Nineteenth Century Questions

by James Freeman Clarke

Much of this, it may be said, is instinctive. We must therefore distinguish between Instinct and Intelligence; or, rather, between instinctive intelligence and reflective intelligence. Many writers on the subject of animals have not carefully distinguished these very different activities of the soul. Even M. Leroy, one of the first in modern times who brought careful observation to the study of the nature of animals, has not always kept in view this distinction—as has been noticed by a subsequent French writer of very considerable ability, M. Flourens.[19] The following marks, according to M. Flourens, distinguish instinct from intelligence:—

INSTINCT	INTELLIGENCE
Is spontaneous,	Is deliberate,
" necessary,	" conditional,
" invariable,	" modifiable,
" innate,	comes from observation and experience,
" fatal,	is free,
" particular.	" general.

Thus the building faculty of the beaver is an instinct, for it acts spontaneously, and always in the same way. It is not a general faculty of building in all places and ways, but a special power of building houses of sticks, mud, and other materials, with the entrance under water and a dry place within. When beavers build on a running stream, they begin by making a dam across it, which preserves them from losing the water in a drought; but this also is a spontaneous and invariable act. The old stories of their driving piles, using their tails for trowels, and having well-planned houses with many chambers, have been found to be fictitious. That the beaver builds by instinct, though intelligence comes in to modify the instinct, appears from his wishing to build his house or his dam when it is not needed. Mr. Broderip, the English naturalist, had a pet beaver that manifested his building instinct by dragging together warming-pans, sweeping-brushes, boots, and sticks, which he would lay crosswise. He then would fill in his wall with clothes, bits of coal, turf, laying it very even. Finally, he made a nest for himself behind his wall with clothes, hay, and cotton. As this creature had been brought from America very young, all this procedure must have been instinctive. But his intelligence showed itself in his adapting his mode of building to his new circumstances. His instinct led him to build his wall, and to lay his sticks crosswise, and to fill in with what he could find, according to the universal and spontaneous procedure of all beavers. But his making use of a chest of drawers for one side of his wall, and taking brushes and boots instead of cutting down trees, were no doubt acts of intelligence.

A large part of the wonderful procedure of bees is purely instinctive. Bees, from the beginning of the world, and in all countries of the earth, have lived in similar communities; have had their queen, to lay eggs for them: if their queen is lost, have developed a new one in the same way, by altering the conditions of existence in one of their larvæ; have constructed their hexagonal cells by the same mathematical law, so as to secure the most strength with the least outlay of material. All this is instinct—for it is spontaneous and not deliberate; it is universal and constant. But when the bee deflects his comb in order to avoid a stick thrust across the inside of the hive, and begins the variation before he reaches the stick, this can only be regarded as an act of intelligence.

Animals, then, have both instincts and intelligence; and so has man. A large part of human life proceeds from tendencies as purely, if not as vigorously, instinctive as those of animals. Man has social instincts, which create human society. Children play from an instinct. The maternal instinct in a human mother is, till modified by reflection, as spontaneous, universal, and necessary as the same instinct in animals. But in man the instincts are reduced to a minimum, and are soon modified by observation, experience, and reflection. In animals they are at their maximum, and are modified in a much less degree.

It is sometimes said that animals do not reason, but man does. But animals are quite capable of at least two modes of reasoning, that of comparison and that of inference. They compare two modes of action, or two substances, and judge the one to be preferable to the other, and accordingly select it. Sir Emerson Tennent tells us that elephants, employed to build stone walls in Ceylon, will lay each stone in its place, then stand off and look to see if it is plumb, and, if not, will move it with their trunk, till it lies perfectly straight. This is a pure act of reflective judgment. He narrates an adventure which befell himself in Ceylon while riding on a narrow road through the forest. He heard a rumbling sound approaching, and directly there came to meet him an elephant, bearing on his tusks a large log of wood, which he had been directed to carry to the place where it was needed. Sir Emerson Tennent's horse, unused to these monsters, was alarmed, and refused to go forward. The sagacious elephant, perceiving this, evidently decided that he must himself go out of the way. But to do this, he was obliged first to take the log from his tusks with his trunk, and lay it on the ground, which he did, and then backed out of the road between the trees till only his head was visible. But the horse was still too timid to go by, whereupon the judicious pachyderm pushed himself farther back, till all of his body, except the end of his trunk, had disappeared. Then Sir Emerson succeeded in getting his horse by, but stopped to witness the result. The elephant came out, took the log up again, laid it across his tusks, and went on his way. This story, told by an unimpeachable witness, shows several successive acts of reasoning. The log-bearer inferred from the horse's terror that it would not pass; he again inferred that in that case he must himself get out of the way; that, to do this, he must lay down his log; that he must go farther back; and accompanying this was his sense of duty, making him faithful to his task; and, most of all, his consideration of what was due to this human traveler, which kept him from driving the horse and man before him as he went on.

There is another well-authenticated anecdote of an elephant; he was following an ammunition wagon, and saw the man who was seated on it fall off just before the wheel. The man would have been crushed had not the animal instantly run forward, and, without an order, lifted the wheel with his trunk, and held it suspended in the air, till the wagon had passed over the man without hurting him. Here were combined presence of mind, good will, knowledge of the danger to the man, and a rapid calculation of how he could be saved.

Perhaps I may properly introduce here an account of the manifestations of mind in the animals I have had the most opportunity of observing. I have a horse, who was named Rubezahl, after the mountain spirit of the Harz made famous in the stories of Musaeus. We have contracted his name to Ruby for convenience. Now I have reason to believe that Ruby can distinguish Sunday from other days. On Sunday I have been in the habit of driving to Boston to church; but on other days, I drive to the neighboring village, where are the post-office, shops of mechanics, and other stores. To go to Boston, I usually turn to the right when I leave my driveway; to go to the village, I turn to the left. Now, on Sunday, if I leave the reins loose, so that the horse may do as he pleases, he invariably turns to the right, and goes to Boston. On other days, he as invariably turns to the left, and goes to the village. He does this so constantly and regularly, that none of the family have any doubt of the fact that he knows that it is Sunday; how he knows it we are unable to discover. I have left my house at the same hour on Sunday and on Monday, in the same carriage, with the same number of persons in it; and yet on Sunday he always turns to the right, and on Monday to the left. He is fed at the same time on Sunday as on other days, but the man comes back to harness him a little later on Sunday than at other times, and that is possibly his method of knowing that it is the day for going to Boston. But see how much of observation, memory, and thought is implied in all this.

Again, Ruby has shown a very distinct feeling of the supernatural. Driving one day up a hill near my house, we met a horse-car coming down toward us, running without horses, simply by the force of gravity. My horse became so frightened that he ran into the gutter, and nearly overturned me; and I got him past with the greatest difficulty. Now he had met the cars coming down that hill, drawn by horses, a hundred times, and had never been alarmed. Moreover, only a day or two after, in going up the same hill, we saw a car moving uphill, before us, where the horses were entirely invisible, being concealed by the car itself, which was between us and the horses. But this did not frighten Ruby at all. He evidently said to himself, "The horses are there, though I do not see them." But in the other case it seemed to him an effect without a cause—something plainly supernatural. There was nothing in the aspect of the car itself to alarm him; he had seen that often enough. He was simply terrified by seeing it move without any adequate cause—just as we should be, if we saw our chairs begin to walk about the room.