CHAPTER VII
REASON
The simplest and truest definition of reason is, I take it, the intelligent correlation of ideation and action for definite purposes not instinctive. The casual observer and a very large majority of the creationists deny the presence of reason in the lower animals, and group all psychical manifestations that are to be observed in animals lower than man under the head of instinct, forgetting that almost every instinctive habit must have been, in the beginning, necessarily the result of conscious determination.
Instinct is, in a certain sense, a process of ratiocination, though its immediate operations may not be due to reason. Instinct involves mental operations; if it did not, it would be simply reflex action. It is heredity under a special name; the father transmits his mental peculiarities as well as his corporeal individualities to his offspring. The experiences of thousands of years leave their imprint on the succeeding generations, until deductions and conclusions drawn from these experiences no longer require any special act of reason in order to bring about certain results. These results, which were, at first, the outcome of special acts of ratiocination, or accidental happenings leading to the good of the creature or creatures in which they occurred, finally became habitual and instinctive.
These special acts of ratiocination are of daily, of hourly, occurrence in the lives of countless myriads of the lower animals, and escape our observation because of the obtuseness of our senses. Every now and then, however, the observer is able to chronicle such an act of reason, and thus adduce the proposition that if the creature or creatures were continually placed in surroundings requiring a like act of reason, that act would eventually become habitual and instinctive on the part of that creature or those creatures. I have witnessed hundreds of acts of intelligent ratiocination in the lower animals that were not called forth by experience and which had not a single faculty of heredity. For instance, several years ago I noticed that one of the combs in a beehive, owing to the extreme heat, had become melted at the top and was in great danger of falling to the floor. The bees had noticed this impending calamity long before I had, and had already set about averting it. They rapidly threw out a buttress or supporting pillar from the comb next to the one in danger, and joined it firmly to it, thus shoring it up and preventing its fall in a most effectual manner. When they had made everything strong and secure, they went to the top of the comb and reattached it to the ceiling of the hive. After this had been done to their satisfaction, they removed the shoring pillar and used the wax elsewhere. In this instance, there was an immediate adaptation of themselves to surrounding circumstances, in which they averted and prevented an utterly unforeseen and unheard-of catastrophe by means as effectual as they were intelligent. Could man do more or reason better? Here was an experience which had not happened to them in hundreds and hundreds of generations, perhaps; which, perhaps, had never happened to them before, and yet, when it did happen, their quick intelligence readily grasped the situation, and they at once set about remedying the evil.[77]
A mud-dauber wasp built a nest in my room, and used an open ventilating window as an entrance and exit. On one occasion this window happened to be closed, and the wasp, not noticing the clear glass, flew against it with great violence. She fell to the floor stunned, but when she had recovered from the effects of the blow, she flew here and there about the room as if looking for another exit. Finally, she discovered a small crevice in the casing, through which she at once crawled. She then went back and forth through this crack until she had become thoroughly familiar with the new road. She never again essayed the window, though it was left open the entire summer.
In this instance the wasp was taught by a single experience to seek out a new road. This experience was wholly new to her, consequently, she must have used correlative ideation for definite purposes in formulating her method of procedure. Although ants, bees, and wasps have highly developed memories, and seem to be likewise in possession of that peculiar function of the mind called by some psychologists "unconscious memory," through which they are, probably, enabled to transmit impressions of comparatively recent experiences to their offspring, I hardly think that the mud-dauber was influenced in her actions by any such inherited instinct. Such a conclusion seems to be unwarranted by the facts in the case. Mud-daubers may have bumped their heads against windows ever since windows came into existence, but not with sufficient frequency to cause them to possess an instinct that taught them to avoid windows.
Again, the ground wasp, whose hole between the bricks of a pavement I stopped with a wad of paper, and which learned to go down into the sulcus between the bricks and to pull the paper in the direction of its long axis in order to remove the obstruction, must have used correlative ideation in order to grasp the problem that was set her to solve.
From certain observation I am inclined to believe that psychical traits which are the result of thousands of years of experience before they become part and parcel of the human psychos may become psychic actualities in ants, bees, and wasps in the course of a few generations. The facility with which these creatures adapt themselves to new environments—in which their very organisms, physical and psychical, are changed to a certain extent—is abundant proof of the truth of this conclusion. All experiments with the Hymenoptera amid changed surroundings indicate an intelligent adaptation of themselves to such environment.
The ant is the only animal, except man, which has slaves and domestic animals. Their intelligence is so highly developed that they make a perfect success in rearing their cattle and capturing their slaves. The cattle of the ants are of the order Aphididæ. The herdsmen of these aphidian cattle can be seen patrolling the shrubs on which the aphides are grazing. On them devolves the care of the herds. They bring them out in the morning and carry them back at night. They gather the eggs of the aphides, carry them into a specially built nursery, attend them carefully until the young aphides are hatched out, and then carry them to the shrubs most liked by them for food. Some strange sense enables them to recognize one another—an ant of the same species, but coming from another nest, is immediately recognized as a stranger, and at once attacked. If the eggs of one ant colony are hatched out in another of the same species, the young ants are at once known to be strangers and intruders. This far transcends our intelligence. What mother could recognize her infant if it were born in the dark and she had never seen it? Again, if the larvæ of ants are removed, hatched outside of the nest, and then returned, the ants at once recognize them as kinsmen and receive them into the nest.