Chapter II: The Origin of the Human Soul (3)

That men should be deluded, however, into crediting animals with “intelligence” (properly so-called) is not at all surprising, when we reflect on the source of this misapprehension; for we find combined in the animal two important factors, whose association closely simulates intelligence, namely, _sentient consciousness_ and _unconscious teleology_. Now teleology is not _inherent_ or _subjective_ intelligence, but rather an _objective expression_ and _product_ of intelligence. It exists in unconscious mechanisms like phonographs and adding machines, and it is, likewise, manifest in unconscious organisms like plants. Here, however, there is no danger of confounding it with conscious intelligence, because machines and plants do not possess consciousness in any form whatever. But in animals, on the contrary, teleology is intimately associated with sentient consciousness. Here the teleological automatisms of instinct are not wholly blind and mechanical, but are guided by sense-perception and associative memory. It is this combination of teleology with sentient “discernment” (as Fabre styles it) that conveys the illusory impression of a conscious intelligence. Careful analysis, however, of the facts, in conjunction with judicious experiments, will, in every instance, enable the observer to distinguish between this deceptive semblance of intelligence and that inherent rational power of abstraction, classification, and inference which is the unique prerogative of the human being. A genuine intelligence of this sort need not be invoked to explain any of the phenomena of brute psychology. All of them, from the highest to the lowest, are explicable in terms of the sensitivo-nervous functions. To illustrate the truth of this statement let us cite a few typical examples of animal behavior, that are sometimes regarded as manifestations of intelligent or rational consciousness on the part of the brute.

Animals, it is pointed out, learn by experience. The tiny chick that has been stung by a wasp, for instance, learns to avoid such noxious creatures for the future. This is, indeed, “learning by experience.” Obviously, however, it does not consist in an inference of a new truth from an old truth. On the contrary, it amounts to nothing more than a mere association of imagery, formed in accordance with the _law of contiguity in time_, sanctioned by the animal’s sensual appetite, and persistently conserved in its sentient memory. A bond of association is formed between the visual image of the wasp and the immediately ensuing sensation of pain. Thereafter the wasp and the pain are associated in a single complex, which the sensile memory of the animal permanently retains. We are dealing with a mere _association of contiguity_, and nothing further is required to explain the future avoidance of wasps by the chick. The abilities acquired by animals through the trial and error method are to be explained in the same way. A horse confined within an enclosure, for example, seeks egress to the fresh grass of the pasture. The fact that repeated exits through the gate of the enclosure have associated the image of its own access to the pasture with the particular spot where the gate is located induces it to approach the gate. Its quest, however, is balked by the fact that the gate is closed and latched. Thereupon, it begins to chafe under the urge of frustrated appetite. Certain actions ensue, some spontaneous and others merely reflex movements. It paws the ground, prances about, and rubs its nose against the gate. Its futile efforts to pass through the closed gate continue indefinitely and aimlessly, until, by some lucky accident, its nose happens to strike against the latch and lift it sufficiently to release the gate. This causes the gate to swing ajar, and the horse rushes out to food and freedom. By the law of contiguity, the vision of free egress through the gate is thereafter firmly associated in the horse’s sense-memory with the final sensation experienced in its nose just prior to the advent of the agreeable eventuation of its prolonged efforts. Henceforth the animal will be able to release itself from the enclosure by repeating the concatenated series of acts that memory associates with the pleasurable result. On the second occasion, however, the more remote of its futile acts will have been forgotten, and the process of opening the gate will occupy less time, though probably a certain amount of useless pawing and rubbing will still persist. Gradually, however, the number of inefficacious actions will diminish, until, after many repetitions of the experience, only those actions which directly issue in the desirable result will remain in the chain of impressions retained by memory, all others being eliminated. For, by a teleological law, making for economy of effort, all impressions not immediately and constantly connected with the gratification of animal appetites tend to be inhibited. Pawlow’s experiments on dogs show that impressions which coincide in time with such gratification tend to be recalled by a return of the appetitive impulse, but are soon disconnected from such association and inhibited, if they recur independently of the recurrence of gratification. For this reason, the horse tends to remember more vividly those actions which are more closely connected with the pleasurable result, and, as its superfluous actions are gradually suppressed by a protective process of inhibition, it gradually comes to run through the series of actions necessary to open the gate with considerable accuracy and dispatch.

The point to be noted, however, is that the horse does not _discursively analyze_ this concatenated series of associated stimulators and actions; for, let the concrete circumstances be changed never so little, the horse will at once lose its laboriously acquired ability to open the gate. Such, for example, will be the result, if the position of the gate be transferred to another part of the enclosure. The horse, therefore, is incapable of adapting its acquired ability to new conditions. It can only rehearse the original series in all its initial concreteness and stereotyped specificity; and it must, whenever the circumstances are changed, begin once more at the beginning, and rearrive by trial and error at its former solution of the problem. The reason is that the horse merely _senses_, but does not _understand_, its own solution of the problem. The sense, however, cannot abstract from the here and now. Consequently, the human infant of two summers is enabled by its dawning intelligence to _adapt old means to new ends_, but the ten-year-old horse cannot adjust its abilities to the slightest change in the concrete conditions surrounding the original acquisition of a useful habit. The cognitive powers of an animal are confined to the sphere of concrete singularity, it has no power to abstract or generalize.

The selfsame observation applies to the tricks which animals “learn” through human training. Their sensitive memory is very receptive and retentive. Hence, by means of a judicious alternation of “rewards” and “penalties” (_e.g._ of sugar and the whip), a man can, as it were, inscribe his own thoughts on the tablets of the brute’s memory, in such a way as to force the latter to form habits that appear to rest upon a basis of intelligence. And so, indeed, they do, but the intelligence is that of the trainer and not that of the animal, which is as destitute of intrinsic intelligence as is a talking phonograph, upon whose records a man can inscribe his thoughts far more efficiently than he can write them in terms of the neurographic imagery of the canine, equine, or simian memory.

The trained monkey always renders back without change the original lesson imparted by its human trainer. The lesson as first received becomes an immutable reaction-basis for the future. With a school child, however, the case is quite different. It does, indeed, receive “an historical basis of reaction,” when the teacher illustrates the process of multiplication by means of an example on the blackboard. But it does not receive this information passively and render it back in the original stereotyped form. On the contrary, it analyzes the information received, and is able thereafter to reapply the analyzed information to new problems differing in specificity from the problem that the teacher originally worked out on the blackboard. The human pupil does not, like the monkey or the phonograph, render back what it has received in unaltered specificity. His reaction differs from its original passive basis. To borrow the words of Driesch, he “uses this basis, but he is not bound to it as it is. He dissolves the combined specificities that have created the basis.” (“The Problem of Individuality,” pp. 27, 28.) The brute, therefore, cannot “learn,” or “be taught” in the sense of intellectual comprehension and enlightenment. “We see,” says John Burroughs somewhere, “that the caged bird or beast does not reason because no strength of bar or wall can convince it that it cannot escape. It cannot be convinced because it has no faculties that are convinced by evidence. It continues to dash itself against the bars not until it is convinced, but until it is exhausted. Then slowly a new habit is formed, the cage habit. When we train an animal to do stunts, we do not teach it or enlighten it in any proper sense, but we compel it to form new habits.”

Human beings, however, can be _taught_ and _enlightened_ under the most adverse circumstances. Even those unfortunates are susceptible to it, who, like Laura Bridgman, Helen Keller, Martha Obrecht, Marie Heurtin, and others, have been blind and deaf and dumb from infancy or birth. With nearly all the light of sensibility extinguished, there was, nevertheless, latent within them something of which a perfectly normal ape, for all the integrity of its senses, is essentially destitute, namely, the superorganic power of reason. Reason, however, is extrinsically dependent on organic sensibility, and, consequently, “the gates of their souls” were closed to human converse, until such a time as the patient kindness and ingenuity of their educators devised means of reciprocal communication on a basis of tactile signals. Thereupon they revealed an intelligence perfectly akin to that of their rescuers. Years of similar education, however, would be futile in the case of an ape. The “gates of the soul” would never open, because the ape has no rational soul, to which the most ingenious trainer might gain access, in which respect it differs fundamentally from even the lowest savage. A being that lacks reason may be _trained_ by means of instruction, but it can never be _enlightened_ by it.

Another consideration, that is occasionally urged in proof of bestial intelligence, is the fact that birds, mammals, and even insects communicate with one another by means of sounds or equivalent signals, which are sometimes remarkably diversified in quality and consequent efficacy. “Since fowls,” writes Darwin, “give distinct warnings for danger on the ground, or in the sky, from hawks ..., may not some unusually wise ape-like animal have imitated the growl of a beast of prey, and thus told his fellow monkeys the nature of the expected danger? This would have been a first step in the formation of a language.” (“Descent of Man,” 2nd ed., ch. III, pp. 122, 123.) This is saltatory logic with a vengeance! Darwin leaps at one bound across the entire chasm between irrationality and rationality, without pausing to build even the semblance of a bridge. Given an animal with the foresight and inventiveness requisite to employ onomatopœia for the _purpose_ of specifying the _nature_ of an expected _danger_, in the _interest_ of its fellows, and we need not trouble ourselves further about plausibleizing any transition; for so “unusually wise” an ape is already well across the gap that separates reason from unreason, and far on its way towards the performance of all the feats of which reason is capable. After swallowing the camel of so much progress, it would be straining at a gnat to deny such a paragon of simian genius the mere power of articulate speech. Of course, if imagination rather than logic, is to be the dominant consideration in science, there is no difficulty in imagining animals to be capable of thinking or doing anything we choose to ascribe to them, as witness _Æsop’s Fables_. But, if sober and critical judgment be in order, then, evidently, from the simple fact that an animal has diversified cries manifestative of different emotions or degrees of emotion (_e.g._ of fear or rage) and capable of arousing similar emotions in other animals of the same species, it by no means follows that such an irrational animal can _adapt a means to an end_ by using mimicry _in order to give notification_ of approaching danger, and _to specify the nature of the danger_ in question.

This stupid anthropomorphism arises from Darwin’s failure to appreciate the fundamental distinction that exists between the “language” of animals, which is indicative, emotional, and inarticulate, and human language, which is descriptive, conceptual, and articulate. Brute animals, under the stress of a determinate passion or emotion, give vent impulsively and unpremeditatedly to instinctive cries indicative of their peculiar emotional state. Moreover, these emotionalized sounds are capable of arousing kindred emotions in the breasts of other animals of the same species, since organisms of the same species are syntonic with (_i.e._ attuned to) one another. Hence these reflex or instinctive cries have, no doubt, a teleological value, inasmuch as they serve to protect the race by inciting a peculiar flight-reaction in those that are not in immediate contact with the fear-inspiring object. This so-called warning, however, is given without reflection or intention on the part of the frightened animal, and is simply sensed, but not interpreted, by the other animals that receive it.

This premised, it is easy to discriminate between bestial and human language. The former is not articulate, that is to say, the sounds of which it is composed have not been elaborated by analysis and synthesis into phonetic elements and grammatical forms. In the second place, it is emotional and not conceptual, because it is manifestative of the emotions or passions (which are functions of the organic or sensual appetite), and not of rational concepts. In the third place, it is indicative, that is, it merely signalizes a determinate emotional state, as a thermometer indicates the temperature, or a barometer the atmospheric pressure. It is not, therefore, descriptive, in the sense of being selected and arranged in syntactic sequence for the express purpose of making others realize one’s own experiences. The rational language of man, on the contrary, is not emotional. Only a negligible portion of the human vocabulary is made up of emotional interjections. It consists, for the most part, of sounds descriptive of thought, to express which an elaborate system of vowels and consonants are discriminated and articulated on the basis of social agreement, the result being a conventional vocal code invented and used for the express purpose of conveying, not emotions or imagery, but general and abstract concepts.

§ 5. The True Significance of Instinct

A third class of facts commonly cited as evidence of bestial intelligence are the remarkable phenomena of _instinct_.[14] The beaver acts as though it were acquainted with the principles of hydraulics and engineering, when it maintains the water at the height requisite to submerge the entrance to its dwelling by building a dam of mud, logs, and sticks across the stream at a point below the site of its habitation. The predatory wasp _Pompilius_ is endowed with surgical art, that suggests a knowledge of anatomy, inasmuch as it first disarms and afterwards paralyzes its formidable prey, the _Lycosa_ or black Tarantula. Another predatory wasp, the _Stizus ruficornis_, disables Mantids in a similar fashion. One of the American Pompilids, the black wasp _Priocnemis flavicornis_, is an adept in the art of navigation, since it adopts the principle of the French hydroglissia (an air-driven boat which skims the water under the propulsion of an aeroplane propeller). This insect tows a huge black spider several times its own size and too heavy to be carried, propelling its prey with buzzing wings along the open waterway, and leaving behind a miniature wake like that of a steamer. It thus avoids the obstacles of the dense vegetation, and saves time and energy in transporting the huge carcass of its paralyzed quarry to the haven of its distant burrow. Spiders like the _Epeira_, for example, are endowed with the mathematical ability of constructing their webs on the patterns of the logarithmic spiral of Jacques Bernouilli (1654-1705), a curve which it took _man_ centuries to discover. The dog infested with parasitic tapeworms (_Taenia_) evinces a seeming knowledge of pharmaceutics, seeing that it will avidly devour Common Wormwood (_Artemisia absynthium_), an herb which it never touches otherwise.

[14] J. Henri Fabre and Erich Wasmann, S.J., have formulated
very sound and critical views on the subject of instinct. The
works of these authors are now available in English. (_Cf._
de Mattos’ translation of the _Souvenirs etymologiques_: “The
Mason Bees,” Ch. VII; “The Bramble Bees,” Ch. VI; “The Hunting
Wasps,” Chs. IX, X, XX; _cf._ also Wasmann’s _Instinct and
Intelligence_, and _Psychology of Ants and of Higher Animals_,
Engl. translation by Gummersbach.)

In all these cases, however, as we have previously remarked, the illusion of intelligence is due to the combination of teleology or objective purposiveness with sentient consciousness. But teleology is nothing more than a material expression of intelligence, not to be confounded with subjective intelligence, which is its causal principle. When the cells of the iris of the eye of a larval salamander regenerate the lens in its typical perfection, after the latter has been experimentally destroyed, we behold a process that is objectively, but not subjectively, intelligent. In like manner the instinctive acts of an animal are teleological or objectively purposive, but do not proceed from an intelligence _inherent in the animal_, any more than the intelligent soliloquy delivered by a phonograph proceeds from a conscious intelligence inherent in the disc. In the animal, sentient consciousness is associated with this teleology or objective purposiveness, but such consciousness is only aware of what can be sensed, and is, therefore, _unconscious of purpose_, that is, of the supersensible link, which connects a means with an end. “Instinct,” to cite the words of Wm. James, “is usually defined as the faculty of acting in such a way as to produce certain ends, without foresight of the ends, and without previous education in the performance.” (“Principles of Psychology,” vol. II, c. xxiv, p. 383.) Hence the unconscious and objective purposiveness, which the human mind discerns in the instinctive behavior of brutes, is manifestative, not of an intelligence within the animal itself, but only of the infinite intelligence of the First Cause or Creator, Who imposed these laws replete with wisdom upon the animal kingdom, and of the finite intelligence of man, who is capable of recognizing the Divine purpose expressed, not only in the instincts of animals, but in all the telic phenomena of nature. Such marvels are not the fortuitous result of uncoördinated contingencies. Behind these correlated teleologies of the visible universe there is a Supreme Intelligence, which has “ordered all things in measure, and number, and weight.” (_Wisdom_: XI, 21.) “And this universal geometry,” says Fabre, in allusion to the mathematics of the Epeira’s web, “tells of an Universal Geometrician, whose divine compass has measured all things. I prefer that, as an explanation of the logarithmic curve of the Ammonite and the Epeira, to the Worm screwing up the tip of its tail. It may not perhaps be in accordance with latter-day teaching, but it takes a loftier flight.” (“Life of the Spider,” p. 400.)

But, though the teleology of instinct is wonderful in the extreme, the element of psychic regulation is so subordinate and restricted, that, far from postulating _intelligent_ control, certain scientists go so far as to deny even _sentient_ control, in the case of instinctive behavior. Animals, in their opinion, are nothing more than “reflex machines,” a view which coincides with that of Descartes, who regarded animals as unconscious automatons. “The instincts,” says Pawlow, “are also reflexes but more complex.” (_Science_, Nov. 9, 1923, p. 359.) The late Jacques Loeb was a protagonist of the view that instincts are simply _metachronic chain-reflexes_, in which one elementary process releases another, each preceding phase terminating in the production of the succeeding phase, until the entire gamut of concatenated arcs has been traversed. Hence, John B. Watson, the Behaviorist disciple of Loeb, defines instinct as “a combination of congenital responses unfolding serially under appropriate stimulation.”

But, if Darwinian anthropomorphism sins by excess, Loeb’s mechanism sins by defect, and fails to account for the indubitable variability of instinctive behavior. For, however fixed and stereotyped such behavior may be, it manifests unmistakable adaptation to external circumstances and emergencies, as well as subordination to the general physiological condition of the organism, phenomena that exclude the idea of fatal predetermination according to the fixed pattern of a determinate series of reflex arcs. As Jennings has shown, synaptic coördination in the neural mechanism cannot be more than a partial factor in determining serial responses. The state of the organism as a whole must also be taken into account. (Cf. “Behavior of the Lower Organisms,” p. 251.) Thus an earthworm may turn to the right simply because it has just turned to the left, but this so-called “chain-reflex” does not involve an invariable and inevitable sequence of events, since the earthworm may turn twice or thrice to the left, before the second reaction of turning to the right comes into play. Any animal, when sated, will react differently to a food stimulus than it will when it is starved, by reason of its altered organic condition. We have something more, therefore, to reckon with than a mere system of reflexes released by a simple physical stimulus.

The second type of variability manifested by instinct is its capacity for complex and continuous adjustment to variable environmental circumstances. Thus predatory animals, such as wasps, crabs, spiders, and carnivorous mammals, accommodate themselves appropriately and uninterruptedly to the changing and unforeseeable movements of the prey they are engaged in stalking, giving evidence in this way of the regulation of their hunting instincts by sensory impressions. Whether this element of psychic control is based upon object-perception, or simple sensation, and whether it involves a sensual impulse, or is merely sensori-motor, we have, naturally, no direct means of ascertaining. But the presence of some sort of sensory regulation is evident enough, _e.g._ in the prompt and unerring flight of vultures to distant carrion. Moreover, there is a close analogy between our sense organs and those of an animal. Particularly, in the case of the higher animals, the resemblance of the sense organs and nervous system to our own is extremely close, so much so that even the localization of sensory and motor centers in the brain is practically identical in dogs, apes, and men. Moreover, the animals make analogous use of their sense organs, orientating them and accommodating them for perception, and using them to inspect strange objects, etc., _e.g._ they turn their eyes, prick up their ears, snuff the wind, etc. Again, analogous motor and emotional effects result from the stimulation of their sense organs, and brutes make emotional displays of anger, exultation, fear, etc., similar to our own. Hence it is to be presumed that they have similar sensuous experiences. The analogy, however, must not be pressed further than the external manifestations warrant. With brute animals, the manifestations in question are confined exclusively to phenomena of the sensuous order.

Another indication of sensory control is found in the repair-work performed by animals endowed with the constructive instinct. C. F. Schroeder, for instance, experimenting on certain caterpillars, found that they repaired their weaving, whenever it was disturbed by the experimenter. Fabre, too, discovered that a Mason-bee would plaster up holes or clefts marring the integrity of its cell, provided that the bee was actually engaged in the process of plastering at the time, and provided that the experimenter inflicted the damage at the level, and within the area, of the construction work on which the bee was then engaged. In a word, if the damage inflicted could be repaired by a simple continuation or extension of its actual work of the moment, the bee was able to cope with the emergency. There are other ways, too, in which the animal adapts its constructive instincts to external circumstance. Fabre tells us that the Bramble-bee _Osmia_, which builds a train of partitioned cells in snail shells or in hollow reeds, will victual first and then plaster in a partition, if the reed be narrow, but will first plaster a partition, and then introduce honey and pollen through a hole left unclosed in the partition, whenever the reed is of greater diameter. This reversal of the procedure according to the exigencies of the external situation does not suggest the chain-reflex of Loeb. (Cf. “The Bramble-Bee,” pp. 214-217.) Another kind of adaptation of instinct to external circumstances consists in the economical omission of the initial step of a serial construction, in cases where the environmental conditions provide a ready-made equivalent. “The silkworm,” says Driesch, “is said not to form its web of silk if it is cultivated in a box containing tulle, and some species of bees which normally construct tunnels do not do so if they find one ready made in the ground, they then only perform their second instinctive act: separating the tunnel into single cells.” (“Science & Phil. of the Organism,” vol. II, p. 47.)

Driesch’s analysis of the constructive instinct shows that these facts of adaptation or regulation fit in with the idea of sensory control rather than with that of a chain-reflex. In the supposition that the successive stages of instinctive construction are due to a chain-reflex, consisting of a series of elementary motor reactions _a_, _b_, _c_, etc., in which _a_ produces the external work A and, on terminating, releases _b_, which, in turn, produces external work B and releases _c_, etc., clearly _b_ could never appear before _a_, and the sight of A ready-made would not inhibit _a_, nor would the removal of A defer the advent of _b_. In other words, regulation would be impossible. But, if we suppose that not the elemental act _a_, but rather the sensory perception of A, the first state of the external construction, is the stimulus to _b_ and, consequently, to the production of the second state of construction B, then we understand why _b_ is released independently of _a_, when, for example, an insect discovers a ready-made substitute for A, the initial step in its construction, and we also understand why, in cases of accidental damage resulting in the total or partial removal of A, the reaction _b_ is deferred and the reaction _a_ prolonged, until the repair or reconstruction of A is complete; for, in this supposition, the addition of A will inhibit _a_ and release _b_, whereas the subtraction of A will inhibit the appearance of _b_ and consequently defer B, until the state of construction A, the sight of which is the stimulus to _b_, is complete. The fact of regulation, therefore, entails _sensory_ control of the serial responses involved in the constructive instinct. Hence, as H. P. Weld of Cornell expresses it: “We may safely assume that even in the lowest forms of animal life some sort of sensory experience releases the (instinctive) disposition and to an extent determines the subsequent course of action.” (Encycl. Am., v. 15, p. 168.)

But it would be going to the opposite extreme to interpret these adjustments of instinct to external contingencies as evidence of _intelligent_ regulation. The animal’s ability, for example, to repair accidental damage to a construction, which instinct impels it to build, is rigidly limited to repairs that can be accomplished by a simple continuation of the actual and normal occupation of the moment. If, however, the damage affects an already completed portion of the instinctive structure, and its present occupation is capable of continuance, the animal is impotent to relinquish this actual occupation of the moment, in order to cope with the emergency. Suppose, for illustration, that the instinctive operations _a_ and _b_ are finished and the animal is in the _c_-stage of its instinctive performance, then, if the damage is inflicted in the A-portion of the structure, and _c_ can be continued independently of A, the animal cannot relinquish _c_ and return to _a_, in order to restore the marred integrity of A. This shows that the animal is guided, in its repair-work, by _sense_, which is bound to the here and now, and not by intelligence, which is an abstractive faculty that emancipates from the actual and concrete present, and enables the possessor to hark back to the past of its performance, should necessity require. Thus Fabre found that the Mason-bee, after it had turned from building to the foraging of honey and pollen, would no longer repair holes pricked in its cell, but suffered the latter to become a veritable vessel of the Danaïdes, which it vainly strove to fill with its liquid provender. Though the holes affected portions extremely close to the topmost layer of masonry, and although it frequently sounded and explored these unaccustomed holes with its antennæ, it took no steps to check the escape of the honey and pollen by recurring to its mason craft of earlier stages. And, finally, when it did resume the plasterer’s trade in constructing a lid for the cell, it would spare no mortar to plug the gaping breaches in the walls of its cell, but deposited its egg in a chamber drained of honey, and then proceeded to perform the useless work of closing with futile diligence _only the topmost aperture_ in this much perforated dwelling. Obviously, therefore, the bee failed to perceive the connection which existed between these breaches and the escape of the honey, and it was unable to apply its instinctive building skill to _new uses_ by abstraction from the definite connection, in which the latter is normally operative.

Sense, therefore, and not intelligence, is the regulatory principle of instinct. To recognize causal and telic relationships is the prerogative of a superorganic intelligence. The transcendental link by which a useful means is referred to an ulterior end is something that cannot be _sensed_, but only _understood_. An animal, therefore, acts _toward_ an end, not _on account of_ an end. Nature, however, has compensated for this ignorance by implanting in each species of animal a special teleological disposition, by reason of which objects and actions, which are, under normal conditions, objectively useful to the individual, or the species, become invested for the animal with a subjective aspect of agreeableness, while objects and actions, which are normally harmful, are invested with a subjective aspect of repulsiveness. The qualities of serviceableness and pleasantness _happen_, so far as the animal is concerned, to be united in one and the same concrete object or action, but the animal is only aware of the pleasantness, which appeals to its senses, and not of the serviceableness, which does not. Thus, in the example already cited, the dog suffering from tapeworms eats the herb known as Common Wormwood, not because it is aware of the remedial efficacy of the herb, but simply because the odor and flavor of the plant appeal to the animal in its actual morbid condition, ceasing to do so, however, when the latter regains the state of health. How different is the action of the man whose blood is infected with malarial parasites and who takes quinine, not because the bitter taste of the alkaloid appeals to his palate, but solely because he has his future cure explicitly in view! “Finally,” says Weld, “the more we learn about instincts the more apparent it becomes that the situations from which they proceed are meaningful, but we need not suppose that the organism is aware of the meaning. The chick in the egg feels (we may only guess as to its nature) a vague discomfort, and the complicated reaction by which it makes its egress from the shell is released.” (Encycl. Am., v. 15, p. 169.)

Recapitulating, then, we may define instinct as a psycho-organic propensity, not acquired by education or experience, but congenital by inheritance and identical in all members of the same zoölogical species, having as its physical basis the specific nervous organization of the animal and as its psychic basis a teleological coördination of the cognitive, emotional, and motor functions, in virtue of which, given the proper physiological state of the organism and the presence of an appropriate environmental stimulus, an animal, without consciousness of purpose, is impelled to the inception, and regulated in the performance, of complicated behavior which is sensually gratifying and, under normal circumstances, simultaneously beneficial to the individual, or the race.

Instinctive acts are performed without previous experience or training on the part of the animal, and are, nevertheless, at least in the majority of cases, _perfect in their first performance_. A few, like the pecking-instinct of young chickens, are slightly improvable through sentient experience, _e.g._ the young chick, at first undiscriminating in the choice of the particles which it picks up, learns later by associative memory to distinguish what is tasty and edible from what is disagreeable and inedible, but, for the most part, the perfection of instinctive acts is independent of prior experience. Hence instinct is entirely different from human reason, which, in the solution of problems, is compelled to begin with reflection upon the data furnished by previous experience, or education. The animal, however, in its instinctive operations, without pausing to investigate, deliberate, or calculate, proceeds unhesitatingly on the very first occasion to a prompt and perfect solution of its problems. Hence, without study, consultation, planning, or previous apprenticeship of any sort, and in the complete absence of experimental knowledge, that might serve as matter for reflection or as a basis for inference, the animal is able to solve intricate problems in engineering, geometry, anatomy, pharmaceutics, etc., which the combined intelligence of mankind required centuries upon centuries of schooling, research, and reflection in order to solve. Of two things, therefore, one: either these actions do not proceed from an intelligent principle inherent in the animal; or they do, and in that case we are compelled to recognize in brute animals _an intelligence superior to our own_, because they accomplish deftly and without effort ingenious feats that human reason cannot duplicate, save clumsily and at the price of prolonged discipline and incessant drudgery. “Perhaps the strongest reason,” says an anonymous writer, “for not regarding the activities of instinct as intelligent is that in such enormously complex sequences of action as, for instance, the emperor moth carries out in the preparing of an escape-opening for itself on its completing the larval and passing into the imago state, the intelligence needed would be so great that it could not be limited to this single activity, and yet it is so limited.”[15]

[15] Cf. Nelson’s Encyclopedia, v. 6, p. 452.

Intelligence is essentially a _generalizing_ and _abstracting_ power; hence, from its very nature, it could not be _limited to a single activity_. Bestial instincts, however, though frequently so amazingly complex and ingeniously purposive as to seem the fruit of profound meditation, are, nevertheless, confined exclusively to this or that determinate ability. They operate within narrow and preëstablished grooves, from which they never swerve to any appreciable degree, being but little modifiable or perfectible by experience. Bees always construct hexagonal cells, spiders stick to the logarithmic spiral, and beavers never attempt to put their engineering skill to new uses. Instincts have but little pliancy, their regularity and uniformity being such as to make the instinctive abilities definitely predictable in the case of any given species of animal. Now, the distinctive mark of intelligence is _versatility_, that is, aptitude for many things without determinate restriction to this or that. A man who is expert in one art may, by reason of his intelligence, be equally proficient in a dozen others. The biologist may be a competent chemist, and the astronomer an excellent physicist. Michel Angelo was a sculptor, a frescoer, a painter, an anatomist, an engineer, and an architect, while Leonardo da Vinci had even more arts to his credit. To predict before birth the precise form that a man’s ability will take is an impossibility. Certain aptitudes, such as a musical gift, are no doubt inherited, but it is an inheritance which imposes no rigid necessity upon inheriter; since he is free to neglect this native talent, and to develop others for which he has no special innate aptitude. With man, the fashion in clothing and the styles of architecture vary from day to day. The brute, however, never emerges from the rut of instinct, and each generation of a given animal species monotonously reproduces the history of the previous generation. Man, on the contrary, is capable of indefinite _progress_, as the march of human cultures and civilizations shows. Gregarious animals are restricted by their instincts to determinate types of aggregation, as we see in the case of ants and bees. Hence these insect communities are unacquainted with our sanguinary revolutions which overturn monarchies in favor of republics, or set up dictatorships in place of democracies; for, fortunately or unfortunately, as one may choose to regard it, man is not limited to one form of government rather than another.

Animals, then, notwithstanding their wonderful instincts, are deficient in precisely that quality which is the unique criterion of intelligence, namely, versatility. Each species has but one stereotyped ability, outside of which it is woefully stupid and inefficient. “So long,” says Fabre, “as its circumstances are normal the insect’s actions are calculated most rationally in view of the object to be attained” (“The Mason-Bees,” p. 167), but let the circumstances cease to be normal, let them vary never so little from those which ordinarily obtain, and the animal is helpless, while its instinctive predisposition becomes, not merely futile, but often positively detrimental. Thus the instinct, which should, in the normal course of events, guide night-flying moths to the white flowers that contain the life-sustaining nectar of their nocturnal banquets, proves their undoing, when they come into contact with the white lights of artificial illumination. In fact, the fatal fondness of the moth for the candle flame has become in all languages a proverb for the folly of courting one’s own destruction.

The animal may employ an exquisitely efficient method in accomplishing its instinctive work, but is absolutely impotent to apply this ingenious method to more than one determinate purpose. Man, however, is not so restricted. He varies at will both his aims and his methods. He can adapt the _same means_ (a pocketknife, for instance) to _different ends_, and, conversely, he can obtain the _same end_ by the use of _different means_ (_e.g._ communicate by mail, or telegraph, or radio). Man, in a word, is _emancipated from limitation to the singular and the concrete_ by virtue of his unique prerogative, reason, or intelligence, the power that enables him _to generalize from the particular and to abstract from the concrete_. This is the secret of his unlimited versatility. This is the basis of his capacity for progress. This is the root of his freedom; for his will seeks happiness in general, happiness in the abstract, and is not, therefore, compelled to choose any particular form or concrete embodiment of happiness, such as this or that style of architecture, this or that form of government, this or that kind of clothing, etc., etc. Teleology is but a material expression of intelligence, and may, therefore, occur in things destitute of intelligence, but versatility is the inseparable concomitant and infallible sign of an inherent and autonomous intelligence. Lacking this quality, instinct, however telic, is obviously not intelligence.

Another indication of the fact that no intelligence lies behind the instinctive behavior of brutes is manifest from their evident _unconsciousness of purpose_. That the animal is ignorant of the purpose implied in its own instinctive actions appears from the fact that it will carry out these operations with futile diligence and exactitude, even when, through accident, the purpose is conspicuously absent. Thus the hen deprived of her eggs will, nevertheless, continue the now futile process of incubation for twenty-one days, or longer, despite the fact that her obstinacy in maintaining the straw of the empty nest at a temperature of 104° F. serves no useful purpose whatever. She cannot but sense the absence of the eggs; she has not, however, the intelligence to realize that incubation without eggs is vain. The connection between the latter and the former is something that mere sense cannot apprehend. Hence the hen is not troubled by the purposelessness of her performance. Fabre gives many examples of this futile persistence in instinctive operations, despite their complete frustration. Alluding to the outcome of his experiments on the Mason-wasp _Pelapaeus_, he says: “The Mason bees, the Caterpillar of the Great Peacock Moth, and many others, when subjected to similar tests, are guilty of the same illogical behaviour: they continue, in the normal order, their series of industrious actions, though accident has now rendered them all useless. Just like millstones unable to cease revolving though there be no corn left to grind, let them once be given the compelling power and they will continue to perform their task despite its futility.” (“Bramble Bees,” pp. 192, 193.)

The instance cited by Dr. H. D. Schmidt is an excellent illustration of this inability of an animal to appreciate either the utility or futility of its instinctive behavior. Having described the instinct of squirrels to bury nuts by ramming them into the ground with their teeth, and then using their paws to cover them with earth, he continues as follows: “Now, as regards the young squirrel, which, of course, never had been present at the burial of a nut, I observed that, after having eaten a number of hickory nuts to appease its appetite, it would take one between its teeth, then sit upright and listen in all directions. Finding all right, it would scratch upon the smooth blanket on which I was playing with it as if to make a hole, then hammer with the nut between its teeth upon the blanket, and finally perform all the motions required to fill up a hole—_in the air_; after which it would jump away, leaving the nut, of course, uncovered.” (_Transactions of the Am. Neurological Ass’n_, 1875, vol. I, p. 129—italics his.) This whole pantomime of purposeless gesticulations, from the useless “Stop, look and listen!” down to the final desertion of the uncovered nut, is overwhelming evidence of the fact that the brute is destitute of any rational faculty capable of recognizing the telic aspect of its own instinctive conduct.

The claim is sometimes made that certain forms of animal behavior are not unconsciously, but _consciously_, telic. Bouvier, for example, claims that in the rare cases of the _use of tools_ among the Arthropoda, we have evidence of the existence of intelligent inventiveness of a rudimentary kind. Thus the crab _Melia_ carries a sea-anemone in its chela as a weapon wherewith to sting its prey into a condition of paralysis. The leaf-cutting ants of India and Brazil use their own thread-spinning larvæ as tools for cementing together the materials out of which their nests are constructed. The predatory wasp _Ammophila urnaria_ uses a pebble to tamp the filling of its burrow. According to the Wheelers (cf. _Science_, May 30, 1924, p. 486), the hunting wasp _Sphex_ (_Ammophila_) _gryphus_ (Sm.) makes similar use of a pebble. As Bouvier notes, however, this use of tools appears “to be rather exceptional ..., showing itself only in the primitive state consisting of the use of foreign bodies as implements.” (Smithson. Inst. Rpt. for 1918, p. 456.) Moreover, the animals in question are limited to a concretely determinate kind of tool, which their environment supplies ready-made. Such a use of implements _does not presuppose any power of abstraction and generalization_. In fact, the presence of such a power is expressly excluded by the consideration that the animal’s so-called “inventiveness” is confined exclusively to _one particularized manifestation_.

At times the behavior of animals so closely simulates the consciously telic or intelligent conduct of men, that only severely critical methods enable us to discriminate between them. An experiment, which Erich Wasmann, S.J., performed upon ants will serve to illustrate this point. In one of his glass nests, Father Wasmann constructed an island of sand surrounded by a moat filled with water. He then removed from their “nursery” a certain number of the ant larvæ and placed them on the island. Thereupon the ants were observed to build a bridge of sand across the moat “for the purpose,” apparently, of rescuing the marooned larvæ. Such behavior seemed to imply an intelligent ordination of a means to an end. Wasmann’s second experiment, however, proved this inference to be wholly unwarranted; for, when he excavated a hole in the sand of the nest and filled it with water, the ants, stimulated by what to them was the disagreeable dampness of the marginal sand, were impelled to perform the reflex act of kicking about in the sand. This impulse persisted until all traces of the hole, the dampness and the water had been buried under a carpet of drier sand. Then, and then only, was the aforesaid impulse inhibited. Applying these results to the interpretation of the first experiment, we see that the “building of a bridge” in the first experiment was not intentional, but merely an accidental result of a kicking-reflex, with damp sand acting as a stimulator. Once the moat was bridged, however, the ants happened to find the larvæ, and were then impelled by instinct to carry the larvæ to their proper place in the nest. To see in such an incident a planned and premeditated rescue of the marooned larvæ would be grossly anthropomorphic. Nevertheless, had only the first experiment been performed, such an anthropomorphic interpretation would have seemed fully justified, and it was only by an appropriate variation of the conditions of the original experiment that this false interpretation could be definitively excluded.

Consciously telic behavior is distinguishable from unconsciously telic conduct only to the extent that it implies an agent endowed with the power of abstraction. Unless an agent can vary radically the specificity of the procedure, whereby it attains a given end, the purposiveness of its behavior is no evidence of its intelligence. “Among animals,” says Bergson, “invention is never more than a variation on the theme of routine. Locked up as it is within the habits of its species, the animal succeeds no doubt in broadening these by individual initiative; but its escape from automatism is momentary only, just long enough to create a new automatism; the gates of its prison close as soon as they are opened; dragging the chain merely lengthens it. Only with man does consciousness break the chain.” (Cf. Smithson. Inst. Rpt. for 1918, p. 457.)

In vain, then, do our Darwinian humanizers of the brute exalt instinct at the expense of intelligence. Their attempt to reduce to a difference of degree the difference of kind that separates the irrational from the rational, fails all along the line. Indeed, far from being able to account for the appearance of intelligence in the world, transformistic theories are impotent to account for so much as the development of instinct, all forms of the evolutionary theory, the Lamarckian, the Darwinian, the De-Vriesian, etc., being equally inadequate to the task of explaining the origin of animal instincts.

The complex instinctive behavior of predatory wasps, for example, is absolutely essential for the preservation of their respective races, and yet these indispensable instincts are completely useless in any other than the _perfect state_. From their very nature, therefore, they do not admit of _gradual development_. The law of all, or none, holds here. “Instinct developed by degrees,” says Fabre, “is flagrantly impossible. The art of preparing the larva’s provisions allows none but masters, and suffers no apprentices; the Wasp must excel in it from the outset or leave the thing alone.” (“The Hunting Wasps,” p. 403.) To be useful at all, the instinctive operation must possess an indivisible perfection, which cannot be partitioned into degrees. The _Pompilius_ (_Calicurgus_), for instance, must, under penalty of instant death, take the preliminary precaution to sting into inaction the ganglion that controls the poison forceps of her formidable prey, the Black Tarantula (_Lycosa_), before she proceeds to paralyze it by stabbing its thoracic ganglion. The slightest imperfection or shortcoming in her surgery would be irretrievably disastrous. Such an instinct never existed in an imperfect form. The first wasp to possess it must have been an expert, or she would never have lived to serve the limp body of the huge spider as living provender for her tiny grub. “The first to come to grips with the Tarantula,” says Fabre, “had an unerring knowledge of her dangerous surgery. The least hesitation, the slightest speculation, and she was lost. The first teacher would also have been the last, with no disciples to take up her art and perfect it.” (“Bramble Bees,” p. 354.)

Another hunting wasp, the Hairy Ammophila, subdues a large caterpillar into a state of coma by pricking with its sting nine of the ventral ganglia, while it spares the cervical ganglion, merely compressing the latter with its mandibles, so as not to destroy life altogether. This nice discrimination rules out Loeb’s hypothesis of a so-called “chemotaxis.” As a result of this elaborate surgical operation, the power of movement is suppressed in every segment, and the tiny larva of the wasp emerging from the egg laid on the ventral surface of the caterpillar can devour this huge living, but motionless, victim in peace and safety. Dead meat would not agree with the larva, and any movement of the caterpillar would be fatal to the delicate grub. To eliminate these contingencies, the Wasp’s surgery must be perfect from the very outset. “There is,” says Fabre, “no _via media_, no half success. Either the caterpillar is treated according to rule and the Wasp and its family is perpetuated; or else the victim is only partially paralyzed and the Wasp’s offspring dies in the egg. Yielding to the inexorable logic of things, we will have to admit that the first Hairy Ammophila, after capturing a Grey Worm to feed her larva, operated on the patient by the exact method in use today.” (“The Hunting Wasps,” pp. 403, 404.)

Certain meticulous critics of our day cite the fact of the diffusion of the poison as indicating that the surgery of the hunting wasps need not be so perfectly accommodated to the nervous system of their prey, and they attempt in this way to discredit Fabre as having failed to take the occurrence of diffusion into account. A careful reading of his works, however, will serve to vindicate him in this respect. In a chapter on the poison of the bee, for instance, we read: “The local effect is diffused. This diffusion, which might well take place in the victims of the predatory insects, plays no part in the latter’s method of operation. The egg, which will be laid immediately afterwards, demands the complete inertia of the prey from the outset. Hence all the nerve-centers that govern locomotion must be numbed instantaneously by the virus.” (“Bramble Bees,” p. 347.) Bouvier, therefore, very justly remarks: “After all, when Fabre’s work is examined there is no trouble in seeing that none of these details escaped him. He never disputed the paralytic action of the poison inoculated by the insect, and the wonderful researches by the Peckhams on the Pompilids, which hunt Lycosids, have clearly established the fact that the thrusts of the sting given by the predatory insect produce two different kinds of paralysis, one functional, and often temporary, resulting from the action of the venom, the other structural and persistent, produced by the dart which more or less injures the nervous centers.” (Smithson. Inst. Rpt. for 1916, p. 594.)

In the case of predatory insects, therefore, the instinct must be _perfect at the outset_, or survival is impossible. For the origin of such instincts, Darwinism, which stresses the _gradualness_ of evolutionary progress, has no explanation that will hold water. Lamarckism, which sees in _acquired habits_ transmitted by inheritance, the origin of instinct, the “memory of the race,” is equally at a loss to account for these instincts. The formation of habits requires _practice_ and _repetition_. The predatory insect must be perfect at the start, and yet it only exercises its remarkable instinct _once a year_. Where is the practice and reiteration requisite for canalizing its nervous system into the conduction-paths of habit? How did one particular set of rarely performed acts happen to gain precedence over all others, and to be alone successful in stamping themselves indelibly upon the nerve plasm as habits, and upon the germ plasm as instincts? De-Vriesianism, which would make the acquisition and perfecting of instinct dependent upon the rare and accidental contingency of a _fortuitous mutation_, is even more objectionable. These instincts are vital to the insect. If their acquisition and improvement depend upon the lucky chance of a series of favorable mutations, its prospects of survival are nil; for it cannot afford to wait at all. “In order to live,” says Fabre, “we all require the conditions that enable us to live: this is a truth worthy of the famous axioms of La Palice. The predatory insects live by their talent. If they do not possess it to perfection, their race is lost.” (“Bramble Bees,” p. 364.)