C. Lloyd Morgan

“ And the instant response of a well-trained dog is admirable. But in the whole proceeding he is merely the executant of his master’s orders. He originates no important step. And if you listen to the criticisms by other shepherds during a competition you will find that they are mainly passed on the judgment shown by the master, and only in palpable failures in obedience on the behaviour of the dog. The intelligent animal is what he is trained to be—one whose natural powers are under the complete control of his master with whom the whole plan of action lies. ”

“ Thus Felidæ, when young, and in very agile sprightly species, like the puma, throughout life, simulate all the actions of an animal hunting its prey—sudden, intense excitement of discovery, concealment, gradual advance, masked by intervening objects, with intervals of watching, when they crouch motionless, the eyes flashing and tail waved from side to side; finally, the rush and spring, when the playfellow is captured, rolled over on his back, and worried to imaginary death. Other species of the most diverse kinds, in which voice is greatly developed, join in noisy concerts and choruses ”

“ And we know what this feeling is—this periodic intense elation which even civilized man occasionally experiences when in perfect health, more especially when young. There are moments when he is mad with joy, when he cannot keep still, when his impulse is to sing and shout aloud and laugh at nothing, to run and leap and exert himself in some extravagant way. ”

“ And, in any case, it seems somewhat extravagant to say that sociability is the chief factor in evolution. No doubt it might be plausibly urged that human society is, from man’s point of view, the highest product of evolution; that in attaining to this end sociability has been the leading factor; and that obviously the leading factor in the evolution of the highest product may properly be called the chief factor in evolution. But Prince Kropotkine apparently means that sociability is the chief factor, not only in this evolution, but in all organic, or, at least, all animal evolution. ”

“ We, indeed, can in some degree learn to take pleasure in that which at first, and by nature, is distasteful; but we do so by some external constraint, or from some motive of ideational origin. We put pressure upon ourselves, or have pressure put upon us, repeatedly to perform some irksome task; we fall into routine and custom; and the performance becomes so far second nature that its discontinuance produces an uncomfortable sense of something lacking in the daily round. Perhaps domestic animals learn to like the good offices we force them to perform for us. ”

“ The animal is but the instrument on which his clever trainer plays; an instrument of wonderful intelligence, but lacking in the higher rational faculty. The organized scheme is the master’s, not that of his willing slave. A rational being might not do more wonderful things; but he would learn them more rapidly and by a less wearisome method. As it is, the clever performing dog originates little or nothing, and repeats again and again the same stereotyped behaviour, which—if one witnesses the performance often—touches one with a profound sense of its lack of rational spontaneity. ”

“ Then the wise bird goes to sleep, and wakes up again only to resume with new zest its persistent and varied efforts, by which it becomes acquainted with all the details of its environment. Watch young birds on the wing gaining their mastery of the air in flight, young seals tumbling in the water, young foals scampering and kicking up their heels in the meadows. ”

“ The blood-system, respiratory organs, and all his inner machinery are still pulsating with nervous thrills; his back is up. Then he sees his chance, and flies at his opponent. Much that he has learnt in play, and all that he has learnt in earnest, comes to his aid in the short angry scuffle. And what we call his emotion of anger spurs him on to the fight; the cowardly dog in which this is lacking or is replaced by fear is spurred to flight. Each may contribute to self-preservation, but in different ways. ”

“ The stimulus intensifies the want, or may in some cases call it into existence. Just as a whiff from the kitchen may lead us to realize that we need the satisfaction that will erelong be presented at table, so may the sight of his mate in the spring evoke in the breast of the yearling sparrow a need, having its source in morphological and physiological changes, that spurs him on to the courtship that shall lead to its due satisfaction. ”

“ In this part of his contention Huxley was, we believe, unquestionably right from the scientific standpoint. Neither will, nor impulse, nor instinct, nor consciousness itself, should be introduced into any scientific description or explanation of phenomena as a cause of their existence or being, for as such it does not enter into the sequence of events; it is that which metaphysics claims as their raison d’être—that which gives them being. Science in this matter should be frankly agnostic—neither affirming nor denying aught. ”

“ Thorndike’s experiments go far to disprove, is what we may term reflective imitation. A cat with no experience of the means of escape, one that has tried to get out of the box by chance efforts in many directions and has failed, sees another cat perform an act acquired in this way, and learns nothing from the sight. This, no doubt, proves that the cat had not in any sense grasped the nature of the problem before it, had no notion of just where the difficulty lay, had not the wit to see that the performance of the other cat supplied the missing links in its own previous behaviour. ”

“ When I am playing a hard game of tennis, or when I am sailing a yacht close to the wind in a choppy sea, self does not at all tend to become focal. Hence, though I am a self-conscious being I am not always self-conscious. And presumably when I am least self-conscious, I am nearest the condition of the animal at the stage of mere sense experience. I am exhilarated with the sense of pleasurable existence, my [154] whole being tingles with sentient life. I sense, or am aware of, my own life and consciousness, in an unusually subtle manner. Experience is vivid and continuous. ”

“ Every generous feeling that has not been crushed, every wholesome impulse that has been followed, every just perception, every habit of unselfish action, will be present in the background to guide or to sustain. ”

“ The method of intelligence—in the sense in which we are using this term—the method of varied trial and error with the utilization of chance success, is a lengthy and somewhat clumsy process; but it suffices. Now contrast it with the procedure of a rational animal, such as man is or may be. When he is confronted by a difficulty he is not content to meet it by trying this way, and that way, and another way, anyhow, and trusting to chance to bring success, but he considers the problem in all its relations with a view to ascertaining the essential nature of the difficulty. ”

“ We have already said that the companion, as the nucleus of a situation, is a thing which reacts in altogether special ways, so that it becomes differentiated from other things as something the meaning of which, and the interest in which, are sui generis and unique in type. It becomes the centre of emotional situations, which we ascribe to rivalry, emulation, jealousy, and so forth. And we have also drawn attention to the view that the genetic order, so far as there is an order, is not first the ego and then the alter, but first the mother and companions and then through them the self. ”

“ Few would contend that the consummate skill evinced in fully developed flight at its best, the hurtling swoop of the falcon, the hovering of the kestrel, the wheeling of swifts in the summer air, the rapid dart and sudden poise of the humming bird, the easy sweep of the sea-gull, the downward glide of the stork—that these are, in all their exquisite perfection, instinctive. A rough but sufficient outline of action is hereditary ”

“ But even supposing that no animal has yet risen beyond the second or intelligent stage, it is none the less important to realize that we have here, in animal life, the foundations on which may be raised what may, perhaps, be regarded as one of the characteristic features of human progress. This characteristic is the transference of evolution from the organism to the environment handed on from generation to generation. ”

“ They are a means by which each indicates to others the fact of his comforting presence; and they still, to a large extent, retain their primary function. The chirping of grasshoppers, the song of the cicada, the piping of frogs in the pool, the bleating of lambs at the hour of dusk, the lowing of contented cattle, the call-notes of the migrating host of birds—all these, whatever else they may be, are the reassuring social links of sound, the grateful signs of kindred presence. ”

“ Once more we may say—and this way of looking at the question arises naturally out of what has gone before—that intelligence deals with concrete examples, and does not rise to the abstract and general rule. The ideal scheme of reason is the result of abstraction and generalization. It is a framework of conceptions which can be applied to the particular facts which fall under observation to see whether it fits and meets the case. Intelligence has to deal with the facts as they present themselves, without the aid of an organized system of knowledge built up into an ideal scheme. ”

“ If the female yielded readily and at once, the behaviour of courtship would never have been evolved. Superabundant vigour in the male is, no doubt, a favourable condition of courtship, as it is of play; but neither is it a sine quâ non, nor in any case does it, or can it, afford any guidance of behaviour into just those specific channels in which we find it setting during the breeding season. If sexual selection be not a vera causa of the specific direction, we have at present no other hypothesis which in any degree fits the facts. ”

“ And if, instead of trusting to such general a priori considerations, we study with attention the conditions under which an animal so behaves as to lead us to infer that it profits by experience, we find that it is not the consciousness that [44] accompanies the behaviour which leads to future guidance, but the consciousness that arises from the results of the behaviour. Let us willingly grant that the newly hatched, and as yet inexperienced chick, when it pecks at a small object is conscious of a visual impression, and is conscious also of movements of its neck and beak. ”

“ Ideal schemes and plans of action, the products of reflection and foresight, take form in the mind and enter into the conscious situation. And the intelligent animal, hitherto the creature of impulse, guided only by the pleasurable or painful tone which gives colour to experience, becomes [62] a rational being, capable of judging how far his own behaviour and that of others is conformable to an ideal.
If, then, we were asked to characterize in the briefest possible terms the stages of conscious evolution, we should say that in the first stage we have consciousness as accompaniment ”

“ It is too late, when the storm has burst, to provide our craft with rigging fit to weather it; but we may find a purpose for the years that oppress us by their dull calm, if we elect to spend them in laying up stores of strength and wisdom and emotional prejudices of a goodly human kind, whereby, if need arises, we may be able to resist hereafter the gusts of passion that might else bear us out of the straightforward course. ”

“ But experimentation must be regarded rather as the proximate end of a conative tendency, or group of conative tendencies, whose ultimate biological end is success in dealing with the environment in the sterner struggle for existence during adult life. The tendency is inherited, and therefore falls under the head of instinctive propensity. But “experimentation” is a group-term under which we comprise the general drift of varied modes of behaviour, founded indeed on a congenital basis, but receiving its stamp and character from what is acquired in the course of the experience it provides. ”