The Life of Sentient Bodies

a) Meaning of Sentient Body — b) Animals as Sentient Bodies

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 knowledge; 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 generation. A sentient body or animal is an organism which, in addition to this vegetal endowment, possesses the sentient operations and the powers which are their principles. The essential specific distinction of animals as compared with plants, lies in the fact that animals possess, in addition to vegetal operations and powers, the sentient operations and powers which we are to consider in the following paragraphs.

b) Animals as Sentient Bodies

There have been in times past, and indeed there are now, some 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 will soon return to its perch and go on with the cheerful business of existence after the hawk has passed. The animal acts, not because it is mechanically set in motion by an outside force, but because it is prompted by inborn, organic drives and by the impressions of its own experience. It acts in different ways in different circumstances, because it is genuinely alive, genuinely sentient — guided by its senses, and by the appetition and locomotion which follow upon sensation.

Now, although animals are truly alive, they are not endowed with reason or intellect. Three outstanding characteristics identify the intellectual being; and these characteristics are not found in any degree in the brute animal:

1. The power of knowing things in universal and in the abstract. Intellect grasps the common nature, the essence, of things — not just this individual rose or that particular dog, but what a rose is, what every dog is, in the abstract. An animal senses, and its sensations are of individual concrete things here and now present: this food, that enemy. When a man says “I saw a flower,” another man understands “flower” in universal, in general; 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. 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. There is no evidence whatever that brute animals possess this power; all evidence points to the contrary.

2. The power of using intelligently significant speech. By language we do not mean the mere utterance of sounds. We mean the use of signs which express thought, which communicate meaning in a general and symbolic way. Man speaks; he says what he means. Animals utter cries which express nothing beyond the immediate emotional state; they signal to one another (as bees are found to do) about concrete individual situations, but they cannot discuss, cannot reason in words, cannot communicate abstract thought. No animal has ever been found to construct a proposition, to tell a story, to ask an abstract question, or to coin a new word for a new meaning. The barking dog, the singing bird, the chattering monkey — all are utterly beyond the first beginning of what we mean by intelligent significant speech.

3. The power of improving upon prior modes of action. 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 is 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.

Since none of these three marks of intellect is found in any merely sentient being, we have concluded that brute animals are not intelligent.

Instinct

We cannot leave the study of sentient life without some mention of instinct. Instinct is a faculty which produces, in many animals, works of astonishing complexity and appropriateness, and which, nevertheless, is not intellect. Let us notice a few illustrations of instinct in action.

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 careful observers. The migrating bird crosses the ocean and finds its way to the precise spot it left the previous year — through fog, through cloud, through darkness, through storm. The bee builds a honeycomb upon principles of geometry and upon a system of economy which the most exacting mathematicians have found to admit of no improvement. The spider, fresh from the egg, before it has seen its elders spin a web, casts its trap for the unwary fly with all the skill of the oldest member of the fraternal order of spiders. These are all instances of instinct.

Instinct is an inborn, organic faculty of the sentient organism; a faculty which is not learned, and not improved by experience; a faculty exercised by all normal members of a species in precisely the same way; a faculty which produces a definite product or achieves a definite result which is adequate to the well-being of the organism, and which often seems to indicate remarkable power of intelligent foresight.

Now this last characteristic of instinct — its seemingly intelligent character — is what makes instinct seem, at first sight, to be evidence of animal intelligence. But a close study of the matter entirely removes this false impression.

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.

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.

3. 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 is 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 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.