T THE DUKE OF ARGYLL ON UNITY IN NATURE. HE Duke
of Argyll, in his new and very interesting paper in the Contemporary Review on the light which animal instincts throw on the mind of Man, again interprets the "unity of Nature " in such a manner as to affirm his belief that there is
nowhere any real break in the perfect continuity of the process by which animal instinct and sagacity are developed into human reason and will. He holds that man, and all that is in man, is " nothing but the result and index of an adjustment contrived by and reflecting the Mind that is supreme in Nature." " We are derived," he says, " and not original. We have been created, or—if any one likes the phrase better—we have been ' evolved ;' not, however, out of nothing, nor out of confusion, nor out of lies ; but out of Nature, which is but a word for the source of all existence, the source of all order, and the very ground of all truth, —the fountain in which all fullness dwells." This last sentence is ambiguous ; but the former,—the one that asserts that all man is and does is " but the result of an adjustment, contrived by and reflecting the Mind that is supreme in Nature,"—appears to us final, as excluding the notion that the Duke sees any- thing oven in human volition which is outside the realm of the pre-established and carefully-adjusted harmony between the principles of organic growth and the principles of that reflex
thought and energy which organic growth stimulates. The drift of his new paper,—a drift in which we heartily agree,—
is to show that instinct in the animal is the exact cor- relative of what we call intuition in man, only that the one has very much less in it of distinct thought and reasoning, while the other has very much less in it of what we may call ready-made action. The bird's instinct,—as the Duke believes, and we think shows,—is,—often at least,—not unaccompanied by keen feeling, and is evidently guided, if not precisely by a keen reflective judgment, yet by something which answers all the purposes of a keen reflective judgment, since it adapts itself to varying circumstances by making a corre- sponding choice of precautions. On the other hand, the man's intuition on which he rears so great a structure of scientific principle, is usually far short of anything on which he can immediately act. It must be combined with a great many lessons of experience, must be expanded into a vast number of subordinate inferences, before it can be made the basis of that sure sort of action which, in the case of the lower animals, instinct appears to elicit at once from the pressure of the occasion. For instance, compare the sort of intui- tions, mathematical and physical, and the superstructure of experience to which they are applied, whereby man has learned so to fire a gun as to destroy his enemy while still at a distance, with the account which the Duke of Argyll gives in the following passage of the instinct of Merganser ducks :-
" On a secluded lake in one of the Hebrides, I observed a Dun- diver, or female of the Bed-breasted Merganser (Mergus Serrator), with her brood of young ducklings. On giving chase in the boat, we soon found that the young, although not above a fortnight old, had such extraordinary powers of swimming and diving, that it was almost impossible to capture them. The distance they went under water, and the unexpected places in which they emerged, baffled all our efforts for a considerable time. At last one of the brood made for the shore, with the object of hiding among the grass and heather which fringed the margin of the lake. We pursued it as closely as we could, but when the little bird gained the shore, our boat was still about twenty yards off. Long drought had left a broad margin of small, flat stones and mud between the water and the usual bank. I saw the little bird run up about a couple of yards from the water, and then suddenly disappear. Knowing what was, likely to be enacted, I kept my eye fixed on the spot ; and when the boat was run upon the beach, I proceeded to find and pick up the chick. But on reaching the place of disappearance, no sign of the young Merganser was to be seen. The closest scrutiny, with the certain knowledge that it was there, failed to enable me to detect it. Proceeding cautiously forwards, I soon became convinced that I had already overshot the mark ; and, on turning round, it was only to see the bird rise like an apparition from the stones, and dashing past the stranded boat, regain the lake,—where, having now recovered its wind, it instantly dived and disappeared. The tactical skill of the whole of this manoeuvre, and the success with which. it was executed, were greeted with loud cheers from the whole party ; and our admira- tion was not diminished when we remembered that some two weeks before that time the little performer had been coiled up inside the shell of an egg, and that about a month before it was apparently nothing but a mass of albumen and of fatty oils The young of all the Anaticla are born, like the gallinaceons birds, not naked or blind, as most others are, but completely equipped with a feathery down, and able to swim or dive as soon as they see the light. More- over, the young of the Merganser have the benefit of seeing from the first the parent bird performing these operations, so that imitation may have some part in developing the perfection with which they are executed by the young. But the particular manoeuvre resorted to by the young bird which baffled our pursuit was a manoeuvre in which it could have had no instruction from example,—the manoeuvre, namely, which consists in biding not under any cover, but by remain- ing perfectly motionless on the ground. This is a method of escape which cannot be resorted to successfully except by birds whose colouring is adapted to the purpose by a close assimilation with the colouring of surrounding objects. The old bird would not have been concealed on the same ground, and would never itself resort to the same method of escape. The young, therefore, cannot have been in- structed in it by the method of example. But the small size of the chick, together with its obscure and curiously mottled colouring, are specially adapted to this mode of concealment. The young of all birds which breed upon the ground are provided with a garment in such perfect harmony with surrounding effects of light as to render this manoeuvre easy. It depends, however, wholly for its success upon absolute stillness. The slightest motion at once attracts the eye of any enemy which is searching for the young. And this absolute stillness must be preserved amidst all the emotions of fear and terror which the close approach of the object of alarm must, and obviously does, inspire. Whence comes this splendid, even if it be unconscious, faith in the sufficiency of a defence which it must require such nerve and strength of will to practise ? No movement, not even the slightest, though the enemy should seem about to trample on it ; such is the terrible requirement of Nature—and by the child of Nature implicitly obeyed ! Here, again, beyond all question, we have an instinct as much born with the creature as the harmonious tinting of its plumage—the external furnishing being inseparably united with the internal furnishing of mind which enables the little creature in very truth to walk by faith, and not by sight.' Is this antoma- tonism ? Is this machinery ? Yes, undoubtedly, -in the sense ex- plained before—that the instinct has been given to the bird in pre- cisely the same sense in which its structure has been given to it—so that anterior to all experience, and without the aid of instruction or of example, it is inspired to act in this manner on the appropriate occasion arising."
Now, comparing this elaborate machinery,—machinery in- volving the action and reaction of fear and self-restraint, in combinations at least as remarkable as the adjustment of the external means to the end which it attained,—with the sort of machinery, also involving ample elements of fear and self-
restraint, by which man learns to defend a camp against an enemy, we observe that the difference is rather in the smaller proportion of ready-made action and the larger proportion of
carefully-constructed and thought-out action, than in anything else. But what does that difference imply The Duke even. goes so far as to say, if we understand him rightly, that there is no difference in kind. The bird's stock of experience is small and his range of choice between various modes of self-defence is small ; there is nothing to show that his actions are in any degree dependent on careful or long-continued inference. His manceuvres are, as the Duke believes, and as seems likely, identical with those of his ancestors of like organisation thousands of generations back ; they are equally prompt, equally well adapted to the arrangements of the external world in which they are effected, and equally independent of elaborate precautionary preparations. On the other hand, though the man starts from the same rudimentary fears and instincts of self- restraint in danger, and though the foundation of all his mili- tary science is what may fairly be called the intellectual in- stincts at the base of mathematical and dynamical reasoning, yet it is obvious enough that the distance between these funda- mental starting-points, and the artillery arrangements by which he makes a camp secure against an enemy, is enormous, and that all that distance is filled np by carefully linked chains of both prac- tical and intellectual inference. This the Duke, of course, admits.
Only, in his opinion, the " adjustments " between the mind of man and the organisation which has led him to pick up these
innumerable lessons of experience and of abstract reasoning, are of no different kind, are not distinct in essence, though
comprehending a much greater variety of form, from those adjustments between the bird's organism and his situation which teach him, when pursued, to take to the shelter of the muddy bank, and to keep his whole body absolutely still when
he is there, in spite of the agitating terror by which he is driven there.
Now, we want to ask whether this is really true. Is there no radical difference in kind between the two cases P One thing will be admitted at once; there is an extraordinary differ-
ence in the proportion between what may be properly called intellect and will and what it is impossible to ascribe to any- thing except imperious organic impulse, in the two cases. If the bird exerts will at all to still the palpitations of his heart,—which is all conjecture,—he must be a bird capable of a heroism which would show itself in other ways. It is quite as rational to suppose that there may be some provision in the bird's organism for a sudden though temporary paralysis of the motor nerves during the period of hiding in the mud, and its sudden cessation again. At all events, as is frankly admitted by the Duke, it is impossible to imagine that the young bird can have reflected beforehand on what he should do if thus attacked,— that he can have observed the likeness of the stones and mud to his own plumage, and can have resolved, by way of pre- caution, that if ever he so loses his wind by diving that a rest is necessary for him, he will take to the bank till he recovers his wind again. That is absurd, and the Duke insists that it is absurd. But it is obvious that what man does, in preparing guns and a camp which he fortifies or learns to fortify against an enemy, is conduct of this nature. It is all compounded of forethought, precaution, and inferences drawn, either from experience, or from those few intellectual "intuitions " which we call axioms. More than this, one of the most import- ant elements in the human precaution is the artificial induce- ment of that peculiar moral state which we call military discipline,—a sort of voluntary and superinduced equivalent for courage, which, though not half as perfect as the bird's instinctive motionlessness, is yet manufacturable on a much larger scale, and also applicable to a far larger range of dangerous emergencies. Now, what is the general result of this comparison ?
Why, as it seems to us, that the "pre-established harmonies," the "adjustments "between the bird's organism and his actions, are much closer, much completer, much more sufficient for the explanation of what he actually does, than the man's. In the man's case, the range of choice is so enormously large, that you can seldom predict to what result any particular external " stimulus " will lead, while in the bird's an adequate naturalist generally can. In the man's case, the intervening layer of free choice is always -vitiating your calculation. Men's inferences may be imperfect only because the men of science have neglected work which they had it in their power to do, and might have done. Men's moral discipline may be imperfect only because the authorities who imposed the discipline did not do their work thoroughly, did not set the example themselves which they ought to have set. In the bird's case, if his organism is not defective, you can almost always tell, within the range of two or three alternatives, exactly what he will do. In the man's case, you can never tell, even if you know the history of his race and his own history, exactly what he will do. Any given "stimulus " provokes from the man so many totally different responses. Now, is it accurate to speak of " adjustment " at all, unless you know, or may know after sufficient study, for certain, what response the organism will give to any given stimulus P The adjustment between man's mind and his organism can only be spoken of as a natural expression of the " unity of Nature," if you really believe that everything which he does or can do,—good and evil, righteous and wicked,—is as much the outcome of the system of Nature which produced him as is the action and reaction between a bird's instinct and his physical wants. If the Duke thinks that, then he, of course, holds the distinction between immorality and morality to be one concerning the time and stage of existence alone ; everything which man does he must have done, as surely as the merganser must have taken to the bank when his lungs were exhausted with his long dive. In that case, of course, Man is but a part of Nature, —though a more advanced part,—in precisely the same sense in which the Merganser is a part of Nature. But if, as we believe, and as it seems to us all history shows, it is impossible in the case of the highest beings to know, by merely studying their nature, what response they will give to many a stimulus affecting their organism, if there be a real power to choose for themselves what response they will give to a given stimulus, then, of course, the higher you go into the scale of being, the less complete is the knowledge which you can draw from " the adjustment " of the organism to its environment. You know the organism, and you know the stimulus, and you know the sort of re- sponse which, in the case of a mere animal, would be given to that stimulus ; but you do not know,' in the case of man, how far that response may be vitally altered by what we call his own will. And to explain that will as only one of the modes of "adjustment" between the stimulus and the organism, is not to explain it, but to explain it away. It seems to us, as we once hinted before, that the Duke of Argyll is using " Unity of Nature" in a manner calculated to set up a real confusion in the minds of his readers. The reason, as we hold, why man loses so much of individual animal instinct in the very pro- cess of gaining so much from the constructive power of intellectual and moral principle, is that there may be more and more room in his world for free choice, for striking out his own course, for passing out of the world where all life is an in- evitable adjustment between an external stimulus and an internal impulse, into the life of conscious self-restraint, of free choice between good and evil—in a word, the life of self-formed char- acter, and self-created destiny. A "pre-established harmony" or adjustment is the worst description in the world to apply to a nature which shows no promptitude in responding effectually to the stimulus of immediate wants, but rather disciplines itself to endure some wants and to provide for others long before they are felt, and generally, in fact, moulds its wants so as to make them subserve a given standard of character, instead of subor- dinating its character to its wants.
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