IV.—Animal “Æsthetics” and “Ethics”
In this section we shall consider some types of behaviour which suggest situations that contain the germs of æsthetics and ethics, with a view to determining, so far as possible, the principles on which they should be interpreted. This is a peculiarly difficult subject; for we are endeavouring to get behind the behaviour, and to infer the mental conditions which accompany it, and through which it assumes its distinctive character. The difficulty is twofold: first, because, as Dr. Stout puts it,[156] “human language is especially constructed to describe the mental states of human beings, and this means that it is especially constructed so as to mislead us when we attempt to describe the workings of minds that differ in any great degree from the human;” and secondly, because, to quote the same careful thinker,[157] “the besetting snare of the psychologist is the tendency to assume that an act or attitude which in himself would be the natural manifestation of a certain mental process must, therefore, have the same meaning in the case of another. The fallacy lies in taking this or that isolated action apart from the totality of conditions under which it appears. It is particularly seductive when the animal mind is the subject of inquiry.”
We must, therefore, base our method of procedure on some definite principle. The canon of interpretation which I have elsewhere suggested[158] is, that we should not interpret animal behaviour as the outcome of higher mental processes, if it can be fairly explained as due to the operation of those which stand lower in the psychological scale of development. To this it may be added—lest the range of the principle be misunderstood—that the canon by no means excludes the interpretation of a particular act as the outcome of the higher mental processes, if we already have independent evidence of their occurrence in the agent. Now, the conclusion to which we are led by direct experiment and a critical study of the actions of animals whose life-history is known to us is, that most of their behaviour—perhaps all—is due to what Dr. Stout terms the perceptual, as opposed to the ideational, exercise of cognition. Their behaviour can be explained without having recourse to the hypothesis that they reflect, and attain to ideal schemes as the result of abstraction and generalization consciously directed to this end. Rather than repeat what I have already said, I will quote Dr. Stout’s summary of the position to which he, too, has been led. “The vast interval,” he says,[159] “which separates human achievements, so far as they depend on human intelligence, from animal achievements, so far as they depend on animal intelligence, is connected with the distinction between perceptual and ideational process. Animal activities are either purely perceptual, or, in so far as they involve ideas, these ideas serve only to prompt and guide an action in its actual execution. On the other hand, man constructs ‘in his head,’ by means of trains of ideas, schemes of action before he begins to carry them out. He is thus capable of overcoming difficulties in advance. He can cross a bridge before he comes to it.”
It has already been stated that in the intelligent behaviour of animals under man’s teaching he is the rational agent, they his willing slaves. This may be here again illustrated to enforce the distinction drawn by Dr. Stout in the above passage. Those who have seen a shepherd’s dog working sheep on a moorland fell, and have taken the trouble to ascertain how the results he sees have been attained, will appreciate, on the one hand, how well the dog knows and responds to the signals of his master, and, on the other hand, how completely all initiation is in the master’s mind, not that of the keenly intelligent dog. Those who merely witness such a performance without inquiry or investigation will probably misunderstand the whole matter. In the north of England competitions are not uncommon where, say, three sheep have to be driven over a definite course, between certain posts and round others, through narrow passages and into a fold—all within a certain time limit. At such a competition success depends on two things: first, the training of the dog to respond at once to some six or eight whistle-signals, often accompanied by gestures and movements of a stick; and secondly, the judgment of the shepherd. The signals, given in different whistle-tones and inflections, have for the dog meaning, such as drive straight on, from this side, from that, stop, lie down, creep, and so forth. The dog’s whole business is to obey these signals. And the instant response of a well-trained dog is admirable. But in the whole proceeding he is merely the executant of his master’s orders. He originates no important step. And if you listen to the criticisms by other shepherds during a competition you will find that they are mainly passed on the judgment shown by the master, and only in palpable failures in obedience on the behaviour of the dog. The intelligent animal is what he is trained to be—one whose natural powers are under the complete control of his master with whom the whole plan of action lies.
Since, then, in the cognitional field we find no independent evidence of the higher processes, we are bound, in accordance with our canon, to interpret emotional situations on similar principles, unless we find in them outstanding facts which cannot be explained in this way.
In considering the pairing situation we urged that the framing of an ideal of beauty to which a given suitor approaches, or from which he falls short, is unnecessary for the interpretation of the facts. We should not in strictness, therefore, speak of “an appreciation of beauty” or “a taste for the beautiful” in birds, since such expressions almost inevitably imply that these creatures have reached some conception of beauty as distinguished from and contrasted with ugliness. At the same time the hen certainly appears to enjoy the situation of which the plumed cock, attitudinizing thus, forms the centre of interest—through which he acquires meaning. Although, therefore, there is probably no ideal or standard of beauty, there are afforded the data in experience from which, were the bird capable of reflection, such an ideal might, in ideational sublimation, be derived. Before comparison, abstraction, and generalization can be applied, in the reflective laboratory of thought, there must be suitable experiences to form the raw material on which these rational processes can be exercised. Long ere, in the course of mental evolution, the correlative conceptions implied in the phrase “beautiful or ugly” had taken definite form, perceptual situations must have arisen, where, by direct appeal to the senses, by the diffused effects of stimulation and their accompanying feeling-tone, and by the natural satisfaction of mere impulse, the foundations were laid of that appreciation of the beautiful which forms the reflective superstructure we build upon them. Indeed, the pleasure and satisfaction attending particular situations, as they severally arise, appear to contain the perceptual germs of what in later development becomes æsthetic appreciation.
The bird which, having completed its nest, eyes it with apparent satisfaction, may well have the germs of that which, when rendered schematic in our thought, we call taste. Dr. Gould, indeed, states that certain humming-birds decorate their nests “with the utmost taste,” weaving into their structure beautiful pieces of lichen. And the gardener bower-bird collects in front of its bower flowers and fruits of bright and varied colours. What meaning these carry in the conscious situation we do not know; we can only suppose that they incidentally contribute to the heightening of the sexual impulse, and have been evolved as a means of stimulation to the biological end towards which sexual selection is unconsciously directed. For it is probable that all the situations with which pleasure and satisfaction are in high degree associated are, in primary origin, closely connected with behaviour directed, through natural or sexual selection, to some definite biological end, or, in brief, with behaviour of biological value. And it is, perhaps, not improbable that the states of consciousness most highly toned with strong emotion have their origin in those situations which arise amid the pairing, parental, and companiable relations of animal life.
We have already said that the companion, as the nucleus of a situation, is a thing which reacts in altogether special ways, so that it becomes differentiated from other things as something the meaning of which, and the interest in which, are sui generis and unique in type. It becomes the centre of emotional situations, which we ascribe to rivalry, emulation, jealousy, and so forth. And we have also drawn attention to the view that the genetic order, so far as there is an order, is not first the ego and then the alter, but first the mother and companions and then through them the self. We learn to know ourselves only through knowing others. We must now ask the question—a question which must be answered before we can touch on the possible ethics of animals—how far, and in what sense, the social animal regards others as of like nature to itself, and capable also of like feelings and emotions. Stated in this form we must, I think, answer the question in the negative. The expression, “of like nature to itself,” implies that the self has already taken more or less definite form, and that the animal infers that, since the alter behaves and reacts in like manner to the ego, it also is an ego. This is distinctly an act of reasoning. As Clifford phrased it, the companion becomes an eject. We can never by direct experience become acquainted with the feelings of others, but we can endow them ejectively with personality analogous to our own.
But, though it is exceedingly doubtful whether any animal can regard its companion as an “eject,” may there not be a perceptual anticipation of the ideational process that comes with later-developed reflection? A decade ago I gave the following answer to this question: “For myself, I cannot doubt that animals project into each other the shadows of the feelings of which they are themselves conscious.”[160] Professor Mark Baldwin speaks of the stage at which this takes place, as the “projective stage” of development. “Now, in the fact,” he says,[161] “of herding, common life and arrangements for the protection of the herd, animal societies of various kinds, animal division of labour, etc.,—whatever be the origin of it,—we have what seems to be such an epoch in animal life. 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.”
Now, in endeavouring to realize how the situation feels to an animal in this projective stage, the first difficulty we encounter is that of divesting ourselves of those products of reflection which characterize our own mental situation; and to avoid what Dr. Stout, in the passage above quoted,[162] terms the psychologist’s besetting snare. The second difficulty is to grasp that, in experience, subject and object are inseparable, however clearly we may learn to perceive that they are distinguishable aspects of that experience. If the subject is eventually regarded as that which experiences, and the object as that which is experienced, it is surely obvious that each is necessary to the other. But, before these different aspects are clearly distinguished, there is, in the perceptual stage of mental development, what we may term a distribution of the items of experience among the centres of interest.
In illustration of the kind of distribution which we may suppose to come naturally to an animal, in what Professor Baldwin terms the projective epoch, let us take three animal situations: first, a chick pecks at a soldier-beetle, and finds it nauseous; secondly, a hen-bird hears the joyous song of her mate; thirdly, a puppy in play bites its companion, and receives a painful nip in return. Each of these constitutes an experience-situation; assuming that the results of the experience are distributed, how may we suppose them to be allocated?
In the first case, the soldier-beetle is the centre of interest in the situation. As the situation develops, the element of nauseousness is introduced. As Dr. Stout puts it, this is what gives the soldier-beetle meaning. Can it be doubted that, if there be any distribution, the nauseousness, though it is altogether what we have learnt to call a subjective affection, attaches itself to the soldier-beetle? The plain man, unsophisticated by Berkeleyan discussion, says simply, in such cases, “The thing is nauseous.” And this probably indicates the naïve and primitive distribution. Turning now to our second example, when the hen hears the courtship song the mate is the centre of a situation suffused with pleasurable feeling. How is the joyousness, again essentially subjective for our later thought, distributed? Surely, if at all, on the mate who forms the centre of interest. This it is which gives him meaning. The joy of the bearer is projected on to the singer. Not entirely, perhaps; the hen literally, on Professor James’s theory of the emotions, feels her heart-beat quickened by his presence, and the delightful ruffling of her feathers. But our aim is not to deny that the germs of the subjective arise in the midst of such situations, but to contend that some at least of the joyous character of the situation attaches to the song of the singer, that some of the feeling is projected, and that this is what gives the mate meaning. In our third case, the playful puppy bites his companion, and is sharply bitten in return. Pain enters into the coalescent situation as a whole. How is it distributed? In the phraseology of association, the nip he gives is closely linked with the pain he receives. By coalescence the pain and the nip form parts of the developed situation. But the companion is the centre of interest. And part of the pain is probably projected on this centre. That such projection actually occurs is rendered probable by such cases as the following, which was told me some years ago. A child, whose exact age I have forgotten if I then ascertained, was pricked by a pin, and he said, “Pin ’urted; poor pin.” It is, indeed, not unlikely that with animals the outward projection of feeling is widely distributed over inanimate, as well as animate, objects, and that its due restriction comes far later in development, of which the so-called personification of lifeless things by savages may be a relic. In any case, the give-and-take of play in young animals, and the after-earnest of courtship and fighting, would seem to afford ample opportunity for the external and internal distribution of feeling which sows the seed in perceptual life of that which blossoms into self and alter in the reflective life of ideational thought.
Although, therefore, an animal cannot conceive its companion as another self of similar nature, and with like passions to his own, yet a considerable share of the feeling-element of the conscious situation is projected on to that companion as the chief centre of interest. And if it be said that this is his feeling and not his neighbour’s, the objection will be seen to lose its force, so soon as it is realized that even man has no experience of any feelings save his own. The only way we can reach fellow-feeling is through sympathy; and sympathy has its roots in the projective process we have endeavoured to describe. We endow our neighbours with natures as sensitive to pain and pleasure as our own. This is a pre-requisite to the social relationships termed ethical. But when we hear people say, and find even Mr. Romanes putting on deliberate record,[163] that “the feelings which prompt a cat to torture a captured mouse can only be assigned to the category to which, by common consent, they are ascribed—delight in torturing for torture’s sake,” I venture to think that common consent, if such it be, is wrong. As I said a dozen years ago,[164] before Professor Groos had so carefully elaborated his theory of play, “the cat or kitten plays with the mouse not from innate cruelty, but for the sake of getting some little practice in the most important business of cat life. Only man, who has the capacity for nobler things, can be cruel for cruelty’s sake;” and this is the direction in which Dr. Groos’s opinion[165] tends to set. Mr. Romanes might have learnt a lesson in caution from his sister, who at first attributed a sense of shame to the capuchin she so carefully studied, but subsequently was led to adopt a simpler interpretation. “He bit me in several places to-day,” she says, in her admirable diary,[166] “but he seemed ashamed of himself afterwards, hiding his face in his arms, and sitting quiet for a time.” She adds, however, in a footnote: “On subsequent observation, I find this quietness was not due to shame at having bit me; for whether he succeeds in biting any person or not, he always sits quiet and dull-looking after a fit of passion, being, I think, fatigued.”
Shame is an ethical feeling. And as we have briefly discussed the germs of æsthetics in animals, so we may now as briefly consider the germs of ethics. In its developed form ethics is one of the “normative sciences” involving standards of right and wrong. It is, as Professor Mackenzie says,[167] “the science of the ideal in conduct.” It involves a standard of “ought,” the product of reflection and generalization. Conduct is compared with the ideal, and perceived to be either below, up to, or perhaps beyond, the normal standard accepted by civilized mankind. This involves a judgment; and so far as conduct is shaped in accordance with the ideal we attribute the guidance to ethical motives. Such ideals, such judgments, and the control of conduct through the play of such motives, are probably beyond the mental capacities of animals. They belong to the ideational stage of mental development, when the conative tendency becomes volitional; not to the perceptual stage, when it is impulsive. They do not enter into the conscious situation as it takes form in the animal mind. Behaviour has not in them acquired ethical meaning, since in developed ethics, as normative, such meaning always has reference to the norm, or standard. A real sense of shame implies that our acts have fallen below our ideal.
It may be said that we cannot prove that animals do not frame such ideals. But, if we accept the canon of interpretation above laid down, what has to be proved is that they do frame them. Is there any case among the hundreds that are popularly adduced to show that dogs are ashamed of themselves, that they possess a sense of justice, that they feel the prick of conscience, that on the one hand they know when they have done wrong, or on the other hand enjoy a sense of conscious rectitude—is there any particular case so described in the popular phraseology of anecdote, which could not be more simply described as the direct outcome of the coalescent situation, without the introduction of any implied reference to a standard of behaviour reached by reflective thought? The pug that has taken a nap on the drawing-room sofa, leaps down and slinks off with a “guilty” look on his master’s approach. One can surely picture the previous situations, and be tolerably certain that they contained an element of reproof or something more energetic. The poodle that has successfully performed his tricks bounds to his mistress with an air of duty well performed. Has he never been petted and patted under such circumstance? Routine in many animals—so often creatures of habit—begets a customary sequence, the breach of which is at once felt. To this I ventured[168] to ascribe the conduct of the turnspit dog reported by Arago. He refused with bared teeth to enter out of his turn the drum by which the spit was rotated. The companion dog was put in for a few moments and then released; whereupon the dog which before had been so refractory seemed satisfied that his turn for drudgery had come, and, entering the wheel of his own accord, began turning the spit as usual. The bared teeth may be here perhaps ascribed to an outraged sense of justice. But is it not a more simple, and just as probable, supposition that the behaviour was due to breach of customary routine. A trainer with whom I had some conversation on this matter pointed out a collie bitch, and said, “If I put her through her tricks in the usual order she does them like an angel; but if I try and make her alter the order she snaps and sulks like the devil.”
I have elsewhere[169] expressed my opinion that, though animals may behave in ways which may tend to mislead us, they do not act with intent to deceive. A dog is described[170] as “showing a deliberate design of deceiving” because he hobbled about the room as if lame and suffering from pain in his foot. But may not this be simply due to the fact that chance experience had led to a situation through which a hobbling gait had acquired the meaning of more petting and attention than usual? To behave with deceit as a deliberate motive implies the idea that the action will be interpreted as having a significance different from that which it really has. It is only possible on the ideational plane of mental development. It implies, too, from the ethical standpoint, a conscious departure from the standard of truth. The black that is acted has conscious reference and relation to the white that is not black. Few, however, will credit animals with deceit of this fully conscious and deliberate kind. Like the fibs of little children, the apparent deceit of animals is probably merely behaviour which has been associated in experience with pleasant results.
The case of shamming sickness, quoted from K. Russ, is thus interpreted by Professor Groos.[171] And yet he adds, “When we see deception used so effectively to serve practical ends, examples of which are very common, it can hardly be doubted that there is in all probability more consciousness of shamming in play than we have any means of demonstrating.” And elsewhere in the same work he observes,[172] “Many a grown animal still takes pleasure in the mock combats that he learned in youth. From a psychological point of view this phenomenon is especially noteworthy, from the fact that the adult animal, though already well acquainted with real fighting, still knows how to keep within the bounds of play, and must therefore be consciously playing a rôle, making believe.” I fail, however, to see the justification for the “therefore.” Surely the difference of behaviour in this example, and in other such examples, is sufficiently explained as the outcome of diverse situations, without having recourse to anything so psychologically complex as the conscious self-illusion of make-believe—interesting and important as this is in the psychology of children. To suppose that a monkey who nurses a bit of blanket has any ideas about its being a make-believe baby is not to interpret the behaviour of animals in accordance with the canon we have adopted for our guidance.
To return to the “ethics” of animals. I have urged that ethical ideas, properly so called, have no place in their psychology. But just as the pleasure and satisfaction attending particular situations, as they severally arise, appear to contain the perceptual germs of what in later development becomes æsthetic appreciation; so, too, do they also contain the perceptual germs of what becomes, through reflection in man, ethical approbation. 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. Professor Mackenzie has indicated the ambiguities in the use of the term “conscience.” “It is,” he says,[173] “sometimes used to express the fundamental principles on which the moral judgment rests; at other times it expresses the principles adopted by a particular individual; at other times it means ‘a particular kind of pleasure or pain felt in perceiving our own conformity or nonconformity to principle.’[174] This last seems to me,” adds Mr. Mackenzie, “the most convenient acceptation of the term, except that I should prefer to say simply that it is a feeling of pain accompanying and resulting from our nonconformity to principle.” According to this definition the existence of a principle or ideal is presupposed; and the fact that Professor Mackenzie lays stress upon the pain of nonconformity, shows that the ideal is a high one. In the case of the animal, however, such an ideal of right conduct has probably not taken form. But Mr. Mackenzie also speaks of the “quasi-conscience” begotten of custom. This comes nearer to the feeling which animals may be supposed to have when their behaviour does not accord with that which through instinct or habit is the usage of the community. And if, as seems to be shown by observation, animals sometimes punish the breaches of such usage—when, for example, cats punish their kittens for uncleanliness—the quasi-conscience will assume a more developed form.
We may say, then, that the perceptual data are given in animal experience from which, in ideational sublimation, ethical ideals may be derived by a process of reflection and generalization. As in the case of æsthetics, so in that of ethics; long ere, in the course of mental evolution, the correlative conceptions implied in the phrase “right or wrong” had taken definite form, perceptual situations must have arisen in which behaviour carried with it the feelings of satisfaction or the reverse which laid the foundations of that approbation of the right which forms the superstructure we build upon them by the exercise of reflective thought.