From the Tree to the Labyrinth (38 page)

This said, the table of zoosemiotic situations has been fully explored: the dog who speaks to the dog, the dog whose bark man interprets because he knows the dog’s habits and therefore his language, and even the animal who speaks human words, like the magpie or the parrot (but this is a case of learned behavior and mechanical execution on the animal’s part, and the problem has nothing to do with a theory of signs).
⁴⁹

With Bacon’s espousal of the zoosemiotic revaluation of an Augustine who is closer to Greek culture, the barking dog definitively joins the ranks of those who, in one way or another, express themselves, because the behavior of animals who twitter, howl, squeak, and roar as they go about their associative lives will henceforth be regarded with a greater sensitivity to the facts of nature.
⁵⁰

It is no accident that we are now entering a period in which the figurative arts too have progressed, in their representation of nature, from the stylizations of the Romanesque to the realism of the Gothic.

Exit the allegorical animal of the bestiary. From now on, whimpers, barks, whinnies, and roars ring out in the symbolic forest inhabited by the beasts, who now say whatever they feel like saying and not what the
Physiologus
would have them say, thereby refusing to become
quasi liber et pictura
and just being themselves.
⁵¹

The second part of this essay chapter incorporates a research project that first appeared under my name, together with those of Roberto Lambertini, Costantino Marmo, and Andrea Tabarroni. The project took shape in a seminar on the history of semiotics at the University of Bologna (during the academic year 1982–1983). After being presented at the Settimane di Studio del Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo (see Spoleto 1985), it was published in English in Eco and Marmo,
On the Medieval Theory of Signs
(1989). For the present book, I have rewritten it, taking into account contributions that have appeared more recently, unburdening it of a number of quotations and erudite notes, and changing the order of the sections. Our original research project identified the classifications in order of complexity, regardless of whether they had appeared before or after one another, whereas in this version I have followed the chronological order, at least within the two traditions—Stoic-Augustinian and Aristotelian-Boethian—because what most concerned me was to underscore the conflict, continually latent, between the correlational and inferential notions of the sign. Hence, while I refer the reader to the original version (cited passim throughout these following notes as
Latratus canis
1989) for a more detailed discussion, the other three authors are not to be considered responsible for the present draft. It should be understood, however, that, without their collaboration, my own ideas on the
latratus canis
would have remained as inarticulate as the
gemitus infirmorum.
[
Translator’s note:
The essay “On Animal Language in the Medieval Classification of Signs,” co-authored by Umberto Eco, Roberto Lambertini, Costantino Marmo, and Andrea Tabarroni, first appeared in English in
Versus
a special number (38–39 [1984]: 3–38) of the periodical
Versus. Quaderni di Studi Semiotici
dedicated to Medieval Semiotics, and subsequently in the symposium edited by Eco and Marmo,
On the Medieval Theory of Signs
(1989: pp. 3–41); the English version appears to have been a collective effort by the authors, revised by Shona Kelly. For a partial summary of their conclusions, see also the chapter “Interpreting Animals,” in Eco’s
The Limits of Interpretation
(1990b, pp. 111–122)—a reprint, with negligible editorial corrections, of the article “
Latratus canis
” that appeared in English, attributed to Eco alone, in the periodical
Tijdschrift voor Filosofie
47 (1985): 3–14. Between these two publications, another similarly abbreviated version, close but not identical to the last two mentioned, and once again recognized as the fruit of a collaboration, was included in a symposium on semiotics, namely, Umberto Eco, Roberto Lambertini, Costantino Marmo, Andrea, and Tabarroni (1986), “
‘Latratus canis’
or: the Dog’s Barking,” in John Deely, Brooke Williams, and Felicia E. Kruse (eds.),
Frontiers in Semiotics
(1986, pp. 63–73). What follows is a new English translation of Eco’s Italian text, itself revised for inclusion in the present volume. It is somewhat misleading that Eco chooses to refer in the notes that follow to the original collaborative article, “On Animal Language in the Medieval Classification of Signs,” as
Latratus canis.
]

1
. The translation is from Virgil (1999: 66–67).

2
. [
Translator’s note:
The corresponding passage in the
Advancement of Learning
(1604) runs as follows: “so that the fable and fiction of Scylla seemeth to be a lively image of this kind of philosophy or knowledge; which was transformed into a comely virgin for the upper parts; but then
candida succinctam latrantibus inguina monstris
(“with howling monsters girt about her white waist,” Virgil,
Eclogue VI,
75), so the generalities of the schoolmen are for a while good and proportionable; but then when you descend into their distinctions and decisions, instead of a fruitful womb for the use and benefit of man’s life,
they end in monstrous altercations and barking questions.”
The dichotomous image may coincidentally remind us of Shakespeare’s Lear (without the barking): “Down from the waist they are Centaurs, / Though women all above: / But to the girdle do the gods inherit, / Beneath is all the fiends.’ ”]

3
. Seneca,
Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales,
with an English translation by Richard M. Gummere, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1917, vol. III, pp. 397–411 [“On Instinct in Animals”].

4
. On the history of these two versions, see Giuseppe Girgenti, in his commentary on the Italian translation of Porphyry’s
De abstinentia
(
Astinenza dagli animali,
Milano, Bompiani, 2005, n. 22 to Book III).

5
. Sextus Empricus,
Outlines of Pyrrhonism,
I, 69, trans. R. G. Bury, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1955, pp. 41–43.

6
. As Sextus himself explains in
Outlines of Pyrrhonism
II, 158 (p. 253), the fifth nondemonstrable argument “deduces from a disjunctive premiss and the opposite of one of its clauses the other clause,” as for example “Either it is day or it is night; but it is not night; therefore it is day.” Naturally, in the version with the crossroads (as opposed to the one with the ditch) what we have is a “multiple syllogism.”

7
. [
Translator’s note:
Philo’s Greek original survives only in a sixth-century Armenian translation. This and the previous quote are from Abraham Terian,
Philonis Alexandrini De Animalibus: The Armenian Text with an Introduction, Translation, and Commentary,
Chico, California, Scholars Press, 1981, pp. 87 and 103–4. The English translator criticizes the “syntactical awkwardness” of the Armenian text, and his own translation is in fact quite unidiomatic. In our transcription of the first citation, Terian’s term “shaft,” which would seem to indicate a vertical cavity, has been replaced by “ditch,” indicating a horizontal barrier, more in keeping with the context.]

8
. See
Plutarch’s Moralia,
XII, Trans. by Harold Cherniss and William Helmbold, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1957, pp. 309–479. The same volume (pp. 487–533) contains the dialogue
Bruta animalia ratione uti
mentioned below.

9
. Aelian,
On the Characteristics of Animals,
With an English Translation by A. F. Schofield, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1958–9, vol. II, Book VI, para. 59 (pp. 81–83).

10
. Porphyry,
On Abstinence from Killing Animals,
trans. by Gillian Clark, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000, p. 85.

11
. Pliny,
Natural History,
vol. III (Books VIII–XI), translated by H. Rackham, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1940, pp. 101–103.

12
. See, for example, Columella: “Now, as I promised in the earlier part of my treatise, I will speak of the dumb guardians of the flocks, though it is wrong to speak of the dog as a dumb guardian; for what human being so clearly or so vociferously gives warning of the presence of a wild beast or of a thief as does the dog by its barking? What servant is more attached to his master than is a dog? What companion more faithful? What more wakeful night-watchman can be found? Lastly, what more steadfast avenger or defender?” (
De re rustica,
books V–IX, trans. E. S. Forster and Edward Heffner, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1954, pp. 305–307). C. Julius Solinus, too, addresses the barking of the dog in his
Collectanea rerum mirabilium
VI.

13
. Stephen A. Barney, W. J. Lewis, J. A. Beach, Oliver Berghof with the collaboration of Muriel Hall,
The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006, p. 253. Likewise, see also Rabanus Maurus,
De rerum naturis,
VIII
De bestiis.

14
. “Canis vero ubi vestigium leporis cervive reperit, et ad diverticulum semitae venerit, et quoddam viarum compitum, quod partes in plurimas scinditur, ambians singularum semitarum exordium, tacitus secum ipse pertractat, velut syllogisticam vocem sagicitate colligendi ordoris demittens. Aut certe, inquit, in hanc partem deflexit, aut in illam. Aut certe in humc se anfractum contulit, sed nec in stam, nec in illam ingressus est, superest igitur ut in istam partem se contulerit, et sic falsitate repudiata in veritatem prolabitur” (
De bestiis,
III, 11, PL 177 86d). A similar text from the same period is found in the Cambridge Bestiary, except that the dog is pursuing, not a hare, but a deer.

15
. “It would seem that irrational animals are able to choose. For choice ‘is the desire of certain things on account of an end,’ as stated in
Ethics
iii, 2, 3. But irrational animals desire something on account of an end: since they act for an end, and from desire. Therefore choice is in irrational animals. Further, the very word
electio
(choice) seems to signify the taking of something in preference to others. But irrational animals take something in preference to others: thus we can easily see for ourselves that a sheep will eat one grass and refuse another. Therefore choice is in irrational animals. Further, according to
Ethics
vi, 12, ‘
it is from prudence that a man makes a good choice of means
.’ But prudence is found in irrational animals: hence it is said in the beginning of
Metaph.
i, 1 that ‘those animals which, like bees, cannot hear sounds, are prudent by instinct.’ We see this plainly, in wonderful cases of sagacity manifested in the works of various animals, such as bees, spiders, and dogs. For a hound in following a stag, on coming to a crossroad, tries by scent whether the stag has passed by the first or the second road: and if he find that the stag has not passed there, being thus assured, takes to the third road without trying the scent; as though he were reasoning by way of exclusion, arguing that the stag must have passed by this way, since he did not pass by the others, and there is no other road. Therefore it seems that irrational animals are able to choose. On the contrary, Gregory of Nyssa [*Nemesius,
De Nat. Hom.
xxxiii.] says that ‘
children and irrational animals act willingly but not from choice
.’ Therefore choice is not in irrational animals. “I answer that, Since choice is the taking of one thing in preference to another it must of necessity be in respect of several things that can be chosen. Consequently in those things which are altogether determinate to one there is no place for choice. Now the difference between the sensitive appetite and the will is that, as stated above (Q[1], A[2], ad 3), the sensitive appetite is determinate to one particular thing, according to the order of nature; whereas the will, although determinate to one thing in general, viz. the good, according to the order of nature, is nevertheless indeterminate in respect of particular goods. Consequently choice belongs properly to the will, and not to the sensitive appetite which is all that irrational animals have. Wherefore irrational animals are not competent to choose. Not every desire of one thing on account of an end is called choice: there must be a certain discrimination of one thing from another. And this cannot be except when the appetite can be moved to several things. “An irrational animal takes one thing in preference to another, because its appetite is naturally determinate to that thing. Wherefore as soon as an animal, whether by its sense or by its imagination, is offered something to which its appetite is naturally inclined, it is moved to that alone, without making any choice. Just as fire is moved upward and not downward, without its making any choice. “As stated in
Phys.
iii, 3 ‘
movement is the act of the movable, caused by a mover
.’ Wherefore the power of the mover appears in the movement of that which it moves. Accordingly, in all things moved by reason, the order of reason which moves them is evident, although the things themselves are without reason: for an arrow through the motion of the archer goes straight towards the target, as though it were endowed with reason to direct its course. The same may be seen in the movements of clocks and all engines put together by the art of man. Now as artificial things are in comparison to human art, so are all natural things in comparison to the Divine art. And accordingly order is to be seen in things moved by nature, just as in things moved by reason, as is stated in Phys. ii. And thus it is that in the works of irrational animals we notice certain marks of sagacity, in so far as they have a natural inclination to set about their actions in a most orderly manner through being ordained by the Supreme art. For which reason, too, certain animals are called prudent or sagacious; and not because they reason or exercise any choice about things. This is clear from the fact that all that share in one nature, invariably act in the same way” (
Summa Theologiae,
I–II, 13, 2).