Rational animal

“ 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 ”

“ And it is this environment which is undergoing progressive evolution and playing on the rational faculties of those which are submitted to its moulding influence. There is no sufficient evidence of anything of the kind in the social communities of animals. This, of course, must be accepted merely as an expression of opinion. But on the hypothesis that animals are rational beings, capable of reflection, it is difficult to understand why they should remain at so low a level of social achievement. ”

“ Consequently there arises the subordinate distinction to which I allude, viz., that instinctive actions are only performed under particular circumstances which have been frequently experienced during the life-history of the species; whereas rational actions are performed under varied circumstances, and serve to meet novel exigencies which may never before have occurred even in the life-history of the individual. ”

“ As animal consciousness is related to human self-consciousness, so exactly is animal will to human free-will, animal intelligence to human reason, animal sign-language to rational grammatical speech of man, constructive art of animals to true rational progressive art of man. ”

“ And consider that only to the rational animal is it given to follow voluntarily what happens; but simply to follow is a necessity imposed on all. ”

“ These creatures of mine seemed strange and uncanny to you so soon as you began to observe them; but to me, just after I make them, they seem to be indisputably human beings. It's afterwards, as I observe them, that the persuasion fades. First one animal trait, then another, creeps to the surface and stares out at me. But I will conquer yet! Each time I dip a living creature into the bath of burning pain, I say, ‘This time I will burn out all the animal; this time I will make a rational creature of my own!’ After all, what is ten years? Men have been a hundred thousand in the making.” ”

“ In the lengthy discussions which psychologists have carried on about the amount of intelligence displayed by lower mammals, or the amount of consciousness involved in the functions of the nerve-centres of reptiles, the same test has always been applied: Is the character of the actions such that we must believe them to be performed for the sake of their result? The result in question, as we shall hereafter abundantly see, is as a rule a useful one,—the animal is, on the whole, safer under the circumstances for bringing it forth. ”

“ Although the naturalist may, for his own convenience, class these reactions under general heads, he must not forget that in the animal it is a particular sensation or perception, or image which calls them forth.
At first this view astounds us by the enormous number of special adjustments it supposes animals to possess ready-made in anticipation of the outer things among which they are to dwell. Can mutual dependence be so intricate and go so far? Is each thing born fitted to particular other things, and to them exclusively, as locks are fitted to their keys? ”

“ I admit this necessity, and unhesitatingly take the position, as has been already done in the classification of minds, that the lower animals are in fact endowed with a something higher and more spiritual than their material bodies or their animal vitality—something which bears distinguishing characteristics of mind. ”

“ As our intelligence has developed we have applied it to the service of the senses and at the expense of our primitive intuition of right and wrong that guided us in the selection of that which was suitable to our preservation and health. We excel the animals in the possession of reason, but the animals excel us in the exercise of instinct. ”

“ Originally performed with consciousness and reflection, many instinctive actions of the animals have become, in the course of time, unconscious, exactly as is the case with the habitual activities of human reason. These, too, may, with like justice, be looked upon as the workings of innate instinct, as, indeed, the impulse to self-preservation, maternal love, and the social instinct often are regarded. Again, instinct is neither distinctively an attribute of the brain [Pg 308] of the animal, nor is the reason an especial endowment of human beings. ”

“ We come, now, to the first appearance, so far as we know, of an animal that by reason of a superior development of its brain was destined to subjugate all the other members of the animal kingdom—the animal which we know as Man. ”

“ But when we ask as to the nature of the animal soul, and how far it is analogous to that of man, we meet with certain difficulties. Let us see then how many of the human qualities of the soul are to be found in animals, and so discover if there is any remainder not possessed by them, peculiar to ourselves. ”

“ But all that instinct for the probable, which we call common sense, must long ago have told us that the animals are not to all appearance evolving in that sense; and that, to say the least, we are not likely to have any personal evidence of their passing from the animal experience to the human experiments. ”

“ I read with great interest the arguments—as different from the mere assumptions—of those who assert that the instinct of animals, and the reason of human beings, are two separate and distinct things; there is a deep gulf between them which can never be passed by the lower order. I do not believe this. Rather do I hold with Romanes that:
No distinct line can be drawn between instinct and reason. Whether we look to the growing child or to the ascending scale of animal life, we find that instinct shades into reason by imperceptible degrees. ”

“ My belief is that the mind of the mere animal is in no ease able to reach beyond the limit of simple ministration to the animal needs, and animal feelings, and instincts of the creature according to its kind ”

“ Are we therefore to infer that it is less intelligent, that it is less docile, than the cat, the raccoon, or the monkey? Not necessarily, for it is possible that these methods do not suit the capacity of the animal. ”

“ Objections.—As the processes of life and that lower order of intelligence known as instinct, are manifested in animals, identically the same as they are in man, and by the wonderful interrelationship existing between all the members of the animal world, from protozoa to man, what is true of one must be true of all, it follows that if it is necessary to evoke the aid of the spirit for the explanation of the phenomena connected with man, it is equally necessary [205] in the case of animals. ”

“ But unless we assume that animals are devoid of mind and true intelligence—an extreme and untenable position—there must be a possible science of comparative psychology, as there is of comparative anatomy and physiology. The study of animal intelligence is possible, interesting, and important, whether we regard man as derived from some lower form, and his intellectual as well as his physical being the result of evolution; or whether we consider that man stands wholly apart in origin either as to body or mind. ”

“ The value and clearness of our inferences will be proportional to the similarity of the animal to ourselves. Thus we can educate many of our higher mammals by a system of rewards and punishments, and we seem therefore to have good reason to believe that fear and joy, anger and desire, certain powers of perception and inference, are in their minds similar to our own. ”

“ Indeed, when the point is suggested, it seems to me surprising how few in number are the instincts of animals which have proved to be so much as of secondary or accidental benefit to man, in the same way as skins, furs, and a whole host of other animal products are thus of secondary use to him. ”

“ Sufficient has now been said to illustrate some of the ways in which instinct and intelligence interact in the evolution of behaviour. Such interaction is further exemplified in the social life of animals, which will be dealt with in the next chapter. ”

“ But he was not then aware that, rightly to understand the mental condition of animals, we must first gain a clear vision of the fundamental processes in man; for it is only through our knowledge of the processes in ourselves that we can interpret the manifestations of similar processes in them. Here again we are hampered by the anthropomorphic tendency which leads us to assign exclusively human motives to animal actions. ”

“ For instance, we have had many books, brochures, magazine articles, &c., devoted to the subject of "animal instinct v. reason," and I would mention such standard works as 'Animal Behaviour' and 'Habit and Instinct,' by Principal Lloyd Morgan. ”

“ I would merely take this occasion to reaffirm with confidence the belief, which I find shared by practically all observers whose lives are passed in the closest relationship with animals,—by such vitally interested observers, for instance, as keepers, trainers, hunters, and trappers,—that the actions of animals are governed not only by instinct, but also, in varying degree, by processes essentially akin to those of human reason. ”

“ Here is a plain illustration of the different ruling original instincts in animals, and human beings are only the highest form of animal, given by God a more developed soul and a choice of action, but still influenced by fundamental nature instincts, which, beneath all the training of civilisation, unconsciously still direct their actions and affect their point of view. ”

“ And—if we review the entire animal kingdom, are not these higher animals closely akin to us, both in bodily structure as also in all that appertains to their functional activities? So near, indeed, do they approach us in the degree of evolution that for that very reason it would seem natural to attribute to them some rudiments of thought—some latent abilities ”

“ Few persons any longer dispute that animals possess some power of reasoning. Animals may constantly be seen to pause, deliberate, and resolve. It is a significant fact, that the more the habits of any particular animal are studied by a naturalist, the more he attributes to reason and the less to unlearnt instincts.59 In future chapters we shall see that some animals extremely low in the scale apparently display a certain amount of reason. No doubt it is often difficult to distinguish between the power of reason and that of instinct. ”

“ All the other animals are confined in the exercise of their constructive faculties to an invariable model, appointed for each of them according to the circumstances of its being. The range of choice is bounded by the limitations of the instinct under which the animal is compelled to do its work. ”

“ Each one of them then is an instinct, as instincts are commonly defined. But they contradict each other—'experience' in each particular opportunity of application usually deciding the issue. The animal that exhibits them loses the 'instinctive' demeanor and appears to lead a life of hesitation and choice, an intellectual life ”

“ How, then, I am asked, do you know that no animal possesses the faintest germs of the faculty of abstracting and generalizing, and that animals receive their knowledge through the senses only? I still recollect the time when any philosopher who, even by way of illustration, ventured to appeal to the mind of animals, was simply tabooed, and I thought every student of the history of philosophy would have understood what I meant by saying that the whole subject was transcendent. ”

“ Animal life is exactly the same, with the super-addition of will or mind in its most perfect state, of instinct or some analogous function in its lower states, or in quite the lowest—a chemical and mechanical difference only, such as shall determine the choice of food and mode of assimilating it. ”

“ And this consideration, it is needless to point out, has a special validity to the evolutionist, inasmuch as upon his theory there must be a psychological, no less than a physiological, continuity extending throughout the length and breadth of the animal kingdom. ”

“ And on similar grounds we believe not less confidently that many animals are also conscious. But how far we are justified in extending this inference it is difficult to say. Probably our safest criterion is afforded by circumstantial evidence that the animal in question profits by experience. ”

“ The real psychology of the animals, so far as we are able to grope our way toward it by deduction and induction combined, is a very different thing from the psychology of certain stories of animals which paved the way for the present vogue. ”

“ It is, however, becoming more and more clearly evident that the discussion of the relation of the animal to the human mind, if it is to be made a subject of scientific inquiry, must be conducted on psychological lines by those who have devoted years of study to the subject. In this work such a discussion will be attempted, and animal behaviour will be treated as the precursor of human conduct, and as affording evidence of the germs from which the distinctively human mental attributes may have been evolved. ”

“ The psychological processes of the animals are so simple, so obvious, in comparison with those of man, their actions flow so directly from their springs of impulse, that it is, as a rule, an easy matter to infer the motives which are at any one moment impelling them. ”