The Life of Sentient Bodies

Chapter III — Sentient Life

Article 1. The Life of Sentient Bodies

This Chapter discusses the life of animal organisms, a life that is known as sentient or sensuous. It offers proof that animals are really living bodies, and that they are equipped with powers superior to those of plants, but that they lack reason. The Chapter studies the operations proper to the sentient organism, and the powers which constitute the immediate principles of these operations. Finally, it treats of the life-principle of sentient organisms, and discusses the natural characteristics of the animal soul. These matters are discussed in the following Articles:

Article 1. The Life of Sentient Bodies
Article 2. The Operations of Sentient Bodies
Article 3. The Sentient Life-Principle

a) Meaning of Sentient Body

A sentient body is a living body or organism which has, in addition to the nutritive, augmentative, and generative powers of the plant, some power of knowing through the use of bodily organ or organs; some capacity of being guided or influenced by such knowl-

edge; and some capacity to act upon knowledge by physical local movement. A sentient body is an animal body, or, more simply, an animal. And by the term animal we mean every bodily organism of a higher order than the plant. We use the term animal to indicate an essence, and we are not limited to the casual use of the term. We apply the term animal to bird or beast or insect or reptile; we apply the term to all phyla, sub-phyla, classes, orders, families, genera, species, races, varieties, and individuals studied by the biologist. We even apply the term to human beings, but it is not a term completely definitive of the human essence which is animality plus something else, namely, rationality.

An animal may be defined as an organism with sentient life. And a sentient body is necessarily an animal organism. Thus the terms sentient body and animal body (and the term animal as a substantive) are completely synonymous. Size and structure (the morphological type) is important for the laboratorian, but not for the philosophical psychologist. For animal life is as perfectly possessed (although not so complex or diversified in function) by the amoeba as by the elephant. From the standpoint of the simple essence animal, the mastodon and the flea on the ear of the mastodon are perfectly alike: each is a sentient organism, each is an animal.

An organism is necessarily a body endowed with vegetal life and the operations of nutrition, growth, and reproduction. A sentient organism is truly an organism, and therefore possesses these operations. But a sentient organism is more than a plant. It is a living body of the next higher grade after the plant.

The term sentient means having some power of sensing. And to sense means to know by means of a bodily part (or bodily parts). The bodily part which serves the organism in the operation of sensing (or sensation, or sense-knowledge) is called a sensory, or, more commonly, a sense-organ. The fundamental animal operation of sensing r’s always manifested by sentient organisms in connection with two other capacities: the tendency to act on the sense-knowledge acquired, and the capacity for actually acting upon that knowledge by bodily local movement.

b) Animals as Sentient Bodies

We are all well aware that there are animal organisms in the world, and that these living bodies have the power of sensing. We know that the dog or the cat has eyes and ears, and we know that these organs serve the animals as eyes and ears serve ourselves. Plenty of evidence is given us in the manner in which animals act. An animal may be deaf or blind, and its failure to respond to sound or light is as obvious and marked as the actual response given these stimuli by animals with normal eyes and ears. Yet there have been scientists and philosophers, and notable ones too (like Rene Descartes, for instance) who held that animals are not alive at all; that they are merely wonderful pieces of machinery. Descartes would have us believe that the cry of an injured animal is no more a vital manifestation than the squeaking of an ill-greased wheel, or the clatter of machinery when some part has been broken. On the other hand, there have been, and indeed now are, some who teach that brute animals are not only alive, but that they possess the power of reasoning and willing. The true doctrine, the doctrine capable of clear proof, is this: Animals (that is, brute animals, animals less than men) are sentient organisms, but they lack reason.

An animal is not a mere machine or automaton. For the action of a machine is the action of set and determined character; it is a matter of wheels and grooves, and driving rods, and gears. A machine acts only when some extrinsic or outside force is made to play upon its parts and set them, and keep them, in motion. And, given the same circumstances and conditions, a machine will always act in the same way. Now, an animal acts immanently, without application from without of an extrinsic force; and it does not always act in the same way when circumstances and conditions are the same. The racing dog may stop suddenly at his master’s command; but unless he is a very well-trained dog, he will not always do so. The playful cur may chase the marauding tom-cat, but, having once had experience of his claws, it will not chase the cat a second time. The bird will fly in terror from the hawk; but the same bird may face the hawk and die when there are defenceless young in her nest. No machine can give evidence of such varied action. For the rest, we have already shown that plants are truly alive, and the animal has all the perfection and the operations of the plant plus its own proper operations. If the lower order of organism is truly alive, the higher order certainly is.—We have seen and approved the ancient axiom, “Nature does nothing in vain.” And surely nature would be engaged in the most stupendous of vanities if she went, humanly speaking, to all the bother of constructing the highly complex animal organism, furnishing it with marvellously planned organs, like eyes and ears and nose, if these things are to have no meaning whatever. And, of course,‘these things would have no meaning and no use if the animal were merely a lifeless machine.

The animal is truly alive; is truly sentient; but the animal is not rational. Certain philosophers like Damiron (1794-1862) and Condillac (1715-1780), as well as the materialists and positivists, put men and brute animals on a common plane in point of knowledge and reason. We assert that the brute animal is not rational, or, in other words, that the animal does not possess intellect. We often hear animals called “intelligent,” but the term is misused in this connection. An animal may be alert in the use of its proper powers, but it is never intelligent, never possessed of reason or capable of intellectual activity. Animals are possessed of what is commonly called instinct, and it is a very wonderful thing; we shall speak of it later in its proper place. But animals have not intellect, and, for the present study, the following proof will amply suffice.

A bodily being endowed with intellect infallibly does three things: he understands (and does not merely sense); he learns to use significant signs which, in normally constituted organisms of this type, takes the form of articulate speech; and, thirdly, he is able to learn, and to improve himself in his manner of acting. In a word, a bodily being possessed of intellect can understand, he can talk, and he can learn how to do things in a better and more convenient way. We shall say a word on each of these points.

i. A being endowed with intellect can understand. The phrase to understand does not mean merely to sense and interpret in an individual and concrete way, as a dog does, for instance, in hearing and obeying a command. To understand means to grasp an essence, to lay hold of a thing in universal, to apprehend a meaning in the abstract: and this is the function of intellect. If a person says to me, “I saw a beautiful flower to-day,” I know what the words mean. I do not demand a picture of the flower in question, nor must I be led to look at the flower itself, before I grasp the meaning of the statement. For I know (intellectually) what a flower is, any flower, every flower. I have an intellectual grasp of the essence indicated by the term flower. In other words, I have the idea or concept of the reality known as flower. This explains what is meant by saying that I grasp the meaning of flower in universal, abstracting from the individual.and concrete determinants of the flower in question. I know what flower means as such. Now, an animal, a merely sentient being, does not understand in the true sense of that term. An animal may be trained to recognize certain words (that is, certain sounds) as signals or commands, but it cannot be made to grasp the sound as the expression of an idea. You may train the dog to do some definite thing when you pronounce the word “flower”; you may train the dog to bark, to whine, to run, to lie down, to stand on hind legs, or to do any one of an indefinite number of things, or a series of things, when he hears the word uttered in a particular way. There is nothing beyond the reach of sense in all this; there is no understanding in it, no intellect. You cannot teach the dog to understand the word “flower” any more than you can teach him to have an active interest in the science of botany or to gather and arrange specimens for a herbarium. But with a human being, the case is different. Once the human person has experienced what is meant by “flower” (and, indeed, his knowledge must begin with the senses) he goes on to form the idea or concept of what a flower essentially is. And so he understands the statement, “I saw a beautiful flower” without having to see the precise individual flower; he understands, indeed, without having to inquire about the sort of flower indicated; he understands without knowing whether the flower referred to be rose, or violet, or aster, or lily. And the case would be the same if the statement were, “I saw a rose.” The human person would understand “rose” in universal, or in general; he would understand in the abstract, without being told that the rose was large or small, of this variety or that, in budding form or in full flower. For the human person (having had some sense-experience of certain individual roses) understands; he grasps the essence indicated by the term rose; he knows what a rose is as such, what any rose is, what every rose is.

An amusing tale is told of a stolid pupil in geometry class, who demanded an explanation of the statement, “Two angles equal to a common third are equal to each other.” The teacher said, “Suppose I have three hats here on the desk. Hat number one is precisely like hat number three. Hat number two is also precisely like hat number three. Now, what must I conclude about the resemblance of hats number one and two?” The pupil answered, “I’d have to see the hats.” Naturally, there was uproar in that classroom. And why ? Because the pupils saw the absurdity of the dunce’s reply. And why did they find the reply absurd? Because every one of them knew precisely what is meant by hat, and by likeness, and unlikeness, and resent-blance. They knew these things in general or in universal. They had no need to have the hats before them as “these three silk hats” or “these three straw hats” or “these three old hats” or “these three expensive hats.” No; they understood; they had a grasp of the essential meaning of the terms used; they knew what is meant by hat as such,—a hat, any hat, every hat. In a word, their grasp of the meaning of the term hat was abstract (that is, independent of considerations such as shape, size, color, material, style, price, of any one individual hat, or of any collection of hats) and universal. For the pupils had intellect; and not sense merely.—Even the dunce knew what hat means. If he was befuddled by the technical phrasing of the axiom about angles, he none the less knew what angle means,—any angle, every angle, angle as such. And he knew what was meant by equality in angles or in hats. Otherwise, he could not even have put his question or have made his demand to see the hats.

It is the mark of a being endowed with intellect that he understands; that he grasps essential meanings; that he lays hold of essences in a universal way; that he knows things in an abstract manner; that he can unite, distinguish, differentiate, and elaborate the elements of his essential knowledge, and so can draw conclusions and exercise the power of reasoning. All this is the function of intellect. And no animal,—not the cleverest animal in the circus, nor the “most intelligent” of household pets,—gives any sign, or the beginning of a sign, of possessing such a power or such a function. We are forced to conclude that while brute-animals have sentiency, they have not reason or intellect. Brute animals are non-rational animals; only man is a rational animal.

2. An organic being endowed with intellect can use significant speech. This point follows from the foregoing. For a human being,—the only organic being endowed with intellect,—not only forms ideas and elaborates processes of reasoning; he expresses these things; he communicates them. This fact makes instruction possible; if it were not a fact, we should have no teachers, not even teachers who teach that animals have intellect or that man hasn’t. And the expression and communication of ideas, thoughts, essential meanings, reasonings, is managed by intelligent (or intellectual) beings through the invention and use of some code of sounds or signs or gestures. Human beings are well equipped for the utterance of varied, modulated, articulated sounds; they have organs admirably suited for such utterance, and obviously designed for it. The normal human being learns very early in life to imitate, to understand, and to use the articulated speech of those habitually about him. Now, the mere utterance of sounds, even of such as have a sentient significance, does not constitute speech. The tiny baby will cry when in pain, will laugh with delight, will coo with pleasure. The baby will utter sounds, and the sounds are expressions of sensed realities; but these sounds are not speech; they are not evidence of functioning intellect. For, while the baby has intellect, its intellect is not yet in adequate use; just as the baby has legs, but has not yet the use of them in walking. Experience, and sense experience, must serve the baby before his intellect can form ideas and acquire a usable system of them. Nor, when he has acquired the use of intellect, will the child entirely cease to use “animal sounds0 which are the expressions of sensed realities; even as a man, he will sigh, and sob, and yawn, and groan, and will cry out when he experiences sudden pain. But the child will not be limited to ”animal sounds” very long. And an animal, young or old, is always limited to such sounds, —to sounds which express sensed realities. The angry growl of a dog or his bark of joy; the cooing of doves in the mating season, or the chattering of monkeys,— these and all other “animal sounds” are always merely sentient in character; they always fall short of intellectual significance. Even those who like to say that “animals talk to one another” cannot force themselves to believe it. Even these (somewhat sentimental) persons cannot refrain from smiling as at an absurdity when some instance of animal “speech” is recorded as though it were a fact; they cannot, for instance, receive, with serious faces and assenting minds, the famous story of the blue-jays’ pow-wow as told by Mark Twain in an early chapter of Tramp Abroad. Nor could the exponents of animal “intelligence” accept seriously the same humorist’s acount of the comments passed by a ship’s parrot on the occasion of the passengers’ concert. The parrot in question was perched in the lounge where the concert was held, and he made a free running commentary upon the offerings of the performers. After a lady had sung, with much feeling, the old song which begins, “Home again, home again, from a foreign shore the parrot strode back and forth on his perch, swore horribly, and declared that ”he wouldn’t give a hang for a tugload of such rot.” The criticism killed the concert; there were no more songs; and the parrot leaned up against the bars of his cage and “laughed himself hoarse for joy.” Of course, these humorous accounts of animal “speech” are human concoctions; but why, if animals could really be regarded as intelligent, would these fictions be regarded as so deliciously funny? Mr. G. K. Chesterton, in The Everlasting Man, makes some notably pointed observations on the subject of “animal intelligence” and “animal speech.” He tells us of the poet who rises early to catch the glory of the sunrise and to express his sentiments about it in a sonnet. He adds that the cows in the field give us no sonnets on sunrise, although admirably situated for viewing many rosy dawns. We shall wait a long time before we notice the gambolling sheep or the winging skylark gaining the attention and applause of fellow-animals for such lines as

Full many a glorious morning have I seen

Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye.

And, although “the lark, at break of day arising, sings hymns at heaven’s gate,” the hymns are not expressed in intelligible speech, and we shall probably wait in vain for the publication of a skylark Watts.

Animals may be trained to utter at command certain sounds,—barks, or growls, or neighs, or grunts. Certain sentient beings may be trained to imitate the sound of human speech. But the most enthusiastic believer in animal intelligence would not profess to find in these sounds an animal language. Yet the parrot, for example, could, if it had intelligence, learn human speech even as a child learns it; such a parrot could be educated; it could be schooled; it could, in time, become a glamorous Bachelor of Arts. No parrot has, as yet, been graduated by an American university. A dog, however, has had that honor; he was made a Bachelor of Caninology by a publicity-seeking university in the hinterland in June 1935. We await with interest the publication of his dissertation.

It is a mark of an organic being endowed with intellect that he can learn to employ intellectually significant speech. Brute animals give no sign, nor the beginning of a sign, of a capacity for such utterance. We are forced to conclude that brute animals, while sentient, are not endowed with intellect.

5. An organic being endowed with intellect can improve his mode of action. An intelligent being can understand, can communicate understanding, can give and receive instruction, and can show the fruits of instruction; he can also show the fruits of understanding and personal reasoning. A boy can be taught the use of carpenter’s tools. He can be made to understand the use of such tools, partly by being told about them, partly by having the instruction exemplified, partly by practice in their use. And thus, in time, the boy may become an expert builder. Another boy, lacking all instruction and all opportunity to handle tools, will not become an expert builder. But a little bird becomes an expert builder of a certain type of nest, entirely without instruction; and no amount of instruction will make that bird the builder of a different type of nest. Bees do not come together, even once in a century, to discuss an improved honeycomb. The bees do their work well, but there is no improvement in the product of their labor; what Virgil, the poet, said of bees two thousand years ago is just as true to-day as it was in that long-vanished time. A spider spins its web; it needs no schooling or instruction in the art; nor does it show any variation in the type of web it weaves. With man, an intelligent being,—an organism endowed with intellect,—it is not so. The whole history of mechanical invention is a proof of the point. Man can and does use his intellect to devise new and improved dwellings, conveniences, means of communication and transportation.

Some experimental psychologists like to observe the behavior of animals imprisoned in a labyrinth; to notice how the imprisoned animal learns to make its escape, and how, upon repeated trials, it makes its way to freedom more and more easily. This sort of thing does not affect our present contention in any way. We ask whether the animal shows any improvement in its method of attending to its natural needs; and the manifest answer is that it does not. You can teach a rat to escape from a labyrinth; you can observe how it makes its way out of the prison, and learns to escape more and more readily. But you cannot teach a rat to make an improved style of rat-hole, or to construct a comfortable rat-house of tiny bricks.

It is a mark of an organic being endowed with intellect that he can improve his mode of action, his methods, his products. Brute animals give not even the beginning of a sign of such a capacity. We are forced to conclude that brute animals, while sentient, are not endowed with intellect.

The natural tendency of a sentient organism, and indeed of every being, carries it toward what is suitable and good for it. In man, as we shall see in a later chapter, this tendency may be baffled in some of its effects by perversity of judgment and abuse of the freedom of choice. But in merely sentient organisms, activity proceeds according to definite, predetermined plans, and produces astonishing results. A man, when he has at last weathered the long years of weakness l and immaturity, knows well enough that he has need of food and shelter, and he is aware of many a convenience that he might find a profit and a pleasure. But he has to study out ways and means of providing himself with these things, and no two men would,— uninstructed and uninfluenced by word or example of others,—work out the problem in precisely the same way. With an animal, however, the case is flatly reversed. The animal passes into maturity (usually in a much shorter time than man requires) and proceeds to attend to its needs; and the members of a given species of animal will do the work in the same way. You might put three men on three desert isles, and you would find later that one had made himself a shelter of stones, another had found a cave in the rock, and a third had fashioned a sort of cabin of saplings and chopped boughs. Nor would there be much resemblance in the style or size of their habitations, even apart from the materials used in their building or arrangement. But three birds of the same kind loosed on three desert isles would make nests of the same style and pattern. And three swarms of bees would make the same sort of honeycomb. Nor would birds or bees require instruction in the work, or have to make trial of this and that before settling down to the building of what they require.

The beaver takes no instruction in the art of building dams, but produces, none the less, a work of such balance and finish as to excite the admiration of car

SENTIENT LIFE ioi penter, joiner, and engineer. The bee studies no blueprints, but the architecture of the comb is flawless. There is a certain sort of beetle (Rhynchites betulae) which cuts and rolls a particular kind of leaf, and closes and seals it as a nest for her developing young; and the manner in which this piece of construction is “laid out” and executed would do credit to a master engineer, with all the higher mathematics in his head and the finest of draughtsman’s tools on his table. There is a wasp (called sphex) which requires living food for her young, and she pierces the spine of caterpillar or spider in the exact spot necessary to produce paralysis but not death; then she places the helpless victim in her nest so that her new-hatched grubs may find their proper diet provided.

Animals not only make the things they need; they also avoid what is harmful. The young chickens may never have seen a hawk, but they are flutteringly aware of his presence in the neighborhood all the same. The sick dog searches out certain grasses, and finds what he seeks, without medical advice or the need of a prescription. Cattle will avoid poisonous herbage without being warned against it and taught methods of recognizing it. Sheep will fly from a wolf without pausing to find whether his advances be friendly. Thus animals show a constant tendency to take care of themselves: positively; by making or arranging what they require; negatively, by avoiding what would be harmful. And this holds for the kind or species of the animal even more strongly than for the individual. The drive of nature is to perpetuate the species; not to let it die out or be destroyed; and the welfare of the young is therefore of greater concern to nature than the welfare of parent animals. The bird will fly away from the cat to protect itself. But the mother-bird will often forget herself, and face death, to defend her young fledglings from the cat.

Now, in all this we discern the workings of a particular sense,—an interior sense, which the philosophers of an older day called “the estimative power” (that is, the power for estimating or judging what is useful, necessary, harmful) or simply “the estimative,” and which is now usually called instinct. Man has instinct too, but, since he has the higher light of intellect, he uses instinct’ less than animals do, and is less practised in its exercise; besides, man needs it less. It is usually of occasions of stress, of sudden action, of sharp alarm, or of preoccupation, that we speak, when we say a man “acts instinctively.” But animals act instinctively all the time. And so wondrous is the product of their instinctive action that many scientists and philosophers have been led to the mistaken conclusion that animals possess intelligence or intellect. There is a vast difference, however, between instinct and intellect, and we shall presently indicate a few points of this diversity. But there is another thought that must first be suggested.

If animals possess intellect; if the wondrous work of beaver, and bee, and beetle, and wasp, and bird, and dog, and cattle, be really a work intelligently planned and executed, then the intellect of animals must be immeasurably superior to that of man. A young man, uneducated and uninstructed, cannot plan and execute a masterpiece of engineering and carpentry; but a young beaver can do it, and does. The bee is an architect and builder without schooling or learned degrees, but a man requires long and tedious training before his mind and his hands will serve him adequately in the architect’s profession. The beetle described above is, if intelligent, a master mathematician and craftsman, and should be the holder of an honored chair in a university. And we should send our surgeons to the sphex (if she be intelligent) for postgraduate courses in instant diagnosis and infallible incision. Yes; if animals have intellect, it is a far better intellect than man’s. And yet,—this is the surprising thing,—this matchless intellect (if it be an intellect) has produced nothing in all the ages of the world but an admirable routine. There is nothing new in its product, nothing fresh, nothing varied. Surely, an intellect such as this would startle the world with its inventiveness and its “infinite variety.” Thus we see that the naive explanation of animal activity as the product of intellect, is a little too simple to be true. The assertion that animals think, and reason, and understand what they do, does not untangle a complex problem; on the contrary, it presents a problem of inexplicable and inextricable tangles.

Let us look now at some points of difference between intellect and instinct.

1. Instinct is an organic faculty; intellect is inorganic and spiritual. Instinct is a sense, and an inner sense; it is organic because it is served by an organ; its organ is part of the brain. In consequence of the fact that instinct is a sense, its object is some individual and concrete thing present here and now. Intellect is not limited to the concrete and individual objects here and now present. Intellect grasps things in the abstract, in universal. The bee draws nectar from this flower and that, and carries its treasure home. But the bee is incapable of reasoning about flowers in general, or of methods in the abstract, and cannot consider ways and means of making better honey or of turning out the commodity with less effort. But the least’instructed man can reason about his work, can consider ways and means of getting it done. In a word the bee executes a splendid plan—but the plan is not its own. The man makes his own plan, or may make it, even when he fails to execute it. For the man has intellect, which is not an organic faculty, but a power of the spiritual soul. Of this we shall speak in detail in another place.

2. Instinctive knowledge is inborn and antecedent to experience; intellectual knowledge is acquired, and presupposes experience. The yearling bird knows how to make its nest without instruction and without watching the parent birds. The human builder needs plenty of instruction and much practice before he can turn out an admirable product. Human beings learn how to do what is required to provide themselves with the necessaries of life; animals do not learn, they know without learning.

5. Instinct is not inventive; intellect is endlessly working out something new. The history of intelligent beings (of men) is a story of progress.in the liberal and mechanical arts. But animals give no sign of novelty or improvement. In matters of mind it M possible, in matters of mechanical art it is usual, for one generation of men to take up where the last generation left off. But one generation of animals of a given species does not take up where the last left off; each generation does the same sort of thing (in providing for natural needs) and in the same sort of way.

4. Instinct is limited to one or a few manifestations; intellect is almost boundless in its capacity. A bird can build a nest, a bee can make honey and honeycomb; but bird and bee cannot exchange services. But a man can learn a great variety of arts, and, indeed, never reaches a stage where he can learn no more. An animal is master of one “trade”; man is jack-of-all-trades, even if he master none.

5. Instinct is changeless in its manifestations; intellect applies its knowledge in an endless variety of i

ways. The instinct of animals makes them do certain things in a certain way. The intellectual knowledge of men is changeless in the fact that it. is a grasp of unchanging truth, but the applications of that truth are variously made by various individuals. Certain basic mathematical truths, for example, are so applied by intellect that we have such various products as chemical formulae, the science of aero-dynamics, and the theory of music.

Summary of the Article

In this lengthy Article we have studied the meaning of sentient body or sentient organism or animal organism. We have proved that brute animals are truly living bodies and not automata. We have proved further that, while sentient, animals are not endowed with intellect. In support of the latter fact we have mentioned three outstanding characteristics of intellectual organic beings, viz., the power of knowing things in universal and in the abstract; the power of using intelligently significant speech; and the power of improving the mode of action. We have found that none of these characteristics is found in any merely sentient being, and have therefore concluded that brute animals are not intelligent. We have made a short study of instinct; we have noticed the astonishingly adequate nature of its product; we have found, nevertheless, that instinctive activity is not an evidence, in any sense, of the presence of intellect. We have contrasted intellect and instinct, and have noticed several striking points of essential difference between these faculties.