I.—Impulse, Interest, and Emotion

Any discussion of animal behaviour must deal largely with what is termed the conative aspect of consciousness. “The states designated by such words as craving, longing, yearning, endeavour, effort, desire, wish, and will,” says Dr. Stout, in his admirable “Manual of Psychology,”[117] “have one characteristic in common. In all of these there is an inherent tendency to pass beyond themselves and become something different. This tendency is not only a fact, but an experience; and the peculiar mode of being conscious, which constitutes the experience, is called conation.” Closely associated with this conation is impulse, which Dr. Stout defines as “any conative tendency, so far as it operates by its own isolated intensity, apart from its relation to a general system of motives. Action on impulse is thus contrasted with action which results from reflection and deliberation.”[118] In the interpretation we have advocated, animals are essentially creatures of impulse, and not to any large extent, if at all, reflective agents. And their impulses may be associated either with their inherited and congenital behaviour, or with that which is due to acquired experience. In other words, their impulses may be divided broadly into two classes, the one instinctive, the other acquired.

Dr. Stout says that conation is not only a fact, but an experience. Now, first as to the fact. It seems to be the correlative in consciousness of the behaviour of the nervous system under stimulation. Let us take some simple case such as that, for example, of a hungry chick pecking at a grain of corn. This is explained from the physiological point of view by saying that internal and external stimulation—internal from the digestive organs and system in need of food, external through the eye—gives rise to a state of unstable equilibrium in the nerve-centres; and that, when the instability reaches a certain value, the nervous system discharges into the motor organs, the chick pecks, and stable equilibrium is restored. The tendency to discharge in some way under stimulation is an essential characteristic of a nervous system. It is one of the facts of physiological science. So, too, the conative tendency is one of the facts of psychological science; it is a change in the situation introduced by the effects of the physiological discharge.

Let us here parenthetically notice that the physiological tendency in the nervous system is an evolved complication and a specialized development of one of the fundamental properties of protoplasm—that which is often spoken of as irritability. One of the characteristics of all living matter is its “explosive” instability. So that at the very threshold of organic behaviour we have the analogue of that which, in its developed form, becomes the tendency of the nervous system to discharge as the result of stimulation. The conative tendency of the psychologist, therefore, has its roots deep down in the elemental germs of all organic life.

And this conative tendency is, says Dr. Stout, not only a fact but an experience. Let us return to our hungry chick that pecks at a grain of corn. And let us grant that as the result of stimulation there arise states of consciousness which we describe as a feeling of hunger and the sight of the grain of corn. The nervous system now discharges; and there are introduced into the situation a further group of data, the motor consciousness of the actual behaviour, sensory data from the results of the act, the seizing of the grain and so forth. The situation has unquestionably changed. But is there any specific consciousness of the conative tendency as such? Is there any “peculiar mode of being conscious which constitutes the experience which is called conation”? It is difficult to say. Hence we find differences of opinion among psychologists as to what, from the psychological point of view, the impulse actually is. Is it simply the conscious situation prior to the response? Is it a feeling of the change from the initial to the succeeding phase? Or are new data introduced apart from those afforded by stimulation on the one hand and response on the other? We will not attempt to decide. Without determining its exact nature we may rest content with the very general statement that impulse is a concomitant of a change in the conscious situation.

There is, however, a use of the term concerning which it seems necessarily to enter a word of protest. Impulse is by some regarded as the underlying cause of the conative tendency. Now science, as such, has nothing whatever to do with underlying causes. If, as a matter of observation and inference, we have reason to believe that there is such a tendency, science simply accepts the fact, and endeavours to formulate the conditions under which it arises, and to trace its observed or inferred antecedents. No doubt many of us find it difficult or impossible to rest content with the strictly scientific position, that of unquestioning acceptance of the facts of nature as we find them given in experience. We say: Here is an observed tendency the conditions and antecedents of which are described by science. But what causes the tendency; what is the impelling force? Now to such questions science can give no answer. Science deals with phenomena, and tries to tell us all about their conditions and their antecedents. But whenever Science is asked: “What is the underlying cause of the phenomena,—that which calls them into being?” Science should always give one answer and one only: “Frankly, I do not know; that lies outside my province; ask my sister Metaphysics.” Science ought to have nothing whatever to do with force as the underlying cause of anything in this universe of phenomena. And impulse, as the impelling force which calls a conative tendency into being, is a metaphysical, not a scientific conception.

We need not further discuss the psychological nature of impulse. Indeed, the little that has been said would not have been necessary to our inquiry were it not that we frequently have occasion to speak of animals as “creatures of impulse,” and to refer to their behaviour as due to impulse. What do we mean by such expressions? If we regard conative tendency as a fact (whatever may be said for or against its being also a specific experience), and if this fact is the tendency of the conscious situation to develope in certain definite ways, then we may define impulse with sufficient clearness by saying, with Dr. Stout, that it is characterized by being unreflective. Conative tendency thus comprises two categories—impulse and volition; the one unreflective, the other involving deliberation.

Before passing on to consider how impulse is partly determined by the feeling-tone and the emotional attributes of the conscious situation, we may first draw attention to the important way in which the results of conative tendency afford the data through which consciousness attains its unity in the midst of diversity of experience.

We said that the impulses might be divided broadly into two classes—the one instinctive, the other acquired. Now, from the point of view suggested by a study of behaviour, if not also, as I am disposed to think, from the more general standpoint of a genetic study of mental development, it is convenient to start with the instinctive act and the conscious situation it implies. We have here a piece of experience which, if we may so phrase it, hangs together; in which experience of things in the environment is included in the same elemental synthesis with that of bodily acts in organic relation to these things. It is closely linked, on the one hand, with a foregoing act of attention, itself of the instinctive type; closely linked, on the other hand, with the results of behaviour through which the environing things call forth a new conscious situation and evoke a further response. Thus not only does the experience of an instinctive act hang together, but a series of such acts do so likewise. And coalescent association not only links and groups the elements within the situation called forth by the single act, but comprises also the elements of the developing situation afforded by the whole series. We see this in the young chick, where, as the result of experience, attention is emphasized where the material is palatable, and lapses where it is nauseous—such nauseous substances being soon ignored. Furthermore many environing things appeal in different ways to the same limited number of sense organs, while the same motor organs respond in different ways in successive modes of instinctive behaviour. The same brain forms the physical basis of varied situations overlapping in many ways, and receives afferent messages from the same body. Hence, in its organic unity it affords the conditions for an underlying stratum of mental unity, amid all the diversities of experience; while the multiplicity of messages on the one hand from external things, and on the other hand from internal happenings, lays the foundations of a differentiation between the external world and the self—a differentiation long to remain implicit, and only to be rendered explicit on a far higher level of mental development. For at this early stage, and perhaps throughout animal life, “there is no single continuous self contrasted with a single continuous world. Self, as a whole, uniting present, past, and future phases, and the world as a single coherent system of things and processes, are ideal constructions, built up gradually in the course of human development. The ideal construction of self and the world is comparatively rudimentary in the lower races of mankind, and it never can be complete. On the purely perceptual plane [with which we are now dealing] it has not even begun.”[119] But though the ideal constructions of self and the world have not, as Dr. Stout says, at this stage, even begun, yet, as the same author observes,[120] “animals distinguish in the environment, and treat as a separate thing, whatever portion of matter appeals to their peculiar instincts, and affords occasion for their characteristic modes of activity.” And this differentiation of specially interesting things from each other, and from their relatively uninteresting surroundings, must be accompanied by some differentiation of these things from themselves as affected by them and reacting to them. So that here, as we have seen to be the case in other matters, what is commonly called the perceptual life of animals affords the rough-hewn materials from which ideal constructions may be elaborated by rational beings.

We cannot here attempt to do more than barely indicate the manner in which the perceptual process in animals may acquire unity and diversity—unity through the functioning of the same brain and body, diversity from the different modes of functioning and the differential effects of diverse modes of stimulation. The interesting point for us in our special inquiry is that it is through behaviour that all this is brought about.

As we interpret the facts, the restless activity of the young is primarily a biological fact, and is to be dealt with as an organic problem—a complication of the fundamental irritability of protoplasm. But it is also an essential condition to the acquisition of conscious experience; and the more there is of it in varied modes the wider is the range of the data afforded to consciousness. Congenital behaviour is thus the goal of organic heredity, and the starting-point of conscious accommodation and adjustment; it is the biological end of variation, and affords the means to intelligent modification.

So much for some of the results of conative tendency. Not only does it secure adaptation or adjustment to the environment, but it affords the conditions of mental development by which further accommodation is rendered possible. But, in addition to the attainment of biological ends, in addition to the furtherance of survival in the struggle for existence, mental development has another aspect. All sensory data, whether from the special senses, from the motor processes concerned in responsive behaviour, or from other sources, may, and perhaps always do, carry with them some amount of what is termed feeling-tone, giving rise to a net result in consciousness which we call pleasure or the reverse. Pleasure or satisfaction—however we name that which, though vague and indeterminate in outline, is a very real attribute of the conscious situation—affords its sanction to certain modes of conation, and may thus be regarded as the psychological end of their continuance or their repetition. It is partly, no doubt, a direct adjunct of sight, hearing, taste, and so forth, and of smooth and easy movements of the body and limbs; but it is partly due to a great body of stimulation coming from many parts of the organic system. The blood-vessels are dilated or contracted, the heart’s action increased or diminished; respiration is deepened or the reverse, and its rhythm may be altered; glands are thrown into a state of activity; the tone of the muscles is affected, and there may be either incipient contraction or relaxation. These are primarily organic effects; but they influence the conscious situation, and are themselves suffused with feeling-tone. For, from all the parts so affected, messages are carried in to the brain, and such afferent messages afford data to consciousness. It may be that the experience of the conative tendency, for which Dr. Stout and others claim a distinctive place in consciousness, is largely due to afferent messages from the motor organs incipiently innervated in preparation for the behaviour which follows. In any case these probably form very important elements in the conscious situation antecedent to the actual response. In what we may term motor attention—the state well exemplified by a cat in the strained pause which precedes the spring on to the prey, or in ourselves when we poise before a dive or hold the billiard cue in preparation for a delicate stroke—this incipient innervation, felt through afferent messages from the parts thus braced for action, enters with much distinctness into the conscious situation. In sensory attention, on the other hand, reflex acts have actually taken place, having for their end and purpose the focussing of the sense organs on the object which stimulates them, so that in this way further and more effective stimulation may be received. But, as the sense organ is steadily held to the focus, and made effectually to cover the stimulating thing, the motor apparatus concerned is kept on the strain, and is all the while contributing data to the conscious situation.

In primary genesis attention, both motor and sensory, is unquestionably organic and reflex in its nature. It is a product, and an invaluable product, of biological evolution. Without this as a basis, the higher forms of attention under conscious guidance would be impossible. For all these higher forms are modifications and complications of what is given in organic heritage. Here, as elsewhere throughout the whole range of behaviour, consciousness only guides to finer issues what is presented to it in rough outline, or in isolated fragments, as the outcome of biological evolution. But the organic responses afford the data which consciousness uses that it may mould and fashion the behaviour so as to reach higher and more complex modes of adjustment.

Lest a familiar form of words should give rise to misapprehension, it may here be stated that, when we say that consciousness moulds and fashions behaviour, we do not intend to imply that consciousness is an underlying cause. We are not using the term consciousness in a metaphysical sense. We mean that consciousness is the expression of certain conditions under which behaviour is guided. Instead of saying, therefore, that consciousness utilizes certain sensory data, it would be more correct to say that it is the sum-total of these data which are the psychical expression of certain brain conditions under which behaviour, as a matter of fact, takes a given set or direction. We use the word consciousness, then, not in its metaphysical sense of an underlying cause or force, but in its scientific sense, as the concomitant of certain antecedent conditions. Our common modes of speech lend themselves with misleading facility to metaphysical assumptions, all the more insidious since they are not consciously acknowledged as such. And not only what we comprise under the broader group-name “consciousness,” but what we include under narrower group-names, such as “impulse,” “volition,” “instinct,” “intelligence,” “reason,” and the like, often do duty as underlying causes of the phenomena, which, from the scientific point of view, they do no more than name.

We often say, for example, that interest guides behaviour in this direction or in that. But such interest must not be regarded as an impelling force; it is an attribute of the conscious situation, more or less suffused with feeling-tone. It is not easy to define; but it seems to take on its distinctive character when re-presentative elements contribute what Dr. Stout[121] terms “meaning” to the conscious situation. The meaning in the early stages of mental development is, however, merely perceptual, and not that which comes much later—that which is implied in the phrase “rational significance.” In the chick which has tasted a cinnabar caterpillar the situation evoked by the sight of this larva has meaning in virtue of the actual experience. But, in this case, the meaning is not conducive to continued interest, since it checks, rather than stimulates, behaviour. At first, indeed, there may be the repellent interest of aversion. But this passes by, and the larvÆ are soon ignored. Small worms also acquire meaning, and here the interest is attractive, and is stimulated afresh each time the meaning is reinforced by repetition of the act of seizing and swallowing.

We have seen that it is through behaviour that things become differentiated from their surroundings, and acquire relative independence in experience. It is through behaviour that what we have termed conscious situations develop. The thing is the centre or nucleus of a developing situation—that which starts the behaviour, and towards which the behaviour is directed; or, since the behaviour may be that of avoidance or escape, we should, perhaps, rather say, it is that to which the behaviour has reference. Now, if interest is the feeling-tone attaching to the whole attentive situation, and if the nucleus of the situation is the thing, it naturally follows that the thing becomes the centre of interest. The mouse is a centre of absorbing interest to the cat, her eggs to the mother-bird, his mate to the sparrow in the spring. Companions are centres of abiding interest to social animals, because they are also the centres of social behaviour and the conscious situations arising thereout; because they evoke in special ways the attentive situation.

The differentiated thing being thus a centre of interest, a relatively fixed nucleus in a changing conscious situation, the development of which is due to behaviour, there can be no question that, among social animals, the companion becomes a peculiar and specialized centre. Around him develops a particular type of behaviour. Towards him the reactions are of a quite distinctive kind. Mother and offspring, mate and mate, are reciprocal centres of interest. To the offspring the parent is a common centre of interest. As they grow up together, what is of interest to one is likewise of interest at the same time to others. Imitation begets similarity of conscious situations. In many ways such community of interest is fostered; and through this community of interest the conscious situations acquire their distinctively social character. Not only is the companion, as the nucleus of a situation, a thing which reacts in altogether special ways, so that it becomes differentiated from other things as something the meaning of which, and the interest in which, are sui generis and unique in type; but it enters into other situations in ways that are also peculiar and characteristic. A worm is thrown to a couple of chicks, and is to each a centre of interest—the nucleus of a situation involving appropriate modes of behaviour. But into this situation there enters for each of them, in a quite peculiar and distinctive way, the action and behaviour of the other chick. The situation is complicated by the introduction of a second centre of interest, and the behaviour has reference to both centres. Instead of quietly and leisurely dealing with the worm in accordance with its special meaning, as it does when there is no rival in the field, the chick darts at it, and bolts with it in accordance with the special meaning which its neighbour’s presence, under such circumstances, has acquired. And this different behaviour carries with it a felt difference in the conscious situation—the interest of which is centred in the companion. Or take the case of a herd of cattle, which attacks a common enemy. The enemy is the primary nucleus of the situation, but it is profoundly modified by the presence of companions by which the behaviour of attack is determined. The situation is social, and not merely individual, and a social interest suffuses it, and gives it a distinctive character.

In this social interest probably arise the germs—but only the germs—of the sense of personality. Some, indeed, go so far as to urge that we learn to know ourselves only through knowing others. The genetic order, so far as there is an order, is, they say, not first the ego and then the alter, but first the mother and companions and then through them the self. Or, to put this point of view in a less questionable form, it is only through the reaction of one on the other that the two are differentiated. Be this as it may, it is only through the action of environment on the organism, and the reaction of the organism on the environment in behaviour, that experience becomes polarized into subject and object. Let it be clearly understood that for the animal, in all probability, subject and object are not clearly distinguished, and set over against each other in the antithesis of thought. Only late in mental development are the self and the world distinguished in subtle analysis as different aspects of the common experience in which both have their inseparable being. Animals, and perhaps the majority of mankind, never trouble themselves about object and subject as clearly realized products of conception and reflective thought. For these concepts are exceedingly subtle. And here, too, the external aspect of experience has the precedence, so far as there is precedence. A healthy lad from the moment he gets up in the morning till the moment he goes to bed, lives chiefly in the objective aspect of experience, an aspect which is in us chiefly associated with the products in consciousness of the leading senses of sight and hearing. But the subjective aspect creeps in when he is hurt, when he is hungry, when he is fatigued. He does not argue about the matter, or formulate it in definite terms. He just dimly feels that the interest has somehow shifted. Still more dimly does the animal feel that, apart from external interests which prompt nine-tenths of its behaviour, chiefly through the senses of sight, hearing, and smell, there are also matters in which the interest has somehow shifted to his own body. For the germ of self is essentially an embodied self. And perhaps the emotions, which ring through the system for some time after the external cause has been removed, serve in some degree to aid in this dimly felt shifting of interest.

Whatever may be the exact psychological nature of the emotions—and there has been much discussion of the question—it may be regarded as certain that they introduce into the conscious situation elements which contribute not a little to the energy of behaviour. They are important conditions to vigorous and sustained conation. And so closely interwoven are these elements with the whole situation in its impulsive aspect, that their disentanglement, in psychological analysis, is a matter of extreme difficulty. I have elsewhere[122] devoted some space to the consideration of the matter. I there follow Professor William James in regarding organic effects, other than motor sensations, as specially characteristic of the emotions in their primary genesis. The cold sweat, the dry mouth, the catch of the breath, the grip of the heart, the abdominal sinking, the blood-tingle or blood-stagnation—these and their like, in varied modes and degrees, characterize the emotions of fear, dread, anger, and so forth, when they rise to any pitch of intensity, and contribute largely to their sharpness and piquancy. These organic effects may be regarded as part of the private and individual business of the body; but in experience they closely coalesce with the motor effects through which the animal has to deal in practical behaviour with that which evokes the emotion.

On this view these organic states which contribute characteristic elements in the emotional consciousness are due to afferent data from the vascular system and visceral organs, just as motor consciousness is due to afferent data from the parts concerned in overt behaviour. But, associated with emotional states, there are also certain motor reactions, which we speak of as their “expression”—so carefully discussed and elucidated by Darwin,—and these unquestionably contribute data to consciousness which coalesce with those afforded by the visceral and vascular elements. The whole is commonly suffused with feeling-tone, and the object which excites the emotion is a centre of pleasurable or painful interest. Representative elements, as experience develops, crowd into the conscious situation and render it more complex. And in addition to all this, there is, apart from the motor expression, the strenuous behaviour of flight or attack, or other mode of vigorous procedure which we commonly speak of as the outcome of the emotional state. The conscious situation, in the case of an enraged or scared animal actually behaving as such, is thus exceedingly complex. And it should be understood that in urging the importance of vascular and visceral elements, this complexity is nowise denied. What is suggested is that these elements are essential, and that they serve to characterize the distinctively emotional factor in the situation, that in any case they heighten the conative tendency.

Sufficient has now been said to indicate—but scarcely more than indicate—the importance of feeling-tone, interest, and emotion in determining the nature, character, and effective energy of the conscious situations which arise in the course of animal behaviour. They largely influence, and in part direct, the course of the conative tendency. But they also occur as its sequel. In animal, as in human life, the successful attainment of the end towards which conation sets is highly pleasurable. The equilibrium that is reached after instability, though it marks the close of present endeavour, leaves after-effects in consciousness in a sense of satisfaction which enters re-presentatively into later situations and helps to further more strenuous endeavour.

II.—Play

“There are two quite different popular ideas of play,” says Professor Groos, in his admirable work on “The Play of Animals.” “The first is that the animal (or man) begins to play when he feels particularly cheerful, healthy, and strong; the second that the play of young animals serves to fit them for the tasks of later life.” The former view, in which the latter may be included incidentally as a result, is closely associated with the names of Schiller,[123] who suggested it, and of Mr. Herbert Spencer,[124] who developed it. Mr. Wallaschek[125] expresses the conception briefly and clearly when he says, “It is the surplus vigour in more highly developed organisms, exceeding what is required for immediate needs, in which play of all kinds takes its rise, manifesting itself by way of imitation or repetition of all those efforts and exertions which are essential to the maintenance of life.” That surplus vigour is often a condition favouring the manifestation of play is probable enough, and seems to be supported by observation and experience; but that it is likewise a condition favouring the chase, combat, mating, and much of the serious business of animal life seems equally unquestionable. Success in all these matters is largely determined by overflowing energy. In play, however, this surplus vigour finds vent when there is no serious occasion for its exercise. But, as Professor Groos says,[126] “while simple overflow of energy explains quite well that the individual who finds himself in a condition of overflowing energy is ready to do something, it does not explain how it happens that all the individuals of a species manifest exactly the specific kind of play expression which prevails with their own species, but differs from every other.” And if to this it be replied, that the specific kind is determined by repetition or imitation of what we have called the serious business of animal life, Professor Groos’s rejoinder is,[127] that “the conception of imitation here set forth—namely, as the repetition of serious activities to which the individual has himself become accustomed—cannot be applied directly to the primary phenomena of play—that is, to its first elementary manifestations” prior to any experience of these serious activities. The repetition (with a difference!) is in such cases not the re-enactment of what has been previously performed in full earnest by the individual, but rather the reappearance in the young of ancestral modes of procedure—in other words, its specific character is such because it is a piece of instinctive behaviour or arises from instinctive proclivities. And this is the central point of the interpretation elaborated with great skill and candour by Professor Groos. Play is instinctive; and its biological value lies in the training it affords for the subsequent earnest of life.

Before leaving the surplus energy theory of play one more point made by Professor Groos may be mentioned. He contends that, though superabundant energy is a favouring condition of animal play (as it is, indeed, of all animal behaviour), still it is not a necessary condition. Animals often play when they are tired out. “Notice a kitten when a piece of paper blows past. Will not any observer confirm the statement that, just as an old cat must be tired to death or else already filled to satiety if it does not try to seize a mouse running near it, so will the kitten, too, spring after the moving object, even if it has been exercising for hours and its superfluous energies are entirely disposed of? Or observe the play of young dogs when two of them have raced about the garden until they are forced to stop from sheer fatigue, and they lie on the ground panting, with tongues hanging out. Now one of them gets up, glances at his companion, and the irresistible power of his innate longing for the fray seizes him again. He approaches the other, sniffs lazily about him, and, though he is evidently only half inclined to obey the powerful impulse, attempts to seize his leg. The one provoked yawns, and in a slow, tired kind of way puts himself on the defensive; but gradually instinct conquers fatigue on him too, and in a few minutes both are tearing madly about in furious rivalry until want of breath puts an end to the game. And so it goes on with endless repetition, until we get the impression that the dog waits only long enough to collect the needed strength, not till superfluous energy urges him to activity.”[128]

Coming now to Professor Groos’s interpretation of play, we find in it, perhaps for the first time in the literature of the subject, adequate stress laid on its biological value. “The play of young animals,” he says,[129] “has its origin in the fact that certain very important instincts appear at a time when the animal does not seriously need them.... Its utility consists in the practice and exercise it affords for some of the more important duties of life, inasmuch as selection [in the higher animals] tends to weaken the blind force of instinct, and aids more and more the development of independent intelligence as a substitute for it. At the moment when intelligence is sufficiently evolved to be more useful in the struggle for existence than the most perfect instinct, then will selection favour those individuals in whom the instincts in question appear earlier and in less elaborated forms—in forms that are merely for practice and exercise,—that is to say, it will favour those animals which play.... Animals cannot be said to play because they are young and frolicsome, but rather they have a period of youth in order to play; for only by so doing can they supplement the insufficient hereditary endowment with individual experience, in view of the coming tasks of life.”

Some stress is here laid on the fact that important instincts appear at a time when the animal does not seriously need them. It seems to imply the doctrine of what biologists term “acceleration”—which means the development of an organ or mode of behaviour at an earlier period in the descendants than that at which it appeared in the ancestors. Thus the adult fighting or hunting instinct of past generations appears in the young to-day as a fighting-play or a hunting-play. It is open to question, however, whether either the instinctive behaviour or the conscious situation in the one case and the other is so nearly identical that the playful fight or hunt can fairly be called the same instinctive procedure as the serious combat or chase. We may hold, with Professor Groos, that the one is an invaluable preparation for the other without identifying them as the same behaviour under different conditions. Indeed the conditions are so different that the identification seems strained. The question may be left open, however, without impairing the value of Professor Groos’s suggestion. And we may divide the preparatory behaviour in what is commonly called play under two heads: first, general preparation for varied modes of serious effort in after-life; and secondly, special preparation for particular forms of this after-effort. Under the first will fall what Professor Groos terms experimentation and movement play, including what Dr. Stout, who fully realizes its importance, calls “manipulation”;[130] under the second, such forms as hunting-play and fighting-play.

Nothing is more characteristic of the young of intelligent animals than the variety and persistency of their behaviour, their sensitiveness to stimuli of many different kinds, their restlessness of swiftly changing attention and response, with occasional pauses of continued effort in some special direction. Constantly on the alert, they exhibit in all its shifting phases behaviour which we interpret as indicating curiosity, inquisitiveness, love of mischief, destructiveness, and so forth. The facts are so familiar to every observer of young animals that it is unnecessary to give any detailed illustration. Watch a kitten in this stage of its development and carefully note its behaviour during half an hour; the variety of effort, the rÔles played by trial, failure, and success, the gain of skill and control over behaviour, will at once be evident. Or devote an equal space of time to observing young jays, magpies, or jackdaws. Every projecting piece of wire or bit of wood in their cage is pulled at this way and that way, from above, from below, from the side. Now one, then another, loose object is picked up and dropped, turned over, carried about, pulled at, hammered at, stuffed into this corner and into that, and experimented with in all possible ways. Then the wise bird goes to sleep, and wakes up again only to resume with new zest its persistent and varied efforts, by which it becomes acquainted with all the details of its environment. Watch young birds on the wing gaining their mastery of the air in flight, young seals tumbling in the water, young foals scampering and kicking up their heels in the meadows. A little observation, as occasion serves, a little attention to the progress towards an adequate experience of the meaning of things, towards more complete control, and increased nicety of behaviour, whether in reference to their surroundings, or in powers of finished locomotion, will serve to bring home what Professor Groos includes under experimentation and movement plays. He regards it all as play, since it seems to have no serious end, and is just a preparation for the sterner realities of adult life. And for human beings, whose work is so largely enforced, the freedom and evident joy of it all suggests the play which has acquired for us the meaning of relaxation from irksome effort, and glad abandonment to less constrained modes of behaviour. But in young animals such play is, after all, the serious business of their time of life. Its import for their future welfare can scarcely be overestimated.

And its import is in large degree psychological. If we watch a young puppy or kitten learning gradually to deal effectively with some difficulty in its extending environment, we see that it puts forth its efforts at first in a somewhat random and indefinite fashion. It is one of those animals in which intelligence has been evolved to supersede and become the more plastic substitute for instinct. The random and indefinite movements, are in detail reflex responses to stimuli. But whereas, in a piece of highly elaborated instinctive behaviour, such reflexes are grouped into a whole which is co-ordinated through inherited nervous mechanism; in the case of the acts of the puppy or kitten they have to be further co-ordinated, or more elaborately grouped, through experience. To act in one way some of the reflexes have to be checked as redundant and not to the point: to act in another way other reflexes have to be similarly checked; and in a third way, yet others. But in all three some of the reflexes are utilized to different ends. Many conscious situations contain common elements; and this tends to give unity to the developing experience. But they contain also elements and groupings which afford that diversity without which conscious behaviour could not be accommodated to them. So that we have here the conditions under which what is technically termed “the concomitant differentiation and integration of experience” can proceed.

And if we speak of the instinct of experimentation we must remember that what we are dealing with is rather an innate tendency or instinctive propensity than a definite and relatively clean-cut piece of instinctive behaviour. It comprises a great number of inherited reflex acts, and may perhaps be fairly called instinctive in detail. But experimentation must be regarded rather as the proximate end of a conative tendency, or group of conative tendencies, whose ultimate biological end is success in dealing with the environment in the sterner struggle for existence during adult life. The tendency is inherited, and therefore falls under the head of instinctive propensity. But “experimentation” is a group-term under which we comprise the general drift of varied modes of behaviour, founded indeed on a congenital basis, but receiving its stamp and character from what is acquired in the course of the experience it provides. It is essentially a process whereby the conscious situations acquire what Dr. Stout terms meaning; and is specially interesting as affording an example of the way in which intelligence moulds and refashions a number of disconnected reflex responses. And if, following Professor Groos, we call it play, it is a little difficult to see how it can be brought in line with his statement[131] that “the play of youth depends on the fact that certain instincts, especially useful in preserving the species, appear before the animal seriously needs them.” Does experimentation occur before it is needed in the economy of animal behaviour? And might we not with equal truth say that the play of youth depends on the fact that certain acquired habits, especially useful in preserving the species, are gained before the animal seriously needs them?

Passing now to those forms of play which afford more special preparation for particular forms of after-effort, under which fall such types as hunting-play and fighting-play, we may refer the reader to the copious examples so carefully collected by Professor Groos. The way in which a kitten pats a cork or a ball, making it roll and then pouncing upon it, is a characteristic example of animal play. Valuable as a preparation for dealing successfully with a mouse when occasion shall arise, this is a specialized form of experimentation; and it is more obviously in line with the hunting-behaviour of later life than is general experimentation with any particular modes of future behaviour. Still it is essentially experimentation, with the instinctive propensity setting in more definite channels. Its value lies in the acquisition of skill under circumstances easier than those presented in the serious chase. So, too, in the case of the playful tussles of puppies or in that of the kitten, which not only shows playful fight to its brothers and sisters, but also to its mother, who responds by holding down the struggling and scratching little creature. Unquestionably, there is an instinctive propensity; much of the detail, and some of the grouping, exhibit inherited reflexes due to special modes of stimulation. No doubt many of these responses occur in a similar but more emphatic way in a serious fight, and yet we may hesitate before committing ourselves to the theory of acceleration. It is at least equally probable that play as preparatory behaviour differs in biological detail (as it almost certainly does in emotional attributes) from the earnest of after-life, and that it was evolved directly as a preparation, as a means of experimentation through which certain essential modes of skill were acquired,—those animals in which the preparatory play propensity was not inherited in due force and requisite amount being worsted in the combats of later life, and eliminated in the struggle for existence. For, in the preparatory tussles and squabbles and playful fights of young animals, experience is gained without serious risk to life and limb.

The modifications of Professor Groos’s biological interpretation of play which we would suggest are so slight that we may be said to accept it almost unreservedly. The play of youth, we may urge, depends on instinctive propensities to experimentation in varied ways, some of more general and others of more special import; and the value of such experimentation lies in the fact that it is a means of acquiring, under circumstances more easy and less dangerous than those of sterner life, experience and skill for future use. In a word, play depends on instinctive propensities of value in education.

Passing now to a brief consideration of the feelings and emotions which we may suppose to accompany play, we may place first those which characterize, from this point of view, general experimentation. We have here rapidly varying situations charged with conative impulse, the satisfaction of which must bring pleasure—the occasional thwarting of which is probably toned with the opposite—the latter serving, through contrast, to enhance the satisfaction of ultimate success. Both pleasure and its antithetical state of feeling are primarily matters of the conscious situation as a whole, and even in ourselves are difficult to distribute in analysis. But assuredly no small share of the total product must be assigned to the successful behaviour which consummates the conative tendency. Indeed, it is the thwarting of free action which is the source of much of the discomfort of the young. Unimpeded and vigorous behaviour also brings with it secondary effects in organic processes—fuller heart-beat, freer circulation, deeper respiration, better digestion, firmer muscular tone, and so forth—which have a marked effect on the conscious situation, and aid in producing that emotional tone which cannot, perhaps, be named in better terms than “good spirits” and the joy of existence, so forcibly suggested during the free play of youth. On the other hand, there is no more piteous sight than that afforded by the young animal, “cabined, cribbed, confined,” suffering from ennui and depression—all its organic processes sluggish and craving to be quickened into the natural vigour of life, not creeping slowly through the veins, but coursing at full flood.

In the psychological aspect of play Dr. Groos assigns perhaps the first place to pleasure in the possession of power, or, as Preyer phrases it, pleasure in being a cause. We must be careful, however, lest in using such expressions we seem to imply that animals—even quite young animals—are capable of entertaining ideas which belong to a much later stage of mental development. Speaking of “joy in ability or power,” Professor Groos says,[132] “This feeling is first a conscious presentation to ourselves of our personality as it is emphasized by play.... But it is more than this; it is also delight in the control we have over our bodies and over external objects. Experimentation in its simple as well as its more complicated forms is, apart from its effect on physical development, educative in that it helps in the formation of causal associations.... The young bear that plays in the water, the dog that tears a paper into scraps, the ape that delights in producing new and uncouth sounds, the sparrow that exercises its voice, the parrot that smashes his feeding trough—all experience the pleasure in energetic activity, which is, at the same time, joy in being able to accomplish something.” But those who agree with Dr. Stout, as I do without hesitation, in denying personality (save in a very embryonic condition) and the conception of causation to animals in the perceptual stage of mental evolution, though they may find in Dr. Groos’s contention a central core of truth, will be unable fully to accept his manner of presenting it. “Any single train of perceptual activity,”[133] says Dr. Stout, “has internal unity and continuity. But where conscious life is mainly perceptual, the several trains of activity are relatively isolated and disconnected with each other. They do not unite to form a continuous system, such as is implied in the conception of a person. We must deny personality to animals.” To this I would merely add that, even where perceptual continuity in animals reaches its maximum, it is not reflectively grasped as a whole, and the ideal construction of the personal ego is not conceived as antithetical to the impersonal world of objects. With what Dr. Stout says about causality I am in complete agreement. “We must notice,”[134] he urges, “the essential difference which separates the merely perceptual category from that of ideational and conceptual thought. The perceptual category is always purely and immediately practical in its operation. It is a constitutive form of thought only because it is a constitutive form of action. The question ‘Why?’ has no existence for the merely perceptual consciousness. It does not and cannot inquire how it is that a certain cause produces a certain effect. It does not and cannot endeavour to explain, to analyze conditions so as to present a cause as a reason. It does not compare different modes of procedure or different groups of circumstances, so as to contradistinguish the precise points in which they agree from those in which they disagree, and in this way to explain why a certain result should follow in one case and a different result in another case. Causality in this sense can only exist for the ideational consciousness, and the development of the ideational consciousness in this direction is a development of conceptual thinking—of generalization.”

Wherein, then, lies the central core of truth in Professor Groos’s contention? In the satisfaction that arises from the success of any conative activity. We see that the animal striving and doing falls within our conception of a cause, in the scientific sense of the word,—a relatively constant and continuous antecedent of diverse sequent effects. We infer that pleasure accompanies the satisfaction of the multifarious conative impulses. The pleasure is the animal’s; the conception of causality and of self as a continuous person, still the same amid diversity of conscious situations, is ours. If we bear this in mind there can be no objection to our attributing to animals joy in ability or power. It is the pleasure derived from that successful conation whereby animals fall into the category of causes within the scheme of our rational thought.

In fighting-play and hunting-play, too, there arise in more specific forms the pleasures of successful conation with the antithetical feelings accompanying thwarted conation. And these are distinguished from earnest, partly because the companion or the inanimate substitute for prey is the centre of a different situation from that afforded by an enemy or the natural object of the chase; partly by the absence of certain insistent emotional states which characterize earnest and the serious business of life. In fighting, this is anger. And we often see the tendency of this to arise in the midst of fighting-plays, and at once say that it becomes serious and passes into fighting in earnest. Indeed, some tinge of earnest, with its fuller emotional tone, forms part of the preparation for future life, and so far falls within the definition Professor Groos gives of play. From which we may see that play is not easily marked off from other forms of conation.

Brief reference to the element of “make-believe,” which Dr. Groos assigns to the higher forms of play, may be reserved for our fourth section; and some further discussion of its psychological aspect to the concluding chapter.

III.—Courtship

We have seen that Professor Groos regards play as the practice and preparation for the serious business of animal life. Founded on instinctive tendencies, it has its biological value in the acquisition of practical acquaintance with the environment, and of skill in dealing with it effectually. It is an education in behaviour of the utmost service in view of the struggle for existence. It is full of the pleasure derived from the satisfaction of innate impulse, the success of conative effort, and the diffused sense of well-being which accompanies a life of action, free and unrestrained. This freedom and gladness lead us to call it play; but we must not draw the inference that the playful animal knows that it is playing, or forms any conception of the antithesis between work and play, which is a product of late development.

In laying stress on the biological value of certain modes of behaviour which we thus call play, a value which lies in the practice and preparation they afford for life’s more earnest work, Professor Groos deserves our hearty thanks. Nor need our thanks be less hearty if we find that he has in some degree been anticipated by Darwin; for he has elaborated with systematic care what Darwin suggested incidentally. “Nothing is more common,” said Darwin,[135] “than for animals to take pleasure in practising whatever instinct they follow at other times for some real good. How often do we see birds which fly easily, gliding and sailing through the air, obviously for pleasure! The cat plays with the captured mouse, and the cormorant with the captured fish. The weaver bird, when confined in a cage, amuses itself by neatly weaving blades of grass between the wires of its cage. Birds which habitually fight during the breeding season are generally ready to fight at all times; and the males of the capercailzie sometimes hold their Balzen, or leks, at the usual place of assemblage during the autumn. Hence it is not at all surprising that male birds should continue singing for their own amusement after the season of courtship is over.”

In the behaviour of courtship we have what is essentially part of the serious business of animal life. And in including it under the heading of “Love Plays,” Professor Groos may seem to be forgetful of his own definition of play. He is, however, too clear a thinker not to see, and too honest an exponent not to say, that much of the emotional behaviour commonly regarded as courtship falls outside his main thesis “in being, strictly speaking, not mere practice preparatory to the exercise of an instinct, but rather its actual working.”[136] But behaviour of a somewhat similar kind is seen in young animals before the time of mating has arrived, and is exemplified both in young and adults under circumstances different from those which distinguish what we may term the pairing situation. This, at any rate, may be regarded as a form of experimentation and practice in the arts of courtship. On different grounds does Professor Groos attempt to justify the inclusion of actual courtship under the head of play. For it may also, he thinks, even at the time of its serious exercise, be to some extent artful, involving “make believe,” and therefore playful in a somewhat different and more subtle sense; but a brief reference to “make believe” we may reserve for our next section.

There can be no question that special modes of behaviour often characterize the pairing situation, and that these not only exemplify an instinctive tendency, but from their constancy and relative definiteness constitute types of instinctive behaviour. They would form parts of any definition of a species founded not on structure but on behaviour. And if animals have feelings and emotions at all—if they are not Cartesian automata, which merely seem to be guided in their actions by consciousness—there can be but little question that the behaviour which characterizes the sexual situation is unusually charged with feeling-tone, and accompanied by all those adjuncts which distinguish an emotional state, broadly considered. This matter is of no little importance in our interpretation of the phenomena described as courtship. Do the accompanying feeling-tone and the state of emotional exaltation influence the behaviour, or would it run a similar course in the absence of any such accompaniments? If, as we can scarcely doubt, the consciousness attending the situation does profoundly influence the behaviour, the further question arises—Is this influence mainly the result of the presence and behaviour of an individual of the opposite sex? To this, again, we must answer that, so far as we can learn by observation, behaviour unquestionably is determined by such influence in the serious business of courtship. And then the further question arises—Is it a matter of indifference what the appearance and behaviour of the individual of the opposite sex may be? Are A., B., C., and the rest of the male alphabet, precisely alike in stimulating in a similar manner, and to a similar degree, the sexual impulse of the female? If we admit any differential influence, and if this influence takes effect in the sexual union to which courtship is preparatory, we so far admit the efficacy of that which Darwin termed sexual selection.

Let us, however, before proceeding with general considerations, present one or two examples of the facts which observation has furnished with regard to specialized modes of behaviour at the time of pairing. Speaking of American night-hawks, Audubon says, “Their manner of flying is a good deal modified at the love season. The male employs the most wonderful evolutions to give expression to his feelings, conducting them with the greatest rapidity and agility in sight of his chosen mate, or to put to rout a rival. He often rises to a height of a hundred metres and more, and his cries become louder and louder as he mounts; then he plunges downward with a slanting direction, with wings half open, and so rapidly that it seems inevitable that he should be dashed to pieces on the ground. But at the right moment, sometimes when only a few inches from it, he spreads his wings and tail, and, turning, soars upward once more.”[137] Mr. Strange, quoted by Darwin[138] says of the satin bower-bird, “at times the male will chase the female all over the aviary, then go to the bower, pick up a gay feather or a large leaf, utter a curious kind of note, set all his feathers erect, run round the bower and become so excited that his eyes appear ready to start from his head; he continues opening first one wing, and then the other, uttering a low, whistling note, and, like the domestic cock, seems to be picking up something from the ground, until at last the female goes quietly towards him.”

Darwin describes how, in the Argus pheasant,[139] “the immensely developed secondary wing-feathers are confined to the male, and each is ornamented with a row of from twenty to twenty-three ocelli, each above an inch in diameter. These beautiful ornaments are hidden until the male shows himself before the female. He then erects his tail, and expands his wing-feathers into a great, almost upright, circular fan or shield, which is carried in front of the body. The ocelli are so shaded that, as the Duke of Argyll remarks, they stand out like balls lying loosely within sockets. But when I looked at a specimen in the British Museum, which is mounted with the wings expanded and trailing downward, I was,” adds Darwin, “greatly disappointed, for the ocelli appeared flat or even concave. Mr. Gould, however, soon made the case clear to me, for he held the feathers erect, in the position in which they would naturally be displayed, and now, from the light shining on them from above, each ocellus at once resembled the ornament called a ball and socket.” The primary wing-feathers are scarcely, if at all, inferior in beauty to the secondaries, though the markings are quite different, the chief ornament being a space parallel to the dark-blue shaft, which in outline forms a perfect second feather lying within the true feather. “Now the secondary and primary wing-feathers are not at all displayed, and the ball and socket ornaments are not exhibited in full perfection, until the male assumes the attitude of courtship.”

It is unnecessary to describe the song of birds which is generally, but not always, at its best during the period of pairing. Bechstein, who kept birds during his whole life, and studied them with care, asserts that “the female canary always chooses the best singer, and that in a state of nature the female finch selects that male out of a hundred whose notes please her most.”[140]

Thus we are led back to sexual selection. If we are satisfied that the males of certain species do as a matter of fact behave in specific and distinguishable ways at the breeding season, and in presence of their would-be mates, the question is, What, if any, is the biological value of such behaviour? What has fostered and guided it in the course of its evolution? From the case of the Argus pheasant, which is only a sample of the large class of cases in which the male has special adornments, we see that the behaviour has often direct relation to the display of such plumage, or, in some apes, of coloured surfaces, so that behaviour and ornamentation must be taken together. The essence of Darwin’s contention is, that the adornments and behaviour give rise to a situation through which the female is stimulated or excited to accept the male; that the male in which they are best developed gives rise to the most effective situation, produces most excitement, and therefore has the best chance of acceptance, being “unconsciously preferred;”[141] and that he thus begets offspring which inherit his adornments and modes of behaviour, such inheritance being, however, confined to the males. Thus sexual selection takes effect through preferential mating, whereby certain hereditary traits are transmitted and become racial characteristics. And this is brought about through an appeal to consciousness, and seems to involve choice—generally that of the female.

Now, as I have elsewhere urged,[142] the hypothesis of sexual selection has often been placed in a false light by the introduction of the unnecessary supposition that the hen bird, for example, must possess a standard or ideal of Æsthetic value, and that she selects that singer which comes nearest to her conception of what a songster should be. Darwin occasionally expressed himself unguardedly in the matter; he says, for example, that the female appreciates the display of the male, and places to her credit a taste for the beautiful.[143] But he also distinctly states that “it is not probable that she consciously deliberates; she is most excited or attracted by the most beautiful, or melodious, or gallant males.”[144] This is all that is really necessary for the theory of sexual selection. The hen accepts that mate which by his song or otherwise excites in sufficient degree the pairing impulse; if others fail to excite this impulse, they are not accepted. Even Mr. A. R. Wallace, who rejects the theory save in a very subordinate form, says[145] that “it may be admitted, as highly probable, that the female is pleased or excited by the display,” and speaks[146] of a possible choice of “the most vigorous, defiant, and mettlesome male,” giving, moreover,[147] several telling examples of preferential mating. Stripped of all its unnecessary Æsthetic surplusage, at any rate so far as this implies an Æsthetic ideal, or Æsthetic motive, the hypothesis of sexual selection suggests that the accepted mate is the one which adequately evokes the pairing impulse.

Here Dr. Groos makes an interesting and important contribution to the subject. He lays stress on the coyness and reluctance of the female, and illustrates it by examples derived from observation. “Thus the female cuckoo answers the call of her mate with an alluring laugh that excites him to the utmost, but it is long before she gives herself up to him. A mad chase through tree-tops ensues, during which she constantly incites him with that mocking call, till the poor fellow is fairly driven crazy. The female kingfisher often torments her devoted lover for half a day, coming and calling him, and then taking to flight. But she never lets him out of her sight the while, looking back as she flies and measuring her speed, and wheeling back when he suddenly gives up the pursuit. The bower-bird leads her mate a chase up and down their skilfully built pleasure-house, and many other birds behave in a similar way. The male must exercise all his arts before her reluctance is overcome. She leads him on from limb to limb, from tree to tree, until it seems that the tantalizing change from allurement to resistance must include an element of mischievous playfulness.”[148]

Professor Groos regards the instinctive coyness of the female as the most efficient means of preventing the too early and too frequent yielding to sexual impulse.[149] He thinks it probable that “in order to preserve the species the discharge of the sexual function must be rendered difficult, since the impulse to it is so powerful that, without some such arrest, it might easily become prejudicial to that end. This same strength of impulse is,” he adds,[150] “itself necessary to the preservation of the species; but, on the other hand, dams must be opposed to the impetuous stream, lest the impulse expend itself before it is made effectual, or the mothers of the race be robbed of their strength, to the detriment of their offspring.” It has its origin in the general fact that, before any important motor discharge takes place, there is apt to be a preparatory and gradually increasing excitement. But this is specially emphasized in association with the sexual impulse. As Professor Zeigler wrote, in a private communication to Dr. Groos,[151] “Among all animals a highly excited condition of the nervous system is necessary for the act of pairing, and consequently we find an exciting playful prelude very generally indulged in.”

Courtship may thus be regarded from the physiological point of view as a means of producing the requisite amount of pairing-hunger; of stimulating the whole system and facilitating general and special vascular changes; of creating that state of profound and explosive instability which has for its psychological concomitant or antecedent an imperious and irresistible craving. This not only overcomes the coyness of the female, but generates and strengthens the ardour of the male—a point on which, perhaps, Professor Groos does not lay sufficient stress. For the process is reciprocal; and though the male leads in the ardour of courtship, yet this ardour constantly grows till at last it overcomes the barriers of reluctance. Courtship is thus the strong and steady bending of the bow that the arrow may find its mark in a biological end of the utmost importance in the survival of a healthy and vigorous race.

The coyness and reluctance of the female afford the conditions under which the bow is bent to the full. But they also afford the conditions of the apparent act of choice. This takes the place, on the perceptual plane of mental development, of that deliberation which precedes the higher act of choice on the ideational plane. For psychology, as well as for biology, then, Dr. Groos’s suggestion is a welcome and helpful one. Both upholders of sexual selection and critics of that hypothesis, have been apt to regard the choice of a mate in animals from too anthropomorphic a point of view—to look upon it as the outcome of rational deliberation, of weighing in the Æsthetic balance the relative attractiveness of this suitor and of that, and of reaching a definite conclusion that the one is to be accepted because he behaves or is adorned in such and such a way, while the other is to be rejected because he falls below all reasonable standards of requirement. The choice exercised by the female, if so we term it, is far simpler and more naÏve. Indeed, Professor Groos goes so far as to say that on his hypothesis the element of choice is altogether abolished. “It is the instinctive coyness of the female,” he says,[152] “that necessitates all the arts of courtship, and the probability is that seldom or never does the female exert any choice. She is not awarder of the prize, but rather a hunted creature. So, just as the beast of prey has special instincts for finding his prey, the ardent male must have special instincts for subduing female reluctance. According to this theory, there is choice only in the sense that the hare finally succumbs to the best hound, which is as much as to say that the phenomena of courtship are referred at once to natural selection.” He reaches this conclusion, however, by gradual stages. He first urges[153] that “it would be absurd to affirm that all bird songs originate in a conscious Æsthetic and critical act of judgment on the part of the female. A conscious choice either of the most beautiful or the loudest singer is certainly not the rule, and probably never occurs at all. But,” he adds, “is it not still a choice, though unconscious, when the female turns to the singer whose voice, whether from strength or modulation, proves most attractive? Even if the song is primarily a means of recognition or an invitation from the male, still the psychological effect must be that the female follows the songster that excites her most, and so exerts a kind of unconscious selection.”

The phrase “unconscious choice” is, however, somewhat unsatisfactory, especially when we remember that it is used to indicate the result of a direct appeal to the conscious situation. If, however, we say that it is perceptual choice arising from impulse as distinguished from ideational choice due to motive and volition, we see that the distinction is in line with that which we have drawn again and again, and which Dr. Stout so well emphasizes in his “Manual of Psychology.” But we have also drawn the distinction between instinctive behaviour prior to individual experience, and intelligent behaviour the result of such experience. Under which of these classes does the behaviour of the female during courtship fall? Professor Groos, in the further development of his hypothesis, seems to place it in the instinctive category. “Instead of a conscious or unconscious choice, of which we know nothing certain,” he says,[154] “we have the need of overcoming instinctive coyness in the female, a fact familiar enough, but hitherto not sufficiently accounted for. Then the question no longer is, which among many males will be chosen by the female, but which one has the qualities that can overcome the reluctance of the female whom he woos. Sexual selection would then become a special case of natural selection.”

I am unable to follow Professor Groos in this view, which I find it rather difficult to reconcile with such statements as that already quoted, in which he says that the female’s “tantalizing change from allurement to resistance seems to include an element of a mischievous playfulness.” It is more probable that instinctive coyness and reluctance afford the conditions under which experience of the pleasures of courtship may be gained. It is said that a flirt, when taken to task for her conduct at ball and picnic, justified it by asking demurely how else she was to gain that wide experience of men which was absolutely necessary to guide her in exercising a wise and becoming choice. Let us hope that when the fateful time arrived she acted with due deliberation. Now the coquetry of birds affords the opportunity of gaining just such experience in the light of which a perceptual choice may be made.

Let us remember that courtship is, as Darwin said, “a prolonged affair,” and that coyness is a means to its prolongation. And let us remember that in simple cases, as also in more complex matters, the intelligent exercise of choice depends upon what Dr. Stout terms the acquisition of meaning. “The chicken does not, at first,” he says,[155] “distinguish between what is edible and what is not. This it has to learn by experience. It will at the outset peck at and seize all worms and caterpillars indiscriminately. There is a particular caterpillar called the cinnabar caterpillar. When this is first presented to the chicken it is pecked at and seized, like other similar objects. But as soon as it is fairly seized it is dropped in disgust. When next the chicken sees the caterpillar, it looks at it suspiciously, and refrains from pecking. Now, what has happened in this case? The sight of the cinnabar caterpillar re-excites the total disposition left behind by the previous experience of pecking at it, seizing it, and ejecting it in disgust. Thus the effect of these experiences [what I have termed the conscious situation] is revived. The sight of the cinnabar caterpillar has acquired a meaning.” Take now the case of a coy hen bird, to whom several males pay court. The sight of this one, behaving after his kind, excites in small degree the sexual impulse and emotions. Her heart beats but little the faster for all his antics, her respiratory rhythm is scarcely affected, her feathers, like her feelings, remain comparatively unruffled. He has acquired meaning from the reaction to his presence; it is not, however, a very attractive meaning. But that other, perhaps from mere persistency, perhaps because he is more “vigorous, defiant, and mettlesome” (she, at any rate, certainly knows not why), deeply stirs her organic being, sets her all aglow, and breaks down the barriers of her coyness. And this he does because he is the centre of a conscious situation which has acquired, through her experience of his presence, a meaning and an interest that are at last irresistibly attractive. It is a choice from impulse, not the result of deliberation; but it is a choice which is determined by the emotional meaning of the conscious situation. And it is the reiterated revival of the associated emotional elements which generates an impulse sufficiently strong to overcome her instinctive coyness and reluctance.

And this coyness is the natural correlative of the ardour of the male, an ardour increased by his courtship antics. If the female yielded readily and at once, the behaviour of courtship would never have been evolved. Superabundant vigour in the male is, no doubt, a favourable condition of courtship, as it is of play; but neither is it a sine qu non, nor in any case does it, or can it, afford any guidance of behaviour into just those specific channels in which we find it setting during the breeding season. If sexual selection be not a vera causa of the specific direction, we have at present no other hypothesis which in any degree fits the facts. And to the criticism of those who, like Mr. W. H. Hudson, urge that dance and song, and aËrial evolutions in birds, are seen at times when the immediate business of courtship forms no part of the situation, Professor Groos’s theory of play affords a sufficient answer. If courtship, whose biological end is of such supreme importance, forms a central feature in the serious business of animal life; and if play is the preparation and practice for behaviour of biological importance; we should expect to find manifestations (with an emotional difference, and no doubt many differences in detail) of all those actions, the due performance of which, in the supreme hour of courtship, will alone enable the adequately prepared and well-practised male to overcome the reluctance of the female, and beget offspring to transmit his instinctive and emotional tendencies.

IV.—Animal “Æsthetics” and “Ethics”

In this section we shall consider some types of behaviour which suggest situations that contain the germs of Æsthetics and ethics, with a view to determining, so far as possible, the principles on which they should be interpreted. This is a peculiarly difficult subject; for we are endeavouring to get behind the behaviour, and to infer the mental conditions which accompany it, and through which it assumes its distinctive character. The difficulty is twofold: first, because, as Dr. Stout puts it,[156] “human language is especially constructed to describe the mental states of human beings, and this means that it is especially constructed so as to mislead us when we attempt to describe the workings of minds that differ in any great degree from the human;” and secondly, because, to quote the same careful thinker,[157] “the besetting snare of the psychologist is the tendency to assume that an act or attitude which in himself would be the natural manifestation of a certain mental process must, therefore, have the same meaning in the case of another. The fallacy lies in taking this or that isolated action apart from the totality of conditions under which it appears. It is particularly seductive when the animal mind is the subject of inquiry.”

We must, therefore, base our method of procedure on some definite principle. The canon of interpretation which I have elsewhere suggested[158] is, that we should not interpret animal behaviour as the outcome of higher mental processes, if it can be fairly explained as due to the operation of those which stand lower in the psychological scale of development. To this it may be added—lest the range of the principle be misunderstood—that the canon by no means excludes the interpretation of a particular act as the outcome of the higher mental processes, if we already have independent evidence of their occurrence in the agent. Now, the conclusion to which we are led by direct experiment and a critical study of the actions of animals whose life-history is known to us is, that most of their behaviour—perhaps all—is due to what Dr. Stout terms the perceptual, as opposed to the ideational, exercise of cognition. Their behaviour can be explained without having recourse to the hypothesis that they reflect, and attain to ideal schemes as the result of abstraction and generalization consciously directed to this end. Rather than repeat what I have already said, I will quote Dr. Stout’s summary of the position to which he, too, has been led. “The vast interval,” he says,[159] “which separates human achievements, so far as they depend on human intelligence, from animal achievements, so far as they depend on animal intelligence, is connected with the distinction between perceptual and ideational process. Animal activities are either purely perceptual, or, in so far as they involve ideas, these ideas serve only to prompt and guide an action in its actual execution. On the other hand, man constructs ‘in his head,’ by means of trains of ideas, schemes of action before he begins to carry them out. He is thus capable of overcoming difficulties in advance. He can cross a bridge before he comes to it.”

It has already been stated that in the intelligent behaviour of animals under man’s teaching he is the rational agent, they his willing slaves. This may be here again illustrated to enforce the distinction drawn by Dr. Stout in the above passage. Those who have seen a shepherd’s dog working sheep on a moorland fell, and have taken the trouble to ascertain how the results he sees have been attained, will appreciate, on the one hand, how well the dog knows and responds to the signals of his master, and, on the other hand, how completely all initiation is in the master’s mind, not that of the keenly intelligent dog. Those who merely witness such a performance without inquiry or investigation will probably misunderstand the whole matter. In the north of England competitions are not uncommon where, say, three sheep have to be driven over a definite course, between certain posts and round others, through narrow passages and into a fold—all within a certain time limit. At such a competition success depends on two things: first, the training of the dog to respond at once to some six or eight whistle-signals, often accompanied by gestures and movements of a stick; and secondly, the judgment of the shepherd. The signals, given in different whistle-tones and inflections, have for the dog meaning, such as drive straight on, from this side, from that, stop, lie down, creep, and so forth. The dog’s whole business is to obey these signals. And the instant response of a well-trained dog is admirable. But in the whole proceeding he is merely the executant of his master’s orders. He originates no important step. And if you listen to the criticisms by other shepherds during a competition you will find that they are mainly passed on the judgment shown by the master, and only in palpable failures in obedience on the behaviour of the dog. The intelligent animal is what he is trained to be—one whose natural powers are under the complete control of his master with whom the whole plan of action lies.

Since, then, in the cognitional field we find no independent evidence of the higher processes, we are bound, in accordance with our canon, to interpret emotional situations on similar principles, unless we find in them outstanding facts which cannot be explained in this way.

In considering the pairing situation we urged that the framing of an ideal of beauty to which a given suitor approaches, or from which he falls short, is unnecessary for the interpretation of the facts. We should not in strictness, therefore, speak of “an appreciation of beauty” or “a taste for the beautiful” in birds, since such expressions almost inevitably imply that these creatures have reached some conception of beauty as distinguished from and contrasted with ugliness. At the same time the hen certainly appears to enjoy the situation of which the plumed cock, attitudinizing thus, forms the centre of interest—through which he acquires meaning. Although, therefore, there is probably no ideal or standard of beauty, there are afforded the data in experience from which, were the bird capable of reflection, such an ideal might, in ideational sublimation, be derived. Before comparison, abstraction, and generalization can be applied, in the reflective laboratory of thought, there must be suitable experiences to form the raw material on which these rational processes can be exercised. Long ere, in the course of mental evolution, the correlative conceptions implied in the phrase “beautiful or ugly” had taken definite form, perceptual situations must have arisen, where, by direct appeal to the senses, by the diffused effects of stimulation and their accompanying feeling-tone, and by the natural satisfaction of mere impulse, the foundations were laid of that appreciation of the beautiful which forms the reflective superstructure we build upon them. Indeed, the pleasure and satisfaction attending particular situations, as they severally arise, appear to contain the perceptual germs of what in later development becomes Æsthetic appreciation.

The bird which, having completed its nest, eyes it with apparent satisfaction, may well have the germs of that which, when rendered schematic in our thought, we call taste. Dr. Gould, indeed, states that certain humming-birds decorate their nests “with the utmost taste,” weaving into their structure beautiful pieces of lichen. And the gardener bower-bird collects in front of its bower flowers and fruits of bright and varied colours. What meaning these carry in the conscious situation we do not know; we can only suppose that they incidentally contribute to the heightening of the sexual impulse, and have been evolved as a means of stimulation to the biological end towards which sexual selection is unconsciously directed. For it is probable that all the situations with which pleasure and satisfaction are in high degree associated are, in primary origin, closely connected with behaviour directed, through natural or sexual selection, to some definite biological end, or, in brief, with behaviour of biological value. And it is, perhaps, not improbable that the states of consciousness most highly toned with strong emotion have their origin in those situations which arise amid the pairing, parental, and companiable relations of animal life.

We have already said that the companion, as the nucleus of a situation, is a thing which reacts in altogether special ways, so that it becomes differentiated from other things as something the meaning of which, and the interest in which, are sui generis and unique in type. It becomes the centre of emotional situations, which we ascribe to rivalry, emulation, jealousy, and so forth. And we have also drawn attention to the view that the genetic order, so far as there is an order, is not first the ego and then the alter, but first the mother and companions and then through them the self. We learn to know ourselves only through knowing others. We must now ask the question—a question which must be answered before we can touch on the possible ethics of animals—how far, and in what sense, the social animal regards others as of like nature to itself, and capable also of like feelings and emotions. Stated in this form we must, I think, answer the question in the negative. The expression, “of like nature to itself,” implies that the self has already taken more or less definite form, and that the animal infers that, since the alter behaves and reacts in like manner to the ego, it also is an ego. This is distinctly an act of reasoning. As Clifford phrased it, the companion becomes an eject. We can never by direct experience become acquainted with the feelings of others, but we can endow them ejectively with personality analogous to our own.

But, though it is exceedingly doubtful whether any animal can regard its companion as an “eject,” may there not be a perceptual anticipation of the ideational process that comes with later-developed reflection? A decade ago I gave the following answer to this question: “For myself, I cannot doubt that animals project into each other the shadows of the feelings of which they are themselves conscious.”[160] Professor Mark Baldwin speaks of the stage at which this takes place, as the “projective stage” of development. “Now, in the fact,” he says,[161] “of herding, common life and arrangements for the protection of the herd, animal societies of various kinds, animal division of labour, etc.,—whatever be the origin of it,—we have what seems to be such an epoch in animal life. These creatures show a real recognition of one individual by another, and a real community of life and reaction, which is quite different from the individualism of purely sensational and unsocial consciousness. And yet it is just as different from the reflective organization of human society, in which the self-consciousness and personal volition of the individual play the most important rÔle. I see no way of accounting for the gregarious instinct anywhere, except on the assumption of such a projective epoch of animal consciousness.”

Now, in endeavouring to realize how the situation feels to an animal in this projective stage, the first difficulty we encounter is that of divesting ourselves of those products of reflection which characterize our own mental situation; and to avoid what Dr. Stout, in the passage above quoted,[162] terms the psychologist’s besetting snare. The second difficulty is to grasp that, in experience, subject and object are inseparable, however clearly we may learn to perceive that they are distinguishable aspects of that experience. If the subject is eventually regarded as that which experiences, and the object as that which is experienced, it is surely obvious that each is necessary to the other. But, before these different aspects are clearly distinguished, there is, in the perceptual stage of mental development, what we may term a distribution of the items of experience among the centres of interest.

In illustration of the kind of distribution which we may suppose to come naturally to an animal, in what Professor Baldwin terms the projective epoch, let us take three animal situations: first, a chick pecks at a soldier-beetle, and finds it nauseous; secondly, a hen-bird hears the joyous song of her mate; thirdly, a puppy in play bites its companion, and receives a painful nip in return. Each of these constitutes an experience-situation; assuming that the results of the experience are distributed, how may we suppose them to be allocated?

In the first case, the soldier-beetle is the centre of interest in the situation. As the situation develops, the element of nauseousness is introduced. As Dr. Stout puts it, this is what gives the soldier-beetle meaning. Can it be doubted that, if there be any distribution, the nauseousness, though it is altogether what we have learnt to call a subjective affection, attaches itself to the soldier-beetle? The plain man, unsophisticated by Berkeleyan discussion, says simply, in such cases, “The thing is nauseous.” And this probably indicates the naÏve and primitive distribution. Turning now to our second example, when the hen hears the courtship song the mate is the centre of a situation suffused with pleasurable feeling. How is the joyousness, again essentially subjective for our later thought, distributed? Surely, if at all, on the mate who forms the centre of interest. This it is which gives him meaning. The joy of the bearer is projected on to the singer. Not entirely, perhaps; the hen literally, on Professor James’s theory of the emotions, feels her heart-beat quickened by his presence, and the delightful ruffling of her feathers. But our aim is not to deny that the germs of the subjective arise in the midst of such situations, but to contend that some at least of the joyous character of the situation attaches to the song of the singer, that some of the feeling is projected, and that this is what gives the mate meaning. In our third case, the playful puppy bites his companion, and is sharply bitten in return. Pain enters into the coalescent situation as a whole. How is it distributed? In the phraseology of association, the nip he gives is closely linked with the pain he receives. By coalescence the pain and the nip form parts of the developed situation. But the companion is the centre of interest. And part of the pain is probably projected on this centre. That such projection actually occurs is rendered probable by such cases as the following, which was told me some years ago. A child, whose exact age I have forgotten if I then ascertained, was pricked by a pin, and he said, “Pin ’urted; poor pin.” It is, indeed, not unlikely that with animals the outward projection of feeling is widely distributed over inanimate, as well as animate, objects, and that its due restriction comes far later in development, of which the so-called personification of lifeless things by savages may be a relic. In any case, the give-and-take of play in young animals, and the after-earnest of courtship and fighting, would seem to afford ample opportunity for the external and internal distribution of feeling which sows the seed in perceptual life of that which blossoms into self and alter in the reflective life of ideational thought.

Although, therefore, an animal cannot conceive its companion as another self of similar nature, and with like passions to his own, yet a considerable share of the feeling-element of the conscious situation is projected on to that companion as the chief centre of interest. And if it be said that this is his feeling and not his neighbour’s, the objection will be seen to lose its force, so soon as it is realized that even man has no experience of any feelings save his own. The only way we can reach fellow-feeling is through sympathy; and sympathy has its roots in the projective process we have endeavoured to describe. We endow our neighbours with natures as sensitive to pain and pleasure as our own. This is a pre-requisite to the social relationships termed ethical. But when we hear people say, and find even Mr. Romanes putting on deliberate record,[163] that “the feelings which prompt a cat to torture a captured mouse can only be assigned to the category to which, by common consent, they are ascribed—delight in torturing for torture’s sake,” I venture to think that common consent, if such it be, is wrong. As I said a dozen years ago,[164] before Professor Groos had so carefully elaborated his theory of play, “the cat or kitten plays with the mouse not from innate cruelty, but for the sake of getting some little practice in the most important business of cat life. Only man, who has the capacity for nobler things, can be cruel for cruelty’s sake;” and this is the direction in which Dr. Groos’s opinion[165] tends to set. Mr. Romanes might have learnt a lesson in caution from his sister, who at first attributed a sense of shame to the capuchin she so carefully studied, but subsequently was led to adopt a simpler interpretation. “He bit me in several places to-day,” she says, in her admirable diary,[166] “but he seemed ashamed of himself afterwards, hiding his face in his arms, and sitting quiet for a time.” She adds, however, in a footnote: “On subsequent observation, I find this quietness was not due to shame at having bit me; for whether he succeeds in biting any person or not, he always sits quiet and dull-looking after a fit of passion, being, I think, fatigued.”

Shame is an ethical feeling. And as we have briefly discussed the germs of Æsthetics in animals, so we may now as briefly consider the germs of ethics. In its developed form ethics is one of the “normative sciences” involving standards of right and wrong. It is, as Professor Mackenzie says,[167] “the science of the ideal in conduct.” It involves a standard of “ought,” the product of reflection and generalization. Conduct is compared with the ideal, and perceived to be either below, up to, or perhaps beyond, the normal standard accepted by civilized mankind. This involves a judgment; and so far as conduct is shaped in accordance with the ideal we attribute the guidance to ethical motives. Such ideals, such judgments, and the control of conduct through the play of such motives, are probably beyond the mental capacities of animals. They belong to the ideational stage of mental development, when the conative tendency becomes volitional; not to the perceptual stage, when it is impulsive. They do not enter into the conscious situation as it takes form in the animal mind. Behaviour has not in them acquired ethical meaning, since in developed ethics, as normative, such meaning always has reference to the norm, or standard. A real sense of shame implies that our acts have fallen below our ideal.

It may be said that we cannot prove that animals do not frame such ideals. But, if we accept the canon of interpretation above laid down, what has to be proved is that they do frame them. Is there any case among the hundreds that are popularly adduced to show that dogs are ashamed of themselves, that they possess a sense of justice, that they feel the prick of conscience, that on the one hand they know when they have done wrong, or on the other hand enjoy a sense of conscious rectitude—is there any particular case so described in the popular phraseology of anecdote, which could not be more simply described as the direct outcome of the coalescent situation, without the introduction of any implied reference to a standard of behaviour reached by reflective thought? The pug that has taken a nap on the drawing-room sofa, leaps down and slinks off with a “guilty” look on his master’s approach. One can surely picture the previous situations, and be tolerably certain that they contained an element of reproof or something more energetic. The poodle that has successfully performed his tricks bounds to his mistress with an air of duty well performed. Has he never been petted and patted under such circumstance? Routine in many animals—so often creatures of habit—begets a customary sequence, the breach of which is at once felt. To this I ventured[168] to ascribe the conduct of the turnspit dog reported by Arago. He refused with bared teeth to enter out of his turn the drum by which the spit was rotated. The companion dog was put in for a few moments and then released; whereupon the dog which before had been so refractory seemed satisfied that his turn for drudgery had come, and, entering the wheel of his own accord, began turning the spit as usual. The bared teeth may be here perhaps ascribed to an outraged sense of justice. But is it not a more simple, and just as probable, supposition that the behaviour was due to breach of customary routine. A trainer with whom I had some conversation on this matter pointed out a collie bitch, and said, “If I put her through her tricks in the usual order she does them like an angel; but if I try and make her alter the order she snaps and sulks like the devil.”

I have elsewhere[169] expressed my opinion that, though animals may behave in ways which may tend to mislead us, they do not act with intent to deceive. A dog is described[170] as “showing a deliberate design of deceiving” because he hobbled about the room as if lame and suffering from pain in his foot. But may not this be simply due to the fact that chance experience had led to a situation through which a hobbling gait had acquired the meaning of more petting and attention than usual? To behave with deceit as a deliberate motive implies the idea that the action will be interpreted as having a significance different from that which it really has. It is only possible on the ideational plane of mental development. It implies, too, from the ethical standpoint, a conscious departure from the standard of truth. The black that is acted has conscious reference and relation to the white that is not black. Few, however, will credit animals with deceit of this fully conscious and deliberate kind. Like the fibs of little children, the apparent deceit of animals is probably merely behaviour which has been associated in experience with pleasant results.

The case of shamming sickness, quoted from K. Russ, is thus interpreted by Professor Groos.[171] And yet he adds, “When we see deception used so effectively to serve practical ends, examples of which are very common, it can hardly be doubted that there is in all probability more consciousness of shamming in play than we have any means of demonstrating.” And elsewhere in the same work he observes,[172] “Many a grown animal still takes pleasure in the mock combats that he learned in youth. From a psychological point of view this phenomenon is especially noteworthy, from the fact that the adult animal, though already well acquainted with real fighting, still knows how to keep within the bounds of play, and must therefore be consciously playing a rÔle, making believe.” I fail, however, to see the justification for the “therefore.” Surely the difference of behaviour in this example, and in other such examples, is sufficiently explained as the outcome of diverse situations, without having recourse to anything so psychologically complex as the conscious self-illusion of make-believe—interesting and important as this is in the psychology of children. To suppose that a monkey who nurses a bit of blanket has any ideas about its being a make-believe baby is not to interpret the behaviour of animals in accordance with the canon we have adopted for our guidance.

To return to the “ethics” of animals. I have urged that ethical ideas, properly so called, have no place in their psychology. But just as the pleasure and satisfaction attending particular situations, as they severally arise, appear to contain the perceptual germs of what in later development becomes Æsthetic appreciation; so, too, do they also contain the perceptual germs of what becomes, through reflection in man, ethical approbation. And the situations in which these ethical germs must be sought are those which entail behaviour for the good of the social community. Indeed, we may go so far as to say that the perceptual foundations of ethics are laid in the social instincts. The satisfaction or dissatisfaction arising from the performance or non-performance of instinctive behaviour, evolved for the biological end of the preservation of the social community, is the perceptual embryo from which conscience is developed. Professor Mackenzie has indicated the ambiguities in the use of the term “conscience.” “It is,” he says,[173] “sometimes used to express the fundamental principles on which the moral judgment rests; at other times it expresses the principles adopted by a particular individual; at other times it means ‘a particular kind of pleasure or pain felt in perceiving our own conformity or nonconformity to principle.’[174] This last seems to me,” adds Mr. Mackenzie, “the most convenient acceptation of the term, except that I should prefer to say simply that it is a feeling of pain accompanying and resulting from our nonconformity to principle.” According to this definition the existence of a principle or ideal is presupposed; and the fact that Professor Mackenzie lays stress upon the pain of nonconformity, shows that the ideal is a high one. In the case of the animal, however, such an ideal of right conduct has probably not taken form. But Mr. Mackenzie also speaks of the “quasi-conscience” begotten of custom. This comes nearer to the feeling which animals may be supposed to have when their behaviour does not accord with that which through instinct or habit is the usage of the community. And if, as seems to be shown by observation, animals sometimes punish the breaches of such usage—when, for example, cats punish their kittens for uncleanliness—the quasi-conscience will assume a more developed form.

We may say, then, that the perceptual data are given in animal experience from which, in ideational sublimation, ethical ideals may be derived by a process of reflection and generalization. As in the case of Æsthetics, so in that of ethics; long ere, in the course of mental evolution, the correlative conceptions implied in the phrase “right or wrong” had taken definite form, perceptual situations must have arisen in which behaviour carried with it the feelings of satisfaction or the reverse which laid the foundations of that approbation of the right which forms the superstructure we build upon them by the exercise of reflective thought.

V.—The Evolution of Feeling and Emotion

“Whatever conditions,” says Dr. Stout,[175] “further and favour conation in the attainment of its end, yield pleasure. Whatever conditions obstruct conation in the attainment of its end, are sources of displeasure. This is the widest generalization which we can frame, from a purely psychological point of view, as regards the conditions of pleasure and displeasure respectively.” Here Dr. Stout seems carefully to avoid the commonly accepted and much advertised conclusion, that pleasure and pain (to use this more familiar word as the antithesis of pleasure) are themselves the end of conative endeavour. And he is so far right that they by no means constitute the sole or indeed the primary end of all conative process. Attention is a conative act; but its primary end is not pleasure, but rather, as Dr. Stout says,[176] the fuller presentation of the object. No doubt this brings pleasure; but the fuller presentation comes first, and carries the pleasure with it. Instinctive response to felt stimulus falls within the conative attitude. In it there is that “inherent tendency to pass beyond itself and become something different,” which Dr. Stout assigns to conation as its chief characteristic. But the end is not pleasure, but simply the instinctive behaviour. And if we say that the attainment of this end does bring satisfaction, which is a form of pleasure, Dr. Stout would probably reply that this is rather a result of the process than its true end.

Now, in such cases, what we are really dealing with is a class of organic processes having conscious accompaniments. No doubt the conscious accompaniments are of importance; they certainly cannot be neglected by the psychologist: but their feeling-tone does not constitute that which makes instinct run its course. And I have introduced the subject for present discussion in this way to reinforce what has already been repeatedly urged in the foregoing pages, that individual behaviour, in its first intent, is a biological legacy with ends predetermined through heredity. The inherent tendency to pass beyond itself and become something different, which for the old psychology was a heaven-sent impulse, or, as Addison said, “an immediate impression from the first Mover and the Divine energy acting in the creatures,” becomes for the new psychology an organic bequest. But the attainment of ends thus already predetermined has feeling-tone, both as process and in its resulting consciousness, and this feeling-tone serves to modify, through the situation it introduces, future behaviour, and thus, in a sense, affords a new end to subsequent conation.

“Life,” wrote James Martineau,[177] “is a cluster of wants physical, intellectual, affectional, moral, each of which may have, and all of which may miss, the fitting object. Is the object withheld or lost? there is pain: is it restored or gained? there is pleasure: does it abide or remain constant? there is content. The two first are cases of disturbed equilibrium, and are so far dynamic that they will not rest till they reach the third, which is their posture of stability and their true end.” This is an adequate description of the essential features in conative process. But in genetic precedence, as in individual development, the physical wants come first, and, at the outset of behaviour, the satisfaction or content is not and cannot be foreseen, since it has never yet entered into experience. To adopt a distinction suggested by Professor Mackenzie,[178] the conation is purposive, since we see that an end is involved, but not purposeful, since there is no definite consciousness of the end aimed at. But when experience has introduced feeling-tone into the situation, we may say that this, in a sense, introduces a new end to subsequent behaviour.

Mr. Herbert Spencer has said[179] that pleasure is that which we seek to bring into consciousness and retain there; pain, that which we seek to get out of consciousness and keep out. May we assert, then, that, in the modification of behaviour due to experience, the pleasure to be gained or the pain to be avoided is the psychological end? Certainly not without qualification, unless we be among those who are content to accept any form of words which gives a general sort of notion of the kind of thing which we suppose is meant, and which is probably more or less correct. We want here and now to get clear ideas, and to express them with some approach to accuracy. To say that pleasure is the psychological end of intelligent behaviour is to put the matter too subjectively and in too abstract a form. Professor Mackenzie has clearly indicated the ambiguity in the word “pleasure.” “Pleasure,” he says,[180] “is sometimes understood to mean agreeable feeling, or the feeling of satisfaction, and sometimes it is understood to mean an object which gives satisfaction. The hearing of music is sometimes said to be a pleasure, but of course the hearing of music is not a feeling of satisfaction; it is an object that gives satisfaction. Generally, it may be observed that when we speak of ‘pleasures’ in the plural, or rather in the concrete, we mean objects that give satisfaction; whereas when we speak of ‘pleasure’ in the abstract, we more often mean the feeling of satisfaction which such objects bring with them.” May we not go a step further, but entirely in the same direction, and say that pleasure is a constituent part of the concept self as an object of thought or desire; that its proper sphere is in the ideational consciousness; and that, as we interpret the animal mind, it has no place as such therein? The hedonist regards pleasure as the most excellent and distinctive characteristic of his ideal self and his ideal community. But animals have not risen or fallen to the level of hedonism. Pleasure is not for them a motive of conduct, though nice objects, as such, are attractive, and through them impulse acquires direction and force.

If, in animal psychology, we are to use the words pleasure and pain (as the antithesis of pleasure)—and they seem more properly to belong to a plane of mental development to which animals probably have not attained—we may say that the pleasure or the pain which attaches to any centre of interest in the situation is that which gives it attractive or repellent meaning; it furthers conation either towards or, as Hobbes would say, fromwards. But if we put the matter in this somewhat abstract form, let us keep in view, if it be only in the background of our thought, the kind of concrete example which may be adduced in its illustration—the dog with his attractive bone, the kitten that has raced off at sight of him, the cock-sparrow with trailing wings hopping after his mate, the falcon stooping on her quarry, the rabbit diving into his burrow at sight of the fox, and so forth. If we have such cases in view, where the centre of the situation has acquired or is acquiring meaning, a meaning which in large degree attaches to the external nucleus of the situation with only the germs of subjective reference, we may, perhaps, summarize the position by saying that in each case some pleasure to be gained or some pain to be avoided is the psychological end of conation.

But in each case the conation has also a biological end—the preservation and conservation of the race. “An animal,” said Darwin,[181] “may be led to pursue that course which is most beneficial to the species by suffering, such as pain, hunger, thirst, or fear; or by pleasure, as in eating and drinking, and in the propagation of the species; or by both combined, as in the search for food.” The important point here to notice is that the two ends agree—the psychological end of the attainment of pleasure and the avoidance of pain, and the biological end of race preservation. Under the joint influence of pleasure and pain, the needle of animal life sets towards the pole of beneficial action.

This consonance of end was in old days ascribed to the beneficent foresight of the Creator. The modern view, that it is a product of evolution, does not necessarily ascribe it to any other ultimate cause. For many still piously hold that evolution is only a name which we give to the method of creation. And there is not a fact or generalization in science by which such a conclusion can be disproved, for the premises lie outside the field of scientific inquiry. But the consonance of end is, for science, a remarkable fact, and one worthy of attentive consideration.

We have already seen that, if the claim for the inheritance of acquired characters be, on the evidence, judged unproven, and if instinct cannot be ascribed to transmitted habit, or regarded as a legacy of that which has been ancestrally acquired, the only scientific explanation of instinctive behaviour is one which involves the principle of natural selection. But no one doubts that, in the course of experience, animals acquire modes of procedure which are beneficial to the race. This is well seen in the play of animals as interpreted by Professor Groos. Now, why do animals play? From the psychological point of view, because they like it; from the biological point of view, because they thus gain practice and preparation for the serious business of their after-life. But why do they like it? because, under natural selection, those who did not like it, and therefore did not play, proved unfit for life’s struggle, and were eliminated. Suppose that an animal were born with a rooted hereditary aversion to everything nutritious and an inherited hunger for anything harmful and unfit for food. What chance would it stand of survival? Hereditary likes and dislikes determine the general course of acquired behaviour, just as hereditary nerve-connections determine the course of instinctive behaviour. Wherein, then, lies the difference between the two? In the fact that in the one case the nerve-connections are transmitted ready-made, while in the other they result from association or coalescence in the course of individual life. But in both cases the pursuit and attainment of the beneficial brings satisfaction.

Now, the consonance of end has long been regarded as an inevitable deduction from the hypothesis of evolution. “That pains are correlatives of actions injurious to the organism,” wrote Mr. Herbert Spencer in his “Principles of Psychology,”[182] “while pleasures are the correlatives of actions conducive to its welfare, is an induction not based on the vital functions only. It is an inevitable deduction from the hypothesis of evolution, that races of sentient creatures could have come into existence under no other conditions. Those races of beings only can have survived in which, on the average, agreeable or desired feelings went along with activities conducive to the maintenance of life, while disagreeable and habitually avoided feelings went along with activities directly or indirectly destructive of life, and there must ever have been, other things being equal, the most numerous and long-continued survivals among races in which these adjustments of feelings to actions were the best, tending ever to perfect adjustment.” And he safeguards the position by adding: “It is frequently taken for granted that the beneficial actions secured must be actions beneficial to the individual; whereas the only necessity is that they shall be beneficial to the race.”

This aspect of the consonance is now quite familiar; but let us carefully note how completely dependent it is on natural selection. Mr. Herbert Spencer’s testimony is especially valuable, since he has always laid much stress on the hereditary transmission of acquired characters and still holds[183] “that the inheritance of functionally-caused alterations has played a larger part than Darwin admitted even at the close of his life; and that, coming more to the front as evolution has advanced, it has played the chief part in producing the highest types.” Now, in these types we certainly find a wide range of consonance between the psychological and the biological ends of behaviour; of which the phenomena of play may again be adduced as an example. Hence the special value of Mr. Herbert Spencer’s testimony to the part played by natural selection in establishing the consonance. “Only those races of beings,” he says, “can have survived in which, on the average, agreeable feelings went along with activities conducive to life;” and again, “The most numerous survivals must ever have been among races in which these adjustments of feelings to actions were the best.” The stress is here laid on the survival of those in which the consonance has obtained; the elimination of those in which it was absent: that is to say, on natural selection. And where else can it be laid? It is not the sort of thing which could be acquired. Suppose that, as we suggested above, an animal were born with a rooted hereditary aversion to everything nutritious and an inherited hunger for anything harmful and unfit for food. Under what conceivable conditions could such an animal acquire a complete change of its affective nature? Animals like things or they do not like them; only to a very limited extent, if at all, under natural conditions, can they learn to like them. We, indeed, can in some degree learn to take pleasure in that which at first, and by nature, is distasteful; but we do so by some external constraint, or from some motive of ideational origin. We put pressure upon ourselves, or have pressure put upon us, repeatedly to perform some irksome task; we fall into routine and custom; and the performance becomes so far second nature that its discontinuance produces an uncomfortable sense of something lacking in the daily round. Perhaps domestic animals learn to like the good offices we force them to perform for us. But here we have the element of external constraint, which is wholly, or almost wholly, absent under natural conditions. And there is no evidence that such acquired likings are inherited. That, however, is another question. Our present point is that, under nature, the conditions of such acquisition are lacking; so that, there being no acquisition, there is, in this case, nothing acquired to be transmitted.

But, so far as behaviour is concerned, “functionally caused alterations” are those due to the exercise of intelligence, by which the behaviour acquires direction and character in reference to the meaning introduced into the situations. See, then, the position to which we are logically driven. The acquisition of that which has beneficial value in behaviour depends on a consonance between psychological and biological end. But this consonance is dependent on survival, and, apart from special creation, or some kindred hypothesis such as Leibnitzian harmony, can be due to nothing else. Even if we grant, therefore, that the effects of acquisition are inherited, the conditions of beneficial acquisition are dependent on natural selection. And thus the inheritance of acquired characters, which is so often urged as a principle of evolution independent of natural selection, is, so far as intelligent behaviour is concerned, indirectly, if not directly, due to this very natural selection of which it is said to be independent. Surely, under these circumstances, the hypothesis in question may be said to be not only unproven, but altogether unnecessary.

And what is true of those diverse feelings which we group under the concepts pleasure and pain respectively, is true also of those more complex dispositions which we call emotional—using this term in a broad and comprehensive sense. We say that in their primary manifestations they are instinctive; and they certainly seem to accompany organic behaviour due to co-ordinated reflex actions. But the emotion, as instinctive, is a matter only of its first occurrence. In the course of experience it enters into conscious situations, the centres of interest in which have acquired meaning.

Take a particular case.[184] Your dog is dozing on the lawn in the sunshine. Suddenly he raises his head, pricks his ears, scents the air, looks fixedly at a gap in the hedge, and utters a low growl. Place your hand on his shoulder, and you will find that his muscles are all a-tremble; on his ribs, and you will feel how strongly his heart is beating. Soon the growing excitement leads to vigorous action, and he darts through the gap. You follow him across the lawn, look over the hedge, and see him facing his old enemy, the butcher’s cur. They are moving slowly past each other, head down, teeth bared, back roughened. You whistle softly. Such a call would generally bring him bounding to your feet; but now it is apparently unheard, at any rate unheeded. The two dogs have a short scuffle, and the cur slinks off. Your dog races after him; and he flees, yelping. The situation is over. Spot returns, wagging his short tail, jumps up at you playfully, and then lies down again on the grass. But now and then, for ten minutes or so, he raises his head and growls softly.

Let us briefly analyze the dog’s condition and actions, reading into them, conjecturally, the accompaniments in consciousness. As he lies on the lawn, he receives a sense-stimulus, auditory or olfactory. It has already acquired meaning, from many a tussle with the butcher’s cur. It has organic effects, and it generates a conscious situation which has acquired complexity through coalescence. As the result of this situation the head is raised, the ears pricked, and so on. The dog is on the alert. His attention is aroused. The muscles of neck, eyes, ears, are brought into play in such a way as to bring the senses to bear on the exciting object. He probably sees the cur through the gap in the hedge. The muscles of the frame are innervated so as to be in a state of preparation to act rapidly and forcibly. At the same time the vaso-motor system is disturbed, the heart-beat is quickened, respiration is altered; there is probably hardly an organ in the body which remains unaffected. Then the dog rushes through the hedge, and stands with bared teeth before his antagonist. A whole set of appropriate muscles are now strongly innervated. There is, perhaps, a double innervation, stimulating to activity and yet restraining from action. He bares his teeth and growls deeply. Attention is so concentrated that he heeds not, perhaps does not hear, his master’s whistle. He is keenly on the alert. The blood-system, respiratory organs, and all his inner machinery are still pulsating with nervous thrills; his back is up. Then he sees his chance, and flies at his opponent. Much that he has learnt in play, and all that he has learnt in earnest, comes to his aid in the short angry scuffle. And what we call his emotion of anger spurs him on to the fight; the cowardly dog in which this is lacking or is replaced by fear is spurred to flight. Each may contribute to self-preservation, but in different ways.

Now, we shall not attempt to determine how the distinctively emotional elements arise. Some think they arise by a sort of irradiating nervous diffusion in the nerve-centres as a direct result of the originating stimulus. Mr. Rutgers Marshall regards them as due to the motor activities in fight or flight; Professor William James contends that they have their source in the visceral affections of heart, lungs, glands, and so forth; Professor Lange attributes them to vaso-motor effects. The problem is a difficult one, and hard to determine by experiment; for we have to deal with a matter of primary genesis, of how they are at the outset introduced into the conscious situation. Experiments on animals which have already gained emotional experience cannot decide the question of genesis. Professor Sherrington, for example, has shown[185] that, after severance of the spinal cord in the lower region of the neck, and of the vagus nerves, by which “a huge field of vascular, visceral, cutaneous, and motor reaction” were “deprived of all connection with the nervous centre necessary to conscious response,” “the emotional states of anger, delight at being caressed, fear and disgust were developed with, as far as could be seen, unlessened strength.” But the avenues of connection were closed after the motor and visceral effects had played their parts in the genesis of the emotion on the hypothesis that the emotion is thus generated. Although new presentative data of this type were thus excluded, their re-presentative after-effects in the situation were not excluded. It is, moreover, an essential part of Professor James’s doctrine, as I provisionally accept it, that the “expression” and the visceral and vascular efforts are independent results of stimulation in certain ways, and that these independent results are conjoined through natural selection. Suppose we sever the connection through which the one takes effect, there is no reason to expect that the manifestation of the other would cease. Professor Sherrington cut off the channels of communication with the visceral and vascular apparatus: if the channels of expression remained open there is no reason why such expression should cease.

We need not, however, for our present purpose, attempt to ascertain how the distinctively emotional characteristics arise. It is sufficient that they are presumably present in the situation. Now, as Dr. Stout well points out,[186] the emotions generally presuppose the existence of certain specific tendencies. “The anger produced in a dog by taking away its bone presupposes the specific appetite for food. The anger produced in it by interfering with its young presupposes the specific tendency to guard and tend its offspring. So the presence of a rival who interferes with its wooing causes anger because of the pre-existence of the sexual impulse.” In general, we may say that emotional states are, under natural conditions, closely associated with behaviour of biological value—with tendencies which are beneficial in self-preservation or race-preservation—with actions that promote survival, and especially with the behaviour which clusters round the pairing and parental instincts. The value of the emotions in animals is that they are an indirect means of furthering survival. But how has the close association between emotional condition and the biological end it furthers been established? Again, we must say that under natural conditions it is not the sort of thing which could be acquired. And again we must urge that natural selection through survival is, apart from some theory of pre-established harmony, the only hypothesis in the field on which the close association can be explained.

There is one more point to which attention may be drawn. If there be one thing, and there certainly are not many, on which all writers on the emotions are agreed, it is as to their vagueness. They do not readily submit to definition, and cannot be described in a sentence. This is not due to any indefiniteness of biological end, nor to much indefiniteness in the mode of “expression;” it is due, rather, to an inherent dimness and haziness of psychological outline. We seem unable to focus them and get a clear-cut result. This is, no doubt, in part due to the complexity of emotional states. But, may it not be largely due to the fact that there is no necessity for definiteness? They fulfil their purpose just as well if they are vague. It is quite necessary for the dog to have a clear-cut impression of his antagonist; and, on the cognitive side of consciousness, meaning must be in some degree definite to be of real value. But, so long as the emotion raises the temperature, so to speak, to the boiling-point of vigorous action, it matters little what the psychological source of heat may be. If this be so, we should expect an emotional vagueness, since natural selection puts no premium upon emotional definiteness. And from this it follows, as a corollary, that, whereas we may infer that an animal’s perceptual products are probably closely similar to our own, since sight, touch, hearing, smell, and taste are of value in so far as they convey definite meaning, in interpreting their feelings and emotions we have less secure grounds of inference, since all that is requisite is that there should be a sufficiently high emotional temperature to afford the conditions for definite and vigorous action.

In conclusion, then, we may say that the primary purpose of the evolution of feeling and emotion is to promote beneficial behaviour, and that the observed consonance of the psychological end of attaining satisfaction, and the biological end of securing survival, seems to be due to natural selection—is, indeed, scarcely explicable on any other naturalistic hypothesis.

A word of warning may be added. We have repeatedly spoken of biological and psychological ends. By this we mean what seems to the observer, as an interpreter of natural processes, the purpose and object of their existence. But the word “end” is often used in such a way as to imply foresight and contrivance on the part of a rational being. We have not used it in this sense. Whether the whole of nature, including animal behaviour, is driven onwards to definite ends by an underlying Cause, is a metaphysical question. It is not one on which science has any right to express an opinion one way or the other. Science deals with the phenomena; the causes of their being lie outside her province.