Chapter VI: Part 6

The fear of birds for man is an acquired trait due to ages of persecution. If man would treat birds kindly, they would act toward him as they do toward any other friendly animal. When unfrequented islands are first visited by man, the birds are found to be perfectly fearless of him, flying about him, feeding from his hand, and manifesting no more timidity than if he were a big-hearted bird himself. Darwin states that, when he stopped at the Galapagos Islands on his famous trip around the world in the _Beagle_, he found the birds there so tame that he could push them from the branches of the trees with his gun-barrel. Professor Cutting, of the State University of Iowa, in an article in the _Popular Science Monthly_ for August, 1903, tells of the almost absolute fearlessness of the birds on the island of Laysan, an isolated atoll in the Pacific west of the Hawaian Islands, which he visited during that summer. The island swarms with bird life—petrels, albatrosses, and tropical birds of various kinds—and these birds betray no more fear in the presence of man than if he were a cow. The albatrosses were so numerous and so indifferent to the presence of man that it was necessary to shove them aside with one’s foot to keep from stepping on them when one went for a walk along the sand-stretches of the shore. Professor Cutting took photographs of birds which literally posed for him in all sorts of positions, and half-savage jackies amused themselves by going about and pulling the pretty tail feathers from the tropical birds as they sat on their nests. I have known of two cases where persons, by going to the same place day after day with food and kindness, have in the course of a few weeks taught robins, sparrows, and other birds, to lose all fear of them, so much so as to sit on their shoulders and arms and eat out of their hands. This is the spirit all birds would show all the time toward their featherless lords if these featherless ones would only treat them with half the consideration they merit.

The love of a bird for the treasures of her nest is one of the most beautiful things of this world. Mother-like, the parent bird will do anything almost for the sake of her little ones. Who has not seen the kildeer strive with all the tact of her clever little soul to allure some big giant of a human being, who has wandered into her neighbourhood, away from her nest of precious young? Many a time as a boy on the farm I have followed one of these birds limping and tumbling and fluttering along on the ground a few feet ahead of me, utterly disabled, as I supposed, but always managing to keep just a little beyond the reach of my eager hands. And when the artful mother has led me far from the sacred spot where lay all there was in this world to her, how triumphantly she has lifted herself on her unharmed wings and, to my utter astonishment, sailed away. The partridge and the mourning-dove are, if possible, even more artful in their acting than the kildeer. After I became a large boy and had been told the meaning of these exhibitions by parent birds, I often followed the mourning-dove, thinking the bird must be really wounded after all, so perfectly did it pretend. But the cunning of the kildeer is not confined to luring one away from the nest. If by some accident one finds her nest (and the nest is so cleverly concealed that, if it is discovered at all, it will be by pure accident), the resourceful mother is ready with other expedients to outwit you. She watches you all the time from the proper distance, and knows by your conduct the moment you have found her nest. And before you have even had time to admire the skill displayed by the mother in blending so perfectly her abode with its surroundings, a single peculiar note from her has caused the whole nestful of cuddling young ones to dart out of their cradle and disappear among the surrounding clods as if by magic. No amount of searching can find one of them. They have vanished as effectually as if they had evaporated. And it is enough to touch the heart of the most indifferent to see the anxious mother bird, as I have seen her from the cranny of a neighbouring rock-pile, come back to her nest and call her scattered children together again after they have once dispersed at her command. Circling around the nest two or three times to assure herself that no one is nigh, she alights and begins a low clucking sound like that of a hen calling her brood. The little ones come out of their hiding-places one after another as mysteriously as they vanished. You can’t see for the life of you where they come from. They seem to just _emanate_. And if one of them fails to come at her call—for the devoted mother knows very well just how many she has—she extends her search farther out from her nest, looking all around and keeping up that peculiar little cluck, until the half-scared-to-death little slyboots finally comes creeping out from his improvised snuggery somewhere. If a kildeer’s nest has once been found, and the mother feels that it is in danger of future visits, she will move her family at night to some other locality, and it is practically impossible ever to find it again. The family relations of the ring-dotterels are said to be ‘so charming and touching that even hunters recoil from shooting a female surrounded by her young ones.’

Human beings, true to their instinct never to call into action their ability to think if they can employ their faculty for nonsense instead, call this love of the mother bird ‘machinery.’ But there are some of us (and our numbers are increasing) who are disposed to put off the adoption of this conclusion until we go mad. The bird builds her nest, weaving it of the rarest fibres. She hides it in the copse or prudently hangs it far out on some inaccessible bough. She lays her beautiful eggs, and hatches them with the warmth and life of her own breast. She tends her young, bringing them food and drink, and watching over them with a tender and tireless vigilance. She protects them in storm with her own little body, worries about them when danger lurks, and dreams of them, no doubt, as she rocks and sleeps under the silent stars. She sings to them in the overflow of her gladness and hope, and risks her very existence to shield them from harm. She teaches them to fly, to find their food, and to detect their enemies. She is true to her mate, and her mate is true and kind to her. As the days of summer shorten, and the cool, long nights warn of approaching autumn, she leads her children away from the old place, she and her faithful mate, out into the wide old world. And I say there is love in the heart of that mother as truly as in the heart of woman, and there are joy and genuineness and sorrow and fidelity in that sylvan home more sacred than may sometimes bloom in the cold mansions of men.

Conjugal love is also very strong in many of the feathered races, especially among those in which the wedding is for successive seasons or for life. The pining of love-birds for their dead sweethearts is well known. The mandarin duck is proverbial for its marital faithfulness, and a pair of these fowls is carried by the Chinese in their marriage processions as an emblem of constancy. Many instances are recorded of birds, after having been deprived of their mates, refusing steadfastly the attentions of other birds, and even sometimes separating themselves entirely from the society of their kind. The following account of the devotion of a widowed pigeon for her deceased consort sounds like a tale of human woe:

‘A man set to watch a field much patronised by pigeons shot an old male pigeon who had long been an inhabitant of the farm. His mate, around whom he had for many a year cooed, whom he had nourished with his own crop and had assisted in rearing numerous young ones immediately settled on the ground by his side She refused to leave him, and manifested her grief in the most expressive manner. The labourer took up the dead bird and hung it on a stake. The widow still refused to forsake her husband, and continued day after day slowly walking around the stake on which his body hung. The kind-hearted wife of the farmer heard of the matter, and went to the relief of the stricken bird. On arriving at the spot, she found the poor bird still watching at the side of her dead, and making an occasional effort to get to him. She was much spent with her long fasting and grief. She had made a circular beaten path around the corpse of her companion’.[8]

And these are the beings whose bones men jest over at their feasts, and brutes shoot for pastime on human holidays. Much has been said of the sorrow of birds for their deceased mates, but not too much. For the avian soul may be smothered by the gloom and loneliness that come upon the heart, when the great light of love and companionship has gone out, quite as completely as the soul of a bereaved human. In not many human homes where loved ones lie sick and dying are felt the pangs of more genuine grief than those sometimes suffered by birds when their friends and companions are stricken in death. The following incident, vouched for by Dr. Franklin, who observed it, is only one among many such instances recorded in the literature on birds:

A pair of parrots had lived together on the most loving terms for four years, when the female was taken with a serious attack of gout. She grew rapidly worse, and was soon so weak as to be unable to leave her perch for food, when the male, faithful and tender as a human spouse, took it upon himself to carry food to her regularly in his beak. ‘He continued feeding her in this way for four months, but the infirmities of his companion increased day by day, until at last she was no longer able to support herself on the perch. She remained cowering down in the bottom of the cage, making from time to time ineffectual efforts to regain her perch. The male was always near her, and did everything in his power to aid the feeble efforts of his dear better-half. Seizing the poor invalid by the beak or the upper part of her wing, he tried his best to enable her to rise, and repeated his efforts several times. His constancy, his gestures, and his continued solicitude, all showed in this affectionate bird the most ardent desire to relieve the sufferings and assist the weakness of his sinking companion. But the scene became still more affecting when the female was dying. Her unhappy consort moved about her incessantly, his attentions and tender cares redoubled. He even tried to open her beak to give some nourishment. He ran to her, and then returned with a troubled and agitated look. At intervals he uttered the most plaintive cries; then, with his eyes fixed on her, kept a mournful silence. At length his companion breathed her last. From that moment he pined away, and in the course of a few weeks died’.[6]

Even the rough-looking ostrich has sensibility enough to die of a broken heart, as was the case in the Jardin des Plantes at Paris a few years ago. There is many a heart with a slabless grave far from the haunts of men, and many a tear in secret brews that never wets the eye.

The individual who has never acquired the enthusiasm for a knowledge of the birds and a love for their presence and association has omitted some of the richest emotions of life. ‘The sight of a bird or the sound of its voice is at all times an event of such significance to me,’ says Chapman, ‘a source of such unfailing pleasure, that when I go afield with those to whom birds are strangers I am deeply impressed by the comparative barrenness of their world, for they live in ignorance of a great store of enjoyment that might be theirs for the asking.’

‘I cannot love the man who does not love, As men love light, the
song of happy birds.’

I have seen a mother mouse in a moment of peril flee from her home among the falling pieces of a cord-wood pile, and disappear under the roots of a neighbouring oak. I have seen her a little later, recovered from her initial dismay, making her way back again, clambering along among the tangled timbers, stopping now and then to look and listen, her eyes wild and anxious, and her whole little body quaking with excitement. I have seen her go among the ruins of her dwelling, take a poor little squeaking young one in her mouth, and hurry away with it to the gloomy refuge in the roots of the oak. I have watched her return again and again, each time taking in her careful teeth the tiny body of a babe, until five mouthfuls of precious pink were safely lodged within the fortress of the oak. And I could as soon believe that woman, when she saves her children from some fearful harm, is a soulless machine as think that that brave little wood-mother, out there alone under the trees, snatching her darlings from the jaws of death, was a heroine without sense or feeling. That little hairy mother with four feet and bead-like eyes loved her young ones in just the same way and for just the same reason as a human mother loves her young ones. She looked upon her babies, in all probability, with the same mother-love and tenderness as a human mother looks upon hers, and felt in miniature, with evil hovering above them, the same consternation a woman feels when destruction reaches out after those that are nearest and dearest. And when it was all over, when the good angel of deliverance had finally spread its healing white wings over that afflicted family, the heart of that little rodent was doubtless soothed by the same joy as that which, in the hour of deliverance, calms the hearts of humankind.

Ants tend their fields, gather their harvests, domesticate other insects, and keep slaves. They help each other bear heavy burdens, extricate each other from misfortune, speak to each other when they meet, and bury their dead. They build roads and bridges, and manifest wonderful engineering skill in their construction. They even tunnel under rivers. They go far from home, and find their way back again. They inhabit towns, and build splendid and spacious palaces. Each ant knows every other citizen of its own town, and an ant from any other town is immediately recognised as a foreigner. Ants have their overseers of industrial enterprises, and regular hours for work and sleep. The ant is the most pugnacious of all animals, and the most muscular compared with its size. It will boldly attack the biggest creature that walks if this creature invades its home. It will fasten its mandibles into an enemy, and allow itself to be torn to pieces without relaxing its hold. Among some savage tribes, certain species of ants are said to be used as surgeons. Infuriated ants are allowed to fasten their mandibles on the opposite edges of a gash, and in this way the wound is closed. The ants are decapitated, and their bodiless heads with their relentless jaws serve as stitches to the wound. Ants have holidays and athletic festivals. On such occasions they romp and chase each other and play hide-and-seek like children. They stand on their hind-legs, embrace each other with their fore-limbs, grasp each other by the feet or antennae, pull each other down the entrances to their towns, wrestle and roll over on the sand, and so on—all in the friendliest manner. It is greatly to the credit of these little people that no observer has ever yet known them to become so inventively helpless or so athletically hard up as to play slug-ball. Ants educate their young, and practise the fundamental principles of human states and societies. Forel, the great Swiss student of ants, says that several hundred nests are sometimes united into a single confederation. Each ant knows every other ant of the entire confederation, and they all take part in the common defence. Haeckel says, speaking of social evolution in ants, that the aboriginal ants of the Chalk Age had as little idea of the division of labour and organisation of modern ant states as paleolithic flint-chippers had of the complexity and organisation of twentieth-century civilisation. ‘If we take an ant’s nest, we not only see that work of every description—rearing of progeny, foraging, building, rearing of aphides, and so on—is performed according to the principles of voluntary mutual aid, but we must also recognise, with Forel, that the fundamental feature of the life of many species of ants is the obligation of every ant to share its food, already swallowed and partly digested, with every member of the community which may apply for it. Two ants belonging to the same nest or to the same confederation of nests will approach each other, exchange a few movements with the antennae, and if one of them is hungry or thirsty—and especially if the other has its crop full—it immediately asks for food. The individual thus requested never refuses. It sets apart its mandibles, takes a proper position, and regurgitates a drop of transparent fluid, which is licked up by the hungry ant. Regurgitating food for others is so prominent a feature in the life of the ants, and it so constantly recurs both for feeding hungry comrades and for feeding larvae, that Forel considers the digestive tube of ants to consist of two different parts, one of which—the posterior—is for the special use of the individual, and the other—the anterior part—is chiefly for the use of the community. If an ant which has its crop full has been selfish enough to refuse to feed a comrade, it will be treated as an enemy. If the refusal has been made while its kinsfolks were fighting with some other species, they will fall upon the greedy individual with greater vehemence even than upon the enemies themselves. All this has been confirmed by the most accurate observations and experiments’.[9]

Ants keep slaves. And the slaves, in some instances, carry their masters about, feed them, groom them, and attend to their every want, just as human lackeys do helpless aristocrats. In some species the institution of slavery is so old that the physical structures of the masters have been modified until the masters are physically unable to feed themselves, and will perish from hunger, though surrounded by food, if they are left to themselves. The brain of the ant, as Darwin says, is one of the most wonderful bits of matter in the universe. It is scarcely one-fourth the size of the head of a pin, yet it is the seat of the most astonishing wisdom and activity. If human intelligence were as great, compared with the mass of the human brain, as is the ant’s, man would be several hundred times as wise as he is now, and would then probably not fall far short of that state of erudition which the average man imagines he already represents. Ants remember, and a fact becomes impressed by repetition, showing that the faculty of memory in ants is governed by the same laws as is this faculty in man. Sir John Lubbock found it necessary to teach his ants the way by repeating the lesson where the way was long or unusual. ‘Sensation, perception, and association follow in the social insects, on the whole, the same fundamental laws as in the vertebrates, including ourselves. Furthermore, attention is surprisingly developed in insects’ (Forel). Ants keep standing armies, make alliances, and maraud neighbouring states. They have their wars, civil and foreign, and their massacres and enslavements of the conquered. But they have never got so low yet, so far as anyone knows, as to hypocritically prosecute their conquests in the name of God and humanity. The battlefields of ants resemble the carnage-plains of men, strewn with ghastly corpses and covered with the headless and dying. And the accounts of their expeditions—their going forth in regular columns, with captains, scouts, and skirmish lines, their battles, and their return laden with plunder and captives—read like the grisly tales of human history. Ants perform, in short, about all the antics of civilised man, except maltreating the females and drinking gin. And shall we say their civilisation is less real because it is miniature and because it is carried on far below the Brobdingnagian contemplations of man? ‘When we see an ant-hill tenanted by thousands of industrious inhabitants, excavating chambers, forming tunnels, making roads, guarding their home, gathering food, feeding the young, tending their domestic animals, each one fulfilling its duties industriously and without confusion, it is difficult altogether to deny them the gift of reason or to escape the conviction that their mental powers differ from those of men not so much in kind as in degree’ (Lubbock).

The industrious and gifted bee, with its wonderful social system, in advance even of that of the most enlightened societies of men; the generous horse, who thinks and feels so much more than the clowns who maul him ever suspect; the artful spider, that confirmed waylayer lurking in his lair of silk; the soft and predaceous cat; the timid-hearted hare, poor hounded little dweller of the fields and stream-sides; the beautiful and vivacious squirrel; the lowly lady-bug; the cautious fox; the irascible serpent, so cruelly misunderstood by men; the patient camel; the scornful peafowl; the indomitable goat; the grave and vindictive elephant; the ingenious beaver, the woodman of the primeval wilderness; the lordly and polygamous cock; the maternal hen; the wary trout, beset everywhere by the villainous traps of impostors; the bride-like butterfly; the delicate antelope and deer; and the sturdy, incorruptible ox—all of these beings have within them souls composed primarily of the same elements as those that compose the souls of men.

Ground-wasps have been observed to use tiny stones as hammers in packing the dirt firmly over their nests—a very remarkable act of intelligence, since the use of tools is not common even among the higher mammals.[10]

Fishes have been taught to assemble at the ringing of a bell, and toads and tortoises to come at the call of their favourite friends. An alligator which was kept tame for several years became so much attached to its master that ‘it followed him about the house like a dog, scrambling up the stairs after him, and showing much affection and docility.’ The favourite friend and companion of this alligator was the cat; and, whenever the cat stretched herself on the floor in front of the fire, the alligator would lie down beside her, with its head on the cat, and go to sleep. ‘When the cat was absent, the alligator was restless, but it always appeared happy when the cat was near it’.[8]

Wolves and foxes sometimes cooperate with each other in their hunting expeditions, somewhat as men do in theirs. One of their number will crouch in ambush by the side of a road known to be used by hares or other small animals, and leap on the unsuspecting fugitives when driven that way by others of the hunting band. Many animals post sentinels when they eat or sleep or engage in other hazardous undertakings, and these sentinels show a good deal of discrimination in distinguishing between animals that are friendly and those that are not. Beavers not only build lodges to live in, but also construct dams to keep the water in which the villages are located at a certain height. The outlet of these dams is carefully regulated, being regularly lessened and enlarged to suit the supply of water in the stream. The trees used by the beavers in their enterprises are felled by them along the margins of the stream, and floated to the place where they are used. In old communities, where the supply of timber near the stream has been exhausted, artificial canals are cut by these indomitable engineers for use in the transportation of their materials. These excavations are made at a great cost of labour and for the deliberate purpose of enabling the builders to accomplish that which they could not accomplish in any other way. ‘In executing this purpose,’ says Romanes, ‘there is sometimes displayed a depth of engineering forethought over details of structure required by the circumstances of special localities which is even more astonishing than the execution of the general idea’.[6] When, for instance, a canal has been carried so far from the original water-supply that, owing to the rising ground, it cannot be continued without a very great expenditure of effort in digging, a second dam is built higher up-stream, and with water drawn from this the canal is continued on at a higher level. Sometimes a third dam is built above the second, and the canal again continued at a still higher level before the valuable timber of the higher grounds is reached. These enterprising rodents also carve sometimes enormous channels across the necks of land formed by winding rivers, to serve as cut-offs in travel and transportation. And yet all of these things—all of the intelligence, feeling, and ingenuity displayed by the non-human races—are still lumped together by belated psychologists under the head of ‘instinct,’ by which is meant a blind, unconscious knack of doing the right thing without in any way realising what is being done or what it is being done for! The principle in accordance with which mind is denied to non-human beings would, if carried to its legitimate conclusions, make machines out of all of us, and limit the possession of conscious intelligence to the individual who promulgates the theory. The attitude assumed by many psychologists toward the mental faculties of inferior races reminds one of Heine’s interview with the old lizard at Lucca. In the discussion which ensued between the poet and the reptile, the poet dropped the words, ‘I think.’ ‘Think!’ snapped the lizard with a sharp, aristocratic tone of profound contempt—‘think! Which of you thinks? For 3,000 years, wise sir, I have investigated the spiritual functions of animals, and I have made men and apes the special objects of my study. I have devoted myself to these queer creatures with as great zeal and diligence as Lyonnet to his caterpillars. And as the result of my researches, I can assure you no man thinks. Now and then something occurs to him, and these accidentally occurring somethings he calls thoughts, and the stringing of them together he calls thinking. But you can take my word for it, no man thinks—no philosopher thinks. And, so far as philosophy is concerned, it is mere air and water, like pure vapours in the sky. There is, in reality, only one true philosophy, and that is engraven in eternal hieroglyphics on my own tail’.[7]

This attitude of the lordly saurian toward the human race is a stinging burlesque on the anthropocentric conceit which perverts all of man’s views of the other orders of life.

It is not contended that non-human beings are psychically identical with human beings. The races of men are not psychically identical with each other. The difference between the intellectual splendours of a Spencer evolving volumes of the profoundest philosophy and the mind of an Australian who cannot count six, or between the understanding of an Edison, the wizard of the electrical world, and that of the South Sea islanders, who, when Captain Cook gave them some English nails, planted them in the hope of raising a new crop, is almost infinite. The lowest races of men have neither superstition nor the power of abstract thought as have the higher races. They have a word for black stone, white stone, and brown stone, but no word for stone; for elm-tree, oak-tree, and the like, but no word for tree. As Kingsley says, ‘It is difficult to believe that a dog does not form as clear an abstract idea of a tree as these people do.’ There are human beings living in the forests of Asia, Africa, and Australasia that wander about from place to place in herds without chief, law, weapons, or fixed habitations. They go naked, mate by chance, and climb trees like monkeys. Some of these races know nothing of fire, religion, or a moral world, chatter to each other like apes, and live on such natural products as roots, fruits, serpents, mice, ants, and honey. One of these creatures, we are told, will lie flat on his front for an hour by the runway of a field-mouse, waiting for a chance to snatch up the little creature when it comes along and eat it. Dozens of such degraded races are mentioned by Blichner in his ‘Man: Past, Present, and Future,’ and by Sir John Lubbock in his ‘Origin of Civilisation.’

Non-human beings have, as a rule, neither the psychic variety nor the intensity of higher humans. And it is not contended that in language, science, and superstition they are capable of being compared with the foremost few of civilised societies, any more than savages, especially the lowest savages, are capable of such comparison. But it is maintained that the non-human races of the earth are _not_ the metallic and soulless lot of fixtures they are vulgarly supposed to be; that they are just as real living beings, with just as precious nerves and just as genuine feelings, rights, heartaches, capabilities, and waywardnesses, as we ourselves: and that, since they are our own kith and kindred, we have no right whatever, higher than the right of main strength (which is the right of devils), to assume them to be, and to treat them as if they were, our natural and legitimate prey.

1. Darwin: _Expression of Emotions in Men and Animals_; New York, 1899. 2. Starr: _Human Progress_; Pennsylvania, 1895. 3. Hartmann: _Anthropoid Apes_; New York, 1901. 4. Brehm: _From North Pole to Equator_; London, 1896. 5. Stanley: _In Darkest Africa_, vol i.; New York, 1890. 6. Romanes: _Animal Intelligence_; New York, 1899. 7. Evans: _Evolutional Ethics and Animal Psychology_; New York, 1898. 8. Jesse: _Gleanings in Natural History_, vol. i.; London, 1832. 9. Kropotkin: _Mutual Aid a Factor of Evolution_; New York, 1902. 10. Peckham and Peckham: _Instincts and Habits of the Solitary Wasps_; Madison, Wisconsin, 1898.

IV. The Elements of Human and Non-human Mind Compared.

The analysis of human mind and the comparison of its elements or powers with the powers of non-human mind corroborate the conclusions already arrived at through observation and deductive inference. The chief powers of the mind of man are _sensation_, _memory_, _emotion_, _imagination_, _volition_, _instinct_, and _reason_. All of these faculties are found in non-human beings, some of them developed to a much higher degree than they are in man, and some of them to a much lower.

_Sensation_ is the effect produced on the mind when a sense organ is affected in some way by external stimuli. Sensation is the lumber of the mind, the raw material out of which are elaborated all other forms of consciousness. The chief species of sensation are those of sight, sound, smell, taste, and feeling. The original sense was feeling, and out of this sense were evolved the other four. The organs of seeing, hearing, smelling, and tasting are therefore modifications of the skin, which is the organ of original sense. The fact that in all animals, down almost to the very beginnings of life, sense organs exist, suggests that sensation may be almost, if not quite, coextensive with animal life. All mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fishes have the same special sense organs as man, and the organs of sight, sound, taste, and smell occupy in all vertebrates the same relative positions in the head. Birds see better than any other animals, and carnivora smell better. Ruminants see, hear, and smell with great acuteness. Fishes also see and hear well; and the wings of the bat are so exceedingly sensitive that it will move about blindfolded and with ears stopped with cotton almost as unerringly as when aided by sight and sound. Insects have smell, sight, and taste well developed, as is shown by their keen appreciation of the colours, perfumes, and flavours of flowers. They also hear. Stridulation proves this. Worms have eyes and ears, and land-leeches scent the approach of their prey at a long distance. The starfish and the medusa respond to all the five classes of stimuli which affect the five senses of man, and nervous substance is found in all animals above the sponge.

_Memory_ is the power of retaining or recognising past states of consciousness. The power to retain impressions follows in origin close upon the power to receive impressions. Memory is the historic faculty of the mind—the power of the mind to store up its experiences—and is found in nearly all animals. The lowly limpet, whose world is a seaside rock, will come back from its little roamings time after time to the same rude lodge from which it set out. Bees remember where they get honey or sugar months afterwards, and when it is necessary will sometimes go back to the old home hive which they left the year before. Ants retrace their steps after making long journeys from their nest, and are able in some way to recognise their friends after months of separation. The stickleback (fish) knows the way back to his nest, although he has been absent several hours. Fishes return and hatch their young year after year in the same waters; birds come back to their old nesting-places; and horses remember their way along devious roads over which they have not been for years. Horses used in the delivery of milk, or in other occupations in which they are accustomed to travel daily over about the same route, come in time to remember every alley, street, and stopping-place of the whole round almost as accurately as their drivers. Darwin’s dog remembered and obeyed him after an absence of five years. The power of dogs, squirrels, and other animals of remembering where they have long before cached food is indeed wonderful. A squirrel will come down out of a tree when the earth is covered to a depth of several inches with lately fallen snow and hop away, without the slightest hesitancy or mistake, to the exact spot where it has months before stored its mid-winter acorns. A lion has been known to recognise its keeper after seven years of separation, and an elephant obeyed all his old words of command on being recaptured after fifteen years of jungle life. The similarity of memory in other animals to the same faculty in man is shown by the fact that memory everywhere is governed by the same laws. In all animals, including man, memory is strengthened by repetition—that is, impressions are always deepened and confirmed by being made over and over. A parrot or a raven masters a new sentence by working at it and saying it over and over again, just as a boy memorises his rules and catechisms.

_Imagination_ is the picturing power of the mind. In its lowest stages of manifestation it is akin to memory. Imagination, however, in its higher reaches, not only reimages previous impressions, but combines them in new and original relations. Imagination is displayed in dreams, images, delusions, anticipation, and sympathy. It also furnishes wings for speculation and reason. Spiders, when they attach stones to their webs to steady them during anticipated gales, probably exercise imagination. The tame serpent which was carried away from its master’s house and found its way back again, though the distance was one hundred miles, no doubt carried in its imagination vivid pictures of its old home.[1] Cats, dogs, horses, and other animals dream, and parrots talk in their sleep. Horses and cattle sometimes stampede at imaginary objects, and often distort real objects into imaginary monsters. When a horse at night takes fright at a big black stump by the roadside, he no doubt imagines it to be some terrible creature ready to eat him up if he should go near it, just as a timid child does in the same circumstances. There is a great difference in horses in this respect, just as there is among children and men, some of them taking fright at every unusual thing, while others are more bold or stolid. The cat playing with a ball of yarn converts it by means of its imagination into an object of prey, just as a girl converts a doll into a baby, or a boy changes a stick into a steed. Sympathy is the putting or picturing of one’s self in the place of another, and by means of the imagination sharing or simulating the psychic conditions of that other. This high and holy exercise of the imagination is exhibited by horses, cattle, dogs, deer, elephants, monkeys, and birds—in fact, by nearly all animals as far down as the fishes and insects.

_Emotion_ is the stirring of the sensibilities by way of the intellect or the imagination. The following emotions are found in non-human beings: fear, surprise, affection, pugnacity, play, pride, anger, jealousy, curiosity, sympathy, emulation, resentment, appreciation of the beautiful, grief, hate, cruelty, joy, benevolence, revenge, shame, remorse, and appreciation of the ludicrous. Excepting the emotions of conscience and religion, which are really compounds, with fear as the main ingredient, this list of non-human emotions is coextensive with the list of human emotions. Many of these emotions germinate low down in the animal kingdom, fear, anger, sexuality, and jealousy all being found in fishes and in the higher invertebrates. In the higher vertebrates many of these emotions are almost as strong as they are in men. Does anyone who has felt the throbbing sides of a frightened puppy or hare have any doubt that these creatures suffer the keenest agony of fear? Apes have been known to fall down and faint when suddenly confronted by a snake, so great is their instinctive horror of serpents; and gray parrots, which are extremely nervous birds, have been known to drop from their perch unconscious under the influence of great fear.[2]

The horse is, perhaps, of all animals, the one which occasionally gives itself over most completely to the emotion of fear, as everyone who has witnessed the terrible abandon of a runaway team can testify. Ants, fishes, birds, cats, dogs, horses, monkeys, porpoises, and many other animals play. Young kittens, colts, and puppies enjoy a scuffle about as well as boys do. Pugnacity originates among the spiders and insects, and is highly developed in the ant, cock, and bulldog. This emotion is strong in the males of nearly all vertebrates. Anyone who has observed the vigilance displayed by fishes in protecting their nests can have little doubt that these comparatively primitive beings possess pugnacity. I was one evening floating in a boat by the edge of a Long Island pond just over a village of perches. Each nest was guarded by an assiduous male, who hovered over it vigilantly, or darted this way and that to drive off the piscatorial _hoi polloi_ hanging about the neighbourhood, ready to slip in at the first opportunity and eat the eggs. Just to see what would happen, I put my hand down into the water and moved it slowly toward one of the nests. To my surprise, the guardian of the nest, instead of fleeing in alarm, proceeded to show fight. It chased my hand away time after time, and when the hand was not removed it would nip it vigorously, not once simply, but two or three times if necessary, and each time with increasing energy. It contended with the courage of a little hero. I pushed it and jostled it about, and even took it in my hand and lifted it clear out of the water. To my amazement, on getting back into the water, it returned promptly to the attack. It fought until it was really fagged, for its onsets were at last much feebler than at first. I came away after twenty minutes, leaving the little hero in triumphant possession of his charge.

Among some species of monkeys several individuals will join together in overturning a stone for the possible ants’ eggs under it; and, when a burying beetle has found a dead mouse or bird, it goes and gets its companions to help it in the interment.[3] Crows show benevolence by feeding their blind and helpless companions, and monkeys adopt the orphans of deceased members of their tribe. Brehm saw two crows feeding in a hollow tree a third crow which was wounded. They had evidently been doing this for some time, for the wound was several weeks old. Darwin tells of a blind pelican which was fed upon fishes, which were brought to it by its friends from a distance of thirty miles.[4] The devotion of cedar-birds to each other and their kindness to all birds in distress are well known to every student of ornithology. Olive Thorne Miller tells of a cedar-bird that raised a brood of young robins that had been left orphans by the accidental killing of the parents. Weddell saw more than once during his journey to Bolivia that when a herd of vicunas were closely pursued the strong males covered the retreat of the weaker and less swift members of the herd by lagging behind and protecting them.[3]

A remarkable instance of altruism which he once saw exhibited by the king-crabs in a London aquarium is mentioned by Kropotkin in his work on ‘Mutual Aid a Factor in Evolution.’ One of these crabs had fallen on its back in a corner of the tank. And for one of these great creatures, with its saucepan carapace, to get on its back is, even in favourable circumstances, a serious matter. The seriousness was increased in this instance by an iron bar, which hindered the normal activities of the unfortunate crustacean. ‘Its comrades came to the rescue, and for one hour’s time I watched how they endeavoured to help their fellow-prisoner. They came two at once, pushed their friend from beneath, and after strenuous efforts succeeded in lifting it upright. But then the iron bar prevented them from achieving the work of rescue, and the crab again fell heavily on its back. After many attempts, one of the helpers went into the depth of the tank and brought two other crabs, who began with fresh forces the same pushing and lifting of their helpless comrade. We stayed in the aquarium for more than two hours, and, when leaving, came to cast a glance upon the tank. The work of attempted rescue still continued. Since I saw that I cannot refuse credit to the observation quoted by Dr. Erasmus Darwin that the common crab during the moulting season stations a sentinel, an unmolted or hard-shelled individual, to prevent marine enemies from injuring moulted individuals in their unprotected state.’ Walruses go to the defence of a wounded comrade when summoned by its cries for help. Romanes tells of a gander who acted as a guardian to his blind consort, taking her neck gently in his mouth and leading her to the water when she wanted to take a swim, and after allowing her to cruise for a time under his guidance and care, conducting her back home again in the same thoughtful manner. When goslings were hatched, this remarkable gander seemed to realise the inability of the mother to look after them, for he took charge of them as if they were his own, convoying them to the waterside, and lifting them carefully out of the ruts and pits with his bill whenever they got into difficulty.[1]

The disposition to go to the aid of a fellow in trouble is one of the most characteristic traits in the psychology of the swine. A single squeal of distress from even the scrawniest member of a swine herd will bring down on the one who causes this distress the hair-raising wrath of every porker within hearing. This trait has been considerably reduced by domestication, and in those varieties in which degeneracy has gone farthest it scarcely exists. But it is exceedingly strong in all wild hogs. Animals as low in the scale of development and as proverbially cold as snakes have been known, when educated and treated with kindness, to manifest considerable affection for their friends and masters. Nearly all domestic animals display a good deal of affection, not only to their young, but to adult members of their own kind and to their human masters. The devotion of the dog to man is without a parallel anywhere. It has been said that ‘the dog is the only thing on this earth that loves you more than he loves himself.’ When dogs become so much attached to their masters or mistresses that they pine and die on being separated from them, they show beyond any question that they have feelings which, in intensity, are not inferior to those possessed by the more highly developed men and women. And this has happened time after time.

A pathetic story of love and of its tragic close came last year out of the Maine woods. Two moose, who had been tracked all day by a couple of human tigers, were finally overtaken, when one of them fell pierced by two rifle-balls. The remaining moose, instead of dashing off into the forest, stood still, lowered its head, and sniffed at its fallen companion. Then, raising its antlers high into the air, it bellowed loudly. As the cry of the great creature echoed through the forest, it also fell at the discharge of the rifles. It was found on examination afterwards that the first moose was blind, and that the second one, which had neglected to leave it for safety, was its pilot.

My father once owned a cow who contracted a strong affection for my sister. This cow, who showed on many occasions and in many ways her highly developed emotional nature, would scarcely allow anyone else than my sister to milk her. She always presented herself to my sister as soon as she was let into the lot in order to be milked first, and she was so jealous of this privilege that if it were not accorded to her she would stand with her head down and give vent to her unhappiness in low moans. After she was milked she would follow her human friend around from one cow to another, in order to be as near her as possible. She knew my sister’s voice from that of everyone else, and would always low a response and come to her when called by name, even though she were a quarter of a mile away in the pasture. Romanes tells somewhere of a band of apes that were being pursued by dogs when a young ape was cut off from the rest and was about to be killed by the dogs. The chief of the band, seeing the peril of the young one, went deliberately back and rescued it.

Many animals show that they possess a rudimentary sense of humour by the pranks and tricks which they play on each other and on human beings. The monkey is the prince of nonhuman jokers, but dogs, cats, horses, elephants, and other animals have enough of this sense to have books written about it. A monkey has been observed to slyly pass his hand back of a second monkey and tweak the tail of a third one, and then composedly enjoy himself while the resentment of the injured monkey expended itself on the innocent middle one. Many monkeys enjoy entertaining their friends with grimaces, by carrying a cane, putting a tin dish on their heads, or other droll antics. These intelligent animals have a sufficiently high appreciation of the ludicrous to dislike ridicule. Like human beings, they can’t endure being laughed at, and get mad if they are made the victims of a joke. Romanes’ monkey was one day asked to crack a nut for the amusement of a visitor. The nut turned out to be a bad one, and the melancholy look of disappointment on the monkey’s face caused the visitor to laugh. The insulted monkey flew into a rage, and hurled the nut at the offending scoffer, then the hammer, and finally the coffee-pot which simmered on the grate fire.[1] Darwin tells of a baboon in the Zoological Gardens of London who always became infuriated every time his keeper took out a letter or book and read aloud to him. On one occasion when Darwin was present the baboon became so furious that he bit his own leg until it bled.[4]

The emotion variously known as shame, regret, repentance, and remorse, is not common among the non-human races. It is found sometimes in dogs and monkeys, and especially in educated anthropoids. But this emotion is exceedingly rare among savages, and is not at all universal even among civilised societies of men. Some animals manifest self-restraint, which is an exceedingly elite quality of mind, and one not so common as it might be even among the higher breeds of mankind. By restraint is meant the inhibition of a desire or instinct in the presence of circumstances tending to render the desire or instinct active—and this is obedience, and the beginning of morality. A dog that will not chase a hare in the presence of his master may do so in his absence. I taught my guinea-pigs to abstain from certain food in their presence which they wanted very much, and which they would have eaten if they had not been educated to let it alone. Sympathy is the most beautiful of all terrestrial emotions. It is manifested, sometimes to an exceedingly touching degree, by all the highest races of animals. No other instances than those already given can be mentioned here. It is sufficient to say that the difference between the savage—whose sympathies are so feeble that he has been known to knock his own child’s brains out for dropping a basket, and who puts his aged parents to death in order to avoid the burden of maintaining them, and whose sympathies seldom extend beyond his family or tribe—and civilised men and women, who feel actual pain when in the presence of those who suffer, and whose sympathies sometimes include all sentient creation, is much greater than that between the savage and many nonhuman animals. The frail, narrow, fantastic character of human sympathy is the most mournful fact in human nature. ‘Man’s inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn,’ and his inhumanity to not-men makes the planet a ball of pain and terror.