Mental Evolution in Man 4

Mental Evolution in Man 4

On the other hand, as I have said, it is not true that animal species

never display any traces of intellectual improvement from generation

to generation. Were this the case, as already remarked, mental

evolution could never have taken place in the brute creation, and

so the phenomena of mind would have been wholly restricted to man:

all animals would have required to present but a vegetative form of

life. But, apart from this general consideration, we meet with many

particular instances of mental improvement in successive generations of

animals, taking place even within the limited periods over which human

observations can extend. In my previous work numerous cases will be

found (especially in the chapters on the plasticity and blended origin

of instincts), showing that it is quite a usual thing for birds and

mammals to change even the most strongly inherited of their instinctive

habits, in order to improve the conditions of their life in relation

to some change which has taken place in their environments. And if it

should be said that in such a case “the animal still does not rise

above the level of birdhood or of beasthood,” the answer, of course,

is, that neither does a Shakespeare or a Newton rise above the level of

manhood.

 

On the whole, then, I cannot see that there is any valid distinction to

be drawn between human and brute psychology with respect to improvement

from generation to generation. Indeed, I should deem it almost more

philosophical in any opponent of the theory of evolution, who happened

to be acquainted with the facts bearing upon the subject, if he were to

adopt the converse position, and argue that for the purposes of this

theory there is _not a sufficient_ distinction between human and brute

psychology in this respect. For when we remember the great advance

which, according to the theory of evolution, the mind of palæolithic

man must already have made upon that of the higher apes, and when we

remember that all races of existing men have the immense advantage of

some form of language whereby to transmit to progeny the results of

individual experience,—when we remember these things, the difficulty

appears to me to lie on the side of explaining why, with such a start

and with such advantages, the human species, both when it first appears

upon the pages of geological history, and as it now appears in the

great majority of its constituent races, should so far resemble animal

species in the prolonged stagnation of its intellectual life.

 

I shall now pass on to consider the views of Mr. Wallace and Mr.

Mivart on the distinction between the mental endowments of man and of

brute. Both these authors are skilled naturalists, and also professed

evolutionists so far as the animal world is concerned: moreover, they

further agree in maintaining that the principles of evolution cannot

be held to apply to man. But it is curious that, so far as psychology

is concerned, they base their arguments in support of their common

conclusion on precisely opposite premisses. For while Mr. Mivart

argues that human intelligence cannot be the same in kind as animal

intelligence, because the mind of the lowest savage is incomparably

superior to that of the highest ape; Mr. Wallace argues for the same

conclusion on the ground that the intelligence of savages is so little

removed from that of the higher apes, that the fact of their brains

being proportionately larger must be held to point prospectively

towards the needs of civilized life. “A brain,” he says, “slightly

larger than that of the gorilla would, according to the evidence before

us, fully have sufficed for the limited mental development of the

savage; and we must therefore admit that the large brain he actually

possesses could never have been developed solely by any of the laws of

evolution.”[10]

 

Now, I have presented these two opinions side by side because I deem it

an interesting, if not a suggestive circumstance, that the two leading

dissenters in this country from the general school of evolutionists,

although both holding the doctrine that man ought to be separated

from the rest of the animal kingdom on psychological grounds, are

nevertheless led to their common doctrine by directly opposite reasons.

 

The eminent French naturalist, Professor Quatrefages, also adopts

the opinion that man should be separated from the rest of the animal

kingdom as a being who, on psychological grounds, must be held to

have had some different mode of origin. But he differs from both

the English evolutionists in drawing his distinction somewhat more

finely. For while Mivart and Wallace found their arguments upon the

mind of man considered as a whole, Quatrefages expressly limits his

ground to the faculties of conscience and religion. In other words, he

allows—nay insists—that no valid distinction between man and brute

can be drawn in respect of rationality or intellect. For instance, to

take only one passage from his writings, he remarks:—“In the name of

philosophy and psychology, I shall be accused of confounding certain

intellectual attributes of the human reason with the exclusively

sensitive faculties of animals. I shall presently endeavour to answer

this criticism from the standpoint which should never be quitted by

the naturalist, that, namely, of experiment and observation. I shall

here confine myself to saying that, in my opinion, the animal is

intelligent, and, although an (intellectually) rudimentary being, that

its intelligence is nevertheless of the same nature as that of man.”

Later on he says:—“Psychologists attribute religion and morality to

the reason, and make the latter an attribute of man (to the exclusion

of animals). But with the reason they connect the highest phenomena of

the intelligence. In my opinion, in so doing they confound, and refer

to a common origin, facts entirely different. Thus, since they are

unable to recognize either morality or religion in animals, which in

reality do not possess these two faculties, they are forced to refuse

them intelligence also, although the same animals, in my opinion, give

decisive proof of their possession of this faculty every moment.”[11]

 

Touching these views I have only two things to observe. In the first

place, they differ _toto cælo_ from those both of Mr. Wallace and Mr.

Mivart; and thus we now find that the _three_ principal authorities

who still stand out for a distinction of kind between man and brute

on grounds of psychology, far from being in agreement, are really in

fundamental opposition, seeing that they base their common conclusion

on premisses which are all mutually exclusive of one another. In the

next place, even if we were fully to agree with the opinion of the

French anthropologist, or hold that a distinction of kind has to be

drawn only at religion and morality, we should still be obliged to

allow—although this is a point which he does not himself appear

to have perceived—that the superiority of human intelligence is a

necessary _condition_ to both these attributes of the human mind. In

other words, whether or not Quatrefages is right in his view that

religion and morality betoken a difference of kind in the only animal

species which presents them, at least it is certain that neither of

these faculties could have occurred in that species, had it not also

been gifted with a greatly superior order of intelligence. For even the

most elementary forms of religion and morality depend upon ideas of a

much more abstract, or intellectual, nature than are to be met with

in any brute. Obviously, therefore, the first distinction that falls

to be considered is the intellectual distinction. If analysis should

show that the school represented by Quatrefages is right in regarding

this distinction as one of degree—and, therefore, that the school

represented by Mivart is wrong in regarding it as one of kind,—the

time will then have arrived to consider, in the same connection, these

special faculties of morality and religion. Such, therefore, is the

method that I intend to adopt. The whole of the present volume will

be devoted to a consideration of “the origin of human faculty” in

the larger sense of this term, or in accordance with the view that

distinctively human faculty begins with distinctively human ideation.

When this matter has been thoroughly discussed, the ground will have

been prepared for considering in subsequent volumes the more special

faculties of Morality and Religion.[12]

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER II.

 

IDEAS.[13]

 

 

I now pass on to consider the only distinction which in my opinion

can be properly drawn between human and brute psychology. This is the

great distinction which furnishes a full psychological explanation of

all the many and immense differences that unquestionably do obtain

between the mind of the highest ape and the mind of the lowest savage.

It is, moreover, the distinction which is now universally recognized

by psychologists of every school, from the Romanist to the agnostic in

Religion, and from the idealist to the materialist in Philosophy.

 

The distinction has been clearly enunciated by many writers, from

Aristotle downwards, but I may best render it in the words of Locke:—

 

“If it may be doubted, whether beasts compound and enlarge their ideas

that way to any degree; this I think I may be positive in, that the

power of abstracting is not at all in them; and that the having of

general ideas is that which puts a perfect distinction betwixt man and

brutes, and is an excellency which the faculties of brutes do by no

means attain to. For it is evident we observe no footsteps in them of

making use of general signs for universal ideas; from which we have

reason to imagine, that they have not the faculty of abstracting, or

making general ideas, since they have no use of words, or any other

general signs.

 

“Nor can it be imputed to their want of fit organs to frame articulate

sounds that they have no use or knowledge of general words; since

many of them, we find, can fashion such sounds, and pronounce words

distinctly enough, but never with any such application; and, on the

other side, men, who through some defect in the organs want words,

yet fail not to express their universal ideas by signs, which serve

them instead of general words; a faculty which we see beasts come

short in. And therefore I think we may suppose, that it is in this

that the species of brutes are discriminated from men; and it is that

proper difference wherein they are wholly separated, and which at

last widens to so vast a distance; for if they have any ideas at all,

and are not bare machines (as some would have them), we cannot deny

them to have some reason. It seems evident to me, that they do some

of them in certain instances reason, as that they have sense; but it

is only in particular ideas, just as they received them from their

senses. They are the best of them tied up within those narrow bounds,

and have not (as I think) the faculty to enlarge them by any kind of

abstraction.”[14]

 

Here, then, we have stated, with all the common-sense lucidity of this

great writer, what we may term the initial or basal distinction of

which we are in search: it is that “proper difference” which, narrow

at first as the space included between two lines of rails at their

point of divergence, “at last widens to so vast a distance” as to end

almost at the opposite poles of mind. For, by a continuous advance

along the same line of development, the human mind is enabled to think

about abstractions of its own making, which are more and more remote

from the sensuous perception of concrete objects; it can unite these

abstractions into an endless variety of ideal combinations; these, in

turn, may become elaborated into ideal constructions of a more and

more complex character; and so on until we arrive at the full powers

of introspective thought with which we are each one of us directly

cognisant.

 

* * * * *

 

We now approach what is at once a matter of refined analysis, and a

set of questions which are of fundamental importance to the whole

superstructure of the present work. I mean the nature of abstraction,

and the classification of ideas. No small amount of ambiguity still

hangs about these important subjects, and in treating of them it is

impossible to employ terms the meanings of which are agreed upon by all

psychologists. But I will carefully define the meanings which I attach

to these terms myself, and which I think are the meanings that they

ought to bear. Moreover, I will end by adopting a classification which

is to some extent novel, and by fully giving my reasons for so doing.