Page images
PDF
EPUB

81. Fourth Materialistic Objection to Personality: from the Attributes of Brutes.

A fourth objection to the personality of man is the assertion that man has no attribute differing in kind from those of the brutes; that the difference is only in degree. From this the objector infers that man has no more claim than the brutes to be distinguished from nature as a person, a supernatural being or a spirit. On the one hand it is inferred that, if brutes are impersonal beings, man, having no attributes differing in kind from those of the brutes, must like them be impersonal. On the other hand, it is inferred that if men are persons or spirits, the brutes must be so likewise.

This objection I proceed to answer. It is incumbent, however, on both the objector and the respondent to remember that, because we cannot enter into the consciousness of brutes, there must be some uncertainty in our interpretation of their mental action, and some diffidence and caution are needful in our affirmations as to its nature and signifi

cance.

I. So far as we can judge, all the mental qualities and powers manifested in brutes are also manifested in man, and in both are the same in kind. This is admitted in the outset. It excludes much false reasoning founded on the assumption that if brutes have any mental qualities in common with man they are proved to be personal beings like man.

II. In addition to these man has the qualities and powers distinctive of personality, which brutes have not.

1. These distinctive qualities of man are clearly and decisively marked in each department of mind: in the intellect, the sensibilities and the will. In the sphere of intelligence brutes have capacities in common with man, such as sense, memory and probably thought in some of its simpler forms. In addition to these man is endowed with intuitive reason: he knows self-evident and universal principles; attains the rational ideas of the True, the Right, the Perfect, the Good rationally estimated as having worth, and the Absolute; and is capable of empirical, philosophical and theological science. Even in the sphere of perceptive intuition man has power which the brute has not. In all his mental activity man is conscious of himself as persisting in unity and identity, one and the same subject of all mental acts. In sense-perception man's mind reacts on the objects of sensation as an active percipient, while sense in the brute, as we suppose, is merely receptive of impressions. Man's knowledge is ontological in its beginning. Man, also, has a power of generalization and reflective thought which exists in brutes only in its simplest forms, if at all.

In the sphere of the sensibilities brutes are susceptible of motives and emotions the same as are found in man, such as the appetites, the desire of society, emulation, compassion, parental affection, and other natural affections and desires. In addition to these man is susceptible of rational motives and emotions, scientific, moral, æsthetic, religious, and of all motives and emotions arising from the idea of worth as estimated by reason.

In the spheres of will, brutes, like men, have the power of locomotion and power to follow their instincts and desires, to "do as they please." But their action simply follows the impulse which at the time is the strongest. Man has also free-will, the power of determining in the light of reason the ends to which he will direct his energy and of exerting his energy or calling it into action at will.

That man is thus endowed has been proved at length in preceding chapters.

2. Brutes lack these distinctive qualities and powers of personality. I cannot go into a full investigation of this question. I only indicate some points which, so far as I have studied the subject, seem to be true and decisive.

First, many facts alleged to prove that the mental powers of brutes are the same with those of men, pertain to those lower powers which 'are admitted to be common to brutes with man. In the discussion of the subject the real line of demarkation between the personal and the impersonal is often overlooked. We are concerned only with facts purporting to reveal in brutes the attributes distinctive of personality.

Secondly, the facts adduced to prove that the distinctive qualities and powers of personality exist in brutes, fail to prove it. To justify this conclusion would require a critical examination of a multitude of alleged facts, impossible within the limits of this discussion. I merely mention a few to exemplify my meaning, all taken from published papers professing to be scientific. A dog which accompanied its master several days in succession across a pasture always broke away and ran wildly around a large stump near the path; and this is cited as an example of fetich worship in the dog. Darwin mentions a dog whose behaviour in presence of a newspaper moved by the wind seemed to indicate a "sense of the supernatural." A little dog accustomed to play with a rubber ball, being left alone, was found, when some one entered, erect on a table holding out its forepaws to the ball lying on the mantel beyond the dog's reach. It was claimed that the dog was praying to the ball to come down. It is needless to say that the religiousness indicated in facts like these exists only in the fancy of the observer. Many facts urged as decisive evidence of morality or even of

religion in brutes indicate merely natural or instinctive affections. The sympathy and compassion of brutes is claimed as "the divinest thing in man." But sympathy and pity are affections of nature arising involuntarily in the presence of suffering and do not constitute moral character in its primary and distinctive meaning. It is claimed that a dog lying persistently on its master's grave till it dies reveals self-sacrificing love, which is the highest virtue. On the contrary, it reveals simply an uncontrolled and irrational natural affection, not a rational love enduring suffering for the good of another or in the intelligent doing of duty. It certainly does not indicate reason. If a human being should do so, we should think the action unreasonable and even a sign of insanity. For a person to die of grief is not evidence of moral self-control, nor of the supremacy in the life of self-sacrificing love to God and man. We are told of "the ant and the bee, who have risen, if not to the virtue of all-embracing charity, at least to the virtues of self-sacrifice and of patriotism;" . . . "the fact that the great majority of workers among the social insects are barren females or nuns, devoting themselves to the care of other individuals' offspring by an act of sacrifice, and that by means of that self-sacrifice these communities grow large and prosperous." I cannot think that this writer or any other sensible person, after reflecting on this assertion, can suppose that the working bees have the slightest consciousness that there is any condition of life, better than their own, which they are deprived of, or of any act or purpose of their own renouncing that happier life and consecrating themselves to the service of the community. They act from pure instinct; they do what their nature impels them to do, without consciousness of any other possibility. It cannot be supposed that these creatures have deliberately chosen to set aside all which is most pleasant to bees and which themselves are conscious they should enjoy, and to devote themselves to a life of labor and privation in order to promote the prosperity of the community. It is not supposable that they ever had the idea of the community and its prosperity, any more than the coral zoophytes have of the Neptune's cup which they are all building in unison. Moral character lies primarily in the intelligent choice of the end of action, and the determination of the energies to do it, resisting and controlling all contrary impulses of nature in subordination to the chosen end; it does not lie in instinctive impulses. A lamb is gentle, a tiger ferocious by nature; the ferocity of the one and the amiableness of the other have no more moral character than the offensiveness of the hyoscyamus and the sweetness of the rose.

Many facts are adduced as proving moral ideas and character in brutes which prove only subjection to superior skill and power, and fear of inflicted pain. A horse exerting itself till it falls exhausted is said

"to show an honest and self-sacrificing devotion to its notion of duty." Once when I was with a distinguished sportsman in the vicinity of Moosehead lake a dog joined us and came at once to heel. The sportsman remarked, “That dog has had many a beating." He knew that it is thus a dog is educated and trained. The same is exemplified in the methods of training wild elephants. An obedience thus springing from subjection to superior power and the dread of inflicted suffering is no proof that brutes have any idea of moral law, or of the distinction between right and wrong, or of the sense of duty or obligation. Alleged facts supposed to indicate remorse, if ascertained to be facts and not mere unauthenticated "dog-stories," may be explained in the same way. An anonymous writer in the London Spectator relates that a young fox-terrier, which had often been punished for taking a handsomely carved brush from the table and playing with it, after having been left alone in the room, was asked by its master on his return, “Have you been a good little dog?" whereupon the dog put its tail between its legs and slunk off and brought the brush from where it had hidden it. On another occasion when asked the same question, it walked off slowly, with the same look of shame, and lay down with its nose pointing to a letter bitten and torn into shreds. The writer says: "I was much struck with what appeared to me a remarkable instance of a dog possessing conscience." But it proves nothing more than a sense of having displeased its master and a dread of punishment. Lamettrie evades the difficulty by suggesting that morality in man is at bottom nothing but fear of punishment. He thus reduces man to the level of the beast instead of lifting the beast to the level of man.

It is claimed that birds and beasts appreciate beauty of form, color and song, and that this is an important factor in natural selection. But this is all fancy. The song-bird that "warbles its native wood-notes wild" does not please itself and its mate any more than the Guinea-fowl does by its incessant creaking note, or the cat by its caterwauling. The spreading of the wing and other acts and cries fancied to be a display of beauty to the aesthetic eye of the mate are better explained as merely the expression of animal excitement, like the singing of Chaucer's "January."

It is also claimed that some brutes show in their actions that they possess the higher or intuitive reason; particularly that their action. accords with mathematical truths and the laws of mechanics. It has been said that "the brain of the ant is the most wonderful little morsel of matter in existence." The honey-making ants of Texas and New Mexico are said to build their ant-heaps in an exact square four to five feet on a side, the four sides fronting exactly North, East, South and West. Bees are said to conform their cells to a geometrical figure and

thus obtain the maximum of room with the minimum of material. The fish-hawk soaring high in the air in order not to frighten the fish before he pounces on it, acts in striking it as if he had measured its distance and direction, and ascertained the refraction of light passing at different angles from the air into the water. A little fish, the Chaetodon rostratus, shoots a drop of water through its prolonged snout at an insect flying near the water and brings it down within its reach, as unerringly as if it had calculated exactly how far from the apparent place of the insect it must aim, on account of refraction, in order to hit it. But if facts like these are urged to prove the higher reason in brutes, they prove too much. If they prove anything in that direction, it is that the fish, the bird and the bee, before every act of the kind, must solve a complicated problem of the higher mathematics. And since in the case of the fish and the hawk the conditions of the problem vary in every act, not only must the problem be solved, but the distances and the angles of incidence, and the degree of refraction must previously be measured. This is not supposable. We can only attribute the action to instinct. Accordingly we find that these animals do not depend on education. The young one is as skillful as the old. Nature acts in them as unerringly as in the planets. But man, endowed with reason and free-will, begins with less skill than the brutes; he learns, he makes mistakes, he educates himself, he surpasses himself every year. In the brute nature rules and the will is no more than the impulse of nature. In man reason guides, the will chooses and determines, and man within the sphere of his determination, controls nature. It must be added that a brute is no more capable of the simplest mathematical calculation than of the most complex. A cat misses one of her five kittens which has been taken away, not through the arithmetical reasoning, 5-1-4, but by sense; as one at a glance without counting misses an article of brica-brac removed from a familiar shelf. Brutes may perhaps be capable of reasoning in some of its simplest forms. A man gave half an orange to his orang-utan and hid the other half on the top of a high press. He then lay down and pretended to go to sleep. The creature presently approached him cautiously and being apparently convinced that he was asleep climbed up and ate the remainder of the orange and hid the peel among some shavings in the grate. He then examined the pretending sleeper again, and lay down on his own bed.* This seems to imply reasoning; and it may be argued that it involves a recognition of intuitive principles of reason which are laws of thought. But since animals of the lower orders, even so low as the coral zoophytes, do what, if done by man, would imply reasoning and solving complicated

Tylor: Anthropology; p. 50.

« PreviousContinue »