The antelopes, which are also driven out by winter, do not always follow the same paths, but usually travel in the same direction. None is more numerous or more frequently seen than the springbok, one of the most graceful and beautiful gazelles with which we are acquainted. Its unusual beauty and agility strike everyone who sees it in its wild state, now walking with elastic step, now standing still to feed, now springing about in playful leaps, and thus disclosing its greatest ornament, a mane-like snow-white tuft of hair, which at a quieter pace is hidden in a longitudinal groove of the back. None of the other antelopes, when forced to migrate, assemble in such numerous herds as this one. Even the most vivid description cannot convey to one who has not seen a herd of springboks on their journey any adequate idea of the wonderful spectacle. After having congregated for weeks, perhaps waiting for the first shower of rain, the springboks at last resolve to migrate. Hundreds of the species join other hundreds, thousands other thousands, and the more threatening the scarcity, the more torturing the thirst, the longer the distances which they cover; the flocks become herds, the herds armies, and these resemble the swarms of locusts which darken the sun. In the plains they cover square miles; in the passes between the mountains they throng together in a compact mass which no other creature can resist; over the low grounds they pour, like a stream which has overflowed its banks and carries all before it. Bewildering, intoxicating, and stupefying even the calmest of men, the throng surges past for hours, perhaps days together.[61] Like the greedy locusts, the famishing animals fall upon grass and leaves, grain, and other fruits of the field; where they have passed, not a blade is left. The man who comes in contact with them is at once thrown to the ground, and so sorely wounded by the tread of their hoofs, light indeed, but a thousand times repeated, that he may be glad if he escapes with his life; a herd of sheep feeding in the way is surrounded and carried off, never to be seen again; a lion, who thought to gain an easy prey, finds himself forced to relinquish his victim, and to travel with the stream. Unceasingly those behind press forward, and those in front yield slowly to the pressure; those cooped up in the middle strive continually to reach the wings, and their efforts are strenuously resisted. Above the clouds of dust raised by the rushing army the vultures circle; flanks and rear are attended by a funeral procession of various beasts of prey; in the passes lurk sportsmen, who send shot after shot into the throng. So the tortured animals travel for many miles, till at length spring sets in and their armies are broken up.
Shall I go on to consider other compulsory migrations, such as those of the arctic foxes and polar bears when an ice-floe on which they were hunting is loosened and floated off by the waves till, under favourable circumstances, it touches some island? I think not, for journeys such as these are not migrations, they are simply passive driftings.
LOVE AND COURTSHIP AMONG BIRDS.
An irresistible instinct, an all-compelling law of nature, moves every living creature to seek a mate of its own species but of opposite sex, to unite a second existence with its own, to awaken responsive emotions through complete self-surrender, and thus to form the closest bond which links being to being, life to life. No power is strong enough to set aside this law, no command authoritative enough to influence it. Yielding to no hindrance this instinct overcomes every obstacle, and presses victorious to its goal.
The almighty power through which this law works we call Love, when we speak of its influence on man; we describe it as Instinct when we discuss its operation on the lower animals. But this is a mere play upon words, nothing more; unless by the former word we intend to imply that every natural instinct in man should by man himself be ennobled and moralized. If it be not so, it will be difficult to distinguish between the two. Man and beast are subject to the same law, but the beast yields it a more absolute obedience. The animal does not weigh or reflect, but gives itself up without resistance to the sway of love, which man often fondly imagines he can withstand or escape.
Of course, he who ventures at the outset to dispute man’s belonging to the animal world at all, sees in an animal nothing more than a machine which is moved and guided, stimulated to action, incited to sue for the favour of the opposite sex, impelled to songs of rejoicing, provoked to combat with rivals, by forces outside of itself; and, naturally enough, he denies to such a machine all freedom and discretion, all conflict between opposing motives, all emotional and intellectual life. Without raising himself by thus claiming a monopoly of intelligent action, or at least of intellectual freedom, he degrades the lower animals to false creations of his own hollow vanity, suggesting that they lead a seeming rather than a real life, and that they are without any of the joys of existence.[62]
An exactly contrary position would be undoubtedly more just, as it certainly is more accurate. Indeed, it is scarcely too much to say that he who refuses to credit the lower animals with intelligence raises anxiety on the score of his own, and that he who denies them all emotional life has himself no experience of what emotional life is. Whoever observes without prejudice is sooner or later forced to admit that the mental activity of all animal beings, diverse as its expression may be, is based upon the same laws, and that every animal, within its own allotted life-circle and under the same circumstances, thinks, feels, and acts like any other, and is not, in contrast to man, impelled to quite definite actions by so-called higher laws. The causes of the actions of animals may perhaps be termed laws, but, if so, we must not forget that man is subject to the same. His intellect may enable him to make some of these laws of nature subservient to his purposes, to modify others, sometimes even to evade them, but never to break or annul them.
Let me attempt to prove the correctness of these opinions by giving examples to show how essentially the expressions of life in man and in the lower animals may resemble each other, how both are alike all-powerfully influenced by the most important of the laws of nature, that which has for its aim, or its consequence, the continuance of the species. Man and bird: how wide the gulf which separates them and their lives! how vast the differences between their habits and behaviour! Is there a power which can bridge over this gulf? Are conditions conceivable which can incite them to essentially similar expressions of life? We shall see.
The birds are more unreservedly dependent on the rotation of the seasons than man is. “They sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns”, and they must perforce adapt themselves to the seasons if they are to find sufficient food, if they are to live at all. Therefore they blossom in spring, bring forth their fruits in summer, conceal these and themselves in autumn, and rest in winter like the motherly earth. The chapters of their life-history are closely bound up with the seasonal progress of the year.
In this respect they are indeed governed by an iron law which, within a certain limit, renders anything like freedom and caprice impossible. But whither should spontaneity tend save to want and misery, to the imperilling of their own lives and those of their young? So they bow submissively to nature’s law, and enjoy, in consequence, a freedom which we men might envy them, and should envy them, were we not more capable of withdrawing ourselves from the influence of the seasons than they. But do not we also blossom in spring, and rest in winter? And must not we, too, bow before iron necessity?