Animal Life and Intelligence

by C. Lloyd Morgan

Weary and sick to death of concepts and relationships and reason, at length he escapes to the garden. Picking up a light stick, he sweeps off the heads of some peculiarly aggravating poppies, and determines to think no more of means and ends, continuing to use the stick meanwhile as a most appropriate means to the end of decapitating the poppies. By all which I mean to imply that there is a great difference between selecting and using a tool for an appropriate purpose, and possessing a conscious knowledge of the relation between the means employed and the ends attained. I do not think that any conception of means, or end, or relationship is possible to the brute. But I believe that the elephant can perceive that this stick will serve to remove that leech. And if this is what Mr. Romanes means by its possessing a conscious knowledge of the relation between the means employed and the ends attained, then I am, so far, at one with him in the interpretation of the facts, though I disagree with his mode of expressing them.

I do not propose to consider particular instances of intelligent inferences as displayed by the invertebrates. Bees in the manipulation of their comb, ants in the economy of their nest, spiders in the construction of their web and the use they make of their silken ropes, show powers of intelligent adaptation which cannot fail to excite our wonder and admiration. But apart from the fact that insect psychology is more largely conjectural than that of the more intelligent mammals, a consideration of these actions would only lead me to reiterate the opinion above frequently expressed. In a word, I regard the bees in their cells, the ants in their nests, the spiders in their webs, as workers of keen perceptions and a high order of practical intelligence. But I do not, as at present advised, believe that they reason upon the phenomena they deal with so cleverly. Intelligent they are; but not rational.

Once more, let me repeat that the sense in which I use the words "rational" and "reason" must be clearly understood and steadily borne in mind. Mr. Romanes uses them in a different sense. "Reason," he says,[HE] "is the faculty which is concerned in the intentional adaptation of means to ends. It therefore implies the conscious knowledge of the relation between means employed and ends attained, and may be exercised in adaptation to circumstances novel alike to the experience of the individual and to that of the species. In other words, it implies the power of perceiving analogies or ratios, and is in this sense equivalent to the term 'ratiocination,' or the faculty of deducing inferences from a perceived equivalency of relations. This latter is the only sense of the word that is strictly legitimate."

It is not my intention to criticize this use of the term "reason." Whether animals are capable of a conscious knowledge of the relation between means employed and ends attained, depends, as we have already seen, upon how much is implied by the word "knowledge"—whether the knowledge is perceptual or conceptual. My only care is to indicate what seem to me the advantages of the usage (legitimate or illegitimate) I adopt.

I repeat, then, that the introduction of the process of analysis appears to me to constitute a new departure in psychological evolution; that the process differs generically from the process of perceptual construction on which it is grafted. And I hold that, this being so, we should mark the departure in every way that we can. I mark it by a restriction of the word "intelligence" to the inferences formed in the field of perception; and the use of the word "reason" when conceptual analysis supervenes. Whether I am justified in so doing, whether my usage is legitimate or not, I must leave others to decide. But, adopting this usage, I see no grounds for believing that the conduct of animals, wonderfully intelligent as it is, is, in any instances known to me, rational.

I say that the introduction of the process of analysis appears to me to constitute a new departure. This, however, must not be construed to involve any breach of continuity.

I do not believe that there is or has been any such breach of continuity. Take a somewhat analogous case. I regard the introduction of aerial respiration in animal life as a new departure. Organisms which had hitherto been water-breathers became air-breathers. But I do not imagine that there was any breach of continuity in respiration. The tadpole begins life as a water-breather only; the frog into which he develops is an air-breather; but there is no breach of continuity between the one state and the other. So, too, the little child dwells in the perceptual sphere; the man into whom he develops is capable of conceptual thought; but there is no breach of continuity in the mental life of the child. It is true that, with all our talk on the subject, we cannot say exactly when in this continuous mental life the new departure is made. But this is no proof whatever that there is no new departure. In a sigmoidal curve there is a new departure where the convex passes into the concave. We may find it difficult to mark the exact point of change. But that does not invalidate the fact that the change does actually take place.

If I be asked how, in the course of mental evolution, the new departure was rendered possible, I reply—Through language. The first step was, I imagine, the naming of predominants. If Noiré and Professor Max Müller be correct in their views, language took its origin in the association of an uttered sound with certain human activities. The action thus named was, so to speak, floated off by its sign. By diacritical marks attached to the word, the agent, the action, and the object of the action were distinguished, and thus came to be differentiated the one from the other. Inseparable in fact, they came henceforth to be separable in thought. Here was analysis in the germ. The action or activity was isolated, and henceforth stood forth as an element in abstract thought. All the busy world around was interpreted in terms of activities. The host of heaven and all the powers of earth were named according to their predominant activities. The moon became the measurer, the sun the shining one, the wind the one who bloweth, the fire the purifier, and so forth. Our verbs and nouns, then, being named predominants (agents, actions, or objects), adjectives and adverbs were subsequently introduced to qualify these by naming a quality less predominant, or to indicate the how, the when, and the where.

When once the different activities and different qualities came to be named or symbolized, they were, as I say, floated off from the agents or objects, and through isolation entered the conceptual sphere. The named predominant became an isolate. Body and mind became separable in thought; the self was differentiated from the not-self; the mind was turned inwards upon itself through the isolation of its varying phases; and the consciousness of the brute became the self-consciousness of man.

Language, and the analytical faculty it renders possible, differentiates man from the brute. "If a brute," says Mr. Mivart,[HF] "could think 'is,' brute and man would be brothers. 'Is' as the copula of a judgment implies the mental separation and recombination of two terms that only exist united in nature, and can, therefore, never have impressed the sense except as one thing. And 'is,' considered as a substantive verb, as in the example, 'This man is,' contains in itself the application of the copula of judgment to the most elementary of all abstractions—'thing' or 'something.' Yet if a being has the power of thinking 'thing' or 'something,' it has the power of transcending space and time by dividing or decomposing the phenomenally one. Here is the point where instinct [intelligence] ends and reason begins." I regard this as one of the truest and most pregnant sentences that Mr. Mivart has written.