It would come back to this; that he had dug very deep [into the cave] and found the place where a man had drawn the picture of a reindeer. But he would dig a good deal deeper before he found a place where a reindeer had drawn a picture of a man. That sounds like a truism, but in this connection it is really a very tremendous truth. He might descend to depths unthinkable, he might sink into sunken continents as strange as remote stars, he might find himself in the inside of the world as far from men as the other side of the moon; he might see in those cold chasms or colossal terraces of stone, traced in faint hieroglyphic of the fossil, the ruins of lost dynasties of biological life, rather like the ruins of successive creations and separate universes than the stages in the story of one. He would find the trail of monsters blindly developing in directions outside all our common imagery of fish and bird; groping and grasping and touching life with every extravagant elongation of horn and tongue and tenacle; growing a forest of fantastic caricatures of the claw and the fin and the finger. But nowhere would he find one finger that had traced one significant line upon the sand; nowhere one claw that had even begun to scratch the faint suggestion of a form. To all appearance, the thing would be as unthinkable in all those countless cosmic variations of forgotten aeons as it would be in the beasts and birds before our eyes. [He] would no more expect to see it than to see the cat scratch on the wall a vindictive caricature of the dog. The childish common sense would keep the most evolutionary child from expecting to see anything like that; yet in the traces of the rude and recently evolved ancestors of humanity he would have seen exactly that. It must surely strike him as strange that men so remote from him should be so near, and that beasts so near to him should be so remote. To his simplicity it must seem at least odd that he could not find any trace of the beginning of any arts among any animals. That is the simplest lesson to learn in the cavern of the coloured pictures; only it is too simple to be learnt. It is the simple truth that man does differ from the brutes in kind and not in degree; and the proof of it is here; that it sounds like a truism to say that the most primitive man drew a picture of a monkey and that it sounds like a joke to say that the most intelligent monkey drew a picture of a man. Something of division and disproportion has appeared; and it is unique. Art is the signature of man.
[G. K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man]
6 comments:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nS1tEnfkk6M
Remarkable, isn't it? I heartily agree that animals disiplay beauty and grace inherently; the difference is that they are not creators.
On a slightly different note, a few men might do well taking dance lessons from these beasties.
well, I think I might agree. I want to agree. I confess no assurance, however. Chesterton confines his illustration to the dexterous art of drawing--representation of form on a canvas. But what of representation of form in life? What do we say is more originally creative about the movement of a ballerina than the movements of this bird? With our framework and language, surely we can articulate what we see and what we design in our dance. But do we intend it as art more than this creature? A skeptic may say the bird follows pure function and instinct, but what is our dance if not function and instinct? I think this question is difficult indeed, and says much of our own ignorance. This says nothing of a greater Creator above us all, but a sense of exception regarding our own representative creation--our re-creation through ourt--is very suspect.
Also, I do believe that bird used a tool, by golly, to clean his branch.
Yep. We intend it as art more than the bird o' paradise. The bird does follow instinct; it cannot do anything else but dance given the presence of a mate, a dance that is beautiful but uncultivated. But a human dance is a creation. I agree, elements of human dance are deeply natural to us (all civilizations have variations), but humans actually practice that dance. They cultivate it. They recognize that some dances are better than others inherently, some are peformed better than others, and that all attempt to reflect a higher standard.
If dancing was not art but instinct only, and if sculpture was not art but instinct only, there would be no contests, no awards, no American Idol, no concerto competitions, no recognition of Phidias' glory, and no self-consciousness on the dance floor at balls. Human art is centered on cultivation, hard work, and excellence. Animal instinct -- beautiful in the case of the bird o' paradise -- considers none of these things.
Incidentally, it is not inaccurate to say that some human dance is only instinctual. We typically describe it as "animalistic," and we all know how it looks.
You, and Chesterton before you, present this idea as a truism, requiring neither evidence nor further explanation or exploration. Our dance is cultivated, disciplined, practiced, perfected, appreciated. The birds is instictive, rote, functional, and neither requires nor benefits from cultivation.
How can we make this claim? I am no ornithologist, but I expect they would hesitate on this point. Surely, we have a difference of degrees of cognitive function. Is this your whole point? To go further and suggest that we have a re-creative ability that places us on a different spiritual or relational level with an ultimate creator is an a priori judgement.
Are our competition or appreciations or the other factors that you mention proof of a difference? They might be considered as much evidence of similarity -- the bird is born with instinct to dance, but not all birds of paradise dance as well as the next; consider: the dancers dance to please others of the species, as far as we can tell (of course, for a function--mating--, but do we not do likewise?)
But if it's not just about function, and also about expression, many are the animals that, dance, sing, seemingly for joy and beauty. A bird sings to warn, marshal, or seduce its fellows. But birds also just sing. And a bird is not born with all its songs, as a little light readings will teach you. A bird listens, imitates, customizes, fashions its calls into ever more complex and unique cadences. What do we know of this? Animalistic indeed.
As I said, degrees of cognitive function, or physical dexerity (a bird cannot paint the Mona Lisa -- but can you sing its song?) are straightforward. But if you go deeper than that into an exploration of the exceptionalism of human art, you wander into territory where answers may surprise you.
You answer my objection--that your implicit claim that animals are non-re-creative creatures--with a simple recitation of the claim. As I say, I wonder sometimes, despite our learning, how much we know.
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