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Darwiniana

T >> Thomas Henry Huxley >> Darwiniana




As it is very necessary to keep up a clear distinction between these two
processes, let the one be called _neurosis_, and the other
_psychosis_. When the gamekeeper was first trained to his work every
step in the process of neurosis was accompanied by a corresponding step in
that of psychosis, or nearly so. He was conscious of seeing something,
conscious of making sure it was a hare, conscious of desiring to catch it,
and therefore to loose the greyhound at the right time, conscious of the
acts by which he let the dog out of the leash. But with practice, though
the various steps of the neurosis remain--for otherwise the impression on
the retina would not result in the loosing of the dog--the great majority
of the steps of the psychosis vanish, and the loosing of the dog follows
unconsciously, or as we say, without thinking about it, upon the sight of
the hare. No one will deny that the series of acts which originally
intervened between the sensation and the letting go of the dog were, in the
strictest sense, intellectual and rational operations. Do they cease to be
so when the man ceases to be conscious of them? That depends upon what is
the essence and what the accident of those operations, which, taken
together, constitute ratiocination.

Now ratiocination is resolvable into predication, and predication consists
in marking, in some way, the existence, the co-existence, the succession,
the likeness and unlikeness, of things or their ideas. Whatever does this,
reasons; and if a machine produces the effects of reason, I see no more
ground for denying to it the reasoning power, because it is unconscious,
than I see for refusing to Mr. Babbage's engine the title of a calculating
machine on the same grounds.

Thus it seems to me that a gamekeeper reasons, whether he is conscious or
unconscious, whether his reasoning is carried on by neurosis alone, or
whether it involves more or less psychosis. And if this is true of the
gamekeeper, it is also true of the greyhound. The essential resemblances in
all points of structure and function, so far as they can be studied,
between the nervous system of the man and that of the dog, leave no
reasonable doubt that the processes which go on in the one are just like
those which take place in the other. In the dog, there can be no doubt that
the nervous matter which lies between the retina and the muscles undergoes
a series of changes, precisely analogous to those which, in the man, give
rise to sensation, a train of thought, and volition.

Whether this neurosis is accompanied by such psychosis as ours it is
impossible to say; but those who deny that the nervous changes, which, in
the dog, correspond with those which underlie thought in a man, are
accompanied by consciousness, are equally bound to maintain that those
nervous changes in the dog, which correspond with those which underlie
sensation in a man, are also unaccompanied by consciousness. In other
words, if there is no ground for believing that a dog thinks, neither is
there any for believing that he feels.

As is well known, Descartes boldly faced this dilemma, and maintained that
all animals were mere machines and entirely devoid of consciousness. But he
did not deny, nor can anyone deny, that in this case they are reasoning
machines, capable of performing all those operations which are performed by
the nervous system of man when he reasons. For even supposing that in man,
and in man only, psychosis is superadded to neurosis--the neurosis which is
common to both man and animal gives their reasoning processes a fundamental
unity. But Descartes' position is open to very serious objections if the
evidence that animals feel is insufficient to prove that they really do so.
What is the value of the evidence which leads one to believe that one's
fellow-man feels? The only evidence in this argument of analogy is the
similarity of his structure and of his actions to one's own. And if that is
good enough to prove that one's fellow-man feels, surely it is good enough
to prove that an ape feels. For the differences of structure and function
between men and apes are utterly insufficient to warrant the assumption
that while men have those states of consciousness we call sensations apes
have nothing of the kind. Moreover, we have as good evidence that apes are
capable of emotion and volition as we have that men other than ourselves
are. But if apes possess three out of the four kinds of states of
consciousness which we discover in ourselves, what possible reason is there
for denying them the fourth? If they are capable of sensation, emotion, and
volition, why are they to be denied thought (in the sense of predication)?

No answer has ever been given to these questions. And as the law of
continuity is as much opposed, as is the common sense of mankind, to the
notion that all animals are unconscious machines, it may safely be assumed
that no sufficient answer ever will be given to them.

There is every reason to believe that consciousness is a function of
nervous matter, when that nervous matter has attained a certain degree of
organisation, just as we know the other "actions to which the nervous
system ministers," such as reflex action and the like, to be. As I have
ventured to state my view of the matter elsewhere, "our thoughts are the
expression of molecular changes in that matter of life which is the source
of our other vital phenomena."

Mr. Wallace objects to this statement in the following terms:--

"Not having been able to find any clue in Professor Huxley's writings to
the steps by which he passes from those vital phenomena, which consist
only, in their last analysis, of movements by particles of matter, to those
other phenomena which we term thought, sensation, or consciousness; but,
knowing that so positive an expression of opinion from him will have great
weight with many persons, I shall endeavour to show, with as much brevity
as is compatible with clearness, that this theory is not only incapable of
proof, but is also, as it appears to me, inconsistent with accurate
conceptions of molecular physics."

With all respect for Mr. Wallace, it appears to me that his remarks are
entirely beside the question. I really know nothing whatever, and never
hope to know anything, of the steps by which the passage from molecular
movement to states of consciousness is effected; and I entirely agree with
the sense of the passage which he quotes from Professor Tyndall, apparently
imagining that it is in opposition to the view I hold.

All that I have to say is, that, in my belief, consciousness and molecular
action are capable of being expressed by one another, just as heat and
mechanical action are capable of being expressed in terms of one another.
Whether we shall ever be able to express consciousness in foot-pounds, or
not, is more than I will venture to say; but that there is evidence of the
existence of some correlation between mechanical motion and consciousness,
is as plain as anything can be. Suppose the poles of an electric battery to
be connected by a platinum wire. A certain intensity of the current gives
rise in the mind of a bystander to that state of consciousness we call a
"dull red light"--a little greater intensity to another which we call a
"bright red light;" increase the intensity, and the light becomes white;
and, finally, it dazzles, and a new state of consciousness arises, which we
term pain. Given the same wire and the same nervous apparatus, and the
amount of electric force required to give rise to these several states of
consciousness will be the same, however often the experiment is repeated.
And as the electric force, the light waves, and the nerve-vibrations caused
by the impact of the light-waves on the retina, are all expressions of the
molecular changes which are taking place in the elements of the battery; so
consciousness is, in the same sense, an expression of the molecular changes
which take place in that nervous matter, which is the organ of
consciousness.

And, since this, and any number of similar examples that may be required,
prove that one form of consciousness, at any rate, is, in the strictest
sense, the expression of molecular change, it really is not worth while to
pursue the inquiry, whether a fact so easily established is consistent with
any particular system of molecular physics or not.

Mr. Wallace, in fact, appears to me to have mixed up two very distinct
propositions: the one, the indisputable truth that consciousness is
correlated with molecular changes in the organ of consciousness; the other,
that the nature of that correlation is known, or can be conceived, which is
quite another matter. Mr. Wallace, presumably, believes in that correlation
of phenomena which we call cause and effect as firmly as I do. But if he
has ever been able to form the faintest notion how a cause gives rise to
its effect, all I can say is that I envy him. Take the simplest case
imaginable--suppose a ball in motion to impinge upon another ball at rest.
I know very well, as a matter of fact, that the ball in motion will
communicate some of its motion to the ball at rest, and that the motion of
the two balls, after collision, is precisely correlated with the masses of
both balls and the amount of motion of the first. But how does this come
about? In what manner can we conceive that the _vis viva_ of the first
ball passes into the second? I confess I can no more form any conception of
what happens in this case, than I can of what takes place when the motion
of particles of my nervous matter, caused by the impact of a similar ball
gives rise to the state of consciousness I call pain. In ultimate analysis
everything is incomprehensible, and the whole object of science is simply
to reduce the fundamental incomprehensibilities to the smallest possible
number.

But to return to the Quarterly Reviewer. He admits that animals have
"mental images of sensible objects, combined in all degrees of complexity,
as governed by the laws of association." Presumably, by this confused and
imperfect statement the Reviewer means to admit more than the words imply.
For mental images of sensible objects, even though "combined in all degrees
of complexity," are, and can be, nothing more than mental images of
sensible objects. But judgments, emotions, and volitions cannot by any
possibility be included under the head of "mental images of sensible
objects." If the greyhound had no better mental endowment than the Reviewer
allows him, he might have the "mental image" of the "sensible object"--the
hare--and that might be combined with the mental images of other sensible
objects, to any degree of complexity, but he would have no power of judging
it to be at a certain distance from him; no power of perceiving its
similarity to his memory of a hare; and no desire to get at it.
Consequently he would stand stock still, and the noble art of coursing
would have no existence. On the other hand, as that art is largely
practised, it follows that greyhounds alone possess a number of mental
powers, the existence of which, in any animal, is absolutely denied by the
Quarterly Reviewer.

Finally, what are the mental powers which he reserves as the especial
prerogative of man? They are two. First, the recognition of "ourselves by
ourselves as affected and perceiving.--Self-consciousness."

Secondly. "The reflection upon our sensations and perceptions, and asking
what they are and why they are.--Reason."

To the faculty defined in the last sentence, the Reviewer, without
assigning the least ground for thus departing from both common usage and
technical propriety, applies the name of reason. But if man is not to be
considered a reasoning being, unless he asks what his sensations and
perceptions are, and why they are, what is a Hottentot, or an Australian
"black-fellow"; or what the "swinked hedger" of an ordinary agricultural
district? Nay, what becomes of an average country squire or parson? How
many of these worthy persons who, as their wont is, read the _Quarterly
Review_, would do other than stand agape, if you asked them whether they
had ever reflected what their sensations and perceptions are and why they
are?

So that if the Reviewer's new definition of reason be correct, the majority
of men, even among the most civilised nations, are devoid of that supreme
characteristic of manhood. And if it be as absurd as I believe it to be,
then, as reason is certainly not self-consciousness, and since it, as
certainly, is one of the "actions to which the nervous system ministers,"
we must, if the Reviewer's classification is to be adopted, seek it among
those four faculties which he allows animals to possess. And thus, for the
second time, he really surrenders, while seeming to defend, his position.

The Quarterly Reviewer, as we have seen, lectures the evolutionists upon
their want of knowledge of philosophy altogether. Mr. Mivart is not less
pained at Mr. Darwin's ignorance of moral science. It is grievous to him
that Mr. Darwin (and _nous autres_) should not have grasped the
elementary distinction between material and formal morality; and he lays
down as an axiom, of which no tyro ought to be ignorant, the position that
"acts, unaccompanied by mental acts of conscious will directed towards the
fulfilment of duty," are "absolutely destitute of the most incipient degree
of real or formal goodness."

Now this may be Mr. Mivart's opinion, but it is a proposition which really
does not stand on the footing of an undisputed axiom. Mr. Mill denies it in
his work on Utilitarianism. The most influential writer of a totally
opposed school, Mr. Carlyle, is never weary of denying it, and upholding
the merit of that virtue which is unconscious; nay, it is, to my
understanding, extremely hard to reconcile Mr. Mivart's dictum with that
noble summary of the whole duty of man--"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God
with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength; and
thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." According to Mr. Mivart's
definition, the man who loves God and his neighbour, and, out of sheer love
and affection for both, does all he can to please them, is, nevertheless,
destitute of a particle of real goodness.

And it further happens that Mr. Darwin, who is charged by Mr. Mivart with
being ignorant of the distinction between material and formal goodness,
discusses the very question at issue in a passage which is well worth
reading (vol. i. p. 87), and also comes to a conclusion opposed to Mr.
Mivart's axiom. A proposition which has been so much disputed and
repudiated, should, under no circumstances, have been thus confidently
assumed to be true. For myself, I utterly reject it, inasmuch as the
logical consequence of the adoption of any such principle is the denial of
all moral value to sympathy and affection. According to Mr. Mivart's axiom,
the man who, seeing another struggling in the water, leaps in at the risk
of his own life to save him, does that which is "destitute of the most
incipient degree of real goodness," unless, as he strips off his coat, he
says to himself, "Now, mind, I am going to do this because it is my duty
and for no other reason;" and the most beautiful character to which
humanity can attain, that of the man who does good without thinking about
it, because he loves justice and mercy and is repelled by evil, has no
claim on our moral approbation. The denial that a man acts morally because
he does not think whether he does so or not, may be put upon the same
footing as the denial of the title of an arithmetician to the calculating
boy, because he did not know how he worked his sums. If mankind ever
generally accept and act upon Mr. Mivart's axiom, they will simply become a
set of most unendurable prigs; but they never have accepted it, and I
venture to hope that evolution has nothing so terrible in store for the
human race.

But if an action, the motive of which is nothing but affection or sympathy,
may be deserving of moral approbation and really good, who that has ever
had a dog of his own will deny that animals are capable of such actions?
Mr. Mivart indeed says:--"It may be safely affirmed, however, that there is
no trace in brutes of any actions simulating morality which are not
explicable by the fear of punishment, by the hope of pleasure, or by
personal affection" (p. 221). But it may be affirmed, with equal truth,
that there is no trace in men of any actions which are not traceable to the
same motives. If a man does anything, he does it either because he fears to
be punished if he does not do it, or because he hopes to obtain pleasure by
doing it, or because he gratifies his affections [Footnote: In separating
pleasure and the gratification of affection, I simply follow Mr. Mivart
without admitting the justice of the separation.] by doing it.

Assuming the position of the absolute moralists, let it be granted that
there is a perception of right and wrong innate in every man. This means,
simply, that when certain ideas are presented to his mind, the feeling of
approbation arises; and when certain others, the feeling of disapprobation.
To do your duty is to earn the approbation of your conscience, or moral
sense; to fail in your duty is to feel its disapprobation, as we all say.
Now, is approbation a pleasure or a pain? Surely a pleasure. And is
disapprobation a pleasure or a pain? Surely a pain. Consequently, all that
is really meant by the absolute moralists is that there is, in the very
nature of man, something which enables him to be conscious of these
particular pleasures and pains. And when they talk of immutable and eternal
principles of morality, the only intelligible sense which I can put upon
the words, is that the nature of man being what it is, he always has been,
and always will be, capable of feeling these particular pleasures and
pains. _À priori,_ I have nothing to say against this proposition.
Admitting its truth, I do not see how the moral faculty is on a different
footing from any of the other faculties of man. If I choose to say that it
is an immutable and eternal law of human nature that "ginger is hot in the
mouth," the assertion has as much foundation of truth as the other, though
I think it would be expressed in needlessly pompous language. I must
confess that I have never been able to understand why there should be such
a bitter quarrel between the intuitionists and the utilitarians. The
intuitionist is, after all, only a utilitarian who believes that a
particular class of pleasures and pains has an especial importance, by
reason of its foundation in the nature of man, and its inseparable
connection with his very existence as a thinking being. And as regards the
motive of personal affection: Love, as Spinoza profoundly says, is the
association of pleasure with that which is loved. [Footnote: "Nempe, Amor
nihil aliud est, quam Lætitia, concomitante idea causæ
externæ."--_Ethices_, III. xiii.] Or, to put it to the common sense of
mankind, is the gratification of affection a pleasure or a pain? Surely a
pleasure. So that whether the motive which leads us to perform an action is
the love of our neighbour, or the love of God, it is undeniable that
pleasure enters into that motive.

Thus much in reply to Mr. Mivart's arguments. I cannot but think that it is
to be regretted that he ekes them out by ascribing to the doctrines of the
philosophers with whom he does not agree, logical consequences which have
been over and over again proved not to flow from them: and when reason
fails him, tries the effect of an injurious nickname. According to the
views of Mr. Spencer, Mr. Mill, and Mr. Darwin, Mr. Mivart tells us,
"_virtue is a mere kind of retrieving:_" and, that we may not miss the
point of the joke, he puts it in italics. But what if it is? Does that make
it less virtue? Suppose I say that sculpture is a "mere way" of
stone-cutting, and painting a "mere way" of daubing canvas, and music a
"mere way" of making a noise, the statements are quite true; but they only
show that I see no other method of depreciating some of the noblest aspects
of humanity than that of using language in an inadequate and misleading
sense about them. And the peculiar inappropriateness of this particular
nickname to the views in question, arises from the circumstance which Mr.
Mivart would doubtless have recollected, if his wish to ridicule had not
for the moment obscured his judgment--that whether the law of evolution
applies to man or not, that of hereditary transmission certainly does. Mr.
Mivart will hardly deny that a man owes a large share of the moral
tendencies which he exhibits to his ancestors; and the man who inherits a
desire to steal from a kleptomaniac, or a tendency to benevolence from a
Howard, is, so far as he illustrates hereditary transmission, comparable to
the dog who inherits the desire to fetch a duck out of the water from his
retrieving sire. So that, evolution, or no evolution, moral qualities are
comparable to a "kind of retrieving;" though the comparison, if meant for
the purposes of casting obloquy on evolution, does not say much for the
fairness of those who make it.

The Quarterly Reviewer and Mr. Mivart base their objections to the
evolution of the mental faculties of man from those of some lower animal
form upon what they maintain to be a difference in kind between the mental
and moral faculties of men and brutes; and I have endeavoured to show, by
exposing the utter unsoundness of their philosophical basis, that these
objections are devoid of importance.

The objections which Mr. Wallace brings forward to the doctrine of the
evolution of the mental faculties of man from those of brutes by natural
causes, are of a different order, and require separate consideration.

If I understand him rightly, he by no means doubts that both the bodily and
the mental faculties of man have been evolved from those of some lower
animal; but he is of opinion that some agency beyond that which has been
concerned in the evolution of ordinary animals has been operative in the
case of man. "A superior intelligence has guided the development of man in
a definite direction and for a special purpose, just as man guides the
development of many animal and vegetable forms." [Footnote: "The Limits of
Natural Selection as applied to Man" (_loc. cit._ p. 359).] I
understand this to mean that, just as the rock-pigeon has been produced by
natural causes, while the evolution of the tumbler from the blue rock has
required the special intervention of the intelligence of man, so some
anthropoid form may have been evolved by variation and natural selection;
but it could never have given rise to man, unless some superior
intelligence had played the part of the pigeon-fancier.

According to Mr. Wallace, "whether we compare the savage with the higher
developments of man, or with the brutes around him, we are alike driven to
the conclusion, that, in his large and well-developed brain, he possesses
an organ quite disproportioned to his requirements" (p. 343); and he asks,
"What is there in the life of the savage but the satisfying of the cravings
of appetite in the simplest and easiest way? What thoughts, idea, or
actions are there that raise him many grades above the elephant or the
ape?" (p. 342.) I answer Mr. Wallace by citing a remarkable passage which
occurs in his instructive paper on "Instinct in Man and Animals."

"Savages make long journeys in many directions, and, their whole faculties
being directed to the subject, they gain a wide and accurate knowledge of
the topography, not only of their own district, but of all the regions
round about. Every one who has travelled in a new direction communicates
his knowledge to those who have travelled less, and descriptions of routes
and localities, and minute incidents of travel, form one of the main
staples of conversation around the evening fire. Every wanderer or captive
from another tribe adds to the store of information, and, as the very
existence of individuals and of whole families and tribes depends upon the
completeness of this knowledge, all the acute perceptive faculties of the
adult savage are directed to acquiring and perfecting it. The good hunter
or warrior thus comes to know the bearing of every hill and mountain range,
the directions and junctions of all the streams, the situation of each
tract characterised by peculiar vegetation, not only within the area he has
himself traversed, but perhaps for a hundred miles around it. His acute
observation enables him to detect the slightest undulations of the surface,
the various changes of subsoil and alterations in the character of the
vegetation that would be quite imperceptible to a stranger. His eye is
always open to the direction in which he is going; the mossy side of trees,
the presence of certain plants under the shade of rocks, the morning and
evening flight of birds, are to him indications of direction almost as sure
as the sun in the heavens" (pp. 207, 208).

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