CHAPTER IX: THE IDEAS OF THE ANIMATE AND THE INANIMATE.
§ 60. At first sight, the difference between an animal and a plant seems greater than the difference between a plant and a lifeless object. Its frequent movements distinguish a quadruped or a bird from inert things; but a plant, inert in most respects, is not thus distinguished. Only to beings capable of making those comparisons between past and present by which growth is detected and the cycle of reproductive changes traced, can it become manifest that plants are allied with animals more than with other entities. The earliest classification, then, puts animals into one group and the rest of things into another.
Hence, in considering how there arises in consciousness the distinction between the living and the not-living, we may, for a while, neglect the phenomena of plant-life and consider only those of animal-life.
To understand the nature of the conceived distinction in the mind of the primitive man, we must observe the development of it through lower forms of consciousness.
§ 61. If, when wandering some sunny day on the seashore among masses of rock covered with “acorn-shells,” one stops to examine something, a feeble hiss many be heard. On investigation, it will be found that this sound proceeds from the acorn-shells. During low tide they commonly remain with their valves not quite shut; but those on which Edition: current; Page: [126] a shadow is suddenly cast begin to close, and by simultaneous closure of the great numbers covered by the shadow, this faint noise is produced. Here the fact to be observed is that these cirrhipeds, which are transformed crustaceans having aborted eyes imbedded in their bodies, and vision which suffices only to discriminate light from darkness, draw to the doors of their cells when the light is all at once intercepted. Ordinarily, something alive casts the shadow—there is an adjacent source of danger. But as the shadow may be cast by a sharp-edged cloud, which obscures the sun with adequate suddenness, an adjacent living body is not always the cause: the test is an imperfect one. Still, we see that deep down among creatures thus unintelligent, there is a vague general response to an indication of adjacent life: the indication being a change that implies a moving body.
Various inferior types whose lives are carried on mainly by reflex actions, display no very marked advance on this mode of discriminating the living from the not-living, as visually presented. Further along the shore, in the tide-pools, are shrimps, which dart in all directions when a large body comes near; and when decaying sea-weed is disturbed, the sea-fleas jump at random, whatever may have caused the disturbance. So in the neighbouring fields, the insects, not distinguishing the shapes of moving objects or their kinds of motion, fly or leap when sudden great changes of visual impression are made on them—each such change usually implying a living body near at hand. In these cases, as in the cases of caterpillars that roll themselves up when touched, the action is automatic. After the vivid nervous stimulus comes a strong motor discharge, resulting in flight or in diffused contraction of the muscles.
In such cases the motion which implies life is confounded with the motion which does not. The kind of mental act is like that occurring in ourselves when some large object suddenly passes close in front. An involuntary start results, before there is time to decide whether the object is alive or Edition: current; Page: [127] dead—a source of danger or not. The primary suggestion with us, as with these lower creatures, is that motion implies life; but whereas with us conscious observation instantly disproves or verifies this suggestion, with them it does not.
§ 62. What is the first specialization of this original consciousness? How do superior creatures begin to qualify this association between motion and life, in such way as to exclude from the class of living things a number which move but are not living? Where intelligence rises beyond the merely automatic, the motion implying life begins to be distinguished from other motion by its spontaneity. Without being struck or pushed by anything external, bodies which are alive suddenly change from rest to movement, or from movement to rest. Rooks show appreciation of this difference. Watching doubtfully as you pass in the distance, they rise into the air if you stop; or, not doing this, do it when you walk on.
That the spontaneity of the motion serves as a test, is clearly shown by the behaviour of animals in presence of a railway train, which shows no spontaneity. In the early days of railways they displayed great alarm; but after a time, familiarized with the roar and the swift motion of this something which, appearing in the distance rushed by and disappeared in the distance, they became regardless of it. The cattle now continue to graze; and even the partridges on the embankment-slopes scarcely raise their heads.
Converse evidence is yielded by the behaviour of a dog mentioned by Mr. Darwin. Like others of his kind, and like superior animals generally, he was regardless of the swaying flowers and the leaves occasionally rustled by the summer breeze. But there happened to be on the lawn an opened parasol. From time to time the breeze stirred this; and when it did so, the dog growled fiercely and barked. Conscious, as his experiences had made him, that the familiar agency which he felt raising his own hair, sufficed also to Edition: current; Page: [128] move the leaves about, and that consequently their motion was not self-produced, he had not observed so large a thing as a parasol thus moved. Hence arose the idea of some living power—an intruder.
Again, appearances which at first vividly suggest life, presently cease to suggest it if spontaneity is absent. The behaviour of a dog before a looking-glass proves this. At first conceiving the reflected image to be another dog, he is excited; and if the back of the looking-glass is accessible, makes attempts to reach the supposed stranger. When, however, the glass is so placed, say in a chiffonier, as to show him the image very frequently, he becomes indifferent to it. For what reason? The appearance does not spontaneously move. While he is still, it remains still; and any motion in it follows motion in himself.
§ 63. Yet a further test used by intelligent animals to discriminate the living from the not-living, is the adaptation of motion to ends. Amusing herself with a mouse she has caught, the cat, if it remains long stationary, touches it with her paw to make it run. Obviously the thought is that a living thing disturbed will try to escape, and so bring a renewal of the chase. Not only is it expected that there will be self-produced motion; but it is expected that this motion will be away from danger. Habitually it is observable of animals that when failing to decide by the odour whether something smelt at is a living creature or not, there is an anticipation that disturbance will cause it to run away if it is alive. And even the behaviour of some gregarious birds when one of their number has been shot, shows that the absence of response to the cries and movements of the flock, leads to the impression that their companion is no longer one of that class of objects known as animated.
§ 64. Thus in the ascent from low to high types of creatures, the power of distinguishing the animate from the Edition: current; Page: [129] inanimate increases. First motion, then spontaneous motion, then adapted spontaneous motion, are the successive tests used as intelligence progresses.
Doubtless other traits aid. Sniffing the air, a deer perceives by something in it the proximity of an enemy; and a carnivore often follows prey by the scent it has left. But certain odours, though concomitants of life, are not used as tests of life; for when found, the objects which exhale the odours are not regarded as living if they exhibit none of the expected motions. Sounds, too, serve as indications; but these, when caused by animals, are the results of spontaneous motions, and are taken to imply life only because they accompany other spontaneous motions.
It should be added that the ability thus to class apart the animate and the inanimate, is inevitably developed in the course of evolution. Under penalties of death by starvation or destruction, there has been a constant cultivation of the power to discriminate the two, and a consequent increase of it.
§ 65. Shall we say that the primitive man is less intelligent than the lower mammals, less intelligent than birds and reptiles, less intelligent even than insects? Unless we say this, we must say that the primitive man distinguishes the living from the not-living; and if we credit him with intelligence higher than that of brutes, we must infer that he distinguishes the living from the not-living better than brutes do. The tests which other creatures use, and which the superior among them rightly use in nearly all cases, he also must use: the only difference being that occasional errors of classing into which the most developed among other creatures fall, he avoids.
It is true that the uncivilized man as we now find him, commonly errs in his classification when shown certain products of civilized art, having traits of structure or behaviour like those of living things. By the Esquimaux, Ross’s vessels Edition: current; Page: [130] were thought alive—moving as they did without oars; and Thomson says of the New Zealanders, that “when Cook’s ship hove in sight, the people took her for a whale with wings.” Andersson tells us that by the Bushmen, a waggon was supposed to be animated, and to want grass: its complexity, its symmetry, and its moving wheels, being irreconcilable with their experiences of inanimate things. “It is alive” said an Arawâk to Brett, on seeing a pocket-compass. That a watch is taken by savages for a living creature, is a fact frequently noted. And we have, again, the story of the Esquimaux, who, ascribing life to a musical box and a barrel-organ, regarded the one as the child of the other. But automatic instruments emitting various sounds, are in that respect strikingly like many animated bodies. The motions of a watch seem spontaneous; and hence the ascription of life is quite natural. We must exclude mistakes made in classing those things which advanced arts have made to simulate living things; since such things mislead the primitive man in ways unlike those in which he can be misled by the natural objects around him. Limiting ourselves to his conceptions of these natural objects, we cannot but conclude that his classification of them into animate and inanimate, is substantially correct.
Concluding this, we are obliged to diverge at the outset from certain interpretations currently given of his superstitions. The belief, tacit or avowed, that the primitive man thinks there is life in things which are not living, is clearly an untenable belief. Consciousness of the difference between the two, growing ever more definite as inteligence evolves, must be in him more definite than in all lower creatures. To suppose that without cause he begins to confound them, is to suppose the process of evolution is inverted.
§ 66. It is, indeed, urged that undeveloped human intelligence daily shows a tendency to confound them. Certain Edition: current; Page: [131] facts are named as implying that children fail in the discrimination. Were not this evidence vitiated by the suggestions of adults, it would have weight. But on remembering that when trying to pacify a child that has hurt itself against some inanimate object, a mother or nurse will affect to take the child’s part against this object, perhaps saying, “Naughty chair to hurt baby—beat it!” we shall suspect that the notion does not originate with the child but is given to it. The habitual behaviour of children to surrounding things implies no such confusion. Unless an inanimate object so far resembles an animate one as to suggest the idea that it may be a motionless living creature which will presently move, a child shows no fear of it. True, if an inanimate thing moves without a perceived external force, alarm results. Unlike as a thing may be to living things, yet if it displays this spontaneity characteristic of living things, the idea of life is aroused, and a scream may be caused. But otherwise, life is no more ascribed by a child than by a puppy or a kitten.* Should it be said that an Edition: current; Page: [132] older child, endowing its playthings with personalities, speaks of them and fondles them as though they were living; the reply is that this shows not belief but deliberate fiction. Though pretending that the things are alive, the child does not really think them so. Were its doll to bite, it would be no less astounded than an adult would be. To secure that pleasurable action of unused faculties called play, many intelligent creatures thus dramatize: lacking the living objects, they will accept as representing them, non-living objects—especially if these can be made to simulate life. But the dog pursuing a stick does not think it alive. If he gnaws it after catching it, he does but carry out his dramatized chase. Did he think the stick alive, he would bite it as eagerly before it was thrown as after. It is further alleged that even the grown man sometimes betrays a lurking tendency to think of inanimate objects as animate. Made angry by resistance to his efforts, he may in a fit of rage swear at some senseless thing, or dash it on the ground, or kick it. But the obvious interpretation is that anger, like every strong emotion, tends to discharge itself in violent muscular actions, which must take some direction or other; that when, as in many past cases, the cause of the anger has been a living object, the muscular actions have been directed towards the injury of such object; and that the established association directs the muscular discharges in the same way when the object is not living, if there is nothing to determine them in any other way. But the man who thus vents his fury cannot be said to think the thing is alive, though this mode of showing his irritation makes him seem to think so.
None of these facts, then, imply any real confusion between the animate and the inanimate. The power to distinguish between the two, which is one of the first powers vaguely shown even by creatures devoid of special senses, which goes on increasing as intelligence evolves, and which becomes complete in the civilized man, must be regarded as Edition: current; Page: [133] approaching completeness in the uncivilized man. It cannot be admitted that he confuses things which, through all lower forms of mind, have been growing clear.
§ 67. “How, then, are we to explain his superstitions?” it will be asked. “That these habitually imply the ascription of life to things not alive, is undeniable. If the primitive man has no proclivity to this confusion, how is it possible to explain the extreme prevalence, if not the universality, of beliefs which give personalities, and tacitly ascribe animation, to multitudes of inanimate things?”
The reply is, that these cannot be primary beliefs, but must be secondary beliefs into which the primitive man is betrayed during his early attempts to understand the surrounding world. The incipiently-speculative stage must come after a stage in which there is no speculation—a stage in which there yet exists no sufficient language for carrying on speculation. During this stage, the primitive man no more tends to confound animate with inanimate than inferior creatures do. If, in his first efforts at interpretation, he forms conceptions inconsistent with this pre-established distinction between animate and inanimate, it must be that some striking experience misleads him—introduces a germ of error which develops into an erroneous set of interpretations.
What is the germinal error? We may fitly seek for it amid those experiences which mask the distinction between animate and inanimate. There are continually-recurring states in which living things simulate things not alive; and in certain attendant phenomena we shall find the seed of that system of superstitions which the primitive man forms.