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The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex

C >> Charles Darwin >> The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex




The principle of IMITATION is strong in man, and especially, as I have
myself observed, with savages. In certain morbid states of the brain this
tendency is exaggerated to an extraordinary degree: some hemiplegic
patients and others, at the commencement of inflammatory softening of the
brain, unconsciously imitate every word which is uttered, whether in their
own or in a foreign language, and every gesture or action which is
performed near them. (14. Dr. Bateman, 'On Aphasia,' 1870, p. 110.)
Desor (15. Quoted by Vogt, 'Memoire sur les Microcephales,' 1867, p. 168.)
has remarked that no animal voluntarily imitates an action performed by
man, until in the ascending scale we come to monkeys, which are well known
to be ridiculous mockers. Animals, however, sometimes imitate each other's
actions: thus two species of wolves, which had been reared by dogs,
learned to bark, as does sometimes the jackal (16. The 'Variation of
Animals and Plants under Domestication,' vol. i. p. 27.), but whether this
can be called voluntary imitation is another question. Birds imitate the
songs of their parents, and sometimes of other birds; and parrots are
notorious imitators of any sound which they often hear. Dureau de la Malle
gives an account (17. 'Annales des Sciences Nat.' (1st Series), tom. xxii.
p. 397.) of a dog reared by a cat, who learnt to imitate the well-known
action of a cat licking her paws, and thus washing her ears and face; this
was also witnessed by the celebrated naturalist Audouin. I have received
several confirmatory accounts; in one of these, a dog had not been suckled
by a cat, but had been brought up with one, together with kittens, and had
thus acquired the above habit, which he ever afterwards practised during
his life of thirteen years. Dureau de la Malle's dog likewise learnt from
the kittens to play with a ball by rolling it about with his fore paws, and
springing on it. A correspondent assures me that a cat in his house used
to put her paws into jugs of milk having too narrow a mouth for her head.
A kitten of this cat soon learned the same trick, and practised it ever
afterwards, whenever there was an opportunity.

The parents of many animals, trusting to the principle of imitation in
their young, and more especially to their instinctive or inherited
tendencies, may be said to educate them. We see this when a cat brings a
live mouse to her kittens; and Dureau de la Malle has given a curious
account (in the paper above quoted) of his observations on hawks which
taught their young dexterity, as well as judgment of distances, by first
dropping through the air dead mice and sparrows, which the young generally
failed to catch, and then bringing them live birds and letting them loose.

Hardly any faculty is more important for the intellectual progress of man
than ATTENTION. Animals clearly manifest this power, as when a cat watches
by a hole and prepares to spring on its prey. Wild animals sometimes
become so absorbed when thus engaged, that they may be easily approached.
Mr. Bartlett has given me a curious proof how variable this faculty is in
monkeys. A man who trains monkeys to act in plays, used to purchase common
kinds from the Zoological Society at the price of five pounds for each; but
he offered to give double the price, if he might keep three or four of them
for a few days, in order to select one. When asked how he could possibly
learn so soon, whether a particular monkey would turn out a good actor, he
answered that it all depended on their power of attention. If when he was
talking and explaining anything to a monkey, its attention was easily
distracted, as by a fly on the wall or other trifling object, the case was
hopeless. If he tried by punishment to make an inattentive monkey act, it
turned sulky. On the other hand, a monkey which carefully attended to him
could always be trained.

It is almost superfluous to state that animals have excellent MEMORIES for
persons and places. A baboon at the Cape of Good Hope, as I have been
informed by Sir Andrew Smith, recognised him with joy after an absence of
nine months. I had a dog who was savage and averse to all strangers, and I
purposely tried his memory after an absence of five years and two days. I
went near the stable where he lived, and shouted to him in my old manner;
he shewed no joy, but instantly followed me out walking, and obeyed me,
exactly as if I had parted with him only half an hour before. A train of
old associations, dormant during five years, had thus been instantaneously
awakened in his mind. Even ants, as P. Huber (18. 'Les Moeurs des
Fourmis,' 1810, p. 150.) has clearly shewn, recognised their fellow-ants
belonging to the same community after a separation of four months. Animals
can certainly by some means judge of the intervals of time between
recurrent events.

The IMAGINATION is one of the highest prerogatives of man. By this faculty
he unites former images and ideas, independently of the will, and thus
creates brilliant and novel results. A poet, as Jean Paul Richter remarks
(19. Quoted in Dr. Maudsley's 'Physiology and Pathology of Mind,' 1868,
pp. 19, 220.), "who must reflect whether he shall make a character say yes
or no--to the devil with him; he is only a stupid corpse." Dreaming gives
us the best notion of this power; as Jean Paul again says, "The dream is an
involuntary art of poetry." The value of the products of our imagination
depends of course on the number, accuracy, and clearness of our
impressions, on our judgment and taste in selecting or rejecting the
involuntary combinations, and to a certain extent on our power of
voluntarily combining them. As dogs, cats, horses, and probably all the
higher animals, even birds (20. Dr. Jerdon, 'Birds of India,' vol. i.
1862, p. xxi. Houzeau says that his parokeets and canary-birds dreamt:
'Etudes sur les Facultes Mentales des Animaux,' tom. ii. p. 136.) have
vivid dreams, and this is shewn by their movements and the sounds uttered,
we must admit that they possess some power of imagination. There must be
something special, which causes dogs to howl in the night, and especially
during moonlight, in that remarkable and melancholy manner called baying.
All dogs do not do so; and, according to Houzeau (21. ibid. 1872, tom. ii.
p. 181.), they do not then look at the moon, but at some fixed point near
the horizon. Houzeau thinks that their imaginations are disturbed by the
vague outlines of the surrounding objects, and conjure up before them
fantastic images: if this be so, their feelings may almost be called
superstitious.

Of all the faculties of the human mind, it will, I presume, be admitted
that REASON stands at the summit. Only a few persons now dispute that
animals possess some power of reasoning. Animals may constantly be seen to
pause, deliberate, and resolve. It is a significant fact, that the more
the habits of any particular animal are studied by a naturalist, the more
he attributes to reason and the less to unlearnt instincts. (22. Mr. L.H.
Morgan's work on 'The American Beaver,' 1868, offers a good illustration of
this remark. I cannot help thinking, however, that he goes too far in
underrating the power of instinct.) In future chapters we shall see that
some animals extremely low in the scale apparently display a certain amount
of reason. No doubt it is often difficult to distinguish between the power
of reason and that of instinct. For instance, Dr. Hayes, in his work on
'The Open Polar Sea,' repeatedly remarks that his dogs, instead of
continuing to draw the sledges in a compact body, diverged and separated
when they came to thin ice, so that their weight might be more evenly
distributed. This was often the first warning which the travellers
received that the ice was becoming thin and dangerous. Now, did the dogs
act thus from the experience of each individual, or from the example of the
older and wiser dogs, or from an inherited habit, that is from instinct?
This instinct, may possibly have arisen since the time, long ago, when dogs
were first employed by the natives in drawing their sledges; or the Arctic
wolves, the parent-stock of the Esquimaux dog, may have acquired an
instinct impelling them not to attack their prey in a close pack, when on
thin ice.

We can only judge by the circumstances under which actions are performed,
whether they are due to instinct, or to reason, or to the mere association
of ideas: this latter principle, however, is intimately connected with
reason. A curious case has been given by Prof. Mobius (23. 'Die
Bewegungen der Thiere,' etc., 1873, p. 11.), of a pike, separated by a
plate of glass from an adjoining aquarium stocked with fish, and who often
dashed himself with such violence against the glass in trying to catch the
other fishes, that he was sometimes completely stunned. The pike went on
thus for three months, but at last learnt caution, and ceased to do so.
The plate of glass was then removed, but the pike would not attack these
particular fishes, though he would devour others which were afterwards
introduced; so strongly was the idea of a violent shock associated in his
feeble mind with the attempt on his former neighbours. If a savage, who
had never seen a large plate-glass window, were to dash himself even once
against it, he would for a long time afterwards associate a shock with a
window-frame; but very differently from the pike, he would probably reflect
on the nature of the impediment, and be cautious under analogous
circumstances. Now with monkeys, as we shall presently see, a painful or
merely a disagreeable impression, from an action once performed, is
sometimes sufficient to prevent the animal from repeating it. If we
attribute this difference between the monkey and the pike solely to the
association of ideas being so much stronger and more persistent in the one
than the other, though the pike often received much the more severe injury,
can we maintain in the case of man that a similar difference implies the
possession of a fundamentally different mind?

Houzeau relates (24. 'Etudes sur les Facultes Mentales des Animaux,' 1872,
tom. ii. p. 265.) that, whilst crossing a wide and arid plain in Texas, his
two dogs suffered greatly from thirst, and that between thirty and forty
times they rushed down the hollows to search for water. These hollows were
not valleys, and there were no trees in them, or any other difference in
the vegetation, and as they were absolutely dry there could have been no
smell of damp earth. The dogs behaved as if they knew that a dip in the
ground offered them the best chance of finding water, and Houzeau has often
witnessed the same behaviour in other animals.

I have seen, as I daresay have others, that when a small object is thrown
on the ground beyond the reach of one of the elephants in the Zoological
Gardens, he blows through his trunk on the ground beyond the object, so
that the current reflected on all sides may drive the object within his
reach. Again a well-known ethnologist, Mr. Westropp, informs me that he
observed in Vienna a bear deliberately making with his paw a current in
some water, which was close to the bars of his cage, so as to draw a piece
of floating bread within his reach. These actions of the elephant and bear
can hardly be attributed to instinct or inherited habit, as they would be
of little use to an animal in a state of nature. Now, what is the
difference between such actions, when performed by an uncultivated man, and
by one of the higher animals?

The savage and the dog have often found water at a low level, and the
coincidence under such circumstances has become associated in their minds.
A cultivated man would perhaps make some general proposition on the
subject; but from all that we know of savages it is extremely doubtful
whether they would do so, and a dog certainly would not. But a savage, as
well as a dog, would search in the same way, though frequently
disappointed; and in both it seems to be equally an act of reason, whether
or not any general proposition on the subject is consciously placed before
the mind. (25. Prof. Huxley has analysed with admirable clearness the
mental steps by which a man, as well as a dog, arrives at a conclusion in a
case analogous to that given in my text. See his article, 'Mr. Darwin's
Critics,' in the 'Contemporary Review,' Nov. 1871, p. 462, and in his
'Critiques and Essays,' 1873, p. 279.) The same would apply to the
elephant and the bear making currents in the air or water. The savage
would certainly neither know nor care by what law the desired movements
were effected; yet his act would be guided by a rude process of reasoning,
as surely as would a philosopher in his longest chain of deductions. There
would no doubt be this difference between him and one of the higher
animals, that he would take notice of much slighter circumstances and
conditions, and would observe any connection between them after much less
experience, and this would be of paramount importance. I kept a daily
record of the actions of one of my infants, and when he was about eleven
months old, and before he could speak a single word, I was continually
struck with the greater quickness, with which all sorts of objects and
sounds were associated together in his mind, compared with that of the most
intelligent dogs I ever knew. But the higher animals differ in exactly the
same way in this power of association from those low in the scale, such as
the pike, as well as in that of drawing inferences and of observation.

The promptings of reason, after very short experience, are well shewn by
the following actions of American monkeys, which stand low in their order.
Rengger, a most careful observer, states that when he first gave eggs to
his monkeys in Paraguay, they smashed them, and thus lost much of their
contents; afterwards they gently hit one end against some hard body, and
picked off the bits of shell with their fingers. After cutting themselves
only ONCE with any sharp tool, they would not touch it again, or would
handle it with the greatest caution. Lumps of sugar were often given them
wrapped up in paper; and Rengger sometimes put a live wasp in the paper, so
that in hastily unfolding it they got stung; after this had ONCE happened,
they always first held the packet to their ears to detect any movement
within. (26. Mr. Belt, in his most interesting work, 'The Naturalist in
Nicaragua,' 1874, (p. 119,) likewise describes various actions of a tamed
Cebus, which, I think, clearly shew that this animal possessed some
reasoning power.)

The following cases relate to dogs. Mr. Colquhoun (27. 'The Moor and the
Loch,' p. 45. Col. Hutchinson on 'Dog Breaking,' 1850, p. 46.) winged two
wild-ducks, which fell on the further side of a stream; his retriever tried
to bring over both at once, but could not succeed; she then, though never
before known to ruffle a feather, deliberately killed one, brought over the
other, and returned for the dead bird. Col. Hutchinson relates that two
partridges were shot at once, one being killed, the other wounded; the
latter ran away, and was caught by the retriever, who on her return came
across the dead bird; "she stopped, evidently greatly puzzled, and after
one or two trials, finding she could not take it up without permitting the
escape of the winged bird, she considered a moment, then deliberately
murdered it by giving it a severe crunch, and afterwards brought away both
together. This was the only known instance of her ever having wilfully
injured any game." Here we have reason though not quite perfect, for the
retriever might have brought the wounded bird first and then returned for
the dead one, as in the case of the two wild-ducks. I give the above
cases, as resting on the evidence of two independent witnesses, and because
in both instances the retrievers, after deliberation, broke through a habit
which is inherited by them (that of not killing the game retrieved), and
because they shew how strong their reasoning faculty must have been to
overcome a fixed habit.

I will conclude by quoting a remark by the illustrious Humboldt. (28.
'Personal Narrative,' Eng. translat., vol. iii. p. 106.) "The muleteers in
S. America say, 'I will not give you the mule whose step is easiest, but la
mas racional,--the one that reasons best'"; and; as, he adds, "this popular
expression, dictated by long experience, combats the system of animated
machines, better perhaps than all the arguments of speculative philosophy."
Nevertheless some writers even yet deny that the higher animals possess a
trace of reason; and they endeavour to explain away, by what appears to be
mere verbiage, (29. I am glad to find that so acute a reasoner as Mr.
Leslie Stephen ('Darwinism and Divinity, Essays on Free Thinking,' 1873, p.
80), in speaking of the supposed impassable barrier between the minds of
man and the lower animals, says, "The distinctions, indeed, which have been
drawn, seem to us to rest upon no better foundation than a great many other
metaphysical distinctions; that is, the assumption that because you can
give two things different names, they must therefore have different
natures. It is difficult to understand how anybody who has ever kept a
dog, or seen an elephant, can have any doubt as to an animal's power of
performing the essential processes of reasoning.") all such facts as those
above given.

It has, I think, now been shewn that man and the higher animals, especially
the Primates, have some few instincts in common. All have the same senses,
intuitions, and sensations,--similar passions, affections, and emotions,
even the more complex ones, such as jealousy, suspicion, emulation,
gratitude, and magnanimity; they practise deceit and are revengeful; they
are sometimes susceptible to ridicule, and even have a sense of humour;
they feel wonder and curiosity; they possess the same faculties of
imitation, attention, deliberation, choice, memory, imagination, the
association of ideas, and reason, though in very different degrees. The
individuals of the same species graduate in intellect from absolute
imbecility to high excellence. They are also liable to insanity, though
far less often than in the case of man. (30. See 'Madness in Animals,' by
Dr. W. Lauder Lindsay, in 'Journal of Mental Science,' July 1871.)
Nevertheless, many authors have insisted that man is divided by an
insuperable barrier from all the lower animals in his mental faculties. I
formerly made a collection of above a score of such aphorisms, but they are
almost worthless, as their wide difference and number prove the difficulty,
if not the impossibility, of the attempt. It has been asserted that man
alone is capable of progressive improvement; that he alone makes use of
tools or fire, domesticates other animals, or possesses property; that no
animal has the power of abstraction, or of forming general concepts, is
self-conscious and comprehends itself; that no animal employs language;
that man alone has a sense of beauty, is liable to caprice, has the feeling
of gratitude, mystery, etc.; believes in God, or is endowed with a
conscience. I will hazard a few remarks on the more important and
interesting of these points.

Archbishop Sumner formerly maintained (31. Quoted by Sir C. Lyell,
'Antiquity of Man,' p. 497.) that man alone is capable of progressive
improvement. That he is capable of incomparably greater and more rapid
improvement than is any other animal, admits of no dispute; and this is
mainly due to his power of speaking and handing down his acquired
knowledge. With animals, looking first to the individual, every one who
has had any experience in setting traps, knows that young animals can he
caught much more easily than old ones; and they can be much more easily
approached by an enemy. Even with respect to old animals, it is impossible
to catch many in the same place and in the same kind of trap, or to destroy
them by the same kind of poison; yet it is improbable that all should have
partaken of the poison, and impossible that all should have been caught in
a trap. They must learn caution by seeing their brethren caught or
poisoned. In North America, where the fur-bearing animals have long been
pursued, they exhibit, according to the unanimous testimony of all
observers, an almost incredible amount of sagacity, caution and cunning;
but trapping has been there so long carried on, that inheritance may
possibly have come into play. I have received several accounts that when
telegraphs are first set up in any district, many birds kill themselves by
flying against the wires, but that in the course of a very few years they
learn to avoid this danger, by seeing, as it would appear, their comrades
killed. (32. For additional evidence, with details, see M. Houzeau,
'Etudes sur les Facultes Mentales des Animaux,' tom. ii. 1872, p. 147.)

If we look to successive generations, or to the race, there is no doubt
that birds and other animals gradually both acquire and lose caution in
relation to man or other enemies (33. See, with respect to birds on
oceanic islands, my 'Journal of Researches during the Voyage of the
"Beagle,"' 1845, p. 398. 'Origin of Species,' 5th ed. p. 260.); and this
caution is certainly in chief part an inherited habit or instinct, but in
part the result of individual experience. A good observer, Leroy (34.
'Lettres Phil. sur l'Intelligence des Animaux,' nouvelle edit., 1802, p.
86.), states, that in districts where foxes are much hunted, the young, on
first leaving their burrows, are incontestably much more wary than the old
ones in districts where they are not much disturbed.

Our domestic dogs are descended from wolves and jackals (35. See the
evidence on this head in chap. i. vol. i., 'On the Variation of Animals and
Plants under Domestication.'), and though they may not have gained in
cunning, and may have lost in wariness and suspicion, yet they have
progressed in certain moral qualities, such as in affection, trust-
worthiness, temper, and probably in general intelligence. The common rat
has conquered and beaten several other species throughout Europe, in parts
of North America, New Zealand, and recently in Formosa, as well as on the
mainland of China. Mr. Swinhoe (36. 'Proceedings Zoological Society,'
1864, p. 186.), who describes these two latter cases, attributes the
victory of the common rat over the large Mus coninga to its superior
cunning; and this latter quality may probably be attributed to the habitual
exercise of all its faculties in avoiding extirpation by man, as well as to
nearly all the less cunning or weak-minded rats having been continuously
destroyed by him. It is, however, possible that the success of the common
rat may be due to its having possessed greater cunning than its fellow-
species, before it became associated with man. To maintain, independently
of any direct evidence, that no animal during the course of ages has
progressed in intellect or other mental faculties, is to beg the question
of the evolution of species. We have seen that, according to Lartet,
existing mammals belonging to several orders have larger brains than their
ancient tertiary prototypes.

It has often been said that no animal uses any tool; but the chimpanzee in
a state of nature cracks a native fruit, somewhat like a walnut, with a
stone. (37. Savage and Wyman in 'Boston Journal of Natural History,' vol.
iv. 1843-44, p. 383.) Rengger (38. 'Saugethiere von Paraguay,' 1830, s.
51-56.) easily taught an American monkey thus to break open hard palm-nuts;
and afterwards of its own accord, it used stones to open other kinds of
nuts, as well as boxes. It thus also removed the soft rind of fruit that
had a disagreeable flavour. Another monkey was taught to open the lid of a
large box with a stick, and afterwards it used the stick as a lever to move
heavy bodies; and I have myself seen a young orang put a stick into a
crevice, slip his hand to the other end, and use it in the proper manner as
a lever. The tamed elephants in India are well known to break off branches
of trees and use them to drive away the flies; and this same act has been
observed in an elephant in a state of nature. (39. The Indian Field,
March 4, 1871.) I have seen a young orang, when she thought she was going
to be whipped, cover and protect herself with a blanket or straw. In these
several cases stones and sticks were employed as implements; but they are
likewise used as weapons. Brehm (40. 'Thierleben,' B. i. s. 79, 82.)
states, on the authority of the well-known traveller Schimper, that in
Abyssinia when the baboons belonging to one species (C. gelada) descend in
troops from the mountains to plunder the fields, they sometimes encounter
troops of another species (C. hamadryas), and then a fight ensues. The
Geladas roll down great stones, which the Hamadryas try to avoid, and then
both species, making a great uproar, rush furiously against each other.
Brehm, when accompanying the Duke of Coburg-Gotha, aided in an attack with
fire-arms on a troop of baboons in the pass of Mensa in Abyssinia. The
baboons in return rolled so many stones down the mountain, some as large as
a man's head, that the attackers had to beat a hasty retreat; and the pass
was actually closed for a time against the caravan. It deserves notice
that these baboons thus acted in concert. Mr. Wallace (41. 'The Malay
Archipelago,' vol. i. 1869, p. 87.) on three occasions saw female orangs,
accompanied by their young, "breaking off branches and the great spiny
fruit of the Durian tree, with every appearance of rage; causing such a
shower of missiles as effectually kept us from approaching too near the
tree." As I have repeatedly seen, a chimpanzee will throw any object at
hand at a person who offends him; and the before-mentioned baboon at the
Cape of Good Hope prepared mud for the purpose.

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