Methods of social study / by Sidney and Beatrice Webb.

  • Sidney Webb
Date:
1932
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Methods of social study / by Sidney and Beatrice Webb. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    35/284 (page 23)
    Social Institutions arising from Animal Instinct The first of these classes of social relations or institutions—in primitive society the predominant type, but traceable even in some of our most highly evolved institutions—includes those which may be assumed to have been derived from our ancestors among the higher vertebrates. We see, in fact, among some of the backboned animals, a slowly emerging supersession of part of their inflexible instinct by a new and more effective kind of mental capacity. Many vertebrates, other than man, habitually apply, to the difficulties with which they meet, the method of trial and error. They play, they tease, they fight, they defend each other, they imitate the actions of others, they seem even to meditate, showing a capacity for adapting their behaviour to their changing circumstances. In all this, in marked contrast with the ants and bees, and all other lower animals, they are transcending the instincts that they have inherited, by a steadily developing intelligence. Some of them begin to manifest inventiveness, to fear the unknown and the dark, to dislike being alone, and even to exhibit signs of self-consciousness. At some stage in the long evolution—there seems now to be general agreement in accepting as the mark of achievement the know¬ ledge of how to make a fire or the acquisition of conventional language in place or in supplement of mere ejaculations—we class these animals as human