II.—Intercommunication
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.
Some account has already been given of the sounds made by young birds, which seem to be instinctive and to afford an index of the emotional state at the time of utterance. That in many cases they serve to evoke a like emotional state and correlated expressive behaviour in other birds of the same brood cannot be questioned. The alarm note of a chick will place its companions on the alert; and the harsh “krek” of a young moor-hen, uttered in a peculiar crouching attitude, will often throw others into this attitude, though the maker of the warning sound may be invisible. That the cries of her brood influence the conduct of the hen is a matter of familiar observation; and that her danger signal causes them at once to crouch or run to her for protection is not less familiar. No one who has watched a cat with her kittens, or a sheep with her lambs, can doubt that such “dumb animals” are influenced in their behaviour by suggestive sounds. The important questions are, how they originate, what is their value, and how far such intercommunication—if such we may call it—extends.
There can be but little question that in all cases of animals under natural conditions such behaviour has an instinctive basis. Though the effect may be to establish a means of communication, such is not their conscious purpose at the outset. They are presumably congenital and hereditary modes of emotional expression which serve to evoke responsive behaviour in another animal—the reciprocal action being generally in its primary origin between mate and mate, between parent and offspring, or between members of the same family group. And it is this reciprocal action which constitutes it a factor in social evolution. Its chief interest in connection with the subject of behaviour lies in the fact that it shows the instinctive foundations on which intelligent and eventually rational modes of intercommunication are built up. For instinctive as the sounds are at the outset, by entering into the conscious situation and taking their part in the association-complex of experience, they become factors in the social life as modified and directed by intelligence. To their original instinctive value as the outcome of stimuli, and as themselves affording stimuli to responsive behaviour, is added a value for consciousness in so far as they enter into those guiding situations by which intelligent behaviour is determined. And if they also serve to evoke, in the reciprocating members of the social group, similar or allied emotional states, there is thus added a further social bond, inasmuch as there are thus laid the foundations of sympathy.
“What makes the old sow grunt and the piggies sing and whine?” said a little girl to a portly substantial farmer. “I suppose they does it for company, my dear,” was the simple and cautious reply. So far as appearances went, that farmer looked as guiltless of theories as man could be. And yet he gave terse expression to what may perhaps be regarded as the most satisfactory hypothesis as to the primary purpose of animal sounds. 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. Arising thus in close relation to the primitive feelings of social sympathy, they would naturally be called into play with special force and suggestiveness at times of strong emotional excitement, and the earliest differentiations would, we may well believe, be determined along lines of emotional expression. Thus would originate mating cries, male and female after their kind; and parental cries more or less differentiated into those of mother and offspring, the deeper note of the ewe differing little save in pitch and timbre from the bleating of her lamb, while the cluck of the hen differs widely from the peeping note of the chick in down. Thus, too, would arise the notes of anger and combat, of fear and distress, of alarm and warning. If we call these the instinctive language of emotional expression, we must remember that such “language” differs markedly from the “language” of which the sentence is the recognized unit.
It is, however, not improbable that, through association in the conscious situation, sounds, having their origin in emotional expression and evoking in others like emotional states, may acquire a new value in suggesting, for example, the presence of particular enemies. An example will best serve to indicate my meaning. “In the early dawn of a grey morning,” says Mr. H. B. Medlicott,[82] “I was geologizing along the base of the Muhair Hills in South Behar, when all of a sudden there was a stampede of many pigs from the fringe of the jungle, with porcine shrieks of sauve-qui-peut significance. After a short run in the open they took to the jungle again, and in a few minutes there was another uproar, but different in sound and in action; there was a rush, presumably of the fighting members, to the spot where the row began, and after some seconds a large leopard sprang from the midst of the scuffle. In a few bounds he was in the open, and stood looking back, licking his chaps. The pigs did not break cover, but continued on their way. They were returning to their lair after a night’s feeding on the plain, several families having combined for mutual protection; while the beasts of prey were evidently waiting for the occasion. I was alone, and, though armed, I did not care to beat up the ground to see if in either case a kill had been effected. The numerous herd covered a considerable space, and the scrub was thick. The prompt concerted action must in each case have been started by the special cry. I imagine that the first assailant was a tiger, and the case was at once known to be hopeless, the cry prompting instant flight, while in the second case the cry was for defence. It can scarcely be doubted that in the first case each adult pig had a vision of a tiger, and in the second of a leopard or some minor foe.”
If we accept Mr. Medlicott’s interpretation as in the main correct, we have in this case: (1) common action in social behaviour, (2) community of emotional state, and (3) the suggestion of natural enemies not unfamiliar in the experience of the herd. Under uniform conditions of experience the alarm-notes of some birds may well call up, re-presentatively, salient features in previous situations. Unquestionably, in the parrot, the word-sounds they imitate become associated with definite objects of sense-experience. In the following case, a particular sound appeared to be suggestive of a particular sense-idea in the dog. The parent blackbirds, which built near a house in Clifton, were wont to give the alarm-note when marauding cats appeared in sight. This sound, it would seem, became definitely associated, in the experience of a terrier, with the animals the presence of which called it forth; and on hearing the alarm note the dog would rush out into the garden, apparently, as I am informed by his mistress, in fullest expectation of a pleasant worry. It is a not improbable hypothesis, therefore, that in the course of evolution the initial value of uttered sounds is emotional; but that on this may be grafted in further development the indication of particular enemies. If, for example, the cry which prompts instant flight among the pigs is called forth by a tiger, it is reasonable to suppose that this cry would give rise to a representative generic image of that animal having its influence on the conscious situation. But if the second cry, for defence, was prompted sometimes by a leopard and sometimes by some other minor foe, then this cry would not give rise to a re-presentative image of the same definiteness. Whether animals have the power of intentionally differentiating the sounds they make to indicate different objects, is extremely doubtful. Can a dog bark in different tones to indicate “cat” or “rat,” as the case may be? Probably not. It may, however, be asked why, if a pig may squeak differently, and thus, perhaps, incidently indicate on the one hand “tiger” and on the other hand “leopard,” should not a dog bark differently, and thus indicate appropriately “cat” or “rat”? Because it is assumed that the two different cries in the pig are the instinctive expression of two different emotional states, and Mr. Medlicott could distinguish them; whereas, in the case of the dog, we can distinguish no difference between his barking in the one case and the other, nor do the emotional states appear to be differentiated. Of course, there may be differences which we have failed to detect. What may be regarded, however, as improbable, is the intentional differentiation of sounds by barking in different tones with the purpose of indicating “cat” or “rat.” Mr. R. L. Garner, in a work[83] which unfortunately contains much hasty and immature generalization, distinguished nine sounds made by capuchins. But none of these, so far as can be gathered from the data given, is necessarily indicative of a particular object. All of them may be emotional expressions of satisfaction, discontent, alarm, apprehension, and so forth. In any case, there is no evidence for that intentional employment of sounds, to the realized end of intercommunication, which would involve the exercise of an incipient rational faculty. Such powers of intercommunication as animals possess are based on direct association, and refer to the here and the now. A dog may be able to suggest to his companion the fact that he has descried a worriable cat; but can a dog tell his neighbour of the delightful worry he enjoyed the day before yesterday in the garden where the man with the biscuit-tin lives? Probably not, bark he never so expressively.
Although some anecdotes are commonly interpreted as affording evidence of descriptive intercommunication among animals, we need the decisive results of experiment before this view can be unreservedly accepted. Sir John Lubbock, now Lord Avebury, made careful experiments with ants, and discusses the question with his customary lucidity and impartiality. “Much of what has been said,” he writes,[84] “as to the powers of communication possessed by bees and ants depends on the fact that if one of them in the course of her rambles has discovered a supply of food, a number of others soon find their way to the store. This, however, does not necessarily imply any power of describing localities. If the ants merely follow a more fortunate companion, or if they hunt her by scent, the matter is comparatively simple; if, on the contrary, the others have the route described to them, the case becomes very different.” Experiments were therefore made to decide the question. For example, when an ant returned from the discovered store of food to the nest, and then emerged with a following of other ants, she was taken up on a slip of paper and transferred to the food. The followers, thus deprived of their leader, in nearly all cases failed to find the store. “I conclude, then,” says Lord Avebury, “that when large numbers of ants come to food they follow one another, being also, to a large extent, guided by scent. The fact, therefore, does not imply any considerable power of intercommunication.” There are, moreover, some circumstances which seem to strengthen this conclusion. For instance, “if a number of slave-ants are put in a box, and if in one corner a dark place of retreat be provided for them, with some earth, one soon finds her way to it. She then comes out again, and going up to one of the others, takes her by the jaws and carries her to the place of shelter. They then both repeat the same manœuvre with other ants, and so on until all their companions are collected together. Now, it seems difficult to imagine that so slow a course would be adopted, if they possessed any power of communicating description.”
Lord Avebury is, however, of opinion that such insects can transmit simpler ideas. He found, for example, that where ants were put to a large and a small store of larvæ under similar circumstances, a greater number of insects followed the ant that had discovered the larger store. This may, indeed, have been due rather to a difference in manner than to any intentional communication; but the fact remains that through some difference of behaviour there resulted suggestive effects on other members of the community.
But although there can be little doubt that the behaviour of social insects has suggestive value for others, it may still be regarded as very doubtful whether they are able to communicate information to one another by any system of language or signs, purposively employed as a system to this end. The distinguished geologist, Hague, communicated to Darwin[85] the effects on ants of crushing some of their number as they proceeded along a definite trail. “As soon as those ants which were approaching arrived near to where their fellows lay dead and suffering, they turned and fled with all possible haste.” “When such an ant, returning in fright, met another approaching, the two would always communicate, but each would pursue its own way, the second ant continuing its journey to the spot where the first had turned about, and then following that example.” There seems nothing to show that the “communication” here was effective.
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. And although domestic animals may learn or be taught to associate the words we utter with certain acts or things, or may even, in a sense, communicate their wishes to us by special modes of behaviour—as in the case of Lord Avebury’s poodle, Van,[86] who was taught to bring cards on which such words as “Food” or “Out” were printed, and in that of a cat which touches the handle of the door when she wants it opened for her,—still, all these are founded on direct association, and are in a line with the act of Mr. Thorndike’s cat, which licked herself or scratched herself when imprisoned in a cage, such act having entered into the association-complex.
Such intentional communication as is to be found in animals, if indeed we may properly so call it, seems to arise by an association of the performance of some act in a conscious situation involving further behaviour for its complete development. Thus the cat which touches the handle of the door when it wishes to leave the room has had experience in which the performance of this act has coalesced with a specific development of the conscious situation. The case is similar when your dog drops a ball or stick at your feet, wishing you to throw it for him to fetch. And on these lines may probably be interpreted such behaviour as Romanes[87] thus described:—“Terrier A being asleep in my house, and terrier B lying on a wall outside, a strange dog, C, ran along below the wall on the public road, following a dog-cart. Immediately on seeing C, B jumped off the wall, ran upstairs to where A was asleep, woke him up by poking him with his nose in a determined and suggestive manner, which A at once understood as a sign: he jumped over the wall and pursued the dog C, although C was by that time far out of sight round a bend in the road.” Romanes did not probably intend to imply that A by poking B, conveyed specific information that there was another dog, C, which had proceeded in a particular direction. That would be descriptive communication. The meaning attaching to A’s action was presumably similar to that which characterizes other “meaning” for intelligent animals—the development of the situation on lines marked out by previous experience. Still, it is clear that such an act would be the perceptual precursor of the deliberate conduct of the rational being by whom the sign is definitely realized as a sign, the intentional meaning of which is distinctly present to thought. This involves a judgment concerning the sign as an object of thought; and this is probably beyond the capacity of the dog. For, as Romanes himself says,[88] “it is because the human mind is able, so to speak, to stand outside of itself, and thus to constitute its own ideas the subject-matter of its own thought, that it is capable of judgment, whether in the act of conception or in that of predication. We have no evidence to show that any animal is capable of objectifying its own ideas; and, therefore, we have no evidence that any animal is capable of judgment.”
It seems, therefore, that the sounds made by animals, and certain other modes of behaviour, may be regarded as primarily instinctive acts which have been evolved with the biological end of affording suggestive stimuli furthering intercommunication between the members of the social group. Their performance, however, affords data to consciousness, which intelligence makes use of in the guidance of behaviour in accordance with the results of experience. And since the similar acts performed by the socially linked members are in many cases closely connected with emotional states, there arises the further social link of community of feeling—that which, perhaps, more than anything else conduces to community of action and similarity of social behaviour. Occasionally particular sounds or special acts may, through constant and uniform association, indicate particular objects, such as natural enemies. But there does not appear to be convincing evidence of any intentional differentiation of the means of communication, or of any use of sounds for descriptive ends.
Still, just as the instinctive imitation we considered in the last section may be regarded as the precursor, in the animal world, of the reflective and rational imitation of which we may watch the development in children, so may instinctive modes of intercommunication be regarded as supplying the foundations on which deliberate and intentional communication may be based. And here imitation will be a co-operating factor. We see in the early stages of the development of children’s language how large a share simple and direct association takes in the process. For a while, indeed, there seems to be this and nothing more. But gradually there arises a realization of a further import and purpose in the hitherto isolated associations. It is seen that they symbolize elements in that incipiently rational scheme of thought and things which is beginning to take form in the child’s mind. The relationships which hold good within the conscious situations of daily life begin to occupy the focus of attention, and hitherto unappreciated word-sounds are perceived to stand out as signs for these relationships. Of course the relationships[89] are implicit in the conscious situations of the higher animals and of infants. Only by reflection can they become explicit, and rivet the attention. Something is needed to bring them into prominence and focus the mental eye upon them. And descriptive intercommunication supplies this need. If a description, even the simplest, is to be apprehended or presented to the apprehension of others, then the relationships must be rendered explicit. Try to describe an ordinary visual scene, or the most commonplace sequence of events, and see if you can do so without making clear to the mind the relationships involved. The thing is impossible. An infant or a dog cannot understand the simplest possible description, because the words and suffixes which indicate the relationships have no meaning. The words which stand for substantive impressions may have suggestive value through direct association. The word “cat” or “rats” may have for the dog a very definite suggestive value; and hence some people fancy that when they say to their dog, “There is a cat in the garden,” the animal understands what they say. But it is quite sufficient to suppose that the word “cat” has suggestive force, all the rest being for the dog mere surplusage of sound. When we talk to our four-footed companions, how much can they be said to understand of what we say? Perhaps a score of words have for a dog a definitely suggestive value, each associated with some simple object or action. “Out,” “down,” “up,” “walk,” “biscuit,” “cat,” “fetch,” and so forth elicit appropriate responses. Even with these, tone is more suggestive than articulation, and in each word the salient feature is the chief guide. When I said “Whisky,” for example, to my fox-terrier, he would at once sit up and beg; not because his tastes were as depraved as those of his master, but because the isk sound, common both to “Whisky” and “biscuit,” was what had for his ears the suggestive value.
In a paper on the “Speech of Children,”[90] Mr. S. S. Buckman exhibits the animal stage in the incipient speech of the human infant. We cannot here discuss, still less criticize, his paper. One or two examples will serve to illustrate how instinctive sounds may serve as the basis for subsequent speech. He regards ma as primarily a forcible expression of an emotional state. “If the child require attention it makes the loudest noise which it can produce; the parting of the lips and opening of the mouth to the widest extent while the full volume of breath is emitted produces the sound ma.” At first the sound seems to have the value of a simple expression of an emotional state. “But if the infant require attention it is its mother whom it wants, and from whom it receives this attention; therefore ma very soon comes to be recognized as the call for mother, and, by a further step in development, as the name for mother.” Here, if we accept the interpretation, we have the passage from the emission of a sound as the expression of emotion to the use of the sound from its association with a particular object of sense-experience to indicate that object. Similarly, according to Mr. Buckman, with kah. At first “a strong sign of displeasure at anything nasty to the taste,” it passes, we are told, into a symbol for the bad; hence κακός; and is perhaps narrowed down to the particularly offensive κάκκη. Da and ta are regarded as recognition sounds, the former being associated eventually with the father, the latter with strangers. This appears somewhat hypothetical, but, granting the accuracy of Mr. Buckman’s interpretation, these sounds also illustrate again the transition from the expression of an emotion to sounds indicative of particular objects of experience.
Interesting, however, as are such observations on the animal stage of sound-production in the human infant, they do not touch the crucial period in the development of language. Mr. Buckman, indeed, regards as a remarkably dogmatic assertion Professor Max Müller’s dictum that “the one great barrier between the brute and man is language;” and he tells us that “there are more than twelve different words in the language of fowls,” on which assertion, in turn, the distinguished linguist whom he criticizes might have something piquant to say. No doubt the difference of opinion turns on the definition of the word “language.” But if, as is now generally accepted, the sentence and not the word is the distinguishing unit in language, and the copula in some form, explicit or implicit, is the pivot of the sentence, the wisest hen is probably incapable of language. The word becomes an element in language—a word proper—only when it assumes the office of a part of speech, that is to say, a constituent element in an interrelated whole. The animal “word,” if we like so to term it, is an isolated brick; a dozen, or even a couple of hundred such bricks do not constitute a building. Language, properly so called, is the builded structure, be it a palace or only a cottage; hen language, or monkey language, is, at best, so far as we at present have evidence, an unfashioned heap of bricks. It is just because language is the expression of a portion of a scheme of thought that it indicates in the speaker the possession of a rational soul, capable of perceiving and symbolizing the relationships of things as reflected in thought.
Herein lies the practical value, for human advance in mental development, of language as a means of descriptive intercommunication. It renders explicit relationships otherwise merely implicit, and forces them to the front; and since these relationships are the stuff of which knowledge is built—without the realization of which any complex ideal scheme is impossible of attainment—the importance of descriptive intercommunication can scarcely be overestimated. And though there is no conclusive evidence of its occurrence among animals, yet we have in them the instinctive and intelligent basis on which in due course of evolution it may be securely based.