Chapter 23

recall it as well as if my years had been five-and-twenty; perhaps better. It was on a summer's evening, and I was out by myself at some distance from the house, playing about the high exposed roots of some old trees; on the other side of the trees the cattle, just returned from pasture, were gathered on the bare level ground. Hearing a great commotion among them, I climbed on to one of the high exposed roots, and, looking over, saw a cow on the ground, apparently unable to rise, moaning and bellowing in a distressed way, while a number of her companions were crowding round and goring her.

What is the meaning of such an instinct? Darwin has but few words on the subject. "Can we believe," he says, in his posthumous _Essay on Instinct, "_when a wounded herbivorous animal returns to its own herd and is then attacked and gored, that this cruel and very common instinct is of any service to the species?" At the same time, he hints that such an instinct might in some circumstances be useful, and his hint has been developed into the current belief among naturalists on the subject. Here it is, in Dr. Romanes' words: "We may readily imagine that the instinct displayed by many herbivorous animals of goring sick and wounded companions, is really of use in countries where the presence of weak members in a herd is a source of danger to the herd from the prevalence of wild beasts." Here it is assumed that the sick are set upon and killed, but this is not the fact; sickness and decay from age or some other cause are slow things, and increase imperceptibly, so that the sight of a drooping member grows familiar to the herd, as does that of a member with some malformation, or unusual shade of colour, or altogether white, as in the case of an albino.

Sick and weak members, as we have seen, while subject to some ill-treatment from their companions (only because they can be ill-treated with impunity), do not rouse the herd to a deadly animosity; the violent and fatal attack is often as not made on a member in perfect health and vigour and unwounded, although, owing to some accident, in great distress, and perhaps danger, at the moment.

The instinct is, then, not only useless but actually detrimental; and, this being so, the action of the herd in destroying one of its members is not even to be regarded as an instinct proper, but rather as an aberration of an instinct, a blunder, into which animals sometimes fall when excited to action in unusual circumstances.

The first thing that strikes us is that in these wild abnormal moments of social animals, they are acting in violent contradiction to the whole tenor of their lives; that in turning against a distressed fellow they oppose themselves to the law of their being, to the whole body of instincts, primary and secondary, and habits, which have made it possible for them to exist together in communities. It is, I think, by reflecting on the abnormal character of such an action that we are led to a true interpretation of this "dark saying of Nature."

Every one is familiar with Bacon's famous passage about the dog, and the noble courage which that animal puts on when "maintained by a man; who is to him in place of a God, or _melior natura;_ which courage is manifestly such as that creature, without the confidence of a better nature than its own, could never attain." Not so. The dog is a social animal, and acts instinctively in concert with his fellows; and the courage he manifests is of the family, not the individual. In the domestic state the man he is accustomed to associate with and obey stands to him in the place of the controlling pack, and to his mind, which is canine and not human, _is_ the pack. A similar "noble courage," greatly surpassing that exhibited on all other occasions, is displayed by an infinite number of mammals and birds of gregarious habits, when repelling the attacks of some powerful and dangerous enemy, or when they rush to the rescue of one of their captive fellows. Concerning this rage and desperate courage of social animals in the face of an enemy, we see (1) that it is excited by the distressed cries, or by the sight of a member of the herd or family dying from or struggling in the clutches of an enemy; (2) that it affects animals when a number af individuals are together, and is eminently contagious, like fear, that communicates itself, quick as lightning, from one to another until all are in a panic, and like the joyous emotion that impels the members of a herd or flock to rush simultaneously into play.

Now, it is a pretty familiar fact that animals acting instinctively, as well as men acting intelligently, have at times their delusions and their illusions, and see things falsely, and are moved to action by a false stimulus to their own disadvantage. When the individuals of a herd or family are excited to a sudden deadly rage by the distressed cries of one of their fellows, or by the sight of its bleeding wounds and the smell of its blood, or when they see it frantically struggling on the ground, or in the cleft of a tree or rock, as if in the clutches of a powerful enemy, they do not turn on it to kill but to rescue it.

In whatever way the rescuing instinct may have risen, whether simply through natural selection or, as is more probable, through an intelligent habit becoming fixed and hereditary, its effectiveness depends altogether on the emotion of overmastering rage excited in the animal--rage against a tangible visible enemy, or invisible, and excited by the cries or struggles of a suffering companion; clearly, then, it could not provide against the occasional rare accidents that animals meet with, which causes them to act precisely in the way they do when seized or struck down by an enemy. An illusion is the result of the emotion similar to the illusion produced by vivid expectation in ourselves, which has caused many a man to see in a friend and companion the adversary he looked to see, and to slay him in his false-seeing anger.

An illusion just as great, leading to action equally violent, but ludicrous rather than painful to witness, may be seen in dogs, when encouraged by a man to the attack, and made by his cries and gestures to expect that some animal they are accustomed to hunt is about to be unearthed or overtaken; and if, when they are in this disposition, he cunningly exhibits and sets them on a dummy, made perhaps of old rags and leather and stuffed with straw, they will seize, worry, and tear it to pieces with the greatest fury, and without the faintest suspicion of its true character.

That wild elephants will attack a distressed fellow seemed astonishing to Darwin, when he remembered the case of an elephant after escaping from a pit helping its fellow to escape also. But it is precisely the animals, high or low in the organic scale, that are social, and possess the instinct of helping each other, that will on occasions attack a fellow in misfortune--such an attack being no more than a blunder of the helping instinct.

Felix de Azara records a rather cruel experiment on the temper of some tame rats confined in a cage. The person who kept them caught the tail of one of the animals and began sharply pinching it, keeping his hand concealed under the cage. Its cries of pain and struggles to free itself greatly excited the other rats; and after rushing wildly round for some moments they flew at their distressed companion, and fixing their teeth in its throat quickly dispatched it. In this case if the hand that held the tail had been visible and in the cage, the bites would undoubtedly have been inflicted on it; but no enemy was visible; yet the fury and impulse to attack an enemy was present in the animals. In such circumstances, the excitement must be discharged--the instinct obeyed, and in the absence of any other object of attack the illusion is produced and it discharges itself on the struggling companion. It is sometimes seen in dogs, when three or four or five are near together, that if one suddenly utters a howl or cry of pain, when no man is near it and no cause apparent, the others run to it, and seeing nothing, turn round and attack each other. Here the exciting cause--the cry for help--is not strong enough to produce the illusion which is sometimes fatal to the suffering member; but each dog mistakingly thinks that the others, or one of the others, inflicted the injury, and his impulse is to take the part of the injured animal. If the cry for help--caused perhaps by a sudden cramp or the prick of a thorn--is not very sharp or intense, the other dogs will not attack, but merely look and growl at each other in a suspicious way.

To go back to Azara's anecdote. Why, it may be asked--and this question has been put to me in conversation--if killing a distressed companion is of no advantage to the race, and if something must be attacked--why did not these rats in this instance attack the cage they were shut in, and bite at the woodwork and wires? Or, in the case related by Mr. Andrew Lang in _Longman's Magazine_ some time ago, in which the members of a herd of cattle in Scotland turned with sudden amazing fury on one of the cows that had got wedged between two rocks and was struggling with distressed bellowings to free itself--why did they not attack the prisoning rocks instead of goring their unfortunate comrade to death? For it is well known that animals will, on occasions, turn angrily upon and attack inanimate objects that cause them injury or hinder their freedom of action. And we know that this mythic faculty--the mind's projection of itself into visible nature--survives in ourselves, that there are exceptional moments in our lives when it comes back to us; no one, for instance, would be astonished to hear that any man, even a philosopher, had angrily kicked away or imprecated a stool or other inanimate object against which he had accidentally barked his shins. The answer is, that there is no connection between these two things--the universal mythic faculty of the mind, and that bold and violent instinct of social animals of rushing to the rescue of a stricken or distressed companion, which has a definite, a narrow, purpose--namely, to fall upon an enemy endowed not merely with the life and intelligence common to all things, including rocks, trees, and waters, but with animal form and motion.

I had intended in this place to give other instances, observed in several widely-separated species, including monkeys; but it is not necessary, as I consider that all the facts, however varied, are covered by the theory I have suggested--even a fact I like the one mentioned in this chapter of cattle bellowing and madly digging up the ground where the blood of one of their kind had been spilt: also such a fact as that of wild cattle and other animals caught in a trap or enclosure attacking and destroying each other in their frenzy; and the fact that some fierce-tempered carnivorous mammals will devour the companion they have killed. It is an instinct of animals like wolves and peccaries to devour the enemy they have overcome and slain: thus, when the jaguar captures a peccary out of a drove, and does not quickly escape with his prize into a tree, he is instantly attacked and slain and then consumed, even to the skin and bones. This is the wolf's and the peccary's instinct; and the devouring of one of their own companions is an inevitable consequence of the mistake made in the first place of attacking and killing it. In no other circumstances, not even when starving, do they prey on their own species.

If the explanation I have offered should seem a true or highly probable one, it will, I feel sure, prove acceptable to many lovers of animals, who, regarding tins seemingly ruthless instinct, not as an aberration but as in some vague way advantageous to animals in their struggle for existence, are yet unable to think of it without pain and horror; indeed, I know those who refuse to think of it at all, who would gladly disbelieve it if they could.

It should be a relief to them to be able to look on it no longer as something ugly and hateful, a blot on nature, but as an illusion, a mistake, an unconscious crime, so to speak, that has for its motive the noblest passion that animals know--that sublime courage and daring which they exhibit in defence of a distressed companion. This fiery spirit in animals, which makes them forget their own safety, moves our hearts by its close resemblance to one of the most highly-prized human virtues; just as we are moved to intellectual admiration by the wonderful migratory instinct in birds that simulates some of the highest achievements of the mind of man. And we know that this beautiful instinct is also liable to mistakes--that many travellers leave us annually never to return. Such a mistake was undoubtedly the cause of the late visitation of Pallas' sand-grouse: owing perhaps to some unusual atmospheric or dynamic condition, or to some change in the nervous system of the birds, they deviated widely from their usual route, to scatter in countless thousands over the whole of Europe and perish slowly in climates not suited to them; while others, overpassing the cold strange continent, sped on over colder, stranger seas, to drop at last like aerolites, quenching their lives in the waves.

Whether because it is true, as Professor Freeman and some others will have it, that humanity is a purely modern virtue; or because the doctrine of Darwin, by showing that we are related to other forms of life, that our best feelings have their roots low down in the temper and instincts of the social species, has brought us nearer in spirit to the inferior animals, it is certain that our regard for them has grown, and is growing, and that new facts and fresh inferences that make us think more highly of them are increasingly welcome.