Animal Life and Intelligence

by C. Lloyd Morgan

In a fruiterer's shop on the opposite side of a street I see an orange. That is to say, certain cones of the retina of my eye are stimulated by light-waves of a yellow quality, and at the bidding of these stimuli I construct the object which I call an orange. That object is distant, roundish, yellow, resisting and yet somewhat soft, with a peculiar smell, and possessed of a taste of its own. Now, it is obvious that I cannot see all these qualities of the orange, as we call them. I construct the object on reception of certain light-waves which are focussed on the retina of my eye. If I go to the orange, however, I can test the correctness of my construct by the senses of touch, smell, and taste. But what led me to construct an object with these qualities? Experience has taught me that these qualities are grouped together in special ways in an orange. I constructed that particular object through what is termed the principle of association. I have learnt that these qualities are grouped together in certain relations to each other, and when I actually receive sight-stimuli of a certain quality, grouped in certain ways, they immediately call up the memories of the associated qualities. That which is actually received is a mere suggestion, the rest is suggested in memory through association. The object might be suggested through other senses. I come into a dining-room after dessert, and the object is suggested through smell. Or my little son says, "Open your mouth and shut your eyes, and see what the fairies will send you;" and an orange is suggested by taste. In all these cases the object is constructed at the bidding of certain sensations, which suggest to my mind the associated qualities. The object is a construct.

And here let us notice that we ascribe the form, the resistance, the taste, the smell, to the object. We do not say or think, "Sight-sensations inform me that there is something which I call an orange, and which is capable of exciting in me sensations of touch, taste, and smell;" but we say, "There is an orange, which has such and such a taste, smell, and feel." In other words, we refer these sensations, related in certain ways, outwards to the object, and name them qualities of the object that we see. But remember, that we do not necessarily or normally say or think anything about it. We just inevitably construct the object, what we build in to the construct depending upon association through experience.

At this stage, perhaps, Common Sense steps in, and, shaking his head, says, with characteristic bluntness, "Nonsense; you'll never persuade me that the things I see and feel around me are nothing but fictions of my own mind. I don't construct them, as you call it; there they are for me to see and feel and taste if I will." Now, Common Sense is a sturdy, hard-headed individual, with whom I desire to keep on friendly terms. And I therefore hasten to explain that I most fully agree with every word that he says. The orange that I see before me is not a mere fiction of my mind. I can, if I will, take it up, feel it, smell it, and taste it. If it will satisfy Common Sense, I will say that it is the idea of the orange that I construct. Only I think that Common Sense, who has a horror of roundabout and indirect statements, will not like my saying, "I am receiving certain visual sensations related in certain ways, which lead me to construct an idea of an orange." He will prefer my saying simply, "I see an orange." Since what he wants me to call our ideas of things answer point for point to the things as they actually exist for us human-folk, it is not only more satisfactory but more correct to merge the two in one, and speak directly and simply of the object. The object is a thing I construct. That it is real may be proved by submitting it to the test of all the senses that I have.

And what do I mean by "real"? I mean that what it is for me it is also for you and any other normally constituted human being. This is, in truth, the only common-sense criterion of objective reality. Some people are colour-blind, and tell us that a rose is not red, but green. We reply that it is really red, but that, through a defect of sight, they cannot distinguish its redness. Here we take the normal human being as a standard for objective reality. For him the rose is red. And this is the only practical criterion that we have. This, however, does not satisfy some people, who think that the objects around them have the same reality, independent of man, that they have for us human-folk. Annihilate, they say, every human being—nay, all life—and the objects will remain as they are, and retain the same reality. Yes, the same reality; which means that if just one fortunate fellow escaped annihilation, he would find them all just as they were. And this nobody doubts. Nevertheless, it is (to me, at least) inconceivable that things independently of us are what they appear to us. Think of what we learnt about the sensations. They all arose in stimulations of the end-organs of special sense. Thence the explosive waves of change passed inwards to the brain, and somewhere therein gave rise to mental products. These mental products, the accompaniments of nerve-changes, can in no sense be like the outside something which gave rise to them. They are symbols of that outside something. And it is these symbols that we build up into objects. Hence I said that it is not only more satisfactory and convenient, but more correct, to speak directly of the object as constructed, and not our idea of the object. The mental product is the object for us, not only for me, but for you and all normal human beings, since the object is the same for all of us. And hence, also, I said that the analogy of gateways, through which pictures of objects gain access to the mind, was false and misleading, and that a truer analogy is that something stands without and knocks at the doorway of sense, and that from the nature of the knocks we learn somewhat concerning that which knocks. The person inside can never open the door to see what manner of thing it is which knocks. But he can build up a most cunning symbolism of knocks which shall suffice for all practical purposes. In other words, the object-world, symbolic though it is, which you and I and the rest of us construct at the bidding of something without us (the existence of which I assume), is amply sufficient for all our practical needs, and constitutes the only practical reality for human-folk.

I am well aware that there are many people who cannot bring themselves to believe in, or even to listen without impatience to, the view that the world we see around us is a world of phenomena. It is absurd, they say, to tell us that yonder tulip, as an object, is in any sense dependent on our perception of it. There it is, and there it would have been had man never been created. Can one conceive that the new species of fossil, which was only yesterday disentombed from the strata in which it has lain buried for long ages, is dependent on man's observation for its qualities as an object? To say that it was "constructed" by the lucky geologist who was fortunate enough first to set eyes on it is sheer nonsense. Its shelly substance protected a bivalve mollusc millions of years before man appeared upon the earth. When we see the orange in the fruiterer's shop, the sight of it merely reminds us of its other qualities—its taste, its smell, its weight, and the rest, which are essentially its own, and no endowments of ours—nowise bestowed upon it by us.

I have no hope of convincing, and not much desire to convince, one who thus objects. I would merely ask him how and when he stepped outside his own consciousness to ascertain that these things are so. Does he believe that consciousness is an accompaniment of certain nervous processes in the grey cortex of the brain? If so, let him tell us how these conscious accompaniments resemble (not merely symbolize, but resemble) tulips and oranges and fossil molluscs. If not, let him propound his new theory of consciousness.

Let it not be supposed that I am denying the existence, and the richly diversified existence, of the external world. We are fully justified, I think, in believing that, corresponding to the diversity of mental symbolism, there is a rich diversity of external existence. But its nature I hold that we can never know. The objects that we see are the joint products of two factors—the external existence and the percipient mind. We cannot eliminate the latter factor so as to see what the external factor is like without it. Those who, like Professor Mivart,[FS] say that we can eliminate the percipient factor, and that the external world without it is just the same as it is with it, are content to reduce the human mind, in the matter of perception, to the level of a piece of looking-glass.

There are some people who seek to get behind phenomena by an appeal to evolution. It will not do nowadays, they say, to make the human mind a starting-point in these considerations; for the human mind is the product of evolution, and throughout that evolution has been step by step moulded to the external world. The external world has, therefore, the prior existence, and to it our perceptions have to conform. All this is quite true; but it is beside the point. Mind has, throughout the process of evolution, been moulded to the external world; our perceptions do conform to outside existences. But they conform, not in exact resemblance, but in mental symbolism. They do not copy, but they correspond to, external existences. It is just because, throughout the long ages of evolution, mind has lived and worked in this symbolic world that common sense is unable to shake off the conviction that this is the only possible world, and exists as such independently of mental processes. The world of phenomena is the world in which we, as conscious beings, live and move. No one denies it. But it is none the less a symbolic world; none the less a world which mind has constructed in the sense that it is an inalienable factor in its being.

Each of us, when we perceive an object, repeats and summarizes the constructive process which it has been the end of mental evolution to compass. Hence it is that, at the bidding of a simple impression, percepts or constructs take origin and shape in the mind. In taking possession of this faculty in the early years of life, we are entering upon a rich ancestral heritage. But if what I have been urging has truth, what we call objects are human constructs, and cannot by any manipulation be converted into anything else.

I will now take another and more complex case of construction, which will bring out some other facts about what I have termed "constructs." I hear in the street a piercing howl, which suggests a dog in pain. Rising from my seat and going to the window, I see a white terrier with a black patch over the left eye limping down the road on three legs. Now, what was the nature of the construct framed at the bidding of the piercing howl? A dog in pain. But what dog? The nature of the howl suggested a small dog; but there was nothing further to particularize him. The construct was, therefore, exceedingly vague and ill defined, and was not rendered definite and particular till I went to the window, and saw that it was a white terrier with a black patch over the eye. The howl, moreover, suggested certain activities of the dog. The construct was not merely a passive, inanimate object, like the orange, but an object capable of performing, and actually performing, certain actions. Here, again, we can only say that it is through experience that special activities are associated with certain objects. Just as the construct orange is capable of exciting sensations of taste, so the construct dog is capable of doing certain things and performing certain actions, that is, of affecting us in certain further ways.