The Blind Will Yet See

The Leader magazine (23/4/49) carries a fascinatingly descriptive article, “World of the Bat,” by Brian Vesey Fitzgerald, naturalist. The author has kept eleven of twelve species of British bats for many years as pets to try to discover the explanation for many habits and instincts which have puzzled scientists for many years.

The bat, though it can distinguish a worm held within an inch before its eyes, is so shortsighted that to all intents and purposes it is blind. Despite this the bat can travel at great speed in irregular flights and can avoid harmful objects by a fraction of an inch by a lightning swerve or a series of swerves in a fraction of a second. The bat has been observed to fly at lightning speed at a wall, pull itself up within a quarter of an inch of the wall, and at the same time distinguish in the minutest time a spider on the wall and grab it for its food. An Italian scientist, two hundred years ago, put out the eyes of some captive bats and released than in a darkened room in which had been strung many strands of black cotton, each strand bearing a little bell. The eyeless bats flew happily up and down the room and never once touched a strand of cotton or rung a bell. And, we are told, how they did it remained a mystery until—”radar” was discovered. It is now known, it is stated, that the bat finds its way about by the same method. “They utter squeaks, and b£ picking up the echo from the squeaks know exactly where they are. The method is known as ‘echo location.’ We can, if our hearing is good hear the ordinary squawk of the flying bat but the squeaks used in echo location are supersonic far above the range of human hearing.” By the aid of an instrument the supersonic squeaks can now be picked up and, the author says, a great deal is now known about them. The bat gains its information from the squeaks it emits. At rest it emits a supersonic squeak about ten times to the second, as it rises to wing it emits about thirty to the second, the faster the bat approaches an obstacle the faster becomes the rate of squeak, rising to fifty or even sixty a second, dropping to normal as soon as the obstacle is passed. Thus does the bat gain its “information” from “echo location.”

Truly, a remarkable illustration of adaptation to environment in the non-human animal kingdom. An example of the application of scientific theory without knowledge of the theory or the powers of abstract reasoning which enables man to understand the processes of nature.

And what lessons might be drawn from the nature lesson? The bat does not learn from its environment in the sense that man learns. Millions of years of evolution reside in the animal instincts of self-preservation. The animal possesses no powers of abstract reasoning to assist it in escaping the dangers of environment. It acts upon the accumulated experiences of millions of years. Man has succeeded, through his powers, in gaining mastery over his environment and has organised himself into human society. Man faces little danger from nature. Man faces danger from the social problems in the society he has developed and organised; the problems of poverty and war, of want in a world which can produce plenty, of armed conflict which threatens vast destruction of life and social wealth.

Man endeavours to escape the dangers of society as inevitably as the animal endeavours to escape the dangers of its environment. Man, human animal, possesses with the rest of the animal kingdom the instinct to escape. He possesses also the powers of reasoning. He has the ability to learn and understand the workings of society, to modify and to change it.

Break down the abstraction “man” into the realities of the world in which we live and we have men and women organised into classes on the basis of possession of the means of production. We have, in short, the capitalist class and the working class—the former, the minority in society and the class that owns, and the latter, the majority, the class that is dispossessed. And because the working class are the majority of the men and women organised in capitalist society the main driving force to escape the problems that society throws up must, and will come from them. Throughout the entire capitalist world the idea of Socialism is shaping itself. This is so because man has more than the animal instincts of self-preservation possessed by the whole animal kingdom he has the power to reason and learn from experience. Under the pressure of the problems that capitalism creates and cannot solve, the working class will learn that Socialism alone provides the escape from these problems. It will learn from its accumulated experiences of capitalism and by simple deductions from those experiences. It will learn as inevitably as the animal evolves the instinct of self-preservation in the struggle for life. And in learning a great many working men and women may never hear of scientific socialist theories. The bat applies the scientific theories of Radar in its struggle for existence instinctively, but the workers learn from practical experience.

It is true that the half-shaped ideas of Socialism require more experience to bring them to maturity. Capitalism aggravates and accelerates its contradictions and provides the driving force to Socialism.

H. W.