He held up his hand towards me, calling my attention to it with many a grimace and cry; he even felt it with his other hand, carefully separating the fingers and gently stroking them. On examination I discovered that the tips of two fingers were bruised and abraded; the little fellow had evidently had them caught in some way beneath the heel of my shoe. He quietly and patiently submitted while we dressed his wounded digits, but removed the bandages just as soon as he was returned to his cage, evidently having more faith in the curative qualities of his own saliva than in the medicaments of man.
In this instance, the monkey clearly indicated that he had been hurt; he pointed out the portion of his body where the injury was situated, and then allowed his friend to "doctor" the injury, although he did not evince an abiding faith in that friend's skill. In contradistinction to the mandril which evinced revenge, the capuchin showed that he was of a forgiving disposition, for, no sooner was he hurt, than he sought consolation from the very person who inflicted the injury.
An English observer, Captain Johnson, writes as follows, when speaking of a monkey which he had shot: "He instantly ran down to the lowest branch of a tree, as if he were going to fly at me, stopped suddenly, and coolly put his paw to the part wounded, and held it out, covered with blood, for me to see. I was so much hurt at the time that it has left an impression never to be effaced, and I have never since fired a gun at any of the tribe."[49]
Another observer, Sir William Hoste, records a similar case. One of his officers saw a monkey running along some rocks, holding her young one in her arms. He fired, and the animal fell. When he arrived at the place where she was lying, she clasped her young one closer, and pointed with her fingers to the hole in her breast made by the bullet. "Dipping her finger in the blood and holding it up, she seemed to reproach him with having been the cause of her pain, and also that of her young one, to which she frequently pointed."[50]
These observations would seem to indicate that monkeys are capable of feeling and of expressing sorrow and reproach. "So intense is the grief of female monkeys for the loss of their young, that it invariably caused the death of certain kinds kept under confinement by Brehm in North America."[51]
By the observant and analytical mind, the various psychical phenomena evinced by the lower animals are not regarded as being either wonderful or extraordinary. Man is a conceited, arrogant individual, and his place in nature has done much toward fostering and enlarging this self-conceit and arrogance. Even in the time of Moses this self-glorification was en evidence. The genesis of the world, as related by this famous historiographer, geographer, naturalist, theologian, and lawgiver, plainly shows this. At the present time, science declares, emphatically, that man is but a mammal, whose brain has undergone exceptional evolutionary development. He is but the younger kinsman of other mammals whose evolutionary development has sought other channels; these, in turn, are but younger kin of yet older animals, and so on backwards, to the beginning of life in bathybian protoplasm. The resistless forces of evolution have placed him where he is, and no amount of self-adulation can hide the scientific fact that he is not a special creation. All the creatures of the living world are kin, and that force which animated the first moneron, and which we call life, has been transmitted from creature to creature until the present day, absolutely unchanged. There is no reason for believing that life will ever be entirely extinguished, until conditions arise which will render the presence of this force impossible.
When we recognize the fact that intelligent ratiocination is but the product and the result of the psychical action of a certain substance called brain matter, and not the product and the result of the action of an essence or force unconnected with, or outside of, brain; and, furthermore, when we know that these lower animals have receptive ganglia analogous to those possessed by man, analogical deductions force us to the conclusion that these animals should possess mental emotions and functions similar to those of man.
The microscope shows that these animals have notochords, nervous systems, and ganglia, or brains. With a one-sixteenth objective, and an achromatic light condenser, I have been able to differentiate the gray matter in the brain of an ant, and even, on two occasions, to bring out the cells and filaments of the cortex. Here in the brain of an ant, is an anatomical and physiological similarity to the brain of man: therefore, it is reasonable to expect evidences of mental operations in the ant akin to those of man.
That we do find these evidences in abundance can no longer be denied. Sir John Lubbock chloroformed some Lasius niger belonging to his formicary. The other ants brought their anæsthetized comrades out of the nest and carried them away; they thought that they were dead. He made some other specimens of the same species intoxicated, and the ants carefully bore their helpless companions back into the nest. The care evinced in helping their intoxicated friends to reach the safe shelter of their nest undoubtedly indicates a sense of sympathy toward the afflicted individuals.
Ants frequently display sympathy for mutilated companions. Whether or not this feeling is ethical or material is not and can not be determined; the fact remains, however, that sympathy is evinced. I myself have observed it on many occasions. I removed the anterior pair of legs from a specimen of Lasius flavus, and placed her near the entrance to her nest. In a short time a companion came to her assistance, and, lifting her with her mandibles, carried her into the nest. A specimen of F. fusca, destitute of antennæ, was attacked and severely injured by an ant of another species. An ant of her own species soon came by. "She examined," says Lubbock, whom I quote, "the poor sufferer carefully, then picked her up tenderly and carried her into the nest. It would have been difficult for any one who witnessed the scene to have denied to this ant the possession of human feelings."[52]