Animal Life and Intelligence

by C. Lloyd Morgan

The next point we have to consider is why we believe, as you and I practically do believe, that the world of phenomena exists as such, not merely for you and for me, but for man. Is it not because we believe in the practical unity of mankind? Is it not because we believe that, greatly as the conceptual and intellectual superstructure may differ in different individuals, the perceptual basis and foundation are practically identical? The senses and sense-organs give, in all normal individuals, sense-data, which differ only within comparatively narrow limits; and though the intellectual and moral world of the Bushman and the North Australian may differ profoundly from those of Shakespeare and Pascal, the perceptual world is, we have every reason to suppose, within these narrow limits, the same. This we may fairly believe; but even so there must be, nay, we know that there are, very great differences in the interpretation of the perceptual world. The individual cannot divest himself of the intellectual and conceptual part of his nature. We, for whom phenomena are more or less conditioned by science, find it difficult to think ourselves into the position of the savage, whose perceptual world is conditioned by crude superstition. The elements of his perceptual world are the same as ours, but the light of knowledge in which we view them is, for him, very dim. When we try to realize his world we find it exceedingly difficult.

And when we come to the lower animals—even those nearest us in the scale of life—the difficulties are enormously increased. The sense-data are probably much the same, but they are combined in different proportions. Olfactory sensation must, one would suppose, be built into the constructs of the dog and the deer to an extent which we cannot at all realize. And then, as Mr. P. G. Hamerton has well said, we have to take into account the immensity of the ignorance of animals. That ignorance, in combination with perfect perceptual clearness (ignorance and mental clearness are quite compatible) and with inconceivably strong instincts, produces a creature whose mental states we can never accurately understand.

I am tempted here to give the instance Mr. Hamerton quotes[GD] in illustration of the ignorance of animals.

"The following account of the behaviour of a cow," he says, "gives a glimpse of the real nature of the animal. These long-tailed cows, say Messrs. Huc and Gabet, are so restive and difficult to milk, that to keep them at all quiet the herdsman has to give them a calf to lick meanwhile. But for this device, not a single drop of milk can be obtained from them. One day a Llama herdsman, who lived in the same house as ourselves, came with a long dismal face to announce that his cow had calved during the night, and that, unfortunately, the calf was dying. It died in the course of the day. The Llama forthwith skinned the poor beast and stuffed it with hay. This proceeding surprised us at first, for the Llama had by no means the air of a man likely to give himself the luxury of a cabinet of natural history. When the operation was completed, we found that the hay-calf had neither feet nor head; whereupon it occurred to us that, after all, it was perhaps a pillow that the Llama contemplated. We were in error, but the error was not dissipated till the next morning, when our herdsman went to milk his cow. Seeing him issue forth, the pail in one hand and the hay-calf under the other arm, the fancy occurred to us to follow him. His first proceeding was to put the hay-calf down before the cow. He then turned to milk the cow herself. The mamma at first opened enormous eyes at her beloved infant; by degrees she stooped her head towards it, then smelt at it, sneezed three or four times, and at last proceeded to lick it with the most delightful tenderness. This spectacle grated against our sensibilities; it seemed to us that he who first invented this parody upon one of the most touching incidents in nature must have been a man without a heart. A somewhat burlesque circumstance occurred one day to modify the indignation with which this treachery inspired us. By dint of caressing and licking her little calf, the tender parent one fine morning unripped it. The hay issued from within, and the cow, manifesting not the slightest surprise nor agitation, proceeded tranquilly to devour the unexpected provender."

Are we surprised at the want of surprise on the part of the cow? Why should we be? What knows she of anatomy or of physiology? If she could think at all about the matter, she would, no doubt, have expected her calf to be composed of condensed milk. But failing that, why not hay? She had presumably some little experience of putting hay inside. Why not find hay inside; and, finding hay, why not enjoy the good provender thus provided? But clearly we must not expect the brutes to possess knowledge to which they cannot attain about matters which in no wise concern their daily life.

"In our estimates of the characters of animals," continues Mr. Hamerton, in his comments on this anecdote, "we always commit one of two mistakes—either we conclude that the beasts have great knowledge because they are so clever, or else we fancy that they must be stupid because they are so ignorant." "The main difficulty in conceiving the mental states of animals," says the same observer, "is that the moment we think of them as human, we are lost." Yes, but the pity of it is that we cannot think of them in any other terms than those of human consciousness. The only world of constructs that we know is the world constructed by man.

"To Newton and to Newton's dog, Diamond," said Carlyle, "what a different pair of universes! while the painting in the optical retina of both was most likely the same." Different, indeed; if we can be permitted, without extravagance, to speak of the universe as existing at all for Diamond, or allowed, except in hyperbole, to set side by side a conception of ultimate generality, like the universe, the summation of all conceptions, and "the painting in the optical retina." Carlyle's meaning is, however, clear enough. Given two different minds and the same facts, how different are the products! In the construct formed on sight of the simplest object, we give far more than we receive; and what we give is a special resultant of inheritance and individual acquisition. No two of us give quite the same in amount or in quality. It is not too much to say that for no two human beings is the world we live in quite the same. And if this be so of human-folk, how different must be the world of man from the world of the dog—the world of Newton from the world of Diamond!

And we must remember that it is not merely that the same world is differently mirrored in different minds, but that they are two different worlds. If there is any truth in what I have urged in the last chapter, we construct the world that we see. The sensations are, as we have seen, mental facts, in no sense resembling their causes, but representing them in mental symbolism. Percepts are the elaborated products of this mental symbolism. The question, then, is not—How does the world mirror itself in the mind of the dog? but rather—How far does the symbolic world of the dog resemble the symbolic world of man? How far is his symbolism the same as ours? Only by fully grasping the fact that the external world of objects does not exist independently of us (though something exists which we thus symbolize), shall we realize the greatness of the difficulty which stands in the path of the student of animal psychology. So long as we are content to accept John Bunyan's crude analogy of the gateways of sense, the difficulty is comparatively small. There is the outside world self-existent and independent; a knowledge of it comes into the mind through the five gateways of sense—a picture of it through the eye-gate, and so on. The dog has also five similar gateways. The world for him is, therefore, much the same as for us. But this is not a true analogy. The world we see around us is a joint product of an external existence, the independent nature of which we can never know, and the human mind. It is something we construct in mental symbolism. How far does the dog construct a similar world? The answer to this question must, as it seems to me, be largely speculative.

And what help have we towards answering it? That afforded by the theory of organic evolution. If we accept that theory, and accept also the view that mental or psychical products are the inseparable concomitants of certain organic or physiological processes, then we have a basis from which to start. That basis I adopt.

Unfortunately, we have at present but little particular knowledge of the correlation of psychical and physiological processes. We cannot, by the dissection of a brain, draw much in the way of valid and detailed inference as to the nature of the psychical processes which accompany its physiological action. Fortunately, however, on the other hand, there are certain physical manifestations which do aid us, and that not a little, in drawing inferences from the physical to the mental. For organisms exhibit certain activities, and from these activities we can infer to some extent the character of the mental processes by which they are prompted. We are wont, in observing the actions of our fellow-men, to draw conclusions (often, alas! erroneous) as to the mental processes which accompany them. We are ourselves active, and we are immediately conscious of the modes of consciousness which accompany our actions. Thus the activities of organisms give us some clue to their mental processes, and it is through observation of their physical activities that we gain nearly all that is of particular value concerning the mental activities of animals. These activities we shall have to consider more fully in a future chapter. In the present chapter we shall consider them only so far as they give us information concerning the perceptual world (or worlds) of animals, and the nature of the inferences which we may suppose animals to draw from the phenomena which fall within their observation.