Animal Behaviour

by C. Lloyd Morgan

It is impossible to improve upon this pithy description of the salient facts, and terse explanation in terms of the hypothesis of natural selection. It may, perhaps, be urged that, on this hypothesis, the origin of the social state, through a biological association of individuals, probably neither preceded nor followed the development of a psychical bond arising from the sense of satisfaction and comfort afforded by social life, but that both originated pari passu. If the linkage was primarily instinctive, its intelligent continuance could only be effected through the pleasure social behaviour carried with it, and the discomfort of separation from the community. No instinctive acts would be persistently repeated, under the guidance of individual experience, if that experience proved bitter and not sweet. An animal with thwarted instincts is one with unsatisfied impulses; its biological and its psychological tendencies are alike unfulfilled. What Darwin saw and wished to enforce, however, was that the psychical link of conscious satisfaction was a necessary prerequisite of the continuance and further evolution of sociability; and that without the integrating bonds of sympathy any advance of social development was impossible.

In two able and interesting articles in the Nineteenth Century review,[109] on “Mutual Aid among Animals,” Prince Kropotkine gives a useful and sufficiently detailed summary of the chief facts concerning the social relationships which have been observed in the animal kingdom—including, perhaps, some rather apocryphal instances,—and combats Huxley’s statement[110] that, “beyond the limited and temporary relations of the family, the Hobbesian war of each against all is the normal state of existence” among animals and primitive men. “Life in societies,” says Prince Kropotkine, “is no exception in the animal world. It is the rule, the law of nature, and it reaches its fullest development with the higher vertebrates. Those species which live solitary, or in small families only, are relatively few, and their numbers are limited.”[111] “Life in societies enables the feeblest insects, the feeblest birds, and the feeblest mammals to resist, or to protect themselves from, the most terrible birds and beasts of prey; it permits longevity; it enables the species to rear its progeny with the least waste of energy, and to maintain its numbers, albeit with a very slow birth-rate; it enables the gregarious animals to migrate in search of new abodes. Therefore, while fully admitting that force, swiftness, protective colours, cunningness, and endurance to hunger and cold, which are mentioned by Darwin and Wallace, are so many qualities making the individual or the species the fittest under certain circumstances, we maintain that under any circumstances sociability is the greatest advantage in the struggle for life.... The fittest are thus the most sociable animals, and sociability appears as the chief factor in evolution, both directly, by securing the well-being of the species while diminishing the waste of energy, and indirectly by favouring the growth of intelligence.”[112] And summarizing his argument, Prince Kropotkine says,[113] “We have seen how few are the animal species which live an isolated life, and how numberless are those which live in societies, either for mutual defence, or for hunting and storing up food, or for rearing their offspring, or simply for enjoying life in common. We have also seen that, though a good deal of warfare goes on between different species, or even different tribes of the same species, peace and mutual support are the rule within the tribe, or the species; and that those species which best know how to combine, and to avoid competition, have the best chances of survival and of further progressive development. They prosper, while unsociable species decay.”

Prince Kropotkine seems, however, to push his argument too far. The assertion that the fittest are the most sociable animals, that sociability appears as the chief factor in evolution, and that unsociable species decay, is not likely to be accepted without qualification by zoologists. What grounds have we for saying that the solitary wasps are less fit than the social wasps? Each has a fitness according to its kind. Can it be maintained that the unsocial tiger is less fit than the social jackal? And can it be said that tigers, which are reported absolutely to swarm in Java and Sumatra, exemplify the decay of an unsociable species? Is it seriously contended that the hawk, which may be successfully mobbed by a number of wagtails, is less fit than his more social assailants? And are the unsocial raptorial birds decaying species? Such questions might be asked by the score. And the answer in every case is that the social and unsocial alike are fitted to their several states of life. In fact, it might be contended, with every whit as much if not more cogency, that sociability is nature’s device for enabling the weaker, and hence in themselves the less fit, to resist the attacks and encroachments of the stronger and individually fitter. Discussing the possibilities of human ancestry, Darwin said:[114] “In regard to bodily size or strength, we do not know whether man is descended from some comparatively small species like the chimpanzee, or from one as powerful as the gorilla. We should, however, bear in mind that an animal possessing great size, strength, and ferocity, which, like the gorilla, could defend itself from all enemies, would not perhaps have become social; and this would most effectually have checked the acquirement of the higher mental qualities, such as sympathy and the love of his fellows. Hence it might have been an immense advantage to man to have sprung from some comparatively weak creature.”

Zoologists, again, will hardly accept without question Prince Kropotkine’s assertion that “life in societies is no exception in the animal world, but is the rule, the law of nature.” Many will contend, on the other hand, that life in societies with anything like division of labour, or with mutual aid (and this seldom carried far), is, taking the animal kingdom as a whole, of comparatively rare occurrence, though none the less noteworthy where it exists. And, in any case, it seems somewhat extravagant to say that sociability is the chief factor in evolution. No doubt it might be plausibly urged that human society is, from man’s point of view, the highest product of evolution; that in attaining to this end sociability has been the leading factor; and that obviously the leading factor in the evolution of the highest product may properly be called the chief factor in evolution. But Prince Kropotkine apparently means that sociability is the chief factor, not only in this evolution, but in all organic, or, at least, all animal evolution. In this he will receive the support of but few zoologists. By some extravagance of statement he has weakened his own case, which is otherwise not lacking in points of weakness. The legitimate inferences from animal behaviour are, that co-operation is in some cases a factor in the evolution of a successful species, that in human progress it has been an important factor giving strength to a creature weak in tooth and claw, and that this factor has co-existed, and still coexists, with that of competition, in the absence of which the race would be dragged down to lower levels of efficiency by the incubus of weaklings.

To Professor Alfred Espinas[115] we owe the best and fullest discussion of the social life of animals, and to his work the reader may be referred for a careful and, for the most part, unstrained and unbiassed consideration of the phenomena. In common with others who have devoted serious attention to the subject, he sees in the family the starting-point of the higher and more comprehensive social group, or “peuplade.” Prince Kropotkine seems, indeed, to combat this view; but the divergence of opinion is more apparent than real. He tells us[116] that anthropology “has established beyond any doubt that mankind did not begin its life in the shape of small isolated families. Far from being a primitive form of organization, the family is a very late product of human evolution.... Societies, bands, or tribes—not families—were thus the primitive form of organization of mankind and its earliest ancestors.” And in support of his views he adduces the sexual communism which is said to be found in the lowest savages, and briefly traces the development of monogamy and the genesis of the family ideal as we conceive it. It may at once be admitted that in all probability mankind did not have its origin in small isolated families. If we do not admit this we must accept the alternative hypothesis, that man was developed from an unsocial ancestor. For though the biological family is the starting-point of the community, it does not of course follow that wherever there is so much coherence between parents and offspring as to form a temporary family group, a social community must in due course arise. In such unsocial carnivora as the tiger, the temporary linkage of family life is strong while it lasts. But though mankind presumably originated in a prehuman race that had already reached some degree of social coherence, there remains behind the question—what was the origin of this social group? And to this question, Prince Kropotkine, in common with Darwin and Espinas, would probably answer without hesitation, that the primeval germ of the social community lay in the prolonged coherence of the group of parents and offspring. In the unsocial animals the family separates and disintegrates before the offspring mate. But if the family continue to cohere, the mating of offspring will give rise to the continuity of coherence found in the herd, or troop, or tribe. For new family groups will be constantly arising before the old family groups have ceased to be associated. Thus would be afforded more opportunity for tradition than among the unsocial animals.

How, then, can it be said that, “far from being a primitive form of organization, the family is a very late product of human evolution”? By using the word “family” in a sense somewhat different—nay, widely different—from that in which it is employed in a biological discussion. In the latter usage sexual communism is not excluded; A., B., and C., D. may have offspring this season; A., D., and C., B. next season. In each season there are family groups with interchange of partners. This does not, however, conform with our conception of the family as realized under civilization. Herein, in fact, lies the essential difference between the human and the animal family. The one is a realized ideal; the other is merely a natural occurrence. Even in the case of monogamous animals, mating for life is probably not conduct in conformity with an ideal, but is due to the fact that instinctive tendencies have taken this line of direction. On the other hand, in monogamous communities of mankind, there is, unfortunately, evidence that in some cases the ideal is not strong enough to prevent presumably ancestral tendencies in the direction of communism.

The basis of human social conduct is unquestionably to be traced in the social behaviour of animals, in inherited tendencies to co-operation and mutual help, in the bonds of sympathy arising through the satisfaction of impulses towards such behaviour, and perhaps, to some extent, in the influence of tradition. It is not, however, until this tradition is rendered, through descriptive communication, more continuous and more effective; it is not until an ideal of mutual aid, and social conduct generally, takes form and is rendered common to the tribe; it is not until the more or less realized conceptions of one generation are handed on to become the environment under which the succeeding generations are nurtured; it is not indeed until man consciously and reflectively aims at the bettering of his environment in accordance with standards rationally conceived and deliberately carried into execution; that a new régime of civilized progress, elsewhere unknown in nature, takes definite form. Under this régime, the elimination of failures through natural selection, though it may not be entirely superseded, plays a subordinate part; alongside the organic continuity which is due to physical heredity, there runs a continuity of tradition through social inheritance.

Human civilization is an embodiment of reason, a product of reflection, a realization of ideals conceived by the leaders of mankind. All this forms the environment of each one of us. And it is this environment which is undergoing progressive evolution and playing on the rational faculties of those which are submitted to its moulding influence. There is no sufficient evidence of anything of the kind in the social communities of animals. This, of course, must be accepted merely as an expression of opinion. But on the hypothesis that animals are rational beings, capable of reflection, it is difficult to understand why they should remain at so low a level of social achievement. The absence of powers of descriptive intercommunication is often assigned as the cause of their comparatively unprogressive condition; but it may be regarded as the sign, rather than the cause, of their lack of reason in the more restricted sense of the term. We cannot, however, enter into the much-disputed question whether reason is the product of language, or language the outcome of reason. Perhaps the safest position is to assume that rationality and true speech are in large measure different aspects of one evolutionary movement—speech arising out of such preceding modes of communication as were considered in the second section of this chapter; reason developing out of intelligence which supplies its necessary data. It is sometimes said that, notwithstanding their powers of speech, savages in their social relations show little advance on animal communities. But surely such statements must be made in forgetfulness of the fact that savage customs almost invariably indicate the presence and sway of ideals which puzzle us from their quaintness, and from the fact that they seem contrary to the dictates of intelligence and due to motives and conceptions the nature and force of which we find it difficult to estimate. The passage from intelligent social behaviour to the rationality which has assumed such strange aspects among existing savages took place somewhere at some time in the past; and the stages of its evolution are hidden from our view. All we can say is, that it is possible to trace in animal behaviour some of the instinctive tendencies and intelligent modes of accommodation to social circumstances, together with the germs of imitation, intercommunication, and tradition, and the establishment of bonds of sympathy, without which the subsequent stages of evolution would be inconceivable.