I am unable to follow Professor Groos in this view, which I find it rather difficult to reconcile with such statements as that already quoted, in which he says that the female’s “tantalizing change from allurement to resistance seems to include an element of a mischievous playfulness.” It is more probable that instinctive coyness and reluctance afford the conditions under which experience of the pleasures of courtship may be gained. It is said that a flirt, when taken to task for her conduct at ball and picnic, justified it by asking demurely how else she was to gain that wide experience of men which was absolutely necessary to guide her in exercising a wise and becoming choice. Let us hope that when the fateful time arrived she acted with due deliberation. Now the coquetry of birds affords the opportunity of gaining just such experience in the light of which a perceptual choice may be made.
Let us remember that courtship is, as Darwin said, “a prolonged affair,” and that coyness is a means to its prolongation. And let us remember that in simple cases, as also in more complex matters, the intelligent exercise of choice depends upon what Dr. Stout terms the acquisition of meaning. “The chicken does not, at first,” he says,[155] “distinguish between what is edible and what is not. This it has to learn by experience. It will at the outset peck at and seize all worms and caterpillars indiscriminately. There is a particular caterpillar called the cinnabar caterpillar. When this is first presented to the chicken it is pecked at and seized, like other similar objects. But as soon as it is fairly seized it is dropped in disgust. When next the chicken sees the caterpillar, it looks at it suspiciously, and refrains from pecking. Now, what has happened in this case? The sight of the cinnabar caterpillar re-excites the total disposition left behind by the previous experience of pecking at it, seizing it, and ejecting it in disgust. Thus the effect of these experiences [what I have termed the conscious situation] is revived. The sight of the cinnabar caterpillar has acquired a meaning.” Take now the case of a coy hen bird, to whom several males pay court. The sight of this one, behaving after his kind, excites in small degree the sexual impulse and emotions. Her heart beats but little the faster for all his antics, her respiratory rhythm is scarcely affected, her feathers, like her feelings, remain comparatively unruffled. He has acquired meaning from the reaction to his presence; it is not, however, a very attractive meaning. But that other, perhaps from mere persistency, perhaps because he is more “vigorous, defiant, and mettlesome” (she, at any rate, certainly knows not why), deeply stirs her organic being, sets her all aglow, and breaks down the barriers of her coyness. And this he does because he is the centre of a conscious situation which has acquired, through her experience of his presence, a meaning and an interest that are at last irresistibly attractive. It is a choice from impulse, not the result of deliberation; but it is a choice which is determined by the emotional meaning of the conscious situation. And it is the reiterated revival of the associated emotional elements which generates an impulse sufficiently strong to overcome her instinctive coyness and reluctance.
And this coyness is the natural correlative of the ardour of the male, an ardour increased by his courtship antics. If the female yielded readily and at once, the behaviour of courtship would never have been evolved. Superabundant vigour in the male is, no doubt, a favourable condition of courtship, as it is of play; but neither is it a sine quâ non, nor in any case does it, or can it, afford any guidance of behaviour into just those specific channels in which we find it setting during the breeding season. If sexual selection be not a vera causa of the specific direction, we have at present no other hypothesis which in any degree fits the facts. And to the criticism of those who, like Mr. W. H. Hudson, urge that dance and song, and aërial evolutions in birds, are seen at times when the immediate business of courtship forms no part of the situation, Professor Groos’s theory of play affords a sufficient answer. If courtship, whose biological end is of such supreme importance, forms a central feature in the serious business of animal life; and if play is the preparation and practice for behaviour of biological importance; we should expect to find manifestations (with an emotional difference, and no doubt many differences in detail) of all those actions, the due performance of which, in the supreme hour of courtship, will alone enable the adequately prepared and well-practised male to overcome the reluctance of the female, and beget offspring to transmit his instinctive and emotional tendencies.
IV.—Animal “Æsthetics” and “Ethics”
In this section we shall consider some types of behaviour which suggest situations that contain the germs of æsthetics and ethics, with a view to determining, so far as possible, the principles on which they should be interpreted. This is a peculiarly difficult subject; for we are endeavouring to get behind the behaviour, and to infer the mental conditions which accompany it, and through which it assumes its distinctive character. The difficulty is twofold: first, because, as Dr. Stout puts it,[156] “human language is especially constructed to describe the mental states of human beings, and this means that it is especially constructed so as to mislead us when we attempt to describe the workings of minds that differ in any great degree from the human;” and secondly, because, to quote the same careful thinker,[157] “the besetting snare of the psychologist is the tendency to assume that an act or attitude which in himself would be the natural manifestation of a certain mental process must, therefore, have the same meaning in the case of another. The fallacy lies in taking this or that isolated action apart from the totality of conditions under which it appears. It is particularly seductive when the animal mind is the subject of inquiry.”
We must, therefore, base our method of procedure on some definite principle. The canon of interpretation which I have elsewhere suggested[158] is, that we should not interpret animal behaviour as the outcome of higher mental processes, if it can be fairly explained as due to the operation of those which stand lower in the psychological scale of development. To this it may be added—lest the range of the principle be misunderstood—that the canon by no means excludes the interpretation of a particular act as the outcome of the higher mental processes, if we already have independent evidence of their occurrence in the agent. Now, the conclusion to which we are led by direct experiment and a critical study of the actions of animals whose life-history is known to us is, that most of their behaviour—perhaps all—is due to what Dr. Stout terms the perceptual, as opposed to the ideational, exercise of cognition. Their behaviour can be explained without having recourse to the hypothesis that they reflect, and attain to ideal schemes as the result of abstraction and generalization consciously directed to this end. Rather than repeat what I have already said, I will quote Dr. Stout’s summary of the position to which he, too, has been led. “The vast interval,” he says,[159] “which separates human achievements, so far as they depend on human intelligence, from animal achievements, so far as they depend on animal intelligence, is connected with the distinction between perceptual and ideational process. Animal activities are either purely perceptual, or, in so far as they involve ideas, these ideas serve only to prompt and guide an action in its actual execution. On the other hand, man constructs ‘in his head,’ by means of trains of ideas, schemes of action before he begins to carry them out. He is thus capable of overcoming difficulties in advance. He can cross a bridge before he comes to it.”
It has already been stated that in the intelligent behaviour of animals under man’s teaching he is the rational agent, they his willing slaves. This may be here again illustrated to enforce the distinction drawn by Dr. Stout in the above passage. Those who have seen a shepherd’s dog working sheep on a moorland fell, and have taken the trouble to ascertain how the results he sees have been attained, will appreciate, on the one hand, how well the dog knows and responds to the signals of his master, and, on the other hand, how completely all initiation is in the master’s mind, not that of the keenly intelligent dog. Those who merely witness such a performance without inquiry or investigation will probably misunderstand the whole matter. In the north of England competitions are not uncommon where, say, three sheep have to be driven over a definite course, between certain posts and round others, through narrow passages and into a fold—all within a certain time limit. At such a competition success depends on two things: first, the training of the dog to respond at once to some six or eight whistle-signals, often accompanied by gestures and movements of a stick; and secondly, the judgment of the shepherd. The signals, given in different whistle-tones and inflections, have for the dog meaning, such as drive straight on, from this side, from that, stop, lie down, creep, and so forth. The dog’s whole business is to obey these signals. And the instant response of a well-trained dog is admirable. But in the whole proceeding he is merely the executant of his master’s orders. He originates no important step. And if you listen to the criticisms by other shepherds during a competition you will find that they are mainly passed on the judgment shown by the master, and only in palpable failures in obedience on the behaviour of the dog. The intelligent animal is what he is trained to be—one whose natural powers are under the complete control of his master with whom the whole plan of action lies.
Since, then, in the cognitional field we find no independent evidence of the higher processes, we are bound, in accordance with our canon, to interpret emotional situations on similar principles, unless we find in them outstanding facts which cannot be explained in this way.
In considering the pairing situation we urged that the framing of an ideal of beauty to which a given suitor approaches, or from which he falls short, is unnecessary for the interpretation of the facts. We should not in strictness, therefore, speak of “an appreciation of beauty” or “a taste for the beautiful” in birds, since such expressions almost inevitably imply that these creatures have reached some conception of beauty as distinguished from and contrasted with ugliness. At the same time the hen certainly appears to enjoy the situation of which the plumed cock, attitudinizing thus, forms the centre of interest—through which he acquires meaning. Although, therefore, there is probably no ideal or standard of beauty, there are afforded the data in experience from which, were the bird capable of reflection, such an ideal might, in ideational sublimation, be derived. Before comparison, abstraction, and generalization can be applied, in the reflective laboratory of thought, there must be suitable experiences to form the raw material on which these rational processes can be exercised. Long ere, in the course of mental evolution, the correlative conceptions implied in the phrase “beautiful or ugly” had taken definite form, perceptual situations must have arisen, where, by direct appeal to the senses, by the diffused effects of stimulation and their accompanying feeling-tone, and by the natural satisfaction of mere impulse, the foundations were laid of that appreciation of the beautiful which forms the reflective superstructure we build upon them. Indeed, the pleasure and satisfaction attending particular situations, as they severally arise, appear to contain the perceptual germs of what in later development becomes æsthetic appreciation.
The bird which, having completed its nest, eyes it with apparent satisfaction, may well have the germs of that which, when rendered schematic in our thought, we call taste. Dr. Gould, indeed, states that certain humming-birds decorate their nests “with the utmost taste,” weaving into their structure beautiful pieces of lichen. And the gardener bower-bird collects in front of its bower flowers and fruits of bright and varied colours. What meaning these carry in the conscious situation we do not know; we can only suppose that they incidentally contribute to the heightening of the sexual impulse, and have been evolved as a means of stimulation to the biological end towards which sexual selection is unconsciously directed. For it is probable that all the situations with which pleasure and satisfaction are in high degree associated are, in primary origin, closely connected with behaviour directed, through natural or sexual selection, to some definite biological end, or, in brief, with behaviour of biological value. And it is, perhaps, not improbable that the states of consciousness most highly toned with strong emotion have their origin in those situations which arise amid the pairing, parental, and companiable relations of animal life.
We have already said that the companion, as the nucleus of a situation, is a thing which reacts in altogether special ways, so that it becomes differentiated from other things as something the meaning of which, and the interest in which, are sui generis and unique in type. It becomes the centre of emotional situations, which we ascribe to rivalry, emulation, jealousy, and so forth. And we have also drawn attention to the view that the genetic order, so far as there is an order, is not first the ego and then the alter, but first the mother and companions and then through them the self. We learn to know ourselves only through knowing others. We must now ask the question—a question which must be answered before we can touch on the possible ethics of animals—how far, and in what sense, the social animal regards others as of like nature to itself, and capable also of like feelings and emotions. Stated in this form we must, I think, answer the question in the negative. The expression, “of like nature to itself,” implies that the self has already taken more or less definite form, and that the animal infers that, since the alter behaves and reacts in like manner to the ego, it also is an ego. This is distinctly an act of reasoning. As Clifford phrased it, the companion becomes an eject. We can never by direct experience become acquainted with the feelings of others, but we can endow them ejectively with personality analogous to our own.
But, though it is exceedingly doubtful whether any animal can regard its companion as an “eject,” may there not be a perceptual anticipation of the ideational process that comes with later-developed reflection? A decade ago I gave the following answer to this question: “For myself, I cannot doubt that animals project into each other the shadows of the feelings of which they are themselves conscious.”[160] Professor Mark Baldwin speaks of the stage at which this takes place, as the “projective stage” of development. “Now, in the fact,” he says,[161] “of herding, common life and arrangements for the protection of the herd, animal societies of various kinds, animal division of labour, etc.,—whatever be the origin of it,—we have what seems to be such an epoch in animal life. These creatures show a real recognition of one individual by another, and a real community of life and reaction, which is quite different from the individualism of purely sensational and unsocial consciousness. And yet it is just as different from the reflective organization of human society, in which the self-consciousness and personal volition of the individual play the most important rôle. I see no way of accounting for the gregarious instinct anywhere, except on the assumption of such a projective epoch of animal consciousness.”
Now, in endeavouring to realize how the situation feels to an animal in this projective stage, the first difficulty we encounter is that of divesting ourselves of those products of reflection which characterize our own mental situation; and to avoid what Dr. Stout, in the passage above quoted,[162] terms the psychologist’s besetting snare. The second difficulty is to grasp that, in experience, subject and object are inseparable, however clearly we may learn to perceive that they are distinguishable aspects of that experience. If the subject is eventually regarded as that which experiences, and the object as that which is experienced, it is surely obvious that each is necessary to the other. But, before these different aspects are clearly distinguished, there is, in the perceptual stage of mental development, what we may term a distribution of the items of experience among the centres of interest.
In illustration of the kind of distribution which we may suppose to come naturally to an animal, in what Professor Baldwin terms the projective epoch, let us take three animal situations: first, a chick pecks at a soldier-beetle, and finds it nauseous; secondly, a hen-bird hears the joyous song of her mate; thirdly, a puppy in play bites its companion, and receives a painful nip in return. Each of these constitutes an experience-situation; assuming that the results of the experience are distributed, how may we suppose them to be allocated?
In the first case, the soldier-beetle is the centre of interest in the situation. As the situation develops, the element of nauseousness is introduced. As Dr. Stout puts it, this is what gives the soldier-beetle meaning. Can it be doubted that, if there be any distribution, the nauseousness, though it is altogether what we have learnt to call a subjective affection, attaches itself to the soldier-beetle? The plain man, unsophisticated by Berkeleyan discussion, says simply, in such cases, “The thing is nauseous.” And this probably indicates the naïve and primitive distribution. Turning now to our second example, when the hen hears the courtship song the mate is the centre of a situation suffused with pleasurable feeling. How is the joyousness, again essentially subjective for our later thought, distributed? Surely, if at all, on the mate who forms the centre of interest. This it is which gives him meaning. The joy of the bearer is projected on to the singer. Not entirely, perhaps; the hen literally, on Professor James’s theory of the emotions, feels her heart-beat quickened by his presence, and the delightful ruffling of her feathers. But our aim is not to deny that the germs of the subjective arise in the midst of such situations, but to contend that some at least of the joyous character of the situation attaches to the song of the singer, that some of the feeling is projected, and that this is what gives the mate meaning. In our third case, the playful puppy bites his companion, and is sharply bitten in return. Pain enters into the coalescent situation as a whole. How is it distributed? In the phraseology of association, the nip he gives is closely linked with the pain he receives. By coalescence the pain and the nip form parts of the developed situation. But the companion is the centre of interest. And part of the pain is probably projected on this centre. That such projection actually occurs is rendered probable by such cases as the following, which was told me some years ago. A child, whose exact age I have forgotten if I then ascertained, was pricked by a pin, and he said, “Pin ’urted; poor pin.” It is, indeed, not unlikely that with animals the outward projection of feeling is widely distributed over inanimate, as well as animate, objects, and that its due restriction comes far later in development, of which the so-called personification of lifeless things by savages may be a relic. In any case, the give-and-take of play in young animals, and the after-earnest of courtship and fighting, would seem to afford ample opportunity for the external and internal distribution of feeling which sows the seed in perceptual life of that which blossoms into self and alter in the reflective life of ideational thought.
Although, therefore, an animal cannot conceive its companion as another self of similar nature, and with like passions to his own, yet a considerable share of the feeling-element of the conscious situation is projected on to that companion as the chief centre of interest. And if it be said that this is his feeling and not his neighbour’s, the objection will be seen to lose its force, so soon as it is realized that even man has no experience of any feelings save his own. The only way we can reach fellow-feeling is through sympathy; and sympathy has its roots in the projective process we have endeavoured to describe. We endow our neighbours with natures as sensitive to pain and pleasure as our own. This is a pre-requisite to the social relationships termed ethical. But when we hear people say, and find even Mr. Romanes putting on deliberate record,[163] that “the feelings which prompt a cat to torture a captured mouse can only be assigned to the category to which, by common consent, they are ascribed—delight in torturing for torture’s sake,” I venture to think that common consent, if such it be, is wrong. As I said a dozen years ago,[164] before Professor Groos had so carefully elaborated his theory of play, “the cat or kitten plays with the mouse not from innate cruelty, but for the sake of getting some little practice in the most important business of cat life. Only man, who has the capacity for nobler things, can be cruel for cruelty’s sake;” and this is the direction in which Dr. Groos’s opinion[165] tends to set. Mr. Romanes might have learnt a lesson in caution from his sister, who at first attributed a sense of shame to the capuchin she so carefully studied, but subsequently was led to adopt a simpler interpretation. “He bit me in several places to-day,” she says, in her admirable diary,[166] “but he seemed ashamed of himself afterwards, hiding his face in his arms, and sitting quiet for a time.” She adds, however, in a footnote: “On subsequent observation, I find this quietness was not due to shame at having bit me; for whether he succeeds in biting any person or not, he always sits quiet and dull-looking after a fit of passion, being, I think, fatigued.”
Shame is an ethical feeling. And as we have briefly discussed the germs of æsthetics in animals, so we may now as briefly consider the germs of ethics. In its developed form ethics is one of the “normative sciences” involving standards of right and wrong. It is, as Professor Mackenzie says,[167] “the science of the ideal in conduct.” It involves a standard of “ought,” the product of reflection and generalization. Conduct is compared with the ideal, and perceived to be either below, up to, or perhaps beyond, the normal standard accepted by civilized mankind. This involves a judgment; and so far as conduct is shaped in accordance with the ideal we attribute the guidance to ethical motives. Such ideals, such judgments, and the control of conduct through the play of such motives, are probably beyond the mental capacities of animals. They belong to the ideational stage of mental development, when the conative tendency becomes volitional; not to the perceptual stage, when it is impulsive. They do not enter into the conscious situation as it takes form in the animal mind. Behaviour has not in them acquired ethical meaning, since in developed ethics, as normative, such meaning always has reference to the norm, or standard. A real sense of shame implies that our acts have fallen below our ideal.
It may be said that we cannot prove that animals do not frame such ideals. But, if we accept the canon of interpretation above laid down, what has to be proved is that they do frame them. Is there any case among the hundreds that are popularly adduced to show that dogs are ashamed of themselves, that they possess a sense of justice, that they feel the prick of conscience, that on the one hand they know when they have done wrong, or on the other hand enjoy a sense of conscious rectitude—is there any particular case so described in the popular phraseology of anecdote, which could not be more simply described as the direct outcome of the coalescent situation, without the introduction of any implied reference to a standard of behaviour reached by reflective thought? The pug that has taken a nap on the drawing-room sofa, leaps down and slinks off with a “guilty” look on his master’s approach. One can surely picture the previous situations, and be tolerably certain that they contained an element of reproof or something more energetic. The poodle that has successfully performed his tricks bounds to his mistress with an air of duty well performed. Has he never been petted and patted under such circumstance? Routine in many animals—so often creatures of habit—begets a customary sequence, the breach of which is at once felt. To this I ventured[168] to ascribe the conduct of the turnspit dog reported by Arago. He refused with bared teeth to enter out of his turn the drum by which the spit was rotated. The companion dog was put in for a few moments and then released; whereupon the dog which before had been so refractory seemed satisfied that his turn for drudgery had come, and, entering the wheel of his own accord, began turning the spit as usual. The bared teeth may be here perhaps ascribed to an outraged sense of justice. But is it not a more simple, and just as probable, supposition that the behaviour was due to breach of customary routine. A trainer with whom I had some conversation on this matter pointed out a collie bitch, and said, “If I put her through her tricks in the usual order she does them like an angel; but if I try and make her alter the order she snaps and sulks like the devil.”
I have elsewhere[169] expressed my opinion that, though animals may behave in ways which may tend to mislead us, they do not act with intent to deceive. A dog is described[170] as “showing a deliberate design of deceiving” because he hobbled about the room as if lame and suffering from pain in his foot. But may not this be simply due to the fact that chance experience had led to a situation through which a hobbling gait had acquired the meaning of more petting and attention than usual? To behave with deceit as a deliberate motive implies the idea that the action will be interpreted as having a significance different from that which it really has. It is only possible on the ideational plane of mental development. It implies, too, from the ethical standpoint, a conscious departure from the standard of truth. The black that is acted has conscious reference and relation to the white that is not black. Few, however, will credit animals with deceit of this fully conscious and deliberate kind. Like the fibs of little children, the apparent deceit of animals is probably merely behaviour which has been associated in experience with pleasant results.
The case of shamming sickness, quoted from K. Russ, is thus interpreted by Professor Groos.[171] And yet he adds, “When we see deception used so effectively to serve practical ends, examples of which are very common, it can hardly be doubted that there is in all probability more consciousness of shamming in play than we have any means of demonstrating.” And elsewhere in the same work he observes,[172] “Many a grown animal still takes pleasure in the mock combats that he learned in youth. From a psychological point of view this phenomenon is especially noteworthy, from the fact that the adult animal, though already well acquainted with real fighting, still knows how to keep within the bounds of play, and must therefore be consciously playing a rôle, making believe.” I fail, however, to see the justification for the “therefore.” Surely the difference of behaviour in this example, and in other such examples, is sufficiently explained as the outcome of diverse situations, without having recourse to anything so psychologically complex as the conscious self-illusion of make-believe—interesting and important as this is in the psychology of children. To suppose that a monkey who nurses a bit of blanket has any ideas about its being a make-believe baby is not to interpret the behaviour of animals in accordance with the canon we have adopted for our guidance.
To return to the “ethics” of animals. I have urged that ethical ideas, properly so called, have no place in their psychology. But just as the pleasure and satisfaction attending particular situations, as they severally arise, appear to contain the perceptual germs of what in later development becomes æsthetic appreciation; so, too, do they also contain the perceptual germs of what becomes, through reflection in man, ethical approbation. And the situations in which these ethical germs must be sought are those which entail behaviour for the good of the social community. Indeed, we may go so far as to say that the perceptual foundations of ethics are laid in the social instincts. The satisfaction or dissatisfaction arising from the performance or non-performance of instinctive behaviour, evolved for the biological end of the preservation of the social community, is the perceptual embryo from which conscience is developed. Professor Mackenzie has indicated the ambiguities in the use of the term “conscience.” “It is,” he says,[173] “sometimes used to express the fundamental principles on which the moral judgment rests; at other times it expresses the principles adopted by a particular individual; at other times it means ‘a particular kind of pleasure or pain felt in perceiving our own conformity or nonconformity to principle.’[174] This last seems to me,” adds Mr. Mackenzie, “the most convenient acceptation of the term, except that I should prefer to say simply that it is a feeling of pain accompanying and resulting from our nonconformity to principle.” According to this definition the existence of a principle or ideal is presupposed; and the fact that Professor Mackenzie lays stress upon the pain of nonconformity, shows that the ideal is a high one. In the case of the animal, however, such an ideal of right conduct has probably not taken form. But Mr. Mackenzie also speaks of the “quasi-conscience” begotten of custom. This comes nearer to the feeling which animals may be supposed to have when their behaviour does not accord with that which through instinct or habit is the usage of the community. And if, as seems to be shown by observation, animals sometimes punish the breaches of such usage—when, for example, cats punish their kittens for uncleanliness—the quasi-conscience will assume a more developed form.
We may say, then, that the perceptual data are given in animal experience from which, in ideational sublimation, ethical ideals may be derived by a process of reflection and generalization. As in the case of æsthetics, so in that of ethics; long ere, in the course of mental evolution, the correlative conceptions implied in the phrase “right or wrong” had taken definite form, perceptual situations must have arisen in which behaviour carried with it the feelings of satisfaction or the reverse which laid the foundations of that approbation of the right which forms the superstructure we build upon them by the exercise of reflective thought.
V.—The Evolution of Feeling and Emotion
“Whatever conditions,” says Dr. Stout,[175] “further and favour conation in the attainment of its end, yield pleasure. Whatever conditions obstruct conation in the attainment of its end, are sources of displeasure. This is the widest generalization which we can frame, from a purely psychological point of view, as regards the conditions of pleasure and displeasure respectively.” Here Dr. Stout seems carefully to avoid the commonly accepted and much advertised conclusion, that pleasure and pain (to use this more familiar word as the antithesis of pleasure) are themselves the end of conative endeavour. And he is so far right that they by no means constitute the sole or indeed the primary end of all conative process. Attention is a conative act; but its primary end is not pleasure, but rather, as Dr. Stout says,[176] the fuller presentation of the object. No doubt this brings pleasure; but the fuller presentation comes first, and carries the pleasure with it. Instinctive response to felt stimulus falls within the conative attitude. In it there is that “inherent tendency to pass beyond itself and become something different,” which Dr. Stout assigns to conation as its chief characteristic. But the end is not pleasure, but simply the instinctive behaviour. And if we say that the attainment of this end does bring satisfaction, which is a form of pleasure, Dr. Stout would probably reply that this is rather a result of the process than its true end.
Now, in such cases, what we are really dealing with is a class of organic processes having conscious accompaniments. No doubt the conscious accompaniments are of importance; they certainly cannot be neglected by the psychologist: but their feeling-tone does not constitute that which makes instinct run its course. And I have introduced the subject for present discussion in this way to reinforce what has already been repeatedly urged in the foregoing pages, that individual behaviour, in its first intent, is a biological legacy with ends predetermined through heredity. The inherent tendency to pass beyond itself and become something different, which for the old psychology was a heaven-sent impulse, or, as Addison said, “an immediate impression from the first Mover and the Divine energy acting in the creatures,” becomes for the new psychology an organic bequest. But the attainment of ends thus already predetermined has feeling-tone, both as process and in its resulting consciousness, and this feeling-tone serves to modify, through the situation it introduces, future behaviour, and thus, in a sense, affords a new end to subsequent conation.
“Life,” wrote James Martineau,[177] “is a cluster of wants physical, intellectual, affectional, moral, each of which may have, and all of which may miss, the fitting object. Is the object withheld or lost? there is pain: is it restored or gained? there is pleasure: does it abide or remain constant? there is content. The two first are cases of disturbed equilibrium, and are so far dynamic that they will not rest till they reach the third, which is their posture of stability and their true end.” This is an adequate description of the essential features in conative process. But in genetic precedence, as in individual development, the physical wants come first, and, at the outset of behaviour, the satisfaction or content is not and cannot be foreseen, since it has never yet entered into experience. To adopt a distinction suggested by Professor Mackenzie,[178] the conation is purposive, since we see that an end is involved, but not purposeful, since there is no definite consciousness of the end aimed at. But when experience has introduced feeling-tone into the situation, we may say that this, in a sense, introduces a new end to subsequent behaviour.
Mr. Herbert Spencer has said[179] that pleasure is that which we seek to bring into consciousness and retain there; pain, that which we seek to get out of consciousness and keep out. May we assert, then, that, in the modification of behaviour due to experience, the pleasure to be gained or the pain to be avoided is the psychological end? Certainly not without qualification, unless we be among those who are content to accept any form of words which gives a general sort of notion of the kind of thing which we suppose is meant, and which is probably more or less correct. We want here and now to get clear ideas, and to express them with some approach to accuracy. To say that pleasure is the psychological end of intelligent behaviour is to put the matter too subjectively and in too abstract a form. Professor Mackenzie has clearly indicated the ambiguity in the word “pleasure.” “Pleasure,” he says,[180] “is sometimes understood to mean agreeable feeling, or the feeling of satisfaction, and sometimes it is understood to mean an object which gives satisfaction. The hearing of music is sometimes said to be a pleasure, but of course the hearing of music is not a feeling of satisfaction; it is an object that gives satisfaction. Generally, it may be observed that when we speak of ‘pleasures’ in the plural, or rather in the concrete, we mean objects that give satisfaction; whereas when we speak of ‘pleasure’ in the abstract, we more often mean the feeling of satisfaction which such objects bring with them.” May we not go a step further, but entirely in the same direction, and say that pleasure is a constituent part of the concept self as an object of thought or desire; that its proper sphere is in the ideational consciousness; and that, as we interpret the animal mind, it has no place as such therein? The hedonist regards pleasure as the most excellent and distinctive characteristic of his ideal self and his ideal community. But animals have not risen or fallen to the level of hedonism. Pleasure is not for them a motive of conduct, though nice objects, as such, are attractive, and through them impulse acquires direction and force.
If, in animal psychology, we are to use the words pleasure and pain (as the antithesis of pleasure)—and they seem more properly to belong to a plane of mental development to which animals probably have not attained—we may say that the pleasure or the pain which attaches to any centre of interest in the situation is that which gives it attractive or repellent meaning; it furthers conation either towards or, as Hobbes would say, fromwards. But if we put the matter in this somewhat abstract form, let us keep in view, if it be only in the background of our thought, the kind of concrete example which may be adduced in its illustration—the dog with his attractive bone, the kitten that has raced off at sight of him, the cock-sparrow with trailing wings hopping after his mate, the falcon stooping on her quarry, the rabbit diving into his burrow at sight of the fox, and so forth. If we have such cases in view, where the centre of the situation has acquired or is acquiring meaning, a meaning which in large degree attaches to the external nucleus of the situation with only the germs of subjective reference, we may, perhaps, summarize the position by saying that in each case some pleasure to be gained or some pain to be avoided is the psychological end of conation.
But in each case the conation has also a biological end—the preservation and conservation of the race. “An animal,” said Darwin,[181] “may be led to pursue that course which is most beneficial to the species by suffering, such as pain, hunger, thirst, or fear; or by pleasure, as in eating and drinking, and in the propagation of the species; or by both combined, as in the search for food.” The important point here to notice is that the two ends agree—the psychological end of the attainment of pleasure and the avoidance of pain, and the biological end of race preservation. Under the joint influence of pleasure and pain, the needle of animal life sets towards the pole of beneficial action.
This consonance of end was in old days ascribed to the beneficent foresight of the Creator. The modern view, that it is a product of evolution, does not necessarily ascribe it to any other ultimate cause. For many still piously hold that evolution is only a name which we give to the method of creation. And there is not a fact or generalization in science by which such a conclusion can be disproved, for the premises lie outside the field of scientific inquiry. But the consonance of end is, for science, a remarkable fact, and one worthy of attentive consideration.
We have already seen that, if the claim for the inheritance of acquired characters be, on the evidence, judged unproven, and if instinct cannot be ascribed to transmitted habit, or regarded as a legacy of that which has been ancestrally acquired, the only scientific explanation of instinctive behaviour is one which involves the principle of natural selection. But no one doubts that, in the course of experience, animals acquire modes of procedure which are beneficial to the race. This is well seen in the play of animals as interpreted by Professor Groos. Now, why do animals play? From the psychological point of view, because they like it; from the biological point of view, because they thus gain practice and preparation for the serious business of their after-life. But why do they like it? because, under natural selection, those who did not like it, and therefore did not play, proved unfit for life’s struggle, and were eliminated. Suppose that an animal were born with a rooted hereditary aversion to everything nutritious and an inherited hunger for anything harmful and unfit for food. What chance would it stand of survival? Hereditary likes and dislikes determine the general course of acquired behaviour, just as hereditary nerve-connections determine the course of instinctive behaviour. Wherein, then, lies the difference between the two? In the fact that in the one case the nerve-connections are transmitted ready-made, while in the other they result from association or coalescence in the course of individual life. But in both cases the pursuit and attainment of the beneficial brings satisfaction.
Now, the consonance of end has long been regarded as an inevitable deduction from the hypothesis of evolution. “That pains are correlatives of actions injurious to the organism,” wrote Mr. Herbert Spencer in his “Principles of Psychology,”[182] “while pleasures are the correlatives of actions conducive to its welfare, is an induction not based on the vital functions only. It is an inevitable deduction from the hypothesis of evolution, that races of sentient creatures could have come into existence under no other conditions. Those races of beings only can have survived in which, on the average, agreeable or desired feelings went along with activities conducive to the maintenance of life, while disagreeable and habitually avoided feelings went along with activities directly or indirectly destructive of life, and there must ever have been, other things being equal, the most numerous and long-continued survivals among races in which these adjustments of feelings to actions were the best, tending ever to perfect adjustment.” And he safeguards the position by adding: “It is frequently taken for granted that the beneficial actions secured must be actions beneficial to the individual; whereas the only necessity is that they shall be beneficial to the race.”
This aspect of the consonance is now quite familiar; but let us carefully note how completely dependent it is on natural selection. Mr. Herbert Spencer’s testimony is especially valuable, since he has always laid much stress on the hereditary transmission of acquired characters and still holds[183] “that the inheritance of functionally-caused alterations has played a larger part than Darwin admitted even at the close of his life; and that, coming more to the front as evolution has advanced, it has played the chief part in producing the highest types.” Now, in these types we certainly find a wide range of consonance between the psychological and the biological ends of behaviour; of which the phenomena of play may again be adduced as an example. Hence the special value of Mr. Herbert Spencer’s testimony to the part played by natural selection in establishing the consonance. “Only those races of beings,” he says, “can have survived in which, on the average, agreeable feelings went along with activities conducive to life;” and again, “The most numerous survivals must ever have been among races in which these adjustments of feelings to actions were the best.” The stress is here laid on the survival of those in which the consonance has obtained; the elimination of those in which it was absent: that is to say, on natural selection. And where else can it be laid? It is not the sort of thing which could be acquired. Suppose that, as we suggested above, an animal were born with a rooted hereditary aversion to everything nutritious and an inherited hunger for anything harmful and unfit for food. Under what conceivable conditions could such an animal acquire a complete change of its affective nature? Animals like things or they do not like them; only to a very limited extent, if at all, under natural conditions, can they learn to like them. We, indeed, can in some degree learn to take pleasure in that which at first, and by nature, is distasteful; but we do so by some external constraint, or from some motive of ideational origin. We put pressure upon ourselves, or have pressure put upon us, repeatedly to perform some irksome task; we fall into routine and custom; and the performance becomes so far second nature that its discontinuance produces an uncomfortable sense of something lacking in the daily round. Perhaps domestic animals learn to like the good offices we force them to perform for us. But here we have the element of external constraint, which is wholly, or almost wholly, absent under natural conditions. And there is no evidence that such acquired likings are inherited. That, however, is another question. Our present point is that, under nature, the conditions of such acquisition are lacking; so that, there being no acquisition, there is, in this case, nothing acquired to be transmitted.
But, so far as behaviour is concerned, “functionally caused alterations” are those due to the exercise of intelligence, by which the behaviour acquires direction and character in reference to the meaning introduced into the situations. See, then, the position to which we are logically driven. The acquisition of that which has beneficial value in behaviour depends on a consonance between psychological and biological end. But this consonance is dependent on survival, and, apart from special creation, or some kindred hypothesis such as Leibnitzian harmony, can be due to nothing else. Even if we grant, therefore, that the effects of acquisition are inherited, the conditions of beneficial acquisition are dependent on natural selection. And thus the inheritance of acquired characters, which is so often urged as a principle of evolution independent of natural selection, is, so far as intelligent behaviour is concerned, indirectly, if not directly, due to this very natural selection of which it is said to be independent. Surely, under these circumstances, the hypothesis in question may be said to be not only unproven, but altogether unnecessary.
And what is true of those diverse feelings which we group under the concepts pleasure and pain respectively, is true also of those more complex dispositions which we call emotional—using this term in a broad and comprehensive sense. We say that in their primary manifestations they are instinctive; and they certainly seem to accompany organic behaviour due to co-ordinated reflex actions. But the emotion, as instinctive, is a matter only of its first occurrence. In the course of experience it enters into conscious situations, the centres of interest in which have acquired meaning.
Take a particular case.[184] Your dog is dozing on the lawn in the sunshine. Suddenly he raises his head, pricks his ears, scents the air, looks fixedly at a gap in the hedge, and utters a low growl. Place your hand on his shoulder, and you will find that his muscles are all a-tremble; on his ribs, and you will feel how strongly his heart is beating. Soon the growing excitement leads to vigorous action, and he darts through the gap. You follow him across the lawn, look over the hedge, and see him facing his old enemy, the butcher’s cur. They are moving slowly past each other, head down, teeth bared, back roughened. You whistle softly. Such a call would generally bring him bounding to your feet; but now it is apparently unheard, at any rate unheeded. The two dogs have a short scuffle, and the cur slinks off. Your dog races after him; and he flees, yelping. The situation is over. Spot returns, wagging his short tail, jumps up at you playfully, and then lies down again on the grass. But now and then, for ten minutes or so, he raises his head and growls softly.
Let us briefly analyze the dog’s condition and actions, reading into them, conjecturally, the accompaniments in consciousness. As he lies on the lawn, he receives a sense-stimulus, auditory or olfactory. It has already acquired meaning, from many a tussle with the butcher’s cur. It has organic effects, and it generates a conscious situation which has acquired complexity through coalescence. As the result of this situation the head is raised, the ears pricked, and so on. The dog is on the alert. His attention is aroused. The muscles of neck, eyes, ears, are brought into play in such a way as to bring the senses to bear on the exciting object. He probably sees the cur through the gap in the hedge. The muscles of the frame are innervated so as to be in a state of preparation to act rapidly and forcibly. At the same time the vaso-motor system is disturbed, the heart-beat is quickened, respiration is altered; there is probably hardly an organ in the body which remains unaffected. Then the dog rushes through the hedge, and stands with bared teeth before his antagonist. A whole set of appropriate muscles are now strongly innervated. There is, perhaps, a double innervation, stimulating to activity and yet restraining from action. He bares his teeth and growls deeply. Attention is so concentrated that he heeds not, perhaps does not hear, his master’s whistle. He is keenly on the alert. The blood-system, respiratory organs, and all his inner machinery are still pulsating with nervous thrills; his back is up. Then he sees his chance, and flies at his opponent. Much that he has learnt in play, and all that he has learnt in earnest, comes to his aid in the short angry scuffle. And what we call his emotion of anger spurs him on to the fight; the cowardly dog in which this is lacking or is replaced by fear is spurred to flight. Each may contribute to self-preservation, but in different ways.
Now, we shall not attempt to determine how the distinctively emotional elements arise. Some think they arise by a sort of irradiating nervous diffusion in the nerve-centres as a direct result of the originating stimulus. Mr. Rutgers Marshall regards them as due to the motor activities in fight or flight; Professor William James contends that they have their source in the visceral affections of heart, lungs, glands, and so forth; Professor Lange attributes them to vaso-motor effects. The problem is a difficult one, and hard to determine by experiment; for we have to deal with a matter of primary genesis, of how they are at the outset introduced into the conscious situation. Experiments on animals which have already gained emotional experience cannot decide the question of genesis. Professor Sherrington, for example, has shown[185] that, after severance of the spinal cord in the lower region of the neck, and of the vagus nerves, by which “a huge field of vascular, visceral, cutaneous, and motor reaction” were “deprived of all connection with the nervous centre necessary to conscious response,” “the emotional states of anger, delight at being caressed, fear and disgust were developed with, as far as could be seen, unlessened strength.” But the avenues of connection were closed after the motor and visceral effects had played their parts in the genesis of the emotion on the hypothesis that the emotion is thus generated. Although new presentative data of this type were thus excluded, their re-presentative after-effects in the situation were not excluded. It is, moreover, an essential part of Professor James’s doctrine, as I provisionally accept it, that the “expression” and the visceral and vascular efforts are independent results of stimulation in certain ways, and that these independent results are conjoined through natural selection. Suppose we sever the connection through which the one takes effect, there is no reason to expect that the manifestation of the other would cease. Professor Sherrington cut off the channels of communication with the visceral and vascular apparatus: if the channels of expression remained open there is no reason why such expression should cease.
We need not, however, for our present purpose, attempt to ascertain how the distinctively emotional characteristics arise. It is sufficient that they are presumably present in the situation. Now, as Dr. Stout well points out,[186] the emotions generally presuppose the existence of certain specific tendencies. “The anger produced in a dog by taking away its bone presupposes the specific appetite for food. The anger produced in it by interfering with its young presupposes the specific tendency to guard and tend its offspring. So the presence of a rival who interferes with its wooing causes anger because of the pre-existence of the sexual impulse.” In general, we may say that emotional states are, under natural conditions, closely associated with behaviour of biological value—with tendencies which are beneficial in self-preservation or race-preservation—with actions that promote survival, and especially with the behaviour which clusters round the pairing and parental instincts. The value of the emotions in animals is that they are an indirect means of furthering survival. But how has the close association between emotional condition and the biological end it furthers been established? Again, we must say that under natural conditions it is not the sort of thing which could be acquired. And again we must urge that natural selection through survival is, apart from some theory of pre-established harmony, the only hypothesis in the field on which the close association can be explained.
There is one more point to which attention may be drawn. If there be one thing, and there certainly are not many, on which all writers on the emotions are agreed, it is as to their vagueness. They do not readily submit to definition, and cannot be described in a sentence. This is not due to any indefiniteness of biological end, nor to much indefiniteness in the mode of “expression;” it is due, rather, to an inherent dimness and haziness of psychological outline. We seem unable to focus them and get a clear-cut result. This is, no doubt, in part due to the complexity of emotional states. But, may it not be largely due to the fact that there is no necessity for definiteness? They fulfil their purpose just as well if they are vague. It is quite necessary for the dog to have a clear-cut impression of his antagonist; and, on the cognitive side of consciousness, meaning must be in some degree definite to be of real value. But, so long as the emotion raises the temperature, so to speak, to the boiling-point of vigorous action, it matters little what the psychological source of heat may be. If this be so, we should expect an emotional vagueness, since natural selection puts no premium upon emotional definiteness. And from this it follows, as a corollary, that, whereas we may infer that an animal’s perceptual products are probably closely similar to our own, since sight, touch, hearing, smell, and taste are of value in so far as they convey definite meaning, in interpreting their feelings and emotions we have less secure grounds of inference, since all that is requisite is that there should be a sufficiently high emotional temperature to afford the conditions for definite and vigorous action.
In conclusion, then, we may say that the primary purpose of the evolution of feeling and emotion is to promote beneficial behaviour, and that the observed consonance of the psychological end of attaining satisfaction, and the biological end of securing survival, seems to be due to natural selection—is, indeed, scarcely explicable on any other naturalistic hypothesis.
A word of warning may be added. We have repeatedly spoken of biological and psychological ends. By this we mean what seems to the observer, as an interpreter of natural processes, the purpose and object of their existence. But the word “end” is often used in such a way as to imply foresight and contrivance on the part of a rational being. We have not used it in this sense. Whether the whole of nature, including animal behaviour, is driven onwards to definite ends by an underlying Cause, is a metaphysical question. It is not one on which science has any right to express an opinion one way or the other. Science deals with the phenomena; the causes of their being lie outside her province.