The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex Volume I Part 2

This was the only known instance of her ever having wilfully injured any game." Here we have reason, though not quite perfect, for the retriever might have brought the wounded bird first and then returned for the dead one, as in the case of the two wild-ducks.

The muleteers in S. America say, "I will not give you the mule whose step is easiest, but _la mas rational_,-the one that reasons best;" and Humboldt[61] adds, "this popular expression, dictated by long experience, combats the system of animated machines, better perhaps than all the arguments of speculative philosophy."

It has, I think, now been shewn that man and the higher animals, especially the Primates, have some few instincts in common. All have the same senses, intuitions and sensations-similar pa.s.sions, affections, and emotions, even the more complex ones; they feel wonder and curiosity; they possess the same faculties of imitation, attention, memory, imagination, and reason, though in very different degrees.

Nevertheless many authors have insisted that man is separated through his mental faculties by an impa.s.sable barrier from all the lower animals. I formerly made a collection of above a score of such aphorisms, but they are not worth giving, as their wide difference and number prove the difficulty, if not the impossibility, of the attempt.

It has been a.s.serted that man alone is capable of progressive improvement; that he alone makes use of tools or fire, domesticates other animals, possesses property, or employs language; that no other animal is self-conscious, comprehends itself, has the power of abstraction, or possesses general ideas; that man alone has a sense of beauty, is liable to caprice, has the feeling of grat.i.tude, mystery, &c.; believes in G.o.d, or is endowed with a conscience. I will hazard a few remarks on the more important and interesting of these points.

Archbishop Sumner formerly maintained[62] that man alone is capable of progressive improvement. With animals, looking first to the individual, every one who has had any experience in setting traps knows that young animals can be caught much more easily than old ones; and they can be much more easily approached by an enemy. Even with respect to old animals, it is impossible to catch many in the same place and in the same kind of trap, or to destroy them by the same kind of poison; yet it is improbable that all should have partaken of the poison, and impossible that all should have been caught in the trap. They must learn caution by seeing their brethren caught or poisoned. In North America, where the fur-bearing animals have long been pursued, they exhibit, according to the unanimous testimony of all observers, an almost incredible amount of sagacity, caution, and cunning; but trapping has been there so long carried on that inheritance may have come into play.

If we look to successive generations, or to the race, there is no doubt that birds and other animals gradually both acquire and lose caution in relation to man or other enemies;[63] and this caution is certainly in chief part an inherited habit or instinct, but in part the result of individual experience. A good observer, Leroy,[64] states that in districts where foxes are much hunted, the young when they first leave their burrows are incontestably much more wary than the old ones in districts where they are not much disturbed.

Our domestic dogs are descended from wolves and jackals,[65] and though they may not have gained in cunning, and may have lost in waryness and suspicion, yet they have progressed in certain moral qualities, such as in affection, trust-worthiness, temper, and probably in general intelligence. The common rat has conquered and beaten several other species throughout Europe, in parts of North America, New Zealand, and recently in Formosa, as well as on the mainland of China. Mr.

Swinhoe,[66] who describes these latter cases, attributes the victory of the common rat over the large _Mus coninga_ to its superior cunning; and this latter quality may be attributed to the habitual exercise of all its faculties in avoiding extirpation by man, as well as to nearly all the less cunning or weak-minded rats having been successively destroyed by him. To maintain, independently of any direct evidence, that no animal during the course of ages has progressed in intellect or other mental faculties, is to beg the question of the evolution of species.

Hereafter we shall see that, according to Lartet, existing mammals belonging to several orders have larger brains than their ancient tertiary prototypes.

It has often been said that no animal uses any tool; but the chimpanzee in a state of nature cracks a native fruit, somewhat like a walnut, with a stone.[67] Rengger[68] easily taught an American monkey thus to break open hard palm-nuts, and afterwards of its own accord it used stones to open other kinds of nuts, as well as boxes. It thus also removed the soft rind of fruit that had a disagreeable flavour. Another monkey was taught to open the lid of a large box with a stick, and afterwards it used the stick as a lever to move heavy bodies; and I have myself seen a young orang put a stick into a crevice, slip his hand to the other end, and use it in the proper manner as a lever. In the cases just mentioned stones and sticks were employed as implements; but they are likewise used as weapons. Brehm[69] states, on the authority of the well-known traveller Schimper, that in Abyssinia when the baboons belonging to one species (_C. gelada_) descend in troops from the mountains to plunder the fields, they sometimes encounter troops of another species (_C.

hamadryas_), and then a fight ensues. The Geladas roll down great stones, which the Hamadryas try to avoid, and then, both species, making a great uproar, rush furiously against each other. Brehm, when accompanying the Duke of Coburg-Gotha, aided in an attack with fire-arms on a troop of baboons in the pa.s.s of Mensa in Abyssinia. The baboons in return rolled so many stones down the mountain, some as large as a man's head, that the attackers had to beat a hasty retreat; and the pa.s.s was actually for a time closed against the caravan. It deserves notice that these baboons thus acted in concert. Mr. Wallace[70] on three occasions saw female orangs, accompanied by their young, "breaking off branches and the great spiny fruit of the Durian tree, with every appearance of rage; causing such a shower of missiles as effectually kept us from approaching too near the tree."

In the Zoological Gardens a monkey which had weak teeth used to break open nuts with a stone; and I was a.s.sured by the keepers that this animal, after using the stone, hid it in the straw, and would not let any other monkey touch it. Here, then, we have the idea of property; but this idea is common to every dog with a bone, and to most or all birds with their nests.

The Duke of Argyll[71] remarks, that the fashioning of an implement for a special purpose is absolutely peculiar to man; and he considers that this forms an immeasurable gulf between him and the brutes. It is no doubt a very important distinction, but there appears to me much truth in Sir J. Lubbock's suggestion,[72] that when primeval man first used flint-stones for any purpose, he would have accidentally splintered them, and would then have used the sharp fragments. From this step it would be a small one to intentionally break the flints, and not a very wide step to rudely fashion them. This latter advance, however, may have taken long ages, if we may judge by the immense interval of time which elapsed before the men of the neolithic period took to grinding and polishing their stone tools. In breaking the flints, as Sir J. Lubbock likewise remarks, sparks would have been emitted, and in grinding them heat would have been evolved: "thus the two usual methods of obtaining fire may have originated." The nature of fire would have been known in the many volcanic regions where lava occasionally flows through forests.

The anthropomorphous apes, guided probably by instinct, build for themselves temporary platforms; but as many instincts are largely controlled by reason, the simpler ones, such as this of building a platform, might readily pa.s.s into a voluntary and conscious act. The orang is known to cover itself at night with the leaves of the Panda.n.u.s; and Brehm states that one of his baboons used to protect itself from the heat of the sun by throwing a straw-mat over its head. In these latter habits, we probably see the first steps towards some of the simpler arts; namely rude architecture and dress, as they arose amongst the early progenitors of man.

_Language._-This faculty has justly been considered as one of the chief distinctions between man and the lower animals. But man, as a highly competent judge, Archbishop Whately remarks, "is not the only animal that can make use of language to express what is pa.s.sing in his mind, and can understand, more or less, what is so expressed by another."[73]

In Paraguay the _Cebus Azarae_ when excited utters at least six distinct sounds, which excite in other monkeys similar emotions.[74] The movements of the features and gestures of monkeys are understood by us, and they partly understand ours, as Rengger and others declare. It is a more remarkable fact that the dog, since being domesticated, has learnt to bark[75] in at least four or five distinct tones. Although barking is a new art, no doubt the wild species, the parents of the dog, expressed their feelings by cries of various kinds. With the domesticated dog we have the bark of eagerness, as in the chase; that of anger; the yelping or howling bark of despair, as when shut up; that of joy, as when starting on a walk with his master; and the very distinct one of demand or supplication, as when wishing for a door or window to be opened.

Articulate language is, however, peculiar to man; but he uses in common with the lower animals inarticulate cries to express his meaning, aided by gestures and the movements of the muscles of the face.[76] This especially holds good with the more simple and vivid feelings, which are but little connected with our higher intelligence. Our cries of pain, fear, surprise, anger, together with their appropriate actions, and the murmur of a mother to her beloved child, are more expressive than any words. It is not the mere power of articulation that distinguishes man from other animals, for as every one knows, parrots can talk; but it is his large power of connecting definite sounds with definite ideas; and this obviously depends on the development of the mental faculties.

As Horne Tooke, one of the founders of the n.o.ble science of philology, observes, language is an art, like brewing or baking; but writing would have been a much more appropriate simile. It certainly is not a true instinct, as every language has to be learnt. It differs, however, widely from all ordinary arts, for man has an instinctive tendency to speak, as we see in the babble of our young children; whilst no child has an instinctive tendency to brew, bake, or write. Moreover, no philologist now supposes that any language has been deliberately invented; each has been slowly and unconsciously developed by many steps. The sounds uttered by birds offer in several respects the nearest a.n.a.logy to language, for all the members of the same species utter the same instinctive cries expressive of their emotions; and all the kinds that have the power of singing exert this power instinctively; but the actual song, and even the call-notes, are learnt from their parents or foster-parents. These sounds, as Daines Barrington[77] has proved, "are no more innate than language is in man." The first attempts to sing "may be compared to the imperfect endeavour in a child to babble." The young males continue practising, or, as the bird-catchers say, recording, for ten or eleven months. Their first essays show hardly a rudiment of the future song; but as they grow older we can perceive what they are aiming at; and at last they are said "to sing their song round." Nestlings which have learnt the song of a distinct species, as with the canary-birds educated in the Tyrol, teach and transmit their new song to their offspring. The slight natural differences of song in the same species inhabiting different districts may be appositely compared, as Barrington remarks, "to provincial dialects;" and the songs of allied, though distinct species may be compared with the languages of distinct races of man. I have given the foregoing details to shew that an instinctive tendency to acquire an art is not a peculiarity confined to man.

With respect to the origin of articulate language, after having read on the one side the highly interesting works of Mr. Hensleigh Wedgwood, the Rev. F. Farrar, and Prof. Schleicher,[78] and the celebrated lectures of Prof. Max Muller on the other side, I cannot doubt that language owes its origin to the imitation and modification, aided by signs and gestures, of various natural sounds, the voices of other animals, and man's own instinctive cries. When we treat of s.e.xual selection we shall see that primeval man, or rather some early progenitor of man, probably used his voice largely, as does one of the gibbon-apes at the present day, in producing true musical cadences, that is in singing; we may conclude from a widely-spread a.n.a.logy that this power would have been especially exerted during the courtship of the s.e.xes, serving to express various emotions, as love, jealousy, triumph, and serving as a challenge to their rivals. The imitation by articulate sounds of musical cries might have given rise to words expressive of various complex emotions.

As bearing on the subject of imitation, the strong tendency in our nearest allies, the monkeys, in microcephalous idiots,[79] and in the barbarous races of mankind, to imitate whatever they hear deserves notice. As monkeys certainly understand much that is said to them by man, and as in a state of nature they utter signal-cries of danger to their fellows,[80] it does not appear altogether incredible, that some unusually wise ape-like animal should have thought of imitating the growl of a beast of prey, so as to indicate to his fellow monkeys the nature of the expected danger. And this would have been a first step in the formation of a language.

As the voice was used more and more, the vocal organs would have been strengthened and perfected through the principle of the inherited effects of use; and this would have reacted on the power of speech. But the relation between the continued use of language and the development of the brain has no doubt been far more important. The mental powers in some early progenitor of man must have been more highly developed than in any existing ape, before even the most imperfect form of speech could have come into use; but we may confidently believe that the continued use and advancement of this power would have reacted on the mind by enabling and encouraging it to carry on long trains of thought. A long and complex train of thought can no more be carried on without the aid of words, whether spoken or silent, than a long calculation without the use of figures or algebra. It appears, also, that even ordinary trains of thought almost require some form of language, for the dumb, deaf, and blind girl, Laura Bridgman, was observed to use her fingers whilst dreaming.[81] Nevertheless a long succession of vivid and connected ideas, may pa.s.s through the mind without the aid of any form of language, as we may infer from the prolonged dreams of dogs. We have, also, seen that retriever-dogs are able to reason to a certain extent; and this they manifestly do without the aid of language. The intimate connection between the brain, as it is now developed in us, and the faculty of speech, is well shewn by those curious cases of brain-disease, in which speech is specially affected, as when the power to remember substantives is lost, whilst other words can be correctly used.[82] There is no more improbability in the effects of the continued use of the vocal and mental organs being inherited, than in the case of handwriting, which depends partly on the structure of the hand and partly on the disposition of the mind; and handwriting is certainly inherited.[83]

Why the organs now used for speech should have been originally perfected for this purpose, rather than any other organs, it is not difficult to see. Ants have considerable powers of intercommunication by means of their antennae, as shewn by Huber, who devotes a whole chapter to their language. We might have used our fingers as efficient instruments, for a person with practice can report to a deaf man every word of a speech rapidly delivered at a public meeting; but the loss of our hands, whilst thus employed, would have been a serious inconvenience. As all the higher mammals possess vocal organs constructed on the same general plan with ours, and which are used as a means of communication, it was obviously probable, if the power of communication had to be improved, that these same organs would have been still further developed; and this has been effected by the aid of adjoining and well-adapted parts, namely the tongue and lips.[84] The fact of the higher apes not using their vocal organs for speech, no doubt depends on their intelligence not having been sufficiently advanced. The possession by them of organs, which with long-continued practice might have been used for speech, although not thus used, is paralleled by the case of many birds which possess organs fitted for singing, though they never sing. Thus, the nightingale and crow have vocal organs similarly constructed, these being used by the former for diversified song, and by the latter merely for croaking.[85]

The formation of different languages and of distinct species, and the proofs that both have been developed through a gradual process, are curiously the same.[86] But we can trace the origin of many words further back than in the case of species, for we can perceive that they have arisen from the imitation of various sounds, as in alliterative poetry. We find in distinct languages striking h.o.m.ologies due to community of descent, and a.n.a.logies due to a similar process of formation. The manner in which certain letters or sounds change when others change is very like correlated growth. We have in both cases the reduplication of parts, the effects of long-continued use, and so forth.

The frequent presence of rudiments, both in languages and in species, is still more remarkable. The letter _m_ in the word _am_, means _I_; so that in the expression _I am_, a superfluous and useless rudiment has been retained. In the spelling also of words, letters often remain as the rudiments of ancient forms of p.r.o.nunciation. Languages, like organic beings, can be cla.s.sed in groups under groups; and they can be cla.s.sed either naturally according to descent, or artificially by other characters. Dominant languages and dialects spread widely and lead to the gradual extinction of other tongues. A language, like a species, when once extinct, never, as Sir C. Lyell remarks, reappears. The same language never has two birthplaces. Distinct languages may be crossed or blended together.[87] We see variability in every tongue, and new words are continually cropping up; but as there is a limit to the powers of the memory, single words, like whole languages, gradually become extinct. As Max Muller[88] has well remarked:-"A struggle for life is constantly going on amongst the words and grammatical forms in each language. The better, the shorter, the easier forms are constantly gaining the upper hand, and they owe their success to their own inherent virtue." To these more important causes of the survival of certain words, mere novelty may, I think, be added; for there is in the mind of man a strong love for slight changes in all things. The survival or preservation of certain favoured words in the struggle for existence is natural selection.

The perfectly regular and wonderfully complex construction of the languages of many barbarous nations has often been advanced as a proof, either of the divine origin of these languages, or of the high art and former civilisation of their founders. Thus F. von Schlegel writes: "In those languages which appear to be at the lowest grade of intellectual culture, we frequently observe a very high and elaborate degree of art in their grammatical structure. This is especially the case with the Basque and the Lapponian, and many of the American languages."[89] But it is a.s.suredly an error to speak of any language as an art in the sense of its having been elaborately and methodically formed. Philologists now admit that conjugations, declensions, &c., originally existed as distinct words, since joined together; and as such words express the most obvious relations between objects and persons, it is not surprising that they should have been used by the men of most races during the earliest ages. With respect to perfection, the following ill.u.s.tration will best shew how easily we may err: a Crinoid sometimes consists of no less than 150,000 pieces of sh.e.l.l,[90] all arranged with perfect symmetry in radiating lines; but a naturalist does not consider an animal of this kind as more perfect than a bilateral one with comparatively few parts, and with none of these alike, excepting on the opposite sides of the body. He justly considers the differentiation and specialisation of organs as the test of perfection. So with languages, the most symmetrical and complex ought not to be ranked above irregular, abbreviated, and b.a.s.t.a.r.dised languages, which have borrowed expressive words and useful forms of construction from various conquering, or conquered, or immigrant races.

From these few and imperfect remarks I conclude that the extremely complex and regular construction of many barbarous languages, is no proof that they owe their origin to a special act of creation.[91] Nor, as we have seen, does the faculty of articulate speech in itself offer any insuperable objection to the belief that man has been developed from some lower form.

_Self-consciousness, Individuality, Abstraction, General Ideas, &c._-It would be useless to attempt discussing these high faculties, which, according to several recent writers, make the sole and complete distinction between man and the brutes, for hardly two authors agree in their definitions. Such faculties could not have been fully developed in man until his mental powers had advanced to a high standard, and this implies the use of a perfect language. No one supposes that one of the lower animals reflects whence he comes or whither he goes,-what is death or what is life, and so forth. But can we feel sure that an old dog with an excellent memory and some power of imagination, as shewn by his dreams, never reflects on his past pleasures in the chase? and this would be a form of self-consciousness. On the other hand, as Buchner[92]

has remarked, how little can the hard-worked wife of a degraded Australian savage, who uses hardly any abstract words and cannot count above four, exert her self-consciousness, or reflect on the nature of her own existence.

That animals retain their mental individuality is unquestionable. When my voice awakened a train of old a.s.sociations in the mind of the above-mentioned dog, he must have retained his mental individuality, although every atom of his brain had probably undergone change more than once during the interval of five years. This dog might have brought forward the argument lately advanced to crush all evolutionists, and said, "I abide amid all mental moods and all material changes.... The teaching that atoms leave their impressions as legacies to other atoms falling into the places they have vacated is contradictory of the utterance of consciousness, and is therefore false; but it is the teaching necessitated by evolutionism, consequently the hypothesis is a false one."[93]

_Sense of Beauty._-This sense has been declared to be peculiar to man.

But when we behold male birds elaborately displaying their plumes and splendid colours before the females, whilst other birds not thus decorated make no such display, it is impossible to doubt that the females admire the beauty of their male partners. As women everywhere deck themselves with these plumes, the beauty of such ornaments cannot be disputed. The Bower-birds by tastefully ornamenting their playing-pa.s.sages with gaily-coloured objects, as do certain humming-birds their nests, offer additional evidence that they possess a sense of beauty. So with the song of birds, the sweet strains poured forth by the males during the season of love are certainly admired by the females, of which fact evidence will hereafter be given. If female birds had been incapable of appreciating the beautiful colours, the ornaments, and voices of their male partners, all the labour and anxiety exhibited by them in displaying their charms before the females would have been thrown away; and this it is impossible to admit. Why certain bright colours and certain sounds should excite pleasure, when in harmony, cannot, I presume, be explained any more than why certain flavours and scents are agreeable; but a.s.suredly the same colours and the same sounds are admired by us and by many of the lower animals.

The taste for the beautiful, at least as far as female beauty is concerned, is not of a special nature in the human mind; for it differs widely in the different races of man, as will hereafter be shewn, and is not quite the same even in the different nations of the same race.

Judging from the hideous ornaments and the equally hideous music admired by most savages, it might be urged that their aesthetic faculty was not so highly developed as in certain animals, for instance, in birds.

Obviously no animal would be capable of admiring such scenes as the heavens at night, a beautiful landscape, or refined music; but such high tastes, depending as they do on culture and complex a.s.sociations, are not enjoyed by barbarians or by uneducated persons.

Many of the faculties, which have been of inestimable service to man for his progressive advancement, such as the powers of the imagination, wonder, curiosity, an undefined sense of beauty, a tendency to imitation, and the love of excitement or novelty, could not fail to have led to the most capricious changes of customs and fashions. I have alluded to this point, because a recent writer[94] has oddly fixed on Caprice "as one of the most remarkable and typical differences between savages and brutes." But not only can we perceive how it is that roan is capricious, but the lower animals are, as we shall hereafter see, capricious in their affections, aversions, and sense of beauty. There is also good reason to suspect that they love novelty, for its own sake.

_Belief in G.o.d-Religion._-There is no evidence that man was aboriginally endowed with the enn.o.bling belief in the existence of an Omnipotent G.o.d. On the contrary there is ample evidence, derived not from hasty travellers, but from men who have long resided with savages, that numerous races have existed and still exist, who have no idea of one or more G.o.ds, and who have no words in their languages to express such an idea.[95] The question is of course wholly distinct from that higher one, whether there exists a Creator and Ruler of the universe; and this has been answered in the affirmative by the highest intellects that have ever lived.

If, however, we include under the term "religion" the belief in unseen or spiritual agencies, the case is wholly different; for this belief seems to be almost universal with the less civilised races. Nor is it difficult to comprehend how it arose. As soon as the important faculties of the imagination, wonder, and curiosity, together with some power of reasoning, had become partially developed, man would naturally have craved to understand what was pa.s.sing around him, and have vaguely speculated on his own existence. As Mr. M'Lennan[96] has remarked, "Some explanation of the phenomena of life, a man must feign for himself; and to judge from the universality of it, the simplest hypothesis, and the first to occur to men, seems to have been that natural phenomena are ascribable to the presence in animals, plants, and things, and in the forces of nature, of such spirits prompting to action as men are conscious they themselves possess." It is probable, as Mr.

Tylor has clearly shewn, that dreams may have first given rise to the notion of spirits; for savages do not readily distinguish between subjective and objective impressions. When a savage dreams, the figures which appear before him are believed to have come from a distance and to stand over him; or "the soul of the dreamer goes out on its travels, and comes home with a remembrance of what it has seen."[97] But until the above-named faculties of imagination, curiosity, reason, &c., had been fairly well developed in the mind of man, his dreams would not have led him to believe in spirits, any more than in the case of a dog.

The tendency in savages to imagine that natural objects and agencies are animated by spiritual or living essences, is perhaps ill.u.s.trated by a little fact which I once noticed: my dog, a full-grown and very sensible animal, was lying on the lawn during a hot and still day; but at a little distance a slight breeze occasionally moved an open parasol, which would have been wholly disregarded by the dog, had any one stood near it. As it was, every time that the parasol slightly moved, the dog growled fiercely and barked. He must, I think, have reasoned to himself in a rapid and unconscious manner, that movement without any apparent cause indicated the presence of some strange living agent, and no stranger had a right to be on his territory.

The belief in spiritual agencies would easily pa.s.s into the belief in the existence of one or more G.o.ds. For savages would naturally attribute to spirits the same pa.s.sions, the same love of vengeance or simplest form of justice, and the same affections which they themselves experienced. The Fuegians appear to be in this respect in an intermediate condition, for when the surgeon on board the "Beagle" shot some young ducklings as specimens, York Minster declared in the most solemn manner, "Oh! Mr. Bynoe, much rain, much snow, blow much;" and this was evidently a retributive punishment for wasting human food. So again he related how, when his brother killed a "wild man," storms long raged, much rain and snow fell. Yet we could never discover that the Fuegians believed in what we should call a G.o.d, or practised any religious rites; and Jemmy b.u.t.ton, with justifiable pride, stoutly maintained that there was no devil in his land. This latter a.s.sertion is the more remarkable, as with savages the belief in bad spirits is far more common than the belief in good spirits.

The feeling of religious devotion is a highly complex one, consisting of love, complete submission to an exalted and mysterious superior, a strong sense of dependence,[98] fear, reverence, grat.i.tude, hope for the future, and perhaps other elements. No being could experience so complex an emotion until advanced in his intellectual and moral faculties to at least a moderately high level. Nevertheless we see some distant approach to this state of mind, in the deep love of a dog for his master, a.s.sociated with complete submission, some fear, and perhaps other feelings. The behaviour of a dog when returning to his master after an absence, and, as I may add, of a monkey to his beloved keeper, is widely different from that towards their fellows. In the latter case the transports of joy appear to be somewhat less, and the sense of equality is shewn in every action. Professor Braubach[99] goes so far as to maintain that a dog looks on his master as on a G.o.d.

The same high mental faculties which first led man to believe in unseen spiritual agencies, then in fetishism, polytheism, and ultimately in monotheism, would infallibly lead him, as long as his reasoning powers remained poorly developed, to various strange superst.i.tions and customs.

Many of these are terrible to think of-such as the sacrifice of human beings to a blood-loving G.o.d; the trial of innocent persons by the ordeal of poison or fire; witchcraft, &c.-yet it is well occasionally to reflect on these superst.i.tions, for they shew us what an infinite debt of grat.i.tude we owe to the improvement of our reason, to science, and our acc.u.mulated knowledge.[100] As Sir J. Lubbock has well observed, "it is not too much to say that the horrible dread of unknown evil hangs like a thick cloud over savage life, and embitters every pleasure." These miserable and indirect consequences of our highest faculties may be compared with the incidental and occasional mistakes of the instincts of the lower animals.

CHAPTER III.

COMPARISON OF THE MENTAL POWERS OF MAN AND THE LOWER ANIMALS-_continued_.

The moral sense-Fundamental proposition-The qualities of social animals-Origin of sociability-Struggle between opposed instincts-Man a social animal-The more enduring social instincts conquer other less persistent instincts-The social virtues alone regarded by savages-The self-regarding virtues acquired at a later stage of development-The importance of the judgment of the members of the same community on conduct-Transmission of moral tendencies-Summary.

I fully subscribe to the judgment of those writers[101] who maintain that of all the differences between man and the lower animals, the moral sense or conscience is by far the most important. This sense, as Mackintosh[102] remarks, "has a rightful supremacy over every other principle of human action;" it is summed up in that short but imperious word _ought_, so full of high significance. It is the most n.o.ble of all the attributes of man, leading him without a moment's hesitation to risk his life for that of a fellow-creature; or after due deliberation, impelled simply by the deep feeling of right or duty, to sacrifice it in some great cause. Immanuel Kant exclaims, "Duty! Wondrous thought, that workest neither by fond insinuation, flattery, nor by any threat, but merely by holding up thy naked law in the soul, and so extorting for thyself always reverence, if not always obedience; before whom all appet.i.tes are dumb, however secretly they rebel; whence thy original?"[103]

This great question has been discussed by many writers[104] of consummate ability; and my sole excuse for touching on it is the impossibility of here pa.s.sing it over, and because, as far as I know, no one has approached it exclusively from the side of natural history. The investigation possesses, also, some independent interest, as an attempt to see how far the study of the lower animals can throw light on one of the highest psychical faculties of man.

The following proposition seems to me in a high degree probable-namely, that any animal whatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts,[105] would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience, as soon as its intellectual powers had become as well developed, or nearly as well developed, as in man. For, _firstly_, the social instincts lead an animal to take pleasure in the society of its fellows, to feel a certain amount of sympathy with them, and to perform various services for them. The services may be of a definite and evidently instinctive nature; or there may be only a wish and readiness, as with most of the higher social animals, to aid their fellows in certain general ways. But these feelings and services are by no means extended to all the individuals of the same species, only to those of the same a.s.sociation.

_Secondly_, as soon as the mental faculties had become highly developed, images of all past actions and motives would be incessantly pa.s.sing through the brain of each individual; and that feeling of dissatisfaction which invariably results, as we shall hereafter see, from any unsatisfied instinct, would arise, as often as it was perceived that the enduring and always present social instinct had yielded to some other instinct, at the time stronger, but neither enduring in its nature, nor leaving behind it a very vivid impression. It is clear that many instinctive desires, such as that of hunger, are in their nature of short duration; and after being satisfied are not readily or vividly recalled. _Thirdly_, after the power of language had been acquired and the wishes of the members of the same community could be distinctly expressed, the common opinion how each member ought to act for the public good, would naturally become to a large extent the guide to action. But the social instincts would still give the impulse to act for the good of the community, this impulse being strengthened, directed, and sometimes even deflected by public opinion, the power of which rests, as we shall presently see, on instinctive sympathy. _Lastly_, habit in the individual would ultimately play a very important part in guiding the conduct of each member; for the social instincts and impulses, like all other instincts, would be greatly strengthened by habit, as would obedience to the wishes and judgment of the community.

These several subordinate propositions must now be discussed; and some of them at considerable length.

It may be well first to premise that I do not wish to maintain that any strictly social animal, if its intellectual faculties were to become as active and as highly developed as in man, would acquire exactly the same moral sense as ours. In the same manner as various animals have some sense of beauty, though they admire widely different objects, so they might have a sense of right and wrong, though led by it to follow widely different lines of conduct. If, for instance, to take an extreme case, men were reared under precisely the same conditions as hive-bees, there can hardly be a doubt that our unmarried females would, like the worker-bees, think it a sacred duty to kill their brothers, and mothers would strive to kill their fertile daughters; and no one would think of interfering. Nevertheless the bee, or any other social animal, would in our supposed case gain, as it appears to me, some feeling of right and wrong, or a conscience. For each individual would have an inward sense of possessing certain stronger or more enduring instincts, and others less strong or enduring; so that there would often be a struggle which impulse should be followed; and satisfaction or dissatisfaction would be felt, as past impressions were compared during their incessant pa.s.sage through the mind. In this case an inward monitor would tell the animal that it would have been better to have followed the one impulse rather than the other. The one course ought to have been followed: the one would have been right and the other wrong; but to these terms I shall have to recur.