Harmony and Conflict in the Living World - Alexander F. Skutch [89]
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sufficiently alluring to foment the activity to the point where it upsets the creature's balance. One may devote years to observing free animals without witnessing gluttony, acquisitiveness, or sexual indulgence carried to the point where it diminishes the animal's fitness, involves it in recognized and avoidable perils, or incapacitates it for rearing its young. This vital sanity of nonhuman creatures was recognized by Plutarch in his unfinished dialogue, wherein Gryllus, transformed into a pig by Circe, tries to convince Ulysses that animals are superior to humans in temperance and fortitude. In so far as subjective states influence the animal's behavior, the happiness, satisfaction, or restful feeling that comes from maintaining all the components of its hereditary pattern of activities in due order and balance appears to be the compelling motive. From vital integrity as the dominant value in animal life, it is not difficult to trace the origin of conscience.
But, as we have learned, new associations could not be formed without dissolving old associations, free intelligence could not arise save as fixed patterns of behavior lost their compelling force. In this dissolution of hereditary patterns, the hierarchial order of activities was weakened, and now one special motive, now another, was free to take supreme, if temporary, command of the mind. And each appetite and passion, as it assumed paramount authority, had in its employ an ever more competent intelligence, which, like a conscienceless genie, was wholly at the disposal of its pleasure-loving master. We earlier noticed the points at which intelligence first intruded into the pattern of instinctive behavior and the tasks that chiefly devolved upon it. The deep, vital, constructive functions were much too intricate to be entrusted to a nascent intellect that could only now and then be aroused to activity and was fit only to guide appetitive behavior, in which it might help to surprise prey, outwit rivals, overcome obstacles, find shelter or a mate, or escape enemies. The passions associated with these pursuits were often greed, anger, hatred, rage, lust, and fear, to which were eventually added vanity, pride, and cruelty. Each of these explosive or disruptive affections might seize control of a half-formed but far from contemptible intelligence, like a hot-headed youth at the wheel of a
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powerful motorcar with a defective steering gear. To this alarming predicament had nascent intelligence brought humankind.
Had each individual been as independent and self-directed as many mammals and birds, humanity might never have weathered the tempests that the first crude stirrings of intelligence brewed in its bosom. As it happened, humans at this stage lived in closely knit groups founded upon blood relationship, and the family or clan would suffer from the individual's uncontrolled indulgence of appetite or passion. For its safety, each group tried to restrain the actions of its members. In traditional societies, direct injury to another individual is, as a rule, regarded as an offense against the aggrieved family rather than, as in more advanced cultures, against the State; and the injured person or his or her relatives are expected to settle accounts with the offender. But acts believed to jeopardize the whole tribe are treated in a quite different manner. Often they are regarded as affronts to the tribe's supernatural guardians, who will punish such insults in their own peculiar fashion, making the whole group suffer. These spirits so touchy and quick