Mental Evolution in Man 3

Mental Evolution in Man 3

With regard to Volition more will be said in a future instalment of

this work. Here, therefore, it is enough to say, in general terms,

that no one has seriously questioned the identity of kind between the

animal and the human will, up to the point at which so-called freedom

is supposed by some dissentients to supervene and characterize the

latter. Now, of course, if the human will differs from the animal will

in any important feature or attribute such as this, the fact must be

duly taken into account during the course of our subsequent analysis.

At present, however, we are only engaged upon a preliminary sketch of

the points of resemblance between animal and human psychology. So far,

therefore, as we are now concerned with the will, we have only to note

that up to the point where the volitions of a man begin to surpass

those of a brute in respect of complexity, refinement, and foresight,

no one disputes identity of kind.

 

Lastly, the same remark applies to the faculties of Intellect.[5]

Enormous as the difference undoubtedly is between these faculties

in the two cases, the difference is conceded not to be one of kind

_ab initio_. On the contrary, it is conceded that up to a certain

point—namely, as far as the highest degree of intelligence to which

an animal attains—there is not merely a similarity of kind, but an

identity of correspondence. In other words, the parallel between

animal and human intelligence which is presented in my Diagram, and to

which allusion has already been made, is not disputed. The question,

therefore, only arises with reference to those superadded faculties

which are represented above the level marked 28, where the upward

growth of animal intelligence ends, and the growth of distinctively

human intelligence begins. But even at level 28 the human mind is

already in possession of many of its most useful faculties, and these

it does not afterwards shed, but carries them upwards with it in the

course of its further development—as we well know by observing the

psychogenesis of every child. Now, it belongs to the very essence of

evolution, considered as a process, that when one order of existence

passes on to higher grades of excellence, it does so upon the

foundation already laid by the previous course of its progress; so that

when compared with any allied order of existence which has not been

carried so far in this upward course, a more or less close parallel

admits of being traced between the two, up to the point at which

the one begins to distance the other, where all further comparison

admittedly ends. Therefore, upon the face of them, the facts of

comparative psychology now before us are, to say the least, strongly

suggestive of the superadded powers of the human intellect having been

due to a process of evolution.

 

Lest it should be thought that in this preliminary sketch of

the resemblances between human and brute psychology I have been

endeavouring to draw the lines with a biased hand, I will here quote

a short passage to show that I have not misrepresented the extent

to which agreement prevails among adherents of otherwise opposite

opinions. And for this purpose I select as spokesman a distinguished

naturalist, who is also an able psychologist, and to whom, therefore,

I shall afterwards have occasion frequently to refer, as on both these

accounts the most competent as well as the most representative of my

opponents. In his Presidential Address before the Biological Section of

the British Association in 1879, Mr. Mivart is reported to have said:—

 

“I have no wish to ignore the marvellous powers of animals, or the

resemblance of their actions to those of man. No one can reasonably

deny that many of them have feelings, emotions, and sense-perceptions

similar to our own; that they exercise voluntary motion, and perform

actions grouped in complex ways for definite ends; that they to a

certain extent learn by experience, and combine perceptions and

reminiscences so as to draw practical inferences, directly apprehending

objects standing in different relations one to another, so that, in

a sense, they may be said to apprehend relations. They will show

hesitation, ending apparently, after a conflict of desires, with what

looks like choice or volition; and such animals as the dog will not

only exhibit the most marvellous fidelity and affection, but will

also manifest evident signs of shame, which may seem the outcome of

incipient moral perceptions. It is no great wonder, then, that so many

persons, little given to patient and careful introspection, should fail

to perceive any radical distinction between a nature thus gifted and

the intellectual nature of man.”

 

* * * * *

 

We may now turn to consider the points wherein human and brute

psychology have been by various writers alleged to differ.

 

The theory that brutes are non-sentient machines need not detain us,

as no one at the present day is likely to defend it.[6] Again, the

distinction between human and brute psychology that has always been

taken more or less for granted—namely, that the one is rational and

the other irrational—may likewise be passed over after what has been

said in the chapter on Reason in my previous work. For it is there

shown that if we use the term Reason in its true, as distinguished

from its traditional sense, there is no fact in animal psychosis more

patent than that this psychosis is capable in no small degree of

_ratiocination_. The source of the very prevalent doctrine that animals

have no germ of reason is, I think, to be found in the fact that reason

attains a much higher level of development in man than in animals,

while instinct attains a higher development in animals than in man:

popular phraseology, therefore, disregarding the points of similarity

while exaggerating the more conspicuous points of difference,

designates all the mental faculties of the animal instinctive, in

contradistinction to those of man, which are termed rational. But

unless we commit ourselves to an obvious reasoning in a circle, we must

avoid assuming that all actions of animals are instinctive, and then

arguing that, because they are instinctive, therefore they differ in

kind from those actions of man which are rational. The question really

lies in what is here assumed, and can only be answered by examining

in what essential respect instinct differs from reason. This I have

endeavoured to do in my previous work with as much precision as the

nature of the subject permits; and I think I have made it evident, in

the first place, that there is no such immense distinction between

instinct and reason as is generally assumed—the former often being

blended with the latter, and the latter as often becoming transmuted

into the former,—and, in the next place, that all the higher animals

manifest in various degrees the faculty of inferring. Now, _this is the

faculty of reason, properly so called_; and although it is true that in

no case does it attain in animal psychology to more than a rudimentary

phase of development as contrasted with its prodigious growth in man,

this is clearly quite another matter where the question before us is

one concerning difference of kind.[7]

 

Again, the theological distinction between men and animals may be

passed over, because it rests on a dogma with which the science of

psychology has no legitimate point of contact. Whether or not the

conscious part of man differs from the conscious part of animals in

being immortal, and whether or not the “spirit” of man differs from

the “soul” of animals in other particulars of kind, dogma itself would

maintain that science has no voice in either affirming or denying.

For, from the nature of the case, any information of a positive kind

relating to these matters can only be expected to come by way of a

Revelation; and, therefore, however widely dogma and science may differ

on other points, they are at least agreed upon this one—namely, if the

conscious life of man differs thus from the conscious life of brutes,

Christianity and Philosophy alike proclaim that only by a Gospel could

its endowment of immortality have been brought to light.[8]

 

Another distinction between the man and the brute which we often find

asserted is, that the latter shows no signs of mental progress in

successive generations. On this alleged distinction I may remark,

first of all, that it begs the whole question of mental evolution in

animals, and, therefore, is directly opposed to the whole body of facts

presented in my work upon this subject. In the next place, I may remark

that the alleged distinction comes with an ill grace from opponents of

evolution, seeing that it depends upon a recognition of the principles

of evolution in the history of mankind. But, leaving aside these

considerations, I meet the alleged distinction with a plain denial of

both the statements of fact on which it rests. That is to say, I deny

on the one hand that mental progress from generation to generation is

an invariable peculiarity of human intelligence; and, on the other

hand, I deny that such progress is never found to occur in the case of

animal intelligence.

 

Taking these two points separately, I hold it to be a statement

opposed to fact to say, or to imply, that all existing savages, when

not brought into contact with civilized man, undergo intellectual

development from generation to generation. On the contrary, one of the

most generally applicable statements we can make with reference to the

psychology of uncivilized man is that it shows, in a remarkable degree,

what we may term a _vis inertiæ_ as regards upward movement. Even

so highly developed a type of mind as that of the Negro—submitted,

too, as it has been in millions of individual cases to close contact

with minds of the most progressive type, and enjoying as it has in

many thousands of individual cases all the advantages of liberal

education—has never, so far as I can ascertain, executed one single

stroke of original work in any single department of intellectual

activity.

 

Again, if we look to the whole history of man upon this planet as

recorded by his remains, the feature which to my mind stands out

in most marked prominence is the almost incredible slowness of his

intellectual advance, during all the earlier millenniums of his

existence. Allowing full weight to the consideration that “the

Palæolithic age, referring as the phrase does to a stage of culture,

and not to any chronological period, is something which has come and

gone at very different dates in different parts of the world;”[9]

and that the same remark may be taken, in perhaps a smaller measure,

to apply to the Neolithic age; still, when we remember what enormous

lapses of time these ages may be roughly taken to represent, I think

it is a most remarkable fact that, during the many thousands of years

occupied by the former, the human mind should have practically made no

advance upon its primitive methods of chipping flints; or that during

the time occupied by the latter, this same mind should have been so

slow in arriving, for example, at even so simple an invention as that

of substituting horns for flints in the manufacture of weapons. In my

next volume, where I shall have to deal especially with the evidence

of intellectual evolution, I shall have to give many instances, all

tending to show its extraordinarily slow progress during these æons of

pre-historic time. Indeed, it was not until the great step had been

made of substituting metals for both stones and horns, that mental

evolution began to proceed at anything like a measurable rate. Yet

this was, as it were, but a matter of yesterday. So that, upon the

whole, if we have regard to the human species generally—whether over

the surface of the earth at the present time, or in the records of

geological history,—we can no longer maintain that a tendency to

improvement in successive generations is here a leading characteristic.

On the contrary, any improvement of so rapid and continuous a kind as

that which is really contemplated, is characteristic only of a small

division of the human race during the last few hours, as it were, of its existence.