The Non-religion of the Future: A Sociological Study

by Jean-Marie Guyau

Instruments supposed to be animate by animals.

One may learn from the preceding example something like what animals conceive the inert instruments to be which they see us handling and with which we sometimes strike them. The notion of an instrument, as such, is relatively modern and was altogether unknown in the early stages of evolution. An instrument, in the eyes of an animal as in the eyes of primitive man, is almost a companion and an accomplice; neither the one nor the other possesses any other notion in especial of causation than that of a co-operation, mute agreement between two associated beings. A lion, which Livingstone shot at and did not hit, ran first to bite the stone which the bullet had struck; it was only subsequently that he threw himself upon the hunter; the ball, the gun, the hunter, were so many distinct and separate enemies that he was bent on punishing in succession. Similarly, in an ancient list of pains and penalties, one finds that the warrior is to lose his hand, the blasphemer his tongue, the spy his ears. At this moment my dog is at my side; the whip with which I corrected him this morning lies upon a chair; the dog walks about that chair sniffing the air with defiance and respect, and I do not believe he would have the courage to touch it. He is aware, however, that when the whip hurt him, the circumstances were quite different, that I was holding that dangerous object in my hand, and that I was, in a sense, the first cause of his chastisement. Still he is not perfectly reassured, as he would be in the presence of an inert object. The impression he seems to have got strikes me as comparable to that which a child receives from a serpent behind a pane of glass; the child knows perfectly that under the actual circumstances he is safe, but he cannot help saying to himself, “If the circumstances were otherwise!”[27] Recollect that the Australian savage treats the white man’s gun as a living and powerful being which he adores and crowns with flowers and supplicates not to kill him. Legend attributes a magic power to the swords of great captains, to Joyeuse or to Durandal. In our own days, even, one sees combatants spend their force not only against their enemies but against everything which pertains to them; it is as if something were supposed to have passed from the man into everything he possesses. Nothing is more difficult to recognize than the profound indifference of nature.

Conduct generates beliefs that justify it.

Mr. Spencer, who denies that the child spontaneously strikes the table which has wounded him, is not, however, unaware that a savage—the Indian Tupis, for example—if he has bruised his foot against a stone, leaps against it in fury and bites it like a dog. Mr. Spencer sees in such facts a phenomenon wholly physical, the need for spending one’s rage in violent muscular action; but this very need can but favour the birth of a psychological illusion, of which the tenacity will be proportionate to the intensity of the sentiment. The physical and the moral are too closely bound up together for a physical expression of anger not to be accompanied by a moral belief corresponding to the action; if a powerful instinct induces us to treat a stone as an enemy, we shall very really see an enemy in this stone.

Romanes’ experiments.

Mr. Romanes made some observations, of the same kind as those of Mr. Spencer, upon a very intelligent Skye terrier. This terrier, like many other dogs, was accustomed to play with dried bones, throwing them into the air and endowing them with an appearance of life, for the pleasure of chasing them afterward. Mr. Romanes attached a long slender thread to a dried bone which he gave the dog to play with. After he had played for some time Mr. Romanes chose an opportune moment, when the bone had fallen to the ground some distance away, and the terrier was approaching it; he drew the bone gently away, by means of the thread attached to it. The attitude of the terrier changed entirely. The bone, which he had been pretending to regard as living, appeared to him to be really so, and his surprise knew no bounds. He approached it nervously and cautiously, as Mr. Spencer describes in the observation which he made; but the slow motion of the bone continued, and the dog became more and more certain that the movement could not be explained as resulting from the impulsion which he had communicated; his surprise became terror, and he ran away and hid himself under the table, to study from a distance the disconcerting spectacle of dried bones coming to life again!

Soap-bubble experiment.

Another of Mr. Romanes’ experiments on the same dog shows that the sentiment of the mysterious was, in this animal, quite powerful enough to serve as an explanation of his conduct. Having taken the terrier into a carpeted room, Mr. Romanes rolled some soap-bubbles which an unsteady draft of air blew about the carpet. The dog took a great interest in the matter, and seemed unable to decide whether the bubbles were alive or not. At first he was very prudent, and followed the bubbles at a distance, but as he was encouraged to examine them more closely, he approached them with his ears up and his tail down, in evident apprehension; the instant the bubble moved he drew back. After a time, however, during which there was at least one bubble on the floor, he took courage, and, the scientific spirit gaining the upper hand over the sentiment of mystery, he became brave enough to draw slowly near one of them and to put his paw upon it, not without anxiety. Naturally the bubble burst, and his astonishment was vivid in the extreme. Mr. Romanes made other bubbles, but could not persuade the dog to approach them for a long time. After a while, however, he started again in pursuit of one, and endeavoured with much caution to put his paw upon it. The result was the same as before. After the second attempt it was impossible to induce him to make a third, and he ultimately ran out of the room and could not be coaxed back. The same experiment, tried by Professor Delbœuf on his dog Mouston, gave a still more striking result. At the blowing of the fourth bubble, his wrath knew no bounds, but he no longer sought to seize it, he contented himself with barking at it, in all the accents of rage, until it burst. Professor Delbœuf wished to continue the experiment, and attempted to do so, but, to his great regret, was obliged to break off because of the frenzy into which the dog had worked himself. The moment that Professor Delbœuf laid his hand upon the vessel containing the soap-suds, the dog was no longer under his control. His condition was evidently due, Professor Delbœuf says, to a contradiction between the fact and his experience, that everything which is coloured is tangible. He was in the presence of the unknown, with all its mysteries and menaces; the unknown, which is the source of fear and of superstition.

Fear of thunder in animals due to sense of mystery.

According to Mr. Romanes the fear that many animals have of thunder is due, in some sort, to a sentiment of mystery. He once possessed a setter, which, he says, had not heard thunder until it had reached the age of eighteen months, when it almost died of fear. He has observed the same phenomenon in other animals, in diverse circumstances. The fright of the setter in question was so strong that, subsequently, when he heard some artillery practice and mistook it for thunder, his aspect was positively pitiable, and in the midst of the chase he endeavoured to hide himself, or to gain the house. After two or three experiences of thunder his horror of cannon became greater than ever, so much so that, in spite of his love for the chase, it was impossible to coax him out of his kennel, so great was his fear that the artillery practice might recommence and he be distant from the house. But the keeper, who had had a wide experience of dogs, assured Mr. Romanes that, if the dog were once taken to the battery and shown the veritable cause for a noise analogous to that of thunder, he would become once more fit for the hunt. Mr. Romanes does not doubt that such would have been the case, for once, when sacks of apples were being emptied, it made a noise in the house like distant thunder; the setter was very restless, but when Mr. Romanes took him where the sacks were being opened and showed him the real cause of the noise, his terror left him, and on his return to the house he listened to the low rumbling in perfect quietude.