through the ages will cure myself or others of carelessness in
adopting ideas, or of unseemly heat in defending them just because we
have adopted them. But if the considerations which I propose to recall
are really incorporated into our thinking and are permitted to
establish our general outlook on human affairs, they will do much to
relieve the imaginary obligation we feel in regard to traditional
sentiments and ideals. Few of us are capable of engaging in creative
thought, but some of us can at least come to distinguish it from other
and inferior kinds of thought and accord to it the esteem that it
merits as the greatest treasure of the past and the only hope of the
future.
NOTES.
[2] The poet-clergyman, John Donne, who lived in the time of James I,
has given a beautifully honest picture of the doings of a saint's
mind: "I throw myself down in my chamber and call in and invite God
and His angels thither, and when they are there I neglect God and His
angels for the noise of a fly, for the rattling of a coach, for the
whining of a door. I talk on in the same posture of praying, eyes
lifted up, knees bowed down, as though I prayed to God, and if God or
His angels should ask me when I thought last of God in that prayer I
cannot tell. Sometimes I find that I had forgot what I was about, but
when I began to forget it I cannot tell. A memory of yesterday's
pleasures, a fear of to-morrow's dangers, a straw under my knee, a
noise in mine ear, a light in mine eye, an anything, a nothing, a
fancy, a chimera in my brain troubles me in my prayer."--Quoted by
ROBERT LYND, _The Art of Letters_, pp. 46-47.
[3] Instincts of the Herd, p. 44.
[4] Diogenes Laertius, book v.
[5] _Reconstruction in Philosophy_.
[6] _The Place of Science in Modern Civilization._
[7] _Traité de Sociologie Générale, passim._ The author's term
"_derivations_" seems to be his precise way of expressing what we have
called the "good" reasons, and his "_residus_" correspond to the
"real" reasons. He well says, _"L'homme éprouve le besoin de
raisonner, et en outre d'étendre un voile sur ses instincts et sur ses
sentiments"_--hence, rationalization. (P. 788.) His aim is to reduce
sociology to the "real" reasons. (P. 791.)
[8] Recently a re-examination of creative thought has begun as a
result of new knowledge which discredits many of the notions formerly
held about "reason". See, for example, _Creative Intelligence_, by a
group of American philosophic thinkers; John Dewey, _Essays in
Experimental Logic_ (both pretty hard books); and Veblen, _The Place
of Science in Modern Civilization_. Easier than these and very
stimulating are Dewey, _Reconstruction in Philosophy_, and Woodworth,
_Dynamic Psychology_.
[9] Trotter, _op. cit._, p. 45. The first part of this little volume
is excellent.
* * * * *
III
Nous étions déjà si vieux quand nous sommes nés.--ANATOLE FRANCE.
Simia quam similis, turpissima bestia, nobis?--ENNIUS.
Tous les homines se ressemblent si fort qu'il n'y a point de peuple
dont les sottises ne nous doivent faire trembler.--FONTENELLE.
The savage is very close to us indeed, both in his physical and
mental make-up and in the forms of his social life. Tribal society
is virtually delayed civilization, and the savages are a sort of
contemporaneous ancestry.--WILLIAM I. THOMAS.
6. OUR ANIMAL HERITAGE. THE NATURE OF CIVILIZATION
There are four historical layers underlying the minds of civilized
men--the animal mind, the child mind, the savage mind, and the
traditional civilized mind. We are all animals and never can cease to
be; we were all children at our most impressionable age and can never
get over the effects of that; our human ancestors have lived in
savagery during practically the whole existence of the race, say five
hundred thousand or a million years, and the primitive human mind is
ever with us; finally, we are all born into an elaborate civilization,
the constant pressure of which we can by no means escape.
Each of these underlying minds has its special sciences and
appropriate literatures. The new discipline of animal or comparative
psychology deals with the first; genetic and analytical psychology
with the second;[10] anthropology, ethnology, and comparative religion
with the third; and the history of philosophy, science, theology, and
literature with the fourth.
We may grow beyond these underlying minds and in the light of new
knowledge we may criticize their findings and even persuade ourselves
that we have successfully transcended them. But if we are fair with
ourselves we shall find that their hold on us is really inexorable. We
can only transcend them artificially and precariously and in certain
highly favorable conditions. Depression, anger, fear, or ordinary
irritation will speedily prove the insecurity of any structure that we
manage to rear on our fourfold foundation. Such fundamental and vital
preoccupations as religion, love, war, and the chase stir impulses
that lie far back in human history and which effectually repudiate the
cavilings of ratiocination.
In all our reveries and speculations, even the most exacting,
sophisticated, and disillusioned, we have three unsympathetic
companions sticking closer than a brother and looking on with jealous
impatience--our wild apish progenitor, a playful or peevish baby, and
a savage. We may at any moment find ourselves overtaken with a warm
sense of camaraderie for any or all of these ancient pals of ours, and
experience infinite relief in once more disporting ourselves with them
as of yore. Some of us have in addition a Greek philosopher or man of
letters in us; some a neoplatonic mystic, some a mediaeval monk, all
of whom have learned to make terms with their older playfellows.
Before retracing the way in which the mind as we now find it in
so-called intelligent people has been accumulated, we may take time to
try to see what civilization is and why man alone can become
civilized. For the mind has expanded _pari passu_ with civilization,
and without civilization there would, I venture to conjecture, have
been no human mind in the commonly accepted sense of that term.
It is now generally conceded by all who have studied the varied
evidence and have freed themselves from ancient prejudice that, if we
traced back our human lineage far enough we should come to a point
where our human ancestors had no civilization and lived a speechless,
naked, houseless, fireless, and toolless life, similar to that of the
existing primates with which we are zoologically closely connected.
This is one of the most fully substantiated of historical facts and
one which we can never neglect in our attempts to explain man as he
now is. We are all descended from the lower animals. We are
furthermore still animals with not only an animal body, but with an
animal mind. And this animal body and animal mind are the original
foundations on which even the most subtle and refined intellectual
life must perforce rest.
We are ready to classify certain of our most essential desires as
brutish--hunger and thirst, the urgence of sleep, and especially
sexual longing. We know of blind animal rage, of striking, biting,
scratching, howling, and snarling, of irrational fears and ignominious
flight. We share our senses with the higher animals, have eyes and
ears, noses and tongues much like theirs; heart, lungs, and other
viscera, and four limbs. They have brains which stand them in good
stead, although their heads are not so good as ours. But when one
speaks of the animal mind he should think of still other resemblances
between the brute and man.
All animals learn--even the most humble among them may gain something
from experience. All the higher animals exhibit curiosity under
certain circumstances, and it is this impulse which underlies all
human science.
Moreover, some of the higher animals, especially the apes and monkeys,
are much given to fumbling and groping. They are restless, easily
bored, and spontaneously experimental. They therefore make discoveries
quite unconsciously, and form new and sometimes profitable habits of
action. If, by mere fumbling, a monkey, cat, or dog happens on a way
to secure food, this remunerative line of conduct will "occur" to the
creature when he feels hungry. This is what Thorndike has named
learning by "trial and error". It might better be called "fumbling and
success", for it is the success that establishes the association. The
innate curiosity which man shares with his uncivilized zoological
relatives is the native impulse that leads to scientific and
philosophical speculation, and the original fumbling of a restless ape
has become the ordered experimental investigation of modern times. A
creature which lacked curiosity and had no tendency to fumble could
never have developed civilization and human intelligence.[l0]
But why did man alone of all the animals become civilized? The reason
is not far to seek, although it has often escaped writers[11] on the
subject. All animals gain a certain wisdom with age and experience,
but the experience of one ape does not profit another. Learning among
animals below man is _individual_, not _co-operative_ and _cumulative_.
One dog does not seem to learn from another, nor one ape from another,
in spite of the widespread misapprehension in this regard. Many
experiments have been patiently tried in recent years and it seems to
be pretty well established that the monkey learns by _monkeying_, but
that he rarely or never appears to _ape_. He does not learn by imitation,
because he does not imitate. There may be minor exceptions, but the fact
that apes never, in spite of a bodily equipment nearly human, become in
the least degree civilized, would seem to show that the accumulation of
knowledge or dexterity through imitation is impossible for them.
Man has the various sense organs of the apes and their extraordinary
power of manipulation. To these essentials he adds a brain
sufficiently more elaborate than that of the chimpanzee to enable him
to do something that the ape cannot do--namely, "see" things clearly
enough to form associations through imitation.[12]
We can imagine the manner in which man unwittingly took one of his
momentous and unprecedented first steps in civilization. Some restless
primeval savage might find himself scraping the bark off a stick with
the edge of a stone or shell and finally cutting into the wood and
bringing the thing to a point. He might then spy an animal and, quite
without reasoning, impulsively make a thrust with the stick and
discover that it pierced the creature. If he could hold these various
elements in the situation, sharpening the stick and using it, he would
have made an invention--a rude spear. A particularly acute bystander
might comprehend and imitate the process. If others did so and the
habit was established in the tribe so that it became traditional and
was transmitted to following generations, the process of civilization
would have begun--also the process of human learning, which is
noticing distinctions and analyzing situations. This simple process of
sharpening a stick would involve the "concepts", as the philosophers
say, of a tool and bark and a point and an artificial weapon. But ages
and ages were to elapse before the botanist would distinguish the
various layers which constitute the bark, or successive experimenters
come upon the idea of a bayonet to take the place of the spear.
Of late, considerable attention has been given to the question of
man's original, uneducated, animal nature; what resources has he as a
mere creature independent of any training that results from being
brought up in some sort of civilized community? The question is
difficult to formulate satisfactorily and still more difficult to
answer. But without attempting to list man's supposed natural
"instincts" we must assume that civilization is built up on his
original propensities and impulses, whatever they may be. These
probably remain nearly the same from generation to generation. The
idea formerly held that the civilization of our ancestors affects our
original nature is almost completely surrendered. _We are all born
wholly uncivilized._
If a group of infants from the "best" families of to-day could be
reared by apes they would find themselves with no civilization. How
long it would take them and their children to gain what now passes for
even a low savage culture it is impossible to say. The whole arduous
task would have to be performed anew and it might not take place at
all, unless conditions were favorable, for man is not naturally a
"progressive" animal. He shares the tendency of all other animal
tribes just to pull through and reproduce his kind.
Most of us do not stop to think of the conditions of an animal
existence. When we read the descriptions of our nature as given by
William James, McDougall, or even Thorndike, with all his reservations,
we get a rather impressive idea of our possibilities, not a picture of
uncivilized life. When we go camping we think that we are deserting
civilization, forgetting the sophisticated guides, and the pack horses
laden with the most artificial luxuries, many of which would not have
been available even a hundred years ago. We lead the simple life with
Swedish matches, Brazilian coffee, Canadian bacon, California canned
peaches, magazine rifles, jointed fishing rods, and electric
flashlights. We are elaborately clothed and can discuss Bergson's
views or D. H. Lawrence's last story. We naïvely imagine we are
returning to "primitive" conditions because we are living out of doors
or sheltered in a less solid abode than usual, and have to go to
the brook for water.
But man's original estate was, as Hobbes reflected, "poor, nasty,
brutish, and short". To live like an animal is to rely upon one's own
quite naked equipment and efforts, and not to mind getting wet or cold
or scratching one's bare legs in the underbrush. One would have to eat
his roots and seeds quite raw, and gnaw a bird as a cat does. To get
the feel of uncivilized life, let us recall how savages with the
comparatively advanced degree of culture reached by our native Indian
tribes may fall to when really hungry. In the journal of the Lewis and
Clark expedition there is an account of the killing of a deer by the
white men. Hearing of this, the Shoshones raced wildly to the spot
where the warm and bloody entrails had been thrown out
... and ran tumbling over one another like famished dogs. Each tore
away whatever part he could, and instantly began to eat it; some
had the liver, some the kidneys, and, in short, no part on which we
are accustomed to look with disgust escaped them. One of them who
had seized about nine feet of the entrails was chewing at one end,
while with his hand he was diligently clearing his way by
discharging the contents at the other.
Another striking example of simple animal procedure is given in the
same journal:
One of the women, who had been leading two of our pack horses,
halted at a rivulet about a mile behind and sent on the two horses
by a female friend. On inquiring of Cameahwait the cause of her
detention, he answered, with great apparent unconcern, that she
had just stopped to lie in, but would soon overtake us. In fact,
we were astonished to see her in about an hour's time come on with
her new-born infant, and pass us on her way to the camp, seemingly
in perfect health.
This is the simple life and it was the life of our ancestors before
civilization began. It had been the best kind of life possible in all
the preceding aeons of the world's history. Without civilization it
would be the existence to which all human beings now on the earth
would forthwith revert. It is man's starting point.[13]
But what about the mind? What was going on in the heads of our
untutored forbears? We are apt to fall into the error of supposing
that because they had human brains they must have had somewhat the
same kinds of ideas and made the same kind of judgments that we do.
Even distinguished philosophers like Descartes and Rousseau made this
mistake. This assumption will not stand inspection. To reach back in
imagination to the really primitive mind we should of course have to
deduct at the start all the knowledge and all the discriminations and
classifications that have grown up as a result of our education and
our immersion from infancy in a highly artificial environment. Then we
must recollect that our primitive ancestor had no words with which to
name and tell about things. He was speechless. His fellows knew no
more than he did. Each one learned during his lifetime according to
his capacity, but no instruction in our sense of the word was
possible. What he saw and heard was not what we should have called
seeing and hearing. He responded to situations in a blind and
impulsive manner, with no clear idea of them. In short, he must have
_thought_ much as a wolf or bear does, just as he _lived_ much like
them.
We must be on our guard against accepting the prevalent notions of
even the animal intellect. An owl may look quite as wise as a judge. A
monkey, canary, or collie has bright eyes and seems far more alert
than most of the people we see on the street car. A squirrel in the
park appears to be looking at us much as we look at him. But he cannot
be seeing the same things that we do. We can be scarcely more to him
than a vague suggestion of peanuts. And even the peanut has little of
the meaning for him that it has for us. A dog perceives a motor-car
and may be induced to ride in it, but his idea of it would not differ
from that of an ancient carryall, except, mayhap, in an appreciative
distinction between the odor of gasoline and that of the stable. Only
in times of sickness, drunkenness, or great excitement can we get some
hint in ourselves of the impulsive responses in animals free from
human sophistication and analysis.
Locke thought that we first got simple ideas and then combined them
into more complex conceptions and finally into generalizations or
abstract ideas. But this is not the way that man's knowledge arose. He
started with mere impressions of general situations, and gradually by
his ability to handle things he came upon distinctions, which in time
he made clearer by attaching names to them.
We keep repeating this process when we learn about anything. The
typewriter is at first a mere mass impression, and only gradually and
imperfectly do most of us distinguish certain of its parts; only the
men who made it are likely to realize its full complexity by noting
and assigning names to all the levers, wheels, gears, bearings,
controls, and adjustments. John Stuart Mill thought that the chief
function of the mind was making inferences. But making distinctions is
equally fundamental--seeing that there are really many things where
only one was at first apparent. This process of analysis has been
man's supreme accomplishment. This is what has made his mind grow.
The human mind has then been built up through hundreds of thousands of
years by gradual accretions and laborious accumulations. Man started
at a cultural zero and had to find out everything for himself; or
rather a very small number of peculiarly restless and adventurous
spirits did the work. The great mass of humanity has never had
anything to do with the increase of intelligence except to act as its
medium of transfusion and perpetuation. Creative intelligence is
confined to the very few, but the many can thoughtlessly avail
themselves of the more obvious achievements of those who are
exceptionally highly endowed.
Even an ape will fit himself into a civilized environment. A
chimpanzee can be taught to relish bicycles, roller skates, and
cigarettes which he could never have devised, cannot understand, and
could not reproduce. Even so with mankind. Most of us could not have
devised, do not understand, and consequently could not reproduce any
of the everyday conveniences and luxuries which surround us. Few of us
could make an electric light, or write a good novel to read by it, or
paint a picture for it to shine upon.
Professor Giddings has recently asked the question, Why has there been
any history?[14] Why, indeed, considering that the "good" and
"respectable" is usually synonymous with the ancient routine, and the
old have always been there to repress the young? Such heavy words of
approval as "venerable", "sanctified", and "revered" all suggest great
age rather than fresh discoveries. As it was in the beginning, is now
and ever shall be, is our protest against being disturbed, forced to
think or to change our habits. So history, _namely change_, has been
mainly due to a small number of "seers",--really gropers and
monkeyers--whose native curiosity outran that of their fellows and led
them to escape here and there from the sanctified blindness of their
time.
The seer is simply an example of a _variation_ biologically, such as
occurs in all species of living things, both animal and vegetable. But
the unusually large roses in our gardens, the swifter horses of the
herd, and the cleverer wolf in the pack have no means of influencing
their fellows as a result of their peculiar superiority. Their
offspring has some chance of sharing to some degree this pre-eminence,
but otherwise things will go on as before. Whereas the singular
variation represented by a St. Francis, a Dante, a Voltaire, or a
Darwin may permanently, and for ages to follow change somewhat the
character and ambitions of innumerable inferior members of the species
who could by no possibility have originated anything for themselves,
but who can, nevertheless, suffer some modification as a result of the
teachings of others. This illustrates the magical and unique workings
of culture and creative intelligence in mankind.[15]
We have no means of knowing when or where the first contribution to
civilization was made, and with it a start on the arduous building of
the mind. There is some reason to think that the men who first
transcended the animal mind were of inferior mental capacity to our
own, but even if man, emerging from his animal estate, had had on the
average quite as good a brain as those with which we are now familiar,
I suspect that the extraordinarily slow and hazardous process of
accumulating modern civilization would not have been greatly
shortened. Mankind is lethargic, easily pledged to routine, timid,
suspicious of innovation. That is his nature. He is only artificially,
partially, and very recently "progressive". He has spent almost his
whole existence as a savage hunter, and in that state of ignorance he
illustrated on a magnificent scale all the inherent weaknesses of the
human mind.
7. OUR SAVAGE MIND
Should we arrange our present beliefs and opinions on the basis of
their age, we should find that some of them were very, very old, going
back to primitive man; others were derived from the Greeks; many more
of them would prove to come directly from the Middle Ages; while
certain others in our stock were unknown until natural science began
to develop in a new form about three hundred years ago. The idea that
man has a soul or double which survives the death of the body is very
ancient indeed and is accepted by most savages. Such confidence as we
have in the liberal arts, metaphysics, and formal logic goes back to
the Greek thinkers; our religious ideas and our standards of sexual
conduct are predominantly mediaeval in their presuppositions; our
notions of electricity and disease germs are, of course, recent in
origin, the result of painful and prolonged research which involved
the rejection of a vast number of older notions sanctioned by
immemorial acceptance.
_In general, those ideas which are still almost universally accepted
in regard to man's nature, his proper conduct, and his relations to
God and his fellows are far more ancient and far less critical than
those which have to do with the movement of the stars, the
stratification of the rocks and the life of plants and animals_.