Douglas Alexander Spalding

“ The young chicken very soon pecks at grains of corn, but it pecked while it was still in the shell, and when it hears the hen peck, it pecks again, at first seemingly at random. Then, when it has by chance hit upon a grain, it may, no doubt, learn to notice the field of vision which is at the moment presented to it. ”

“ But, in the present state of our scientific knowledge, such a psychology, professing to be a complete system, is self-condemned. In its fundamental principles the science of mind must be the same for all living creatures. Further, if man be, as is now believed, but the highest, the last, the most complex product of evolution, a system professing to be an analysis and exposition of his mind, yet confessing itself incompetent to deal with the necessarily simpler mental processes of lower creatures, must surely feel itself in an uncomfortably anomalous position. ”

“ SO great was the influence of that school of psychology which maintained that we and all other animals had to acquire in the course of our individual lives all the knowledge and skill necessary for our preservation, that many of the very greatest authorities in science refused to believe in those instinctive performances of young animals about which the less learned multitude have never had any doubt. ”

“ The newly-born babe cannot raise its hand to its mouth, and doubtless for a long time after birth it has no consciousness of the axiom, "Things that are equal to the same thing are equal to one another." The helplessness of infancy is pointed to as furnishing ocular demonstration of the doctrine that, whatever may be the case with the animals, all human knowledge, all human ability to perform useful actions, must be wholly the result of associations formed in the life-history of each individual. ”

“ The only theory in explanation of the phenomena of instinct that has an air of science about it is, the doctrine of Inherited Association. Instinct in the present generation of animals is the product of the accumulated experiences of past generations. ”

“ May we now, on the other side, similarly presume, until the contrary is shown, that the more tardy progress of the infant is not because its mental constitution has to be built up from the foundation out of the primitive elements of consciousness, which the chicken's has not, but rather because the child comes into the world in a state of greater physical, and therefore mental immaturity? ”

“ The feeble nestling when it leaves the shell is blind. One of the several very pronounced and interesting instincts it exhibits at this stage is, that in response to certain sounds it opens its mouth and struggles to hold up its head to be fed. ”

“ The progress of the infant, however, has been so continually spoken of as if it were a visible process of unaided acquisition, that it may give some surprise when it is asserted from the other side that we have no sufficiently accurate acquaintance with the alleged acquisitions of infancy to justify the doctrine that they are different in kind from the unfolding of the inherited instincts of the chicken. ”

“ Our ignorance of animal psychology may be still more boldly drawn on in defence of the theory under consideration. With a hyper-scientific caution, its advocates refuse to take into account any thing (incompatible with their theory) cencerning any one species of animal that has not been proved by a very overwhelmingly large number of very accurate observations. And they find it possible to maintain that it still remains unproved that any species of animal possesses either knowledge or skill not wholly acquired by each individual. ”

“ Bearing in mind that, when born, the child has no occasion for the power of masticating solid food; that the ability to suck, which involves an equally complex series of muscular adjustments, is what it requires, and this it has by instinct; bearing all this in mind, the question is, Why may not the innate ability to masticate be developed by the time it is required quite as spontaneously as the teeth used in the operation? ”

“ WITH regard to instinct we have yet to ascertain the facts. Do the animals exhibit untaught skill and innate knowledge? May not the supposed examples of instinct be after all but the results of rapid learning and imitation? ”

“ Each of the constant connections among the fibres of the cerebral masses answers to some constant connection of phenomena in the experiences of the race. . . . Those who contend that knowledge results wholly from the experiences of the individual, ignoring as they do the mental evolution which accompanies the autogenous development of the nervous system, fall into an error as great as if they were to ascribe all bodily growth and structure to exercise, forgetting the innate tendency to assume the adult form. ”

“ The two reached the mother in five minutes and at the same moment.
Different kinds of creatures, then, bring with them a good deal of cleverness, and a very useful acquaintance with the established order of Nature. At the same time all of them later in their lives do a great many things of which they are quite incapable at birth. That these are all matters of pure acquisition appears to me an unwarranted assumption. The human infant cannot masticate; it can move its limbs, but cannot walk, or direct its hands so as to grasp an object held up before it. The kitten just born cannot catch mice. ”

“ Animals can learn what they did not know by instinct and forget the instinctive knowledge which they never learned, while their instincts will often accommodate themselves to considerable changes in the order of external events. Everybody knows it to be a common practice to hatch ducks'-eggs under the common hen, though in such cases the hen has to sit a week longer than on her own eggs. I tried an experiment to ascertain how far the time of sitting could be interfered with in the opposite direction. Two hens became broody on the same day, and I set them on dummies. ”

“ Another incontestable case of instinct may be seen in the art of scraping in search of food. Without any opportunities of imitation, chickens begin to scrape when from two to six days old. Most frequently the circumstances are suggestive; at other times, however, the first attempt, which generally consists of a sort of nervous dance, was made on a smooth table. The unacquired dexterity shown in the capture of insects is very remarkable. A duckling one day old, on being placed in the open air for the first time, almost immediately snapped at, and caught, a fly on the wing. ”

“ Whether, for example, those ganglia that in the body of each one of us are employed in carrying on what we call reflex action, are so many distinct seats of consciousness, like so many separate animals, an idea for which much has been said, or whether the nerve-changes that go on in these ganglia have no subjective side; in either case the objective facts will remain the same. If consciousness is evolved, it is not at the expense of a single oscillation of a molecule disappearing from the object-world. ”

“ As evolutionists, whether we take the more common view and regard the actions of animals as prompted by their feelings and guided by their thoughts, or believe, as I do, that animals and men are conscious automata, in either case we are under no necessity of assuming, in explanation of the origin of the most mysterious instincts, any thing beyond the operation of those laws that we see operating around us, but concerning which we have yet to learn more, perhaps, than we have learned.—Nature. ”

“ For it was not until afterward that I observed a turkey, when it sees a fly settle on any object, steals on the unwary insect with slow and measured step, and, when sufficiently near, advances its head very slowly and steadily until within reach of its prey, which is then seized by a sudden dart. In still further confirmation of the opinion that such wonderful examples of dexterity and cunning are instinctive and not acquired, may be adduced the significant fact that the individuals of each species have little capacity to learn any thing not found in the habits of their progenitors. ”

“ More peculiar to myself, and giving special meaning to the word experience, is the view that the question of the origin of the most mysterious instinct is not more difficult than, or different from, but is the same with the problem of the origin of the physical structures of the creatures. ”

“ It may be that veterans who have won their laurels on, say, the battle-field of innate ideas, love the old controversy, and are not anxious to learn that both sides were right and both wrong. Moreover, it is the misfortune of this important addition to psychology, that it shows that previous workers in this field of inquiry have at times been laboring in the dark to solve problems like in kind with the famous difficulty of accounting for the supposed fact that the weight of a vessel of water is not increased by the addition of a live fish. ”

“ In opposition to this view, it has been urged that we have only to consider almost any well-marked instinct to see that it could never have been a product of evolution. We, it is said most frequently, cannot conceive the experiences that might by inheritance have become the instincts; and we can see very clearly that many instincts are so essential to the preservation of the creatures that without them they could never have lived to acquire, them. ”

“ With the development of the physical parts, comes, according to our view, the power to use them, in the ways that have preserved the race through past ages. This is in harmony with all we know. Not so the contrary view. So old is the feud between the cat and the dog, that the kitten knows its enemy even before it is able to see him, and when its fear can in no way serve it. ”

“ One or two observations favorable to the opinion that animals have an instinctive knowledge of their enemies may be taken for what they are worth. When twelve days old, one of my little protégés, running about beside me, gave the peculiar chirp whereby they announce the approach of danger. On looking up, a sparrow-hawk was seen hovering at a great height overhead. Again, a young hawk was made to fly over a hen with her first brood of chickens, then about a week old. In the twinkling of an eye, most of the chickens were hid among grass and bushes. ”

“ The subject is too vast. We cannot exhibit the grandeur; we can only in a few general phrases express our admiration of the profound, all-embracing philosophy of which the work before us is an installment. ”

“ There can be no need to say more than that these unfortunate creatures are assumed to have been singularly unlike their parents. The answer is, that it is not the doctrine of evolution that the bodies are evolved first by one set of causes and the minds are put in afterward by another. ”

“ No effort enables us to assimilate them. That a unit of feeling: has nothing in common with a unit of motion, becomes more than ever manifest when we bring the two into juxtaposition." Mr. Spencer's idea is that feeling and nervous action are two faces of the same ontological something—a view that prohibits the notion of the one passing into or being expended in producing the other. The conclusion is, that the transformations of physical energy remain unaffected by the presence or absence of consciousness.
Psychology has as yet been made a serious study by only a few individuals. ”

“ I would now add that not only does the chick not require to learn to peck at, to seize, and to swallow small specks of food, but that it is not a fact, as asserted, and generally supposed, that it pecks while still in the shell. The actual mode of self-delivery is just the reverse of pecking. ”

“ But to return to examples of instinctive skill and knowledge, concerning which I think no doubt can remain, a very useful instinct may be observed in the early attention that chickens pay to their toilet. As soon as they can hold up their heads, when only from four to five hours old, they attempt dressing at their wings, that, too, when they have been denied the use of their eyes. ”

“ Again, every boy who has brought up nestlings with the hand must have observed that, while for a time they but hold up their heads and open their mouths to be fed, they by-and-by begin quite spontaneously to snap at the food. ”

“ The newly-hatched swallow or tomtit can neither walk, nor fly, nor feed itself. They are as helpless as the human infant. Is it as the result of painful learning that the child subsequently seizes an apple and eats it? ”

“ Let it now be remembered that, in the absence of conclusive evidence to the contrary, it has been considered a safe position to hold that the early knowledge and intelligent action of the chicken "may be, after all, nothing more than very rapid acquisitions, the result of that experimentation, prompted by the inborn or spontaneous activity." ”

“ The infant is unable to masticate; a morsel put into its mouth at first usually tumbles out. But, if there occur spontaneous movements of the tongue, mouth, or jaw, giving birth to a strong relish, these movements are sustained, and begin to be associated with the sensations ”

“ Though the instincts of animals appear and disappear in such seasonable correspondence with their own wants and the wants of their offspring as to be a standing subject of wonder, they have by no means the fixed and unalterable character by which some would distinguish them from the higher faculties of the human race. They vary in the individuals as does their physical structure. ”