Part 7

James Forbes, in his "Oriental Memoirs," relates a striking instance of this kind. One of a shooting party had killed a female monkey in a banian tree, and carried it to his tent. Forty or fifty of the tribe soon gathered around the tent, chattering furiously and threatening an attack, from which they were only diverted by the display of the fowling-piece, whose effects they seemed perfectly to understand. But while the others retreated, the leader of the troop stood his ground, continuing his threatening chatter. Finding this of no avail, he came to the door of the tent, moaning sadly, and by his gestures seeming to beg for the dead body. When it was given, he took it sorrowfully up in his arms and carried it away to the waiting troop. That hunter never shot a monkey again.

This deep feeling for the dead is probably not common among monkeys. The gibbon, for instance, is said to take no notice of the dead. It is, however, highly sympathetic to injured and sick companions, and this feeling seems common to all the apes. No human being could show more tender care of wounded or helpless companions than has often been seen in members of this affectionate tribe of animals.

Without giving further examples of the intelligence and sympathy of the apes, we may say that they possess in a marked degree the mental powers to which man owes so much, viz. observation and imitation. The ape is the most curious of the lower animals--that is, it possesses the faculty of observation in an unusual degree. What we call curiosity in the ape is the basic form of the characteristic which we call attention or observation in man. Its seeming great activity in the ape is what might naturally be expected in an observant animal when removed from its natural habitat to a location where all around it is new and strange. Man under like circumstances is as curious as the ape, while the latter in its native trees probably finds little to excite its special attention. In both man and the ape it needs novelty to excite curiosity.

Again, the ape is imitative in a high degree. This faculty also it does not share with the lower animals, but does with man, imitation being one of the methods by which he has attained his supremacy. Observation, imitation, education, are the three levers in the development of the human intellect. The first two of these the ape possesses in a marked degree. It is susceptible also to the last, being very teachable. Education certainly exists to some extent among the apes in their natural habitat, perhaps to as great an extent as it did in primitive man. In the latter case it is doubtful if there was much that could be called designed education, the young gaining their degree of knowledge by observing and imitating their elders. The same is certainly the case among the apes.

We may reasonably ask what there is in the life and character of the apes to give them this mental superiority over the remaining lower animals. It is certainly not due to the arboreal life and powers of grasp of these animals, for in those respects they resemble the lemurs, which are greatly lacking in intelligence. Whether the monkeys emerged from the lemurs or the two groups developed side by side is a question as yet unsettled; at all events they are closely similar in conditions of existence. Yet while the monkeys are the most intelligent and teachable of animals, the lemurs are among the least intelligent of the mammalia. There is here a marked distinction which is evidently not due to difference of structure or habitat, and must have its origin in some other characteristic, such as difference in life habits.

There is certainly nothing in the diet of the ape to develop intelligence. The frugivorous and herbivorous animals do not need cunning and shrewdness to anything like the extent necessary in carnivorous animals. They do not need to pursue or lie in wait for prey; and they escape from their enemies mainly through strength, speed, concealment, or other physical powers or methods. Escape may occasionally develop mental alertness, but does not usually do so. Certainly if the alert, watchful, suspicious habits of the apes are due to the requisite of avoiding dangerous enemies, we might naturally look for similar habits in the lemurs, which are similarly situated. And if we consider the wide distribution of the apes throughout the tropics of both hemispheres, and their great diversity in species and condition, it seems very unlikely that in all these localities their relations with other animals would be such as to develop the mental alertness which they so generally display. The fact appears to be that, while this may be a cause, it is not a leading cause, of mental development in animals, and that we must seek elsewhere for the origin of animal intelligence.

Research, indeed, leads us to examples of intelligence where we should least expect to find it. Among the mammalia we perceive one marked example in the beavers, the only one in the great class of the rodents, with their nine hundred or more of species. But we must go still lower, to the insects, for the most striking examples, finding them alone in the ants, the bees, and the termites, among the vast multitude of insect forms. Less marked instances appear in the elephants, in some of the birds, and in certain other gregarious animals.

From these examples, and what is elsewhere known of animal intelligence, one broad conclusion may be drawn, that all the strikingly intelligent animals are strongly social in their habits, and that no decided display of intelligence is to be found among solitary species. This conclusion becomes almost a demonstration in the case of the ants and bees. The ants, for instance, comprise hundreds of species, spread over most of the world, mainly social, but occasionally solitary. The social species, while varying greatly in habit, all display powers of intelligence, and these so diversified as to indicate many separate lines of evolution. The solitary ants, on the contrary, manifest no special intelligence, and do not rise above the general insect level. The same may be said of the bees. The hive bee, the most communal in habit, shows the highest traits of intelligent activity. The bees which form smaller groups and the social wasps stand at a lower level, and the solitary bees and wasps sink to the ordinary insect plane. We arrive at like conclusions from observation of the social termites, or white ants, some species of which are remarkable for their intelligent coöperation and division of duties.

Examples similar in kind may be drawn from the vertebrates. Among the birds there are none more quick-witted than the social crows, none with less display of intelligence than the solitary carnivorous species. Birds are rather gregarious than social. There are few species whose association is above that of mere aggregation in flight. Those more distinctively social usually have special habits which indicate intelligence--as in the often cited instances of their seemingly trying and executing delinquents. Among the carnivorous mammals the social dog or wolf tribe displays the intelligent habit of mutual aid. The horses, oxen, deer, and other gregarious hoofed animals have a degree of division of duties, but their intelligence is of a lower grade than that of the dogs and the elephants. On the whole, it may be affirmed that the social habit is frequently accompanied by instances of special intelligence to which we find no counterpart among the solitary forms, and that the highest manifestations of intelligence in the lower animals are found in those forms which possess communal habits, as the ants, bees, termites, and beavers.

One important characteristic of the communal animals is that they become mentally specialized. They round up their powers, build barriers of habit over which they cannot pass, perform the same acts with such interminable iteration that what began as intellect sinks back into instinct. Each individual has fixed duties and is confined within a limited circle of acts, whose scope it cannot pass, or only to the minutest extent.

The non-communal social animals, on the contrary, are not thus restricted. Their intelligence is of a generalized character, and is capable of developing in new channels. None are tied down to special duties, each possesses the full powers of all, and they are thus more open to a continued growth of the intellect than the communal forms. To this class belongs the ape. Its intelligence is general, not special; broadly capable of development, not narrowed and bound in by the limitation of certain fixed and special duties.

The suggestions above offered point to three grades of community among animals, which may be designated the communal, the social, and the solitary. Among these there are, of course, many stages of transition from one to the other. The specially communal, including the ants, bees, termites, and beavers, are those in which there is almost a total loss of individuality, each member working for the good of the community as a unit, not for its personal advantage. The result consists in organized industries, division and specialization of duties, a common home, food stock, etc. At a lower level in animal life, that of the hydroid polyps, communism has become so complete that the community has grown into an actual individual, the members not being free, but acting as organs of an aggregate mass, in which each performs some special duty for the good of the community.

The social animals differ from the communal in that the individuality of the members is fully preserved. There is some measure of work for the group, some degree of mutual aid, some evidence of leadership and subordination, but these are confined to a few exigencies of life, while in most of the details of existence each member of the group acts for itself. The solitary animals are those which do not form groups larger than that of the family, and into whose life the principle of mutual aid, outside the immediate family relations, does not enter. Each acts for itself alone, and intercourse between the individuals of the species is greatly restricted.

The advantages of social habits among animals are evident. There is excellent reason to believe that all animals, and especially such advanced forms as the vertebrates and the higher arthropods, have some power of mental development, some facility in devising new methods of action to meet new situations. Though their reasoning power may be small, it is not quite lacking, and many examples of the exercise of the faculty of thought could be cited if necessary.

What we are here concerned with, is the final result of such exercises of individual thought powers. In the case of the solitary forms, such new conceptions die with the individual. Though they may exert an influence on the development of the nervous system, and aid in the hereditary transmission of more active brain powers, they are lost as special ideas, fail to be taken up and repeated by other members of the species. This is not the case with the social animals. Each of these has some faculty of observation and some tendency to imitation, and useful steps of advance made by individuals are likely to be observed and retained as general habits of the community. Anything of importance that is gained may be preserved by educative influences. The facility of mental communication between these creatures is perhaps much greater than is generally supposed, and acts of importance which are not directly observed might in many cases be transmitted through repetition for the benefit of the group. We know this to be the main agency in human progress. New ideas are of rare occurrence with man. Ideas of permanent value do not occur to one per cent., perhaps not to one hundredth of one per cent., of civilized mankind, yet few of such ideas are lost, and that which has proved of advantage to an individual soon becomes the common possession of a community.

Among the lower animals new and advantageous ideas are probably of exceedingly rare occurrence. When they do occur, their advantage to solitary forms is very slight, being that of minute steps of brain development and hereditary transmission of the same. To social forms they are doubly advantageous, since, while they tend to brain development, they may also be preserved in their original form, and transmitted directly to members of the group. They are still more advantageous to the communal animals, from the closer intercourse of these, and their constant association in acts of mutual aid. But in the latter instance their influence is usually exerted for the benefit of the community as a unit, while in the case of social animals it is of advantage to the individual.

The result of such a process of evolution in the case of the communal animals is a strict specialism. A series of acts of advantage to the community are slowly developed, and are repeated so frequently that they become instinctive, while a fixed circle of duties arises, through whose links it is almost impossible to break. There is no reason to believe that the individual initiative is wanting. The varied round of duties of a community of ants, for instance, could only have arisen through step after step of progress from the condition of the solitary ants. If such steps have been made, others may be made, and are likely to be preserved if found advantageous. The ant individual preserves its powers of observation and thought and may initiate new processes. But most of the ant communities are already so excellently adapted to the conditions of their life as to leave little opportunity for improvement, so that the adoption of new and advantageous habits are certain to be exceedingly rare.

It is an interesting fact that communalism has been confined to animals of comparatively low organization. The most complete examples of it exist in the polyps and some other low forms, in which each community has become a compound individual, the members remaining attached to the parent stock. The next higher examples to be met are the frequently cited ants and bees, belonging to the lowly organized class of arthropoda, yet, through the advantage of association and mutual aid, developing actions and habits only found elsewhere in the human race. The only example among vertebrates is that of the beavers, members of the low order of rodents. With these the results are less varied and intricate than with the ants, in accordance with the much smaller size of the community. All the higher vertebrates are either social or solitary in habit, and among them the narrow specialism of the communal forms does not exist. Each individual works in large measure for itself, its mental powers remain generalized, and it is not tied down to the performance of a series of fixed hereditary acts from which escape is well-nigh impossible.

Of the social animals, man presents the most complete type, and the one from which we can best deduce the conditions of the class. A human community is made up of individuals of many degrees of intellectual ability, the mass remaining at a low level, the few attaining a high level. Yet those of high powers of intellect set the standard for the whole, teach the lower either by precept or example, and aid effectively in advancing the standard of the community. A rope or chain is said to be as weak as its weakest part. A human community, on the contrary, may be said to be as strong as its strongest part. The standing of the whole is dependent upon the thoughts and acts of the few, from whom the general mass receive new ideas and gain new habits. The existing intellectual and industrial position of mankind is very largely a result of ideas evolved by individuals age after age, and preserved as the mental property of the whole. Destroy the books and works of art and industry of any community, cut off its intellectual leaders, remove from the general mind the results of education, and it would at once fall back to a low level and be obliged to begin again its slow climb upward. The intellectual standing of any civilized nation depends upon two things: the preservation in books, in memory, and in works of art and industry, of the ideas of ancient workers and thinkers; and the mental activity of living thinkers and inventors, whose work takes its start from this standpoint of stored-up thought. Rob any community of all its basic ideas, and it would quickly retrograde to a primitive condition of thought and organization, from which it might need many centuries to emerge.

It has been said above that man is the highest example of the social animal. While that is the truth, it is not the whole truth. He is at the same time the highest example of the communal animal. Mutual aid, organization into strictly rounded communities, labor for the good of the whole, is as declared in him as in the most developed community of the ants, and we admire the work of the latter simply because they repeat at a lower level the work of man. In truth, in man we have a splendid example of the existence of the individual initiative in connection with the communal organization. Specialism exists in a hundred forms. Some nations have been tied down by it to conditions almost as fixed as those of the ants. But generalism exists in as full a measure, new ideas are constantly modifying or replacing the old, and the communism of man is a progressive one, steadily borne upward on the wings of new ideas. Individual thought has the fullest swing, and it is to the system of special reward for useful thought and act that man owes much of his great advance. On the other hand, reward without useful service has been one of the leading agencies that have acted to check human progress.

The lower animals do not possess the advantage of man in his power of preserving the thoughts and products of the past as a foundation for new steps of progress. Memory may aid them to a slight degree, but they have no special means of recording useful ideas. This cannot fairly be said of the communal forms, which possess the result of the labors of former generations as useful object lessons. But in the higher animals no means exist for the permanent preservation of ideas, and each step of progress must be due to the direct influence of living individuals and the indirect result of natural selection.

This is one cause of the slow mental advance of the lower animals. A second is the deficiency in educational influences, which have had so much to do with human progress. Education is not quite wanting in the brute creation. There are many instances on record of instruction given by the adults to the young. But this agency is in its embryo stage, and its influence must be small. Again, each tribe of lower animals is apt to fall into a fixed circle of life acts, to become so closely adapted to some situation or condition that any change of habits would be likely to prove detrimental. This is a state of affairs tending to produce stagnation and vigorously to check advance. Many instances of this could be cited from human history, while it is the common condition with the animals below man.

To return to the apes, the considerations above taken lead to the conclusion that it is chiefly, if not solely, to their social habits that they owe their mental quickness. While only in minor traits communal, they are eminently social, and have doubtless derived great advantage from this. The lemurs, which share their habitat and resemble them in organization, are markedly unsocial, and are as mentally dull as the apes are mentally quick. Possibly, the thought powers of the apes once set in train, there may have been something in the exigencies of arboreal life that quickened their powers of observation; but we are constrained to believe that the main influence to which they owe their development is that of social habits, in which they stand at a high, if not the highest, level among the distinctly social animals.

The thought capacities of the ape intellect are general, not special. The mind of these animals remains free and capable of new thought in new situations. It is fully alive to the needs and dangers of arboreal life, and advances no farther in its native habitat because there is nothing more of importance to be learned. But while fixed it is not stagnant. When the ape is taken from its native woods and put among the many new conditions arising on shipboard and in human habitations, we quickly perceive indications of its mental alertness. Its faculties of observation and imitation are actively exercised, and new habits and conceptions are quickly gained. Could the apes be made to breed freely in captivity, so that a domestic race, comparable to that of the dogs, could be obtained, their mental powers might, perhaps, be cultivated to an extraordinary degree, yielding instances of thought approaching that of man. The ape is especially notable for its tendency to attempt new acts of itself, not waiting to be taught, as in the case of other domesticated animals. In short, it seems by all odds to be the animal best fitted mentally to serve as the basis of a high intellectual development, as it is the best fitted physically to change from the attitude of the quadruped to that of the biped.

The anthropoid apes in general manifest a reversion from the social toward the solitary state, this condition reaching its ultimate in the orang, which is one of the most solitary of animals. The smaller forms are the most social, the gibbons being decidedly so. There is very good reason to believe that the man-ape was highly social, if we may judge from what we find in all races of men, and all grades, from the savage to the civilized. This animal was thus in a position to avail itself of all the advantages of the social habit, and to gain the mental development thence arising. How long ago it was when it left the trees and made its home upon the ground, it is impossible to say. It may have been as far back as the early Pliocene or the late Miocene Period, or even earlier. As yet its brain was probably no more developed than in the case of the other anthropoids, perhaps less so than in the existing species. But in its new habitat it was exposed to a series of novel conditions that must have exerted a healthful and stimulating influence upon its mind.

If it had remained in the trees we should probably to-day have only a man-ape still. Leaving their safe shelter for the ground, it became exposed to new dangers and was forced to fit itself to fresh conditions. Prowling carnivorous animals haunted its new place of residence, and these it had to avoid by speed or alertness of motion, or combat them by strength and the use of weapons. The carnivorous tastes which it had in all probability gained, made it a creature of the chase, pursuing swift animals, capturing them by fleetness or stratagem, or bringing them down with the aid of clubs and missiles. Such a new series of duties and dangers could not fail to exert a vigorous influence upon a brain already quick of thought and susceptible to fresh impressions, and we may well conceive that the man-ape then entered upon a new and rapid phase of mental progress, its brain developing in powers and growing in dimensions as it slowly became adapted to its new situation and grew able to cope with fresh demands and critical exigencies.

There is still another influence which has had its share, perhaps a very prominent share, in the intellectual development of animals, yet which no writer seems to have considered from this point of view. The probable effect of this influence needs to be taken into account, in conclusion of this section of our subject. It is that of the comparative agency of the senses in the development of the mind, and the effects likely to arise from the dominance of some one of the senses.

In the lowest animals touch was the predominant, if not the only sense, taste perhaps being associated with it. But these senses, which demand actual contact with objects, obviously could give none but the narrowest conception of the conditions of nature. The other senses, sight, hearing, and smell, give intimations of the existence and conditions of more or less distant objects, and their development greatly widened the scope of outreach in animals and must have exerted a powerful influence upon the growth of mental conditions.