THE WAKING-DREAM THEORY OF ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE.
AWRITER in the new number of the Edinburgh Review, who criticises Dr. Lindsay's book on " Mind in the Lower Animals in Health and Disease," comes to the con- clusion that for the most part the highest acts of intellig- ence performed by elephants, dogs, and all the other sagacious animals are due to the impressions and habits pro- duced in them by human agency, and cannot be ascribed to any independent reflection on their parts. In general, the reviewer follows Dr. Carpenter in thinking that the ordinary state of an intelligent animal is that which may be best described as a" waking dream," a state in which the action of the creature is automatic,—that is, an action involving as little conscious self- control as walking, or drawing back from a too hot fire, or protect- ing oneself against a falling object,—though the sensory impres- sions which suggest the action are for the most part quite fresh, instead of, as in the case of dreams, a long train of associations only originated, perhaps, by one dim sensation. If we under- stand this theory rightly, it is that when a retriever dog, for instance, is told to go back and fetch his master's stick, what happens in his mind is something of this kind,—the word "fetch " is associated in the strongest possible way with the act of going to look for something, while the word "stick " suggests the im- pression of a particular object in which the searching is to end ; and the process that goes on in the dog's mind is supposed to be nearly the same as goes on in a well-trained servant's mind when, without turning his attention to the subject, he
mechanically opens the door on hearing a ring at the bell, or takes the visitor's card in to his master or mistress. In other words, a train of habitual actions is suggested, and the end of them is also suggested,—which train of actions will happen in due order with perfect regularity, if the dog has been well trained, and does not depend at all on his power at the moment to think for himself. The gist of the theory is that the dog is an organism, on which you act almost as you act on a piano when you touch its keys, or as you may often act on a heavy sleeper without wakening him, if you habitually im- press upon him that at a particular sign he shall turn round on his other side, or even sit up in bed to take his medicine. Such habitual acts are often performed without the slightest trace of self-conscious recollection on the part of the sleeper ; and this theory implies that the most intelligent acts of the most intelligent animals are in the same measure products of a well-impressed habit, which secures its end not by the help of individual reflection, but by the mechanical cogency of former training acting on an impressionable medium.
Now, the difficulty of this explanation of the higher acts of animal intelligence seems to us exceedingly great. It will ac- count, of course, for such acts as the mechanical obedience of the sporting dog when told to come to heel, or even, perhaps, when ordered to fetch what is distinctly within his vision or always to be found in the same place ; but it will not ac- count at all for his overcoming a number of difficulties for which no provision had been made, and which he had never been taught to surmount, in the act of discharging his duty. For instance, it is certain that a well-trained servant could not answer the bell and take in the visitor's card without any self- consciousness of what he was doing, if he found the door locked, without first procuring the key ; while the necessity of procuring the key and of questioning himself where it was and how to procure it, would at once break up all the mechanical adjustments of his habit, and throw him back on the application of individual judgment to the con- ditions of the case. And so precisely it is with the dog. When he is told to do something which involves a great variation on what he has been taught to do, it is quite obvious that you cannot account for it, as if the whole process were that of a waking dream. Thus, a friend of the present writer's was asked by his gamekeeper to shoot a magpie at the beginning of a day of sport, for him to nail up against a tree. The magpie, when shot, was concealed in the hedge, and the sportsman, with his gamekeeper, went on with the day's sport, which lasted several hours. On their return, they passed the place where the mag- pie was placed without remembering it, and a good deal later, as twilight was coming on, the sportsman remarked to the keeper that he had forgotten the magpie. The man replied that the dog would fetch it, and he told him to go and fetch the magpie. She set off, and before they reached home, re-
turned with the bird in question. Now, is it possible to describe that as the procedure of a waking dream ? The dog must have clearly understood not only that she was to fetch something, but what she was to fetch. It was not a thing with which she had a regular train of associations set up. The bird had been shot only that morning, and the place in the hedge where it was concealed was not a place to which she was accustomed to go for what her master wanted. Even suppose, if you please, that the word " magpie " started a lively train of associations of scent in the dog's organs of smell, still there must have been much livelier associations with the actual smells present to her on her long tramp, and the resolve to resist these and choose those, must have made her state of mind one very different indeed from that of a "waking dream." She must, at least, have realised clearly as much as this,—that she was to disregard all other suggestions made to her by her senses, however lively, and track out only those much less lively ones suggested to her by the mention of the bird shot in the morning. That is not the procedure of a waking dream. In a waking dream,—the mind not being supposed to govern its own actions,—the new sensations supersede those passed away, and the mind floats along with the current. Or take one of the most accurately known and best reported stories of animal intelligence on record,—the case of the poet Cowper's water- spaniel Beau, which, seeing his master trying for a long time to catch a water-Illy in the Ouse with his stick, took time to con- sider what his master's object had been, ana on Cowper's return along the river dashed into the water, as soon as he came in sight of the particular water-lily, snapped it off with his teeth,
brought it to shore, and laid it at his master's feet. There is no manner of doubt about the story. Cowper versified it at once, in order, as he said, that his dog might " mortify the pride of man's superior breed." Well, is it possible to explain it as you would the machinery of a waking dream ? In the first place, no order was given to the dog at all. In the next place, the dog (lid not at once catch what his master wanted, and only after reflection, and on his return, when he had satisfied himself of the probable object of his master's efforts, did lie secure the prize on which the poet had expended so much fruitless effort. In the third place, it was of course a mere inference that be- cause his master had made motions with his stick as if ho were endeavouring to bring the water-lily near to him, he really wanted to get hold of the blossom, and not merely to make those vain manoeuvres with his stick. Now, of course the mind may draw inferences of its own, and act on them, in a state which may for the most part be described as a "waking dream ;" but just so far as it does so, is the state badly described in that language, since no one could have such a waking dream who was not also, at other times, fully awake, and in the fixed habit of rescuing itself by the exercise of active reason from the mere drift of the sense-impressions presented to it.
Our own conviction is very strong that the " waking dream " theory--in other words, the automatic theory—will not explain any one of the higher instances of animal intelligence,---and by the higher instances of animal intelligence, we mean the innumerable cases where an animal meets with unexpected difficulties with which it had not been trained to cope, and sur- mounts them by the efforts of its own mind. It seems to us one thing to assert that the highest animals below our own race are not competent so to emancipate themselves from the habits impressed upon them as to think out a new scheme of life for themselves ; and quite another to assert that when under the influence of that strong desire to please, which seems nearly the highest impulse that actuates an intelligent and affectionate dog, it is incapable of adapting means to ends for itself by the independent action of its own mind. The Edinburgh reviewer instances the tame subordination of London cab-horses to the training of man, as one of the most striking proofs that the horse has no power of substituting ends of its own for the automatic habits impressed on it by man. But no one ever supposed that any one of the lower animals has such a power of calmly weighing ends and means, as deliberately to choose for itself a different state of life from that to which it is accus- tomed and subdued by its daily habits. How many children, —nay, how many men,—have any such power? Does not everybody regard it as a sign of singular force of character in a boy, if at twelve or fourteen he decides to take up a line of life of his own choosing ? Would any child of eight, unless goaded to it by extreme cruelty, conceive the possibility of striking out a new end in life for itelf ? And is it much to say that the lower races of animals are, as races, incapable of doing what almost all children as children arc incapable of doing ? The practical question is not Dr. Lindsay's, whether there be any races of animals equal in intelligence and character to man --for there is, of course, no pretence for such a question—but whether the highest point which the most sagacious animals touch, is not far above that of mere auto- matic habit trained by some superior intelligence. We entirely reject the " waking-dream " theory of the higher intelligence of cats, dogs, and elephants, not to mention foxes, and even many birds. We admit, indeed, that their highest intelligence is shown in trying to gain individual ends which they strongly desire to gain, and not in the power to arrange a general plan of life. But in overcoming new and unexpected obstacles even to individual ends which they greatly desire, whether from love to their master or any less disinterested motive, we believe that many of the lower animals exhibit a power of reflection and resource which it is as impossible to explain reasonably by the " waking-dream " theory, as it is impossible to explain the invention or the manufacture of flint imple- ments or cross-bows by the waking-dream theory. We believe that the germs of the higher faculties appear in the evolution of life long before the lower faculties attain their full development- Nothing, for instance, is more touching than the disinterested, unselfish, and loyal devotion and attachment of the highest of the lower animals to man ; yet here we have the germs of some of the very highest parts of human nature, and that, too, long before the lower parts of human nature appear in these animals in anything like their fullest development. Why, then,
should it be surprising that feats of acute inference are achieved and acted upon by creatures quite incapable of setting before themselves a general ideal of life, or of making a coherent and combined effort to set themselves free from those conditions of life under which from their infancy they have found themselves ?
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