What Is Man? and Other Essays

for it and find it. Now an uncle of mine had an old horse who used to get into the closed lot where the corn-crib was and dishonestly take the corn. I got the punishment myself, as it was supposed that I had heedlessly failed to insert the wooden pin which kept the gate closed. These persistent punishments fatigued me; they also caused me to infer the existence of a culprit, somewhere; so I hid myself and watched the gate. Presently the horse came and pulled the pin out with his teeth and went in. Nobody taught him that; he had observed—then thought it out for himself. His process did not differ from Edison’s; he put this and that together and drew an inference—and the peg, too; but I made him sweat for it. Y.M. It has something of the seeming of thought about it. Still it is not very elaborate. Enlarge. O.M. Suppose Mr. Edison has been enjoying some one’s hospitalities. He comes again by and by, and the house is vacant. He infers that his host has moved. A while afterward, in another town, he sees the man enter a house; he infers that that is the new home, and follows to inquire. Here, now, is the experience of a gull, as related by a naturalist. The scene is a Scotch fishing village where the gulls were kindly treated. This particular gull visited a cottage; was fed; came next day and was fed again; came into the house, next time, and ate with the family; kept on doing this almost daily, thereafter. But, once the gull was away on a journey for a few days, and when it returned the house was vacant. Its friends had removed to a village three miles distant. Several months later it saw the head of the family on the street there, followed him home, entered the house without excuse or apology, and became a daily guest again. Gulls do not rank high mentally, but this one had memory and the reasoning faculty, you see, and applied them Edisonially. Y.M. Yet it was not an Edison and couldn’t be developed into one. O.M. Perhaps not. Could you? Y.M. That is neither here nor there. Go on. O.M. If Edison were in trouble and a stranger helped him out of it and next day he got into the same difficulty again, he would infer the wise thing to do in case he knew the stranger’s address. Here is a case of a bird and a stranger as related by a naturalist. An Englishman saw a bird flying around about his dog’s head, down in the grounds, and uttering cries of distress. He went there to see about it. The dog had a young bird in his mouth—unhurt. The gentleman rescued it and put it on a bush and brought the dog away. Early the next morning the mother bird came for the gentleman, who was sitting on his veranda, and by its maneuvers persuaded him to follow it to a distant part of the grounds—flying a little way in front of him and waiting for him to catch up, and so on; and keeping to the winding path, too, instead of flying the near way across lots. The distance covered was four hundred yards. The same dog was the culprit; he had the young bird again, and once more he had to give it up. Now the mother bird had reasoned it all out: since the stranger had helped her once, she inferred that he would do it again; she knew where to find him, and she went upon her errand with confidence. Her mental processes were what Edison’s would have been. She put this and that together—and that is all that thought _is _—and out of them built her logical arrangement of inferences. Edison couldn’t have done it any better himself. Y.M. Do you believe that many of the dumb animals can think? O.M. Yes—the elephant, the monkey, the horse, the dog, the parrot, the macaw, the mocking-bird, and many others. The elephant whose mate fell into a pit, and who dumped dirt and rubbish into the pit till bottom was raised high enough to enable the captive to step out, was equipped with the reasoning quality. I conceive that all animals that can learn things through teaching and drilling have to know how to observe, and put this and that together and draw an inference—the process of thinking. Could you teach an idiot the manual of arms, and to advance, retreat, and go through complex field maneuvers at the word of command? Y.M. Not if he were a thorough idiot. O.M. Well, canary-birds can learn all that; dogs and elephants learn all sorts of wonderful things. They must surely be able to notice, and to put things together, and say to themselves, “I get the idea, now: when I do so and so, as per order, I am praised and fed; when I do differently I am punished.” Fleas can be taught nearly anything that a Congressman can. Y.M. Granting, then, that dumb animals are able to think upon a low plane, is there any that can think upon a high one? Is there one that is well up toward man? O.M. Yes. As a thinker and planner the ant is the equal of any savage race of men; as a self-educated specialist in several arts she is the superior of any savage race of men; and in one or two high mental qualities she is above the reach of any man, savage or civilized! Y.M. Oh, come! you are abolishing the intellectual frontier which separates man and beast. O.M. I beg your pardon. One cannot abolish what does not exist. Y.M. You are not in earnest, I hope. You cannot mean to seriously say there is no such frontier. O.M. I do say it seriously. The instances of the horse, the gull, the mother bird, and the elephant show that those creatures put their this’s and thats together just as Edison would have done it and drew the same inferences that he would have drawn. Their mental machinery was just like his, also its manner of working. Their equipment was as inferior to the Strasburg clock, but that is the only difference—there is no frontier. Y.M. It looks exasperatingly true; and is distinctly offensive. It elevates the dumb beasts to—to— O.M. Let us drop that lying phrase, and call them the Unrevealed Creatures; so far as we can know, there is no such thing as a dumb beast. Y.M. On what grounds do you make that assertion? O.M. On quite simple ones. “Dumb” beast suggests an animal that has no thought-machinery, no understanding, no speech, no way of communicating what is in its mind. We know that a hen _has _speech. We cannot understand everything she says, but we easily learn two or three of her phrases. We know when she is saying, “I have laid an egg”; we know when she is saying to the chicks, “Run here, dears, I’ve found a worm”; we know what she is saying when she voices a warning: “Quick! hurry! gather yourselves under mamma, there’s a hawk coming!” We understand the cat when she stretches herself out, purring with affection and contentment and lifts up a soft voice and says, “Come, kitties, supper’s ready”; we understand her when she goes mourning about and says, “Where can they be? They are lost. Won’t you help me hunt for them?” and we understand the disreputable Tom when he challenges at midnight from his shed, “You come over here, you product of immoral commerce, and I’ll make your fur fly!” We understand a few of a dog’s phrases and we learn to understand a few of the remarks and gestures of any bird or other animal that we domesticate and observe. The clearness and exactness of the few of the hen’s speeches which we understand is argument that she can communicate to her kind a hundred things which we cannot comprehend—in a word, that she can converse. And this argument is also applicable in the case of others of the great army of the Unrevealed. It is just like man’s vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions. Now as to the ant— Y.M. Yes, go back to the ant, the creature that—as you seem to think—sweeps away the last vestige of an intellectual frontier between man and the Unrevealed. O.M. That is what she surely does. In all his history the aboriginal Australian never thought out a house for himself and built it. The ant is an amazing architect. She is a wee little creature, but she builds a strong and enduring house eight feet high—a house which is as large in proportion to her size as is the largest capitol or cathedral in the world compared to man’s size. No savage race has produced architects who could approach the ant in genius or culture. No civilized race has produced architects who could plan a house better for the uses proposed than can hers. Her house contains a throne-room; nurseries for her young; granaries; apartments for her soldiers, her workers, etc.; and they and the multifarious halls and corridors which communicate with them are arranged and distributed with an educated and experienced eye for convenience and adaptability. Y.M. That could be mere instinct. O.M. It would elevate the savage if he had it. But let us look further before we decide. The ant has soldiers—battalions, regiments, armies; and they have their appointed captains and generals, who lead them to battle. Y.M. That could be instinct, too. O.M. We will look still further. The ant has a system of government; it is well planned, elaborate, and is well carried on. Y.M. Instinct again. O.M. She has crowds of slaves, and is a hard and unjust employer of forced labor. Y.M. Instinct. O.M. She has cows, and milks them. Y.M. Instinct, of course. O.M. In Texas she lays out a farm twelve feet square, plants it, weeds it, cultivates it, gathers the crop and stores it away. Y.M. Instinct, all the same. O.M. The ant discriminates between friend and stranger. Sir John Lubbock took ants from two different nests, made them drunk with whiskey and laid them, unconscious, by one of the nests, near some water. Ants from the nest came and examined and discussed these disgraced creatures, then carried their friends home and threw the strangers overboard. Sir John repeated the experiment a number of times. For a time the sober ants did as they had done at first—carried their friends home and threw the strangers overboard. But finally they lost patience, seeing that their reformatory efforts went for nothing, and threw both friends and strangers overboard. Come—is this instinct, or is it thoughtful and intelligent discussion of a thing new—absolutely new—to their experience; with a verdict arrived at, sentence passed, and judgment executed? Is it instinct?—thought petrified by ages of habit—or isn’t it brand-new thought, inspired by the new occasion, the new circumstances? Y.M. I have to concede it. It was not a result of habit; it has all the look of reflection, thought, putting this and that together, as you phrase it. I believe it was thought. O.M. I will give you another instance of thought. Franklin had a cup of sugar on a table in his room. The ants got at it. He tried several preventives; and ants rose superior to them. Finally he contrived one which shut off access—probably set the table’s legs in pans of water, or drew a circle of tar around the cup, I don’t remember. At any rate, he watched to see what they would do. They tried various schemes—failures, every one. The ants were badly puzzled. Finally they held a consultation, discussed the problem, arrived at a decision—and this time they beat that great philosopher. They formed in procession, cross the floor, climbed the wall, marched across the ceiling to a point just over the cup, then one by one they let go and fell down into it! Was that instinct—thought petrified by ages of inherited habit? Y.M. No, I don’t believe it was. I believe it was a newly reasoned scheme to meet a new emergency. O.M. Very well. You have conceded the reasoning power in two instances. I come now to a mental detail wherein the ant is a long way the superior of any human being. Sir John Lubbock proved by many experiments that an ant knows a stranger ant of her own species in a moment, even when the stranger is disguised—with paint. Also he proved