Animal Behaviour

by C. Lloyd Morgan

And if we speak of the instinct of experimentation we must remember that what we are dealing with is rather an innate tendency or instinctive propensity than a definite and relatively clean-cut piece of instinctive behaviour. It comprises a great number of inherited reflex acts, and may perhaps be fairly called instinctive in detail. But experimentation must be regarded rather as the proximate end of a conative tendency, or group of conative tendencies, whose ultimate biological end is success in dealing with the environment in the sterner struggle for existence during adult life. The tendency is inherited, and therefore falls under the head of instinctive propensity. But “experimentation” is a group-term under which we comprise the general drift of varied modes of behaviour, founded indeed on a congenital basis, but receiving its stamp and character from what is acquired in the course of the experience it provides. It is essentially a process whereby the conscious situations acquire what Dr. Stout terms meaning; and is specially interesting as affording an example of the way in which intelligence moulds and refashions a number of disconnected reflex responses. And if, following Professor Groos, we call it play, it is a little difficult to see how it can be brought in line with his statement[131] that “the play of youth depends on the fact that certain instincts, especially useful in preserving the species, appear before the animal seriously needs them.” Does experimentation occur before it is needed in the economy of animal behaviour? And might we not with equal truth say that the play of youth depends on the fact that certain acquired habits, especially useful in preserving the species, are gained before the animal seriously needs them?

Passing now to those forms of play which afford more special preparation for particular forms of after-effort, under which fall such types as hunting-play and fighting-play, we may refer the reader to the copious examples so carefully collected by Professor Groos. The way in which a kitten pats a cork or a ball, making it roll and then pouncing upon it, is a characteristic example of animal play. Valuable as a preparation for dealing successfully with a mouse when occasion shall arise, this is a specialized form of experimentation; and it is more obviously in line with the hunting-behaviour of later life than is general experimentation with any particular modes of future behaviour. Still it is essentially experimentation, with the instinctive propensity setting in more definite channels. Its value lies in the acquisition of skill under circumstances easier than those presented in the serious chase. So, too, in the case of the playful tussles of puppies or in that of the kitten, which not only shows playful fight to its brothers and sisters, but also to its mother, who responds by holding down the struggling and scratching little creature. Unquestionably, there is an instinctive propensity; much of the detail, and some of the grouping, exhibit inherited reflexes due to special modes of stimulation. No doubt many of these responses occur in a similar but more emphatic way in a serious fight, and yet we may hesitate before committing ourselves to the theory of acceleration. It is at least equally probable that play as preparatory behaviour differs in biological detail (as it almost certainly does in emotional attributes) from the earnest of after-life, and that it was evolved directly as a preparation, as a means of experimentation through which certain essential modes of skill were acquired,—those animals in which the preparatory play propensity was not inherited in due force and requisite amount being worsted in the combats of later life, and eliminated in the struggle for existence. For, in the preparatory tussles and squabbles and playful fights of young animals, experience is gained without serious risk to life and limb.

The modifications of Professor Groos’s biological interpretation of play which we would suggest are so slight that we may be said to accept it almost unreservedly. The play of youth, we may urge, depends on instinctive propensities to experimentation in varied ways, some of more general and others of more special import; and the value of such experimentation lies in the fact that it is a means of acquiring, under circumstances more easy and less dangerous than those of sterner life, experience and skill for future use. In a word, play depends on instinctive propensities of value in education.

Passing now to a brief consideration of the feelings and emotions which we may suppose to accompany play, we may place first those which characterize, from this point of view, general experimentation. We have here rapidly varying situations charged with conative impulse, the satisfaction of which must bring pleasure—the occasional thwarting of which is probably toned with the opposite—the latter serving, through contrast, to enhance the satisfaction of ultimate success. Both pleasure and its antithetical state of feeling are primarily matters of the conscious situation as a whole, and even in ourselves are difficult to distribute in analysis. But assuredly no small share of the total product must be assigned to the successful behaviour which consummates the conative tendency. Indeed, it is the thwarting of free action which is the source of much of the discomfort of the young. Unimpeded and vigorous behaviour also brings with it secondary effects in organic processes—fuller heart-beat, freer circulation, deeper respiration, better digestion, firmer muscular tone, and so forth—which have a marked effect on the conscious situation, and aid in producing that emotional tone which cannot, perhaps, be named in better terms than “good spirits” and the joy of existence, so forcibly suggested during the free play of youth. On the other hand, there is no more piteous sight than that afforded by the young animal, “cabined, cribbed, confined,” suffering from ennui and depression—all its organic processes sluggish and craving to be quickened into the natural vigour of life, not creeping slowly through the veins, but coursing at full flood.

In the psychological aspect of play Dr. Groos assigns perhaps the first place to pleasure in the possession of power, or, as Preyer phrases it, pleasure in being a cause. We must be careful, however, lest in using such expressions we seem to imply that animals—even quite young animals—are capable of entertaining ideas which belong to a much later stage of mental development. Speaking of “joy in ability or power,” Professor Groos says,[132] “This feeling is first a conscious presentation to ourselves of our personality as it is emphasized by play.... But it is more than this; it is also delight in the control we have over our bodies and over external objects. Experimentation in its simple as well as its more complicated forms is, apart from its effect on physical development, educative in that it helps in the formation of causal associations.... The young bear that plays in the water, the dog that tears a paper into scraps, the ape that delights in producing new and uncouth sounds, the sparrow that exercises its voice, the parrot that smashes his feeding trough—all experience the pleasure in energetic activity, which is, at the same time, joy in being able to accomplish something.” But those who agree with Dr. Stout, as I do without hesitation, in denying personality (save in a very embryonic condition) and the conception of causation to animals in the perceptual stage of mental evolution, though they may find in Dr. Groos’s contention a central core of truth, will be unable fully to accept his manner of presenting it. “Any single train of perceptual activity,”[133] says Dr. Stout, “has internal unity and continuity. But where conscious life is mainly perceptual, the several trains of activity are relatively isolated and disconnected with each other. They do not unite to form a continuous system, such as is implied in the conception of a person. We must deny personality to animals.” To this I would merely add that, even where perceptual continuity in animals reaches its maximum, it is not reflectively grasped as a whole, and the ideal construction of the personal ego is not conceived as antithetical to the impersonal world of objects. With what Dr. Stout says about causality I am in complete agreement. “We must notice,”[134] he urges, “the essential difference which separates the merely perceptual category from that of ideational and conceptual thought. The perceptual category is always purely and immediately practical in its operation. It is a constitutive form of thought only because it is a constitutive form of action. The question ‘Why?’ has no existence for the merely perceptual consciousness. It does not and cannot inquire how it is that a certain cause produces a certain effect. It does not and cannot endeavour to explain, to analyze conditions so as to present a cause as a reason. It does not compare different modes of procedure or different groups of circumstances, so as to contradistinguish the precise points in which they agree from those in which they disagree, and in this way to explain why a certain result should follow in one case and a different result in another case. Causality in this sense can only exist for the ideational consciousness, and the development of the ideational consciousness in this direction is a development of conceptual thinking—of generalization.”

Wherein, then, lies the central core of truth in Professor Groos’s contention? In the satisfaction that arises from the success of any conative activity. We see that the animal striving and doing falls within our conception of a cause, in the scientific sense of the word,—a relatively constant and continuous antecedent of diverse sequent effects. We infer that pleasure accompanies the satisfaction of the multifarious conative impulses. The pleasure is the animal’s; the conception of causality and of self as a continuous person, still the same amid diversity of conscious situations, is ours. If we bear this in mind there can be no objection to our attributing to animals joy in ability or power. It is the pleasure derived from that successful conation whereby animals fall into the category of causes within the scheme of our rational thought.

In fighting-play and hunting-play, too, there arise in more specific forms the pleasures of successful conation with the antithetical feelings accompanying thwarted conation. And these are distinguished from earnest, partly because the companion or the inanimate substitute for prey is the centre of a different situation from that afforded by an enemy or the natural object of the chase; partly by the absence of certain insistent emotional states which characterize earnest and the serious business of life. In fighting, this is anger. And we often see the tendency of this to arise in the midst of fighting-plays, and at once say that it becomes serious and passes into fighting in earnest. Indeed, some tinge of earnest, with its fuller emotional tone, forms part of the preparation for future life, and so far falls within the definition Professor Groos gives of play. From which we may see that play is not easily marked off from other forms of conation.

Brief reference to the element of “make-believe,” which Dr. Groos assigns to the higher forms of play, may be reserved for our fourth section; and some further discussion of its psychological aspect to the concluding chapter.

III.—Courtship

We have seen that Professor Groos regards play as the practice and preparation for the serious business of animal life. Founded on instinctive tendencies, it has its biological value in the acquisition of practical acquaintance with the environment, and of skill in dealing with it effectually. It is an education in behaviour of the utmost service in view of the struggle for existence. It is full of the pleasure derived from the satisfaction of innate impulse, the success of conative effort, and the diffused sense of well-being which accompanies a life of action, free and unrestrained. This freedom and gladness lead us to call it play; but we must not draw the inference that the playful animal knows that it is playing, or forms any conception of the antithesis between work and play, which is a product of late development.