



Produced by Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net









THE KNICKERBOCKER.

VOL. XXII. DECEMBER, 1843. No. 6.




MIND OR INSTINCT.

AN INQUIRY CONCERNING THE MANIFESTATION OF MIND BY THE LOWER ORDERS OF
ANIMALS.

               'IN some are found
  Such teachable and apprehensive parts,
  That man's attainments in his own concerns,
  Matched with the expertness of the brutes in their's,
  Are ofttimes vanquished and thrown far behind.'

  COWPER.

OF THE REASON OR JUDGMENT OF THE PRINCIPLE CALLED INSTINCT.


A SURGEON of Leeds, (Eng.,) says BUFFON, found a
little spaniel who had been lamed. He carried the poor animal home,
bandaged up his leg, and, after two or three days, turned him out.
The dog returned to the surgeon's house every morning, till the leg
was perfectly well. At the end of several months, the spaniel again
presented himself, in company with another dog, who had also been
lamed; and he intimated, as well as piteous and intelligent looks could
intimate, that he desired the same kind assistance to be rendered to
his friend as had been bestowed upon himself. A similar circumstance is
stated to have occurred to MORANT, a celebrated French surgeon.

A fox, adds the same writer, having entered a hen-house through a small
aperture, which was the only opening, succeeded without disturbing
the family in destroying all the fowls, and in satiating his appetite
with part of them; but his voracity so enlarged his dimensions as to
prevent his egress. In the morning the farmer discovered the havoc of
the night, and the perpetrator himself sprawled out on the floor of the
coop, apparently dead from surfeit. He entered, and taking the creature
by the heels, carried him out and cast him beside the house. This was
no sooner done than the fox sprang up and bounded away with the speed
of a racer. This was communicated by the person.

A spaniel, OBSEND informs us, having discovered a mouse in a
shock of corn, jumped with his fore feet against it to frighten him
out; and then running quickly to the back side, succeeded in taking the
mouse as he attempted to escape.

BUFFON says: 'A number of beavers are employed together at
the foot of the tree in gnawing it down; and when this part of the
labor is accomplished, it becomes the business of others to sever the
branches, while a third party are engaged along the borders of the
river in cutting other trees, which though smaller than the first tree,
are yet as thick as the leg, if not the thigh, of a common-sized man.
These they carry with them by land to the brink of the river, and then
by water to the place allotted for their building; where sharpening
them at one end, and forming them into stakes, they fix them in the
ground, at a small distance from each other, and fill up the vacant
spaces with pliant branches. While some are thus employed in fixing
the stakes, others go in quest of clay, which they prepare for their
purpose with their tails and their feet. At the top of their <DW18>, or
mole, they form two or three openings. These they occasionally enlarge
or contract, as the river rises or falls. NOTE.--Should the
current be very gentle, the dam is carried nearly straight across;
but when the stream is swiftly flowing, it is uniformly made with a
considerable curve, having the convex part opposed to the current.

  'Ac veluti ingentem formicae farris acervum
  Cum populant, hyemis memores, tectoque reponunt:
  It nigrum campis agmen, praedamque per herbas
  Convectant calle augusto: pars grandia trudunt
  Obnixae frumenta humeris: pars agmina cogunt,
  Castigant que moras: opere omnis semita fervet.'

  AENEID, IV., 402.

  'In formica non modo sensus sed etiam mens, ratio, memoria.'--CIC.

 'Si quis comparet onera corporibus earum (formicarum) fateatur nullis
 portione. Vires esse majores. Gerunt ea morsu; majora aversae postremio
 pedibus moliuntur, humeris obnoxae. Est iis Reip ratio memoria cura.
 Semima arrosa condunt vie rursus in fruges exeant e terra. Majora
 ad introitum (cavernae) dividunt Madefacta imbre proferunt atque
 siccant.'--PLINY: lib. XI., cap. 30.

Many birds and other animals, BUFFON informs us, station a
watch, while they are feeding in the fields. Whenever marmots venture
abroad, one is placed as a sentinel, sitting on an elevated rock,
while the others amuse themselves in the fields below, or are engaged
in cutting grass and making it into hay for their future convenience;
and no sooner does their trusty sentinel perceive a man, an eagle, a
dog, or any other enemy approaching, than he gives notice to the rest
by a kind of whistle, and is himself the last that takes refuge in the
cell. It is asserted that when their hay is made, one of them lies upon
its back, permits the hay to be heaped between its paws, keeping them
upright to make greater room, and in this manner remaining still upon
its back, is dragged by the tail, hay and all, to their common retreat.

These instances could be multiplied indefinitely; but more than
sufficient have been cited. They prove in the first place, without need
of argument, that animals have a language by which they apprehend each
other. Concert of action and division of labor would be impossible
without it. They also exhibit the exercise of memory and abstraction;
and it now remains to ascertain whether their conduct was the result of
reason.

If a person should take a friend whose arm had been fractured to a
skilful surgeon who had before cured him of a similar wound, we should
infer the following course of reasoning: First, a comparison of facts,
to discover whether the injury in question was like the one he had
received; the ability of this surgeon over others in such cases; and
the presumption that the same skill and remedies will again produce
the same effects. These are the most obvious points. The dog, in the
cited case, had once been healed of a broken limb by a surgeon; and
having found a mate in a like situation, took him also to the same
surgeon. It is evident that his conduct was as wise as the man's. The
facts and actions in the two cases are parallel; and having seen that
animals obtain a perception of objects by the same agencies that man
does, it only remains to ascertain whether the intermediate reasoning
process between perception and action were essentially the same. Now,
we cannot prove directly that the mind of another passes through any
process whatever; because the proof of any process of our own mind
is consciousness, which cannot go beyond us; but we can infer the
train of reasoning in a given case with great correctness, taking
self-knowledge as a basis; and the similarity of conduct in another,
in view of premises, with what our own would have been. This is the
chief criterion by which much of our daily conduct is regulated, and
is the most substantial proof that can be reached. Hence, we can infer
with just as much certainty that the instinct of the dog passed through
the process mentioned, as that the mind of the man did in the case
supposed. We can also infer it with as much truth as that instinct is
susceptible of the process of memory, since the proof in both cases is
drawn from facts, and on the same principles.

Again: The beaver's dam is constructed at the very place a skilful
engineer would have selected for a similar purpose. This choice of one
place before another is necessarily founded on comparison, which is
a deliberative reasoning process. It is therefore inconsistent with
an impulse, which seems to be the action suggested, by instantaneous
perception and reasoning; a single, inflexible propulsion in one
direction; without a careful choice, and without deliberation: hence
the term impulsive cannot be applied to a large proportion of the
actions of animals; and having no reason for supposing the impulses of
animals supernatural, or unlike human impulses, the term itself should
be abandoned as vague and unmeaning. Gnawing the large tree upon the
inner side, that it might fall directly across the stream, also rises
above the utmost that we can understand by an inward persuasion; for
it is the incipient step, and has full relation to the subsequent work
of erecting a pier. We have seen that while one part are cutting down
the tree, another part go up the stream, cut smaller trees for stakes,
and draw them to the water's edge; while still a third division go in
quest of clay to prepare as a mortar. This completeness of plan, and
combination of means to execute it, is wholly inconsistent with the
common explanation of instinctive operations. Such exhibitions, as we
have already remarked, are simply the workings of a certain principle
they possess; performing for them the same office that mind does
for man; and the true direction of inquiry is to the nature of its
qualities. The actions themselves exhibit comparison, a knowledge of
the adaptation of means to an end, the combination of these means in
regular detail to effect the end, and the still higher intelligence
of future cause and effect, as evinced by the enlargement of the
water passage with the rise of the stream. These actions, then, being
ascertained to be uniformly the same in a great variety of cases, and
manifesting the operation of an intelligent principle in every act; and
being such as in man would have been in pursuance of the processes of
reason mentioned; we are clearly directed to the inference (indeed no
other rational one _can_ be made) that they compared the advantages of
different places, to enable them to select the best, having reference
to the construction of a dam; that they reasoned out the plan of this
dam and the adaptation of certain materials to its erection; that
they reflected upon the need