The mental functions, which are indispensable to organic and to animal life properly so called, quickly attained the degree of development without which the species would have disappeared. On the contrary, the highest “fundamental dispositions” of our nature remained latent for a long time, and only manifested themselves by degrees. But if their development has been slow, it is, in return, continuous and indefinite. And these dispositions tend to preponderate, although the “inversion” of the primitive economy can never become complete. Humanity emerges progressively from animality. The highest civilization is then, at bottom, entirely in conformity with nature: for it is only the manifestation more and more marked of the most characteristic properties of our species. In this sense, our social solution must be understood “as the extreme term of a progression continued uninterruptedly throughout the whole living kingdom from the most simple forms of vegetable life, the predominance of the organic functions becoming less and less exclusive, in order in the first place to make room for the predominance of the animal functions properly so called, and finally for that of the intellectual and moral functions, whose development is the very definition of humanity.”[208]
Thus, the chain of being is uninterrupted. But Comte, as we know, did not accept Lamarck’s hypothesis. He believed in the fixity of species. Undoubtedly he admits in a measure which science will some day fix, acquisitions slowly incorporated into organisms by heredity. But he does not think that they will go so far as to transform species. The whole evolution of man must then be explained by its original constitution. Indeed, Comte here maintains, as everywhere in nature, the perfect correspondence between the statical and the dynamical point of view. The case of man cannot be an exception to this encyclopædic law, which is verified in all the orders of phenomena from the most simple to the most complex. As the whole line of the curve corresponds to the equation, so the whole development of humanity must correspond to the “fundamental nature” of man. On this condition alone is sociology possible as a science. Now positive sociology exists: therefore the postulate is justified.
II.
The theory of the relation between man and animals thus finds itself deduced from the general principles of positive philosophy. But it can also be verified a posteriori, through the criticism of the arguments of the adverse theory by means of observation and experience.
The first of these arguments and the one which in general makes the greatest impression, contrasts the instinct of animals with the intelligence of man. It represents instinct as blind and fatal, and intelligence as free and progressive. But this antithesis cannot withstand the examination of facts. Instinct is called too hastily a “fatal tendency of animals to the mechanical execution of actions which are uniformly determined by corresponding circumstances, and not requiring nor even admitting of any education properly so-called.” This fatal tendency does not exist. It is a gratuitous supposition, perhaps a remnant of the Cartesian theory concerning the automatism of animals. Georges Leroy, in his charming Lettres sur les animaux, has shown that in the mammals and in the birds of our districts, the fixity in the construction of habitations, in the habits of hunting, in the mode of migration, etc., only existed for naturalists who never left their study, or for inattentive observers.[209]
Undoubtedly, habits may become hereditary. But here we only have a phenomenon common to men and animals, and those habits are modified if the circumstances which have produced them come to change. It is in this sense alone that we can admit M. de Blainville’s formula: “L’instinct est la raison fixée, la raison est l’instinct mobile.” We must especially understand that instinct is not opposed to intelligence. What ought we really to indicate by instinct? A spontaneous impulse in a direction determined, independently of any foreign influence.” But in this sense, the word applies to the activity of any faculty whatever, to the intellectual faculties as well as to the others. There is no contrast between instinct and intelligence. We say of a child that he has the “instinct” of music, of drawing, of calculation, etc. In this sense man has certainly as many and more instincts than animals. If, on the other hand, we call intelligence the faculty of modifying our conduct according to the circumstances of each case, animals are, like man, more or less intelligent and reasonable. Otherwise they would be doomed to disappear very quickly.
But animals have no language! Another error in observation. The higher animals have a certain degree of language corresponding to the nature and to the extent of their relations. This language is no more fixed than the so-called instincts. The language of each social species is characterised by an arrest of development precisely like the society which this species tended to found. The limits of its progress, beyond which indeed it does not go, result from the whole of the obstacles which it encounters, in consequence of the competition with the other species, and particularly with the human species, without naming those limits which the imperfection of organs may create.[210]
Many animals are capable of experiencing needs without regard to a useful purpose. For instance, they like to exercise their animal functions for the pleasure of doing so, that is to say, to play. Some among them experience æsthetic impressions. They are also, without the slightest doubt, capable of altruistic feelings. Sometimes these feelings show themselves in the shape of domestic affection, and tend to make a solitary life unbearable to the individual. Family life then becomes permanent. Sometimes an animal devotes itself to the service of a superior race. Do we know to what lengths the progress of altruism would go in certain animal species, if their intelligence could have been more developed, and if their surroundings had allowed of their more extensive social progress?[211]
Finally, animals even possess a rudiment of religion, if by this we understand an endeavour to interpret the phenomena which strike them. When sufficiently developed to manifest, where there is sufficient leisure, a certain speculative activity, they reach spontaneously, in the same way as we do ourselves, a kind of low fetichism, which consists in supposing that external bodies are animated by will and by passions.[212] “A child, a savage, a dog, a monkey, seeing a watch for the first time, will see in it a kind of animal.” But Comte at once adds that the chief difference between man and animals lies in the impossibility for the latter to emerge from the lowest degree of fetichism, and to rise to a real religion. No animal society “combines sociability with intelligence sufficiently ever to constitute a religious association.”[213] Comte would probably have approved of M. de. Quatrefages’ definition in which he calls man a religious animal. The decisive step was taken on the day when man’s intellect passed from fetichism to astrolatry.[214] That “great creation of the gods” was the first trial in purely speculative activity made by his mind. The whole subsequent development of humanity arose from this.
Thus, the arguments which claim to establish an insuperable distance between man and animals, generally rest upon imperfectly observed facts. On the contrary, in animals, we find the more or less visible rudiments of everything which has evolved so magnificently in humanity. We cannot describe in detail how and why this species has become, so to speak, incomparable and incommensurable with the others. It must have got the upperhand, not in virtue of this and that particular advantage, (although an important one), such as the upright position or the possession of a hand, but on account of the co-operation of many favourable conditions, of which the totality allowed, so to speak, of an almost indefinite development. From a certain moment, there was a definite stoppage in the social evolution of the other species, and the progress of the human species was decisive. We cannot estimate the initial influence of the various conditions according to the present development of the several human faculties, for this development is especially due to the social life of which those conditions allowed. Each superiority of man may have been very little defined originally. Time, the action of the other higher functions, exercise, heredity have played their part here. The “human attributes” must then have grown constantly, ever consolidating the “ascendency” which they had determined. At the same time the corresponding attributes must have diminished in the rival species, as they were brought to a standstill in their development. Undoubtedly, by degrees, the interval has widened until it has become a gap so broad and so deep as to make it impossible to imagine how it could ever have been crossed. But biology and sociology help us to judge better. We must see this, in some detail, in connection with the important question of language.