The Old Riddle and the Newest Answer

X

ANIMAL AND MAN

LEAVING for later consideration the fourth of Du Bois-Reymond's Unsolved Enigmas, namely the seemingly pre-ordained order of the universe, we may conveniently group together the three which follow it, as much resembling that which has just occupied our attention. These problems, it will be remembered, are (a) the origin of simple sensation and consciousness, or, in other words, of the faculties possessed by animals; (b) that of rational thought and speech; (c) Free-will. – Here again we are bound to ask, in the name of right reason and common-sense, what light has really been thrown on such questions by Science, and how far she has changed their aspect, – that so we may guard against the delusion of imagining ourselves to be in possession of more knowledge than we actually possess.

(a) Simple sensation and consciousness. As regards the actual origin of the higher form of life which distinguishes the animal from the vegetable, we are obviously no better informed than we have found ourselves to be concerning the first beginnings of life in any form, – no evidence as to the actual facts being available, or even possible, for our enlightenment. Once more we can only argue from the present to the past, and enquire whether the progress of science has made it more reasonable to suppose than it seemed in pre-scientific days that animal life has been spontaneously evolved, either from inanimate matter or from the vegetative life of plants. This enquiry so much resembles that which we have just concluded as to make it unnecessary to pursue it at any length.

We find, in fact, that men of Science who have no prepossessions whatever against Evolution, and would willingly accept the Law of Continuity at all points, if only evidence were forthcoming, find here not only an unsolved problem, but one even more difficult than the Origin of Life itself. Du Bois-Reymond for example places this amongst his "transcendental" enigmas, to which an answer will never be found, whereas he thinks that the origin of vegetable life, although at present a mystery, may one day be explained. The expression of his opinion, – that by no possibility can we ever understand how consciousness could be evolved from matter – has, he tells us107 been vehemently contradicted, but, he adds, nothing in the way of argument, or beyond mere assumptions, has been brought against him. Of these assumptions he notices only that of Professor Haeckel, "the Prophet of Jena," who protests against such limitations of our possibilities as treason to the sacred cause of Evolution. The progress we have made in intellect, says Haeckel, beyond our barbarous progenitors, is sufficient to show that we are on the high road of development towards a stage as far in advance of the present, as this is of the past; and when that is attained, our knowledge will be full and will embrace all this. But, asks Du Bois-Reymond in reply, is this mighty progress of ours so very evident within the period concerning which we have any information? Has the mental capacity of our race notably improved since Homer?108 or its faculty of thinking since Plato and Aristotle? At our present rate of progress, long before the high-water mark prophesied by Haeckel is reached, the earth will have become uninhabitable. And, were it otherwise, the highest point of intellect to which conceivably man could attain, would be that of the "sufficient intelligence" whereof we have been told, which, from an inspection of the cosmic nebula could foretell all that was to issue from it. And, adds Du Bois-Reymond, even could we do this, we should still be unable to understand the origin of consciousness, which would require intelligence of another order than ours, however magnified.

So again Mr. Wallace tells us,109 after speaking of the beginning of life as we have already heard,

The next stage is still more marvellous, still more completely beyond all possibility of explanation by matter, its laws and forces. It is the introduction of sensation or consciousness, constituting the fundamental distinction between the animal and vegetable kingdoms. Here all idea of mere complication of structure producing the result is out of the question. We feel it to be altogether preposterous to assume that at a certain stage of complexity of atomic constitution, and as a necessary result of that complexity alone, an ego should start into existence, a thing that feels, that is conscious of its own existence. Here we have the certainty that something new has arisen, a being whose nascent consciousness has gone on increasing in power and definiteness till it has culminated in the higher animals. No verbal explanation or attempt at explanation – such as the statement that life is the result of the molecular forces of the protoplasm, or that the whole existing organic universe from the amœba up to man was latent in the fire-mist from which the solar system was developed – can afford any mental satisfaction, or help us in any way to a solution of the mystery.

Unquestionably, there is no lack of speakers and writers who flatly contradict such views, and assert that animal life, equally with vegetable, could be, and must have been, naturally evolved from inorganic nature. The above testimonies, however, amply suffice for our present purpose, and with them we may be satisfied; for at least they make it plain that Science has found no evidence as to the origin of sensation and consciousness conclusive enough to compel belief. And where there is no scientific evidence even alleged, such as might require the training of a specialist for its due appreciation, one man of ordinary intelligence is as competent a judge as another, and scientific experts are on a level with the rest of us.

(b) Rational thought and speech. What has just been said applies with equal force to this matter likewise. Unless Science have some positive evidence to bring, demonstrating how the gulf can be bridged which separates the intelligence of the most degraded races of men from the highest of the brutes, and how articulate language can spontaneously have arisen, which is the necessary appanage of reason, we have all equally the means of forming our conclusions on the subject.

That the gulf between man and the lower animals is here immense we have the evidence of Mr. Darwin.

No doubt [he writes]110 the difference is in this respect enormous, even if we compare the mind of one of the lowest savages, who has no words to express any number higher than four, and who uses no abstract terms for the commonest objects or affections, with that of the most highly organized ape. The difference would, no doubt, still remain immense, even if one of the highest apes had been improved and civilized as much as a dog has been in comparison with its parent form, the wolf or jackal. The Fuegians rank amongst the lowest barbarians; but I was continually struck with surprise how closely the three natives on board H.M.S. Beagle, who had lived some years in England and could talk a little English, resembled us in disposition and in most of our mental faculties.

Mr. Darwin goes on to argue, however, that the difference between man and beast is one of degree only and not of kind; that this can be "clearly shewn"; and that there is unquestionably a much wider interval in mental power between one of the lowest fishes, as a lamprey or lancelet, and one of the higher apes, than between an ape and a man; yet this immense interval is filled up by numberless gradations, from which he concludes that by a like series of steps, of which, however, no trace is left, our progenitors have been able to mount from the simian to the human level.

Clear however as Mr. Darwin pronounces the evidence to be, it is very far from being so considered by other eminent naturalists. So convinced an Evolutionist as Mr. Mivart, for example, declared on various occasions that his reason abundantly sufficed to convince him that there was a wider break in nature between man and the highest ape, than between the highest ape and an oyster or even a mushroom.

It is evident that the evidence which permits judgments so diverse as these cannot be said conclusively to prove the former existence of a bridge every vestige of which has, by the acknowledgment of all parties, entirely disappeared. We are therefore left to determine for ourselves, whether the powers of our own mind, as each knows them in himself, are of a totally different nature from those of dogs and horses, and chimpanzees such as the late lamented "Consul," or whether we are superior only in degree, as a sheep-dog is more intelligent than a sheep, or a fox than a goose.

If in any respect such an enquiry can be made definite and therefore profitable, it is clearly in regard of Language. This, as said above, is an essential adjunct of reason such as ours, and on the other hand it forms the plainest boundary between the domain of the human race and that of the brutes. It is, says Professor Max Müller, our Rubicon on the hither side of which men alone are found. Given reason such as ours, whatever mode of communication might be open to them, we cannot suppose its possessors failing to establish a medium of intercourse. In existing conditions, man can make an alphabet out of the clicks of a needle or the flashes of a mirror, and if his vocal organs were no better than those of a baboon, we cannot imagine him content generation after generation with inarticulate howls and yells. But this is just the case of the animals. They are never found to make the smallest progress in the direction of a code of signals. Dogs indeed, as Mr. Darwin says,111 having developed in captivity the new art of barking, have further learnt to vary this accomplishment according to the circumstances that provoke it, and have distinct tones to express the diversity of their feelings, as when hunting, or angry, or setting out for a walk, or shut up in a kennel or out of a house. Some dogs, he might have added, refine still further, and will betray by their style of bark not only that they are hunting something, but what it is that they have come upon, whether a rabbit, a cat, or a hedgehog. But, as the Chevalier Bunsen observes,112 and his observation includes such manifestations as the above:

Animal sounds are the echoes of blind instincts within, or of the phenomena of the outward world, uttered by suffering or satisfied animal nature, and in all cases resulting from mere passiveness.

By rational language, on the other hand, is signified, to quote Mr. Mivart:113

The external manifestation, whether by sound or gesture, of general conceptions: – not emotional expressions or the manifestations of sensible impressions, but enunciations of distinct judgments as to "the what," "the how," and "the why."

Consequently, as Bunsen declares:

The theories about the origin of language have followed those about the origin of thought, and have shared their fate. The materialists have never been able to show the possibility of the first step. They attempt to veil their inability by the easy but fruitless assumption of an infinite space of time, destined to explain the gradual development of animals into men; as if millions of years could supply the want of the agent necessary for the first movement, for the first step in the line of progress! No numbers can effect a logical impossibility. How indeed could reason spring out of a state which is destitute of reason? How can speech, the expression of thought, develop itself in a year or in millions of years, out of unarticulated sounds which express feelings of pleasure, pain, and appetite? The common-sense of mankind will always shrink from such theories.

Bunsen's words were echoed even more forcibly by professor Max Müller, speaking as President of the Anthropological Section of the British Association at Cardiff in 1889.

What [he asked] does Bunsen consider the real barrier between man and beast? It is language, which is unattainable, or at least unattained, by any animal except man.

You know [he continued] how for a time, and chiefly owing to Darwin's predominating influence, every conceivable effort was made to reduce the distance which language places between man and beast, and to treat language as a vanishing line in the mental evolution of animal and man. It required some courage at times to stand up against the authority of Darwin, but at present all serious thinkers agree, I believe, with Bunsen, that no animal has ever developed what we mean by rational language, as distinct from mere utterances of pleasure or pain, a subject lately treated with great fulness by Professor Romanes. Still, if all true science is based on facts, the fact remains that no animal has ever found what we mean by a language; and we are fully justified, therefore, in holding with Bunsen and Humboldt, as against Darwin and Romanes, that there is a specific difference between the human animal and all other animals, and that that difference consists in language as the outward manifestation of what the Greeks meant by Logos.

It is moreover evident that, far from speech having generated reason, as some have preposterously maintained, it is reason which generates speech, no less inevitably than sunlight produces the spectrum when it passes through a prism. The seeming paradox of Wilhelm von Humboldt is in fact a sober truth: "Man is man only through speech, but in order to invent it he must already be man." We have plain evidence that before means for the internal expression of it are found, the mental word (verbum mentale) is awaiting them, and that without this it would be as impossible for any sort of rational speech to be produced as for an apple to be grown without an apple-tree.

Evidence to this effect is furnished by recorded instances of persons who from early childhood, or even from birth, were deaf, dumb, and blind, and appeared to be cut off from all possibility of human converse, the "gates of Mansoul" being thus almost entirely closed. Such are the well-known cases of Laura Bridgman, Miss Keller, and Martha Obrecht, who had been thus afflicted since their earliest childhood, the two first named from the age of two, and the last from that of three years.114 Also the more recent instance of Marie Heurtin, who was so born, and consequently could not have even the faintest glimmer of any knowledge these senses could convey.115 Yet, by the exercise of ingenious and unwearied charity, a means of communication was elaborated through the sense of touch, and the souls which had seemingly been buried alive, shewed themselves responsive to such advances, – often astonishingly so, – and revealed their possession of faculties identical with those of their rescuers. We are told, for example, of Marie Heurtin that her intelligence proved to be quick, that she was even "unusually clever, evidently eager for knowledge, and, as sometimes happens, her faculties being prevented by her infirmity from wasting their powers on external objects, were all the more fresh and vigorous." Even more wonderful is the case of Miss Keller, who attained a degree of culture and accomplishment far beyond the common level of those possessing the use of all their senses.

Somewhat akin to such instances is that of the savages from Tierra del Fuego mentioned above by Mr. Darwin. In their case likewise, when they were brought into communication with people possessed of higher culture than their own degraded race, it was found that the corresponding faculties within them were not dead, or as yet non-existent, but only starved into lethargy; and, the opportunity being given, they speedily caused surprise by unmistakable proofs how closely they resemble ourselves.

Thus we find that in this branch of our enquiry there is one broad fact, which all must recognize and none can deny. No race of men has ever been known which could not speak, nor any race of animals which could, or which had made the first beginnings of intelligent language. Facts being the only groundwork of Science here is undoubtedly something whereon she may build an inference, and this inference will certainly not be that the faculties of men and animals are radically identical. And if we are told, as we constantly are, that it is more truly scientific to admit such identity, should there not be some other facts, still more significant and equally well established, to exhibit on the other side?

But of what character are the arguments actually adduced? It will be sufficient to quote a few which come with the highest authority.

We may start with the almost classical specimen contributed by Mr. Darwin himself.

It does not [he says]116 appear altogether incredible that some unusually wise ape-like animal should have thought of imitating the growl of a beast of prey, so as to indicate to his fellow monkeys the nature of the expected danger. And this would have been a first step in the formation of a language.

Similarly Professor Whitney writes of some supposed "pithecoid"117 men:

There is no difficulty in supposing them to have possessed forms of speech, more rudimentary and imperfect than ours.118

And so again Professor Romanes:119

Let us try to imagine a community considerably more intelligent than the existing anthropoid apes, although still considerably below the intellectual level of existing savages. It is certain that in such a community natural signs of voice, gesture, and grimace would be in vogue to a greater or less extent. As their numbers increased … such signs would require to become more and more conventional, or acquire more and more the character of sentence-words.

Of course, as Mr. Mivart replies,120 there is no difficulty in supposing anything we choose, or in seeing animals in imagination performing feats which never yet have they been known to achieve in fact. But no amount of such suppositions or imaginations will furnish Science with the scantiest apology for a foothold, nor can the germs of language attributed to pithecoid communities or the sagest of their patriarchs, be considered as of any greater value than the speeches put into the mouths of the animals by Æsop or "Uncle Remus."