Part 10
9. If human mind has been evolved, it is logical to expect to find in other animals, especially in those more closely resembling ourselves in structure, mind elements similar to those we find in ourselves.[6] And this is precisely what we do find. The same great trunk impulses that animate men animate also those more rudimentary but not less real individuals below and around men. The great primary facts of sex, of self-preservation, of pleasure and pain, of life and death, of egoism and altruism, of motherhood, of alimentation, etc.—all of these are found everywhere, down almost to the very threshold of organic life. And they are the antecedents of the same great tendencies as those that control the lives of men. It is often supposed by the superficial that the facts of sex and alimentation, which are so prominent in other animals, have been relegated to a very subordinate place in the nature of man. But nothing could be much farther from the truth. It has been said that there are only two things that will induce the typical African or Australian to undergo prolonged labour—hunger and the sex appetite. It is probable that men—not only primitive men, but the most evolved races, including even poets and philosophers—will do more desperate and idiotic things and undergo more trying experiences when actuated by the sex impulse than from the effects of any other impulse in human nature. This impulse is especially overmastering in races like the Italian and Spanish, and has been mentioned by ethnologists as a probable factor in the deterioration of these races. The sentiments of love, marital affection, and family life control mankind more completely than any other motives. And next to these comes hunger. Let anyone who imagines that only the non-human creatures are carnal observe with what uniformity almost every function in both savage and civilised life gravitates toward eating and drinking. If it is a picnic, a convention, a national holiday, a Christmas celebration, a meeting of a fraternal society, a thanksgiving ceremony, or what not, eating is one of the main things, and the one exercise into which four-fifths of those present probably enter with the greatest enthusiasm.
The human soul is the blossom, not the beginning, of psychic evolution. Mother-love compassionated infancy long before a babe came from the stricken loins of woman. The inhabitants of the earth had been seeking pleasure and seeking to avoid pain, and seeking ever with the same sad futility, long before man with his retinue of puny philosophies strutted upon the scene. Hate poisoned the cisterns of the sea and dropped its pollutions through the steaming spaces ages before there was malice among men. Altruism is older than the mountains, and selfishness hardened the living heart before the continents were lifted. There was wonder in the woods and in the wild heart of the fastnesses before there were waitings in synagogues and genuflections about altar piles. The frogs, crickets, and birds had been singing love a thousand generations and more when the first amoroso knelt in dulcet descant to a beribboned Venus. Human nature is not an article of divine manufacture, any more than is the human form. It came out of the breast of the bird, out of the soul of the quadruped. The human heart does not draw back from the mysterious dissolutions of death more earnestly than does the hare that flees before resounding packs or the wild-fowl that reddens the reeds with its flounderings. Bowerbirds build their nest-side resorts, decorate them with gay feathers, and surround them with grounds ornamented with bright stones and shells, for identically the same reason as human beings design drawing-rooms, hang them with tapestries, and surround them with ornamented lawns. The scarlet waistcoat of the robin and the flaming dresses of tanagers and humming-birds, which seem, as they flash through the forest aisles, like shafts of cardinal-fire, serve the same vanities and minister to the same instincts as the plumage of the dandy and the tints and gewgaws of gorgeous dames. Art is largely a manifestation of sex, and it is about as old and about as persistent as this venerable impulse. How did Darwin’s dog know his master on his master’s return from a five-years’ trip around the world? Just as the boy remembers where the strawberries grow and the philosopher recalls his facts—by that power of the brain to retain and to reproduce past impressions. Why does the thinker search his soul for new theories and the spaces for new stars? For the same reason that the child asks questions and the monkey picks to pieces its toys. What is reason? A habit of wise men—an expedient of ants—a mania the fools of all ages are free from. All of the activities of men, however imposing or peculiar, are but elaborations in one way or another of the humble doings of the animalcule, whose home is a water-drop and whose existence can be discovered by human senses only by the aid of instruments.
10. Mind has evolved because the universe has evolved. Whether mind is a part of the universe, or all of it, or only an attribute of it, it is, in any case, inextricably mixed up with it. And, since the universe as a whole has evolved, it is improbable that any part of it or anything pertaining to it has remained impassive to the general tendency. There are no solids. Nothing stands. The whole universe is in a state of fluidity. Even the ‘eternal hills,’ the ‘unchanging continents,’ and the ‘everlasting stars,’ are flowing, flowing ever, slowly but ceaselessly, from form to form. So is mind. Indeed, if there is anywhere in the folds of creation a being such as the one whom man has long accused of having brought the universe into existence, we may rest assured that even he is not sitting passively apart from the enormous enterprise which he has himself inaugurated.
The evidence is conclusive. The evolution of mind is supported by a series of facts not less incontrovertible and convincing than that by which physical evolution is established. The data of mental evolution are not quite so definite and plentiful as those of physical evolution. But this is due to the greater intangibility of mental phenomena and to the backward condition of the psychological sciences, especially of comparative psychology. Mental phenomena are always more difficult to deal with than material phenomena, and hence are always more tardily attended to in the application of any theory. But taking everything into account, including the close connection between physical and psychical phenomena, it may be asserted that it is not more certain that the physical structure of man has been derived from sub-human forms of life than it is that the human mind has also been similarly derived.
Man is the adult of long evolution. The human soul has ancestors and consanguinities just as the body has. It is just as reasonable to suppose that the human physiology, with its definitely elaborated tissues, organs, and systems, is unrelated to the physiology of vertebrates in general, and through vertebrate physiology to the physiology of invertebrates, as to suppose that the states and impulses constituting human nature and consciousness began to exist in the anthropic type of anatomy and are unrelated to the states and impulses of vertebrate consciousness in general, and through vertebrate consciousness to those remoter types of sentiency lying away at the threshold of organic life. Human psychology is a part of universal psychology. It has been evolved. It has been evolved according to the same laws of heredity and adaptation as have physiological structures. And it is just as impossible to understand human nature and psychology unaided by those wider prospects of universal psychology as it is to understand the facts of human physiology unaided by analogous universalisations.
1. Romanes: _Mental Evolution in Animals_; New York, 1898. 2. Gilbraith: _Ethnological Journal_, 1869, p. 304. 3. Burton: _First Footsteps in East Africa_; London, 1856. 4. Lubbock: _Origin of Civilisation_; New York, 1898. 5. Demoor: _Evolution by Atrophy_; New York, 1899. 6. This topic is more fully presented in the chapter “The elements of the human and non-human mind compared.”
III. The Common-sense View.
But it is not necessary to be learned in Darwinian science in order to know that non-human beings have souls. Just the ordinary observation of them in their daily lives about us—in their comings and goings and doings—is sufficient to convince any person of discernment that they are beings with joys and sorrows, desires and capabilities, similar to our own. No human being with a conscientious desire to learn the truth can associate intimately day after day with these people—associate with them as he himself would desire to be associated with in order to be interpreted, without presumption or reserve, in a kind, honest, straightforward, magnanimous manner; make them his friends and really enter into their inmost lives—without realising that they are almost unknown by human beings, that they are constantly and criminally misunderstood, and that they are in reality beings actuated by substantially the same impulses and terrorised by approximately the same experiences as we ourselves. They eat and sleep, seek pleasure and try to avoid pain, cling valorously to life, experience health and disease, get seasick, suffer hunger and thirst, co-operate with each other, build homes, reproduce themselves, love and provide for their children, feeding, defending, and educating them, contend against enemies, contract habits, remember and forget, learn from experience, have friends and favourites and pastimes, appreciate kindness, commit crimes, dream dreams, cry out in distress, are affected by alcohol, opium, strychnine, and other drugs, see, hear, smell, taste, and feel, are industrious, provident and cleanly, have languages, risk their lives for others, manifest ingenuity, individuality, fidelity, affection, gratitude, heroism, sorrow, sexuality, self-control, fear, love, hate, pride, suspicion, jealousy, joy, reason, resentment, selfishness, curiosity, memory, imagination, remorse—all of these things, and scores of others, the same as human beings do.
The anthropoid races have the same emotions and the same ways of expressing those emotions as human beings have. They laugh in joy, whine in distress, shed tears, pout and apologise, and get angry when they are laughed at. They protrude their lips when sulky or pouting, stare with wide open eyes in astonishment, and look downcast when melancholy or insulted. When they laugh, they draw back the corners of their mouth and expose their teeth, their eyes sparkle, their lower eyelids wrinkle, and they utter chuckling sounds, just as human beings do.[1] They have strong sympathy for their sick and wounded, and manifest toward their friends, and especially toward the members of their own family, a devotion scarcely equalled among the lowest races of mankind. They use rude tools, such as clubs and sticks, and resort to cunning and deliberation to accomplish their ends. The orang, when pursued, will throw sticks at his pursuers, and when wounded, and the wound does not prove instantly fatal, will sometimes press his hand upon the wound or apply grass and leaves to stop the flow of blood. The children of anthropoids wrestle with each other, and chase and throw each other, just as do the juveniles of human households. The gorilla, chimpanzee, and orang all build for themselves lodges made of broken boughs and leaves in which to sleep at night. These lodges, rude though they are, are not inferior to the habitations of many primitive men. The Puris, who live naked in the depths of the Brazilian forests, do not even have huts to live in, only screens made by setting up huge palm-leaves against a cross-pole.[2] Some of the African tribes are said to live largely in caves and the crevices of rocks. This is the case with many primitive men. According to a writer in the _Journal_ of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland (January, 1902), ‘common forms of dwelling among the wild tribes of the Malay Peninsula are rock-shelters (sometimes caves, but more commonly natural recesses under overhanging ledges) and leaf-shelters, which are sometimes formed on the ground and sometimes in the branches of trees. The simplest form of these leaf-shelters consists of a single palm-leaf planted in the ground to afford the wanderer some slight shelter for the night.’
When they sleep, the anthropoids sometimes lie stretched out, man-like, on their backs, and sometimes they lie on their side with their hand under their head for a pillow. The orang retires about five or six o’clock in the evening, and does not rise until the morning sun has dissipated the mists of the forest. The gorilla and chimpanzee seem to mate for life. The former lives, as a rule, in single families, each family consisting of a male and a female and their children. During the day this primitive family roams through the forests of equatorial Africa in search of food. They live on fruits and nuts and the tender shoots and leaves of plants. They are especially fond of sugar-cane, which they eat in small-boy fashion by chewing and discarding the juiceless pulp. Among the foods of the gorilla is a walnut-like nut which it cracks with stones. As evening comes on, the head of the family selects a sleeping-place for the night. This is usually some low tree with a dense growth at the top, and protected as much as possible by higher trees from the chilly night wind. Here, on a bed of broken branches and leaves, the mother and little ones go to sleep, while the father devotedly crouches at the foot of the tree, with his back against the trunk to guard his family from leopards and other nocturnal cut-throats who eat apes.[3] When the weather is stormy, they cover themselves with broad pandanus leaves to keep off the rain. Koppenfels relates an incident of a gorilla family which makes one think of things he sometimes sees among men. The family consisted of the parents and two children. It was meal-time. The head of the family reposed majestically on the ground, while the wife and children hustled for fruits for him in a near-by tree. If they were not sufficiently nimble about it, or if they were so wanton as to take a bite themselves, the paterfamilias growled and gave them a cuff on the head.[3] Notwithstanding the sensational tales of the ferocity of this being, the gorilla never attacks anyone at any time unless he is molested.[3] He much prefers to attend to his own business. But if he is not allowed to do so, if he is attacked, he is as fearless as a machine. He approaches his antagonist walking upright and beating his breast with his fists. He presents one of the most terrifying of all spectacles, as, with gleaming eyes, hair erect, and resounding yells, he bears down on the object of his resentment. The natives fear the gorilla more than they fear any other animal.
The chimpanzee in his native wilds lives in small tribes consisting of a few families each. Like the gorilla, it passes the most of its time on the ground, going among the trees only for food or sleep. It builds a sleeping-place at night in the trees, as in the case of the gorilla. Brehm, who brought up a number of chimpanzees in his own home as comrades and playmates of his children, and who studied them and associated with them for years, says: ‘The chimpanzee is not only one of the cleverest of all creatures, but a being capable of deliberation and judgment. Everything he does is done consciously and deliberately. He looks upon all other animals, except man, as very inferior to himself. He treats children entirely different from grown-up people. The latter he respects; the former he looks upon as comrades and equals. He is not merely inquisitive: he is greedy for knowledge. He can draw conclusions, can reason from one thing to another, and apply the results of experience to new circumstances. He is cunning, even wily, has flashes of humour, indulges in practical jokes, manifests moods, and is entertained in one company and bored in another. He is self-willed but not stubborn, good-natured but not wanting in independence. He expresses his emotions like a human being. In sickness he behaves like one in despair, distorts his face, groans, stamps, and tears his hair. He learns very easily whatever is taught him, as, for instance, to sit upright at table, to eat with knife and fork and spoon, to drink from a glass or cup, to stir the sugar in his tea, to use a napkin, to wear clothes, to sleep in a bed, and so on. Exceedingly appreciative of every caress, he is equally sensitive to blame and unkindness. He is capable of deep gratitude, and he expresses it by shaking hands or kissing without being asked to do so. He behaves toward infants with touching tenderness. The behaviour of a sick and suffering chimpanzee is most pathetic. Begging piteously, almost humanly, he looks into his master’s face, receives every attempt to help him with warm thanks, and soon looks upon his physician as a benefactor, holding out his arm to him, stretching out his tongue whenever told, and even doing so of his own accord after a few visits from his physician. He swallows medicines readily, and even submits to surgical operations—in short, behaves very like a human patient in similar circumstances. As his end approaches, he becomes more gentle, and the nobler traits of his character stand out prominently’.[4]
_The New York Herald_, in its issue of July 2, 1901, contained an account of the death of Charlemagne, a chimpanzee who died a short time before at Grenoble, France. This anthropoid at the time of his death was the most popular inhabitant of the town. His popularity was due to his good-nature and intelligence, and especially to the fact that a few years before his death he had saved a child from drowning in a well. The ape saw the child fall, and without a moment’s hesitation climbed down the rope used for the buckets, seized the child, and climbed out again by the same rope by which he had descended. The people of the town thought so much of him that they followed his remains to the grave, and the municipal council voted to erect a bronze statue to his memory.
A heartless hunter—maybe one of those assassins who fill the wilds with widows and orphans in the name of Science—tells of the murder of a mother chimpanzee and her baby in Africa. The mother was high up in a tree with her little one in her arms. She watched intently, and with signs of the greatest anxiety, the hunter as he moved about beneath, and when he took aim at her the poor doomed thing motioned to him with her hand precisely in the manner of a human being, to have him desist and go away.
According to Emin Pasha, who was for a number of years Governor of an Egyptian province on the Upper Nile, and whom Stanley made his last expedition to ‘rescue,’ chimpanzees sometimes make use of fire. He told Stanley that, when a tribe of chimpanzees who resided in a forest near his camp came at night to get fruit from the orchards, they always came bearing torches to light them on their way. ‘If I had not seen it with my own eyes,’ he declares, ‘I never could have believed that these beings have the power of making fire’.[5] This same authority relates that on one occasion a band of chimpanzees descended upon his camp and carried off a drum. The marauders went away in great glee, beating the drum as they retreated. He says he heard them several times after that, at night, beating their drum, in the forest.
The monkeys are little inferior to the man-like races in their intelligence and in the general similarity of their feelings and instincts to those of men. Monkeys live in tribes, and at the head of each tribe is an old male chief who has won his place by his strength, courage, and ability. Monkeys have excellent memories and keen observation, and are able to recognise their friends in a crowd even after long absences. They are proverbially imitative, have a strong desire for knowledge, and are exceedingly sensitive and sympathetic in their natures. Sympathy and curiosity, the two most prominent traits in simian psychology, are, significantly, the two most important facts in the psychology of man. Sympathy and curiosity lie at the foundation of human civilisation, sympathy at the foundation of morals, and curiosity of invention and science. The monkey whose diary appears in the closing pages of Romanes’ ‘Animal Intelligence’ was possessed of an almost ravenous desire to know. He spent hour after hour in exploration, examining with the indomitable patience of a scientist everything that came within the bounds of his little horizon. And when he had found out any new thing, he was as delighted over it as a boy who has solved a hard problem, repeating the experiment over and over until it was thoroughly familiar to him. Among the many things he discovered for himself was the use of the lever and the screw. Monkeys are the most affectionate of all animals excepting dogs and men. This affection reaches its culmination, as among men, in the love of the mother for her child. The mother monkey’s little one is the object of her constant care and affection. She nurses and bathes it, licks it and cleans its coat, and folds it in her arms and rocks it as if to lull it to sleep, just as human mammas do. She divides every bite with her little one, but does not hesitate to chastise it with slaps and pinches when it is rude. The monkey child is generally very obedient, obedient enough for an example to many a human youngster.
‘Very touching,’ says Brehm, from whom many of the foregoing facts are gleaned, ‘is the conduct of the mother when her baby is obviously suffering. And if it dies she is in despair. For hours, and even for days, she carries the little corpse about with her, refuses all food, sits indifferently in the same spot, and often literally pines to death’.[4]
Orphan monkeys, according to Brehm, are often adopted by the tribe, and carefully looked after by the other monkeys, both male and female. The great mass of human beings, who know about as much about the real emotional life of monkeys as wooden Indians do, are inclined to pass over lightly all displays of feeling by these people of the trees. But the poet knows, and the prophet knows, and the world will one day understand, that in the gentle bosoms of these wild woodland mothers glow the antecedents of the same impulses as those that cast that blessed radiance over the lost paradise of our own sweet childhood. The mother monkey who gathered green leaves as she fled from limb to limb, and frantically stuffed them into the wound of her dying baby in order to stanch the cruel rush of blood from its side, all the while uttering the most pitiful cries and casting reproachful glances at her human enemy, until she fell with her darling in her arms and a bullet in her heart, had in her simian soul just as genuine mother-love, and love just as sacred, as that which burns in the breast of woman.
The affection of monkeys is not confined to the love of the mother for her child, but exists among the different members of the same tribe, and extends even to human beings, especially to those who make any pretensions to do to them as they would themselves be done by. The monkey kept by Romanes, already referred to, became so attached to his master that he went into the wildest demonstrations of joy whenever his master, after an absence, came into the room. Standing on his hind-legs at the full length of his chain, and reaching out both hands as far as he could reach, he screamed with all his might. His joy was so hysterical that it was impossible to carry on any kind of conversation until he had been folded in his master’s arms, when he immediately grew quiet.