Part 6
It is curious that we should abuse the hen for being now and then deceived by our impostures, considering the immense quantities of counterfeit coin we ourselves accept as currency, and the strange compounds of chalk and mud and alum and poisonous herbs and minerals which, according to the analysts, we contentedly swallow down as milk and butter, bread and beer. But the hen in a wild state is not subject to our impositions, and possibly the domestic hen finds it better for herself to overlook them. At any rate, as the mistakes concern her progeny, if her conduct is other than beneficial, it is an argument _against_ the perfection of instinct, which it tends to bring down to the level of imperfect human reason. It is commonly supposed that ducklings take to the water by instinct. And Addison tells us that on one occasion, as he was walking in the yard of his friend’s country-house, he ‘was wonderfully pleased to see the different workings of instinct in a hen followed by a brood of ducks. The young, upon the sight of a pond, immediately ran into it; while the step-mother, with all imaginable anxiety, hovered about the borders of it, to call them out of an element that appeared to her so dangerous and destructive[35].’ In order to test the real force of nature in this matter, as distinct from experience and education, I ventured on the experiment of placing some little orphan ducklings, which had been reared away from any pond, in a shallow bath of water just deep enough for them to swim in. The experiment was two or three times repeated, but in each case with a sort of impiety, or, at any rate, gross disrespect towards the grand principle of instinct, the ducklings, instead of enjoying themselves in their appropriate element, made the most violent and unceasing efforts to escape from it. The whole theory of instinct, indeed, probably rests on a multitude of evidences which have themselves been taken for granted. At every point minute observation, or actual questioning of the facts asserted, undermines it. Addison himself must have begun to waver, before he inserted in the numbers of the ‘Guardian[36]’ the French philosopher’s account of the ant, and its wonderful ingenuity and perseverance. Nor are passages wanting in his works, which might have been expressly written in support of the theory of development. After commenting on the various insensible gradations of perceptive being, ‘If we look,’ he says, ‘into the several inward perfections of cunning and sagacity, or what we generally call instinct, we find them rising after the same manner, imperceptibly one above another, and receiving additional improvements, according to the species in which they are implanted. This progress in nature is so very gradual, that the most perfect of an inferior species comes very near to the most imperfect of that which is immediately above it.’ Again: ‘The whole chasm in nature, from a plant to a man, is filled up with divers kinds of creatures, rising one over another, by such a gentle and easy ascent, that the little transitions and deviations from one species to another are almost insensible;’ and he quotes with approbation a passage from Locke, in which we read, ‘There are some brutes that seem to have as much knowledge and reason as some that are called men[37].’ Pope, who pursues much the same track in his ‘Essay on Man,’ permits himself to speak of ‘the half-reasoning elephant.’ Any one who doubts the appropriateness of such an epithet, not only to the elephant but to many other animals, should begin to study the ways and doings of the lower creatures with an eye to this very question,--at every turn asking himself how the action observed can be accounted for by a blind irrational instinct. A stumbling horse, for example, that is generally beaten for stumbling, starts after a false step before the lash is applied. How ridiculous will it be to ascribe to horses an instinct of starting after stumbling--a conditional instinct, that appears only in those horses that have been previously beaten when they stumbled! We need not suppose, as Lord Bacon appears to have done, that ‘dogs know the dog-killer’ by a kind of power of divination[38]. By their watchful habits, and quick inference from acute observation of the few particulars they are able to comprehend, it can scarcely be doubted that dogs learn something of the dispositions and intentions of mankind, recognize their humours, and distinguish those who are friendly to themselves from those who are hostile.
Numberless writers have noticed the different dispositions of the lower animals, differing not merely in separate species, but in various individuals of the same. There has been no scruple in taking the brutes themselves as types and emblems of moral qualities. Almost every vice and virtue has been unsparingly assigned to one or other of the brute creation. They are brave or cowardly, savage and treacherous, gentle and generous, industrious, idle, obedient, wayward, affectionate, malicious, working always for the common good, or full of rapacity and selfishness. It is likely enough that we often misapply these epithets, and call that courage which is only consciousness of strength, and that malignant ferocity which is really a hungry stomach and a badly-furnished larder; for such mistakes we commit also in judging of our fellow-men. But there are many beautiful instances on record in which dumb creatures have shown themselves capable beyond question of faithful friendship, and therefore as possessing at least the beginnings, if not any high advancement, of a moral nature. None perhaps is more beautiful than that told by Henry Brookes, a writer of the last century, about one of the lions in the Tower of London. A little spaniel picked up in the streets was thrown into the cage of the largest of these beasts, called for his size the king’s lion. ‘Immediately the little animal trembled, and shivered, and crouched, and threw itself on its back, and put forth its tongue, and held up its paws, in supplicatory attitudes, as an acknowledgment of superior power, and praying for mercy. In the meantime the lordly brute, instead of devouring it, beheld it with an eye of philosophic inspection. He turned it over with one paw, and then turned it over with the other, and smelled to it, and seemed desirous of courting a further acquaintance. From this day the strictest friendship commenced between them, a friendship consisting of all possible affection and tenderness on the part of the lion, and of the utmost confidence and boldness on the part of the dog, insomuch that he would lay himself down to sleep, within the fangs and under the jaws of his terrible patron.’
The sequel of the story is pathetic. To tell it briefly, in twelve months the little spaniel sickened and died. The lion at first supposed him to be asleep, but finding that all his efforts to awaken him were in vain, he was filled with intense anguish, would not allow the dead body to be removed, refused all sustenance or comfort, spending his time between rage and grief, till after five days of such an existence, one morning he was found dead, with his head lovingly reclined on the carcase of his little friend[39].
Were this only a fable instead of an actual incident, there is nothing in it revolting to our sense of probability, because we are perfectly aware that the lower animals constantly give indications of what in ourselves we call the moral feelings. We continually see them behaving as we ourselves behave when we submit to self-sacrifice for the sake of those we love.
We see many animals in possession of laws and constitutions answering to our own in all but one particular, namely, that theirs appear to be fixed while ours are continually changing. But most likely we overrate both the fixed character of theirs, and the instability of our own. Changes in the politics of an oyster may easily escape the notice of a man in the midst of some vast revolution (as he thinks it) of human affairs, some vast revolution which proves in the end to be nothing more than a change of names. For mankind the acquisition of language has indefinitely quickened the movement of ideas, but where language is without the aids of writing and printing, as among savage tribes, and where the language itself is an imperfect instrument of thought, the same routine seems to prevail from generation to generation. Fashion in dress changes but slowly when the dress itself is nothing but a girdle; and the fashions of the mind change with as little facility when ideas and wants, and the means of expressing the one and gratifying the other, are all alike few and extremely simple.
So simple are the wants and ideas of the savage, so little above those of the elephant and the ape, that Mr. Wallace finds himself driven to the conclusion that the savage ‘in his large and well-developed brain possesses an organ quite disproportionate to his actual requirements--an organ that seems prepared in advance, only to be fully utilized as he progresses in civilization.’ But anything _quite disproportionate_ to its actual place in nature cannot have been produced according to the theory of development. This theory therefore Mr. Wallace deems and declares inapplicable to the brain and mind of man. In support of his view he adduces several circumstances both of man’s bodily and mental constitution, which he considers this theory incapable of explaining. He maintains that natural selection will not account for those rudiments of logical, moral, and æsthetic faculties which are to be found in uncivilized man; for the nakedness of the human skin, though hair upon the back would be of essential service to the unclad savage; for the absence of prehensile power from the human foot, a power which he thinks would be useful, or for those perfections of hand and voice which he thinks would be useless, to uncultivated human beings. The inference he draws ‘from this class of phenomena is, that a superior intelligence has guided the development of man in a definite direction and for a special purpose, just as man guides the development of many animal and vegetable forms.’
In this illustration he overlooks the circumstance that man’s selection is after all nothing more nor less than part and parcel of natural selection. In his argument from the various uses and powers of the hand and brain, which could have been of no service to men in a wild state, he neglects the consideration that what is selected through being useful in one direction may incidentally become useful in another. Had he employed his usual ingenuity on the question of man’s hairless skin, he might have seen the possibility of its ‘selection’ through its superior beauty or the health attaching to superior cleanliness. At any rate it is surprising that he should picture to himself a superior intelligence plucking the hair from the backs of savage men, (to whom according to his own account it would have been useful and beneficial) in order that the descendants of the poor shorn wretches might, after many deaths from cold and damp, in the course of many generations take to tailoring and dabbling in bricks and mortar. In regard to the voice he makes an assertion which is surely impossible for himself or any one else to prove, namely, that ‘savages certainly never choose their wives for fine voices.’ But upon this assertion the whole of his argument about the voice depends. And as for the stress which he lays upon the rudimentary moral and æsthetic faculties of savages, we have shown that numbers of other animals likewise have rudimentary moral faculties, while Mr. Wallace himself makes it probable that many have a taste for colour[40], and that ‘their powers of vision and their faculties of perception and emotion must be essentially of the same nature as our own[41].’
Truly in one sense every variation is prepared in advance, only to be fully utilized in the future progress of the creature that varies. Every variation, I doubt not, is so prepared in advance by a superior intelligence, but under the general laws which that intelligence has ordained, and not by a special interference. The real progress of each creature, within the spheres at least of consciousness and intelligence, would seem to consist in its growing capacity for perceiving and understanding, for entering into fellowship with, beings superior to itself. In mental powers the dog and the horse become more and more like man, the closer and the more continuous the intercourse. Could they learn our language or we theirs, the progress might be indefinitely hastened. In the general progress onwards and upwards, man, it may be believed, then first became the indisputable lord and chief over his fellow animals, when his reason had so far advanced that he could comprehend the idea of God, when his reason had grown into a capacity of hearing the divine voice, which since then, not by interference with physical conditions, but by intercourse of mind with mind, has led him forward step by step from darkness into twilight, from the twilight is still leading him forward, as his eyes become able to bear it, towards the beauty of the rosy-fingered dawn; and just as those of the lower animals are considered the most intelligent which make the most successful efforts at intercourse with man and at serving him, so, by a true analogy, may the philosopher deem those men and those races of men to be furthest on the path of enlightenment who know most of God and serve Him best.
HUMAN NATURE AND BRUTE NATURE.[42]
A poor slave, named Androcles, escaped from his master into a sandy desert. While there a lion came suddenly upon him, and by signs made him understand that it was in an agony of pain. This the slave was able to relieve by extracting a large thorn from its paw and by gentle treatment of the wound. From this time the lion shared its prey with the man, till Androcles, pining for human society, and facing even death to regain it, at length gave himself up to his master. It so happened that the slave was sent to Rome to be exposed to wild beasts at the same time that the very lion which he had befriended was sent thither, among many others, to supply the cruel sports of the amphitheatre. The moment came when Androcles was to be torn in pieces. A huge famished lion rushed forth in fury upon him; then paused, crept gently towards him, and ended by fawning upon him with caressing movements. It was the lion he had known in the desert.
This is no fable, but a piece of well-known history; and the sequel is equally well-known, that the applause and admiration of all beholders at this wonderful instance of fraternity between man and beast, at this marvellous exemplification of the powers of memory and gratitude in a wild animal, secured the lives both of slave and lion.
Had this been recorded in the Hebrew Scriptures, in that noble and reverent phraseology which so often leaves out of sight all secondary causes as by comparison insignificant, and ascribes all that is good and wonderful directly to God, there can be little doubt that it would have borne a striking resemblance to the miracles wrought in favour of Elijah and Daniel; when for the one God commanded the ravens to feed him, and the ravens brought him bread and flesh in the morning and bread and flesh in the evening; and for the other God sent his angel and stopped the mouths of the lions even in their den, and they did him no hurt. Explain these miracles as you will, and the kindred one quoted by St. Peter, or accept them all without explanation as occurrences out of the course of nature and beyond our comprehension, it still follows from the language of the sacred writers that they at least supposed these brute creatures capable of intelligence, an intelligence sufficient to receive the divine commands and to avoid, so far as they might, opposition to God’s will. For how else could there be any moral teaching in the circumstance that ‘the dumb ass speaking with man’s voice forbad the madness of the prophet?’ How else can the miracle seem anything else or anything better than a piece of puerile conjuring? But this faculty, which the sacred writers therefore attribute to the brutes, the faculty of hearing and obeying the voice of God, is the basis of the highest intelligence, the basis of all true morality and religion.
That which we are now concerned to prove is, that human reason is an outgrowth and development of a faculty common to the whole animal creation; that we are the heirs of the past in fact, as we are inheritors of the future in hope; that an incalculable multitude of small advantages acquired in successive generations has brought man to his present vantage-ground of superiority; and that this very footing of advantage has now become in its turn simply the starting-point for future improvement to an estate indefinitely higher and better. It may well be impossible in a few minutes’ discourse to do more than indicate the bare outline of the proof; and even this might seem inappropriate to the time and place, did we not hope to show further that these opinions, startling or even dangerous as they may seem to some, give support to high principles of humanity, and are in accordance with the course and progress of God’s revelation of Himself to mankind.
It is well established that the human body in all its parts corresponds to the structure of certain of the lower animals. When first discovered this was extremely shocking to the sentiments of mankind, shocking to their pride, but shocking also to their religious sentiment, because they had been accustomed to speak of the ‘human form divine,’ to represent the supreme God, ‘Jehovah, Jove, or Lord,’ as wearing the form and acting with the members of a man, and because in the writings sacred alike to the Jew and to the Christian, they found it written that God created man in His own image; in the image of God created He him.’ They did not stop to enquire what sort of creation was intended or what sort of likeness. They failed to observe that the vague indefinite notion they entertained of a bodily likeness was inconsistent with the Christian’s cardinal doctrine of the Incarnation, according to which it is not man that wears the form of God, but God that took upon him the form of man.
It will now for a time perhaps seem equally shocking that the mind of man, which alone is left him for the divine resemblance, should notwithstanding have been developed from the mind of a brute creature, or if not developed, at any rate framed upon the same type and pattern.
A broad line has till lately been drawn between reason and instinct, instinct appearing in a large number of instances to do or even to surpass the work of reason, but within an exceedingly limited sphere, and according to a fixed invariable course. Ingenious and thoughtful men, however, taking their opinions not from hearsay and tradition, but founding them on careful observation of the works and ways of God in nature itself, have now shown the baselessness of this ancient estimate.
The bird building its nest does not follow an invariable rule, but accommodates itself to circumstances, to the materials of the locality, to the requirements of defence, as man does with his own habitations. There is no proof that the bird builds untaught by its elders, or that it does not improve by practice. Since wasps have been known to construct their nest out of paper, itself a fabric of human invention, it is impossible they can have chosen their material by an original instinct. The cells which various bees construct attain to various degrees of perfection, and imperfections may be found in the most perfect. It has indeed been a curious fancy for men so long to entertain, that though they were created in the image of God to have dominion over the lower creatures, yet those creatures without reason, without teaching, without the God-likeness, should be able to surpass them, by a miracle or a mystery, in the accuracy or perfection of their works.
The pursuit which man in a low state of civilization has ever thought most noble is that of war. The essence of war lies in the combination of forces and the choice of opportunity. Of both these the lower animals are known to be capable. Their armies resemble human armies in following leaders, in posting sentinels, in carrying off captives, in making slaves. Creatures that are very weak combine not unfrequently to repel or to destroy an antagonist immensely too strong for their individual efforts. That rooks and other animals try, and execute justice upon, offenders against the laws and customs of their society is probable, if it cannot be absolutely proved.
The objection is sure to be urged that if the dumb animals have the progressive plastic intelligence which is thus claimed for them, it ought, in the innumerable generations which have existed, to have attained to something far higher than there is any pretence for thinking it to have done. But this objection leaves important considerations out of sight. It is true here, as in so many cases, that to him that hath shall more be given. The intelligence of man reached a point not all at once but by degrees, at which it was able to invent helps and appliances for its own benefit and improvement, and thenceforward its strides were more rapid and its distinction from lower intelligences more marked. Cancel the art of printing, cancel the signs of the alphabet, cancel the forms of articulate language, and with each one of these steps you will thrust back and degrade, not perhaps every single human intellect, but certainly the whole mass and average of human intelligence. There is no need to ask or answer the question whether thought without language is possible: without language thought cannot move, it has no grasp upon the world; it may flicker for a moment in the mind that kindles it, as a light under a bushel, but it cannot shine before men that they may see its goodness and glorify their Father in heaven. We see the proof of this in races of men that have no printed books, no symbols for writing, and but feeble imperfect languages. Civilization is wanting to them; their worship is degraded; in their habits and general morality they rise but little above the brute creation. Moreover, century after century they continue without making any apparent improvement or advance. Contrast or compare with these the lower animal creation, and it will be found, if not in its separate members, still in the whole group, not to fall so infinitely below humanity as human beings have long been pleased to imagine: for the lower animals can be taught to recognize man as their superior and friend, though his mind is beyond their comprehension, and a similar recognition is exactly what we men have to attain to in regard to God; they can be taught by pleasure and pain, motives by which we ourselves both in childhood and in age are taught, motives by which God Himself declares that He teaches us, if we are to believe His word.
That they are capable of our virtues has been shown in a notable instance; that they are capable of our follies is clear in the conspicuous vanity of the peacock; and no weakness cleaves more pertinaciously to the human mind than this of vanity, which is often found combined even with the noblest intellect. That they are influenced by feelings like ours may be learned from the gay plumage of the bird of Paradise, acquired under the same influence of the preference and admiration of others, for which fair women wear fair raiment, and for which the soldier, at extra risk to his life, is clad in scarlet.