Part 7

Thus co-operation, for still fresh reasons, is biologically important for the higher groups. The problem is becoming increasingly pressing for the human race, since the time is in sight when the whole habitable area of the globe will be colonized, up to a certain level of density and efficiency, by members of the more advanced races. Biologically speaking, it is perfectly clear that some co-operative system, involving federation in one form or another, is the proper system to adopt; and that the “world-state”--not necessarily organized after the plan of our present highly specialized nationalist-industrialist states, which appear happily to represent only a temporary phase of evolution, but none the less an organic reality, a co-operative unit--that the “world-state” is not merely a figment of unpractical dreamers, but an obviously desirable aim for humanity. Kant, a century and a half ago even, had seen clearly enough that some universal society was a necessity for the unfolding of human possibility; and had gone further and pointed out that there were indications of a movement of civilization in that direction. In our time, this movement has been retarded by the extraordinary and mushroom growth of Nationalism, in which to the average man his “Country” (really _Nation_) has become his most real God. In the last hundred years, Nationalism has usurped the place of Religion as the most important super-individual interest of individuals--has indeed in some sense become a religion. It is leading the world into an impasse, as do all incomplete and partial conceptions; but, in the Hague Court and the League of Nations, has already generated the seeds of what will in time devour it.[23]

To sum up, we may say that the crude application to human affairs of the doctrine of the struggle for existence, torn from its biological context, isolated and over-emphasized, is wholly unwarranted. On the other hand, a struggle does continue, both of the direct and indirect type defined by Darwin: and there is no prospect of it ceasing to play an important part in human biology. Co-operation is not, any more than competition, to be taken as the sole desirable principle. Panaceas of this sort do not exist, except to make bubble reputations and quack fortunes. Even within such a highly organized co-operative unit as the mammalian body a struggle continues--the different tissues are in competition with each other for food, and if the available supply diminishes below the necessary level, some tissues will be drawn upon by other more successful competitors, and the struggle will lead to an end-result in which the proportion of the various kinds of cells comes to be very different from what they were in the normal well-nourished body.[24] That is a purely biological example. In man, since the unification of the community is of a low order, it is inevitable that individuals and sections will continue in some form of competition with each other: not only this, however, but the additional fact that man’s mental organization reacts strongly to the stimulus of competition make it probable that a “struggle” of some sort will not only be inevitable but up to a point beneficial in any form of society. What is more, once co-operation exists, competition between the co-operative units is necessary to bring out the full efficiency of their combination.

All that the biologist can do is to point out that neither the one-sided application of the principle of struggle nor of that of co-operation is biologically sound. But, as everywhere else in human conduct, after the broad principles have been grasped, success lies always in a delicate, continuous adjustment of conflicting claims, in what one may call a personal conscious effort. Struggle is universal: but by itself it can only lead to a certain stage of evolutionary progress.

The half-baked moralist may lay down the law about right and wrong with the most positive assurance; but, by not paying attention to the necessity for sweet reasonableness, give-and-take, unselfishness, for thought about the thousand and one details of daily conduct, he may be making himself and his wife thoroughly unhappy, ruining his family’s chances, and, as a matter of fact, be thoroughly immoral without once suspecting it.

It is in a very similar way that the militarist, for instance, fortifying himself in the doctrine of the struggle for existence with what he regards as an impregnable sanction for his theories, is in reality acting immorally because not attempting to envisage the whole problem.

There is one very interesting evolutionary point which well illustrates the difference between pure biology and pure sociology, and yet emphasizes the natural connection between the two. Once again it has a connection with the greater flexibility of human mind. As we have seen, in the lowest animals behaviour is for the most part unvarying, hereditarily determined: the organism is capable of a number of definite reactions, and if these do not suffice to extricate it from difficulties, it perishes. The first step towards gaining is the power of learning. “Once bitten, twice shy” is applicable to all higher vertebrates; and it is not only the burnt child who dreads the fire (although a study of moths and candles will convince us that “Lepidopteran” cannot be substituted as subject of the proverb).

When, as in the higher mammals, the power of learning by experience is rapid, the individual organism is better able to adjust itself to the dangers of life, and once more there is less sacrifice of individuals in the struggle. The same organism persists: but of two possible types of behaviour, the unmodified innate type is eliminated, the type modified by experience survives. If we like to put it in a way which is perhaps not wholly justifiable, there comes into being, besides the struggle for existence between individuals, a struggle for existence between different possible modes of reaction of one and the same organism.

With the advent of man upon the scene, still new possibilities arise. First of all, he is capable of ideas, which, biologically speaking, are to be regarded as potentialities of behaviour. There is no evidence at present that even the highest animals possess ideas or even images.[25] Secondly, these ideas are transmissible by speech and writing, and accordingly tradition has come into being, so that modification of behaviour by experience can be operative not only within the individual life, not only from one generation to the next immediately succeeding, as in many mammals, but for an indefinite period. The experience of Moses, Archimedes, or Charlemagne, of Jesus, Newton, or James Watt is modifying our behaviour to-day.

The result, both for individuals and communities, is that a selection of ideas instead of a selection of organic units can to an ever greater extent take place; and thus the actual extinction of living matter be increasingly avoided. For instance, we find the substitution of judicial procedure, in which the ideas of two disputants about the matter in dispute are weighed and a selection made in favour of one, for various forms of violence and combat in which one or other of the actual disputants was often eliminated. Or again, in struggles between communities, even though warfare is still resorted to, yet it does not operate in the same way as in earlier stages of human evolution. A salient example of this is afforded by the result of the recent war to Germany; although an equally good instance can be seen, for example, in the Boer War. In primitive wars, the defeated tribe was wherever possible exterminated or enslaved: it ceased to exist as an independent unit, and the great majority of its male members were killed. This is impossible under present conditions: and all those who preserve, or have ever possessed, any political sanity aim, for instance, neither at the physical nor the economic destruction or subordination of Germany, but--to use one of those attractive catchwords that sounded so well in war-time--at her “change of heart”--in other words, the extermination, not of a nation, but of a national tradition.

To what extent this substitution of mental for physical will continue it is hard to say; already, to take another field, the multiplication of cheap books has led to an ever increasing number of men and women finding most of their adventure and romance in books instead of in the life that we are accustomed to call real. But that would lead us away from our main point--enough to have indicated another great difference between processes above and below the human level.

There are numerous important questions concerning our right to apply biological ideas of heredity directly to human beings which I would have liked to touch upon. But for one thing I have not the time, and for another, Mr. Carr-Saunders in his recent book on the Population Problem has dealt so fully with the relation between biological inheritance and what may be called tradition-inheritance, that I omit them with a good conscience.

In this brief treatment I have had to ask you to take conclusions on trust, without presenting the evidence on which they are based; this, however, is inevitable when transferring ideas from one science to another. I have attempted to show, first, that biology can profit by incorporating certain conclusions of sociology and so rounding off and completing certain of its own principles: on the other hand, I have put before you my belief that there are certain basic biological principles which must be taken into account by the sociologist--principles which hold good in sociology because man too is an organism.

By now, however, we can see more clearly the way in which the various sciences with which we are concerned, of whose relations we had something to say at the beginning of this essay, properly interlock.

They interlock thus. The physico-chemical sciences are basic to biology. Organisms are made of the same substances as are non-living compounds; their processes are therefore conformable to certain physico-chemical laws, such as the indestructibility of matter, the conservation of energy, and so forth; and in so far as we analyse the material aspect of life, physico-chemical concepts are _adequate_. On the other hand, physico-chemical concepts--or at least our present ones--are not _all-sufficient_. In the first place, the very complicated arrangement of matter which is found in living substance has not been yet sufficiently analysed by physics and chemistry: accordingly we find many processes occurring in biology--such as the directional changes in evolution of which we have spoken--which could not have been foretold on our present physico-chemical knowledge, but must be investigated separately as adding to our store of facts and principles, in the confident hope that a synthesis will one day be possible. Secondly, a whole new category of phenomena, the psychological, is first met with in biology, and to this we cannot as yet apply physical or chemical ideas at all.

For a combination of these two reasons, biology deals with certain concepts which are not implicit in current physico-chemical ideas. Physics and chemistry are basic for biology, but they are not exhaustive.

In a very similar way, biology is basic for sociology, but again not exhaustive. Certain limits are set to human life through man’s organic nature. Certain of his activities can be completely analysed in terms of biology. But other of his activities, especially those concerned with his new type of mental organization, find no counterpart in the rest of the biological kingdoms, and must be studied in and for themselves.

Bergson would have us believe that evolution is creative. It is better to say, with Lloyd Morgan, that it is emergent. With new degrees of complexity, new qualitative differences emerge. Thus the sciences are a hierarchy, the subject-matter of one constituting the foundation for the next in the series. All that biology can do for sociology is to help her to build her foundations solidly and correctly: but we all know that without good foundations no building is safe.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bury, J. B., ’20. “The Idea of Progress.” London, 1920.

Carr-Saunders, A. M., ’22. “The Population Problem.” Oxford, 1922.

Hobhouse, L. T., ’01. “Mind in Evolution.” London, 1901.

Huxley, J. S., ’12. “The Individual in the Animal Kingdom.” Cambridge, 1912.

Keyser, ’21. “Science” (N.S.) New York, 1921.

Kropotkin, Prince, ’08. “Mutual Aid, A Factor in Evolution.” London, 1908.

Lloyd Morgan, C., ’23. “Emergent Evolution.” London, 1923.

Marvin, F. S. “Progress and History” (5th Imp.). Oxford, 1921.

Radl, E., ’09. “Geschichte der biologischen Theorien,” vol. ii. Leipzig, 1909.

Ritchie, ’01. “Darwinism in Politics” (4th Ed.). London, 1901.

Roberts, Morley, ’20. “Warfare in the Human Body.” London, 1920.

Roux, W., ’81. “Der Kampf der Teile im Organismics.” 1881.

Sherrington, ’22. “The Advancement of Science, 1922.” London, 1922.

Spencer, Herbert. “First Principles,” “Principles of Biology,” “Principles of Sociology.”

Thorndike, E. L., ’11. “Animal Intelligence.” New York, 1911.

Trotter, W., ’19. “Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War” (2nd Ed.). London, 1919.

Wells, H. G., ’21. “The Outline of History.” London, 1921.

FOOTNOTES:

[18] For a remarkable critical history of biological thought during this period, see Radl, ’09.

[19] Morley Roberts is a recent exception. See his interesting book, _Warfare in the Human Body_.

[20] _Science_, September 1921.

[21] See Thorndike, ’11.

[22] See J. S. Huxley, ’12, for a discussion of the grades of biological individuality.

[23] See, e.g., Wells, ’21, pp. 558, 666.

[24] See Roux, ’81, for a discussion of this important extension of Darwinism.

[25] See Thorndike, _op. cit._; Washburn, _The Animal Mind_. New York, 1913.

III

ILS N’ONT QUE DE L’ÂME: AN ESSAY ON BIRD-MIND

THE BIRDS

To most of us, a bird’s a feathered song Which for our pleasure gives a voice to spring. We make a symbol of its airy wing Bright with the liberty for which we long.

Or we discover them with love more strong As each a separate, individual thing Which only learns to act, or move, or sing In ways that wholly to itself belong.

But some with deeper and more inward sight See them a part of that one Life which streams Slow on, towards more mind--a part more light Then we; unburdened with regrets, or dreams, Or thought. A winged emotion of the sky, The birds through an eternal Present fly.

OXFORD, _April 1923_.

ILS N’ONT QUE DE L’ÂME: AN ESSAY ON BIRD-MIND

“O Nightingale, thou surely art A creature of a fiery heart.” --W. WORDSWORTH.

“The inferior animals, when the conditions of life are favourable, are subject to periodical fits of gladness, affecting them powerfully and standing out in vivid contrast to their ordinary temper.... Birds are more subject to this universal joyous instinct than mammals, and ... as they are much freer than mammals, more buoyant and graceful in action, more loquacious, and have voices so much finer, their gladness shows itself in a greater variety of ways, with more regular and beautiful motions, and with melody.”--W. H. HUDSON.

“How do you know but ev’ry Bird that cuts the airy way Is an immense world of delight, clos’d by your senses five?” --BLAKE.

“_Ils n’ont pas de cerveau--ils n’ont que de l’âme._” A dog was being described, with all his emotion, his apparent passion to make himself understood, his failure to reach comprehension; and that was how the French man of letters summed up the brute creation--“_pas de cerveau--que de l’âme_.”

Nor is it a paradox: it is a half-truth that is more than half true--more true at least than its converse, which many hold.

There is a large school to-day who assert that animals are “mere machines.” Machines they may be: it is the qualification which does not fit. I suppose that by saying “mere” machines it is meant to imply that they have the soulless, steely quality of a machine which goes when it is set going, stops when another lever is turned, acts only in obedience to outer stimuli, and is in fact unemotional--a bundle of operations without any quality meriting the name of a self.

It is true that the further we push our analysis of animal behaviour, the more we find it composed of a series of automatisms, the more we see it rigorously determined by combination of inner constitution and outer circumstance, the more we have cause to deny to animals the possession of anything deserving the name of reason, ideals, or abstract thought. The more, in fact, do they appear to us as mechanisms (which is a much better word than machines, since this latter carries with it definite connotations of metal or wood, electricity or steam). They are mechanisms, because their mode of operation is regular; but they differ from any other type of mechanism known to us in that their working is--to put it in the most non-committal way--accompanied by emotion. It is, to be sure, a combination of emotion with reason that we attribute to a soul; but none the less, in popular parlance at least, the emotional side is predominant, and pure reason is set over against the emotional content which gives soul its essence. And this emotional content we most definitely find running through the lives of higher animals.

The objection is easily and often raised that we have no direct knowledge of emotion in an animal, no direct proof of the existence of any purely mental process in its life. But this is as easily laid as raised. We have no direct knowledge of emotion or any other conscious process in the life of any human being save our individual selves; and yet we feel no hesitation in deducing it from others’ behaviour. Although it is an arguable point whether biological science may not for the moment be better served by confining the subject-matter and terms of analysis to behaviour alone, it is a very foolhardy “behaviorist” indeed who denies the _existence_ of emotion and conscious process!

But the practical value of this method of thinking is, as I say, an arguable point; it is indeed clear that a great immediate advance, especially in non-human biology, has been and may still be made by translating the uncertain and often risky terms of subjective psychology into those based upon the objective description of directly observable behaviour. However, it is equally easy to maintain, and I for one maintain it, that to omit a whole category of phenomena from consideration is unscientific, and must in the long run lead to an unreal, because limited, view of things; and that, when great detail of analysis is not required, but only broad lines and general comparison, the psychological terminology, of memory, fear, anger, curiosity, affection, is the simpler and more direct tool, and should be used to supplement and make more real the cumbersome and less complete behavioristic terminology, of modification of behaviour, fright, aggression, and the rest.

It is at least abundantly clear that, if we are to believe in the principle of uniformity at all, we must ascribe emotion to animals as well as to men: the similarity of behaviour is so great that to assert the absence of a whole class of phenomena in one case, its presence in the other, is to make scientific reasoning a farce.

“_Pas de cerveau--que de l’âme._” Those especially who have studied birds will subscribe to this. The variety of their emotions is greater, their intensity more striking, than in four-footed beasts, while their power of modifying behaviour by experience is less, the subjection to instinct more complete. Those who are interested in the details can see from experiments, such as those recorded by Mr. Eliot Howard in his _Territory in Bird Life_, how limited is a bird’s power of adjustment; but I will content myself with a single example, one of nature’s experiments, recorded by Mr. Chance last year by the aid of the cinematograph--the behaviour of small birds when the routine of their life is upset by the presence of a young Cuckoo in the nest.

When, after prodigious exertions, the unfledged Cuckoo has ejected its foster-brothers and sisters from their home, it sometimes happens that one of them is caught on or close to the rim of the nest. One such case was recorded by Mr. Chance’s camera. The unfortunate fledgling scrambled about on the branches below the nest; the parent Pipit flew back with food; the cries and open mouth of the ejected bird attracted attention, and it was fed; and the mother then settled down upon the nest as if all was in normal order. Meanwhile, the movements of the fledgling in the foreground grew feebler, and one could imagine its voice quavering off, fainter and fainter, as its vital warmth departed. At the next return of the parent with food the young one was dead.

It was the utter stupidity of the mother that was so impressive--its simple response to stimulus--of feeding to the stimulus of the young’s cry and open mouth, of brooding to that of the nest with something warm and feathery contained in it--its neglect of any steps whatsoever to restore the fallen nestling to safety. It was almost as pitiable an exhibition of unreason as the well-attested case of the wasp attendant on a wasp-grub, who, on being kept without food for some time, grew more and more restless, and eventually bit off the hind end of the grub and offered it to what was left!

Birds in general are stupid, in the sense of being little able to meet unforeseen emergencies; but their lives are often emotional, and their emotions are richly and finely expressed. I have for years been interested in observing the courtship and the relations of the sexes in birds, and have in my head a number of pictures of their notable and dramatic moments. These seem to me to illustrate so well the emotional furnishing of birds, and to provide such a number of windows into that strange thing we call a bird’s mind, that I shall simply set some of them down as they come to me.