Animal Life and Intelligence

by C. Lloyd Morgan

In the higher phases of human conduct, then, the activities are subject to the law of the ideas of which they are the outcome—the law of elimination through incongruity.

I have said that natural selection has little or nothing to do with these higher phases of conduct. But has not human selection through preferential mating? I believe that it has; and I trust that it will have a still greater influence in the future. It is one of the noblest privileges of woman, for with her mainly lies the choice, that she may aid in raising humanity to a higher level. If once the idea of marrying for anything but pure affection could become utterly incongruous to woman's mental nature; and if once the idea of perpetuating any form of moral, intellectual, or physical deformity could become equally incongruous; the bettering of humanity, through the exclusion of the deformed in body and mind from any share in its continuance must inevitably follow. Here, again, ideas would determine conduct.

And what, we may now proceed to ask, is the physiological or kinetic aspect of this metakinetic process? The answer to this question involves the conception of what I would term "interneural evolution." Just as the environment of a conceptual idea is constituted by other conceptual ideas, so is the environment of its neural concomitant constituted by the other neural processes in the brain. Just as no idea can get itself accepted if it be in incongruity with the system of ideas among which it is introduced, so, too, can no neural process become established if it be not in harmony with the other neural processes of the cerebral hemispheres. The brain is a microcosm; its neural processes are interrelated; and the environment of any neural process is constituted by other neural processes.

A little consideration will show that this must be so; that it is only the physical or kinetic aspect of what is freely admitted when the mental or metakinetic aspect is under consideration. If it be admitted that states of consciousness are determined by other states of consciousness, and that states of consciousness are the concomitants of certain neural processes in the brain, it follows as a logical necessity that brain-neuroses, however originating, are determined in their evolution by other brain-neuroses; and that there has been a brain or interneural evolution, distinct from and yet intimately associated with the evolution of other bodily structures and activities. The more closely and directly brain-neuroses are associated with immediate activities, the more closely implicated is interneural evolution in the process of organic elimination through natural selection. But when long trains of neuroses take place in only remote and distant connection with other bodily activities, they are removed from the process of elimination through natural selection, and interneural evolution is allowed to proceed comparatively untrammelled.

I have already indicated my belief that abstraction (isolation), analysis, and conceptual ideas have been rendered possible through language, and are excellences unto which the lower animals do not attain. Hence I regard this comparatively untrammelled phase of interneural evolution as something essentially human, something which differentiates man from brute. And I would correlate man's greatly developed brain—inexplicable, I think, by natural selection alone—with this later and special phase of interneural evolution. Even in the lowest savage this brain-evolution has proceeded a long way. I am not fitted in this matter to offer an opinion which would carry much weight. But from all that I have read I gather that savages have in all cases elaborated a complex—often a highly complex—interpretation of nature and theory of things. The interpretation may seem bizarre and incongruous enough to us, full of fetishism and strange superstitions, but it is an interpretation; to the savage it presents no incongruity; to him the incongruity is in the oddly assorted beliefs of the missionary. His system of ideas is, in fact, one of the many possible systems to which mental evolution may give rise.

For what we call systems of thoughts, interpretations of nature, theories of things, are so many genera and species which have resulted from this later phase of metakinetic evolution. Our methods are at present too coarse, our powers too limited, to enable us to determine these species from their kinetic aspect. The brains of Kaffir and Boer, of ploughboy and merchant, of materialist and idealist, are too subtly wrought to enable us to trace the systems of kineses which were the concomitants of their scheme of beliefs. But we can learn something of the genera and species from their metakinetic aspect as symbolized through language and other bodily activities. They fall into certain groups, fetishistic, spiritualistic, materialistic, idealistic, monistic, and so on, and within these groups there are sub-divisions. This is not the place to consider them or discuss their characteristics. What I wish to note about them is that, diverse as they seem and are, each is a coherent product of mental evolution. In each, all that is incongruous to itself has been or is being eliminated.

There are some people, however, who are surprised at the incongruity of interpretations of nature among each other. Fetishism, they say, has been proved to be utterly false. It constitutes a hideous and grotesque delirium. How can that which is utterly and completely false to nature have had a natural evolution? Now, for the élite of the Aryan race, whose systems of ideas have been moulded in accordance with the conceptions of modern science, no doubt the fetishism of the poor savage seems sufficiently incongruous and grotesque. So, too, does the system of ideas of the Right Rev. Bishop of —— appear no doubt, to the learned and eminent Professor ——, and vice versâ. And so, too, no doubt, does the system of ideas of the white man (who introduces firearms and firewater, and preaches the gospel of forgiveness and temperance) appear to the poor savage. Each in his degree wonders how this falsity, this incongruity, can have had a natural genesis. But in each case the falsity and the incongruity is not within the system itself, but between different systems.

Once more, I repeat that if the individual nature of the systems of ideas be not adequately grasped, the nature of mental evolution will not be apprehended. States of consciousness can only be determined by other states of consciousness; and states of consciousness are for the individual subject, and for him alone. Conceptual ideas are states of consciousness; and "falsity to nature" means, and can only mean, incongruity with the environing states of consciousness in the individual mind. For the savage there is no falsity to nature in his fetishism. The idea presents no incongruity with his system of ideas; no more incongruity than filed teeth, flattened head, or pierced nose do to his standard of beauty. It is with our system of ideas (i.e. mine or yours) that his fetishism is false and incongruous. The falsity or incongruity, I repeat, is not within the system itself, but between different systems.

It may still, however, be said—Only one interpretation of nature can be true; all others must be false. And the falsity is not merely incongruity with other ideas in other systems of thought or belief; it is falsity to the plain and obvious facts of nature.

We may freely admit that only one interpretation of nature can be true. But who is to determine which? Who can decide the question between monist and materialist? Who dare arbitrate between the bishop and the professor? The criterion of fitness in this case, as in others, is survival; and who can say what existing interpretation of nature (if any) shall outlive all its competitors? Who can say what will be the nature of the further evolution of any existing philosophical creed? The elimination of the false is a slow and gradual process; and many degenerate systems of ideas may linger on in the darker corners of the world of men. False or out of harmony as they seem to be with the higher phases of development; false or out of harmony as they would be with a different and more exalted environment; they are not false or out of harmony with the environment in the midst of which we find them; they are not false or out of harmony with "the plain and obvious facts of nature," as these exist for the ill-developed or savage mind.