An important argument in support of the existence of a clairvoyance in the instincts of animals is to be found in the series of facts which testify to the existence of a like clairvoyance, under certain circ.u.mstances, even among human beings, while the self-curative instincts of children and of pregnant women have been already mentioned. Here, however, {124} in correspondence with the higher stage of development which human consciousness has attained, a stronger echo of the unconscious clairvoyance commonly resounds within consciousness itself, and this is represented by a more or less definite presentiment of the consequences that will ensue. It is also in accord with the greater independence of the human intellect that this kind of presentiment is not felt exclusively immediately before the carrying out of an action, but is occasionally disconnected from the condition that an action has to be performed immediately, and displays itself simply as an idea independently of conscious will, provided only that the matter concerning which the presentiment is felt is one which in a high degree concerns the will of the person who feels it. In the intervals of an intermittent fever or of other illness, it not unfrequently happens that sick persons can accurately foretell the day of an approaching attack and how long it will last. The same thing occurs almost invariably in the case of spontaneous, and generally in that of artificial, somnambulism; certainly the Pythia, as is well known, used to announce the date of her next ecstatic state. In like manner the curative instinct displays itself in somnambulists, and they have been known to select remedies that have been no less remarkable for the success attending their employment than for the completeness with which they have run counter to received professional opinion. The indication of medicinal remedies is the only use which respectable electro-biologists will make of the half-sleeping, half-waking condition of those whom they are influencing. "People in perfectly sound health have been known, before childbirth or at the commencement of an illness, to predict accurately their own approaching death. The accomplishment of their predictions can hardly be explained as the result of mere chance, for if this were all, the prophecy should fail at least as often as not, whereas the reverse is actually the case. Many of these persons neither desire death nor fear it, so that the result cannot be ascribed to imagination." So writes the celebrated physiologist, Burdach, from whose chapter on presentiment in his work "Bhicke in"s Leben" a great part of my most striking examples is taken. This presentiment of deaths, which is the exception among men, is quite common with animals, even though they do not know nor understand what death is. When they become aware that their end is approaching, they steal away to outlying and solitary places. This is why in cities we so rarely see the dead body or skeleton of a cat. We can only suppose that the unconscious clairvoyance, which is of essentially the same kind whether in man or beast, calls forth presentiments of different degrees of definiteness, so that the cat is driven to withdraw herself through a mere instinct without knowing why she does so, while in man a definite perception is awakened of the fact that he is about to die. Not only do people have presentiments concerning their own death, but there are many instances on record in which they have become aware of that of those near and dear to them, the dying person having appeared in a dream to friend or wife or husband. Stories to this effect prevail among all nations, and unquestionably contain much truth. Closely connected with this is the power of second sight, which existed formerly in Scotland, and still does so in the Danish islands. This power enables certain people without any ecstasy, but simply through their keener perception, to foresee coming events, or to tell what is going on in foreign countries on matters in which they are deeply interested, such as deaths, battles, conflagrations (Swedenborg foretold the burning of Stockholm), the arrival or the doings of friends who are at a distance. With many persons this clairvoyance is confined to a knowledge of the death of their acquaintances or fellow-townspeople. There have been a great many instances of such death-prophetesses, and, what is most important, some cases have been verified in courts of law. I may say, in pa.s.sing, that this power of second sight is found in persons who are in ecstatic states, in the spontaneous or artificially induced somnambulism of the higher kinds of waking dreams, as well as in lucid moments before death. These prophetic glimpses, by which the clairvoyance of the unconscious reveals itself to consciousness, {126} are commonly obscure because in the brain they must a.s.sume a form perceptible by the senses, whereas the unconscious idea can have nothing to do with any form of sensual impression: it is for this reason that humours, dreams, and the hallucinations of sick persons can so easily have a false signification attached to them. The chances of error and self-deception that arise from this source, the ease with which people may be deceived intentionally, and the mischief which, as a general rule, attends a knowledge of the future, these considerations place beyond all doubt the practical unwisdom of attempts to arrive at certainty concerning the future. This, however, cannot affect the weight which in theory should be attached to phenomena of this kind, and must not prevent us from recognising the positive existence of the clairvoyance whose existence I am maintaining, though it is often hidden under a chaos of madness and imposture.
The materialistic and rationalistic tendencies of the present day lead most people either to deny facts of this kind in toto, or to ignore them, inasmuch as they are inexplicable from a materialistic standpoint, and cannot be established by the inductive or experimental method - as though this last were not equally impossible in the case of morals, social science, and politics. A mind of any candour will only be able to deny the truths of this entire cla.s.s of phenomena so long as it remains in ignorance of the facts that have been related concerning them; but, again, a continuance in this ignorance can only arise from unwillingness to be convinced. I am satisfied that many of those who deny all human power of divination would come to another, and, to say the least, more cautious conclusion if they would be at the pains of further investigation; and I hold that no one, even at the present day, need be ashamed of joining in with an opinion which was maintained by all the great spirits of antiquity except Epicurus - an opinion whose possible truth hardly one of our best modern philosophers has ventured to contravene, and which the champions of German enlightenment were so little disposed to relegate to the domain of old wives" tales, that Goethe furnishes us with an example of second sight that fell within his own experience, and confirms it down to its minutest details.
Although I am far from believing that the kind of phenomena above referred to form in themselves a proper foundation for a superstructure of scientific demonstration, I nevertheless find them valuable as a completion and further confirmation of the series of phenomena presented to us by the clairvoyance which we observe in human and animal instinct. Even though they only continue this series {128} through the echo that is awakened within our consciousness, they as powerfully support the account which instinctive actions give concerning their own nature, as they are themselves supported by the a.n.a.logy they present to the clairvoyance observable in instinct. This, then, as well as my desire not to lose an opportunity of protesting against a modern prejudice, must stand as my reason for having allowed myself to refer, in a scientific work, to a cla.s.s of phenomena which has fallen at present into so much discredit.
I will conclude with a few words upon a special kind of instinct which has a very instructive bearing upon the subject generally, and shows how impossible it is to evade the supposition of an unconscious clairvoyance on the part of instinct. In the examples adduced hitherto, the action of each individual has been done on the individual"s own behalf, except in the case of instincts connected with the continuation of the species, where the action benefits others - that is to say, the offspring of the creature performing it.
We must now examine the cases in which a solidarity of instinct is found to exist between several individuals, so that, on the one hand, the action of each redounds to the common welfare, and, on the other, it becomes possible for a useful purpose to be achieved through the harmonious a.s.sociation of individual workers. This community of instinct exists also among the higher animals, but here it is harder to distinguish from a.s.sociations originating through conscious will, inasmuch as speech supplies the means of a more perfect intercommunication of aim and plan. We shall, however, definitely recognise {129} this general effect of a universal instinct in the origin of speech and in the great political and social movements in the history of the world. Here we are concerned only with the simplest and most definite examples that can be found anywhere, and therefore we will deal in preference with the lower animals, among which, in the absence of voice, the means of communicating thought, mimicry, and physiognomy, are so imperfect that the harmony and interconnection of the individual actions cannot in its main points be ascribed to an understanding arrived at through speech. Huber observed that when a new comb was being constructed a number of the largest working-bees, that were full of honey, took no part in the ordinary business of the others, but remained perfectly aloof. Twenty-four hours afterwards small plates of wax had formed under their bellies. The bee drew these off with her hind-feet, masticated them, and made them into a band. The small plates of wax thus prepared were then glued to the roof of the hive one on the top of the other. When one of the bees of this kind had used up her plates of wax, another followed her and carried the same work forward in the same way. A thin rough vertical wall, half a line in thickness and fastened to the sides of the hive, was thus constructed. On this, one of the smaller working-bees whose belly was empty came, and after surveying the wall, made a flat half-oval excavation in the middle of one of its sides; she piled up the wax thus excavated round the edge of the excavation. After a short time she was relieved by another like herself, till more than twenty followed one another in this way. Meanwhile another bee began to make a similar hollow on the other side of the wall, but corresponding only with the rim of the excavation on this side. Presently another bee began a second hollow upon the same side, each bee being continually relieved by others. Other bees kept coming up and bringing under their bellies plates of wax, with which they heightened the edge of the small wall of wax. In this, new bees were constantly excavating the ground for more cells, while others proceeded by degrees to bring those already begun into a perfectly symmetrical shape, and at the same time continued building up the prismatic walls between them. Thus the bees worked on opposite sides of the wall of wax, always on the same plan and in the closest correspondence with those upon the other side, until eventually the cells on both sides were completed in all their wonderful regularity and harmony of arrangement, not merely as regards those standing side by side, but also as regards those which were upon the other side of their pyramidal base.
Let the reader consider how animals that are accustomed to confer together, by speech or otherwise, concerning designs which they may be pursuing in common, will wrangle with thousandfold diversity of opinion; let him reflect how often something has to be undone, destroyed, and done over again; how at one time too many hands come forward, and at another too few; what running to and fro there is before each has found his right place; how often too many, and again too few, present themselves for a relief gang; and how we find all this in the concerted works of men, who stand so far higher than bees in the scale of organisation. We see nothing of the kind among bees. A survey of their operations leaves rather the impression upon us as though an invisible master-builder had prearranged a scheme of action for the entire community, and had impressed it upon each individual member, as though each cla.s.s of workers had learnt their appointed work by heart, knew their places and the numbers in which they should relieve each other, and were informed instantaneously by a secret signal of the moment when their action was wanted. This, however, is exactly the manner in which an instinct works; and as the intention of the entire community is instinctively present in the unconscious clairvoyance {131a} of each individual bee, so the possession of this common instinct impels each one of them to the discharge of her special duties when the right moment has arrived. It is only thus that the wonderful tranquillity and order which we observe could be attained. What we are to think concerning this common instinct must be reserved for explanation later on, but the possibility of its existence is already evident, inasmuch {131b} as each individual has an unconscious insight concerning the plan proposed to itself by the community, and also concerning the means immediately to be adopted through concerted action - of which, however, only the part requiring his own co-operation is present in the consciousness of each. Thus, for example, the larva of the bee itself spins the silky chamber in which it is to become a chrysalis, but other bees must close it with its lid of wax. The purpose of there being a chamber in which the larva can become a chrysalis must be present in the minds of each of these two parties to the transaction, but neither of them acts under the influence of conscious will, except in regard to his own particular department. I have already mentioned the fact that the larva, after its metamorphosis, must be freed from its cell by other bees, and have told how the working-bees in autumn kill the drones, so that they may not have to feed a number of useless mouths throughout the winter, and how they only spare them when they are wanted in order to fecundate a new queen. Furthermore, the working-bees build cells in which the eggs laid by the queen may come to maturity, and, as a general rule, make just as many chambers as the queen lays eggs; they make these, moreover, in the same order as that in which the queen lays her eggs, namely, first for the working-bees, then for the drones, and lastly for the queens. In the polity of the bees, the working and the s.e.xual capacities, which were once united, are now personified in three distinct kinds of individual, and these combine with an inner, unconscious, spiritual union, so as to form a single body politic, as the organs of a living body combine to form the body itself.
In this chapter, therefore, we have arrived at the following conclusions:-
Instinct is not the result of conscious deliberation; {132} it is not a consequence of bodily organisation; it is not a mere result of a mechanism which lies in the organisation of the brain; it is not the operation of dead mechanism, glued on, as it were, to the soul, and foreign to its inmost essence; but it is the spontaneous action of the individual, springing from his most essential nature and character. The purpose to which any particular kind of instinctive action is subservient is not the purpose of a soul standing outside the individual and near akin to Providence - a purpose once for all thought out, and now become a matter of necessity to the individual, so that he can act in no other way, though it is engrafted into his nature from without, and not natural to it. The purpose of the instinct is in each individual case thought out and willed unconsciously by the individual, and afterwards the choice of means adapted to each particular case is arrived at unconsciously. A knowledge of the purpose is often absolutely unattainable {133} by conscious knowledge through sensual perception. Then does the peculiarity of the unconscious display itself in the clairvoyance of which consciousness perceives partly only a faint and dull, and partly, as in the case of man, a more or less definite echo by way of sentiment, whereas the instinctive action itself - the carrying out of the means necessary for the achievement of the unconscious purpose - falls always more clearly within consciousness, inasmuch as due performance of what is necessary would be otherwise impossible. Finally, the clairvoyance makes itself perceived in the concerted action of several individuals combining to carry out a common but unconscious purpose.
Up to this point we have encountered clairvoyance as a fact which we observe but cannot explain, and the reader may say that he prefers to take his stand here, and be content with regarding instinct simply as a matter of fact, the explanation of which is at present beyond our reach. Against this it must be urged, firstly, that clairvoyance is not confined to instinct, but is found also in man; secondly, that clairvoyance is by no means present in all instincts, and that therefore our experience shows us clairvoyance and instinct as two distinct things - clairvoyance being of great use in explaining instinct, but instinct serving nothing to explain clairvoyance; thirdly and lastly, that the clairvoyance of the individual will not continue to be so incomprehensible to us, but will be perfectly well explained in the further course of our investigation, while we must give up all hope of explaining instinct in any other way.
The conception we have thus arrived at enables us to regard instinct as the innermost kernel, so to speak, of every living being. That this is actually the case is shown by the instincts of self-preservation and of the continuation of the species which we observe throughout creation, and by the heroic self-abandonment with which the individual will sacrifice welfare, and even life, at the bidding of instinct. We see this when we think of the caterpillar, and how she repairs her coc.o.o.n until she yields to exhaustion; of the bird, and how she will lay herself to death; of the disquiet and grief displayed by all migratory animals if they are prevented from migrating. A captive cuckoo will always die at the approach of winter through despair at being unable to fly away; so will the vineyard snail if it is hindered of its winter sleep. The weakest mother will encounter an enemy far surpa.s.sing her in strength, and suffer death cheerfully for her offspring"s sake. Every year we see fresh cases of people who have been unfortunate going mad or committing suicide. Women who have survived the Caesarian operation allow themselves so little to be deterred from further childbearing through fear of this frightful and generally fatal operation, that they will undergo it no less than three times. Can we suppose that what so closely resembles demoniacal possession can have come about through something engrafted on to the soul as a mechanism foreign to its inner nature, {135} or through conscious deliberation which adheres always to a bare egoism, and is utterly incapable of such self-sacrifice for the sake of offspring as is displayed by the procreative and maternal instincts?
We have now, finally, to consider how it arises that the instincts of any animal species are so similar within the limits of that species - a circ.u.mstance which has not a little contributed to the engrafted-mechanism theory. But it is plain that like causes will be followed by like effects; and this should afford sufficient explanation. The bodily mechanism, for example, of all the individuals of a species is alike; so again are their capabilities and the outcomes of their conscious intelligence - though this, indeed, is not the case with man, nor in some measure even with the highest animals; and it is through this want of uniformity that there is such a thing as individuality. The external conditions of all the individuals of a species are also tolerably similar, and when they differ essentially, the instincts are likewise different - a fact in support of which no examples are necessary. From like conditions of mind and body (and this includes like predispositions of brain and ganglia) and like exterior circ.u.mstances, like desires will follow as a necessary logical consequence. Again, from like desires and like inward and outward circ.u.mstances, a like choice of means - that is to say, like instincts - must ensue. These last two steps would not be conceded without restriction if the question were one involving conscious deliberation, but as these logical consequences are supposed to follow from the unconscious, which takes the right step unfailingly without vacillation or delay so long as the premises are similar, the ensuing desires and the instincts to adopt the means for their gratification will be similar also.
Thus the view which we have taken concerning instinct explains the very last point which it may be thought worth while to bring forward in support of the opinions of our opponents.
I will conclude this chapter with the words of Sch.e.l.ling: "Thoughtful minds will hold the phenomena of animal instinct to belong to the most important of all phenomena, and to be the true touchstone of a durable philosophy."
CHAPTER IX
Remarks upon Von Hartmann"s position in regard to instinct.
Uncertain how far the foregoing chapter is not better left without comment of any kind, I nevertheless think that some of my readers may be helped by the following extracts from the notes I took while translating. I will give them as they come, without throwing them into connected form.
Von Hartmann defines instinct as action done with a purpose, but without consciousness of purpose.
The building of her nest by a bird is an instinctive action; it is done with a purpose, but it is arbitrary to say that the bird has no knowledge of that purpose. Some hold that birds when they are building their nest know as well that they mean to bring up a family in it as a young married couple do when they build themselves a house. This is the conclusion which would be come to by a plain person on a prima facie view of the facts, and Von Hartmann shows no reason for modifying it.
A better definition of instinct would be that it is inherited knowledge in respect of certain facts, and of the most suitable manner in which to deal with them.
Von Hartmann speaks of "a mechanism of brain or mind" contrived by nature, and again of "a psychical organisation," as though it were something distinct from a physical organisation.
We can conceive of such a thing as mechanism of brain, for we have seen brain and handled it; but until we have seen a mind and handled it, or at any rate been enabled to draw inferences which will warrant us in conceiving of it as a material substance apart from bodily substance, we cannot infer that it has an organisation apart from bodily organisation. Does Von Hartmann mean that we have two bodies - a body-body, and a soul-body?
He says that no one will call the action of the spider instinctive in voiding the fluids from its glands when they are too full. Why not?
He is continually personifying instinct; thus he speaks of the "ends proposed to itself by the instinct," of "the blind unconscious purpose of the instinct," of "an unconscious purpose constraining the volition of the bird," of "each variation and modification of the instinct," as though instinct, purpose, and, later on, clairvoyance, were persons, and not words characterising a certain cla.s.s of actions. The ends are proposed to itself by the animal, not by the instinct. Nothing but mischief can come of a mode of expression which does not keep this clearly in view.
It must not be supposed that the same cuckoo is in the habit of laying in the nests of several different species, and of changing the colour of her eggs according to that of the eggs of the bird in whose nest she lays. I have inquired from Mr. R. Bowdler Sharpe of the ornithological department at the British Museum, who kindly gives it me as his opinion that though cuckoos do imitate the eggs of the species on whom they foist their young ones, yet one cuckoo will probably lay in the nests of one species also, and will stick to that species for life. If so, the same race of cuckoos may impose upon the same species for generations together. The instinct will even thus remain a very wonderful one, but it is not at all inconsistent with the theory put forward by Professor Hering and myself.
Returning to the idea of psychical mechanism, he admits that "it is itself so obscure that we can hardly form any idea concerning it," {139a} and then goes on to claim for it that it explains a great many other things. This must have been the pa.s.sage which Mr. Sully had in view when he very justly wrote that Von Hartmann "dogmatically closes the field of physical inquiry, and takes refuge in a phantom which explains everything, simply because it is itself incapable of explanation."
According to Von Hartmann {139b} the unpractised animal manifests its instinct as perfectly as the practised. This is not the case. The young animal exhibits marvellous proficiency, but it gains by experience. I have watched sparrows, which I can hardly doubt to be young ones, spend a whole month in trying to build their nest, and give it up in the end as hopeless. I have watched three such cases this spring in a tree not twenty feet from my own window and on a level with my eye, so that I have been able to see what was going on at all hours of the day. In each case the nest was made well and rapidly up to a certain point, and then got top-heavy and tumbled over, so that little was left on the tree: it was reconstructed and reconstructed over and over again, always with the same result, till at last in all three cases the birds gave up in despair. I believe the older and stronger birds secure the fixed and best sites, driving the younger birds to the trees, and that the art of building nests in trees is dying out among house-sparrows.
He declares that instinct is not due to organisation so much as organisation to instinct. {140} The fact is, that neither can claim precedence of or pre-eminence over the other. Instinct and organisation are only mind and body, or mind and matter; and these are not two separable things, but one and inseparable, with, as it were, two sides; the one of which is a function of the other. There was never yet either matter without mind, however low, nor mind, however high, without a material body of some sort; there can be no change in one without a corresponding change in the other; neither came before the other; neither can either cease to change or cease to be; for "to be" is to continue changing, so that "to be" and "to change" are one.
Whence, he asks, comes the desire to gratify an instinct before experience of the pleasure that will ensue on gratification? This is a pertinent question, but it is met by Professor Hering with the answer that this is due to memory - to the continuation in the germ of vibrations that were vibrating in the body of the parent, and which, when stimulated by vibrations of a suitable rhythm, become more and more powerful till they suffice to set the body in visible action. For my own part I only venture to maintain that it is due to memory, that is to say, to an enduring sense on the part of the germ of the action it took when in the persons of its ancestors, and of the gratification which ensued thereon. This meets Von Hartmann"s whole difficulty.
The glacier is not snow. It is snow packed tight into a small compa.s.s, and has thus lost all trace of its original form. How incomplete, however, would be any theory of glacial action which left out of sight the origin of the glacier in snow! Von Hartmann loses sight of the origin of instinctive in deliberative actions because the two cla.s.ses of action are now in many respects different. His philosophy of the unconscious fails to consider what is the normal process by means of which such common actions as we can watch, and whose history we can follow, have come to be done unconsciously.
He says, {141} "How inconceivable is the supposition of a mechanism, &c., &c.; how clear and simple, on the other hand, is the view that there is an unconscious purpose constraining the volition of the bird to the use of the fitting means." Does he mean that there is an actual thing - an unconscious purpose - something outside the bird, as it were a man, which lays hold of the bird and makes it do this or that, as a master makes a servant do his bidding? If so, he again personifies the purpose itself, and must therefore embody it, or be talking in a manner which plain people cannot understand. If, on the other hand, he means "how simple is the view that the bird acts unconsciously," this is not more simple than supposing it to act consciously; and what ground has he for supposing that the bird is unconscious? It is as simple, and as much in accordance with the facts, to suppose that the bird feels the air to be colder, and knows that she must warm her eggs if she is to hatch them, as consciously as a mother knows that she must not expose her new-born infant to the cold.
On page 99 of this book we find Von Hartmann saying that if it is once granted that the normal and abnormal manifestations of instinct spring from a single source, then the objection that the modification is due to conscious knowledge will be found to be a suicidal one later on, in so far as it is directed against instinct generally. I understand him to mean that if we admit instinctive action, and the modifications of that action which more nearly resemble results of reason, to be actions of the same ultimate kind differing in degree only, and if we thus attempt to reduce instinctive action to the prophetic strain arising from old experience, we shall be obliged to admit that the formation of the embryo is ultimately due to reflection - which he seems to think is a reductio ad absurdum of the argument.
Therefore, he concludes, if there is to be only one source, the source must be unconscious, and not conscious. We reply, that we do not see the absurdity of the position which we grant we have been driven to. We hold that the formation of the embryo is ultimately due to reflection and design.
The writer of an article in the Times, April 1, 1880, says that servants must be taught their calling before they can practise it; but, in fact, they can only be taught their calling by practising it. So Von Hartmann says animals must feel the pleasure consequent on gratification of an instinct before they can be stimulated to act upon the instinct by a knowledge of the pleasure that will ensue. This sounds logical, but in practice a little performance and a little teaching - a little sense of pleasure and a little connection of that pleasure with this or that practice, - come up simultaneously from something that we cannot see, the two being so small and so much abreast, that we do not know which is first, performance or teaching; and, again, action, or pleasure supposed as coming from the action.
"Geistes-mechanismus" comes as near to "disposition of mind," or, more shortly, "disposition," as so unsatisfactory a word can come to anything. Yet, if we translate it throughout by "disposition," we shall see how little we are being told.
We find on page 114 that "all instinctive actions give us an impression of absolute security and infallibility"; that "the will is never weak or hesitating, as it is when inferences are being drawn consciously." "We never," Von Hartmann continues, "find instinct making mistakes." Pa.s.sing over the fact that instinct is again personified, the statement is still incorrect. Instinctive actions are certainly, as a general rule, performed with less uncertainty than deliberative ones; this is explicable by the fact that they have been more often practised, and thus reduced more completely to a matter of routine; but nothing is more certain than that animals acting under the guidance of inherited experience or instinct frequently make mistakes which with further practice they correct. Von Hartmann has abundantly admitted that the manner of an instinctive action is often varied in correspondence with variation in external circ.u.mstances. It is impossible to see how this does not involve both possibility of error and the connection of instinct with deliberation at one and the same time. The fact is simply this - when an animal finds itself in a like position with that in which it has already often done a certain thing in the persons of its forefathers, it will do this thing well and easily: when it finds the position somewhat, but not unrecognisably, altered through change either in its own person or in the circ.u.mstances exterior to it, it will vary its action with greater or less ease according to the nature of the change in the position: when the position is gravely altered the animal either bungles or is completely thwarted.
Not only does Von Hartmann suppose that instinct may, and does, involve knowledge antecedent to, and independent of, experience - an idea as contrary to the tendency of modern thought as that of spontaneous generation, with which indeed it is identical though presented in another shape - but he implies by his frequent use of the word "unmittelbar" that a result can come about without any cause whatever. So he says, "Um fur die unbewusster Erkenntniss, welche nicht durch sinnliche Wahrnehmung erworben, sondern als unmittelbar Besitz," &c. {144a} Because he does not see where the experience can have been gained, he cuts the knot, and denies that there has been experience. We say, Look more attentively and you will discover the time and manner in which the experience was gained.
Again, he continually a.s.sumes that animals low down in the scale of life cannot know their own business because they show no sign of knowing ours. See his remarks on Saturnia pavonia minor (page 107), and elsewhere on cattle and gadflies. The question is not what can they know, but what does their action prove to us that they do know. With each species of animal or plant there is one profession only, and it is hereditary. With us there are many professions, and they are not hereditary; so that they cannot become instinctive, as they would otherwise tend to do.
He attempts {144b} to draw a distinction between the causes that have produced the weapons and working instruments of animals, on the one hand, and those that lead to the formation of hexagonal cells by bees, &c., on the other. No such distinction can be justly drawn.
The ghost-stories which Von Hartmann accepts will hardly be accepted by people of sound judgment. There is one well-marked distinctive feature between the knowledge manifested by animals when acting instinctively and the supposed knowledge of seers and clairvoyants. In the first case, the animal never exhibits knowledge except upon matters concerning which its race has been conversant for generations; in the second, the seer is supposed to do so. In the first case, a new feature is invariably attended with disturbance of the performance and the awakening of consciousness and deliberation, unless the new matter is too small in proportion to the remaining features of the case to attract attention, or unless, though really new, it appears so similar to an old feature as to be at first mistaken for it; with the second, it is not even professed that the seer"s ancestors have had long experience upon the matter concerning which the seer is supposed to have special insight, and I can imagine no more powerful a priori argument against a belief in such stories.