Part 10

Edward Von Hartmann, the eloquent prophet of the unconscious intelligence of nature, teaches us that such intelligence is the attribute of the very animals and plants themselves.

But can we limit the manifestations of intelligence and quasi-instinctive purpose to the organic world? By no means. The phenomena of crystallisation, the repair in due form of the broken angle of a crystal, the inherent tendencies of chemical substances to combine in definite proportions, and other laws of the inorganic world, speak to us of unconscious intelligence and volition latent in it also.

A perception of this truth has led to the conception of the universal presence of true intelligence, as it were in a rudimentary form, throughout the whole material universe—the universal diffusion of what the late Professor Clifford called “mind-stuff” in every particle of matter.

Such a belief can, however, be entertained only by those who neglect to note the differences of objects presented to the senses, attending solely to their resemblances, and describing them by inadequate and misleading terms. The habit of perverting language in this manner, has been lately well spoken of as using intellectual false coin. By such an abuse of language and disregard of points of unlikeness, all diversities may easily be reduced to identity. Against such abuse the scientific biologist must energetically protest. The expression “life” refers to definite phenomena which are not found but in animals and plants. The crystal is not really alive, because it does not undergo the cycle of changes characteristic of life. It does not sustain itself by alimentation, reproduce its kind, and die. Anyone choosing to stretch terms may say that molecules of inorganic matter live, because molecules exist. But in that case we shall have to create a new term to denote what we now call life. We might as well say a lamp-post “feels” because we can make an impression on it, or that crystals “calculate” because of their geometrical proportions, or that oxygen “lusts” after that which it rusts. As the late Mr. G. H. Lewes has said: “We deny that a crystal has sensibility; we deny it on the ground that crystals exhibit no more signs of sensibility than plants exhibit signs of civilisation, and we deny it on the ground that among the conditions of sensibility there are some positively known to us, and these are demonstrably absent from the crystal. We have full evidence that it is only special kinds of molecular change that exhibit the special signs called sentient; we have as good evidence that only special aggregations of molecules are vital, and that sensibility never appears except in a living organism, disappearing with the vital activities, as we know that banks and trades-unions are specifically human institutions.”

The considerations which are here applied to vital activity, may be paralleled by others applied to intelligence. They will show us that however profoundly rational may be that world which is commonly spoken of as irrational, yet that its rationality is not truly the attribute of the various animals which perform such admirably calculated actions, but truly belongs to what is the ultimate and common cause of them all, and to that only.

There is, indeed, a logic in mere “feeling,” there is a logic even in insentient nature; but that logic is not the logic of the crystal nor of the brute; its true position must be sought elsewhere. It is _in_ them, but it is not _of_ them.

However, let us patiently consider a little this hypothesis of an innate, _unconscious_ intelligence as the cause of the various strictly, or analogically, instinctive actions of animals.

It is in the first place plain that no intelligence could exist so as to adjust “means” to “ends,” except by the aid of memory; and “memory” has therefore been freely attributed even to the lower animals. Let us see, then, what the term “memory” really denotes. Now we cannot be said to _remember_ anything unless we are conscious that what is again made present to our mind has been present to our mind before. An image might recur to our imagination a hundred times, but if at each recurrence it was for us something altogether new and unconnected with the past, we could not be said to remember it. It would rather be an example of extreme “forgetfulness” than of “memory.” In “memory,” then, there are and must be two distinct elements. The first is the reproduction before the mind of what has been before the mind previously, and the second element is the recognition of what is so reproduced as being connected with the past.

There is yet a further distinction which may be drawn between acts of true recollection.

We are all aware that every now and then we direct our attention to try and recall something which we know we have for the moment forgotten, and which we instantly recognise when we have recalled it. But besides this voluntary memory we are sometimes startled by the flashing into consciousness of something we had forgotten, and which we were so far from trying to recollect that we were thinking of something entirely different.

There are, then, two kinds of true memory—one in which the will intervenes, and which may be spoken of as _recollection_, and the other in which it does not, and which may be termed _reminiscence_. Neither of these can exist in a creature destitute of true self-consciousness. There are, however, two other kinds of repeated action which take place even in ourselves, and which should be carefully distinguished.

The first of these are practically automatic actions, which are repeated unconsciously after having been learned, as in walking, reading, speaking, and often in playing some musical instrument. In a certain vague and improper sense we may be said—having learned how to do these things—to _recollect_ how to do them; but unless the mind recognises the past in the present while performing them they are not instances of memory, but merely a form of habit in which consciousness may or may not intervene.

The second class of repeated actions just referred to are, on the other hand, those in which consciousness cannot be made to intervene, and are mere acts of organic habit. Thus a man wrecked on an island inhabited by savages, and long dwelling there, may at first have the due action of his digestive organs impeded by the unwonted food on which he may have to live. After a little while, however, the evil diminishes, and in time his organism may have “learnt” how to correspond perfectly with the new conditions. Then with each fresh meal the alimentary canal and glands must practically “recognise” a return of the recently obtained experience, and repeat its freshly acquired power of healthy response thereto. Can “memory” be properly predicated of such actions of the alimentary glands? It can be so predicated only by a perversion of language. It is not memory, because not only is it divorced from consciousness as it occurs, but it cannot anyhow be made present to consciousness. Again, a boy at school has had a kick at football, which has left a deep scar on his leg. That boy, now become an old man, still bears the same scar, though all his tissues have been again and again transformed in the course of seventy years. Can the constant reproduction of the mark, in any reasonable sense, be said to be an act of, or due to, memory? Evidently it cannot, and neither can it be reasonably predicated of any of the actions of plants or of the lowest animals.

As, then, “memory” cannot be predicated, except by an abuse of language, of the lower forms of life, it would appear that neither intelligence nor rationality can truly exist in them, so as to preside over all those actions of nutrition, repair, reproduction, and instinct which we have examined and distinguished.

Nevertheless, Hartmann and his followers do not on this account hesitate to ascribe true intelligence to unconscious nature, and though such ascription may seem too absurd to deserve serious consideration, it would nevertheless be a great mistake to despise such opinions. For, as Mr. Lewes truly says,[34] “As there are many truths which cease to be appreciated because they are never disputed,” so there are many errors which are best exposed by allowing them to run to a head. Mr. Butler, who carries this hypothesis of unconscious intelligence to its last consequences, asks,[35] “What is to know how to do a thing?” His answer is, “Surely, to do it.” And he represents how, when many things have been perfectly learnt, they may be performed unconsciously. In a very amusing chapter on “Conscious and unconscious knowers,” he says, “Whenever we find people knowing they know this or that ... they do not yet know it perfectly.” In another place he says,[36] “We say of the chicken that it knows how to run about as soon as it is hatched ... but had it no knowledge before it was hatched? It grew eyes, feathers, and bones; yet we say it knew nothing about all this.... What, then, does it know? Whatever it knows so well as to be unconscious of knowing it. Knowledge dwells on the confines of uncertainty. When we are very certain we do not know that we know. When we will very strongly, we do not know that we will.”

[34] _Problems of Life and Mind_, ii. iii. iv. of Third Series, p. 85.

[35] _Life and Habit_, p. 55.

[36] _Unconscious Memory_, p. 30.

Now the fact is that there is great ambiguity in the use of the word _know_. Just as before with the term memory, so also here, certain distinctions must be drawn if we would think coherently.

A. To “know,” in the highest sense which we give to the word, is to be aware (by a reflex act) that we really have a certain given perception. It is a voluntary, intelligent, self-conscious act, parallel to that kind of memory which we before distinguished as “recollection.”

B. We also say we “know” when we do not use a reflex act, but yet have a true perception—a perception accompanied by consciousness—as when we teach, and in most of our ordinary intellectual acts.

C. When we so “know” a thing that it can be done with perfect unconsciousness, we cannot be said to “know” it intellectually, although in doing that thing our nervous and motor mechanism acts (in response to sensational stimuli) as perfectly as, or more perfectly than, in our conscious activity. The “knowledge” which accompanies such “unconscious action” is improperly so called, except in so far as we may be able to direct our minds to its perception, and so render it worthy of the name—as we have seen we may direct attention to our unconscious reminiscences, and so make them conscious ones. In the same way then in which we have already distinguished such acts of memory (while unconscious) as sensuous memory, so we may distinguish such acts of apprehension (while unconscious) as _sensuous cognition_. By it we can understand, to a certain extent, what may be the “knowledge” or “sensuous cognition” of mere animals.

D. Besides the above three kinds of apprehensions, we may distinguish others which can be only very remotely, if at all, compared with knowledge, since they can never, by any effort, be brought within the sphere of consciousness. Such are the actions of our organism by which it responds to impressions in an orderly and appropriate but unfelt manner—the intimate actions of our visceral organs, which can be modified, within limits, according to the influence brought to bear on them, as we may see in the oarsman’s hand, the blacksmith’s arm, and the ballet-dancer’s leg.

If such actions could be spoken of as in any sense apprehensive, they would have to be spoken of as “organic cognitions,” but they may be best distinguished as “_organic response_” or “_organic correspondence_.”

That the inorganic world, no less than the organic, is instinct with reason, and that we find in it objective conditions which correspond with our subjective conceptions, is perfectly true; but when once the profound difference between mere organic habit and intellectual memory is apprehended, there will be little difficulty in recognising the yet greater difference between “organic correspondence” and the faithfulness of inorganic matter to the laws of its being.

That the _absence_ of consciousness in actions which are perfectly performed, does not make such actions into acts of “perfect knowledge,” is demonstrated by every calculating machine. No sane person can say that such a machine “possesses” knowledge, though it is true that it “exhibits” it. Similarly we must refuse to apply the terms “memory” and “intelligence” to the merely organic activity of animals and plants.

The assertion that in the vegetal and lowest animal forms of life there is an innate but unconscious intelligence, is an assertion which contains an inherent contradiction, and is therefore fundamentally irrational. Anyone who says that blind actions (in which no end is perceived or intended) are truly intelligent ones, abuses language. The meaning of words is due to convention, and anyone who calls such actions truly intelligent, divides himself from the rest of mankind by refusing to speak their language.

What experience have we which can justify such a conception as that of “unconscious intelligence?” We are indeed aware of a multitude of actions which are evidently the outcome of intelligence, but which (like the analogous action of a calculating machine) are performed by creatures really unconscious, though they may possess consentience. But consciousness is the accompaniment of all those actions which we _know_ to be intellectual and rational. Our experience then contradicts the hypothesis of the existence of any such thing as “unconscious intelligence.” Such a thing is indeed no true concept, for it is incapable not only of being imagined but also of being really conceived of. It resembles such unmeaning expressions as “a square pentagon” or a “pitch-dark luminosity.”

Nevertheless, our experience is _in favor_ of the existence of an intelligence which can implant in and elicit from unconscious bodies activities which are intelligent in appearance and result. Thus we can construct calculating machines and train animals to perform many actions which have a delusive semblance of rationality.

“Truly intelligent action” we know as being intelligent and rational in its _foresight_, and therefore as necessarily conscious in the very principle of its being.

“Unconsciously intelligent action,” improperly called “intelligent” or “wise,” is that which is intelligent and wise only as to its results, and not in the innermost principle of the creatures (whether living or mere machines) which perform such action. To speak technically, we have “formal” and “material” intelligence, as we have “formal” and “material” vice and virtue.[37] We have already distinguished between the “formal” and the merely “material” discoverer of a new fossil, and this distinction is one which it is most important to bear in mind. It is the failure to apprehend this distinction which is the root of a vast number of modern philosophical errors, and the error which consists in asserting the reality of “unconscious intelligence” is one of them.

[37] Thus a man wishing to aid another, but who by miscalculation causes his death, does an action which is “materially” homicidal, though “formally” his action is a virtuous one. Similarly a man may be “materially” a bigamist but not “formally,” as when he has married a second wife being honestly convinced that his first wife was dead.

In fact “intelligence” exists very truly, in a certain sense, in the admirably directed actions blindly performed by living beings. It is not, however, “formally” in them, but exists formally in their ultimate cause. Nevertheless that intelligence is so implanted within them that it truly exists in them “materially” though it is not “formally” in them.

We have here, then, the answer to the question, “What is the rationality of the irrational?” It is a rationality which is very really, though not materially, present in the irrational world, while it is formally present in that world’s cause and origin.

To every Theist this answer will be a satisfactory one. To him who is not a Theist there is no really satisfactory answer possible. This is a question not of theology but of pure reason antecedent to all theology. To reason, and to reason only, I appeal when I affirm that the existence of a constant, pervading, sustaining, directing, and all-controlling but unfathomable Intelligence which is not the intelligence of irrational creatures themselves, is the supreme truth which nature eloquently proclaims to him who with unprejudiced reason and loving sympathy will carefully consider her ways. He can hardly fail to discover, immanent in the material universe, “an action the results of which harmonize with man’s reason; an action which is orderly, and disaccords with blind chance, or ‘a fortuitous concurrence of atoms,’ but which ever eludes his grasp, and which acts in modes different from those by which we should attempt to accomplish similar ends.”[38] For myself, I am bound humbly to confess that the more I study nature the more I am convinced that in the action of this all-pervading but inscrutable and unimaginable intelligence, of which self-conscious human rationality is the utterly inadequate image, though the image attainable by us, is to be sought the sole possible explanation of the mysterious but undeniable presence in nature of a rationality in that which is in itself irrational.—_Fortnightly Review._

[38] _Lessons from Nature_, ch. xii. p. 374. John Murray, 1876.

CONCERNING EYES.

BY WILLIAM H. HUDSON.

White, crimson, emerald green, shining golden yellow, are amongst the colors seen in the eyes of birds. In owls, herons, cormorants, and many other tribes, the brightly-tinted eye is incomparably the finest feature and chief glory. It fixes the attention at once, appearing like a splendid gem, for which the airy bird-body with its graceful curves and soft tints forms an appropriate setting. When the eye closes in death, the bird, except to the naturalist, becomes a mere bundle of dead feathers: crystal globes may be put into the empty sockets, and a bold life-imitating attitude given to the stuffed specimen; but the vitreous orbs shoot forth no life-like flames, the “passion and the fire whose fountains are within” have vanished, and the best work of the taxidermist, who has given a life to his bastard art, produces in the mind only sensations of irritation and disgust. In museums, where limited space stands in the way of any abortive attempts at copying nature too closely, the stuffer’s work is endurable because useful; but in a drawing-room, who does not close his eyes or turn aside to avoid seeing a case of stuffed birds—those unlovely mementoes of death in their gay plumes? who does not shudder, albeit not with fear, to see the wild cat, filled with straw, yawning horribly, and trying to frighten the spectator with its crockery glare? I shall never forget the first sight I had of the late Mr. Gould’s collection of humming-birds (now in the National Museum), shown to me by the naturalist himself, who evidently took considerable pride in the work of his hands. I had just left tropical nature behind me across the Atlantic, and the unexpected meeting with a transcript of it in a dusty room in Bedford Square gave me quite a shock. Those pellets of dead feathers, which had long ceased to sparkle and shine, stuck with wires—not invisible—over blossoming cloth and tinsel bushes, how melancholy they made me feel!

Considering the bright color and great splendor of some eyes, particularly in birds, it seems probable that in these cases the organ has a twofold use: first and chiefly, to see; secondly, to intimidate an adversary with those luminous mirrors, in which all the dangerous fury of a creature brought to bay is best depicted. Throughout nature the dark eye predominates; and there is certainly a great depth of fierceness in the dark eye of a bird of prey; but its effect is less than that produced by the vividly-colored eye, or even of the white eye of some raptorial species, as, for instance, of the Asturina pucherani. Violent emotions are associated in our minds—possibly, also, in the minds of other species—with certain colors. Bright red seems the appropriate hue of anger: the poet Herbert even calls the rose “angrie and brave” on account of its hue: and the red or orange certainly expresses resentment better than the dark eye. Even a very slight spontaneous variation in the coloring of the irides might give an advantage to an individual for natural selection to act on; for we can see in almost any living creature that not only in its perpetual metaphorical struggle for existence is its life safeguarded in many ways; but when protective resemblances, flight, and instincts of concealment all fail, and it is compelled to engage in a real struggle with a living adversary, it is provided for such occasions with another set of defences. Language and attitudes of defiance come into play; feathers or hairs are erected; beaks snap and strike, or teeth are gnashed, and the mouth foams or spits; the body puffs out; wings are waved or feet stamped on the ground, and many other gestures of rage are practised. It is not possible to believe that the coloring of the crystal globes, towards which an opponent’s sight is first directed, and which most vividly exhibit the raging emotions within, can have been entirely neglected as a means of defence by the principle of selection in nature. For all these reasons I believe the bright-colored eye is an improvement on the dark eye.

Man has been very little improved in this direction, the dark eye, except in the north of Europe, having been, until recent times, almost or quite universal. The blue eye does not seem to have any advantage for man in a state of nature, being mild where fierceness of expression is required; it is almost unknown amongst the inferior creatures; and only on the supposition that the appearance of the eye is less important to man’s welfare than it is to that of other species can we account for its survival in a branch of the human race. Little, however, as the human eye has changed, assuming it to have been dark originally, there is a great deal of spontaneous variation in individuals, light hazel and blue-grey being apparently the most variable. I have found curiously marked and spotted eyes not uncommon; in some instances the spots being so black, round, and large as to produce the appearance of eyes with clusters of pupils on them. I have known one person with large brown spots on light blue-grey eyes, whose children all inherited the peculiarity; also another with reddish hazel irides thickly marked with fine characters resembling Greek letters. This person was an Argentine of Spanish blood, and was called by his neighbors _ojos escritos_, or written eyes. It struck me as a very curious circumstance that these eyes, both in their ground color and the form and disposition of the markings traced on them, were precisely like the eyes of a common species of grebe, _Podiceps rollandi_. But we look in vain amongst men for the splendid crimson, flaming yellow, or startling white orbs which would have made the dark-skinned brave inspired by violent emotions a being terrible to see. Nature has neglected man in this respect, and it is to remedy the omission that he stains his face with bright pigments and crowns his head with eagles’ barred plumes.