Part 5

There is, again, the case of neuter insects and the highly complex instincts of insects living in communities, such as bees, ants, and termites. The Darwinian theory has the great advantage of only needing for its support the suggestion of some possible utility in each case; and as all structures and functions in nature have their utility, the task is not a difficult one for an ingenious, patient, and accomplished thinker. Yet Mr. Darwin, with all his ingenuity, patience, and accomplishments, has been unable to suggest a rational explanation for the accidental origin of these insect communities with their marvellously complex instincts. I will confine myself to one more instance of a highly noteworthy instinct, which no one has in any way succeeded in explaining. The instance I refer to is that by which an animal, when an enemy approaches, lies quite quiescent and apparently helpless, an action often spoken of as “shamming death.” To evade the force of this remarkable case of instinct, it has been objected that the disposition of the limbs adopted by insects which thus act, is not the same as that which the limbs assume when such insects are really dead, and that all species are not when thus acting equally quiescent. The first observation, however, does not concern the matter really at issue. The remarkable thing is not that a helpless insect should assume the position of its own dead, but that such a creature, instead of trying to escape, should adopt a mode of procedure utterly hopeless unless the enemy’s attention is thereby effectually eluded. It is impossible that this instinct could have been gradually gained by the elimination of all those individuals who did not practice it, for if the quiescence, whether absolutely complete or not, were not sufficient at once to make the creature elude observation, its destruction would be only the more fully insured by such ineffectual quiescence. The same argument applies to birds which seem to feign lameness or other injury. Yet even if we could account for these cases, which as a fact are as yet entirely unaccounted for, it would not do away with the need of recognising the real existence and peculiar nature of instinct. It would not do so on account both of man’s highest and of man’s lowest instinctive powers. To speak first of the former: as instinct, such as we have hitherto discovered, is the appointed bridge between mere organic and intellectual animal life, so there is in man a further development of instinct, peculiar to him, and serving to bridge over the gulf between mere intelligent animal faculty and distinctly human reflective intellectual activity. Such special intellectual instinct is that which impels man to the external manifestation by voice or gesture of the mental abstractions which his intellect spontaneously forms, and which are not formed by the lower animals, which give no evidence of this power of abstraction. Language could never have been deliberately invented nor have arisen by a mere accidental individual variation, for vocal and gesture signs are essentially conventional, and require more or less comprehension on the part of those to whom they are addressed as well as on the part of those who use them. Analogous considerations apply to the first beginnings of what cannot be reckoned as merely instinctive activities, but the origins of which must have been akin to instincts. I refer to the beginnings of literature, art, science and politics, which were never deliberately invented. Even men who supposed they were inventing and constructing a certain new order of things with full purpose and much intelligence, have really been all the time so dominated by influences beyond their consciousness, that they really evolved something very different from what they supposed or intended. This fact has been most instructively shown by De Tocqueville and Taine with respect to the men who promoted and carried through the great French Revolution. So much, then, for man’s highest instinctive powers: but our argument has no need to refer to them, for a consideration of man’s lowest instinctive powers alone suffices to show that they cannot be due to “natural selection,” even when aided by “lapsed intelligence.” Can it be for a moment seriously maintained that such actions of the infant as those of the sucking, deglutition, and defecation, or the sexual instincts of later life, ever arose through the accidental conservation of haphazard variations of habit in ancestral animals? If it cannot be maintained, as I am confident it cannot, then it is absolutely impossible successfully to evade the difficulty of the existence of instinct. However far we may put back the beginnings of instinct, the question as to its origin (with its subsequent modifications) ever returns, and indeed with increased importunity. How did the first sentient creatures obtain and swallow their food? How did they first come to fecundate their ova or suitably to deposit them? How did they first effect such movements as might be necessary for their respiratory processes? Wherever such phenomena first manifested themselves in sentient organisms, we are compelled therein to recognise the manifest presence of instinct—the appointed means (as before said) of bridging over the interval between the purely vegetative functions and the intelligent activities of sentient animal life. “Natural selection” is manifestly impotent to account for the existence of such a faculty as that of “instinct.” We have already seen that the hypothesis of “lapsed intelligence” is also impotent to account for it. Thus the most recently attempted explanation falls altogether to the ground. Nevertheless the theory of evolution renders it necessary to assume that as new species of animals were from time to time evolved, so also were new and appropriate instincts. How then are we to account for the origin of such new instincts? That a certain mystery attends such origin cannot be denied, but a parallel mystery attends all other kinds of vital phenomena. What can be more mysterious than the purely organic functions of animals? Though not truly instinctive, they are full of unconscious purpose, and so are akin to instinct. Our nutrition is a process of self-generation by which the various bodies which constitute our food become transformed into our own substance. This process is effected by what is called assimilation, by which process the ultimate substance, or parenchyma, of our own body and of the bodies transforms part of what is immediately external to it, into the parenchyma itself. Again, the process of secretion is, as it were, parallel to the process of alimentation or nutrition. In secretion, the body extracts from the blood new substances (the secretions) which do not exist _as such_ within it. In nutrition, the body extracts from the blood new substances (the various tissues) which do not exist _as such_ within it. The blood is not the only source of our nutrition, since it has the power of replenishing itself. Thus the living particles which form the ultimate substance of our body exercise a certain power of choice with respect to the contents of the fluids which come in contact with them. Such particles are not passive bodies; they are active living agents, and their action no one has yet really explained. Here, then, are a set of activities which, if duly pondered over, will be found to be fully as mysterious and inexplicable in their unconscious teleology as any phenomena of instinct as ordinarily understood. But there is another class of organic vital actions which also seem to have a decided affinity both to reflex action and to instinct, though they are not to be regarded as actual instances of either of these faculties. The actions I refer to are those which bring about the repair of injuries and the reproduction of lost parts. They are like reflex action inasmuch as they take place in perfect unconsciousness and without the will having any power over them. They are like instinct inasmuch as they are directed towards a useful and unforeseen end. In the process of healing and repair of a wounded part of the body, a fluid, perfectly structureless substance, is secreted, or poured forth, from the parts about the wound. In this substance, cells arise and become abundant; so that the substance, at first structureless, becomes what is called cellular tissue. Then, by degrees, this structure transforms itself into vessels, tendons, nerves, bone, and membrane—into some or all of such parts—according to the circumstances of the case. In a case of broken bone, the two broken ends of the bone soften, the sharp edges thus disappearing. Then a soft substance is secreted, and this becomes at first gelatinous, often afterwards cartilaginous, and, finally, osseous or bony. But not only do these different kinds of substance—these distinct tissues—thus arise and develop themselves in this neutral or, as it is called, “undifferentiated” substance, but very complex structures, appropriately formed and nicely adjusted for the performance of complex functions, may also be developed. We see this in the production of admirably formed joints in parts which were at first devoid of anything of the kind. I may quote, as an example, the case of a railway guard, whose arm had been so injured that he had been compelled to have the elbow with its joint cut out, but who afterwards developed a new joint almost as good as the old one. In the uninjured condition the outer bone of the lower arm—the radius—ends above in a smooth-surfaced cup, which plays against part of the lower end of the bone of the upper arm, or humerus, while its side also plays against the side of the other bone of the lower arm, the ulna, with the interposition of a cartilaginous surface. The radius and ulna are united to the humerus by dense and strong membranes or ligaments, which pass between it and them, anteriorly, posteriorly, and on each side, and are attached to projecting processes, one on each side of the humerus. Such was the condition of the parts which were removed by the surgeon. Nine years after the operation the patient died, and Mr. Syme had the opportunity of dissecting the arm, which in the meantime had served the poor man perfectly well, he having been in the habit of swinging himself by it from one carriage to another, while the train was in motion, quite as easily and securely as with the other arm. On examination, Mr. Syme found that the amputated end of the radius had formed a fresh polished surface, and played both on the humerus and the ulna, a material something like cartilage being interposed. The ends of the bones of the forearm were locked in by two processes projecting downwards from the humerus, and also strong lateral and still stronger anterior and posterior ligaments again bound them fast to the last-named bone.[7] It would be easy to bring forward a number of more or less similar cases. The amount of reproduction of lost parts which may take place in many of the lower animals is astonishing. Thus the tails of lizards, if broken off, will grow again, and the limbs of newts will be reproduced, with their bones, muscles, blood-vessels, and nerves. Even the eye and the lower jaw have been seen to be reproduced in the last-named animals. If certain worms be cut in two, each half will become a perfect animal, the head producing a new tail, and the tail a new head; and a worm called a _nais_ has been cut into as many as twenty-five parts with a like result. But the most remarkable animal for its power of repairing injuries is the fresh-water hydra, almost any fragment of which will, under favorable circumstances, grow into a new and entire fresh animal. It is also a notorious and very noteworthy fact that, in both man and the lower animals, the processes of repair take place the more readily the younger the age of the injured individual may be. But these unconscious but practically teleological processes of repair, are often preceded by actions which everyone would call instinctive.

[7] See Mr. Timothy Holmes’s _System of Surgery_, 3rd edit. vol. iii. p. 746.

There is yet another class of organic vital actions to which I must advert, which are at once utterly unconscious, while the fact that they are directed to a distinct end is indisputable; in fact they are purposive in the very highest degree that any unconscious actions can be purposive. They are the actions of true reproduction, and they come before us naturally here, since a consideration of the process of remedial reproduction in the individual, naturally leads us on to the consideration _of the reproduction of the species itself_. In the cases of the frog and the butterfly, everyone knows that the creature which comes forth from the egg is very different from the parent. Animals, in fact, mostly attain their adult condition by passing through a series of development changes; only as a rule that series is not abruptly interrupted by plainly marked pauses, as it is in the frog and butterfly, and, therefore, such changes, instead of being obvious, are only to be detected with difficulty and through patient research. Almost every animal thus goes through a series of very remarkable changes during its individual process of development or, as it is called, during its “ontogeny.” This process, in its perfect unconsciousness, is like reflex action, but it is far more wonderful, since in the earliest stages even nerve-tissue is absent and has itself to be formed. In the accuracy of its direction towards a useful end, it is the very counterpart of the most developed instinct; nor, if the impulses by which adult individuals are led to seek and to perform those processes which give rise to the embryo, are to be called instinctive, is it easy to see how the analogical use of the term “instinctive” can be refused to that impulse by which each developing embryo is led to go through those processes which give rise to the adult. The action of each organism during its individual development may be compared, and has evidently much affinity with, the processes of nutrition and the repair and reproduction of parts lost through some injury. These processes of nutrition and repair have also evidently a close relation to reflex action and reflex action has also a close affinity to instinctive action. Instead, however, of explaining “instinct” by “reflex action,” I would rather explain reflex action, processes of nutrition, processes of repair, processes of individual development, by instinct—using this term in a wide analogical sense. For we know the wonderful action and nature of instinct as it exists in our own human activity, standing, as it were, at the head of the various unconsciously intelligent vital processes. These processes seem to me to be all diverse manifestations of what is fundamentally one kind of activity. Of these manifestations, instinctive action is the best type, because by it we can, to a certain extent, understand the others, whereas none of the others enable us to understand instinct.—_Fortnightly Review._

A VERY OLD MASTER.

The work of art which lies before me is old, unquestionably old; a good deal older, in fact, than Archbishop Ussher (who invented all out of his own archiepiscopal head the date commonly assigned for the creation of the world) would by any means have been ready to admit. It is a bas-relief by an old master, considerably more antique in origin than the most archaic gem or intaglio in the Museo Borbonico at Naples, the mildly decorous Louvre in Paris, or the eminently respectable British Museum, which is the glory of our own smoky London in the spectacled eyes of German professors, all put together. When Assyrian sculptors carved in fresh white alabaster the flowing curls of Sennacherib’s hair, just like a modern coachman’s wig, this work of primæval art was already hoary with the rime of ages. When Memphian artists were busy in the morning twilight of time with the towering coiffure of Ramses or Sesostris, this far more ancient relic of plastic handicraft was lying, already fossil and forgotten, beneath the concreted floor of a cave in the Dordogne. If we were to divide the period for which we possess authentic records of man’s abode upon this oblate spheroid into ten epochs—an epoch being a good high-sounding word which doesn’t commit one to any definite chronology in particular—then it is probable that all known art, from the Egyptian onward, would fall into the tenth of the epochs thus loosely demarcated, while my old French bas-relief would fall into the first. To put the date quite succinctly, I should say it was most likely about 244,000 years before the creation of Adam according to Ussher.

The work of the old master is lightly incised on reindeer horn, and represents two horses, of a very early and heavy type, following one another, with heads stretched forward, as if sniffing the air suspiciously in search of enemies. The horses would certainly excite unfavorable comment at Newmarket. Their “points” are undoubtedly coarse and clumsy: their heads are big, thick, stupid, and ungainly; their manes are bushy and ill-defined; their legs are distinctly feeble and spindle-shaped; their tails more closely resemble the tail of the domestic pig than that of the noble animal beloved with a love passing the love of women by the English aristocracy. Nevertheless there is little (if any) reason to doubt that my very old master did, on the whole, accurately represent the ancestral steed of his own exceedingly remote period. There were once horses even as is the horse of the prehistoric Dordognian artist. Such clumsy, big-headed brutes, dun in hue and striped down the back like modern donkeys, did actually once roam over the low plains where Paris now stands, and browse off lush grass and tall water-plants around the quays of Bordeaux and Lyons. Not only do the bones of the contemporary horses, dug up in caves, prove this, but quite recently the Russian traveller Prjevalsky (whose name is so much easier to spell than to pronounce) has discovered a similar living horse, which drags on an obscure existence somewhere in the high table-lands of Central Asia. Prjevalsky’s horse (you see, as I have only to write the word, without uttering it, I don’t mind how often or how intrepidly I use it) is so singularly like the clumsy brutes that sat, or rather stood, for their portraits to my old master that we can’t do better than begin by describing him _in propria persona_.

The horse family of the present day is divided, like most other families, into two factions, which may be described for variety’s sake as those of the true horses and the donkeys, these latter including also the zebras, quaggas, and various other unfamiliar creatures whose names, in very choice Latin, are only known to the more diligent visitors at the Sunday Zoo. Now everybody must have noticed that the chief broad distinction between these two great groups consists in the feathering of the tail. The domestic donkey, with his near congeners, the zebra and co., have smooth short-haired tails, ending in a single bunch or fly-whisk of long hairs collected together in a tufted bundle at the extreme tip. The horse, on the other hand, besides having horny patches or callosities on both fore and hind legs, while the donkeys have them on the fore legs only, has a hairy tail, in which the long hairs are almost equally distributed from top to bottom, thus giving it its peculiarly bushy and brushy appearance. But Prjevalsky’s horse, as one would naturally expect from an early intermediate form, stands halfway in this respect between the two groups, and acts the thankless part of a family mediator; for it has most of its long tail-hairs collected in a final flourish, like the donkey, but several of them spring from the middle distance, as in the genuine Arab, though never from the very top, thus showing an approach to the true horsey habit without actually attaining that final pinnacle of equine glory. So far as one can make out from the somewhat rude handicraft of my prehistoric Phidias the horse of the quaternary epoch had much the same caudal peculiarity; his tail was bushy, but only in the lower half. He was still in the intermediate stage between horse and donkey, a natural mule still struggling up aspiringly toward perfect horsehood. In all other matters the two creatures—the cave man’s horse and Prjevalsky’s—closely agree. Both display large heads, thick necks, coarse manes, and a general disregard of “points” which would strike disgust and dismay into the stout breasts of Messrs. Tattersall. In fact over a T.Y.C. it may be confidently asserted, in the pure Saxon of the sporting papers, that Prjevalsky’s and the cave man’s lot wouldn’t be in it. Nevertheless a candid critic would be forced to admit that, in spite of clumsiness, they both mean staying.

So much for the two sitters; now let us turn to the artist who sketched them. Who was he, and when did he live? Well, his name, like that of many other old masters, is quite unknown to us; but what does that matter so long as his work itself lives and survives? Like the Comtists he has managed to obtain objective immortality. The work, after all, is for the most part all we ever have to go upon. “I have my own theory about the authorship of the Iliad and Odyssey,” said Lewis Carroll (of “Alice in Wonderland”) once in Christ Church common room: “it is that they weren’t really written by Homer, but by another person of the same name.” There you have the Iliad in a nutshell as regards the authenticity of great works. All we know about the supposed Homer (if anything) is that he was the reputed author of the two unapproachable Greek epics; and all we know directly about my old master, viewed personally, is that he once carved with a rude flint flake on a fragment of reindeer horn these two clumsy prehistoric horses. Yet by putting two and two together we can make, not four, as might be naturally expected, but a fairly connected history of the old master himself and what Mr. Herbert Spencer would no doubt playfully term “his environment.”