Animal Life and Intelligence

by C. Lloyd Morgan

It may, however, be objected that this view is at variance with the familiar observation that there are many excellent people who hold and maintain theories which are exceedingly incongruous, which seem, indeed, to us mutually antagonistic. Yes, to us. Brought into the environment of our system of ideas, one or other of these antagonistic views would be eliminated through incongruity. Not so, however, with those who hold both. Amid the environment of a less logical and less coherent system of ideas, both can find admission, if not as congruous, still as neutral. A sense of their incongruity is not aroused.

But there are some people, it may be said, who consciously hold views which they admit to be incongruous; who base all their scientific reasonings on a continuity of causation, but who, nevertheless, believe in miraculous interruptions of that continuity. In this case, however, the incongruity is made congruous in a higher synthesis. They belie themselves when they suppose that they are holding incongruous views. Stated at length, what they admit is that miraculous interventions are incongruous, not for them, but for those whose whole system of thought is cast in another mould than theirs—for the materialist and the infidel.

I cannot discuss the matter further here. This is not the place to show, or attempt to show, how the evolution of systems of thought has caused, or is causing, certain ideas, such as that of slavery, religious persecution, the moral and physical degradation of our poor, to reach that degree of incongruity which we signify as abhorrent; or how that evolution has caused yet more primitive ideas to seem positively repulsive. Nor is it the place to show, or attempt to show, how the advance of scientific knowledge has been constantly accompanied by the elimination of incongruous conceptions. I must content myself with the brief indication I have given of the principle of elimination through incongruity as applied to ideas.

It may be said that such a principle does not account for the origin of the new congruous ideas, but only for the getting rid of old incongruous ideas. Quite true. But I have grievously failed in my exposition of natural selection through elimination if I have not made it evident that this objection (if that can be called an objection which, in truth, is none) lies also at the door of Darwin's generalization.[KL]

Now, from all that has been said in this chapter, it will be seen that, on the hypothesis of monism, we cannot regard organic and mental evolution as continuous the one into the other, but rather as parallel the one with the other—as the kinetic and metakinetic manifestations of the same process. Organic evolution is a matter of structure and activity. If the structure or the activity be not attuned to the environing conditions, it will be eliminated, those sufficiently well attuned surviving. Turning to the metakinetic aspect, we have seen that there are certain mental processes which are directly and closely associated with activities. Their evolution will be intimately associated with organic evolution. For if these processes lead to ill-attuned activities, the organism will be eliminated; and thus the evolution of well-attuned activities and their corresponding mental states will proceed side by side. We may, therefore, say, not incorrectly, that these lower phases of mental evolution are subject to the law of natural selection.

But when the neural processes which intervene between stimulus and activity become more complex and more roundabout; when, instead of being directly and closely associated with life-preserving activities, they are associated indirectly and remotely;—then they become, step by step, removed from their subjection to natural selection. And when, in man, the metakineses associated with these neural kineses assume the form of hypotheses, theories, interpretations of nature, moral ideals, and religious conceptions, these are, except in so far as they lead to activities which may conduce to elimination, no longer subject to the law of natural selection, unless we use this term in a somewhat metaphorical, or at least extended, sense. They are subject, as we have seen, to a new process of elimination through incongruity.

Similarly with that wide range of conduct in man which is the outcome of his conceptual life, and is removed from those merely life-preserving activities which are still, to some extent, under the influence of natural elimination. Conduct is here modified in accordance with the conceptual system of which it is the outcome and outward expression. And this higher conduct is subject, not to elimination through natural selection, but to elimination through incongruity. Slavery would never have been abolished through natural selection; by this means the modest behaviour of a chaste woman could not have been developed. To natural selection neither the Factory Acts nor the artistic products in this year's Academy were due; by this process were determined neither the conduct of John Howard nor that of Florence Nightingale. Some evolutionists have done no little injury to the cause they have at heart by vainly attempting to defend the untenable position that natural selection has been a prime factor in the higher phases of human conduct. I believe that natural selection has had little or nothing to do with them as such. They are the outcome of conceptual ideas, and are subject to the same process of elimination through incongruity.

So soon as, in the course of mental evolution, the idea of slavery became incongruous, and in certain minds abhorrent and repulsive, steps were taken to check the conduct which was the outward expression of this idea. So, too, in other cases. The reformer must not, however, be too far in advance of his generation, if his reform is to be practically carried out. When his ideas are so "advanced" as to be incongruous with those of all but a very small minority of his contemporaries, even they are forced to confess that the nation is not yet ripe for the changes they contemplate.

No one will question that artistic products are the outcome of artistic ideas. In the slow and difficult progress of a new school of painting or of music, we see exemplified the rejection of the new ideas through their incongruity with the old-fashioned artistic systems. Only gradually do there grow up new generations for whom these new ideas are not incongruous. For them the old-fashioned systems become incongruous; and if the school becomes dominant, artistic products embodying the old ideas are eliminated through incongruity.

We are not all alike. Our mental systems are different. One artist will introduce into his canvas effects which, to the eye of another, will at once strike a jarring note of incongruity. To some minds the institution of slavery presents no incongruity. There are not wanting men for whom the degrading moral and physical conditions under which many of our poor are forced to live and work present little or no incongruity. To the Russian, English fidelity to the marriage vow is said to be as incongruous as, to an English woman, is the harem of an Eastern potentate.