Animal Life and Intelligence

by C. Lloyd Morgan

But, further, the howl suggested a dog in pain. No amount of sensations entering into any manner of relations could give me that element of the construct. I can neither see, touch, taste, smell, nor hear pain in another being. Pain is entirely subjective and known only to the sufferer. But I have been a sufferer. I have experienced pain and pleasure. And just as my experiences, individual and ancestral, lead me to project into inanimate objects certain qualities, the products of my sensations, so do my experiences, individual and ancestral, lead me to project into certain animals feelings analogous to those I have myself experienced. This is sometimes described as an inference. But if we call this an inference, then we must, I think, call the taste, smell, and feel of the orange I see before me inferences. In both cases the inference, if we so call it, enters at once into the immediate construct.

And when I went to the window and saw the dog limping down the street, I saw also a small boy, with arm drawn back, in the act of throwing a stone. In other words, I saw the objects in the scene before me standing in certain relations to each other. I concluded that the boy had thrown a stone at the dog and was about to throw another. In other words, I saw the scene before me as part of a sequence of events.

One more example I will give to bring out another and important feature in the mental process. Strolling before breakfast in early spring in my friend's garden, there is borne to me on the morning air a whiff of violet fragrance. Not only does this lead me to construct violets, but it reminds me of a scene in my childhood with which the scent of these flowers was closely associated. Not only is the object constructed, but a scene with which their fragrant odour has been associated is reconstructed in memory. The violets are immediate constructs or presentations of sense; the remembered scene is a reconstruct or representation in memory. So, too, when I heard a piercing howl in the street, the dog I constructed was a vague presentation of sense; but the street in which I instinctively placed him was a reconstruct or representation in memory. The difference between a construct or presentation of sense, and a reconstruct or representation in memory, is that the former is directly suggested through the immediate action of some quality or activity of the object, while the latter is indirectly suggested through some intermediate agency.

Before proceeding further, let us review the conclusions we have thus far reached. Through the action of certain surroundings on our sensitive organization, we receive certain impressions, and among these impressions and others revived in memory we recognize certain similarities or differences in quality, in intensity, in order of sequence, and in source of origin. The sensations which thus originate are mental facts in no sense resembling their causes, but representing them in mental symbolism. The consciousness of similarity or difference is no part of the impression, but a further mental fact arising out of the impression, and with it giving origin to sensation. It deals with the relation of impressions among each other and to the recipient. It involves recognition and discrimination. Its basis is laid in memory. The sensations are instantly localized, referred to objects, and projected outwards, mainly through the instrumentality of the muscular sense. The mental symbolism is thus built into the objects around us, and constructs are formed. But into the tissue of these constructs are woven, not only the sensations immediately received, but much that is only suggested through association as the outcome of past experience, individual and ancestral. The constructs and their associated reconstructs are thus endowed with qualities which have practical reality, since they are not for me only, but for you and for mankind. They are, therefore, in a sense independent of me, but nowise independent of man.[FT]

Some of the constructs are endowed with activities, and some with feelings akin to our own. Finally, in the field of vision which we construct or reconstruct, the objects are seen to stand in relationship to each other, and the scene as a whole is perceived to be part of an orderly sequence of events.

We have already got a long way beyond the impressions with which we started; and yet, if I may trust my own experience, such construction as I have described is direct and immediate. A child of four or five would not only construct as much, but might not improbably go a long way further, and say, "Naughty boy to throw a stone at poor doggie!" It is, I say, direct and immediate, and it implies a wonderful amount of mental activity. Some people seem to imagine that in the simpler forms of perception, as when I see an orange on the table, the mind is as passive as the sensitive plate in a photographer's camera. This surely is not so. It is a false and shallow psychology which teaches it. Just as a light pin-prick may set agoing complex physical activities in the frog, so may comparatively simple visual sensations give rise to complex mental activities in construction and reconstruction. It is to emphasize this mental activity that I have persistently used the terms "construct" and "construction." And I wish to emphasize it still further by saying that without the active and constructive mind no such process of construction or reconstruction is possible or (I speak for myself) conceivable. We might just as well suppose that the frog could leap away on stimulation of a pin-prick in the absence of its complex bodily organization, as that sensation could give rise to construction and reconstruction in the absence of a highly organized mind.

We have seen that when a howl suggested the construct dog, that construct was vague and undefined; but when I went to the window and saw the terrier, the construct became particularized and defined. This seems to me the normal order of development: first the vague, general, and indefinite; then the particular, special, and defined. That which is immediately suggested at the bidding of sensations received is always more or less general; it only becomes specialized on further examination physical or mental—first a dog or an orange; then this dog or this orange. The more unfamiliar the object, the more vague and indefinite the construct. The more familiar the object, and the further our examination of it is carried, the more particular and defined the construct. I would, therefore, mark two stages in the process of construction: first, the formation of constructs by immediate association, more or less vague, indefinite, and ill defined; and, secondly, the definition of constructs by examination, by which they are rendered more definite, particular, and special, and supplemented by intelligent inferences.

I need not stay here to point out the immense importance of this process of defining and particularizing constructs, or the length to which it may be carried; nor need I pause to indicate how, through memory and association, representative or reconstructive elements crowd in to link or weave the constructs into more or less vivid and brilliant scenes. But I have next to notice that out of this intelligent examination arises a new, distinct mental process, the analysis of constructs.

This process involves the paying of special attention to certain qualities of objects, to the intentional exclusion of other qualities. When I cease to examine an orange as a construct, and pay attention to its colour or its taste to the exclusion of other properties, with the purpose of comparing this colour or taste with other colours and tastes, I am making a step in analysis. So, too, when I consider the form of an orange for the purpose of comparing it with the form of the earth, I am making a step in analysis. And, again, when I consider the howl of the dog with the object of comparing it with other sounds, I am making a step in analysis. We may call the process by which we select a certain quality, and consider it by itself to the neglect of other qualities, isolation, and the products of the process we may term isolates.[FU]

This process could not be initiated till a large body of constructive and reconstructive experience had been gained. But once initiated, there is no end to the process. We pick to pieces all the phenomena of nature, all the qualities and relationships of objects, the activities and functions of animals, the mental phenomena of which we are conscious in ourselves. We isolate the qualities, relationships, feelings; and we name the isolates we obtain. Hence arises all our science, all our higher thought. In the terms which we apply to our isolates consists the richness of our language.