Second Half. The Doctrine of the Abstract Idea, or Thinking.
Chapter V.[16] On The Irrational Intellect.
It must be possible to arrive at a complete knowledge of the consciousness of the brutes, for we can construct it by abstracting certain properties of our own consciousness. On the other hand, there enters into the consciousness of the brute instinct, which is much more developed in all of them than in man, and in some of them extends to what we call mechanical instinct.
The brutes have understanding without having reason, and therefore they have knowledge of perception but no abstract knowledge. They apprehend correctly, and also grasp the immediate causal connection, in the case of the higher species even through several links of its chain, but they do not, properly speaking, think. For they lack conceptions, that is, abstract ideas. The first consequence of this, however, is the want of a proper memory, which applies even to the most sagacious of the brutes, and it is just this which constitutes the principal difference between their consciousness and that of men. Perfect intelligence depends upon the distinct consciousness of the [pg 229] past and of the eventual future, as such, and in connection with the present. The special memory which this demands is therefore an orderly, connected, and thinking retrospective recollection. This, however, is only possible by means of general conceptions, the assistance of which is required by what is entirely individual, in order that it may be recalled in its order and connection. For the boundless multitude of things and events of the same and similar kinds, in the course of our life, does not admit directly of a perceptible and individual recollection of each particular, for which neither the powers of the most comprehensive memory nor our time would be sufficient. Therefore all this can only be preserved by subsuming it under general conceptions, and the consequent reference to relatively few principles, by means of which we then have always at command an orderly and adequate survey of our past. We can only present to ourselves in perception particular scenes of the past, but the time that has passed since then and its content we are conscious of only in the abstract by means of conceptions of things and numbers which now represent days and years, together with their content. The memory of the brutes, on the contrary, like their whole intellect, is confined to what they perceive, and primarily consists merely in the fact that a recurring impression presents itself as having already been experienced, for the present perception revivifies the traces of an earlier one. Their memory is therefore always dependent upon what is now actually present. Just on this account, however, this excites anew the sensation and the mood which the earlier phenomenon produced. Thus the dog recognises acquaintances, distinguishes friends from enemies, easily finds again the path it has once travelled, the houses it has once visited, and at the sight of a plate or a stick is at once put into the mood associated with them. All kinds of training depend upon the use of this perceptive memory and on the force of habit, which in the case of animals is specially strong. It is therefore just as different [pg 230] from human education as perception is from thinking. We ourselves are in certain cases, in which memory proper refuses us its service, confined to that merely perceptive recollection, and thus we can measure the difference between the two from our own experience. For example, at the sight of a person whom it appears to us we know, although we are not able to remember when or where we saw him; or again, when we visit a place where we once were in early childhood, that is, while our reason was yet undeveloped, and which we have therefore entirely forgotten, and yet feel that the present impression is one which we have already experienced. This is the nature of all the recollections of the brutes. We have only to add that in the case of the most sagacious this merely perceptive memory rises to a certain degree of phantasy, which again assists it, and by virtue of which, for example, the image of its absent master floats before the mind of the dog and excites a longing after him, so that when he remains away long it seeks for him everywhere. Its dreams also depend upon this phantasy. The consciousness of the brutes is accordingly a mere succession of presents, none of which, however, exist as future before they appear, nor as past after they have vanished; which is the specific difference of human consciousness. Hence the brutes have infinitely less to suffer than we have, because they know no other pains but those which the present directly brings. But the present is without extension, while the future and the past, which contain most of the causes of our suffering, are widely extended, and to their actual content there is added that which is merely possible, which opens up an unlimited field for desire and aversion. The brutes, on the contrary, undisturbed by these, enjoy quietly and peacefully each present moment, even if it is only bearable. Human beings of very limited capacity perhaps approach them in this. Further, the sufferings which belong purely to the present can only be physical. Indeed the brutes do not properly [pg 231] speaking feel death: they can only know it when it appears, and then they are already no more. Thus then the life of the brute is a continuous present. It lives on without reflection, and exists wholly in the present; even the great majority of men live with very little reflection. Another consequence of the special nature of the intellect of the brutes, which we have explained is the perfect accordance of their consciousness with their environment. Between the brute and the external world there is nothing, but between us and the external world there is always our thought about it, which makes us often inapproachable to it, and it to us. Only in the case of children and very primitive men is this wall of partition so thin that in order to see what goes on in them we only need to see what goes on round about them. Therefore the brutes are incapable alike of purpose and dissimulation; they reserve nothing. In this respect the dog stands to the man in the same relation as a glass goblet to a metal one, and this helps greatly to endear the dog so much to us, for it affords us great pleasure to see all those inclinations and emotions which we so often conceal displayed simply and openly in him. In general, the brutes always play, as it were, with their hand exposed; and therefore we contemplate with so much pleasure their behaviour towards each other, both when they belong to the same and to different species. It is characterised by a certain stamp of innocence, in contrast to the conduct of men, which is withdrawn from the innocence of nature by the entrance of reason, and with it of prudence or deliberation. Hence human conduct has throughout the stamp of intention or deliberate purpose, the absence of which, and the consequent determination by the impulse of the moment, is the fundamental characteristic of all the action of the brutes. No brute is capable of a purpose properly so-called. To conceive and follow out a purpose is the prerogative of man, and it is a prerogative which is rich in consequences. Certainly an instinct like that of the bird of passage or the [pg 232] bee, still more a permanent, persistent desire, a longing like that of the dog for its absent master, may present the appearance of a purpose, with which, however, it must not be confounded. Now all this has its ultimate ground in the relation between the human and the brute intellect, which may also be thus expressed: The brutes have only direct knowledge, while we, in addition to this, have indirect knowledge; and the advantage which in many things—for example, in trigonometry and analysis, in machine work instead of hand work, &c.—indirect has over direct knowledge appears here also. Thus again we may say: The brutes have only a single intellect, we a double intellect, both perceptive and thinking, and the operation of the two often go on independently of each other. We perceive one thing, and we think another. Often, again, they act upon each other. This way of putting the matter enables us specially to understand that natural openness and naivete of the brutes, referred to above, as contrasted with the concealment of man.
However, the law natura non facit saltus is not entirely suspended even with regard to the intellect of the brutes, though certainly the step from the brute to the human intelligence is the greatest which nature has made in the production of her creatures. In the most favoured individuals of the highest species of the brutes there certainly sometimes appears, always to our astonishment, a faint trace of reflection, reason, the comprehension of words, of thought, purpose, and deliberation. The most striking indications of this kind are afforded by the elephant, whose highly developed intelligence is heightened and supported by an experience of a lifetime which sometimes extends to two hundred years. He has often given unmistakable signs, recorded in well-known anecdotes, of premeditation, which, in the case of brutes, always astonishes us more than anything else. Such, for instance, is the story of the tailor on whom an elephant revenged himself for pricking him with a needle. I wish, however, to rescue from [pg 233] oblivion a parallel case to this, because it has the advantage of being authenticated by judicial investigation. On the 27th of August 1830 there was held at Morpeth, in England, a coroner's inquest on the keeper, Baptist Bernhard, who was killed by his elephant. It appeared from the evidence that two years before he had offended the elephant grossly, and now, without any occasion, but on a favourable opportunity, the elephant had seized him and crushed him. (See the Spectator and other English papers of that day.) For special information on the intelligence of brutes I recommend Leroy's excellent book, “Sur l'Intelligence des Animaux,” nouv. éd. 1802.
Chapter VI. On The Doctrine of Abstract or Rational Knowledge.
The outward impression upon the senses, together with the mood which it alone awakens in us, vanishes with the presence of the thing. Therefore these two cannot of themselves constitute experience proper, whose teaching is to guide our conduct for the future. The image of that impression which the imagination preserves is originally weaker than the impression itself, and becomes weaker and weaker daily, until in time it disappears altogether. There is only one thing which is not subject either to the instantaneous vanishing of the impression or to the gradual disappearance of its image, and is therefore free from the power of time. This is the conception. In it, then, the teaching of experience must be stored up, and it alone is suited to be a safe guide to our steps in life. Therefore Seneca says rightly, “Si vis tibi omnia subjicere, te subjice rationi” (Ep. 37). And I add to this that the essential condition of surpassing others in actual life is that we should reflect or deliberate. Such an important tool of the intellect as the concept evidently cannot be identical with the word, this mere sound, which as an impression of sense passes with the moment, or as a phantasm of hearing dies away with time. Yet the concept is an idea, the distinct consciousness and preservation of which are bound up with the word. Hence the Greeks called word, concept, relation, thought, and reason by the name of the first, ὁ λογος. Yet the concept is perfectly different both from the word, [pg 235] to which it is joined, and from the perceptions, from which it has originated. It is of an entirely different nature from these impressions of the senses. Yet it is able to take up into itself all the results of perception, and give them back again unchanged and undiminished after the longest period of time; thus alone does experience arise. But the concept preserves, not what is perceived nor what is then felt, but only what is essential in these, in an entirely altered form, and yet as an adequate representative of them. Just as flowers cannot be preserved, but their ethereal oil, their essence, with the same smell and the same virtues, can be. The action that has been guided by correct conceptions will, in the result, coincide with the real object aimed at. We may judge of the inestimable value of conceptions, and consequently of the reason, if we glance for a moment at the infinite multitude and variety of the things and conditions that coexist and succeed each other, and then consider that speech and writing (the signs of conceptions) are capable of affording us accurate information as to everything and every relation when and wherever it may have been; for comparatively few conceptions can contain and represent an infinite number of things and conditions. In our own reflection abstraction is a throwing off of useless baggage for the sake of more easily handling the knowledge which is to be compared, and has therefore to be turned about in all directions. We allow much that is unessential, and therefore only confusing, to fall away from the real things, and work with few but essential determinations thought in the abstract. But just because general conceptions are only formed by thinking away and leaving out existing qualities, and are therefore the emptier the more general they are, the use of this procedure is confined to the working up of knowledge which we have already acquired. This working up includes the drawing of conclusions from premisses contained in our knowledge. New insight, on the contrary, can only be obtained by the help [pg 236] of the faculty of judgment, from perception, which alone is complete and rich knowledge. Further, because the content and the extent of the concepts stand in inverse relation to each other, and thus the more is thought under a concept, the less is thought in it, concepts form a graduated series, a hierarchy, from the most special to the most general, at the lower end of which scholastic realism is almost right, and at the upper end nominalism. For the most special conception is almost the individual, thus almost real; and the most general conception, e.g., being (i.e., the infinitive of the copula), is scarcely anything but a word. Therefore philosophical systems which confine themselves to such very general conceptions, without going down to the real, are little more than mere juggling with words. For since all abstraction consists in thinking away, the further we push it the less we have left over. Therefore, if I read those modern philosophemes which move constantly in the widest abstractions, I am soon quite unable, in spite of all attention, to think almost anything more in connection with them; for I receive no material for thought, but am supposed to work with mere empty shells, which gives me a feeling like that which we experience when we try to throw very light bodies; the strength and also the exertion are there, but there is no object to receive them, so as to supply the other moment of motion. If any one wants to experience this let him read the writings of the disciples of Schelling, or still better of the Hegelians. Simple conceptions would necessarily be such as could not be broken up. Accordingly they could never be the subject of an analytical judgment. This I hold to be impossible, for if we think a conception we must also be able to give its content. What are commonly adduced as examples of simple conceptions are really not conceptions at all, but partly mere sensations—as, for instance, those of some special colour; partly the forms of perception which are known to us a priori, thus properly the ultimate elements of perceptive knowledge. But [pg 237] this itself is for the whole system of our thought what granite is for geology, the ultimate firm basis which supports all, and beyond which we cannot go. The distinctness of a conception demands not only that we should be able to separate its predicates, but also that we should be able to analyse these even if they are abstractions, and so on until we reach knowledge of perception, and thus refer to concrete things through the distinct perception of which the final abstractions are verified and reality guaranteed to them, as well as to all the higher abstractions which rest upon them. Therefore the ordinary explanation that the conception is distinct as soon as we can give its predicates is not sufficient. For the separating of these predicates may lead perhaps to more conceptions; and so on again without there being that ultimate basis of perceptions which imparts reality to all those conceptions. Take, for example, the conception “spirit,” and analyse it into its predicates: “A thinking, willing, immaterial, simple, indestructible being that does not occupy space.” Nothing is yet distinctly thought about it, because the elements of these conceptions cannot be verified by means of perceptions, for a thinking being without a brain is like a digesting being without a stomach. Only perceptions are, properly speaking, clear, not conceptions; these at the most can only be distinct. Hence also, absurd as it was, “clear and confused” were coupled together and used as synonymous when knowledge of perception was explained as merely a confused abstract knowledge, because the latter kind of knowledge alone was distinct. This was first done by Duns Scotus, but Leibnitz has substantially the same view, upon which his “Identitas Indiscernibilium” depends. (See Kant's refutation of this, p. 275 of the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason.)