Chapter VIII (2)

Most wonderful of all are the instincts connected with the continuation of the species. The males always find out the females of their own kind, but certainly not solely through their resemblance to themselves. With many animals, as, for example, parasitic crabs, the sexes so little resemble one another that the male would be more likely to seek a mate from the females of a thousand other species than from his own. Certain butterflies are polymorphic, and not only do the males and females of the same species differ, but the females present two distinct forms, one of which as a general rule mimics the outward appearance of a distant but highly valued species; yet the males will pair only with the females of their own kind, and not with the strangers, though these may be very likely much more like the males themselves. Among the insect species of the _strepsiptera_, the female is a shapeless worm which lives its whole life long in the hind body of a wasp; its head, which is of the shape of a lentil, protrudes between two of the belly rings of the wasp, the rest of the body being inside. The male, which only lives for a few hours, and resembles a moth, nevertheless recognises his mate in spite of these adverse circumstances, and fecundates her.

Before any experience of parturition, the knowledge that it is approaching drives all mammals into solitude, and bids them prepare a nest for their young in a hole or in some other place of shelter. The bird builds her nest as soon as she feels the eggs coming to maturity within her. Snails, land-crabs, tree-frogs, and toads, all of them ordinarily dwellers upon land, now betake themselves to the water; sea-tortoises go on shore, and many saltwater fishes come up into the rivers in order to lay their eggs where they can alone find the requisites for their development. Insects lay their eggs in the most varied kinds of situations,—in sand, on leaves, under the hides and horny substances of other animals; they often select the spot where the larva will be able most readily to find its future sustenance, as in autumn upon the trees that will open first in the coming spring, or in spring upon the blossoms that will first bear fruit in autumn, or in the insides of those caterpillars which will soonest as chrysalides provide the parasitic larva at once with food and with protection. Other insects select the sites from which they will first get forwarded to the destination best adapted for their development. Thus some horseflies lay their eggs upon the lips of horses or upon parts where they are accustomed to lick themselves. The eggs get conveyed hence into the entrails, the proper place for their development,—and are excreted upon their arrival at maturity. The flies that infest cattle know so well how to select the most vigorous and healthiest beasts, that cattle-dealers and tanners place entire dependence upon them, and prefer those beasts and hides that are most scarred by maggots. This selection of the best cattle by the help of these flies is no evidence in support of the conclusion that the flies possess the power of making experiments consciously and of reflecting thereupon, even though the men whose trade it is to do this recognise them as their masters. The solitary wasp makes a hole several inches deep in the sand, lays her egg, and packs along with it a number of green maggots that have no legs, and which, being on the point of becoming chrysalides, are well nourished and able to go a long time without food; she packs these maggots so closely together that they cannot move nor turn into chrysalides, and just enough of them to support the larva until it becomes a chrysalis. A kind of bug (_cerceris bupresticida_), which itself lives only upon pollen, lays her eggs in an underground cell, and with each one of them she deposits three beetles, which she has lain in wait for and captured when they were still weak through having only just left off being chrysalides. She kills these beetles, and appears to smear them with a fluid whereby she preserves them fresh and suitable for food. Many kinds of wasps open the cells in which their larvæ are confined when these must have consumed the provision that was left with them. They supply them with more food, and again close the cell. Ants, again, hit always upon exactly the right moment for opening the cocoons in which their larvæ are confined and for setting them free, the larva being unable to do this for itself. Yet the life of only a few kinds of insects lasts longer than a single breeding season. What then can they know about the contents of their eggs and the fittest place for their development? What can they know about the kind of food the larva will want when it leaves the egg—a food so different from their own? What, again, can they know about the quantity of food that will be necessary? How much of all this at least can they know consciously? Yet their actions, the pains they take, and the importance they evidently attach to these matters, prove that they have a foreknowledge of the future: this knowledge therefore can only be an unconscious clairvoyance. For clairvoyance it must certainly be that inspires the will of an animal to open cells and cocoons at the very moment that the larva is either ready for more food or fit for leaving the cocoon. The eggs of the cuckoo do not take only from two to three days to mature in her ovaries, as those of most birds do, but require from eleven to twelve; the cuckoo, therefore, cannot sit upon her own eggs, for her first egg would be spoiled before the last was laid. She therefore lays in other birds’ nests—of course laying each egg in a different nest. But in order that the birds may not perceive her egg to be a stranger and turn it out of the nest, not only does she lay an egg much smaller than might be expected from a bird of her size (for she only finds her opportunity among small birds), but, as already said, she imitates the other eggs in the nest she has selected with surprising accuracy in respect both of colour and marking. As the cuckoo chooses the nest some days beforehand, it may be thought, if the nest is an open one, that the cuckoo looks upon the colour of the eggs within it while her own is in process of maturing inside her, and that it is thus her egg comes to assume the colour of the others; but this explanation will not hold good for nests that are made in the holes of trees, as that of _sylvia phænicurus_, or which are oven-shaped with a narrow entrance, as with _sylvia rufa_. In these cases the cuckoo can neither slip in nor look in, and must therefore lay her egg outside the nest and push it inside with her beak; she can therefore have no means of perceiving through her senses what the eggs already in the nest are like. If, then, in spite of all this, her egg closely resembles the others, this can only have come about through an unconscious clairvoyance which directs the process that goes on within the ovary in respect of colour and marking.

An important argument in support of the existence of a clairvoyance in the instincts of animals is to be found in the series of facts which testify to the existence of a like clairvoyance, under certain circumstances, even among human beings, while the self-curative instincts of children and of pregnant women have been already mentioned. Here, however, {124} in correspondence with the higher stage of development which human consciousness has attained, a stronger echo of the unconscious clairvoyance commonly resounds within consciousness itself, and this is represented by a more or less definite presentiment of the consequences that will ensue. It is also in accord with the greater independence of the human intellect that this kind of presentiment is not felt exclusively immediately before the carrying out of an action, but is occasionally disconnected from the condition that an action has to be performed immediately, and displays itself simply as an idea independently of conscious will, provided only that the matter concerning which the presentiment is felt is one which in a high degree concerns the will of the person who feels it. In the intervals of an intermittent fever or of other illness, it not unfrequently happens that sick persons can accurately foretell the day of an approaching attack and how long it will last. The same thing occurs almost invariably in the case of spontaneous, and generally in that of artificial, somnambulism; certainly the Pythia, as is well known, used to announce the date of her next ecstatic state. In like manner the curative instinct displays itself in somnambulists, and they have been known to select remedies that have been no less remarkable for the success attending their employment than for the completeness with which they have run counter to received professional opinion. The indication of medicinal remedies is the only use which respectable electro-biologists will make of the half-sleeping, half-waking condition of those whom they are influencing. “People in perfectly sound health have been known, before childbirth or at the commencement of an illness, to predict accurately their own approaching death. The accomplishment of their predictions can hardly be explained as the result of mere chance, for if this were all, the prophecy should fail at least as often as not, whereas the reverse is actually the case. Many of these persons neither desire death nor fear it, so that the result cannot be ascribed to imagination.” So writes the celebrated physiologist, Burdach, from whose chapter on presentiment in his work “Bhicke in’s Leben” a great part of my most striking examples is taken. This presentiment of deaths, which is the exception among men, is quite common with animals, even though they do not know nor understand what death is. When they become aware that their end is approaching, they steal away to outlying and solitary places. This is why in cities we so rarely see the dead body or skeleton of a cat. We can only suppose that the unconscious clairvoyance, which is of essentially the same kind whether in man or beast, calls forth presentiments of different degrees of definiteness, so that the cat is driven to withdraw herself through a mere instinct without knowing why she does so, while in man a definite perception is awakened of the fact that he is about to die. Not only do people have presentiments concerning their own death, but there are many instances on record in which they have become aware of that of those near and dear to them, the dying person having appeared in a dream to friend or wife or husband. Stories to this effect prevail among all nations, and unquestionably contain much truth. Closely connected with this is the power of second sight, which existed formerly in Scotland, and still does so in the Danish islands. This power enables certain people without any ecstasy, but simply through their keener perception, to foresee coming events, or to tell what is going on in foreign countries on matters in which they are deeply interested, such as deaths, battles, conflagrations (Swedenborg foretold the burning of Stockholm), the arrival or the doings of friends who are at a distance. With many persons this clairvoyance is confined to a knowledge of the death of their acquaintances or fellow-townspeople. There have been a great many instances of such death-prophetesses, and, what is most important, some cases have been verified in courts of law. I may say, in passing, that this power of second sight is found in persons who are in ecstatic states, in the spontaneous or artificially induced somnambulism of the higher kinds of waking dreams, as well as in lucid moments before death. These prophetic glimpses, by which the clairvoyance of the unconscious reveals itself to consciousness, {126} are commonly obscure because in the brain they must assume a form perceptible by the senses, whereas the unconscious idea can have nothing to do with any form of sensual impression: it is for this reason that humours, dreams, and the hallucinations of sick persons can so easily have a false signification attached to them. The chances of error and self-deception that arise from this source, the ease with which people may be deceived intentionally, and the mischief which, as a general rule, attends a knowledge of the future, these considerations place beyond all doubt the practical unwisdom of attempts to arrive at certainty concerning the future. This, however, cannot affect the weight which in theory should be attached to phenomena of this kind, and must not prevent us from recognising the positive existence of the clairvoyance whose existence I am maintaining, though it is often hidden under a chaos of madness and imposture.

The materialistic and rationalistic tendencies of the present day lead most people either to deny facts of this kind _in toto_, or to ignore them, inasmuch as they are inexplicable from a materialistic standpoint, and cannot be established by the inductive or experimental method—as though this last were not equally impossible in the case of morals, social science, and politics. A mind of any candour will only be able to deny the truths of this entire class of phenomena so long as it remains in ignorance of the facts that have been related concerning them; but, again, a continuance in this ignorance can only arise from unwillingness to be convinced. I am satisfied that many of those who deny all human power of divination would come to another, and, to say the least, more cautious conclusion if they would be at the pains of further investigation; and I hold that no one, even at the present day, need be ashamed of joining in with an opinion which was maintained by all the great spirits of antiquity except Epicurus—an opinion whose possible truth hardly one of our best modern philosophers has ventured to contravene, and which the champions of German enlightenment were so little disposed to relegate to the domain of old wives’ tales, that Goethe furnishes us with an example of second sight that fell within his own experience, and confirms it down to its minutest details.

Although I am far from believing that the kind of phenomena above referred to form in themselves a proper foundation for a superstructure of scientific demonstration, I nevertheless find them valuable as a completion and further confirmation of the series of phenomena presented to us by the clairvoyance which we observe in human and animal instinct. Even though they only continue this series {128} through the echo that is awakened within our consciousness, they as powerfully support the account which instinctive actions give concerning their own nature, as they are themselves supported by the analogy they present to the clairvoyance observable in instinct. This, then, as well as my desire not to lose an opportunity of protesting against a modern prejudice, must stand as my reason for having allowed myself to refer, in a scientific work, to a class of phenomena which has fallen at present into so much discredit.

I will conclude with a few words upon a special kind of instinct which has a very instructive bearing upon the subject generally, and shows how impossible it is to evade the supposition of an unconscious clairvoyance on the part of instinct. In the examples adduced hitherto, the action of each individual has been done on the individual’s own behalf, except in the case of instincts connected with the continuation of the species, where the action benefits others—that is to say, the offspring of the creature performing it.

We must now examine the cases in which a solidarity of instinct is found to exist between several individuals, so that, on the one hand, the action of each redounds to the common welfare, and, on the other, it becomes possible for a useful purpose to be achieved through the harmonious association of individual workers. This community of instinct exists also among the higher animals, but here it is harder to distinguish from associations originating through conscious will, inasmuch as speech supplies the means of a more perfect intercommunication of aim and plan. We shall, however, definitely recognise {129} this general effect of a universal instinct in the origin of speech and in the great political and social movements in the history of the world. Here we are concerned only with the simplest and most definite examples that can be found anywhere, and therefore we will deal in preference with the lower animals, among which, in the absence of voice, the means of communicating thought, mimicry, and physiognomy, are so imperfect that the harmony and interconnection of the individual actions cannot in its main points be ascribed to an understanding arrived at through speech. Huber observed that when a new comb was being constructed a number of the largest working-bees, that were full of honey, took no part in the ordinary business of the others, but remained perfectly aloof. Twenty-four hours afterwards small plates of wax had formed under their bellies. The bee drew these off with her hind-feet, masticated them, and made them into a band. The small plates of wax thus prepared were then glued to the roof of the hive one on the top of the other. When one of the bees of this kind had used up her plates of wax, another followed her and carried the same work forward in the same way. A thin rough vertical wall, half a line in thickness and fastened to the sides of the hive, was thus constructed. On this, one of the smaller working-bees whose belly was empty came, and after surveying the wall, made a flat half-oval excavation in the middle of one of its sides; she piled up the wax thus excavated round the edge of the excavation. After a short time she was relieved by another like herself, till more than twenty followed one another in this way. Meanwhile another bee began to make a similar hollow on the other side of the wall, but corresponding only with the rim of the excavation on this side. Presently another bee began a second hollow upon the same side, each bee being continually relieved by others. Other bees kept coming up and bringing under their bellies plates of wax, with which they heightened the edge of the small wall of wax. In this, new bees were constantly excavating the ground for more cells, while others proceeded by degrees to bring those already begun into a perfectly symmetrical shape, and at the same time continued building up the prismatic walls between them. Thus the bees worked on opposite sides of the wall of wax, always on the same plan and in the closest correspondence with those upon the other side, until eventually the cells on both sides were completed in all their wonderful regularity and harmony of arrangement, not merely as regards those standing side by side, but also as regards those which were upon the other side of their pyramidal base.

Let the reader consider how animals that are accustomed to confer together, by speech or otherwise, concerning designs which they may be pursuing in common, will wrangle with thousandfold diversity of opinion; let him reflect how often something has to be undone, destroyed, and done over again; how at one time too many hands come forward, and at another too few; what running to and fro there is before each has found his right place; how often too many, and again too few, present themselves for a relief gang; and how we find all this in the concerted works of men, who stand so far higher than bees in the scale of organisation. We see nothing of the kind among bees. A survey of their operations leaves rather the impression upon us as though an invisible master-builder had prearranged a scheme of action for the entire community, and had impressed it upon each individual member, as though each class of workers had learnt their appointed work by heart, knew their places and the numbers in which they should relieve each other, and were informed instantaneously by a secret signal of the moment when their action was wanted. This, however, is exactly the manner in which an instinct works; and as the intention of the entire community is instinctively present in the unconscious clairvoyance {131a} of each individual bee, so the possession of this common instinct impels each one of them to the discharge of her special duties when the right moment has arrived. It is only thus that the wonderful tranquillity and order which we observe could be attained. What we are to think concerning this common instinct must be reserved for explanation later on, but the possibility of its existence is already evident, inasmuch {131b} as each individual has an unconscious insight concerning the plan proposed to itself by the community, and also concerning the means immediately to be adopted through concerted action—of which, however, only the part requiring his own co-operation is present in the consciousness of each. Thus, for example, the larva of the bee itself spins the silky chamber in which it is to become a chrysalis, but other bees must close it with its lid of wax. The purpose of there being a chamber in which the larva can become a chrysalis must be present in the minds of each of these two parties to the transaction, but neither of them acts under the influence of conscious will, except in regard to his own particular department. I have already mentioned the fact that the larva, after its metamorphosis, must be freed from its cell by other bees, and have told how the working-bees in autumn kill the drones, so that they may not have to feed a number of useless mouths throughout the winter, and how they only spare them when they are wanted in order to fecundate a new queen. Furthermore, the working-bees build cells in which the eggs laid by the queen may come to maturity, and, as a general rule, make just as many chambers as the queen lays eggs; they make these, moreover, in the same order as that in which the queen lays her eggs, namely, first for the working-bees, then for the drones, and lastly for the queens. In the polity of the bees, the working and the sexual capacities, which were once united, are now personified in three distinct kinds of individual, and these combine with an inner, unconscious, spiritual union, so as to form a single body politic, as the organs of a living body combine to form the body itself.

In this chapter, therefore, we have arrived at the following conclusions:—

Instinct is not the result of conscious deliberation; {132} it is not a consequence of bodily organisation; it is not a mere result of a mechanism which lies in the organisation of the brain; it is not the operation of dead mechanism, glued on, as it were, to the soul, and foreign to its inmost essence; but it is the spontaneous action of the individual, springing from his most essential nature and character. The purpose to which any particular kind of instinctive action is subservient is not the purpose of a soul standing outside the individual and near akin to Providence—a purpose once for all thought out, and now become a matter of necessity to the individual, so that he can act in no other way, though it is engrafted into his nature from without, and not natural to it. The purpose of the instinct is in each individual case thought out and willed unconsciously by the individual, and afterwards the choice of means adapted to each particular case is arrived at unconsciously. A knowledge of the purpose is often absolutely unattainable {133} by conscious knowledge through sensual perception. Then does the peculiarity of the unconscious display itself in the clairvoyance of which consciousness perceives partly only a faint and dull, and partly, as in the case of man, a more or less definite echo by way of sentiment, whereas the instinctive action itself—the carrying out of the means necessary for the achievement of the unconscious purpose—falls always more clearly within consciousness, inasmuch as due performance of what is necessary would be otherwise impossible. Finally, the clairvoyance makes itself perceived in the concerted action of several individuals combining to carry out a common but unconscious purpose.

Up to this point we have encountered clairvoyance as a fact which we observe but cannot explain, and the reader may say that he prefers to take his stand here, and be content with regarding instinct simply as a matter of fact, the explanation of which is at present beyond our reach. Against this it must be urged, firstly, that clairvoyance is not confined to instinct, but is found also in man; secondly, that clairvoyance is by no means present in all instincts, and that therefore our experience shows us clairvoyance and instinct as two distinct things—clairvoyance being of great use in explaining instinct, but instinct serving nothing to explain clairvoyance; thirdly and lastly, that the clairvoyance of the individual will not continue to be so incomprehensible to us, but will be perfectly well explained in the further course of our investigation, while we must give up all hope of explaining instinct in any other way.

The conception we have thus arrived at enables us to regard instinct as the innermost kernel, so to speak, of every living being. That this is actually the case is shown by the instincts of self-preservation and of the continuation of the species which we observe throughout creation, and by the heroic self-abandonment with which the individual will sacrifice welfare, and even life, at the bidding of instinct. We see this when we think of the caterpillar, and how she repairs her cocoon until she yields to exhaustion; of the bird, and how she will lay herself to death; of the disquiet and grief displayed by all migratory animals if they are prevented from migrating. A captive cuckoo will always die at the approach of winter through despair at being unable to fly away; so will the vineyard snail if it is hindered of its winter sleep. The weakest mother will encounter an enemy far surpassing her in strength, and suffer death cheerfully for her offspring’s sake. Every year we see fresh cases of people who have been unfortunate going mad or committing suicide. Women who have survived the Cæsarian operation allow themselves so little to be deterred from further childbearing through fear of this frightful and generally fatal operation, that they will undergo it no less than three times. Can we suppose that what so closely resembles demoniacal possession can have come about through something engrafted on to the soul as a mechanism foreign to its inner nature, {135} or through conscious deliberation which adheres always to a bare egoism, and is utterly incapable of such self-sacrifice for the sake of offspring as is displayed by the procreative and maternal instincts?

We have now, finally, to consider how it arises that the instincts of any animal species are so similar within the limits of that species—a circumstance which has not a little contributed to the engrafted-mechanism theory. But it is plain that like causes will be followed by like effects; and this should afford sufficient explanation. The bodily mechanism, for example, of all the individuals of a species is alike; so again are their capabilities and the outcomes of their conscious intelligence—though this, indeed, is not the case with man, nor in some measure even with the highest animals; and it is through this want of uniformity that there is such a thing as individuality. The external conditions of all the individuals of a species are also tolerably similar, and when they differ essentially, the instincts are likewise different—a fact in support of which no examples are necessary. From like conditions of mind and body (and this includes like predispositions of brain and ganglia) and like exterior circumstances, like desires will follow as a necessary logical consequence. Again, from like desires and like inward and outward circumstances, a like choice of means—that is to say, like instincts—must ensue. These last two steps would not be conceded without restriction if the question were one involving conscious deliberation, but as these logical consequences are supposed to follow from the unconscious, which takes the right step unfailingly without vacillation or delay so long as the premises are similar, the ensuing desires and the instincts to adopt the means for their gratification will be similar also.

Thus the view which we have taken concerning instinct explains the very last point which it may be thought worth while to bring forward in support of the opinions of our opponents.

I will conclude this chapter with the words of Schelling: “Thoughtful minds will hold the phenomena of animal instinct to belong to the most important of all phenomena, and to be the true touchstone of a durable philosophy.”