by A. S. Byatt
These were questions that troubled him, personally, as deeply as the questions of Design and the Designer troubled Harald Alabaster. He debated with himself on paper, not quite sure whether his musings were worthy of publication.
We might remark that there is a continuing dispute amongst human students of these interesting creatures as to whether they possess, singly or collectively, anything that can be called ‘intelligence’ or not. We might also remark that the attitude of the human student is often coloured by what he would wish to believe, by his attitude to the Creation in general, that is, by a very general tendency to see every other thing, living and inanimate, in anthropomorphic terms. We wonder about the utility to men of other living things, and one of the uses we make of them is to try to use them as magical mirrors to reflect back to us our own faces with a difference. We look in their societies for analogies to our own, for structures of command, and a language of communication. In the past both ants and bees have been thought to have kings, generals and armies. Now we know better, and describe the female worker-ants as slaves, nurses, nuns or factory-operatives, as we choose. Those of us who conclude that the insects have no language, no capacity to think, no ‘intelligence’, but only ‘instinct’ tend to describe their actions as those of automata, which we picture as little mechanical inventions whirring about like clockwork set in motion.
Those who wish to believe that there is a kind of intelligence in the nest and the hive can point to other things besides the marvellous mathematics of the hexagonal cells of the bees, which recent thinkers have decreed to be a function simply of their building movements and the shape of their bodies. No one who has spent long periods observing ants solving the problem of transporting an awkward straw, or a bulky dead caterpillar through the interstices of a mud floor, will feel able to argue that their movements are haphazard, that they do not jointly solve problems. I have seen a crew of a dozen ants manoeuvre a stem as tall, to them, as a tree to us, with about as many plausible false starts as a similar crew of schoolboys might make, before finding which end to insert at which angle. If this is instinct, it resembles intelligence in finding a particular method to solve a particular problem. M. Michelet in his recent book, L’Insecte, has a most elegant passage on the response to the plundering attacks of a lumbering moth, Sphinx Atropos, imported into France at the time of the American Revolution, probably as the caterpillar on the potato plant, protected and promulgated by Louis XIV. M. Michelet writes eloquently of the terrible appearance of this ‘sinister being’, ‘marked fairly precisely in wild grey with an ugly death’s-head’—it is our Death’s-head Hawk Moth, in fact. It is a glutton for honey, and pillages the hives, consuming eggs, nymphs and pupae in its depredations. The great Huber decided to protect his bees and was told by his assistant that the bees had already solved the problem either with, for instance, a variety of experimental barriers—by building new fortifications with narrow windows which would not admit the fat invader—or by making a series of barriers with successive walls zigzagging behind narrow entries, making a kind of twisting maze into which the Death’s-head could not insert its bulk. M. Michelet is delighted by this—it proves the bees’ intelligence, to him, conclusively. He calls it ‘the Coup d’État of the beasts, the insect revolution’, a blow struck not only against the Death’s-head but against thinkers like Malebranche and Buffon who denied bees any power of thought or capacity to divert their attention in new directions. Ants too can both make mazes and learn man-made mazes—some ants better than others. Do these things prove the little creatures are capable of conscious development? The order of their societies is infinitely more ancient than our own. Fossil ants are found in the most ancient stones; they have conducted themselves as they do over unimaginable millennia. Are they set in their ways—however intricate and subtle these may be—do they follow a driving force, an instinctual pattern rigid and invariable as stone channels, or are they soft, ductile, flexible, malleable by change and their own wills?
Much, so much, almost all, depends on what we think this force, or power, or indwelling spirit we call ‘instinct’ is. How does ‘instinct’ differ from intelligence? We must all admire the miracle of inherited aptitudes, inherited knowledge in a founding Queen of a new ant-colony who has never been outside her parent-nest, who has never been digging, or food-gathering, yet is able to nourish her young, feed and care for them, construct her first home, open the pupal shells. This is inherited intelligence, and is part of the general thoughtfulness and intelligence diffused through the whole society, which gives to all a knowledge of how to answer the needs of all in the most suitable way. The debate between the proponents of instinct and the proponents of intelligence is at its sharpest in its consideration of the Vigilance on the part of the whole community which makes decisions as to how many workers, how many soldiers, how many winged lovers or virgin Queens a community may need at any given time. Such decisions take into account the available food, the size of the nursery, the strength of the active Queens, the deaths of others, the season, the enemies. If these decisions are made by Chance, then these busy, efficient communities are ruled by a series of happy accidents, so complex that Chance must appear to be as wise as many local deities: if this is automatic response, what would intelligence be? The intelligence that directs the activities of the founding Queen, or those of the mature worker, is the intelligence of the City itself, of the conglomerate which cares for the wellbeing of the whole, and continues its life, in time and space, so that the community is infinite and eternal, even if both Queens and workers are mortal.
We do not wholly know what we mean either by the word ‘instinct’ or by the word ‘intelligence’. We divide our own actions into those controlled by ‘instinct’—the sucking of a new-born infant at the breast, the swerve of the runner to avoid danger, the sniffing at our bread and meat to detect signs of dangerous putrefaction; and those controlled by ‘intelligence’—foresight, rational analysis, reflective thought. Cuvier and other thinkers compared the workings of ‘instinct’ with those of ‘habit’, and Mr Darwin has finely observed that in human beings ‘the comparison gives a remarkably accurate account of the frame of mind under which an instinctive action is performed, but not of its origin. How unconsciously many habitual actions are performed, indeed not rarely in direct opposition to our conscious will! yet they may be modified by the will or reason.’ Are we to see the actions of the ants and bees as controlled by a combination of instincts as undeviating as the swallowing and swimming motions of the amoeba, or are we to see their behaviour as a combination of such instincts, acquired habits, and a directing intelligence, not residing in any particular individual ant, but accessible by these, when needed? Our own bodies are controlled by such a combination. Our own nerve-cells respond to stimuli and respond very strongly to the excitements of great fear, love, pain or intellectual activity, often arousing in us the possibility of new exercises of our skills previously unheard of. These are deep questions, pondered by every generation of philosophers, answered satisfactorily by none. Where do the soul and the mind reside in the human body? Or in the heart or in the head?
And do we find the analogy with our individual selves more useful, or that with the co-operative cells of our bodies, when understanding the ants? I believe I have been able to observe individual ants who habitually moved more vigorously and nervously, explored farther, approached other ants to interest them in new activities or to exhort them to greater efforts. Are these restless and inventive individual persons in the society, or are they large and well-fed cells in the centre of the ganglia? My own inclination is to wish to think of them as individual creatures, full of love, fear, ambition, anxiety, and yet I know also that their whole natures may be changed by changes in their circumstances. Shake up a dozen ants, in a test-tube, and they will fall on each other and fight furiously. Separate a worker from the community, and she will turn in aimless circles, or crouch morosely in a coma and wait to die: she will not survive for more than a
few days at most. Those who argue that ants must blindly behave as ‘instinct’ dictates are making of ‘instinct’ a Calvinist God, another name for Predestination. And those observing similar reactions in human creatures, who may lose their wills and their memories after physical injuries or shocks, who may be born without the capacity to reason which makes us human—or may lose it, even, under the pressure of extreme desire, or extreme fear of death—are substituting the Predestination of body and instinct for the iron control of a loving and vengeful Deity on a golden immutable Throne in a Crystal Heaven.
The terrible idea—terrible to some, terrible, perhaps, to all, at some time or in some form—that we are biologically predestined like other creatures, that we differ from them only in inventiveness and the capacity for reflection on our fate—treads softly behind the arrogant judgement that makes of the ant a twitching automaton.
And what may we learn, or perhaps fear to learn, or draw back from learning, in a comparison between our own societies and those of the social insects?
We may see their communities as the true individuals, of which the independent creatures, performing their functions, living and dying, are no more than cells, endlessly replaced and renewed. This would fit with Menenius’ fable in Coriolanus of the commonweal as a body, all of whose members help its continued life and wellbeing, from the toenails to the voracious belly. Professor Asa Gray, in Harvard University, has argued persuasively that in the case of the vegetable world, as in the branching animal communities of corals, it is the variety that is the individual, since the creatures may be divided and propagated asexually, without loss of life. The ant community is more varied than the corals, in the division of labour, and the variety of forms taken by the creatures, but it is possible to believe that its ends are no more complex and do not differ. They are the perpetuation of the city, the race, the original breed.
I made a Belgian friend in my travels on the Amazon, who was a good naturalist, a poet in his own language, and much given to meditation on the deeper things in life. He wrote despondingly of the effects on social animals of the very high elaboration of the social instinct which developed, he claimed, for the most part, from the family, the relations of mother and child, the protective gathering of the primal groups. He was in the jungle because he was not a social being, but a natural solitary, a romantic would-be Wild Man, but his observations on these matters are not uninteresting. The more perfected the association, he said, the more probability there is of a development of severe systems of authority, of intolerance, constraints, proliferated rules and regulations. Organised societies, he said, tended to the condition found in factories, in barracks, in the galleys, without leisure, or relaxation, using creatures pitilessly for their functional benefit, until they were exhausted and could be cast aside. Such social being he characterised memorably as ‘a kind of common despair’ and he saw the cities of the termites, in which fellow creatures are rationally turned to food when no longer useful, as a parody of the terrestrial Paradises towards which the social designers of human cities and communes are working so hopefully. Nature, he said, does not desire happiness. When I retorted that Fourier’s communities were based upon the rationally indulged pursuit of pleasures and inclinations (1,620 passions, to count exactly), he said gloomily that these groups were doomed to failure, either because they would disintegrate into combative chaos, or because the rational organisation would substitute militarism for Harmony, sooner or later.
I retorted at the time that Réaumur claimed to have observed ants at play like ancient Greeks, indulging in wrestling-bouts without harm, on sunny days. I have since, I must confess, several times observed what I believed to be this playful phenomenon, only to conclude on closer inspection, that what I was watching was not play, but war in earnest, fought, as ant-wars usually are, for limited objectives and without wholesale berserker bloodlust. Alfred Wallace, who was travelling in the same parts at that time, and is a convinced Socialist, much affected by the vision and practical success of Robert Owen’s successful experiments at New Lanark, attempted to put the problem in a kinder and milder light. Owen, he argued, had proved by his social experiments that environment can greatly modify character for the good—‘that no character is so bad that it may not be greatly improved by a really good environment acting upon it from early infancy and that Society has the power of creating such an environment’. Owen’s limited extension of individual responsibility to his workers, his care for their individual education, improved their wills, which were their individual natures. Wallace wrote (I quote an unpublished letter), ‘Heredity, through which it is now known that ancestral characteristics are continually reappearing, gives that infinite diversity of character which is the very salt of social life; by environment, including education, we can so modify and improve that character as to bring it into harmony with the possessor’s actual surroundings, and thus fit him for performing some useful and enjoyable function in the great social organisation.’
I have digressed far, you may think, from Elm Tree Bole and Osborne, the Red Fort and Stonewall City. In fact, these fundamental questions, of the influence of heredity, instinct, social identity, habit and will, arise at every moment of our study. We find parables wherever we look in Nature, and we make them more or less wisely. Religious thinkers have seen in the love of mother and infant, of Father and Son, a reflection of the eternal relations of the Prime Being with the Created World and with Man himself. My Belgian friend saw that love, on the other hand, as an instinctual response leading to the formation of societies which gave even more restricted and functional identities to their members. I have mentioned the role of Instinct as Predestination, and of Intelligence as residing in communities rather than individuals. To ask, what are the ants in their busy world, is to ask, what are we, however we may answer …
William stared at his page. He had argued round and round, not really thinking of publication, for if he had been, he thought, ruefully, at least for the large, young audience envisaged by Matty Crompton who might read for improvement, he would have had to pay more attention to the religious susceptibilities of their parents and guardians. He thought of appending that useful tag from Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner
He prayeth well, who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.
He decided to give his pages to Miss Crompton, and gauge her response, if he could. It struck him that he knew nothing of her own religious views. A friend of Charles Darwin had once told him that almost no women were prepared to question the truths of religion. He thought, then, that the whole of what he had just written was somehow set against what Harald Alabaster was trying to say—more so than appeared on the surface of the writing, for like almost all his contemporaries, he was half afraid to give full expression, even to himself, of his very real sense that Instinct was Predestination, that he was a creature as driven, as determined, as constricted, as any flying or creeping thing. He wrote about will and reason, but they did not feel to him, in his bones, in his sense of his own weight in the mass of struggling life on earth, to be very powerful or important entities, as they were for a seventeenth-century divine under the Eye of God, or a discoverer of new stars exulting in his power. His nerve-cells pricked, his hand ached, his head was full of crawling black fog. He felt his life as a brief struggle, a scurrying along dark passages with no issue into the light.
When he gave his final musings to Miss Crompton to read, he found himself waiting anxiously for her opinion. She took the pages away one day, and brought them back the next, saying that they were exactly what was required, just such scrupulous general considerations were what would greatly increase the appeal of the book to a wide audience and lead to its discussion in all circles. She added, ‘Do you think it conceivable that there may be future generations who will be happy to believe that they are finite beings with no afterlife—or that their natures may be fully satisfied by the part they play in the life of the whole community?’
‘Such being
s exist now, I believe. It is a curious outcome of travel that all beliefs come to seem more—more relative, more tenuous. I was much struck by the universal incapacity of Amazon Indians to imagine a community which did not reside on the banks of a vast river. They are not capable of asking, “Do you live near a river?” only “What is your river like? Is your river quick or slow, do you live near rapids or possible land avalanches?” They picture the Ocean as a river, I know, no matter how we may try to describe it vividly and accurately. It is like trying to tell a blind man the principles of perspective, which I once attempted. And it led me to wonder what do I not reflect upon, of what important facts am I ignorant in my picture of the world?’
‘Many—most—would not have your intellectual carefulness and humility.’
‘Do you think so? Those who will not accept Mr Darwin’s findings are divided between those who are very angry and quite sure they are right—who kick imaginary stones like Dr Johnson refuting Berkeley—and those, like Sir Harald, whose quest for assurance—reassurance—of Faith is shot through with trouble, indeed anguish.’
‘The wisdom of the serpent might suggest strengthening your case for a possible explanation that might square with Providence.’
‘Do you think I should do that?’
‘I think a man must be truthful, as far as possible, or the whole truth will never be found. You must say nothing you do not think.’
There was a silence. Matty Crompton ruffled through the pages. She said, ‘I liked your passage from Michelet about the depredations of the Sphinx Atropos. It is amazing how much—how much of mystery, of fairy glamour—is added to the creatures by the names bestowed upon them.’
‘I used to think of Linnaeus, in the forest, constantly. He bound the New World so tightly to the imagination of the Old when he named the swallowtails for the Greek and Trojan heroes, and the Heliconiae for the Muses. There I was, in lands never before entered by Englishmen, and round me fluttered Helen and Menelaus, Apollo and the Nine, Hector and Hecuba and Priam. The imagination of the scientist had colonised the untrodden jungle before I got there. There is something wonderful about naming a species. To bring a thing that is wild, and rare, and hitherto unobserved under the net of human observation and human language—and in the case of Linnaeus, with such wit, such order, such lively use of our inherited myths and tales and characters. He wished to call the Atropos the Caput mortuum, you know, the Death’s Head exactly—but the system of nomenclature requires a monosyllable.’