Animals are often described as harbouring feelings of revenge and vindictiveness. To test this in the elephant, Captain Shipp gave an elephant a sandwich of cayenne pepper. "He then waited," says Mr. Romanes,[HY] "for six weeks before again visiting the animal, when he went into the stable, and began to fondle the elephant as he had previously been accustomed to do. For a time no resentment was shown, so that the captain began to think that the experiment had failed; but at last, watching an opportunity, the elephant filled his trunk with dirty water, and drenched the captain from head to foot." Here the facts are that an injury was received, and that the retaliation followed after an interval of six weeks. The inference seems to be that the elephant harboured feelings of revenge or vindictiveness during this period. It may have been so. It may be, however, that the elephant never once pictured the captain during the six weeks; but, on seeing him again, remembered the injury, and, as we say, paid him out. But what we understand by revenge and vindictiveness is the keeping of an injury before the mind for the express purpose of ultimately avenging it. And this the elephant, to say the least of it, may not have done.
In Miss Romanes's interesting observations on the Cebus monkey, she says,[HZ] "He bit me in several places to-day when I was taking him away from my mother's bed after his morning's game there. I took no notice; but he seemed ashamed of himself afterwards, hiding his face in his arms, and sitting quiet for a time." But, in a footnote, we read, "On subsequent observation, I find this quietness was not due to shame at having bitten me; for whether he succeeds in biting any person or not, he always sits quiet and dull-looking after a fit of passion, being, I think, fatigued." I quote this to illustrate the difference which I am endeavouring to insist upon between observed fact and observer's inference.
Mr. Romanes comments[IA] on the remarkable change which has been produced in the domestic dog as compared with wild dogs, with reference to the enduring of pain. "A wolf or a fox will sustain the severest kinds of physical suffering without giving utterance to a sound, while a dog will scream when any one accidentally treads upon its toes. This contrast," says Mr. Romanes, "is strikingly analogous to that which obtains between savage and civilized man: the North American Indian, and even the Hindoo, will endure without a moan an amount of physical pain—or, at least, bodily injury—which would produce vehement expressions of suffering from a European. And, doubtless, the explanation is in both cases the same; namely, that refinement of life engenders refinement of nervous organization, which renders nervous lesions more intolerable." I cannot accept this as the most probable explanation. In the first place, the human beings referred to have different ideals in the matter of conduct under pain and suffering. The American Indian and the Hindoo have a stoic ideal, which does not influence the average European. On the other hand, the dog, from his association with man, has learnt more and more to give expression to his feelings in barks, whines, and yelpings. To howl at every little pain would do a wolf no good, but rather advertise him to his enemies; to howl when his toes are trodden on makes most men look where they are stepping, and probably pet the sufferer for his pains. In the one case, to howl is disadvantageous; in the other, it is advantageous. I do not, however, put forward my own explanation as necessarily more correct than that given by Mr. Romanes (though I regard it myself as more probable). My object is to show that it is possible for two observers to regard the same activities of animals, and read into them different psychological accompaniments. Throughout the sections of Mr. Romanes's work which deal with the emotions, I feel myself forced at almost every turn to question the validity of his inferences.
From all that I have said in the last chapter, it will be gathered that I am not prepared to credit our dumb companions with a single sentiment. A sense of beauty, a sense of the ludicrous, a sense of justice, and a sense of right and wrong,—these abstract emotions or sentiments, as such, are certainly impossible to the brute, if, as I have contended, he is incapable of isolation and analysis. But, as we have already seen, even with us these emotions have to be particularized and brought within the perceptual sphere ere they are strongly operative on conduct. We are not roused to indignation by an abstract sense of injustice, but by the particular performance of an unjust deed. Even so, however, the emotional state aroused carries with it in us some of the spirit of the conceptual sphere from which it has descended. The analogous emotions in animals cannot possess, if I am right, any tincture of this conceptual spirit. And since we cannot divest ourselves of our conceptual spirituality, we cannot justly estimate what these emotional states, in dog or ape, are like. Remembering this, let us see what can be said in favour of a perceptual sense of injustice, guilt, the ludicrous, and the beautiful. In evidence of a sense of justice, we have the oft-quoted case of the turnspit-dog reported by Arago the astronomer.[IB] This dog refused, with bared teeth, to enter out of his turn the drum by the revolution of which the spit was rotated. M. Arago, for whom the pullet on the spit was being dressed, requested that the dog's companion, after turning the spit for a short time, should be released. Whereupon the dog who had before been so refractory seemed satisfied that his turn for drudgery had come, and, entering the wheel of his own accord, began without hesitation to turn it as usual. Many will be prepared to maintain that dogs resent unjust chastisement. A gentleman I met near Rio de Janeiro possessed a dog whose sensitiveness was such that, after a reproof, he would leave the house, and sometimes not return for several days. His owner assured me of his belief that in such cases the reproof had always been undeserved; and he told me of one definite instance in which the reproof—never more than verbal—had been for a theft which was afterwards found to have been committed by his garden-boy. On this occasion the dog was away for three days, and returned in a wretched and miserable condition. What shall we say of such cases? Seeing how complex is what we call a sense of justice, I am not prepared to credit the dog therewith; and I am disposed to regard such actions as I have just described as the result of a breach of normal association. Dogs, like men, are creatures of habit; and breaches of normal association—occurrences contrary to expectation—give rise to uneasiness, dissatisfaction, and consequent resentment.
Conversely, many of the cases where dogs and other animals are said to know when they have done wrong, and to suffer the pricks of conscience, may probably be satisfactorily explained by association. When my friend, coming down into his drawing-room, sees Tim's "guilty" look, he suspects that the dog has, contrary to rule, been taking a nap on one of the chairs; and his suspicions are not a little strengthened by the unnatural warmth of the easiest armchair. "Ah! Tim always knows when he has done wrong," says my friend. But not improbably the association in Tim's mind is a direct one between a nap on that chair and his master's displeasure. What Tim knows is, perhaps, not that he has done wrong, but that he will "catch it." It is the expectation of a reproof, or something more, that gives rise to his look of conscious guilt. In the same way, the look of "conscious rectitude" we often see in some dogs may be due to the anticipation of a word of commendation. And, in general, I fancy that the association in an animal's mind is between the performance of a given act and the occurrence of certain consequences. When this association becomes definite it must, I imagine, draw after it a dislike of such actions as have been accompanied by evil consequences, and a delight in such actions as have been accompanied by pleasant consequences. And eventually this dislike or delight is transferred from his own actions to the similar actions of others. Thus dogs punish their puppies for acts of uncleanliness, while cats are even more particular in this respect. A correspondent in Nature[IC] gives a case of a cat chastising by a violent blow with her paw her kitten, who was about to enjoy a herring which had been set down before the fire to keep hot. So, too, according to Mr. Darwin,[ID] "when the baboons in Abyssinia plunder a garden, they silently follow their leader, and, if an imprudent young animal makes a noise, he receives a slap from the others to teach him silence and obedience." And Mr. Schaub communicated to Professor Nipher[IE] a case of a black-and-tan terrier bitch, whose pup had stolen a stocking from his bedroom, and who followed the young offender, took the stocking from him, and returned it to the owner. Her action gave evidence, he says, of displeasure at the action of the pup. And Mr. Schaub contrived to have the offence committed on many successive mornings, the same performance being repeated each time.
In this connection I will give two anecdotes of Carlo, communicated to me by Mrs. Mann. "Once I came upon Carlo sitting in the dining-room doorway, Dulceline, the cat, angrily watching him from the stairs, and also evidently having an eye on a leg of mutton half dragged off the dish on the dining-table. Carlo had clearly caught the thief in the act. He was on guard; and he seemed much relieved when higher powers came on the scene. Honesty seemed part of Carlo's nature. In this matter we never had to give him any lessons. Nor could he bear to see dishonesty in others. One Sunday, one of the little girls saw Carlo coming along looking so anxiously at her that she knew he wanted her to come. She therefore followed him, and Carlo took her to the store-room, the door of which her sister had left open. In the doorway Carlo stopped, and looked first up at his mistress and then into the store-room, as much as to say, 'What can we think of this?' And truly there was a certain little black-and-tan terrier, whose principles were by no means of a high order, regaling himself with some cold meat that he had dragged on to the floor. Toby knew he was in the wrong, and tried to flee. But Carlo stopped him as he endeavoured to fly past. And when Toby was thereupon duly slapped, Carlo sat straight up, with a face of conscious rectitude."
These anecdotes, communicated to me by a lady of culture and intelligence, illustrate how, in describing the actions of animals, phraseology only, in strictness, applicable to the psychology of man, is unwittingly and almost unavoidably employed. Toby's "principles were not of a high order," yet he "knew he was in the wrong," while Carlo watched him receive his punishment, and "sat straight up, with a face of conscious rectitude."
Coming now to a sense of humour or a sense of the ludicrous, Darwin himself said,[IF] "Dogs show what may fairly be called a sense of humour, as distinguished from mere play; if a bit of stick or other such object be thrown to one, he will often carry it away for a short distance; and then, squatting down with it on the ground close before him, will wait until his master comes close to take it away. The dog will seize it and rush away in triumph, repeating the same manœuvre, and evidently enjoying the practical joke." Mr. Romanes had a dog who used to perform certain self-taught tricks, "which clearly had the object of exciting laughter. For instance, while lying on his side and violently grinning, he would hold one leg in his mouth. Under such circumstances, nothing pleased him so much as having his joke duly appreciated, while, if no notice was taken of him, he would become sulky." To these I may add an observation of my own. I used sometimes, when staying at Lancaster with a friend, to take his dog Sambo, a highly intelligent retriever, to the seashore. His chief delight there was to bury small crabs in the sand, and then stand watching till a leg or a claw appeared above the surface, upon which he would race backwards and forwards, giving short barks of keen enjoyment. This I saw him do on many occasions. He always waited till a helpless leg appeared, and then bounded away as if he could not contain the canine laughter that was in him. Who shall say, however, what was passing through the mind of the dog in any of these three cases? The motive of Mr. Darwin's dog may have been to prolong the game, though I expect there was something more than this. Mr. Romanes's dog exemplified, perhaps, the sense of satisfaction at being noticed. Sambo's performance is now, as it was years ago, beyond me. But a sense of humour, involving a delicate appreciation of the minor incongruities of life, is, I imagine, too subtle an emotion for even Sambo.
I pass now to the sense of beauty, and I shall consider this at greater length, because of its bearing on sexual selection and the origin of floral beauty.
The interesting experiments of Sir John Lubbock already alluded to seem to establish the fact that bees have certain colour-preferences. Blue and pink are the most attractive colours; yellow and red are in less favour. No doubt these preferences have arisen in association with the flowers from which the bees obtain their nectar. They have a practical basis of biological value. But there seems no doubt that certain colours are now for them more attractive than others. Bees and other insects are, undoubtedly, attracted by flowers; these flowers excite in us an æsthetic pleasure; the bees are, therefore, supposed to be attracted to the flowers through their possession of an æsthetic sense. Now, this does not necessarily follow. It is the nectar, not the beauty of the flower, that attracts the bee. So long as the flower is sufficiently conspicuous to be rapidly distinguished by the insect, the conditions of the case are met so far as insect psychology is concerned. The fact remains, however, that the flowers thus conspicuous to the insect are fraught with beauty for us.