CHAPTER IV
ANIMALS
Whilst philosophers and moralists have studied men, and naturalists animals, Darwin considered it necessary to collect information concerning both men and beasts simultaneously before making a biography of the human being. With the modesty so often characteristic of a great genius, the English naturalist acknowledges that “many of the views which have been advanced are highly speculative, and some no doubt will prove erroneous. False facts are highly injurious to the progress of science, for they often long endure; but false views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm, as everyone takes a salutary pleasure in proving their falseness; and when this is done, one path towards error is closed and the road to truth is often at the same time opened.”[33]
Although there is no doubt that the facts observed by Darwin and recorded in the Origin of Species, are perfectly correct, I hope to be able to dispose of the opinion that “man and animals follow parallel lines in their lives, but that man advances more quickly, and has taken his place in the front rank.”
Whilst making a short résumé of remarks which Noiré and other learned writers have made on animals, I also propose to draw a comparison between the two who are so closely connected—the superior and inferior animal.
Darwin was not alone in his endeavour to prove that there exists no essential difference between man and beast; some have even asserted that the intelligence of certain animals is not only equal to, but at times, superior to that of man. We must be on our guard, however, against those numerous anecdotes which have led even philosophers astray; we will also divest our minds of prejudice and preconceived notions, that we may introduce some order into ideas which have been disturbed by superficial observers and the makers of false systems, those enemies of true science; let us candidly own the smallness of our knowledge concerning the mind of an animal; we do not in the least know how they philosophise, nor how an ox recognises his stable door. Instead of having recourse to animals and seeking to draw parallels between their mental faculties and ours, let us examine ourselves to find out what passes in our own minds. We shall then discover that we never in reality perceive anything unless we can distinguish it from other things by means, if not of a word, yet of a sign; that is till we have passed through the four stages of sensation, perception, conception, and more important than all, for our present purpose, of naming. When it is once acknowledged that concepts are impossible without words, and that man alone amongst organised beings possesses the power of language, and that the mental faculties of animals are different from ours in kind, and not only in degree, it naturally follows that a genealogical descent of man from animals is an impossible assumption.
Formerly, in comparing the characteristics of man and animals it was contended that the latter were ruled by instinct in place of the reason which was the attribute of the former; and although an affirmation is not an explanation it appeared sufficiently plausible and was accepted. But the fact is that both man and beast possess instinct. If the spider weaves his net by instinct, a child takes his mother’s breast also by instinct; both are with regard to instinct at one level. Man involuntarily extends his arm to protect himself if he suddenly perceives an object near him on the point of striking him. “If we tear a spider’s web, and watch the spider first run from it in despair, then return and examine the mischief and endeavour to mend it. Surely we have the instinct of weaving controlled by observation, by comparison, by reflection, and by judgment.”[34]
No one has hitherto succeeded in explaining and analysing the instinct said to be in animals. Cuvier[35] and other naturalists have compared it with habit.[36] This comparison gives an accurate notion of the frame of mind under which an instinctive action is performed, but does not necessarily explain its origin.
As reason develops in man, instinct plays a less important part; whereas a cat chases a mouse, a bird flies, and fish swim by instinct from their birth to their last day; and the actions of ants, bees, and moles, do not cease to amaze us, because they are inseparable from their structure and their vital functions. The natural impulses which guide birds and insects in making their nests, hives, and storehouses, cocoons of silk with which they have so enriched our world and theirs, are the results of constant and repeated acts, during the course of innumerable generations. The fact of not distinguishing the instinct which is in man from that found in animals and thus attributing man’s conscious acts to the natural leanings which guide unconscious creatures, has perhaps caused Renan to assert that the monotheistic tendency of the Semitic race belongs to it by a religious instinct.
It is certain that impressions are received both by man and by animals; with both the knowledge of objects proceeds from the impressions made on the senses, thus transmitting the image to the intelligence; but there the likeness ends; the capacities differ. The animal remains the slave—in every sense of the word—of his organs; the sight of a bone to gnaw, the corner in which he lies, the signs of friendship that he receives from human beings, call forth in a dog a chain of feelings taking the place of the chain of ideas called out in man.
Man’s capabilities of introducing intermediaries between the intention and the fulfilment of his object witness to his wideness of mind, his experience of the past and prevision of the future; all those things that he owes to his power of imagination and conception even in the case of things having no real existence, or which do not exist as yet; he reproduces at will the outward likeness of what is not at the moment before him. Thus man who names an object, thinks it; but the animal from not possessing language cannot think it and cannot reproduce it when out of its sight.