_THE FEELINGS AND EMOTIONS_
I.--IMPULSE, INTEREST, AND EMOTION
Any discussion of animal behaviour must deal largely with what is
termed the conative aspect of consciousness. “The states designated by
such words as _craving_, _longing_, _yearning_, _endeavour_, _effort_,
_desire_, _wish_, and _will_,” says Dr. Stout, in his admirable “Manual
of Psychology,”[117] “have one characteristic in common. In all of
these there is an inherent tendency to pass beyond themselves and
become something different. This tendency is not only a fact, but an
experience; and the peculiar mode of being conscious, which constitutes
the experience, is called _conation_.” Closely associated with this
conation is _impulse_, which Dr. Stout defines as “any conative
tendency, so far as it operates by its own isolated intensity, apart
from its relation to a general system of motives. Action on impulse
is thus contrasted with action which results from reflection and
deliberation.”[118] In the interpretation we have advocated, animals
are essentially creatures of impulse, and not to any large extent,
if at all, reflective agents. And their impulses may be associated
either with their inherited and congenital behaviour, or with that
which is due to acquired experience. In other words, their impulses may
be divided broadly into two classes, the one instinctive, the other
acquired.
Dr. Stout says that conation is not only a fact, but an experience.
Now, first as to the fact. It seems to be the correlative in
consciousness of the behaviour of the nervous system under stimulation.
Let us take some simple case such as that, for example, of a hungry
chick pecking at a grain of corn. This is explained from the
physiological point of view by saying that internal and external
stimulation--internal from the digestive organs and system in need
of food, external through the eye--gives rise to a state of unstable
equilibrium in the nerve-centres; and that, when the instability
reaches a certain value, the nervous system discharges into the
motor organs, the chick pecks, and stable equilibrium is restored.
The tendency to discharge in some way under stimulation is an
essential characteristic of a nervous system. It is one of the facts
of physiological science. So, too, the conative tendency is one of
the facts of psychological science; it is a change in the situation
introduced by the effects of the physiological discharge.
Let us here parenthetically notice that the physiological tendency
in the nervous system is an evolved complication and a specialized
development of one of the fundamental properties of protoplasm--that
which is often spoken of as irritability. One of the characteristics
of all living matter is its “explosive” instability. So that at the
very threshold of organic behaviour we have the analogue of that which,
in its developed form, becomes the tendency of the nervous system to
discharge as the result of stimulation. The conative tendency of the
psychologist, therefore, has its roots deep down in the elemental germs
of all organic life.
And this conative tendency is, says Dr. Stout, not only a fact but an
experience. Let us return to our hungry chick that pecks at a grain of
corn. And let us grant that as the result of stimulation there arise
states of consciousness which we describe as a feeling of hunger and
the sight of the grain of corn. The nervous system now discharges;
and there are introduced into the situation a further group of data,
the motor consciousness of the actual behaviour, sensory data from
the results of the act, the seizing of the grain and so forth. The
situation has unquestionably changed. But is there any specific
consciousness of the conative tendency as such? Is there any “peculiar
mode of being conscious which constitutes the experience which is
called conation”? It is difficult to say. Hence we find differences of
opinion among psychologists as to what, from the psychological point
of view, the impulse actually is. Is it simply the conscious situation
prior to the response? Is it a feeling of the change from the initial
to the succeeding phase? Or are new data introduced apart from those
afforded by stimulation on the one hand and response on the other? We
will not attempt to decide. Without determining its exact nature we
may rest content with the very general statement that impulse is a
concomitant of a change in the conscious situation.
There is, however, a use of the term concerning which it seems
necessarily to enter a word of protest. Impulse is by some regarded as
the underlying cause of the conative tendency. Now science, as such,
has nothing whatever to do with underlying causes. If, as a matter
of observation and inference, we have reason to believe that there
is such a tendency, science simply accepts the fact, and endeavours
to formulate the conditions under which it arises, and to trace its
observed or inferred antecedents. No doubt many of us find it difficult
or impossible to rest content with the strictly scientific position,
that of unquestioning acceptance of the facts of nature as we find
them given in experience. We say: Here is an observed tendency the
conditions and antecedents of which are described by science. But what
causes the tendency; what is the impelling force? Now to such questions
science can give no answer. Science deals with phenomena, and tries to
tell us all about their conditions and their antecedents. But whenever
Science is asked: “What is the underlying cause of the phenomena,--that
which calls them into being?” Science should always give one answer
and one only: “Frankly, I do not know; that lies outside my province;
ask my sister Metaphysics.” Science ought to have nothing whatever to
do with force as the underlying cause of anything in this universe of
phenomena. And impulse, as the impelling force which calls a conative
tendency into being, is a metaphysical, not a scientific conception.
We need not further discuss the psychological nature of impulse.
Indeed, the little that has been said would not have been necessary
to our inquiry were it not that we frequently have occasion to speak
of animals as “creatures of impulse,” and to refer to their behaviour
as due to impulse. What do we mean by such expressions? If we regard
conative tendency as a fact (whatever may be said for or against its
being also a specific experience), and if this fact is the tendency
of the conscious situation to develope in certain definite ways, then
we may define _impulse_ with sufficient clearness by saying, with
Dr. Stout, that it is characterized by being unreflective. Conative
tendency thus comprises two categories--impulse and volition; the one
unreflective, the other involving deliberation.
Before passing on to consider how impulse is partly determined by the
feeling-tone and the emotional attributes of the conscious situation,
we may first draw attention to the important way in which the results
of conative tendency afford the data through which consciousness
attains its unity in the midst of diversity of experience.
We said that the impulses might be divided broadly into two
classes--the one instinctive, the other acquired. Now, from the
point of view suggested by a study of behaviour, if not also, as I
am disposed to think, from the more general standpoint of a genetic
study of mental development, it is convenient to start with the
instinctive act and the conscious situation it implies. We have here
a piece of experience which, if we may so phrase it, hangs together;
in which experience of things in the environment is included in the
same elemental synthesis with that of bodily acts in organic relation
to these things. It is closely linked, on the one hand, with a
foregoing act of attention, itself of the instinctive type; closely
linked, on the other hand, with the results of behaviour through
which the environing things call forth a new conscious situation
and evoke a further response. Thus not only does the experience of
an instinctive act hang together, but a series of such acts do so
likewise. And coalescent association not only links and groups the
elements within the situation called forth by the single act, but
comprises also the elements of the developing situation afforded
by the whole series. We see this in the young chick, where, as the
result of experience, attention is emphasized where the material is
palatable, and lapses where it is nauseous--such nauseous substances
being soon ignored. Furthermore many environing things appeal in
different ways to the same limited number of sense organs, while the
same motor organs respond in different ways in successive modes of
instinctive behaviour. The same brain forms the physical basis of
varied situations overlapping in many ways, and receives afferent
messages from the same body. Hence, in its organic unity it affords
the conditions for an underlying stratum of mental unity, amid all
the diversities of experience; while the multiplicity of messages
on the one hand from external things, and on the other hand from
internal happenings, lays the foundations of a differentiation between
the external world and the self--a differentiation long to remain
implicit, and only to be rendered explicit on a far higher level of
mental development. For at this early stage, and perhaps throughout
animal life, “there is no single continuous self contrasted with a
single continuous world. Self, as a whole, uniting present, past, and
future phases, and the world as a single coherent system of things and
processes, are ideal constructions, built up gradually in the course
of human development. The ideal construction of self and the world
is comparatively rudimentary in the lower races of mankind, and it
never can be complete. On the purely perceptual plane [with which we
are now dealing] it has not even begun.”[119] But though the ideal
constructions of self and the world have not, as Dr. Stout says,
at this stage, even begun, yet, as the same author observes,[120]
“animals distinguish in the environment, and treat as a separate thing,
whatever portion of matter appeals to their peculiar instincts, and
affords occasion for their characteristic modes of activity.” And this
differentiation of specially interesting things from each other, and
from their relatively uninteresting surroundings, must be accompanied
by some differentiation of these things from themselves as affected
by them and reacting to them. So that here, as we have seen to be the
case in other matters, what is commonly called the perceptual life of
animals affords the rough-hewn materials from which ideal constructions
may be elaborated by rational beings.
We cannot here attempt to do more than barely indicate the manner
in which the perceptual process in animals may acquire unity and
diversity--unity through the functioning of the same brain and body,
diversity from the different modes of functioning and the differential
effects of diverse modes of stimulation. The interesting point for us
in our special inquiry is that it is through behaviour that all this is
brought about.
As we interpret the facts, the restless activity of the young is
primarily a biological fact, and is to be dealt with as an organic
problem--a complication of the fundamental irritability of protoplasm.
But it is also an essential condition to the acquisition of conscious
experience; and the more there is of it in varied modes the wider is
the range of the data afforded to consciousness. Congenital behaviour
is thus the goal of organic heredity, and the starting-point of
conscious accommodation and adjustment; it is the biological end of
variation, and affords the means to intelligent modification.
So much for some of the results of conative tendency. Not only does
it secure adaptation or adjustment to the environment, but it affords
the conditions of mental development by which further accommodation is
rendered possible. But, in addition to the attainment of biological
ends, in addition to the furtherance of survival in the struggle for
existence, mental development has another aspect. All sensory data,
whether from the special senses, from the motor processes concerned in
responsive behaviour, or from other sources, may, and perhaps always
do, carry with them some amount of what is termed _feeling-tone_,
giving rise to a net result in consciousness which we call pleasure
or the reverse. Pleasure or satisfaction--however we name that which,
though vague and indeterminate in outline, is a very real attribute
of the conscious situation--affords its sanction to certain modes of
conation, and may thus be regarded as the psychological end of their
continuance or their repetition. It is partly, no doubt, a direct
adjunct of sight, hearing, taste, and so forth, and of smooth and
easy movements of the body and limbs; but it is partly due to a great
body of stimulation coming from many parts of the organic system. The
blood-vessels are dilated or contracted, the heart’s action increased
or diminished; respiration is deepened or the reverse, and its rhythm
may be altered; glands are thrown into a state of activity; the tone of
the muscles is affected, and there may be either incipient contraction
or relaxation. These are primarily organic effects; but they influence
the conscious situation, and are themselves suffused with feeling-tone.
For, from all the parts so affected, messages are carried in to the
brain, and such afferent messages afford data to consciousness. It may
be that the experience of the conative tendency, for which Dr. Stout
and others claim a distinctive place in consciousness, is largely due
to afferent messages from the motor organs incipiently innervated in
preparation for the behaviour which follows. In any case these probably
form very important elements in the conscious situation antecedent to
the actual response. In what we may term motor attention--the state
well exemplified by a cat in the strained pause which precedes the
spring on to the prey, or in ourselves when we poise before a dive
or hold the billiard cue in preparation for a delicate stroke--this
incipient innervation, felt through afferent messages from the parts
thus braced for action, enters with much distinctness into the
conscious situation. In sensory attention, on the other hand, reflex
acts have actually taken place, having for their end and purpose the
focussing of the sense organs on the object which stimulates them,
so that in this way further and more effective stimulation may be
received. But, as the sense organ is steadily held to the focus, and
made effectually to cover the stimulating thing, the motor apparatus
concerned is kept on the strain, and is all the while contributing data
to the conscious situation.
In primary genesis attention, both motor and sensory, is unquestionably
organic and reflex in its nature. It is a product, and an invaluable
product, of biological evolution. Without this as a basis, the higher
forms of attention under conscious guidance would be impossible. For
all these higher forms are modifications and complications of what is
given in organic heritage. Here, as elsewhere throughout the whole
range of behaviour, consciousness only guides to finer issues what is
presented to it in rough outline, or in isolated fragments, as the
outcome of biological evolution. But the organic responses afford
the data which consciousness uses that it may mould and fashion the
behaviour so as to reach higher and more complex modes of adjustment.
Lest a familiar form of words should give rise to misapprehension,
it may here be stated that, when we say that consciousness moulds
and fashions behaviour, we do not intend to imply that consciousness
is an underlying cause. We are not using the term consciousness in
a metaphysical sense. We mean that consciousness is the expression
of certain conditions under which behaviour is guided. Instead of
saying, therefore, that consciousness utilizes certain sensory data,
it would be more correct to say that it _is_ the sum-total of these
data which are the psychical expression of certain brain conditions
under which behaviour, as a matter of fact, takes a given set or
direction. We use the word consciousness, then, not in its metaphysical
sense of an underlying cause or force, but in its scientific sense,
as the concomitant of certain antecedent conditions. Our common modes
of speech lend themselves with misleading facility to metaphysical
assumptions, all the more insidious since they are not consciously
acknowledged as such. And not only what we comprise under the broader
group-name “consciousness,” but what we include under narrower
group-names, such as “impulse,” “volition,” “instinct,” “intelligence,”
“reason,” and the like, often do duty as underlying causes of the
phenomena, which, from the scientific point of view, they do no more
than name.
We often say, for example, that _interest_ guides behaviour in this
direction or in that. But such interest must not be regarded as an
impelling force; it is an attribute of the conscious situation, more or
less suffused with feeling-tone. It is not easy to define; but it seems
to take on its distinctive character when re-presentative elements
contribute what Dr. Stout[121] terms “meaning” to the conscious
situation. The meaning in the early stages of mental development is,
however, merely perceptual, and not that which comes much later--that
which is implied in the phrase “rational significance.” In the chick
which has tasted a cinnabar caterpillar the situation evoked by the
sight of this larva has meaning in virtue of the actual experience.
But, in this case, the meaning is not conducive to continued interest,
since it checks, rather than stimulates, behaviour. At first, indeed,
there may be the repellent interest of aversion. But this passes by,
and the larvæ are soon ignored. Small worms also acquire meaning, and
here the interest is attractive, and is stimulated afresh each time
the meaning is reinforced by repetition of the act of seizing and
swallowing.
We have seen that it is through behaviour that things become
differentiated from their surroundings, and acquire relative
independence in experience. It is through behaviour that what we have
termed conscious situations develop. The thing is the centre or nucleus
of a developing situation--that which starts the behaviour, and towards
which the behaviour is directed; or, since the behaviour may be that
of avoidance or escape, we should, perhaps, rather say, it is that to
which the behaviour has reference. Now, if interest is the feeling-tone
attaching to the whole attentive situation, and if the nucleus of the
situation is the thing, it naturally follows that the thing becomes
the centre of interest. The mouse is a centre of absorbing interest to
the cat, her eggs to the mother-bird, his mate to the sparrow in the
spring. Companions are centres of abiding interest to social animals,
because they are also the centres of social behaviour and the conscious
situations arising thereout; because they evoke in special ways the
attentive situation.
The differentiated thing being thus a centre of interest, a relatively
fixed nucleus in a changing conscious situation, the development of
which is due to behaviour, there can be no question that, among social
animals, the companion becomes a peculiar and specialized centre.
Around him develops a particular type of behaviour. Towards him the
reactions are of a quite distinctive kind. Mother and offspring, mate
and mate, are reciprocal centres of interest. To the offspring the
parent is a common centre of interest. As they grow up together, what
is of interest to one is likewise of interest at the same time to
others. Imitation begets similarity of conscious situations. In many
ways such community of interest is fostered; and through this community
of interest the conscious situations acquire their distinctively social
character. Not only is the companion, as the nucleus of a situation,
a thing which reacts in altogether special ways, so that it becomes
differentiated from other things as something the meaning of which,
and the interest in which, are _sui generis_ and unique in type; but
it enters into other situations in ways that are also peculiar and
characteristic. A worm is thrown to a couple of chicks, and is to each
a centre of interest--the nucleus of a situation involving appropriate
modes of behaviour. But into this situation there enters for each of
them, in a quite peculiar and distinctive way, the action and behaviour
of the other chick. The situation is complicated by the introduction of
a second centre of interest, and the behaviour has reference to both
centres. Instead of quietly and leisurely dealing with the worm in
accordance with its special meaning, as it does when there is no rival
in the field, the chick darts at it, and bolts with it in accordance
with the special meaning which its neighbour’s presence, under such
circumstances, has acquired. And this different behaviour carries with
it a felt difference in the conscious situation--the interest of which
is centred in the companion. Or take the case of a herd of cattle,
which attacks a common enemy. The enemy is the primary nucleus of the
situation, but it is profoundly modified by the presence of companions
by which the behaviour of attack is determined. The situation is
social, and not merely individual, and a social interest suffuses it,
and gives it a distinctive character.
In this social interest probably arise the germs--but only the
germs--of the sense of personality. Some, indeed, go so far as to
urge that we learn to know ourselves only through knowing others. The
genetic order, so far as there is an order, is, they say, not first
the ego and then the alter, but first the mother and companions and
then through them the self. Or, to put this point of view in a less
questionable form, it is only through the reaction of one on the other
that the two are differentiated. Be this as it may, it is only through
the action of environment on the organism, and the reaction of the
organism on the environment in behaviour, that experience becomes
polarized into subject and object. Let it be clearly understood that
for the animal, in all probability, subject and object are not clearly
distinguished, and set over against each other in the antithesis of
thought. Only late in mental development are the self and the world
distinguished in subtle analysis as different aspects of the common
experience in which both have their inseparable being. Animals, and
perhaps the majority of mankind, never trouble themselves about object
and subject as clearly realized products of conception and reflective
thought. For these concepts are exceedingly subtle. And here, too, the
external aspect of experience has the precedence, so far as there is
precedence. A healthy lad from the moment he gets up in the morning
till the moment he goes to bed, lives chiefly in the objective aspect
of experience, an aspect which is in us chiefly associated with the
products in consciousness of the leading senses of sight and hearing.
But the subjective aspect creeps in when he is hurt, when he is hungry,
when he is fatigued. He does not argue about the matter, or formulate
it in definite terms. He just dimly feels that the interest has
somehow shifted. Still more dimly does the animal feel that, apart from
external interests which prompt nine-tenths of its behaviour, chiefly
through the senses of sight, hearing, and smell, there are also matters
in which the interest has somehow shifted to his own body. For the germ
of self is essentially an embodied self. And perhaps the emotions,
which ring through the system for some time after the external cause
has been removed, serve in some degree to aid in this dimly felt
shifting of interest.
Whatever may be the exact psychological nature of the emotions--and
there has been much discussion of the question--it may be regarded
as certain that they introduce into the conscious situation elements
which contribute not a little to the energy of behaviour. They are
important conditions to vigorous and sustained conation. And so
closely interwoven are these elements with the whole situation in
its impulsive aspect, that their disentanglement, in psychological
analysis, is a matter of extreme difficulty. I have elsewhere[122]
devoted some space to the consideration of the matter. I there follow
Professor William James in regarding organic effects, other than motor
sensations, as specially characteristic of the emotions in their
primary genesis. The cold sweat, the dry mouth, the catch of the
breath, the grip of the heart, the abdominal sinking, the blood-tingle
or blood-stagnation--these and their like, in varied modes and degrees,
characterize the emotions of fear, dread, anger, and so forth, when
they rise to any pitch of intensity, and contribute largely to their
sharpness and piquancy. These organic effects may be regarded as part
of the private and individual business of the body; but in experience
they closely coalesce with the motor effects through which the animal
has to deal in practical behaviour with that which evokes the emotion.
On this view these organic states which contribute characteristic
elements in the emotional consciousness are due to afferent data from
the vascular system and visceral organs, just as motor consciousness
is due to afferent data from the parts concerned in overt behaviour.
But, associated with emotional states, there are also certain motor
reactions, which we speak of as their “expression”--so carefully
discussed and elucidated by Darwin,--and these unquestionably
contribute data to consciousness which coalesce with those afforded
by the visceral and vascular elements. The whole is commonly suffused
with feeling-tone, and the object which excites the emotion is a
centre of pleasurable or painful interest. Representative elements, as
experience develops, crowd into the conscious situation and render it
more complex. And in addition to all this, there is, apart from the
motor expression, the strenuous behaviour of flight or attack, or other
mode of vigorous procedure which we commonly speak of as the outcome
of the emotional state. The conscious situation, in the case of an
enraged or scared animal actually behaving as such, is thus exceedingly
complex. And it should be understood that in urging the importance of
vascular and visceral elements, this complexity is nowise denied. What
is suggested is that these elements are essential, and that they serve
to characterize the distinctively emotional factor in the situation,
that in any case they heighten the conative tendency.
Sufficient has now been said to indicate--but scarcely more than
indicate--the importance of feeling-tone, interest, and emotion
in determining the nature, character, and effective energy of the
conscious situations which arise in the course of animal behaviour.
They largely influence, and in part direct, the course of the conative
tendency. But they also occur as its sequel. In animal, as in human
life, the successful attainment of the end towards which conation
sets is highly pleasurable. The equilibrium that is reached after
instability, though it marks the close of present endeavour, leaves
after-effects in consciousness in a sense of satisfaction which enters
re-presentatively into later situations and helps to further more
strenuous endeavour.
II.--PLAY
“There are two quite different popular ideas of play,” says Professor
Groos, in his admirable work on “The Play of Animals.” “The first is
that the animal (or man) begins to play when he feels particularly
cheerful, healthy, and strong; the second that the play of young
animals serves to fit them for the tasks of later life.” The former
view, in which the latter may be included incidentally as a result, is
closely associated with the names of Schiller,[123] who suggested it,
and of Mr. Herbert Spencer,[124] who developed it. Mr. Wallaschek[125]
expresses the conception briefly and clearly when he says, “It is the
surplus vigour in more highly developed organisms, exceeding what is
required for immediate needs, in which play of all kinds takes its
rise, manifesting itself by way of imitation or repetition of all those
efforts and exertions which are essential to the maintenance of life.”
That surplus vigour is often a condition favouring the manifestation
of play is probable enough, and seems to be supported by observation
and experience; but that it is likewise a condition favouring the
chase, combat, mating, and much of the serious business of animal life
seems equally unquestionable. Success in all these matters is largely
determined by overflowing energy. In play, however, this surplus vigour
finds vent when there is no serious occasion for its exercise. But, as
Professor Groos says,[126] “while simple overflow of energy explains
quite well that the individual who finds himself in a condition of
overflowing energy is ready to do something, it does not explain how
it happens that all the individuals of a species manifest exactly the
specific kind of play expression which prevails with their own species,
but differs from every other.” And if to this it be replied, that the
specific kind is determined by repetition or imitation of what we have
called the serious business of animal life, Professor Groos’s rejoinder
is,[127] that “the conception of imitation here set forth--namely,
as the repetition of serious activities to which the individual has
himself become accustomed--cannot be applied directly to the primary
phenomena of play--that is, to its first elementary manifestations”
prior to any experience of these serious activities. The repetition
(with a difference!) is in such cases not the re-enactment of what has
been previously performed in full earnest by the individual, but rather
the reappearance in the young of ancestral modes of procedure--in
other words, its specific character is such because it is a piece of
instinctive behaviour or arises from instinctive proclivities. And this
is the central point of the interpretation elaborated with great skill
and candour by Professor Groos. Play is instinctive; and its biological
value lies in the training it affords for the subsequent earnest of
life.
Before leaving the surplus energy theory of play one more point
made by Professor Groos may be mentioned. He contends that, though
superabundant energy is a favouring condition of animal play (as it
is, indeed, of all animal behaviour), still it is not a necessary
condition. Animals often play when they are tired out. “Notice a kitten
when a piece of paper blows past. Will not any observer confirm the
statement that, just as an old cat must be tired to death or else
already filled to satiety if it does not try to seize a mouse running
near it, so will the kitten, too, spring after the moving object,
even if it has been exercising for hours and its superfluous energies
are entirely disposed of? Or observe the play of young dogs when two
of them have raced about the garden until they are forced to stop
from sheer fatigue, and they lie on the ground panting, with tongues
hanging out. Now one of them gets up, glances at his companion, and
the irresistible power of his innate longing for the fray seizes him
again. He approaches the other, sniffs lazily about him, and, though he
is evidently only half inclined to obey the powerful impulse, attempts
to seize his leg. The one provoked yawns, and in a slow, tired kind
of way puts himself on the defensive; but gradually instinct conquers
fatigue on him too, and in a few minutes both are tearing madly about
in furious rivalry until want of breath puts an end to the game. And so
it goes on with endless repetition, until we get the impression that
the dog waits only long enough to collect the needed strength, not till
superfluous energy urges him to activity.”[128]
Coming now to Professor Groos’s interpretation of play, we find in it,
perhaps for the first time in the literature of the subject, adequate
stress laid on its biological value. “The play of young animals,” he
says,[129] “has its origin in the fact that certain very important
instincts appear at a time when the animal does not seriously need
them.... Its utility consists in the practice and exercise it affords
for some of the more important duties of life, inasmuch as selection
[in the higher animals] tends to weaken the blind force of instinct,
and aids more and more the development of independent intelligence as
a substitute for it. At the moment when intelligence is sufficiently
evolved to be more useful in the struggle for existence than the most
perfect instinct, then will selection favour those individuals in
whom the instincts in question appear earlier and in less elaborated
forms--in forms that are merely for practice and exercise,--that is
to say, it will favour those animals which play.... Animals cannot be
said to play because they are young and frolicsome, but rather they
have a period of youth in order to play; for only by so doing can
they supplement the insufficient hereditary endowment with individual
experience, in view of the coming tasks of life.”
Some stress is here laid on the fact that important instincts appear
at a time when the animal does not seriously need them. It seems to
imply the doctrine of what biologists term “acceleration”--which means
the development of an organ or mode of behaviour at an earlier period
in the descendants than that at which it appeared in the ancestors.
Thus the adult fighting or hunting instinct of past generations appears
in the young to-day as a fighting-play or a hunting-play. It is open
to question, however, whether either the instinctive behaviour or
the conscious situation in the one case and the other is so nearly
identical that the playful fight or hunt can fairly be called the
same instinctive procedure as the serious combat or chase. We may
hold, with Professor Groos, that the one is an invaluable preparation
for the other without identifying them as the same behaviour under
different conditions. Indeed the conditions are so different that the
identification seems strained. The question may be left open, however,
without impairing the value of Professor Groos’s suggestion. And we
may divide the preparatory behaviour in what is commonly called play
under two heads: first, general preparation for varied modes of serious
effort in after-life; and secondly, special preparation for particular
forms of this after-effort. Under the first will fall what Professor
Groos terms experimentation and movement play, including what Dr.
Stout, who fully realizes its importance, calls “manipulation”;[130]
under the second, such forms as hunting-play and fighting-play.
Nothing is more characteristic of the young of intelligent animals than
the variety and persistency of their behaviour, their sensitiveness
to stimuli of many different kinds, their restlessness of swiftly
changing attention and response, with occasional pauses of continued
effort in some special direction. Constantly on the alert, they exhibit
in all its shifting phases behaviour which we interpret as indicating
curiosity, inquisitiveness, love of mischief, destructiveness, and so
forth. The facts are so familiar to every observer of young animals
that it is unnecessary to give any detailed illustration. Watch
a kitten in this stage of its development and carefully note its
behaviour during half an hour; the variety of effort, the _rôles_
played by trial, failure, and success, the gain of skill and control
over behaviour, will at once be evident. Or devote an equal space of
time to observing young jays, magpies, or jackdaws. Every projecting
piece of wire or bit of wood in their cage is pulled at this way and
that way, from above, from below, from the side. Now one, then another,
loose object is picked up and dropped, turned over, carried about,
pulled at, hammered at, stuffed into this corner and into that, and
experimented with in all possible ways. Then the wise bird goes to
sleep, and wakes up again only to resume with new zest its persistent
and varied efforts, by which it becomes acquainted with all the details
of its environment. Watch young birds on the wing gaining their
mastery of the air in flight, young seals tumbling in the water, young
foals scampering and kicking up their heels in the meadows. A little
observation, as occasion serves, a little attention to the progress
towards an adequate experience of the meaning of things, towards
more complete control, and increased nicety of behaviour, whether in
reference to their surroundings, or in powers of finished locomotion,
will serve to bring home what Professor Groos includes under
experimentation and movement plays. He regards it all as play, since it
seems to have no serious end, and is just a preparation for the sterner
realities of adult life. And for human beings, whose work is so largely
enforced, the freedom and evident joy of it all suggests the play which
has acquired for us the meaning of relaxation from irksome effort, and
glad abandonment to less constrained modes of behaviour. But in young
animals such play is, after all, the serious business of their time of
life. Its import for their future welfare can scarcely be overestimated.
And its import is in large degree psychological. If we watch a young
puppy or kitten learning gradually to deal effectively with some
difficulty in its extending environment, we see that it puts forth its
efforts at first in a somewhat random and indefinite fashion. It is one
of those animals in which intelligence has been evolved to supersede
and become the more plastic substitute for instinct. The random and
indefinite movements, are in detail reflex responses to stimuli.
But whereas, in a piece of highly elaborated instinctive behaviour,
such reflexes are grouped into a whole which is co-ordinated through
inherited nervous mechanism; in the case of the acts of the puppy
or kitten they have to be further co-ordinated, or more elaborately
grouped, through experience. To act in one way some of the reflexes
have to be checked as redundant and not to the point: to act in another
way other reflexes have to be similarly checked; and in a third way,
yet others. But in all three some of the reflexes are utilized to
different ends. Many conscious situations contain common elements; and
this tends to give unity to the developing experience. But they contain
also elements and groupings which afford that diversity without which
conscious behaviour could not be accommodated to them. So that we
have here the conditions under which what is technically termed “the
concomitant differentiation and integration of experience” can proceed.
And if we speak of the instinct of experimentation we must remember
that what we are dealing with is rather an innate tendency or
instinctive propensity than a definite and relatively clean-cut piece
of instinctive behaviour. It comprises a great number of inherited
reflex acts, and may perhaps be fairly called instinctive in detail.
But experimentation must be regarded rather as the proximate end of
a conative tendency, or group of conative tendencies, whose ultimate
biological end is success in dealing with the environment in the
sterner struggle for existence during adult life. The tendency
is inherited, and therefore falls under the head of instinctive
propensity. But “experimentation” is a group-term under which we
comprise the general drift of varied modes of behaviour, founded indeed
on a congenital basis, but receiving its stamp and character from
what is acquired in the course of the experience it provides. It is
essentially a process whereby the conscious situations acquire what
Dr. Stout terms meaning; and is specially interesting as affording an
example of the way in which intelligence moulds and refashions a number
of disconnected reflex responses. And if, following Professor Groos,
we call it play, it is a little difficult to see how it can be brought
in line with his statement[131] that “the play of youth depends on
the fact that certain instincts, especially useful in preserving
the species, appear before the animal seriously needs them.” Does
experimentation occur before it is needed in the economy of animal
behaviour? And might we not with equal truth say that the play of youth
depends on the fact that certain acquired habits, especially useful in
preserving the species, are gained before the animal seriously needs
them?
Passing now to those forms of play which afford more special
preparation for particular forms of after-effort, under which fall
such types as hunting-play and fighting-play, we may refer the reader
to the copious examples so carefully collected by Professor Groos.
The way in which a kitten pats a cork or a ball, making it roll and
then pouncing upon it, is a characteristic example of animal play.
Valuable as a preparation for dealing successfully with a mouse when
occasion shall arise, this is a specialized form of experimentation;
and it is more obviously in line with the hunting-behaviour of later
life than is general experimentation with any particular modes of
future behaviour. Still it is essentially experimentation, with the
instinctive propensity setting in more definite channels. Its value
lies in the acquisition of skill under circumstances easier than those
presented in the serious chase. So, too, in the case of the playful
tussles of puppies or in that of the kitten, which not only shows
playful fight to its brothers and sisters, but also to its mother,
who responds by holding down the struggling and scratching little
creature. Unquestionably, there is an instinctive propensity; much of
the detail, and some of the grouping, exhibit inherited reflexes due to
special modes of stimulation. No doubt many of these responses occur
in a similar but more emphatic way in a serious fight, and yet we may
hesitate before committing ourselves to the theory of acceleration.
It is at least equally probable that play as preparatory behaviour
differs in biological detail (as it almost certainly does in emotional
attributes) from the earnest of after-life, and that it was evolved
directly as a preparation, as a means of experimentation through which
certain essential modes of skill were acquired,--those animals in
which the preparatory play propensity was not inherited in due force
and requisite amount being worsted in the combats of later life, and
eliminated in the struggle for existence. For, in the preparatory
tussles and squabbles and playful fights of young animals, experience
is gained without serious risk to life and limb.
The modifications of Professor Groos’s biological interpretation of
play which we would suggest are so slight that we may be said to accept
it almost unreservedly. The play of youth, we may urge, depends on
instinctive propensities to experimentation in varied ways, some of
more general and others of more special import; and the value of such
experimentation lies in the fact that it is a means of acquiring,
under circumstances more easy and less dangerous than those of sterner
life, experience and skill for future use. In a word, play depends on
instinctive propensities of value in education.
Passing now to a brief consideration of the feelings and emotions
which we may suppose to accompany play, we may place first those which
characterize, from this point of view, general experimentation. We have
here rapidly varying situations charged with conative impulse, the
satisfaction of which must bring pleasure--the occasional thwarting
of which is probably toned with the opposite--the latter serving,
through contrast, to enhance the satisfaction of ultimate success. Both
pleasure and its antithetical state of feeling are primarily matters of
the conscious situation as a whole, and even in ourselves are difficult
to distribute in analysis. But assuredly no small share of the total
product must be assigned to the successful behaviour which consummates
the conative tendency. Indeed, it is the thwarting of free action which
is the source of much of the discomfort of the young. Unimpeded and
vigorous behaviour also brings with it secondary effects in organic
processes--fuller heart-beat, freer circulation, deeper respiration,
better digestion, firmer muscular tone, and so forth--which have a
marked effect on the conscious situation, and aid in producing that
emotional tone which cannot, perhaps, be named in better terms than
“good spirits” and the joy of existence, so forcibly suggested during
the free play of youth. On the other hand, there is no more piteous
sight than that afforded by the young animal, “cabined, cribbed,
confined,” suffering from _ennui_ and depression--all its organic
processes sluggish and craving to be quickened into the natural vigour
of life, not creeping slowly through the veins, but coursing at full
flood.
In the psychological aspect of play Dr. Groos assigns perhaps the first
place to pleasure in the possession of power, or, as Preyer phrases
it, pleasure in being a cause. We must be careful, however, lest in
using such expressions we seem to imply that animals--even quite young
animals--are capable of entertaining ideas which belong to a much
later stage of mental development. Speaking of “joy in ability or
power,” Professor Groos says,[132] “This feeling is first a conscious
presentation to ourselves of our personality as it is emphasized by
play.... But it is more than this; it is also delight in the control
we have over our bodies and over external objects. Experimentation
in its simple as well as its more complicated forms is, apart from
its effect on physical development, educative in that it helps in the
formation of causal associations.... The young bear that plays in the
water, the dog that tears a paper into scraps, the ape that delights
in producing new and uncouth sounds, the sparrow that exercises its
voice, the parrot that smashes his feeding trough--all experience
the pleasure in energetic activity, which is, at the same time, joy
in being able to accomplish something.” But those who agree with Dr.
Stout, as I do without hesitation, in denying personality (save in a
very embryonic condition) and the conception of causation to animals
in the perceptual stage of mental evolution, though they may find in
Dr. Groos’s contention a central core of truth, will be unable fully
to accept his manner of presenting it. “Any single train of perceptual
activity,”[133] says Dr. Stout, “has internal unity and continuity.
But where conscious life is mainly perceptual, the several trains of
activity are relatively isolated and disconnected with each other. They
do not unite to form a continuous system, such as is implied in the
conception of a person. We must deny personality to animals.” To this
I would merely add that, even where perceptual continuity in animals
reaches its maximum, it is not reflectively grasped as a whole, and the
ideal construction of the personal ego is not conceived as antithetical
to the impersonal world of objects. With what Dr. Stout says about
causality I am in complete agreement. “We must notice,”[134] he urges,
“the essential difference which separates the merely perceptual
category from that of ideational and conceptual thought. The perceptual
category is always purely and immediately practical in its operation.
It is a constitutive form of thought only because it is a constitutive
form of action. The question ‘Why?’ has no existence for the merely
perceptual consciousness. It does not and cannot inquire how it is
that a certain cause produces a certain effect. It does not and cannot
endeavour to _explain_, to analyze conditions so as to present a cause
as a _reason_. It does not compare different modes of procedure or
different groups of circumstances, so as to contradistinguish the
precise points in which they agree from those in which they disagree,
and in this way to explain why a certain result should follow in one
case and a different result in another case. Causality in this sense
can only exist for the ideational consciousness, and the development
of the ideational consciousness in this direction is a development of
conceptual thinking--of generalization.”
Wherein, then, lies the central core of truth in Professor Groos’s
contention? In the satisfaction that arises from the success of any
conative activity. We see that the animal striving and doing falls
within our conception of a cause, in the scientific sense of the
word,--a relatively constant and continuous antecedent of diverse
sequent effects. We infer that pleasure accompanies the satisfaction of
the multifarious conative impulses. The pleasure is the animal’s; the
conception of causality and of self as a continuous person, still the
same amid diversity of conscious situations, is ours. If we bear this
in mind there can be no objection to our attributing to animals joy
in ability or power. It is the pleasure derived from that successful
conation whereby animals fall into the category of causes within the
scheme of our rational thought.
In fighting-play and hunting-play, too, there arise in more specific
forms the pleasures of successful conation with the antithetical
feelings accompanying thwarted conation. And these are distinguished
from earnest, partly because the companion or the inanimate substitute
for prey is the centre of a different situation from that afforded by
an enemy or the natural object of the chase; partly by the absence of
certain insistent emotional states which characterize earnest and the
serious business of life. In fighting, this is anger. And we often see
the tendency of this to arise in the midst of fighting-plays, and at
once say that it becomes serious and passes into fighting in earnest.
Indeed, some tinge of earnest, with its fuller emotional tone, forms
part of the preparation for future life, and so far falls within the
definition Professor Groos gives of play. From which we may see that
play is not easily marked off from other forms of conation.
Brief reference to the element of “make-believe,” which Dr. Groos
assigns to the higher forms of play, may be reserved for our fourth
section; and some further discussion of its psychological aspect to the
concluding chapter.
III.--COURTSHIP
We have seen that Professor Groos regards play as the practice and
preparation for the serious business of animal life. Founded on
instinctive tendencies, it has its biological value in the acquisition
of practical acquaintance with the environment, and of skill in
dealing with it effectually. It is an education in behaviour of the
utmost service in view of the struggle for existence. It is full of
the pleasure derived from the satisfaction of innate impulse, the
success of conative effort, and the diffused sense of well-being which
accompanies a life of action, free and unrestrained. This freedom and
gladness lead us to call it play; but we must not draw the inference
that the playful animal knows that it is playing, or forms any
conception of the antithesis between work and play, which is a product
of late development.
In laying stress on the biological value of certain modes of behaviour
which we thus call play, a value which lies in the practice and
preparation they afford for life’s more earnest work, Professor Groos
deserves our hearty thanks. Nor need our thanks be less hearty if we
find that he has in some degree been anticipated by Darwin; for he has
elaborated with systematic care what Darwin suggested incidentally.
“Nothing is more common,” said Darwin,[135] “than for animals to take
pleasure in practising whatever instinct they follow at other times for
some real good. How often do we see birds which fly easily, gliding and
sailing through the air, obviously for pleasure! The cat plays with the
captured mouse, and the cormorant with the captured fish. The weaver
bird, when confined in a cage, amuses itself by neatly weaving blades
of grass between the wires of its cage. Birds which habitually fight
during the breeding season are generally ready to fight at all times;
and the males of the capercailzie sometimes hold their _Balzen_, or
_leks_, at the usual place of assemblage during the autumn. Hence it is
not at all surprising that male birds should continue singing for their
own amusement after the season of courtship is over.”
In the behaviour of courtship we have what is essentially part of the
serious business of animal life. And in including it under the heading
of “Love Plays,” Professor Groos may seem to be forgetful of his own
definition of play. He is, however, too clear a thinker not to see, and
too honest an exponent not to say, that much of the emotional behaviour
commonly regarded as courtship falls outside his main thesis “in being,
strictly speaking, not mere practice preparatory to the exercise of
an instinct, but rather its actual working.”[136] But behaviour of
a somewhat similar kind is seen in young animals before the time of
mating has arrived, and is exemplified both in young and adults under
circumstances different from those which distinguish what we may term
the pairing situation. This, at any rate, may be regarded as a form of
experimentation and practice in the arts of courtship. On different
grounds does Professor Groos attempt to justify the inclusion of actual
courtship under the head of play. For it may also, he thinks, even at
the time of its serious exercise, be to some extent artful, involving
“make believe,” and therefore playful in a somewhat different and more
subtle sense; but a brief reference to “make believe” we may reserve
for our next section.
There can be no question that special modes of behaviour often
characterize the pairing situation, and that these not only exemplify
an instinctive tendency, but from their constancy and relative
definiteness constitute types of instinctive behaviour. They would
form parts of any definition of a species founded not on structure but
on behaviour. And if animals have feelings and emotions at all--if
they are not Cartesian automata, which merely _seem_ to be guided in
their actions by consciousness--there can be but little question that
the behaviour which characterizes the sexual situation is unusually
charged with feeling-tone, and accompanied by all those adjuncts
which distinguish an emotional state, broadly considered. This matter
is of no little importance in our interpretation of the phenomena
described as courtship. Do the accompanying feeling-tone and the state
of emotional exaltation influence the behaviour, or would it run a
similar course in the absence of any such accompaniments? If, as we
can scarcely doubt, the consciousness attending the situation does
profoundly influence the behaviour, the further question arises--Is
this influence mainly the result of the presence and behaviour of an
individual of the opposite sex? To this, again, we must answer that,
so far as we can learn by observation, behaviour unquestionably is
determined by such influence in the serious business of courtship. And
then the further question arises--Is it a matter of indifference what
the appearance and behaviour of the individual of the opposite sex may
be? Are A., B., C., and the rest of the male alphabet, precisely alike
in stimulating in a similar manner, and to a similar degree, the sexual
impulse of the female? If we admit any differential influence, and if
this influence takes effect in the sexual union to which courtship is
preparatory, we so far admit the efficacy of that which Darwin termed
sexual selection.
Let us, however, before proceeding with general considerations, present
one or two examples of the facts which observation has furnished with
regard to specialized modes of behaviour at the time of pairing.
Speaking of American night-hawks, Audubon says, “Their manner of flying
is a good deal modified at the love season. The male employs the most
wonderful evolutions to give expression to his feelings, conducting
them with the greatest rapidity and agility in sight of his chosen
mate, or to put to rout a rival. He often rises to a height of a
hundred metres and more, and his cries become louder and louder as he
mounts; then he plunges downward with a slanting direction, with wings
half open, and so rapidly that it seems inevitable that he should be
dashed to pieces on the ground. But at the right moment, sometimes when
only a few inches from it, he spreads his wings and tail, and, turning,
soars upward once more.”[137] Mr. Strange, quoted by Darwin[138] says
of the satin bower-bird, “at times the male will chase the female all
over the aviary, then go to the bower, pick up a gay feather or a large
leaf, utter a curious kind of note, set all his feathers erect, run
round the bower and become so excited that his eyes appear ready to
start from his head; he continues opening first one wing, and then the
other, uttering a low, whistling note, and, like the domestic cock,
seems to be picking up something from the ground, until at last the
female goes quietly towards him.”
Darwin describes how, in the Argus pheasant,[139] “the immensely
developed secondary wing-feathers are confined to the male, and each
is ornamented with a row of from twenty to twenty-three ocelli, each
above an inch in diameter. These beautiful ornaments are hidden until
the male shows himself before the female. He then erects his tail, and
expands his wing-feathers into a great, almost upright, circular fan or
shield, which is carried in front of the body. The ocelli are so shaded
that, as the Duke of Argyll remarks, they stand out like balls lying
loosely within sockets. But when I looked at a specimen in the British
Museum, which is mounted with the wings expanded and trailing downward,
I was,” adds Darwin, “greatly disappointed, for the ocelli appeared
flat or even concave. Mr. Gould, however, soon made the case clear to
me, for he held the feathers erect, in the position in which they would
naturally be displayed, and now, from the light shining on them from
above, each ocellus at once resembled the ornament called a ball and
socket.” The primary wing-feathers are scarcely, if at all, inferior in
beauty to the secondaries, though the markings are quite different, the
chief ornament being a space parallel to the dark-blue shaft, which in
outline forms a perfect second feather lying within the true feather.
“Now the secondary and primary wing-feathers are not at all displayed,
and the ball and socket ornaments are not exhibited in full perfection,
until the male assumes the attitude of courtship.”
It is unnecessary to describe the song of birds which is generally, but
not always, at its best during the period of pairing. Bechstein, who
kept birds during his whole life, and studied them with care, asserts
that “the female canary always chooses the best singer, and that in a
state of nature the female finch selects that male out of a hundred
whose notes please her most.”[140]
Thus we are led back to sexual selection. If we are satisfied that the
males of certain species do as a matter of fact behave in specific
and distinguishable ways at the breeding season, and in presence of
their would-be mates, the question is, What, if any, is the biological
value of such behaviour? What has fostered and guided it in the course
of its evolution? From the case of the Argus pheasant, which is only
a sample of the large class of cases in which the male has special
adornments, we see that the behaviour has often direct relation to the
display of such plumage, or, in some apes, of coloured surfaces, so
that behaviour and ornamentation must be taken together. The essence
of Darwin’s contention is, that the adornments and behaviour give rise
to a situation through which the female is stimulated or excited to
accept the male; that the male in which they are best developed gives
rise to the most effective situation, produces most excitement, and
therefore has the best chance of acceptance, being “unconsciously
preferred;”[141] and that he thus begets offspring which inherit his
adornments and modes of behaviour, such inheritance being, however,
confined to the males. Thus sexual selection takes effect through
preferential mating, whereby certain hereditary traits are transmitted
and become racial characteristics. And this is brought about through an
appeal to consciousness, and seems to involve choice--generally that of
the female.
Now, as I have elsewhere urged,[142] the hypothesis of sexual selection
has often been placed in a false light by the introduction of the
unnecessary supposition that the hen bird, for example, must possess a
standard or ideal of æsthetic value, and that she selects that singer
which comes nearest to her conception of what a songster should be.
Darwin occasionally expressed himself unguardedly in the matter; he
says, for example, that the female appreciates the display of the
male, and places to her credit a taste for the beautiful.[143] But he
also distinctly states that “it is not probable that she consciously
deliberates; she is most excited or attracted by the most beautiful, or
melodious, or gallant males.”[144] This is all that is really necessary
for the theory of sexual selection. The hen accepts that mate which by
his song or otherwise excites in sufficient degree the pairing impulse;
if others fail to excite this impulse, they are not accepted. Even
Mr. A. R. Wallace, who rejects the theory save in a very subordinate
form, says[145] that “it may be admitted, as highly probable, that the
female is pleased or excited by the display,” and speaks[146] of a
possible choice of “the most vigorous, defiant, and mettlesome male,”
giving, moreover,[147] several telling examples of preferential mating.
Stripped of all its unnecessary æsthetic surplusage, at any rate so far
as this implies an æsthetic ideal, or æsthetic motive, the hypothesis
of sexual selection suggests that the accepted mate is the one which
adequately evokes the pairing impulse.