The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to SexDarwin, Charles
History
The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex
Darwin, Charles
Evolution (Biology); Human beings -- Origin; Sex differences; Sexual dimorphism (Animals); Sexual selection in animals
We can only judge by the circumstances under which actions are
performed, whether they are due to instinct, or to reason, or to the
mere association of ideas: this latter principle, however, is
intimately connected with reason. A curious case has been given by
Prof. Mobius (23. ‘Die Bewegungen der Thiere,’ etc., 1873, p. 11.), of
a pike, separated by a plate of glass from an adjoining aquarium
stocked with fish, and who often dashed himself with such violence
against the glass in trying to catch the other fishes, that he was
sometimes completely stunned. The pike went on thus for three months,
but at last learnt caution, and ceased to do so. The plate of glass was
then removed, but the pike would not attack these particular fishes,
though he would devour others which were afterwards introduced; so
strongly was the idea of a violent shock associated in his feeble mind
with the attempt on his former neighbours. If a savage, who had never
seen a large plate-glass window, were to dash himself even once against
it, he would for a long time afterwards associate a shock with a
window-frame; but very differently from the pike, he would probably
reflect on the nature of the impediment, and be cautious under
analogous circumstances. Now with monkeys, as we shall presently see, a
painful or merely a disagreeable impression, from an action once
performed, is sometimes sufficient to prevent the animal from repeating
it. If we attribute this difference between the monkey and the pike
solely to the association of ideas being so much stronger and more
persistent in the one than the other, though the pike often received
much the more severe injury, can we maintain in the case of man that a
similar difference implies the possession of a fundamentally different
mind?
Houzeau relates (24. ‘Études sur les Facultés Mentales des Animaux,’
1872, tom. ii. p. 265.) that, whilst crossing a wide and arid plain in
Texas, his two dogs suffered greatly from thirst, and that between
thirty and forty times they rushed down the hollows to search for
water. These hollows were not valleys, and there were no trees in them,
or any other difference in the vegetation, and as they were absolutely
dry there could have been no smell of damp earth. The dogs behaved as
if they knew that a dip in the ground offered them the best chance of
finding water, and Houzeau has often witnessed the same behaviour in
other animals.
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