Chapter 2
Animals and animal nature; how beasts differ from men; instinct; the study and treatment of animals.
1031 passages · 349 principal · Covers the 49 volumes of primary texts
Under the idea of Animal these books gather everything they say about beasts: what they are, how they differ from men, how they behave by instinct, and how men keep, breed, love, hunt, worship and imagine them. It is a great idea for the Harvard Classics because nearly every attempt in them to say what man is proceeds by comparison with the brute. Marcus Aurelius calls man the reasonable animal and the social animal1,2. Epictetus says the body is what we share with the beasts3. Darwin, at the other end of the collection, asks whether the comparison marks a difference of kind at all.
The ancients placed animals on a scale of being. For Marcus Aurelius, irrational creatures share one life while rational ones share one intelligent soul4. Bees, herds and nesting birds show a bond of unity that plants and stones lack5. Augustine grants horse and mule the powers of animating and perceiving but not understanding6. Later inquiry blurred the lower boundary of the scale. Harvey finds hearts even in snails, wasps and flies, and in the simplest creatures only a pulsating vesicle7,8,9. Darwin watches a colony of zoophytes move like a single animal10. Pasteur sees vibrios turn back at obstacles as if by an instinct for life, yet he admits that no absolute line divides animal from vegetable11. Faraday measures the carbon that man, cow and horse alike burn in breathing12. Pope draws a moral from such kinship: each beast has powers proportioned to its state, and man is not the sole end of creation13,14.
That kinship of bodies made animals the material of science. Bacon’s New Atlantis keeps beasts for dissection, to learn what can be wrought on man15. Harvey works on living creatures as well as dead ones, choosing serpents and fishes because their slower hearts make the motions clear16,17. Descartes notes that the hearts of large animals with lungs resemble ours18. Hume carries the principle further than anatomy: whatever theory explains human understanding should also explain the understanding of other animals19. Jenner traces a disease from horse to cow to milker20, and Pasteur inoculates rabbits and chickens21. Darwin goes furthest of all. He derives domestic breeds from wild stocks22 and reads rudimentary organs as traces of ancestry23. He finds graded beaks among the Galapagos finches24 and proposes that all animals descend from four or five progenitors25. Rousseau’s vicar had seen a barrier between species that prevents the confusion of kinds26; Darwin’s whole account denies it.
The central controversy is how beasts differ from men. Augustine grants animals memory, so memory cannot be the mark. Beasts see the world, he says, but cannot question it, because no reason sits in judgment over their senses27,28. More holds that only man beholds beauty29. Hobbes finds curiosity, the desire to know causes, in no creature but man30, and only man seeks the possible effects of a thing31. Descartes and Swift make speech decisive; parrots, Descartes says, utter words without understanding them32,33. Rousseau offers several marks in turn. A monkey choosing between nuts acts without a general idea34; no beast uses fire or admires the sun35; and conscience alone lifts man above the brutes36. Pascal observes that a horse does not admire its companion37. Hobbes and Adam Smith draw a practical consequence: beasts cannot make covenants or fair exchanges, and so, though their breeds differ more than men do, they cannot pool their talents38,39,40.
Descartes pressed the separation to its limit. Brutes have no reason at all, and their skill comes from the disposition of their organs, as a clock’s does41. A machine shaped like an ape could not be told from the animal42. He held it dangerous to equate their souls with ours43. Voltaire replied that beasts have organs, sensation and memory, and are therefore no mere machines44. Rousseau accepts the machine but changes the test: the beast is an ingenious machine guided by instinct, and it differs from man in freedom rather than understanding45. Hobbes had already granted more than either. Beasts imagine, they understand a master’s call, and they deliberate and will, since appetite and aversion alternate in them as in us46,47,48,49. Some beasts pursue their good better than a child50. Hume agrees that animals learn from experience and infer like effects from like causes. They do it by custom rather than argument, and so do children and most men51,52. In Schiller’s William Tell a herdsman argues the same point from chamois that post sentinels53. Pascal leaves the question standing: do animals reason, think, talk54?
Behind the logical dispute lies a moral one. Pascal sets man between brute and angel and thinks it dangerous to show his likeness to the brutes without his greatness55,56. What is natural in animals, he says, signals a fall in man57. Epictetus calls it shameful for man to begin and end where the brutes do58. Dante’s lustful follow appetite like beasts59, and Lear fears that a life allowed no more than need is as cheap as a beast’s60. Emerson calls the mob man voluntarily descending to the beast and sees tiger rudiments in civilized man61,62. Darwin finds that the Fuegians lack the instinct of animals and seem to lack reason too63. Browning, by contrast, calls brutes content, finished clods64. Schiller fears that man loses the animal’s happy limitation without gaining humanity65.
The question of the soul’s fate divides further. Plato’s Phaedo sends vicious souls into asses and wolves66. Ecclesiastes gives men and beasts one breath and one fate67. Some Utopians think brute souls immortal though lesser than man’s68. Faustus envies beasts whose souls dissolve into the elements69, and Browne rejects transmigration70. In the Buddhist writings even a frog may hear the Doctrine71.
Instinct is the third great theme. For Pascal it is fixed: the bees’ hexagons never improve, while man’s reason accumulates72,73. Rousseau and Burke likewise see the beast unchanged after a thousand years74,75. Pope turns the fixity into praise. Instinct is an unerring guide to happiness, surer than fallible reason76, though a barrier still separates the two77. Kant concedes that instinct would secure welfare better than reason78. Hume undercuts the contrast from the other side, calling experimental reasoning itself a species of instinct79. Rousseau holds that man, having no instinct of his own, appropriates the instincts of all the beasts80.
Darwin transforms the question by treating instincts as inherited, variable and selected. He wonders at acts done without experience or knowledge of their purpose81. Caterpillars repeat their sequences in a fixed order82, yet bird nests differ by region83. The blind young cuckoo ejects its foster-brothers84, and the Molothrus birds show every grade of nest-parasitism85. Slave-making ants range from partial to total dependence on their slaves86. Pascal’s hexagon becomes evidence for gradual origin: the cells of humble-bee, Melipona and hive-bee form a graduated series87. Bees build that comb without knowing its angles88, and their workmanship is less accurate than supposed89. Neuter insects show that habit is not indispensable to forming an instinct90. The same reasoning applies to fear of man. The tameness of Galapagos birds shows that wildness toward man is a hereditary instinct, slowly acquired under persecution91,92. Pointing dogs inherit their skill93, and the dog’s love of man is an instinct gained in domestication94. Rousseau had read a dog’s untaught mole-hunting as instinct, as opposed to moral ideas acquired95.
On animal feeling the texts largely agree. Cicero finds natural affection in animals’ care of their offspring96, and he reports a crowd’s pity for elephants that seemed to share something with mankind97. Rousseau credits beasts with pity: horses avoid trampling bodies, and cattle mourn at the slaughterhouse98. Manzoni’s she-goats suckle abandoned infants99. Rousseau denies that the battles of males yield any induction about men100, while Darwin makes male combat and female choice a principle of selection101,102. Plato’s Socrates says birds sing from joy103, and Schiller sees in play and song a gleam of freedom beyond want104,105.
Observed natural history runs from Job’s wild ass and warhorse106, through Herodotus’s crocodile107 and Harrison’s English beasts and barnacle fowl108,109, to Darwin’s careful witness. Darwin records the crafty carrancha110 and a cuttlefish that seems aware of being watched111. He reconstructs the extinct Mylodon112 and shows that large beasts abound on sterile ground113. His studies of distribution reveal a web of dependence. Bats alone reach oceanic islands114. The Norway rat exterminated New Zealand’s native rat115. Introduced goats on St. Helena destroyed the trees, and land-shells and insects went extinct with them116, for man’s cattle disturb the chain linking animals together117. Smith had already observed that every species multiplies in proportion to its subsistence118.
On domestication judgment divides. Rousseau thinks tamed animals degenerate, as civilized man does119. Darwin finds domestication a theatre of variation: any wild animal would vary as much under it120, and breeders shape races, often unconsciously121,122. Smith credits plentiful feeding more than change of breed123 and treats cattle as fixed or circulating capital124. Emerson sees the cow sacrificed to her bag125, and Thoreau contrasts the playful wildness of cattle with a locomotive-like domestic life126. Horses receive special attention. Darwin shows one tamed through a few severe trials127 and judges the mule superior to its parents in memory and endurance128. Haskell thinks a steady warhorse deserves a monument129.
As companions, animals prompt the tenderest writing. Argos recognizes Odysseus as he dies130. Cellini’s dog identifies a thief131, and the Bargello holds that good dogs foretell their masters’ mischance132. Harrison praises the mastiff’s gentleness with children133. Carlyle calls a dog’s instinct a voice of Nature134. Pliny’s dolphin carries boys on its back135. In Plutarch, Caesar rebukes those who lavish on pets the affection due to their own kind136. Animals also teach. Job bids men ask the beasts137; Browne finds more wisdom in bees and ants than in whales138; Pope makes beasts man’s first instructors in building and society139. Machiavelli turns lion and fox into a model for princes140.
Man’s treatment of beasts begins in dominion, given in the Psalms141 and celebrated in Sophocles’ yoking of horse and bull142. Milton’s Adam names the beasts and finds them unfit companions for a rational being143. Voltaire ridicules man as self-styled king of the animals144, and Pascal doubts whether the horse has a right to use him145. Restraint is urged from many quarters. Marcus Aurelius bids us use irrational creatures generously146, and the Buddhist monks extend friendliness to snakes147. Massachusetts’ Body of Liberties forbids cruelty to beasts kept for man’s use148. Locke warns that cruelty to beasts hardens children toward men149. Woolman grounds tenderness in God, from whom all creatures’ life derives150,151. Burns mourns the broken social union between man and mouse152, and Coleridge and Blake make reverence for creatures a religious duty153,154. More condemns hunting as butchery155, and Burns curses the hunter who maims a hare156. Franklin weighs fishing as murder against the fact that fish eat one another157. Religion also sets beasts apart. Egypt holds them sacred and gives them honoured burial158,159. The Koran distinguishes permitted from forbidden beasts160. Utopia allows no sacrifice, since God gave beasts life that they might live161.
Imagination crosses the boundary that philosophy disputes. Circe’s swine keep human minds162. Sigmund in wolf-skin keeps his understanding163. The Arabian ape writes and dines with courtly manners164. Renan finds no clear line between man and animal in Celtic heroes165. Milton’s serpent claims the fruit raised it to reason and speech166. Fable lends beasts human counsel167,168. Blake’s tiger169 and Job’s untamable leviathan170 figure an otherness that man cannot master.
Several questions remain open across these books. Is the difference between man and brute one of kind, marked by reason, speech or conscience, or one of degree, as Hobbes, Hume and Darwin suggest? Is instinct a fixed limitation or the record of slow selection? And does dominion carry duties that kinship would make stronger?
Introductory essay written by Claude Opus 5.5 from the outline and the notes on every passage below; quotations are checked against this edition.
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