Social animal

“ Every thing, therefore, tends to convince us, that formerly men were only with regard to the domestic animals, what those who are particularly charged with the care of them still are—namely, members of the society which these animals form among themselves; and, that they are only distinguished, in the general mass, by the authority which they have been enabled to assume from their superiority of intellect. Thus, every social animal which recognizes man as a member, and as the chief of its herd, is a domestic animal. ”

“ It is upon this that depends all the social advance that animals have made, and the study of animal sociology would differ from that of human in dealing with instincts and adaptations instead of rational acts. ”

“ The differentiated thing being thus a centre of interest, a relatively fixed nucleus in a changing conscious situation, the development of which is due to behaviour, there can be no question that, among social animals, the companion becomes a peculiar and specialized centre. ”

“ The characteristic feature of social behaviour is that it is in large degree determined by the behaviour of other members of the social community. In all animals which mate there is a temporary or more lasting influence on each other of the individuals which unite to procreate their kind; and in those which foster their young there is a social relation of parents and offspring. Some of these mutual relationships will be discussed, in their emotional aspects, in the next chapter. Here we will consider the more general factors which serve to determine the course of social evolution. ”

“ Now, if interest is the feeling-tone attaching to the whole attentive situation, and if the nucleus of the situation is the thing, it naturally follows that the thing becomes the centre of interest. The mouse is a centre of absorbing interest to the cat, her eggs to the mother-bird, his mate to the sparrow in the spring. Companions are centres [244] of abiding interest to social animals, because they are also the centres of social behaviour and the conscious situations arising thereout ”

“ Thus we shall not go wrong in attributing to the higher animals in their simple social life, not only the elementary feelings, the loves and hates, sympathies and jealousies which underlie all forms of society, but also in a rudimentary stage the intelligence which enables those feelings to direct the operations of the animal so as best to gratify them. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It may, perhaps, be urged that, on this hypothesis, the origin of the social state, through a biological association of individuals, probably neither preceded nor followed the development of a psychical bond arising from the sense of satisfaction and comfort afforded by social life, but that both originated pari passu. If the linkage was primarily instinctive, its intelligent continuance could only be effected through the pleasure social behaviour carried with it, and the discomfort of separation from the community. ”

“ The foundations of intercommunication, like those of imitation, are laid in certain instinctive modes of response, which are stimulated by the acts of other animals of the same social group. These have been fostered by natural selection as a means of social linkage furthering the preservation, both of the individual and of the group. ”

“ The origin and development of social life in the animal as well as in the human world have long been considered problems by scientists, whether biologists, sociologists, psychologists, or educators. Imitation of some kind or other, all would agree, constitutes one and only one of the chief factors in this problem. ”

“ Since man in so many respects only goes on to develop the previous achievements of animal experience, it may be supposed that he made use of the social experience of animals as the firm foundation of his higher advancement. ”

“ But every biologist recognizes gregariousness, approach in its social form, the basal instinct which crowds animals into herds and is manifested in the flight of birds in flocks, protectiveness, the instinctive attitude of parent to offspring, and imitation, the instinctive attitude toward leaders or parents, as primitive endowments of animal and of human selves. ”

“ Animals and morality.—The finesses required in polite society, such as careful avoidance of everything ridiculous, incommon, presumptuous, the suppressing of virtues and our most cager desires, the immediate resignation, self-adaptation, self-depreciation—all these are, roughly speaking, to be found as social custom even in the lowest animal world—and only in this low depth are we able to discover the after-purpose of these uniable pre-cautions: one wishes to escape from one's pursuers and to be aided in the search after one's prey. ”

“ It concerns animals’ social consciousness, their consciousness of the feelings of their fellows. Do animals, for example, when they see others feeding, feel that the others are feeling pleasure? Do they, when they fight, feel that the other feels pain? So level-headed a thinker as Lloyd Morgan has said that they do, but the conduct of my animals would seem to show that they did not. ”

“ On the other hand, there is no reason for withholding the term "society" from many animal groups. These animal societies, however, are very different in many respects from human society, and are of interest to us only as certain of their forms throw light upon human society. ”

“ With still another training and interest, as in the case of those especially interested in human affairs, such as the sociologist, the physician, the sanitary expert, and the agriculturist, we may ultimately expect a greater appreciation for the associational aspect because of the social or associational character of human society. The associational is the phase of animal activity which may be considered as the form of animal behavior which has developed into the human social relations. It is a response to the complete organic and inorganic environment. ”

“ And the situations in which these ethical germs must be sought are those which entail behaviour for the good of the social community. Indeed, we may go so far as to say that the perceptual foundations of ethics are laid in the social instincts. The satisfaction or dissatisfaction arising from the performance or non-performance of instinctive behaviour, evolved for the biological end of the preservation of the social community, is the perceptual embryo from which conscience is developed. ”

“ V.—The Evolution of Social Behaviour
“Animals of many kinds,” said Darwin, [108] “are social; every one must have noticed how miserable horses, dogs, sheep, etc., are when separated from their companions. The most common mutual service in the higher animals is to warn one another of danger. Every sportsman knows how difficult [226] it is to approach animals in a herd or troop. Wild horses and cattle do not, I believe, make any danger-signal; but the attitude of any one of them who first discovers an enemy warns the others. Rabbits stamp loudly on the ground with their hind feet as a signal ”

“ In animal life the situation is simple. Whether the animal decides to fight for it or to run for it, he has at any rate two plain courses before him, and the relation between his emotional states and the type of situation is rather definitely fixed racially, and relatively constant. ”

“ Of late, considerable attention has been given to the question of man's original, uneducated, animal nature; what resources has he as a mere creature independent of any training that results from being brought up in some sort of civilized community? ”

“ It would be easy to add a great number of other proofs of the all-sufficiency of the one leading characteristic of the human species—superior brain development—to account for all the important features that distinguish man from the lower animals, but those already mentioned will suffice.
The last question to be discussed is whether there is any generic distinction between human and animal association. Many animals are gregarious and some lead a truly social life. We all know how most domestic animals love to mingle with their kind. ”

“ From the many anecdotes of dogs calling others to their assistance, or bringing others to those who feed them or treat them kindly, we may indeed infer the existence of a social tendency and of the suggestive effects of behaviour, but we cannot derive conclusive evidence of anything like descriptive communication. ”

“ How does it happen that some animal species are social while others are not? It is impossible to maintain with some authors that sociability increases according to the degree of development attained by the animal.32 Certain insects, for example, are endowed with pronounced social feelings, while the cat tribe and some kinds of birds are on the contrary unsocial. ”

“ Nor could the human animal, apart from association with his fellows, ever develop [Pg 17] a human mind. "The human mind is what happens to the human animal in a social situation." [21] Of course, without the care of adults, the infant would, in general, promptly perish. ”

“ In addition, however, man, together with certain other social animals, has developed a third set of activities or instincts—an impulsion toward the preservation of the community to which he belongs—and so far has this evolved in his case that it outranks in importance the other two. ”

“ A student of philosophy would hasten to reply: “This difference lies in the fact that we are conscious of our social faculty, while the animals are unconscious of theirs—in the fact that while we reflect and reason upon the operation of our social instinct, the animals do nothing of the kind.” ”

“ It has to be remarked that the moral virtues are illustrated mainly by or in those animals that have directly or indirectly received their moral training from man—such animals as the dog, elephant, and horse. As a general rule—to which there are exceptions both in man and other animals—the human child and the young animal can equally be educated both to distinguish and do the right. ”

“ These creatures show a real recognition of one individual by another, and a real community of life and reaction, which is quite different from the individualism of purely sensational and unsocial consciousness. And yet it is just as different from the reflective organization of human society, in which the self-consciousness and personal volition of the individual play the most important rôle. I see no way of accounting for the gregarious instinct anywhere, except on the assumption of such a projective epoch of animal consciousness. ”

“ The lower animals, which are destined to live for themselves alone, know no virtue, and have, therefore, no soul, as it is truly said. Yet in the domestic animals, notwithstanding the low order of their reasoning faculty,—from education and from the sort of social intercourse in which they live with man, we may perceive very obvious traces of morality, and the gradual creation of a perception of right and wrong. ”

“ Every holy secret of human nature, all those subjects of which the grace and the power consists in their exquisite delicacy and tender refinement, were here handled with coarse fingers. Society assumed the aspect of a pack of breeding animals, and all its laws and institutions were to return to the mere animal basis. ”

“ Later on we observed the spirit of courage in operation; evolving animals really developed a crude form of protective self-consciousness. Subsequent to the appearance of the mammalian groups, we beheld the spirit of knowledge manifesting itself in increased measure. And the evolution of the higher mammals brought the function of the spirit of counsel, with the resulting growth of the herd instinct and the beginnings of primitive social development. ”

“ Sociability--that is, the need of the animal of associating with its like--the love of society for society's sake, combined with the "joy of life," only now begins to receive due attention from the zoologists. (25) We know at the present time that all animals, beginning with the ants, going on to the birds, and ending with the highest mammals, are fond of plays, wrestling, running after each other, trying to capture each other, teasing each other, and so on. ”

“ The latter is essentially a biological study, and while psychological considerations are potent in both, those that belong to animal sociology relate exclusively to feeling while those that belong to human sociology relate chiefly to the intellect. The facts of animal association therefore—the remarkable resemblances to man's ways displayed by insects and the curious imitations of human customs in various departments of the animal world—prove to be only analogies and not true homologies, and as such have much less value to the sociologist than they appear at first view to possess. ”

“ For each must live, and those already living have proved their right to existence by a more or less complete adaptation to their environment. The result of this twofold conflict between living beings is to evolve the manifold structures and functions—teeth, claws, skin, color, fur, feathers, horns, tusks, wily instincts, strength, stealth, deceit, and humility—which make up character in the animal world. ”

“ The development of the moral qualities is a more interesting problem. The foundation lies in the social instincts, including under this term the family ties. These instincts are highly complex, and in the case of the lower animals give special tendencies towards certain definite actions; but the more important elements are love, and the distinct emotion of sympathy. Animals endowed with the social instincts take pleasure in one another's company, warn one another of danger, defend and aid one another in many ways. ”