imagine that so slow a course would be adopted, if they
possessed any power of communicating description.”
Lord Avebury is, however, of opinion that such insects can transmit
simpler ideas. He found, for example, that where ants were put to
a large and a small store of larvæ under similar circumstances, a
greater number of insects followed the ant that had discovered the
larger store. This may, indeed, have been due rather to a difference in
manner than to any intentional communication; but the fact remains that
through some difference of behaviour there resulted suggestive effects
on other members of the community.
But although there can be little doubt that the behaviour of social
insects has suggestive value for others, it may still be regarded as
very doubtful whether they are able to communicate information to one
another by any system of language or signs, purposively employed as a
system to this end. The distinguished geologist, Hague, communicated
to Darwin[85] the effects on ants of crushing some of their number as
they proceeded along a definite trail. “As soon as those ants which
were approaching arrived near to where their fellows lay dead and
suffering, they turned and fled with all possible haste.” “When such
an ant, returning in fright, met another approaching, the two would
always communicate, but each would pursue its own way, the second ant
continuing its journey to the spot where the first had turned about,
and then following that example.” There seems nothing to show that the
“communication” here was effective.
From the many anecdotes of dogs calling others to their assistance, or
bringing others to those who feed them or treat them kindly, we may
indeed infer the existence of a social tendency and of the suggestive
effects of behaviour, but we cannot derive conclusive evidence of
anything like descriptive communication. And although domestic animals
may learn or be taught to associate the words we utter with certain
acts or things, or may even, in a sense, communicate their wishes to
us by special modes of behaviour--as in the case of Lord Avebury’s
poodle, Van,[86] who was taught to bring cards on which such words
as “Food” or “Out” were printed, and in that of a cat which touches
the handle of the door when she wants it opened for her,--still,
all these are founded on direct association, and are in a line with
the act of Mr. Thorndike’s cat, which licked herself or scratched
herself when imprisoned in a cage, such act having entered into the
association-complex.
Such intentional communication as is to be found in animals, if indeed
we may properly so call it, seems to arise by an association of the
performance of some act in a conscious situation involving further
behaviour for its complete development. Thus the cat which touches the
handle of the door when it wishes to leave the room has had experience
in which the performance of this act has coalesced with a specific
development of the conscious situation. The case is similar when your
dog drops a ball or stick at your feet, wishing you to throw it for
him to fetch. And on these lines may probably be interpreted such
behaviour as Romanes[87] thus described:--“Terrier A being asleep in
my house, and terrier B lying on a wall outside, a strange dog, C,
ran along below the wall on the public road, following a dog-cart.
Immediately on seeing C, B jumped off the wall, ran upstairs to where
A was asleep, woke him up by poking him with his nose in a determined
and suggestive manner, which A at once understood as a sign: he jumped
over the wall and pursued the dog C, although C was by that time far
out of sight round a bend in the road.” Romanes did not probably intend
to imply that A by poking B, conveyed specific information that there
was another dog, C, which had proceeded in a particular direction.
That would be descriptive communication. The meaning attaching to
A’s action was presumably similar to that which characterizes other
“meaning” for intelligent animals--the development of the situation on
lines marked out by previous experience. Still, it is clear that such
an act would be the perceptual precursor of the deliberate conduct of
the rational being by whom the sign is definitely realized as a sign,
the intentional meaning of which is distinctly present to thought.
This involves a judgment concerning the sign as an object of thought;
and this is probably beyond the capacity of the dog. For, as Romanes
himself says,[88] “it is because the human mind is able, so to speak,
to stand outside of itself, and thus to constitute its own ideas the
subject-matter of its own thought, that it is capable of judgment,
whether in the act of conception or in that of predication. We have no
evidence to show that any animal is capable of objectifying its own
ideas; and, therefore, we have no evidence that any animal is capable
of judgment.”
It seems, therefore, that the sounds made by animals, and certain other
modes of behaviour, may be regarded as primarily instinctive acts which
have been evolved with the biological end of affording suggestive
stimuli furthering intercommunication between the members of the social
group. Their performance, however, affords data to consciousness, which
intelligence makes use of in the guidance of behaviour in accordance
with the results of experience. And since the similar acts performed
by the socially linked members are in many cases closely connected with
emotional states, there arises the further social link of community
of feeling--that which, perhaps, more than anything else conduces to
community of action and similarity of social behaviour. Occasionally
particular sounds or special acts may, through constant and uniform
association, indicate particular objects, such as natural enemies. But
there does not appear to be convincing evidence of any intentional
differentiation of the means of communication, or of any use of sounds
for descriptive ends.
Still, just as the instinctive imitation we considered in the last
section may be regarded as the precursor, in the animal world, of
the reflective and rational imitation of which we may watch the
development in children, so may instinctive modes of intercommunication
be regarded as supplying the foundations on which deliberate and
intentional communication may be based. And here imitation will be a
co-operating factor. We see in the early stages of the development of
children’s language how large a share simple and direct association
takes in the process. For a while, indeed, there seems to be this and
nothing more. But gradually there arises a realization of a further
import and purpose in the hitherto isolated associations. It is seen
that they symbolize elements in that incipiently rational scheme of
thought and things which is beginning to take form in the child’s mind.
The relationships which hold good within the conscious situations
of daily life begin to occupy the focus of attention, and hitherto
unappreciated word-sounds are perceived to stand out as signs for
these relationships. Of course the relationships[89] are implicit in
the conscious situations of the higher animals and of infants. Only by
reflection can they become explicit, and rivet the attention. Something
is needed to bring them into prominence and focus the mental eye upon
them. And descriptive intercommunication supplies this need. If a
description, even the simplest, is to be apprehended or presented to
the apprehension of others, then the relationships must be rendered
explicit. Try to describe an ordinary visual scene, or the most
commonplace sequence of events, and see if you can do so without making
clear to the mind the relationships involved. The thing is impossible.
An infant or a dog cannot understand the simplest possible description,
because the words and suffixes which indicate the relationships have
no meaning. The words which stand for substantive impressions may
have suggestive value through direct association. The word “cat” or
“rats” may have for the dog a very definite suggestive value; and hence
some people fancy that when they say to their dog, “There is a cat in
the garden,” the animal understands what they say. But it is quite
sufficient to suppose that the word “cat” has suggestive force, all the
rest being for the dog mere surplusage of sound. When we talk to our
four-footed companions, how much can they be said to understand of what
we say? Perhaps a score of words have for a dog a definitely suggestive
value, each associated with some simple object or action. “Out,”
“down,” “up,” “walk,” “biscuit,” “cat,” “fetch,” and so forth elicit
appropriate responses. Even with these, tone is more suggestive than
articulation, and in each word the salient feature is the chief guide.
When I said “Whisky,” for example, to my fox-terrier, he would at once
sit up and beg; not because his tastes were as depraved as those of
his master, but because the _isk_ sound, common both to “Whisky” and
“biscuit,” was what had for his ears the suggestive value.
In a paper on the “Speech of Children,”[90] Mr. S. S. Buckman exhibits
the animal stage in the incipient speech of the human infant. We cannot
here discuss, still less criticize, his paper. One or two examples
will serve to illustrate how instinctive sounds may serve as the
basis for subsequent speech. He regards _ma_ as primarily a forcible
expression of an emotional state. “If the child require attention
it makes the loudest noise which it can produce; the parting of the
lips and opening of the mouth to the widest extent while the full
volume of breath is emitted produces the sound _ma_.” At first the
sound seems to have the value of a simple expression of an emotional
state. “But if the infant require attention it is its mother whom it
wants, and from whom it receives this attention; therefore _ma_ very
soon comes to be recognized as the call for mother, and, by a further
step in development, as the name for mother.” Here, if we accept the
interpretation, we have the passage from the emission of a sound as
the expression of emotion to the use of the sound from its association
with a particular object of sense-experience to indicate that object.
Similarly, according to Mr. Buckman, with _kah_. At first “a strong
sign of displeasure at anything nasty to the taste,” it passes, we are
told, into a symbol for the bad; hence κακός; and is perhaps narrowed
down to the particularly offensive κάκκη. _Da_ and _ta_ are regarded
as recognition sounds, the former being associated eventually with the
father, the latter with strangers. This appears somewhat hypothetical,
but, granting the accuracy of Mr. Buckman’s interpretation, these
sounds also illustrate again the transition from the expression of an
emotion to sounds indicative of particular objects of experience.
Interesting, however, as are such observations on the animal stage of
sound-production in the human infant, they do not touch the crucial
period in the development of language. Mr. Buckman, indeed, regards as
a remarkably dogmatic assertion Professor Max Müller’s dictum that “the
one great barrier between the brute and man is language;” and he tells
us that “there are more than twelve different words in the language of
fowls,” on which assertion, in turn, the distinguished linguist whom he
criticizes might have something piquant to say. No doubt the difference
of opinion turns on the definition of the word “language.” But if,
as is now generally accepted, the sentence and not the word is the
distinguishing unit in language, and the copula in some form, explicit
or implicit, is the pivot of the sentence, the wisest hen is probably
incapable of language. The word becomes an element in language--a word
proper--only when it assumes the office of a part of speech, that is
to say, a constituent element in an interrelated whole. The animal
“word,” if we like so to term it, is an isolated brick; a dozen, or
even a couple of hundred such bricks do not constitute a building.
Language, properly so called, is the builded structure, be it a palace
or only a cottage; hen language, or monkey language, is, at best, so
far as we at present have evidence, an unfashioned heap of bricks. It
is just because language is the expression of a portion of a scheme of
thought that it indicates in the speaker the possession of a rational
soul, capable of perceiving and symbolizing the relationships of things
as reflected in thought.
Herein lies the practical value, for human advance in mental
development, of language as a means of descriptive intercommunication.
It renders explicit relationships otherwise merely implicit, and forces
them to the front; and since these relationships are the stuff of which
knowledge is built--without the realization of which any complex ideal
scheme is impossible of attainment--the importance of descriptive
intercommunication can scarcely be overestimated. And though there is
no conclusive evidence of its occurrence among animals, yet we have in
them the instinctive and intelligent basis on which in due course of
evolution it may be securely based.
III.--SOCIAL COMMUNITIES OF BEES AND ANTS
Apart from human societies the most noteworthy social communities of
animals are found among insects, especially in ants, bees, wasps, and
termites. It is true that in the mammalia we find such communities as
the troop of apes, the herd of cattle, the pack of wolves, the school
of porpoises, the so-called “rookeries” of seals, and the colonies of
“prairie dogs” and of beavers; and that among birds there are analogous
communities. Undoubtedly the temporary or permanent association of many
individuals is in such cases an advantage to the race, and confers
mutual benefits on the associates. But in none of these cases is
division of labour carried to such a high degree as among the social
insects. And it is through such division of labour that the social
community reaches its highest expression.
It is a somewhat remarkable fact that in man, where we find the social
division of labour brought to a high pitch of perfection, and carried
out with great nicety of accommodation to those circumstances which
civilization has rendered extremely complicated, there is no organic
differentiation of structure among the co-operating individuals;
whereas, so low down in the scale of life as the colonial polype,
_Hydractinia_, which is often found growing on the shells occupied
by hermit crabs, there are at least three kinds of differentiated
individuals: nutritive polypes with mouth and tentacles; mouthless
sensitive members; and others whose sole office is reproduction.
But these differentiated individuals in the colonial zoophytes are
connected at their bases by a common flesh; and the division of labour
is a product of organic evolution, and is probably not in any degree
determined or guided by consciousness. We may say, then, that the
division of labour in the zoophyte is wholly physical, whereas in man
it is chiefly conscious or psychical; as is also the bond of union
between the several members of the colony. Intermediate between these
extremes stand the social insects. In them there is no physical bond of
union, for each individual is distinct and separate; the social linkage
is in some degree conscious under the conditions of their nurture; and
the division of labour is partly conscious, though probably in large
degree based on instinctive foundations, and partly the outcome of an
organic differentiation of structure seen in the reproductive members
and in the sterile workers, as exemplified in the common wood ant (Fig.
24). In some cases the workers themselves may be divided into different
castes.
[Illustration: FIG. 24.--Wood ant. 1, Queen; 2, male; 3, worker (from
Shipley).]
So much has been written--and well written--on the social life of
insect communities, that it will here suffice to indicate some of
the problems which arise when we endeavour to interpret the modes of
behaviour which have been carefully observed. In the honey-bee we have
the well-known differentiation of structure into drones or effective
males, queens or egg-laying females, and workers or ineffective
females, in which the development of the reproductive organs is
arrested or modified. Distinct modes of behaviour are correlated with
these structural differences. When a swarm of bees leaves a hive it
generally consists of the old queen-mother and a certain number of the
workers which are her offspring. When they have found new quarters,
or have been safely housed under domestication, the workers busy
themselves in making the cells in which the queen may lay her eggs, and
in which food may be stored. In doing this the bees act in concert,
and though the mathematical accuracy of the form and size of the cells
has been much exaggerated, the comb which results is a very beautiful
and well-adapted product of mutual co-operation in joint labour. And
though intelligence may, under special circumstances, modify the method
of procedure there can be little doubt that comb-building is primarily
due to inherited instinct. The cells are not, however, all of the same
size, those for the drones being somewhat larger than the cells in
which the workers are reared, while much larger and differently shaped
cells are prepared for the future queens. If instinctive therefore--as
it seems to be in the main--the behaviour runs into different lines,
the immediate causes of which, internal or external, we are not able
accurately to assign.
The reproductive behaviour of egg-laying in the queen-mother is also
instinctive. It is believed that the drones are developed from eggs
from which the queen bee withholds the fertilizing fluid, which she
retains for months or years after the nuptial flight, stored in a
special receptacle. And the size and shape of the drone-cell may supply
the stimulus through which her behaviour in this respect is determined.
But she lays similarly fertilized eggs in both the worker-cells and the
queen-cells; and in these two cases the stimulating conditions must be
different.
When the eggs have been laid, and the grubs hatched, the worker bees
assume new duties--the feeding and tending of the young. They eat
honey and pollen, which is partially digested, and supplied as pap to
the grubs in such quantities that they seem bathed in it; but after a
short time a mixture of honey pollen and water is substituted for this
pap. It is said that the drone larvæ are fed with pap for a longer
period than the workers; and the queen larva undoubtedly receives far
more of this pap--or, perhaps, of a still richer nutritive product,
sometimes spoken of as royal jelly--and, indeed, is supplied therewith
throughout larval life. It is generally believed that this high feeding
is the cause of queen-development, and that should the queen larvæ die
ordinary worker larvæ are fed up, and produce queens nowise dissimilar
to those developed in the royal cells. It is clear, if this be so, that
the behaviour of the nurses decides the difference between the future
queens and working bees--that is to say, the fertile and the sterile
females. In any case, the feeding of the young by members of the same
community is a fact to be specially noted. It is commonly said that the
family is the germ from which the social community springs; and it may
be added that food-collection or food-administration in some form makes
the difference between the family that coheres and the family that
scatters.
When the larvæ have been fed, each after its kind, the workers seal up
the cells with lids of pollen and wax; the larvæ spin cocoons, pass
into the pupa stage, and then change to perfect bees, which bite a way
through the lid and take their place in the hive. These young bees
now become the nurses, while the older bees go abroad to fetch honey
and pollen to be stored away in some of the cells. But when a queen
emerges, her first act is to go round to the other royal cells, tear
them open, and sting to death the helpless occupants. Meanwhile the
old queen may have led off the surplus population in a swarm, and the
new queen reigns in her stead. Idle drones have also been emerging
from their cells; and when the young queen starts forth on her nuptial
flight she is followed by the drones, mates with one of them, and
returns a potential mother of thousands. So long as there is abundance
of food the useless drones are tolerated; but when there is scarcity
they are ejected, and drone eggs, larvæ, and pupæ are said to be
destroyed.
In the works of Huber and others, further marvels of hive-life, some
well-authenticated, others more or less doubtful, are duly set forth.
But enough has here been said to show that a social community of bees
presents problems of animal behaviour which are sufficiently difficult
of explanation. How far is the behaviour instinctive? How far is it
due to experience individually acquired? Are we constrained to admit
a rational factor? If so, is it, like human reason, the result of
generalization from experience of the relationships of phenomena? Or
are there features of insect psychology which differ from any of which
we have firsthand knowledge? These questions are more easily put than
answered. As in the case of bird-migration, so too in that of the
social life of bees, there is much that honesty forces us to confess
our inability satisfactorily to explain.
So, too, is it in the social life of ants. Among these insects the
males and perfect females bear wings, though these appendages may be
subsequently shed. In some kinds, however, there are also wingless
males or females capable of exercising the reproductive function. The
workers are wingless, and are often of two or three kinds, differing
in form and appearance, and in some cases playing different parts in
the social economy. There is also, in some cases, a separate class
of large-headed soldier ants; so that differentiation of structure
among the sterile females is carried further in ants than in bees.
Their nests generally consist of an elaborate system of chambers and
passages, either built with pine-needles, as in our common wood ant,
or hollowed out in the earth or in wood, or sometimes built with a
paper-like material, or formed of rolled leaves. It is said that a
common ant in Eastern Asia (_Œcophylla smaragdina_) “forms shelters
on the leaves of trees, by curling the edges of leaves and joining
them together.... The perfect ant has no material with which to fasten
together the edges it curls; its larva, however, possesses glands that
secrete a supply of material for it to form a cocoon with, and the
ants utilize the larvæ to effect their purpose.”[91] This has recently
been confirmed by Mr. E. G. Green, Government entomologist, at the
Botanic Gardens at Peradeniya, Ceylon. “He has seen ants actually
holding larvæ in their mouths and utilizing them as spinning machines.
To find out what would be done, some leaves were purposely separated
by Mr. Green. The edges of the leaves were quickly drawn together by
the ants, and, about an hour later, small white grubs were seen being
passed backwards and forwards across the gaps made in the walls of the
shelter. A continuous thread of silk proceeded from the mouth of the
larva, and was used to repair the damage.”[92] This is a remarkable
act of apparently intelligent behaviour. But when we remember how much
of the time of ants is occupied in carrying about their larvæ, it is
hardly an act of which it can be affirmed that it could not arise as
the result of chance experience.
In some cases two different genera are found in the same nest, with
separate chambers and passages, as in the case of the robber-ant
(_Solenopsis_) and the slave-ant (_Formica fusca_). The orifices by
which the former enter are too small to allow of the entrance of the
latter, “hence the robber obtains an easy living at the expense of the
larger species,” for “they make incursions into the nurseries, and
carry off the larvæ as food.”
In a few cases the foundation of a new colony has been carefully
watched. Blockmann was successful in observing the formation of new
nests by _Componotus ligniperdus_ at Heidelberg. “He found under
stones, in the spring, many examples of females, either solitary
or accompanied only by a few eggs, larvæ, or pupæ. Further, he
was successful in getting isolated females to commence nesting in
confinement, and observed that the ant that afterwards becomes the
queen, at first carries out by herself all the duties of the nest.
Beginning by making a small burrow, she lays some eggs, and when these
hatch, feeds and tends the larvæ and pupæ: the first specimens of these
latter that become perfect insects are workers of all sizes, and at
once undertake the duties of tending the young and feeding the mother,
who, being thus freed from the duties of nursing and of providing food
while she is herself tended and fed, becomes a true queen-ant. Thus
it seems established that, in the case of this species, the division
of labour found in the complex community does not at first exist,
but is correlative with increasing numbers of the society. Further
observations as to the growth of one of these nascent communities, and
the times and conditions under which the various forms of individuals
composing a complete society first appear, would be of considerable
interest.”[93]
The queen does not, as in the case of the bee, deposit her eggs in
separate cells where they are tended by nurses. The eggs, which are
laid in the chambers of the nest, are subjected to much licking by
the nurses; the larvæ are, moreover, moved about from place to place,
so as to be subjected to the requisite conditions of moisture and
temperature. They are carefully cleaned, and after they have passed
into the pupa stage the emerging insects are stripped of a delicate
investing skin. And not only do the ants assiduously feed their
young; those who have gone forth and drunk their fill of sweet juices
feed those who have remained behind. Forel took some specimens of
_Componotus ligniperdus_, “and shut them up without food for several
days, and thereafter supplied some of them with honey, stained with
Prussian blue; being very hungry, they fed so greedily on this that
in a few hours their hind bodies were distended to three times their
previous size. He then took one of these gorged individuals, and
placed it among those that had not been fed. The replete ant was at
once explored by touches of the other ants and surrounded, and food
was begged from it. It responded to the demands by feeding a small
specimen from its mouth, and when this little one had received a good
supply, it in turn communicated some thereof to other specimens; while
the original well-fed one also supplied others, and thus the food was
speedily distributed. This habit of receiving and giving food is of
the greatest importance in the life-history of ants.”[94] It affords
the basis or starting-point of the keeping of aphides, the making of
slaves, the curious development of honey-pot ants, and in some cases
the association with ants of other insects.
[Illustration: FIG. 25.--Beetle soliciting food from Ant (after
Wasmann).]
Some of these insects, of which there are many species belonging to
several orders, are parasitic; others appear to be hostile, and yet are
able to maintain themselves in the nest; others simply live side by
side with the ants, which seem to be neither hostile nor friendly to
them. In some of these cases the biological purpose of the association
is unknown, while in others the ant serves as a model which the
associated insect mimics. Thus in the nest of an Indian ant (_Sima
rufa-nigra_) occur a small wasp and a spider which, to some extent in
form and more markedly in coloration, mimic their hosts. “Wherever you
find this species in any numbers,” says Mr. Rothney,[95] “if you watch
a few moments, you will see a mimicking spider, _Salticus_, running
about among the ants, which it very closely resembles in appearance,
much more so in life than in set specimens placed side by side; I have
seen numbers on the most friendly footing with the ants, though I
have never seen them enter their burrows.... They are, I should say,
the only friends the ant has, with the exception of a sand-wasp, a
new species of _Rhinopsis_ since described by Mr. Cameron, which also
very closely mimics the ant, and which, on first observing among the
workers, I took to be the male.” But there are some beetles which
are not only tolerated, but fed by the ants with which they live. In
the case of the genera _Atemeles_ and _Lomechusa_, which are always
found in or near ants’ nests, the good offices are reciprocal, for the
beetles “have patches of yellow hairs, and these secrete some substance
with a flavour agreeable to the ants, which lick the beetles from time
to time. On the other hand, the ants feed the beetles; this they do by
regurgitating food, at the request of the beetle, on to their lower
lip, from which it is then taken by the beetle. The beetles in many of
their movements exactly resemble the ants, and their mode of requesting
food, by stroking the ants in certain ways, is quite ant-like. So
reciprocal is the friendship, that if an ant is in want of food the
beetle will in its turn disgorge for the benefit of its host. The young
of the beetles are reared in the nests by the ants, who attend to them
as carefully as they do to their own young. The beetles are, however,
fond of the ants’ larvæ as food, and, indeed, eat them to a very large
extent, even when their own young are receiving food from the ants.
Wasmann (to whom we are indebted for most of our knowledge on this
subject) seems to be of opinion that the ants scarcely distinguish
between the beetle larvæ and their own young; one unfortunate result
for the beetle follows from this, viz. that in the pupal state the
treatment that is suitable for the ant larvæ does not agree with the
beetle larvæ. The ants are in the habit of digging up their own kind,
and lifting them out and cleaning them during their metamorphosis: they
do this also with the beetle larvæ, with fatal results; so that only
those that have the good fortune to be forgotten by the ants complete
their development.”[96]
Aphides, or plant-lice, yield to the solicitations of ants, which
stroke them with their antennæ, by emitting a drop of sweet and viscid
secretion, and it appears that the caress of the ant is the natural
stimulus for the emission of the drop. Not only, however, do the ants
go forth in search of aphides in their natural haunts, they bring them
to the neighbourhood of the nest, and may even impound them by building
a wall of earth round and over them. Huber stated that ants collected
the eggs of the aphides and tended them in their nests, and the
accuracy of the observation has been shown by Lord Avebury and others.
“The aphid eggs are laid early in October, on the food plant of the
insect. They are of no direct use to the ants, yet they are not left
where they are laid, where they would be exposed to the severity of the
weather and to innumerable dangers, but brought into the nests by the
ants, and tended by them with the utmost care through the long winter
months until the following March, when the young ones are brought out
and again placed on the young shoots of the daisy.”[97] Dr. McCook
noticed that ants, returning from the trees on which aphides abounded,
fed others near the nests, and he regarded this as a case of division
of labour, the foragers obtaining food for the nurses which remained in
or near the nest.
A further division of labour, carried to lengths which seem almost
absurd, is found in the honey-pot ant of the United States and Mexico.
The juice on which these ants feed is obtained from an oak-gall.
Foragers go forth at night and return distended with the sweet fluid,
and, having fed the ordinary workers in the nest, apparently discharge
the balance of their store into living honey-pots, which remain in
the nest and preserve the food till it may be required by the members
of the community. Their abdomens are enormously distended, they never
leave the nest, and they seem to form a distinct caste, whose function
it is to passively accumulate stores of reserve food for the community.
Curiously enough the same peculiar social arrangement is found in
different genera living as far apart as Mexico, Australia, and South
Africa.
[Illustration: FIG. 26.---Honey-pot Ant.]
There is no doubt that in some cases the division of labour is not
restricted to the individuals of the same species, but that other
species are introduced into the nest to perform certain functions--thus
giving rise to the so-called slavery among ants. This is carried to
an extreme in the European species _Formica rufescens_, the males and
queens of which do no work, while the sole function of the workers
is to capture slaves of the smaller species _Formica fusca_. In
association with this specialized mode of instinctive behaviour, “even
their bodily structure has undergone a change; their mandibles have
lost their teeth, and have become mere nippers, deadly weapons indeed,
but useless except in war. They have lost the greater part of their
instincts: their art--that is, the power of building; their domestic
habits--for they take no care of their own young, all this being done
by the slaves; their industry--they take no part in providing the
daily supplies; if the colony changes the situation of its nest, the
masters are all carried by the slaves to the new one; nay, they have
even lost the habit of feeding.... I have had a nest of this species
under observation for a long time, but never saw one of the masters
feeding. I have kept isolated specimens for weeks, by giving them a
slave for an hour or two a day to clean and feed them, and under these
circumstances they remained in perfect health, while, but for the
slaves, they would have perished in two or three days.”[98]
In this matter, we have in different species successive stages in the
development of the instinctive behaviour which is thus carried so far
in _Formica rufescens_. Our English ants, of the species _Formica
sanguinea_, have fewer slaves and are less dependent on them; they
can feed and forage for themselves, and during migration carry their
slaves--which are of the same species as in the other case--instead of
being carried by them. In the nests of the common wood ant or horse
ant (_Formica rufa_) there are occasionally a few slaves. Lord Avebury
thinks it likely that they are developed from larvæ or pupæ, originally
taken for food, which have by chance come to maturity in the nest of
their captors.
But one more incident in the social life of ants can here be
noticed--though many others could be given did space permit. The
leaf-cutting ants of America form paths from their nests to suitable
trees, from which to obtain the small coin-like leaf fragments, which
they carry in the mandibles, and hence have gained the name of umbrella
or parasol ants. These paths are sometimes underground; and Mr. McCook
measured one which ran at a depth of some 18 inches beneath the surface
for 448 feet, and was then continued for another 185 feet to the tree
which the ants were stripping. The whole path was in an almost perfect
straight line from nest to tree. The leaf fragments are stored in large
quantities in the nest, and it was long a matter of uncertainty for
what purpose they were collected. The problem was solved by Alfred
Möller, who found that the leaves, which are subdivided and masticated
by a special set of workers within the nest, form the appropriate
material in which the threads of a fungus ramify and flourish. This
fungus is tended by the ants with great care, and is made to produce a
specially modified form of growth, not found under other circumstances,
in the form of white aggregations, termed by Möller “Kohlrabi clumps.”
These form the principal food of the ants; and the spongy mass of earth
and leaves is called the fungus garden. “If a nest be broken into
and the fungus garden scattered, the ants collect it as quickly as
possible, especially the younger parts, taking as much trouble over it
as over the larvæ. They also cover it up again as soon as possible to
protect it from the light.”[99]
Again, it may be asked with regard to the social life of ants as
with respect to that of bees--How far is their complex behaviour
instinctive? How far is it due to imitation? What part does
intelligence play, and under what conditions of acquisition? Is reason,
in the restricted sense of the word, a factor in the development of
the behaviour? I cannot answer these questions, and am of opinion that
much detailed observation is yet needed before we can do much more
than speculate in the matter. Much indeed has been done, but yet more
remains for future investigation.
The conditions under which much of the behaviour is carried out seem to
indicate strong instinctive tendencies which give an hereditary trend
to the direction which the social behaviour takes. Dr. Bethe,[100]
indeed, goes so far as to regard the behaviour as almost entirely
instinctive, affording little evidence of that modifiability of
reactions which indicates intelligent guidance. He shows as the result
of careful experiment that the behaviour of ants to friends and enemies
are direct reactions to smell. Enemies washed with the excretions of
members of the nest are treated as friends, notwithstanding their
different colour, size, and general appearance. By scent, too, they
follow the lead of others and retrace their way to the nest; this, he
says, is not the result of a mental process, but is the reaction of a
complicated reflex mechanism. As the outcome of careful observation,
Dr. Bethe’s conclusions are of great value and interest. But he seems
to go too far in denying to ants any power of intelligent accommodation
to circumstances. If we admit intelligence, then the fact that the
insects come forth in the midst of a community in full social activity
would tend to the imitative or intelligent acquisition of like modes
of procedure. It is difficult to distinguish the share taken by these
two factors which may well co-operate. And if natural selection is
exercising its influence through the elimination of those which do not
fall into line in social behaviour, there would be ample opportunity
for the survival of coincident variations.[101] If one may be allowed
to speculate, it seems probable that the interaction of instinct
and intelligence will be found with fuller knowledge to suffice for
the explanation of the facts, without calling in the known but here
improbable factor of rationality or any factors unknown elsewhere in
psychology.
Some interesting observations of Lord Avebury’s are sometimes quoted
as evidence that ants are lacking in intelligence, but (if we accept
the distinction already drawn[102]) they seem rather to show the lack
of reason. “I placed food,” he says,[103] “in a porcelain cup, on a
slip of glass surrounded by water, but accessible to the ants by a
bridge, consisting of a strip of paper two-thirds of an inch long and
one-third wide. Having then put an ant (_Formica nigra_) from one of
my nests to this food, she began carrying it off, and by degrees a
number of friends came to help her. When about twenty-five ants were
so engaged, I moved the little paper bridge slightly, so as to leave a
chasm just so wide that the ants could not reach across. They came to
the edge and tried hard to get over, but it did not occur to them to
push the paper bridge, though the distance was only about one-third of
an inch, and they might easily have done so. After trying for about a
quarter of an hour they gave up the attempt and returned home. This I
repeated several times. Then, thinking that paper was a substance to
which they were not accustomed, I tried the same with a bit of straw
one inch long and one-eighth of an inch wide. The result was the same.
Again, I placed particles of food close to and directly over the nest,
but connected with it only by a passage several feet in length. Under
these circumstances it would be obviously a saving of time and labour
to drop the food on to the nest, or at any rate to spring down with
it, so as to save one journey. But though I have frequently tried the
experiment, my ants never adopted either of these courses. I arranged
matters so that the glass on which the food was placed was only raised
one-third of an inch above the nest. The ants tried to reach down, and
the distance was so small that occasionally, if another ant passed
underneath just as one was reaching down, the upper one could step on
to its back, and so descend; but this only happened accidentally, and
they did not think of throwing the particles down, nor, which surprised
me very much, would they jump down themselves. I then placed a heap of
mould close to the glass, but just so far that they could not reach
across. It would have been quite easy for any ant, by moving a particle
of earth for a quarter of an inch, to have made a bridge by which the
food might have been reached, but this simple expedient did not occur
to them.”
Now, when we remember that the method of intelligence is to profit
by chance experience, while the method of reason is, with foresight
and intention, to adapt means to ends, we shall see that to move a
straw even a quarter of an inch, or to make a bridge with particles
of mould, would require rational and not merely intelligent powers.
Chance experience would not supply the necessary data to be utilized
by intelligence when repetition had established an association in the
conscious situation. Granting that the ants were intelligent but not
rational, they could not be expected to overcome the difficulties,
simple as they seem to us, which Lord Avebury placed in their path. Had
they been overcome the fact would be more difficult to explain than the
use of a stone tool by the sand wasp, since this could more readily be
hit upon by chance experience. And what these valuable experiments, of
which kind more are needed, seem to show is, that the ant, probably
the most intelligent of all insects, has no claim to be regarded as a
rational being.
IV.--ANIMAL TRADITION
In that interaction between instinct and intelligence which, when
further detailed work has sifted and purified our knowledge of the
psychology of animal communities, may prove sufficient to account for
the well-established facts, animal tradition will probably have to be
recognized as of no little importance. When a newly emerging ant or
bee, or a young bird or mammal is born into a community where certain
modes of behaviour are already in full swing, an imitative tendency
of the follow-my-leader type may lead it to fall in line with the
traditional habits. It is said that young ants follow the older workers
about the nest, and are “trained to a knowledge of domestic duties,
especially in the case of larvæ.” On the other hand, we have seen that,
in certain observed cases, the queen ant is the solitary starting-point
of a new community, and that the division of labour follows with the
increasing numbers of the newly formed social group; so that, in such
cases, whatever part tradition may play in the later phases of social
life, it cannot afford a sufficient account of the division of labour
in the earlier history of the community. We need, however, fuller
information concerning the continued life-history of such communities
under natural conditions, and as to how far they remain self-contained
without any incorporation of older members from adjoining nests. In
the case of bees, where the old queen departs with a swarm, there may
be greater continuity of tradition. But how far this is a necessary
factor in social development is at present a matter of conjecture. In
the herd of mammals and the flock of birds, and in all the family and
social life in these classes of animals, the example of elders, without
any imitation of the higher reflective type, can scarcely be without
its influence on the behaviour of the young which, one would suppose,
would tend to fall in with the ways which had become traditional in
the species. Professor Wesley Mills tells us that a mongrel pup, whose
psychical development he carefully watched, showed “extraordinarily
rapid” progress when he was introduced to the society of other dogs,
and was thus subjected to the influence of canine tradition.
How far this influence extends in animal communities--how far it
is either a necessary or even an important contributory factor in
the development of certain modes of behaviour--is at present in
large degree a matter of speculation. And the only justification
for speculation in science is that it may open our eyes to modes of
influence the range and limits of whose effects may be submitted to the
touchstone of careful observation, and, if possible, experiment. In
this instance it is rather the indefiniteness of the evidence before us
than its absence that stands in the way of any profitable discussion of
the problem from the evidential point of view. And this indefiniteness
is partly due to the fact that the need of observation is not realized,
because this factor in animal behaviour has not been distinguished with
sufficient clearness. It is worth while, therefore, to devote a short
space to a consideration of the relation of this tradition to instinct
and intelligence with a view to the focussing of observation on the
facts by which it may be further elucidated.
In the first place, it is probable that, as in other modes of animal
behaviour, traditional procedure is founded on an instinctive basis.
This must be an imitative tendency of the broad follow-my-leader
type indicated in the first section of this chapter. And this would
afford wide instinctive foundations, which would owe their hereditary
character to the fact that, under natural selection, those individuals
in the community would survive which fell into line with the adaptive
behaviour of their companions, while those which failed in this respect
would be eliminated as more or less isolated outsiders, standing apart
from the social life. In illustration we may take a hypothetical
case, founded, however, upon observation. The Rev. S. J. Whitmee, a
missionary in Samoa, believes that the tooth-billed pigeon of these
islands (_Didunculus strigirostris_) “has probably been frightened when
roosting, or during incubation, by attacks of cats, and has sought
safety in the trees. Learning, from frequent repetition of the fright,
that the ground is a dangerous place, it has acquired the habit of
building, roosting, and feeding on the high trees; and this habit is
now operating for the preservation of this interesting bird, which a
few years ago was almost extinct.”[104] Now, in this case, the young
birds which followed the lead of those who, under experience, had
acquired the habit, would stand a better chance of survival than those
who, failing to do so, were caught napping on the ground. In further
illustration, we may take the case of two species of rats found by
Mr. C. M. Woodford on one of the Solomon Islands. These two species
are regarded by Mr. Oldfield Thomas as slightly altered descendants
of one parent species, with adaptations due to the fact that, of this
original species, some have adopted a terrestrial, others an arboreal
life. Thus _Mus rex_ lives in trees, has broad footpads, and a long
rasp-like, probably semi-prehensile tail; while _Mus imperator_ lives
on the ground, has smaller pads, and a short smooth tail. How far the
different modes of behaviour in the two species may have been fostered
by the influence of tradition we do not know; but it is not improbable
that such an influence would be a co-operating factor in the process of
segregation, and that in the course of time each form has been adapted
to its special environment through the elimination of those individuals
which were not in harmony with the conditions of their life.
Such a case--admittedly hypothetical in the interpretation put upon the
facts--may help us to see how the general instinctive follow-my-leader
tendency might become specialized in certain essential lines of racial
behaviour, and how, under natural selection, coincident variations in
the line of traditional acts might become more and more definitely
inherited as, at first, strong instinctive tendencies, and eventually
more stereotyped modes of instinctive behaviour. This, indeed, may have
been the mode of origin of some of the social instincts.
Reverting, however, to the stage where the general instinctive
follow-my-leader tendency is only partly or incompletely specialized
along particular lines of behaviour, we should have at this stage
certain hereditary trends of action, dependent on stimuli afforded
by the behaviour of others, but needing, for their guidance to finer
issues and more adequate and highly perfected performance, the play
of intelligence and the satisfaction of nascent social impulses. In
the economy of the hive or the nest there are, no doubt, instinctive
tendencies and predispositions; but there is also something more than
organic heredity with its transmitted modes of behaviour analogous
to the inherited form and structure of the body or its parts.
Consciousness exerts a guiding influence. The insect is not independent
of experience, but is capable of profiting by the teachings of that
fertile mother of all intelligent behaviour. It is unnecessary,
however, to insist on the fact that such insects are something more
than instinctive automata, but are guided in their behaviour by the
results of experience. Many careful observers lay stress upon this;
if, indeed, they do not go further and claim for the social insect the
higher rational faculty. “When we see,” says Lord Avebury,[105] “an
ant-hill tenanted by thousands of industrious inhabitants, excavating
chambers, forming tunnels, making roads, guarding their home, gathering
food, feeding the young, tending their domestic animals--each one
fulfilling its duties industriously, and without confusion--it is
difficult altogether to deny to them the gift of reason; and the
preceding observations tend to confirm the opinion that their mental
powers differ from those of man, not so much in kind as in degree.”
If the term “reason” be here accepted in the broad sense, and not
in the narrower sense before indicated, this passage will probably
be endorsed by the majority of those who have paid any attention to
the subject. Even those who regard “reason,” in the more restricted
acceptation of the term, as outside any scheme of evolution, since it
differs in kind and not merely in degree, would probably deny this
faculty to ants. In any case the passage expresses the conviction of
a close and singularly unprejudiced observer, that the doings of ants
involve conscious guidance in the light of experience individually
acquired.
And yet the behaviour of different species of ants, each after its
kind, is remarkably constant--so constant that, to use the words of Dr.
Peckham in another connection, it is characteristic of the species, and
would be an important part of any definition of the insect based upon
its habits. And some part of this constancy may be due to tradition,
though much of it may result from strong instinctive tendencies which
intelligence guides to similar ends, because the conditions are similar
in successive generations of social insects.
From the point of view of observation, however, it is particularly
difficult to distinguish the part played by tradition as a
psychological influence from that played by what we have above
described as instinctive imitation. In our study of other modes of
instinctive behaviour we can isolate an individual, or group of young
individuals, and observe how far certain acts are performed prior
to any experience. Thus chicks behave in certain instinctive ways
under conditions which preclude their learning from the hen or other
older birds--so that tradition cannot be operative. But where social
behaviour is concerned, such methods of observation are necessarily
excluded, since isolation involves the absence of the social factor.
And if certain instinctive acts require for their due performance
the stimulus of the like performance in others, what is this but a
form of instinctive tradition; and how are we to distinguish it from
intelligent tradition, where a psychological factor has freer play
and exercises guidance over the performance? In the present state
of our knowledge we can do no more than suggest, as not improbable,
that tradition passes through three phases: the first in which it is
instinctive; the second in which it becomes intelligent through the
satisfaction which the due performance of traditional acts arouses in
consciousness; and the third in which, at any rate in man, it takes
on a rational form, and is made to accord with an ideal scheme, the
product of conceptual thought and of reflection on data which have
been generalized and considered in their due relationships to the
scheme which takes definite form in the mind. Whether in the social
communities of insects or those of beavers, among mammals, or rooks
among birds, tradition has begun to pass into the third or rational
stage, we do not know. It may be so, but probably the development along
these lines has not been carried far. Presumably in the ant, rook, and
beaver anything like an ideal scheme of thought based on reflection, if
it exist, is as yet exceedingly indefinite.
But even supposing that no animal has yet risen beyond the second or
intelligent stage, it is none the less important to realize that we
have here, in animal life, the foundations on which may be raised what
may, perhaps, be regarded as one of the characteristic features of
human progress. This characteristic is the transference of evolution
from the organism to the environment handed on from generation to
generation. Thus man, “availing himself of tradition, is able to
seize upon the acquirements of his ancestors at the point where they
left them.”[106] Thus “he has slowly accumulated and organized the
experience which is almost wholly lost with the cessation of individual
life in other animals.”[107] But he is able to do so through the
extension, refining, and fixing of that instinctive and intelligent
tradition which begins to take form in animal communities.
V.--THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR
“Animals of many kinds,” said Darwin,[108] “are social; every one
must have noticed how miserable horses, dogs, sheep, etc., are when
separated from their companions. The most common mutual service in
the higher animals is to warn one another of danger. Every sportsman
knows how difficult it is to approach animals in a herd or troop.
Wild horses and cattle do not, I believe, make any danger-signal; but
the attitude of any one of them who first discovers an enemy warns the
others. Rabbits stamp loudly on the ground with their hind feet as a
signal; sheep and chamois do the same with their fore feet, uttering
likewise a whistle. Many birds and some mammals post sentinels. The
leader of a troop of monkeys acts as such, and utters cries expressive
both of danger and of safety. Social animals perform many little
services for each other: horses nibble, and cows lick each other;
monkeys search each other for external parasites, and are said to
remove thorns and burrs. Social animals mutually defend each other.
Bull bisons in North America, when there is danger drive the cows and
calves into the middle of the herd, whilst they defend the outside.
Among baboons the old males come forward to the attack. Wolves hunt in
packs; and pelicans fish in concert.
“It has often been assumed,” continues Darwin, “that animals were in
the first place rendered social, and that they feel as a consequence
uncomfortable when separated from each other, and comfortable whilst
together; but it is a more probable view that these sensations were
first developed, in order that those animals which would profit by
living in society should be induced to live together, in the same
manner as the sense of hunger and the pleasure of eating were, no
doubt, first acquired in order to induce animals to eat. The feeling
of pleasure from society is probably an extension of the parental and
filial affections, since the social instinct seems to be developed by
the young remaining long with their parents; and this extension may be
attributed in part to habit, but chiefly to natural selection. With
those animals which were benefited by living in close association,
the individuals which took the greatest pleasure in society would
best escape various dangers; while those which cared least for their
comrades, and lived solitary, would perish in greater numbers. In
however complex a manner the feeling of sympathy may have originated,
as it is one of high importance to all those animals which aid and
defend one another, it will have been increased through natural
selection; for those communities which included the greatest number of
the most sympathetic members would flourish best, and rear the greatest
number of offspring.”
It is impossible to improve upon this pithy description of the salient
facts, and terse explanation in terms of the hypothesis of natural
selection. It may, perhaps, be urged that, on this hypothesis, the
origin of the social state, through a biological association of
individuals, probably neither preceded nor followed the development of
a psychical bond arising from the sense of satisfaction and comfort
afforded by social life, but that both originated _pari passu_. If
the linkage was primarily instinctive, its intelligent continuance
could only be effected through the pleasure social behaviour carried
with it, and the discomfort of separation from the community. No
instinctive acts would be persistently repeated, under the guidance of
individual experience, if that experience proved bitter and not sweet.
An animal with thwarted instincts is one with unsatisfied impulses;
its biological and its psychological tendencies are alike unfulfilled.
What Darwin saw and wished to enforce, however, was that the psychical
link of conscious satisfaction was a necessary prerequisite of the
continuance and further evolution of sociability; and that without the
integrating bonds of sympathy any advance of social development was
impossible.
In two able and interesting articles in the _Nineteenth Century_
review,[109] on “Mutual Aid among Animals,” Prince Kropotkine gives a
useful and sufficiently detailed summary of the chief facts concerning
the social relationships which have been observed in the animal
kingdom--including, perhaps, some rather apocryphal instances,--and
combats Huxley’s statement[110] that, “beyond the limited and temporary
relations of the family, the Hobbesian war of each against all is the
normal state of existence” among animals and primitive men. “Life in
societies,” says Prince Kropotkine, “is no exception in the animal
world. It is the rule, the law of nature, and it reaches its fullest
development with the higher vertebrates. Those species which live
solitary, or in small families only, are relatively few, and their
numbers are limited.”[111] “Life in societies enables the feeblest
insects, the feeblest birds, and the feeblest mammals to resist, or to
protect themselves from, the most terrible birds and beasts of prey; it
permits longevity; it enables the species to rear its progeny with the
least waste of energy, and to maintain its numbers, albeit with a very
slow birth-rate; it enables the gregarious animals to migrate in search
of new abodes. Therefore, while fully admitting that force, swiftness,
protective colours, cunningness, and endurance to hunger and cold,
which are mentioned by Darwin and Wallace, are so many qualities making
the individual or the species the fittest under certain circumstances,
we maintain that under _any_ circumstances sociability is the greatest
advantage in the struggle for life.... The fittest are thus the most
sociable animals, and sociability appears as the chief factor in
evolution, both directly, by securing the well-being of the species
while diminishing the waste of energy, and indirectly by favouring the
growth of intelligence.”[112] And summarizing his argument, Prince
Kropotkine says,[113] “We have seen how few are the animal species
which live an isolated life, and how numberless are those which live
in societies, either for mutual defence, or for hunting and storing
up food, or for rearing their offspring, or simply for enjoying life
in common. We have also seen that, though a good deal of warfare goes
on between different species, or even different tribes of the same
species, peace and mutual support are the rule within the tribe, or the
species; and that those species which best know how to combine, and to
avoid competition, have the best chances of survival and of further
progressive development. They prosper, while unsociable species decay.”
Prince Kropotkine seems, however, to push his argument too far.
The assertion that the fittest are the most sociable animals, that
sociability appears as the chief factor in evolution, and that
unsociable species decay, is not likely to be accepted without
qualification by zoologists. What grounds have we for saying that the
solitary wasps are less fit than the social wasps? Each has a fitness
according to its kind. Can it be maintained that the unsocial tiger
is less fit than the social jackal? And can it be said that tigers,
which are reported absolutely to swarm in Java and Sumatra, exemplify
the decay of an unsociable species? Is it seriously contended that
the hawk, which may be successfully mobbed by a number of wagtails,
is less fit than his more social assailants? And are the unsocial
raptorial birds decaying species? Such questions might be asked by the
score. And the answer in every case is that the social and unsocial
alike are fitted to their several states of life. In fact, it might
be contended, with every whit as much if not more cogency, that
sociability is nature’s device for enabling the weaker, and hence in
themselves the less fit, to resist the attacks and encroachments of the
stronger and individually fitter. Discussing the possibilities of human
ancestry, Darwin said:[114] “In regard to bodily size or strength, we
do not know whether man is descended from some comparatively small
species like the chimpanzee, or from one as powerful as the gorilla.
We should, however, bear in mind that an animal possessing great size,
strength, and ferocity, which, like the gorilla, could defend itself
from all enemies, would not perhaps have become social; and this would
most effectually have checked the acquirement of the higher mental
qualities, such as sympathy and the love of his fellows. Hence it
might have been an immense advantage to man to have sprung from some
comparatively weak creature.”
Zoologists, again, will hardly accept without question Prince
Kropotkine’s assertion that “life in societies is no exception in the
animal world, but is the rule, the law of nature.” Many will contend,
on the other hand, that life in societies with anything like division
of labour, or with mutual aid (and this seldom carried far), is, taking
the animal kingdom as a whole, of comparatively rare occurrence, though
none the less noteworthy where it exists. And, in any case, it seems
somewhat extravagant to say that sociability is the chief factor in
evolution. No doubt it might be plausibly urged that human society is,
from man’s point of view, the highest product of evolution; that in
attaining to this end sociability has been the leading factor; and that
obviously the leading factor in the evolution of the highest product
may properly be called the chief factor in evolution. But Prince
Kropotkine apparently means that sociability is the chief factor, not
only in this evolution, but in all organic, or, at least, all animal
evolution. In this he will receive the support of but few zoologists.
By some extravagance of statement he has weakened his own case,
which is otherwise not lacking in points of weakness. The legitimate
inferences from animal behaviour are, that co-operation is in some
cases a factor in the evolution of a successful species, that in human
progress it has been an important factor giving strength to a creature
weak in tooth and claw, and that this factor has co-existed, and still
coexists, with that of competition, in the absence of which the race
would be dragged down to lower levels of efficiency by the incubus of
weaklings.
To Professor Alfred Espinas[115] we owe the best and fullest discussion
of the social life of animals, and to his work the reader may be
referred for a careful and, for the most part, unstrained and unbiassed
consideration of the phenomena. In common with others who have
devoted serious attention to the subject, he sees in the family the
starting-point of the higher and more comprehensive social group, or
“peuplade.” Prince Kropotkine seems, indeed, to combat this view; but
the divergence of opinion is more apparent than real. He tells us[116]
that anthropology “has established beyond any doubt that mankind did
_not_ begin its life in the shape of small isolated families. Far
from being a primitive form of organization, the family is a very
late product of human evolution.... Societies, bands, or tribes--not
families--were thus the primitive form of organization of mankind and
its earliest ancestors.” And in support of his views he adduces the
sexual communism which is said to be found in the lowest savages,
and briefly traces the development of monogamy and the genesis of
the family ideal as we conceive it. It may at once be admitted that
in all probability mankind did not have its origin in small isolated
families. If we do not admit this we must accept the alternative
hypothesis, that man was developed from an unsocial ancestor. For
though the biological family is the starting-point of the community,
it does not of course follow that wherever there is so much coherence
between parents and offspring as to form a temporary family group, a
social community must in due course arise. In such unsocial carnivora
as the tiger, the temporary linkage of family life is strong while it
lasts. But though mankind presumably originated in a prehuman race that
had already reached some degree of social coherence, there remains
behind the question--what was the origin of this social group? And to
this question, Prince Kropotkine, in common with Darwin and Espinas,
would probably answer without hesitation, that the primeval germ of
the social community lay in the prolonged coherence of the group of
parents and offspring. In the unsocial animals the family separates and
disintegrates before the offspring mate. But if the family continue to
cohere, the mating of offspring will give rise to the continuity of
coherence found in the herd, or troop, or tribe. For new family groups
will be constantly arising before the old family groups have ceased to
be associated. Thus would be afforded more opportunity for tradition
than among the unsocial animals.
How, then, can it be said that, “far from being a primitive form of
organization, the family is a very late product of human evolution”?
By using the word “family” in a sense somewhat different--nay,
widely different--from that in which it is employed in a biological
discussion. In the latter usage sexual communism is not excluded; A.,
B., and C., D. may have offspring this season; A., D., and C., B.
next season. In each season there are family groups with interchange
of partners. This does not, however, conform with our conception of
the family as realized under civilization. Herein, in fact, lies the
essential difference between the human and the animal family. The one
is a realized ideal; the other is merely a natural occurrence. Even in
the case of monogamous animals, mating for life is probably not conduct
in conformity with an ideal, but is due to the fact that instinctive
tendencies have taken this line of direction. On the other hand, in
monogamous communities of mankind, there is, unfortunately, evidence
that in some cases the ideal is not strong enough to prevent presumably
ancestral tendencies in the direction of communism.
The basis of human social conduct is unquestionably to be traced
in the social behaviour of animals, in inherited tendencies to
co-operation and mutual help, in the bonds of sympathy arising through
the satisfaction of impulses towards such behaviour, and perhaps, to
some extent, in the influence of tradition. It is not, however, until
this tradition is rendered, through descriptive communication, more
continuous and more effective; it is not until an ideal of mutual
aid, and social conduct generally, takes form and is rendered common
to the tribe; it is not until the more or less realized conceptions
of one generation are handed on to become the environment under which
the succeeding generations are nurtured; it is not indeed until man
consciously and reflectively aims at the bettering of his environment
in accordance with standards rationally conceived and deliberately
carried into execution; that a new _régime_ of civilized progress,
elsewhere unknown in nature, takes definite form. Under this _régime_,
the elimination of failures through natural selection, though it may
not be entirely superseded, plays a subordinate part; alongside the
organic continuity which is due to physical heredity, there runs a
continuity of tradition through social inheritance.
Human civilization is an embodiment of reason, a product of reflection,
a realization of ideals conceived by the leaders of mankind. All this
forms the environment of each one of us. And it is this environment
which is undergoing progressive evolution and playing on the rational
faculties of those which are submitted to its moulding influence.
There is no sufficient evidence of anything of the kind in the social
communities of animals. This, of course, must be accepted merely as an
expression of opinion. But on the hypothesis that animals are rational
beings, capable of reflection, it is difficult to understand why they
should remain at so low a level of social achievement. The absence
of powers of descriptive intercommunication is often assigned as the
cause of their comparatively unprogressive condition; but it may be
regarded as the sign, rather than the cause, of their lack of reason in
the more restricted sense of the term. We cannot, however, enter into
the much-disputed question whether reason is the product of language,
or language the outcome of reason. Perhaps the safest position is to
assume that rationality and true speech are in large measure different
aspects of one evolutionary movement--speech arising out of such
preceding modes of communication as were considered in the second
section of this chapter; reason developing out of intelligence which
supplies its necessary data. It is sometimes said that, notwithstanding
their powers of speech, savages in their social relations show little
advance on animal communities. But surely such statements must be made
in forgetfulness of the fact that savage customs almost invariably
indicate the presence and sway of ideals which puzzle us from their
quaintness, and from the fact that they seem contrary to the dictates
of intelligence and due to motives and conceptions the nature and force
of which we find it difficult to estimate. The passage from intelligent
social behaviour to the rationality which has assumed such strange
aspects among existing savages took place somewhere at some time in the
past; and the stages of its evolution are hidden from our view. All
we can say is, that it is possible to trace in animal behaviour some
of the instinctive tendencies and intelligent modes of accommodation
to social circumstances, together with the germs of imitation,
intercommunication, and tradition, and the establishment of bonds of
sympathy, without which the subsequent stages of evolution would be
inconceivable.