Cancelled

With its clever snark and searing perspective, Cancelled is a funny,

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Author: Farrah Penn

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.
 ORGANIC NATURE’S RIDDLE.
BY ST. GEORGE MIVART.

II.
A thoroughly mechanical conception of nature is the scientific
ideal of a very large and a very influential school of thinkers.24
and the goal towards which they strive. In so striving they
follow the lead of the earliest of modern philosophers,
Descartes, who would probably have felt no small satisfaction
could he have foreseen that the doctrine of animal automatism
would be so eloquently advocated in the nineteenth century, as
well as that of a mechanical evolution of new species of animals
and plants.
Evidently the last-mentioned conception was necessary to
render the mechanical theory complete. As long as men
believed in the action of any mysterious intelligence hidden in
nature, and working through it in specific evolution towards
foreseen and intended ends, a mechanical conception of nature
was obviously impossible. But no less impossible was the
acceptance of such a mechanical hypothesis as long as any
belief remained in the existence, in individual animals, of an
innate and mysterious instinctive power directing their actions in
ways beneficial to them or to their race, yet unintended and
unforeseen by the creatures which performed those actions. A
denial of the existence of any true “instinct,” as well as of any
unmechanical action in specific evolution, was then necessary
for the maintenance of the mechanical theory, and accordingly
such denials have been confidently made, as we have already
seen.
While, however, this current of thought has been gaining in
volume and velocity, another contrary current has no less made
itself manifest, and amongst its exponents Edward Von
Hartmann25 is an eloquent advocate of the manifest action of
intelligence in nature, and of what may thus be called an
“intellectual” as opposed to a “mechanical” conception of the
universe. He lays much stress upon instinct, and is as earnest in
asserting its distinct existence and nature, as are the
mechanicians in denying its existence.
As was said at the beginning of the former article, the great
interest just now of the study of instinct, lies in its bearings on
the Darwinian hypothesis, or rather on the philosophy therewith
connected. Let us then proceed to examine whether or not the
analogies before pointed out between instinct and other forms
of vital activity can be carried further. Let us especially examine
whether the consideration of instinct in the widest sense of that
term, throws any glimmerings of light upon that most recondite
and still most mysterious process, the genesis of new species.
We may be encouraged to hope that such a result is possible
from the words of one of those twin biologists who on the same
night put forth their independently-arrived-at views as to what
we are all agreed to regard as at least an important factor in the
origin of species. No less a person than Mr. Wallace has written
the following significant words:—
“No thoughtful person can contemplate without amazement the
phenomena presented by the development of animals. We see
the most diverse forms—a mollusk, a frog, and a mammal—
arising from apparently identical primitive cells, and progressing
for a time by very similar initial changes, but thereafter each
pursuing its highly complex and often circuitous course of
development with unerring certainty, by means of laws and
forces of which we are totally ignorant. It is surely a not
improbable supposition that the unknown power which
determines and regulates this marvellous process may also
determine the initiation of these more important changes of
structure, and those developments of new parts and organs
which characterise the successive stages of the evolutions of
animal forms.”
These words advocate and confirm what I have elsewhere
antecedently urged. Many influences doubtless may come into
play in the origin of new species; but let us look a little narrowly
at certain influences which must come into play therein, and the
action of which no man can deny.
One of these influences (which no one has more richly
illustrated than has the late Mr. Darwin) is that of heredity; but
what is heredity?
In the first place it is obviously a property, not of new
individuals, not of offspring, but of parental forms. As every one
knows, it is the innate tendency which each organism possesses
to reproduce its like. If any living creature, x, was self-
impregnating and the outcome of a long line of self-
impregnating predecessors, all existing in the midst of one
uniform and continuously unvarying environment, then x would
produce offspring completely like itself. This fundamental
biological law of reproduction may be compared with the
physical first law of motion, according to which any body in
motion will continue to move on uniformly at the same rate and
in the same direction until some other force or motion is
impressed upon it.
The fact that new individual organisms arise from both a
paternal and a maternal influence, and from a line of ancestors
every one of which had a similar bifold origin, modifies this first
law of heredity only so far as to produce a more or less complex
compound of hereditary reproductive tendencies in every
individual, the effect of which must be analogous to that
mechanical law of the composition of forces resulting in the
production of a new creature resembling its immediate and
more remote progenitors in varying degrees, according to (1)
the amount of force springing from each ancestral strain, and
(2) the compatibility or incompatibility26 of the prevailing
tendencies, resulting in an intensification, perpetuation,
modification, or neutralisation of ancestral characters, as the
case may be.
All such action is but “heredity” acting in one or other mode; but
there is another and fundamentally different action which has to
be considered, and that is the action of the environment upon
nascent organisms—an action exercised either directly upon
them, or indirectly upon them through its direct action upon
their parents. That such actions produce unmistakable effects is
notorious. It will be, I think, sufficient here to advert to such
cases as the well-known brood-mare covered by a quagga, and
the peculiar effects of a well-bred bitch being lined by a
mongrel. These show how an action exercised upon the female
parent (but with no direct action on the immediate offspring)
may act indirectly upon her subsequent progeny.
As a rule, modifications accidentally or artificially induced in
parents are not transmitted to their offspring, as is well shown
by the need of the repetition of circumcision, and of pressure of
Indian children’s heads and Chinese girls’ feet, in each
generation. Yet there is good evidence that such changes are
occasionally inherited. The epileptic offspring of injured guinea-
pigs is a case often referred to. Haëckel speaks of a bull which
had lost its tail by accident, and which begot entirely tailless
calves. With respect to cats,27 I am indebted to Mr. John Birkett
for the knowledge of an instance in which a female with an
injured tail produced some stump-tailed kittens in two litters.
There is evidence that certain variations are more apt to be
inherited than others. Amongst those very apt to be inherited
are skin affections, affections of the nervous system and of the
generative organs, e.g. hypospadias and absence of the uterus.
The last case is one especially interesting, because it can only
be propagated indirectly.
Changes in the environment notoriously produce changes in
certain cases, even in adults. The modifications which may
result from the action of unusual agencies on the embryo have
been well shown by M. C. Dareste.28 As has been already
remarked, processes of repair take place the more readily the
younger the age of the subject. Similarly, it is probable that the
action of the environment generally acts more promptly and
intensely on the embryo than in the older young. That the same
organism will sometimes assume very different forms has been
observed by Professor Lankester in the case of Bacterium
rufescens.29
The effects of changed conditions is often very striking. Ficus
stipulata grown on a wall has small, thin leaves, and clings to
the surface like a large moss or a miniature ivy. Planted out, it
forms a shrub, with large, coarse, leathery leaves.
Mr. Wallace has pointed out some of the curious direct effects of
external conditions on organisms. He tells us30 that in the small
island of Amboina the butterflies (twelve species, of nine
different genera) are larger than those of any of the more
considerable islands about it, and that this is an effect probably
due to some local influence. In Celebes a whole series of
butterflies are not only of a larger size, but have the same
peculiar form of wing. The Duke of York’s Island seems, he tells
us, to have a tendency to make birds and insects white, or at
least pale, and the Philippines to develop metallic colors; while
the Moluccas and New Guinea seem to favor blackness and
redness in parrots and pigeons. Species of butterflies which in
India are provided with a tail to the wing, begin to lose that
appendage in the islands, and retain no trace of it on the
borders of the Pacific. The Æneas group of papilios never have
tails in the equatorial region of the Amazon Valley, but gradually
acquire tails, in many cases, as they range towards the northern
and southern tropics. Mr. Gould says that birds are more highly
colored under a clear atmosphere than in islands or on coasts—
a condition which also seems to affect insects, while it is
notorious that many shore plants have fleshy leaves. We need
but refer to the English oysters mentioned by Costa, which,
when transported to the Mediterranean, grew rapidly like the
true Mediterranean oyster, and to the twenty different kinds of
American trees said by Mr. Meehan to differ in the same manner
from their nearest American allies, as well as to the dogs, cats,
and rabbits which have been proved to undergo modifications
directly induced by climatic change. But still more strange and
striking changes have been recorded as due to external
conditions. Thus it is said31 that certain branchiopodous
creatures of the crab and lobster class (certain crustacea) have
been changed from the form characteristic of one genus
(Artemia salina) into that of quite another (Branchipus), by
having been introduced in large numbers by accident into very
salt water. The latter form is not only larger than the former, but
has an additional abdominal segment and a differently formed
tail. Such changes tell strongly in favor of the existence in
creatures of positive, innate tendencies to change in definite
directions under special conditions.
It is also obvious that the very same influences (e.g. amounts of
light, heat, moisture, &c.) will produce different effects in
different species, as also that the nature of some species is
more stubborn and less prone to variation than that of others.
Such, for example, is the case with the ass, the guinea-fowl,
and the goose, as compared with the dog, the horse, the
domestic fowl, and the pigeon. Thus both the amount and the
kind of variability differ in different races, and such
constitutional capacities or incapacities tend to be inherited by
their derivative forms, and so every kind of animal must have its
own inherent powers of modifiability or resistance, so that no
organism or race of organisms can vary in an absolutely
indefinite manner; and if so, then unlimited variability must be a
thing absolutely impossible.
The foregoing considerations tend to show that every variation
is a function32 of “heredity” and “external influence”—i.e. is the
result of the reaction of the special nature of each organism
upon the stimuli of its environment.
In addition to the action of heredity and the action of the
environment, there is also a peculiar kind of action due to an
internal force which has brought about so many interesting
cases of what is called “serial and lateral homology” which
cannot be due to descent, but which demonstrate the existence
of an intra-organic activity, the laws of which have yet to be
investigated. Comparative anatomy, pathology, and teratology
combine to point out the action of this internal force.
“Lateral homology” refers to the production of similar structures
on either side of the body, as in the similarity of our right and
left hands and feet. “Serial homology” refers to the production
of similar structures one behind the other, as in the series of
similar segments in the body of a worm or a centipede, and the
similar series of limbs in the latter animal.
These tendencies to lateral and serial repetition show
themselves in ways which cannot be accounted for by
inheritance from ancestral forms, but loudly proclaim the
presence and action of some internal force tending to produce
such homologous repetitions in organisms in different animals.
Thus even in ourselves, when we compare our leg and foot with
our arm and hand, we find that they have homologous features
which cannot be accounted for as being inheritances from
supposed ancestral animals. Our extremities resemble each
other in the texture of the skin, the shape of the nails, and
other points, and these resemblances are not due to external
conditions, but exist in spite of them; and comparative anatomy
reveals to us countless similar examples in the animal kingdom.
Limbs can hardly be more unlike in form and position than are
the arms and legs of birds, and yet we meet with breeds of
fowls and pigeons the feet of which are furnished with what are
called “boots,” that is, with long feathers which grow on the side
of the foot, serially corresponding with that of the hand, which
grow the feathers of the wing.
Again, in disease, and in cases of monstrosity or congenital
malformation, nothing is more common than to find precisely
similarly diseased conditions, or similar abnormalities of
structure, affecting serially or laterally homologous parts, such
as corresponding parts of the two arms or two legs, or of the
right (or left) arm and hand and leg and foot respectively.
Altogether it seems then to be undeniable that the characters
and the variations of species33 are due to the combined action
of internal and external agencies acting in a direct, positive, and
constructive manner.
It is obvious, however, that no character very prejudicial to a
species could ever be established, owing to the perpetual action
of all the destructive forces of nature which destructive forces,
considered as one whole, have been personified under the
name “natural selection.”
Its action, of course, is, and must be, destructive and negative.
The evolution of a new species is as necessarily a process which
is constructive and positive, and, as all must admit, is one due
to those variations upon which natural selection acts. Variation,
which thus lies at the origin of every new species, is (as we
have seen) the reaction of the nature of the varying animal
upon all the multitudinous agencies which environ it. Thus “the
nature of the animal” must be taken as the cause, “the
environment” being the stimulus which sets that cause in action,
and “natural selection” the agency which restrains it within the
bounds of physiological propriety.
We may compare the production of a new species to the
production of a statue. We have (1) the marble material
responding to the matter of the organism; (2) the intelligent
active force of the sculptor, directing his arm, responding to the
psychic nature of the organism, which reacts according to law
as surely as in the case of reflex action in healing, or in any
other vital action; (3) the various conceptions of the artist,
which stimulate him to model, responding to the environing
agencies which evoke variation; and (4) the blows of the
smiting chisel, corresponding to the action of natural selection.
No one would call the mere blows of the chisel—apart from both
the active force of the artist and the ideal conceptions which
direct that force—the cause of the production of the statue.
They are a cause—they help to produce it and are absolutely
necessary for its production. They are a material cause, but not
the primary cause. This distinction runs through all spheres of
activity. Thus the inadequacy of “natural selection” to explain
the origin of species runs parallel with its inadequacy to explain
the origin of instinct, as before pointed out.
The formal discoverer of a new fossil is the naturalist who first
sees it with an instructed eye, appreciates and describes it, not
the laborer who accidentally uncovers but ignores it, and who
cannot be accounted to be, any more than the spade he
handles, other than a mere material cause of its discovery. So
we must regard the sum of the destructive agencies of nature,
as a material cause of the origin of new species, their formal
cause being the reaction of the nature of their parent organisms
upon the sum of the multitudinous influences of their
environment. This kind of action of “the organism”—this formal
cause—has been compared by Mr. Alfred Wallace, and by me,
with the action of the organism in its embryonic development;
and this, I have further urged, is to be likened to the processes
of repair and reproduction of parts of the individual after injury,
and this, again, to reflex action, and, finally, this last to instinct
as manifested in ourselves and in other animals also.
The phenomena, then, exhibited in the various processes which
have been passed in review—nutrition, growth, repair, reflex
action, instinct, the evolution of the individual and of the species
—will, I think, abundantly serve to convince him who carefully
considers them, that a mechanical conception of nature is
inadequate and untenable. For it cannot be denied that in all
these various natural processes, performed by creatures devoid
of self-conscious intellect, there is somehow and somewhere a
latent rationality, by the imminent existence of which their
various admirably calculated activities are alone explicable. We
are compelled to admit that the merely animal and vegetable
worlds which we regard as irrational, possess a certain
rationality. This innate mysterious rationality blindly executes the
most elaborately contrived actions in order to effect necessary
or useful ends not consciously in view. We have here to consider
the question, “How is this blind rationality, this practical but
unconscious intelligence, explicable?”
Edward Von Hartmann, the eloquent prophet of the unconscious
intelligence of nature, teaches us that such intelligence is the
attribute of the very animals and plants themselves.
But can we limit the manifestations of intelligence and quasi-
instinctive purpose to the organic world? By no means. The
phenomena of crystallisation, the repair in due form of the
broken angle of a crystal, the inherent tendencies of chemical
substances to combine in definite proportions, and other laws of
the inorganic world, speak to us of unconscious intelligence and
volition latent in it also.
A perception of this truth has led to the conception of the
universal presence of true intelligence, as it were in a
rudimentary form, throughout the whole material universe—the
universal diffusion of what the late Professor Clifford called
“mind-stuff” in every particle of matter.
Such a belief can, however, be entertained only by those who
neglect to note the differences of objects presented to the
senses, attending solely to their resemblances, and describing
them by inadequate and misleading terms. The habit of
perverting language in this manner, has been lately well spoken
of as using intellectual false coin. By such an abuse of language
and disregard of points of unlikeness, all diversities may easily
be reduced to identity. Against such abuse the scientific biologist
must energetically protest. The expression “life” refers to
definite phenomena which are not found but in animals and
plants. The crystal is not really alive, because it does not
undergo the cycle of changes characteristic of life. It does not
sustain itself by alimentation, reproduce its kind, and die.
Anyone choosing to stretch terms may say that molecules of
inorganic matter live, because molecules exist. But in that case
we shall have to create a new term to denote what we now call
life. We might as well say a lamp-post “feels” because we can
make an impression on it, or that crystals “calculate” because of
their geometrical proportions, or that oxygen “lusts” after that
which it rusts. As the late Mr. G. H. Lewes has said: “We deny
that a crystal has sensibility; we deny it on the ground that
crystals exhibit no more signs of sensibility than plants exhibit
signs of civilisation, and we deny it on the ground that among
the conditions of sensibility there are some positively known to
us, and these are demonstrably absent from the crystal. We
have full evidence that it is only special kinds of molecular
change that exhibit the special signs called sentient; we have as
good evidence that only special aggregations of molecules are
vital, and that sensibility never appears except in a living
organism, disappearing with the vital activities, as we know that
banks and trades-unions are specifically human institutions.”
The considerations which are here applied to vital activity, may
be paralleled by others applied to intelligence. They will show us
that however profoundly rational may be that world which is
commonly spoken of as irrational, yet that its rationality is not
truly the attribute of the various animals which perform such
admirably calculated actions, but truly belongs to what is the
ultimate and common cause of them all, and to that only.
There is, indeed, a logic in mere “feeling,” there is a logic even
in insentient nature; but that logic is not the logic of the crystal
nor of the brute; its true position must be sought elsewhere. It
is in them, but it is not of them.
However, let us patiently consider a little this hypothesis of an
innate, unconscious intelligence as the cause of the various
strictly, or analogically, instinctive actions of animals.
It is in the first place plain that no intelligence could exist so as
to adjust “means” to “ends,” except by the aid of memory; and
“memory” has therefore been freely attributed even to the lower
animals. Let us see, then, what the term “memory” really
denotes. Now we cannot be said to remember anything unless
we are conscious that what is again made present to our mind
has been present to our mind before. An image might recur to
our imagination a hundred times, but if at each recurrence it
was for us something altogether new and unconnected with the
past, we could not be said to remember it. It would rather be an
example of extreme “forgetfulness” than of “memory.” In
“memory,” then, there are and must be two distinct elements.
The first is the reproduction before the mind of what has been
before the mind previously, and the second element is the
recognition of what is so reproduced as being connected with
the past.
There is yet a further distinction which may be drawn between
acts of true recollection.
We are all aware that every now and then we direct our
attention to try and recall something which we know we have
for the moment forgotten, and which we instantly recognise
when we have recalled it. But besides this voluntary memory we
are sometimes startled by the flashing into consciousness of
something we had forgotten, and which we were so far from
trying to recollect that we were thinking of something entirely
different.
There are, then, two kinds of true memory—one in which the
will intervenes, and which may be spoken of as recollection, and
the other in which it does not, and which may be termed
reminiscence. Neither of these can exist in a creature destitute
of true self-consciousness. There are, however, two other kinds
of repeated action which take place even in ourselves, and
which should be carefully distinguished.
The first of these are practically automatic actions, which are
repeated unconsciously after having been learned, as in
walking, reading, speaking, and often in playing some musical
instrument. In a certain vague and improper sense we may be
said—having learned how to do these things—to recollect how
to do them; but unless the mind recognises the past in the
present while performing them they are not instances of
memory, but merely a form of habit in which consciousness may
or may not intervene.
The second class of repeated actions just referred to are, on the
other hand, those in which consciousness cannot be made to
intervene, and are mere acts of organic habit. Thus a man
wrecked on an island inhabited by savages, and long dwelling
there, may at first have the due action of his digestive organs
impeded by the unwonted food on which he may have to live.
After a little while, however, the evil diminishes, and in time his
organism may have “learnt” how to correspond perfectly with
the new conditions. Then with each fresh meal the alimentary
canal and glands must practically “recognise” a return of the
recently obtained experience, and repeat its freshly acquired
power of healthy response thereto. Can “memory” be properly
predicated of such actions of the alimentary glands? It can be
so predicated only by a perversion of language. It is not
memory, because not only is it divorced from consciousness as
it occurs, but it cannot anyhow be made present to
consciousness. Again, a boy at school has had a kick at football,
which has left a deep scar on his leg. That boy, now become an
old man, still bears the same scar, though all his tissues have
been again and again transformed in the course of seventy
years. Can the constant reproduction of the mark, in any
reasonable sense, be said to be an act of, or due to, memory?
Evidently it cannot, and neither can it be reasonably predicated
of any of the actions of plants or of the lowest animals.
As, then, “memory” cannot be predicated, except by an abuse
of language, of the lower forms of life, it would appear that
neither intelligence nor rationality can truly exist in them, so as
to preside over all those actions of nutrition, repair,
reproduction, and instinct which we have examined and
distinguished.
Nevertheless, Hartmann and his followers do not on this
account hesitate to ascribe true intelligence to unconscious
nature, and though such ascription may seem too absurd to
deserve serious consideration, it would nevertheless be a great
mistake to despise such opinions. For, as Mr. Lewes truly says,34
“As there are many truths which cease to be appreciated
because they are never disputed,” so there are many errors
which are best exposed by allowing them to run to a head. Mr.
Butler, who carries this hypothesis of unconscious intelligence to
its last consequences, asks,35 “What is to know how to do a
thing?” His answer is, “Surely, to do it.” And he represents how,
when many things have been perfectly learnt, they may be
performed unconsciously. In a very amusing chapter on
“Conscious and unconscious knowers,” he says, “Whenever we
find people knowing they know this or that ... they do not yet
know it perfectly.” In another place he says,36 “We say of the
chicken that it knows how to run about as soon as it is hatched
... but had it no knowledge before it was hatched? It grew eyes,
feathers, and bones; yet we say it knew nothing about all this....
What, then, does it know? Whatever it knows so well as to be
unconscious of knowing it. Knowledge dwells on the confines of
uncertainty. When we are very certain we do not know that we
know. When we will very strongly, we do not know that we will.”
Now the fact is that there is great ambiguity in the use of the
word know. Just as before with the term memory, so also here,
certain distinctions must be drawn if we would think coherently.
A. To “know,” in the highest sense which we give to the word, is
to be aware (by a reflex act) that we really have a certain given
perception. It is a voluntary, intelligent, self-conscious act,
parallel to that kind of memory which we before distinguished
as “recollection.”
B. We also say we “know” when we do not use a reflex act, but
yet have a true perception—a perception accompanied by
consciousness—as when we teach, and in most of our ordinary
intellectual acts.
C. When we so “know” a thing that it can be done with perfect
unconsciousness, we cannot be said to “know” it intellectually,
although in doing that thing our nervous and motor mechanism
acts (in response to sensational stimuli) as perfectly as, or more
perfectly than, in our conscious activity. The “knowledge” which
accompanies such “unconscious action” is improperly so called,
except in so far as we may be able to direct our minds to its
perception, and so render it worthy of the name—as we have
seen we may direct attention to our unconscious reminiscences,
and so make them conscious ones. In the same way then in
which we have already distinguished such acts of memory
(while unconscious) as sensuous memory, so we may
distinguish such acts of apprehension (while unconscious) as
sensuous cognition. By it we can understand, to a certain
extent, what may be the “knowledge” or “sensuous cognition”
of mere animals.
D. Besides the above three kinds of apprehensions, we may
distinguish others which can be only very remotely, if at all,
compared with knowledge, since they can never, by any effort,
be brought within the sphere of consciousness. Such are the
actions of our organism by which it responds to impressions in
an orderly and appropriate but unfelt manner—the intimate
actions of our visceral organs, which can be modified, within
limits, according to the influence brought to bear on them, as
we may see in the oarsman’s hand, the blacksmith’s arm, and
the ballet-dancer’s leg.
If such actions could be spoken of as in any sense
apprehensive, they would have to be spoken of as “organic
cognitions,” but they may be best distinguished as “organic
response” or “organic correspondence.”
That the inorganic world, no less than the organic, is instinct
with reason, and that we find in it objective conditions which
correspond with our subjective conceptions, is perfectly true;
but when once the profound difference between mere organic
habit and intellectual memory is apprehended, there will be little
difficulty in recognising the yet greater difference between
“organic correspondence” and the faithfulness of inorganic
matter to the laws of its being.
That the absence of consciousness in actions which are
perfectly performed, does not make such actions into acts of
“perfect knowledge,” is demonstrated by every calculating
machine. No sane person can say that such a machine
“possesses” knowledge, though it is true that it “exhibits” it.
Similarly we must refuse to apply the terms “memory” and
“intelligence” to the merely organic activity of animals and
plants.
The assertion that in the vegetal and lowest animal forms of life
there is an innate but unconscious intelligence, is an assertion
which contains an inherent contradiction, and is therefore
fundamentally irrational. Anyone who says that blind actions (in
which no end is perceived or intended) are truly intelligent ones,
abuses language. The meaning of words is due to convention,
and anyone who calls such actions truly intelligent, divides
himself from the rest of mankind by refusing to speak their
language.
What experience have we which can justify such a conception
as that of “unconscious intelligence?” We are indeed aware of a
multitude of actions which are evidently the outcome of
intelligence, but which (like the analogous action of a calculating
machine) are performed by creatures really unconscious, though
they may possess consentience. But consciousness is the
accompaniment of all those actions which we know to be
intellectual and rational. Our experience then contradicts the
hypothesis of the existence of any such thing as “unconscious
intelligence.” Such a thing is indeed no true concept, for it is
incapable not only of being imagined but also of being really
conceived of. It resembles such unmeaning expressions as “a
square pentagon” or a “pitch-dark luminosity.”
Nevertheless, our experience is in favor of the existence of an
intelligence which can implant in and elicit from unconscious
bodies activities which are intelligent in appearance and result.
Thus we can construct calculating machines and train animals to
perform many actions which have a delusive semblance of
rationality.
“Truly intelligent action” we know as being intelligent and
rational in its foresight, and therefore as necessarily conscious in
the very principle of its being.
“Unconsciously intelligent action,” improperly called “intelligent”
or “wise,” is that which is intelligent and wise only as to its
results, and not in the innermost principle of the creatures
(whether living or mere machines) which perform such action.
To speak technically, we have “formal” and “material”
intelligence, as we have “formal” and “material” vice and
virtue.37 We have already distinguished between the “formal”
and the merely “material” discoverer of a new fossil, and this
distinction is one which it is most important to bear in mind. It
is the failure to apprehend this distinction which is the root of a
vast number of modern philosophical errors, and the error which
consists in asserting the reality of “unconscious intelligence” is
one of them.
In fact “intelligence” exists very truly, in a certain sense, in the
admirably directed actions blindly performed by living beings. It
is not, however, “formally” in them, but exists formally in their
ultimate cause. Nevertheless that intelligence is so implanted
within them that it truly exists in them “materially” though it is
not “formally” in them.
We have here, then, the answer to the question, “What is the
rationality of the irrational?” It is a rationality which is very
really, though not materially, present in the irrational world,
while it is formally present in that world’s cause and origin.
To every Theist this answer will be a satisfactory one. To him
who is not a Theist there is no really satisfactory answer
possible. This is a question not of theology but of pure reason
antecedent to all theology. To reason, and to reason only, I
appeal when I affirm that the existence of a constant,
pervading, sustaining, directing, and all-controlling but
unfathomable Intelligence which is not the intelligence of
irrational creatures themselves, is the supreme truth which
nature eloquently proclaims to him who with unprejudiced
reason and loving sympathy will carefully consider her ways. He
can hardly fail to discover, immanent in the material universe,
“an action the results of which harmonize with man’s reason; an
action which is orderly, and disaccords with blind chance, or ‘a
fortuitous concurrence of atoms,’ but which ever eludes his
grasp, and which acts in modes different from those by which
we should attempt to accomplish similar ends.”38 For myself, I
am bound humbly to confess that the more I study nature the
more I am convinced that in the action of this all-pervading but
inscrutable and unimaginable intelligence, of which self-
conscious human rationality is the utterly inadequate image,
though the image attainable by us, is to be sought the sole
possible explanation of the mysterious but undeniable presence
in nature of a rationality in that which is in itself irrational.—
Fortnightly Review.
 CONCERNING EYES.
BY WILLIAM H. HUDSON.

White, crimson, emerald green, shining golden yellow, are

amongst the colors seen in the eyes of birds. In owls, herons,
cormorants, and many other tribes, the brightly-tinted eye is
incomparably the finest feature and chief glory. It fixes the
attention at once, appearing like a splendid gem, for which the
airy bird-body with its graceful curves and soft tints forms an
appropriate setting. When the eye closes in death, the bird,
except to the naturalist, becomes a mere bundle of dead
feathers: crystal globes may be put into the empty sockets, and
a bold life-imitating attitude given to the stuffed specimen; but
the vitreous orbs shoot forth no life-like flames, the “passion
and the fire whose fountains are within” have vanished, and the
best work of the taxidermist, who has given a life to his bastard
art, produces in the mind only sensations of irritation and
disgust. In museums, where limited space stands in the way of
any abortive attempts at copying nature too closely, the stuffer’s
work is endurable because useful; but in a drawing-room, who
does not close his eyes or turn aside to avoid seeing a case of
stuffed birds—those unlovely mementoes of death in their gay
plumes? who does not shudder, albeit not with fear, to see the
wild cat, filled with straw, yawning horribly, and trying to
frighten the spectator with its crockery glare? I shall never
forget the first sight I had of the late Mr. Gould’s collection of
humming-birds (now in the National Museum), shown to me by
the naturalist himself, who evidently took considerable pride in
the work of his hands. I had just left tropical nature behind me
across the Atlantic, and the unexpected meeting with a
transcript of it in a dusty room in Bedford Square gave me quite
a shock. Those pellets of dead feathers, which had long ceased
to sparkle and shine, stuck with wires—not invisible—over
blossoming cloth and tinsel bushes, how melancholy they made
me feel!
Considering the bright color and great splendor of some eyes,
particularly in birds, it seems probable that in these cases the
organ has a twofold use: first and chiefly, to see; secondly, to
intimidate an adversary with those luminous mirrors, in which all
the dangerous fury of a creature brought to bay is best
depicted. Throughout nature the dark eye predominates; and
there is certainly a great depth of fierceness in the dark eye of a
bird of prey; but its effect is less than that produced by the
vividly-colored eye, or even of the white eye of some raptorial
species, as, for instance, of the Asturina pucherani. Violent
emotions are associated in our minds—possibly, also, in the
minds of other species—with certain colors. Bright red seems
the appropriate hue of anger: the poet Herbert even calls the
rose “angrie and brave” on account of its hue: and the red or
orange certainly expresses resentment better than the dark eye.
Even a very slight spontaneous variation in the coloring of the
irides might give an advantage to an individual for natural
selection to act on; for we can see in almost any living creature
that not only in its perpetual metaphorical struggle for existence
is its life safeguarded in many ways; but when protective
resemblances, flight, and instincts of concealment all fail, and it
is compelled to engage in a real struggle with a living adversary,
it is provided for such occasions with another set of defences.
Language and attitudes of defiance come into play; feathers or
hairs are erected; beaks snap and strike, or teeth are gnashed,
and the mouth foams or spits; the body puffs out; wings are
waved or feet stamped on the ground, and many other gestures
of rage are practised. It is not possible to believe that the
coloring of the crystal globes, towards which an opponent’s
sight is first directed, and which most vividly exhibit the raging
emotions within, can have been entirely neglected as a means
of defence by the principle of selection in nature. For all these
reasons I believe the bright-colored eye is an improvement on
the dark eye.
Man has been very little improved in this direction, the dark eye,
except in the north of Europe, having been, until recent times,
almost or quite universal. The blue eye does not seem to have
any advantage for man in a state of nature, being mild where
fierceness of expression is required; it is almost unknown
amongst the inferior creatures; and only on the supposition that
the appearance of the eye is less important to man’s welfare
than it is to that of other species can we account for its survival
in a branch of the human race. Little, however, as the human
eye has changed, assuming it to have been dark originally, there
is a great deal of spontaneous variation in individuals, light
hazel and blue-grey being apparently the most variable. I have
found curiously marked and spotted eyes not uncommon; in
some instances the spots being so black, round, and large as to
produce the appearance of eyes with clusters of pupils on them.
I have known one person with large brown spots on light blue-
grey eyes, whose children all inherited the peculiarity; also
another with reddish hazel irides thickly marked with fine
characters resembling Greek letters. This person was an
Argentine of Spanish blood, and was called by his neighbors
ojos escritos, or written eyes. It struck me as a very curious
circumstance that these eyes, both in their ground color and the
form and disposition of the markings traced on them, were
precisely like the eyes of a common species of grebe, Podiceps
rollandi. But we look in vain amongst men for the splendid
crimson, flaming yellow, or startling white orbs which would
have made the dark-skinned brave inspired by violent emotions
a being terrible to see. Nature has neglected man in this
respect, and it is to remedy the omission that he stains his face
with bright pigments and crowns his head with eagles’ barred
plumes.
Bright-colored eyes in many species are probably due, like
ornaments and gaudy plumage, to sexual selection. The quality
of shining in the dark, however, possessed by many nocturnal
and semi-nocturnal species, has always, I believe, a hostile
purpose. When found in inoffensive species, as, for instance, in
the lemurs, it can only be attributed to mimicry, and this would
be a parallel case with butterflies mimicking the brilliant
“warning colors” of other species on which birds do not prey.
Cats amongst mammals, and owls amongst birds, have been
most highly favored; but to the owls the palm must be given.
The feline eyes, as of a puma or wild cat, blazing with wrath,
are wonderful to see; sometimes the sight of them affects one
like an electric shock; but for intense brilliance and quick
changes, the dark orbs kindling with the startling suddenness of
a cloud illuminated by flashes of lightning, the yellow globes of
the owl are unparalleled. Some readers might think my
language exaggerated. Descriptions of bright sunsets and of
storms with thunder and lightning would, no doubt, sound
extravagant to one who had never witnessed these phenomena.
Those only who spend years “conversing with wild animals in
desert places,” to quote Azara’s words, know that, as with the
atmosphere, so with animal life, there are special moments; and
that a creature presenting a very sorry appearance dead in a
museum, or living in captivity, may, when hard pressed and
fighting for life in its own fastness, be sublimed by its fury into a
weird and terrible object.
Nature has many surprises for those who wait on her: one of
the greatest she ever favored me with was the sight of a
wounded Magellanic eagle-owl I shot on the Rio Negro in
Patagonia. The haunt of this bird was an island in the river,
overgrown with giant grasses and tall willows, leafless now, for
it was in the middle of winter. Here I sought for and found him
waiting on his perch for the sun to set. He eyed me so calmly
when I aimed my gun, I scarcely had the heart to pull the
trigger. He had reigned there so long, the feudal tyrant of that
remote wilderness? Many a water-rat, stealing like a shadow
along the margin between the deep stream and the giant
rushes, he had snatched away to death; many a spotted wild
pigeon had woke on its perch at night with his cruel crooked
talons piercing its flesh; and beyond the valley on the bushy
uplands many a crested tinamou had been slain on her nest and
her beautiful glossy dark green eggs left to grow pale in the sun
and wind, the little lives that were in them dead because of
their mother’s death. But I wanted that bird badly, and
hardened my heart: the “demoniacal laughter” with which he
had so often answered the rushing sound of the swift black river
at eventide would be heard no more. I fired: he swerved on his
perch, remained suspended for a few moments, then slowly
fluttered down. Behind the spot where he had fallen was a great
mass of tangled dark-green grass, out of which rose the tall,
slender boles of the trees; overhead through the fretwork of
leafless twigs the sky was flushed with tender roseate tints, for
the sun had now gone down and the surface of the earth was in
shadow. There, in such a scene, and with the wintry quiet of the
desert over it all, I found my victim stung by his wounds to fury
and prepared for the last supreme effort. Even in repose he is a
big eagle-like bird: now his appearance was quite altered, and
in the dim, uncertain light he looked gigantic in size—a monster
of strange form and terrible aspect. Each particular feather
stood out on end, the tawny barred tail spread out like a fan,
the immense tiger-colored wings wide open and rigid, so that as
the bird, that had clutched the grass with his great feathered
claws, swayed his body slowly from side to side—just as a snake
about to strike sways its head, or as an angry watchful cat
moves its tail—first the tip of one, then of the other wing
touched the ground. The black horns stood erect, while in the
centre of the wheel-shaped head the beak snapped incessantly,
producing a sound resembling the clicking of a sewing-machine.
This was a suitable setting for the pair of magnificent furious
eyes, on which I gazed with a kind of fascination, not unmixed
with fear when I remembered the agony of pain suffered on
former occasions from sharp, crooked talons driven into me to
the bone. The irides were of a bright orange color, but every
time I attempted to approach the bird they kindled into great
globes of quivering yellow flame, the black pupils being
surrounded by a scintillating crimson light which threw out
minute yellow sparks into the air. When I retired from the bird
this preternatural fiery aspect would instantly vanish.
The dragon eyes of that Magellanic owl haunt me till now, and
when I remember them, the bird’s death still weighs on my
conscience, albeit by killing it I bestowed on it that dusty
immortality which is the portion of stuffed specimens in a
museum.
The question as to the cause of this fiery scintillating
appearance is, doubtless, one very hard to answer, but it will
force itself on the mind. When experimenting on the bird, I
particularly noticed that every time I retired the nictitating
membrane would immediately cover the eyes and obscure them
for some time, as they will when an owl is confronted with
strong sunlight; and this gave me the impression that the fiery,
flashing appearance was accompanied with, or followed by, a
burning or smarting sensation. I will here quote a very
suggestive passage from a letter on this subject written to me
by a gentleman of great attainments in science: “Eyes certainly
do shine in the dark—some eyes, e.g. those of cats and owls;
and the scintillation you speak of is probably another form of
the phenomenon. It probably depends upon some extra-
sensibility of the retina analogous to what exists in the
molecular constitution of sulphide of calcium and other
phosphorescent substances. The difficulty is in the scintillation.
We know that light of this character has its source in the heat
vibrations of molecules at the temperature of incandescence,
and the electric light is no exception to the rule. A possible
explanation is that supra-sensitive retinæ in times of excitement
become increasedly phosphorescent, and the same excitement
causes a change in the curvature of the lens, so that the light is
focussed, and pro tanto brightened into sparks. Seeing how
little we know of natural forces, it may be that what we call light
in such a case is eye speaking to eye—an emanation from the
window of one brain into the window of another.”
The theory here suggested that the fiery appearance is only
another form of the phosphorescent light found in some eyes, if
correct, would go far towards disposing of all those cases one
hears and reads about—some historical ones—of human eyes
flashing fire and blazing with wrath. Probably all such
descriptions are merely poetic exaggerations. One would not
look for these fiery eyes amongst the peaceful children of
civilization, who, when they make war, do so without anger, and
kill their enemies by machinery, without even seeing them; but
amongst savage or semi-savage men, carnivorous in their diet,
fierce in disposition, and extremely violent in their passions. It is
precisely amongst people of this description that I have lived a
great deal. I have often seen them frenzied with excitement,
their faces white as ashes, hair erect, and eyes dropping great
tears of rage, but I have never seen anything in them even
approaching to that fiery appearance described in the owl.
Nature has done comparatively little for the human eye, not
only in denying it the terrifying splendors found in some other
species, but also in the minor merit of beauty; yet here, when
we consider how much sexual selection concerns itself with the
eye, a great deal might have been expected. When going about
the world one cannot help thinking that the various races and
tribes of men, differing in the color of their skins and in the
climates and conditions they live in, ought to have differently
colored eyes. In Brazil, I was greatly struck with the magnificent
appearance of many of the negro women I saw there: well-
formed, tall, majestic creatures, often appropriately clothed in
loose white gowns and white turban-like headdresses; while on
their round polished blue-black arms they wore silver armlets. It
seemed to me that the pale golden irides, as in the intensely
black tyrant-bird Lichenops, would have given a finishing glory
to these sable beauties, completing their strange unique
loveliness. Again, in that exquisite type of female beauty which
we see in the white girl with a slight infusion of negro blood,
giving the graceful frizzle to the hair, the purple-red hue to the
lips, and the dusky terra-cotta tinge to the skin, an eye more
suitable than the dark dull brown would have been the intense
orange brown seen in the lemur’s eye. For many very dark-
skinned tribes nothing more beautiful than the ruby-red iris
could be imagined; while sea-green eyes would have best suited
dusky-pale Polynesians and languid peaceful tribes like that one
described in Tennyson’s poem:—
And round about the keel with faces pale,
Dark faces pale against that rosy flame,
The mild-eyed melancholy Lotos-eaters came.
Since we cannot have the eyes we should like best to have, let
us consider those that nature has given us. The incomparable
beauty of the “emerald eye” has been greatly praised by the
poets, particularly by those of Spain. Emerald eyes, if they only
existed, would certainly be beautiful beyond all others,
especially if set off with dark or black hair and that dim pensive
creamy pallor of the skin frequently seen in warm climates, and
which is more beautiful than the rosy complexion prevalent in
northern regions, though not so lasting. But either they do not
exist or else I have been very unfortunate, for after long
seeking I am compelled to confess that never yet have I been
gratified by the sight of emerald eyes. I have seen eyes called
green, that is, eyes with a greenish tinge or light in them, but
they were not the eyes I sought. One can easily forgive the
poets their misleading descriptions, since they are not
trustworthy guides, and very often, like Humpty Dumpty in
“Through the Looking Glass,” make words do “extra work.” For
sober fact one is accustomed to look to men of science; yet,
strange to say, while these complain that we—the unscientific
ones—are without any settled and correct ideas about the color
of our own eyes, they have endorsed the poet’s fable, and have
even taken considerable pains to persuade the world of its
truth. Dr. Paul Broca is their greatest authority. In his “Manual
for Anthropologists” he divides human eyes into four distinct
types—orange, green, blue, grey; and these four again into five
varieties each. The symmetry of such a classification suggests at
once that it is an arbitrary one. Why orange, for instance? Light
hazel, clay color, red, dull brown, cannot properly be called
orange; but the division requires the five supposed varieties of
the dark pigmented eye to be grouped under one name, and
because there is yellow pigment in some dark eyes they are all
called orange. Again, to make the five grey varieties the lightest
grey is made so light that only when placed on a sheet of white
paper does it show grey at all: but there is always some color in
the human skin, so that Broca’s eye would appear absolutely
white by contrast—a thing unheard of in nature. Then we have
green, beginning with the palest sage green, and up through
grass green and emerald green, to the deepest sea green and
the green of the holly leaf. Do such eyes exist in nature? In
theory they do. The blue eye is blue, and the grey grey, because
in such eyes there is no yellow or brown pigment on the outer
surface of the iris to prevent the dark purple pigment—the uvea
—on the inner surface from being seen through the membrane,
which has different degrees of opacity, making the eye appear
grey, light or dark blue, or purple, as the case may be. When
yellow pigment is deposited in small quantity on the outer
membrane, then it should, according to the theory, blend with
the inner blue and make green. Unfortunately for the
anthropologists, it doesn’t. It only gives in some cases the
greenish variable tinge I have mentioned, but nothing
approaching to the decided greens of Broca’s tables. Given an
eye with the right degree of translucency in the membrane and
a very thin deposit of yellow pigment spread equally over the
surface; the result would be a perfectly green iris. Nature,
however, does not proceed quite in this way. The yellow
pigment varies greatly in hue; it is muddy yellow, brown, or
earthy color, and it never spreads itself uniformly over the
surface, but occurs in patches grouped about the pupil and
spreads in dull rays or lines and spots, so that the eye which
science says “ought to be called green” is usually a very dull
blue-grey or brownish-blue, or clay color, and in some rare
instances shows a changeable greenish hue.
In the remarks accompanying the report of the Anthropomentric
Committee of the British Association for 1881 and 1883, it is
said that green eyes are more common than the tables indicate,
and that eyes that should properly be called green, owing to the
popular prejudice against that term, have been recorded as grey
or some other color.
Does any such prejudice exist? or is it necessary to go about
with the open manual in our hands to know a green eye when
we see one? No doubt the “popular prejudice” is supposed to
have its origin in Shakespeare’s description of jealousy as a
green-eyed monster; but if Shakespeare has any great weight
with the popular mind the prejudice ought to be the other way,
since he is one of those who sing the splendors of the green
eye.
Thus, in Romeo and Juliet:—
The eagle, madam,
Hath not so green, so quick, so fair an eye
As Paris hath.
The lines are, however, nonsense, as green-eyed eagles have no
existence; and perhaps the question of the popular prejudice is
not worth arguing about.
If we could leave out the mixed or neutral eyes, which are in a
transitional state—blue eyes with some dark pigment obscuring
their blueness, and making them quite unclassifiable, as no two
pairs of eyes are found alike—then all eyes might be divided
into two great natural orders, those with and those without
pigment on the outer surface of the membrane. They could not
be called light and dark eyes, since many hazel eyes are really
lighter than purple and dark grey eyes. They might, however, be
simply called brown and blue eyes, for in all eyes with the outer
pigment there is brown, or something scarcely distinguishable
from brown; and all eyes without pigment, even the purest
greys, have some blueness.
Brown eyes express animal passions rather than intellect, and
the higher moral feelings. They are frequently equalled in their
own peculiar kind of eloquence by the brown or dark eyes in
civilised dogs. In animals there is, in fact, often an exaggerated
eloquence of expression. To judge from their eyes, caged cats
and eagles in the Zoological Gardens are all furred and
feathered Bonnivards. Even in the most intellectual of men the
brown eye speaks more of the heart than of the head. In the
inferior creatures the black eye is always keen and cunning or
else soft and mild, as in fawns, doves, aquatic birds, etc.; and it
is remarkable that in man also the black eye—dark brown iris
with large pupil—generally has one or the other of these
predominant expressions. Of course, in highly-civilised
communities, individual exceptions are extremely numerous.
Spanish and negro women have wonderfully soft and loving
eyes, while the cunning weasel-like eye is common everywhere,
especially amongst Asiatics. In high-caste Orientals the keen,
cunning look has been refined and exalted to an expression of
marvellous subtlety—the finest expression of which the black
eye is capable.
The blue eye—all blues and greys being here included—is, par
excellence, the eye of intellectual man; that outer warm-colored
pigment hanging like a cloud, as it were, over the brain absorbs
its most spiritual emanations, so that only when it is quite blown
away are we able to look into the soul, forgetting man’s kinship
with the brutes. When one is unaccustomed to it from always
living with dark-eyed races, the blue eye seems like an anomaly
in nature, if not a positive blunder; for its power of expressing
the lower and commonest instincts and passions of our race is
comparatively limited; and in cases where the higher faculties
are undeveloped it seems vacant and meaningless. Add to this
that the ethereal blue color is associated in the mind with
atmospheric phenomena rather than with solid matter, inorganic
or animal. It is the hue of the void, expressionless sky; of
shadows on far-off hill and cloud; of water under certain
conditions of the atmosphere, and of the unsubstantial summer
haze,
Whose margin fades
Forever and forever as I move.
In organic nature we only find the hue sparsely used in the
quickly-perishing flowers of some frail plants; while a few living
things of free and buoyant motions, like birds and butterflies,
have been touched on the wings with the celestial tint only to
make them more aërial in appearance. Only in man, removed
from the gross materialism of nature, and in whom has been
developed the highest faculties of the mind, do we see the full
beauty and significance of the blue eye—the eye, that is,
without the interposing cloud of dark pigment covering it. In the
recently-published biography of Nathaniel Hawthorne, the
author says of him: “His eyes were large, dark blue, brilliant,
and full of varied expression. Bayard Taylor used to say that
they were the only eyes he ever knew to flash fire.... While he
was yet at college, an old gypsy woman, meeting him suddenly
in a woodland path, gazed at him and asked, ‘Are you a man or
an angel?’” Mrs. Hawthorne says in one of her letters quoted in
the book: “The flame of his eyes consumed compliment, cant,
sham, and falsehood; while the most wretched sinners—so
many of whom came to confess to him—met in his glance such
a pity and sympathy that they ceased to be afraid of God and
began to return to him.... I never dared gaze at him, even I,
unless his lids were down.”
I think we have, most of us, seen eyes like these—eyes which
one rather avoids meeting, because when met one is startled by
the sight of a naked human soul brought so near. One person,
at least, I have known to whom the above description would
apply in every particular; a man whose intellectual and moral
nature was of the highest order, and who perished at the age of
thirty, a martyr, like the late Dr. Rabbeth, in the cause of science
and humanity.
How very strange, then, that savage man should have been
endowed with this eye unsuited to express the instincts and
passions of savages, but able to express that intelligent and
high moral feeling which a humane civilisation was, long ages
after, to develop in his torpid brain! A fact like this seems to fit
in with that flattering, fascinating, ingenious hypothesis invented
by Mr. Wallace to account for facts which, according to the
theory of natural selection, ought not to exist. But, alas! that
beautiful hypothesis fails to convince. Even the most degraded
races existing on the earth possess a language and the social
state, religion, a moral code, laws, and a species of civilisation;
so that there is a great gulf between them and the highest ape
that lives in the woods. And as far back as we can go this has
been the condition of the human race, the real primitive man
having left no writing on the rocks. In the far dim past he still
appears, naked, standing erect, and with a brain “larger than it
need be,” according to the theory; so that of the oldest pre-
historic skull yet discovered Professor Huxley is able to say that
it is a skull which might have contained the brains of a
philosopher or of a savage. We can only conclude that we are
divided by a very thin partition from those we call savages in
our pride; and that if man has continued on the earth, changing
but little, for so vast a period of time, the reason is, that while
the goddess Elaboration has held him by one hand, endeavoring
ever to lead him onwards, the other hand has been clasped by
Degeneration, which may be personified as a beauteous and
guileful nymph whose fascinations have had as much weight
with him as the wisdom of the goddess.—Gentleman’s
Magazine.