INSTINCT

Nothing is more wonderful than nature’s method of endowing each individual at the beginning with all the impulses, tendencies and capacities that are to control and determine the outcome of the life. The acorn has the perfect oak tree in its heart; the complete butterfly exists in the grub; and man at his highest powers is present in the babe at birth. Education adds nothing to what heredity supplies, but only develops what is present from the first.

We are a part of a great unbroken procession of life, which began at the beginning and will go on till the end. Each generation receives, through heredity, the products of the long experience through which the race has passed. The generation receiving the gift today lives its own brief life, makes its own little contribution to the sum total and then passes on as millions have done before. Through heredity, the achievements, the passions, the fears, and the tragedies of generations long since moldered to dust stir our blood and tone our nerves for the conflict of today.

1. THE NATURE OF INSTINCT

Every child born into the world has resting upon him an unseen hand reaching out from the past, pushing him out to meet his environment, and guiding him in the start upon his journey. This impelling and guiding power from the past we call instinct. In the words of Mosso: “Instinct is the voice of past generations reverberating like a distant echo in the cells of the nervous system. We feel the breath, the advice, the experience of all men, from those who lived on acorns and struggled like wild beasts, dying naked in the forests, down to the virtue and toil of our father, the fear and love of our mother.”

THE BABE’S DEPENDENCE ON INSTINCT.-The child is born ignorant and helpless. It has no memory, no reason, no imagination. It has never performed a conscious act, and does not know how to begin. It must get started, but how? It has no experience to direct it, and is unable to understand or imitate others of its kind. It is at this point that instinct comes to the rescue. The race has not given the child a mind ready made-that must develop; but it has given him a ready-made nervous system, ready to respond with the proper movements when it receives the touch of its environment through the senses.

And this nervous system has been so trained during a limitless past that its responses are the ones which are necessary for the welfare of its owner. It can do a hundred things without having to wait to learn them. Burdette says of the new-born child, “Nobody told him what to do. Nobody taught him. He knew. Placed suddenly on the guest list of this old caravansary, he knew his way at once to two places in it-his bedroom and the dining-room.” A thousand generations of babies had done the same thing in the same way, and each had made it a little easier for this particular baby to do his part without learning how.

DEFINITION OF INSTINCT.-Instincts are the tendency to act in certain definite ways, without previous education and without a conscious end in view. They are a tendency to act; for some movement, or motor adjustment, is the response to an instinct. They do not require previous education, for none is possible with many instinctive acts: the duck does not have to be taught to swim or the baby to suck. They have no conscious end in view, though the result may be highly desirable.

Says James: “The cat runs after the mouse, runs or shows fight before the dog, avoids falling from walls and trees, shuns fire and water, etc., not because he has any notion either of life or death, or of self, or of preservation. He has probably attained to no one of these conceptions in such a way as to react definitely upon it. He acts in each case separately, and simply because he cannot help it; being so framed that when that particular running thing called a mouse appears in his field of vision he must pursue; that when that particular barking and obstreperous thing called a dog appears he must retire, if at a distance, and scratch if close by; that he must withdraw his feet from water and his face from flame, etc. His nervous system is to a great extent a pre-organized bundle of such reactions. They are as fatal as sneezing, and exactly correlated to their special excitants as it to its own."

You ask, Why does the lark rise on the flash of a sunbeam from his meadow to the morning sky, leaving a trail of melody to mark his flight? Why does the beaver build his dam, and the oriole hang her nest? Why are myriads of animal forms on the earth today doing what they were countless generations ago? Why does the lover seek the maid, and the mother cherish her young? Because the voice of the past speaks to the present, and the present has no choice but to obey.

INSTINCTS ARE RACIAL HABITS.-Instincts are the habits of the race which it bequeaths to the individual; the individual takes these for his start, and then modifies them through education, and thus adapts himself to his environment. Through his instincts, the individual is enabled to short-cut racial experience, and begin at once on life activities which the race has been ages in acquiring. Instinct preserves to us what the race has achieved in experience, and so starts us out where the race left off.

UNMODIFIED INSTINCT IS BLIND.-Many of the lower animal forms act on instinct blindly, unable to use past experience to guide their acts, incapable of education. Some of them carry out seemingly marvelous activities, yet their acts are as automatic as those of a machine and as devoid of foresight. A species of mud wasp carefully selects clay of just the right consistency, finds a somewhat sheltered nook under the eaves, and builds its nest, leaving one open door. Then it seeks a certain kind of spider, and having stung it so as to benumb without killing, carries it into the new-made nest, lays its eggs on the body of the spider so that the young wasps may have food immediately upon hatching out, then goes out and plasters the door over carefully to exclude all intruders. Wonderful intelligence? Not intelligence at all. Its acts were dictated not by plans for the future, but by pressure from the past. Let the supply of clay fail, or the race of spiders become extinct, and the wasp is helpless and its species will perish. Likewise the race of bees and ants have done wonderful things, but individual bees and ants are very stupid and helpless when confronted by any novel conditions to which their race has not been accustomed.

Man starts in as blindly as the lower animals; but, thanks to his higher mental powers, this blindness soon gives way to foresight, and he is able to formulate purposeful ends and adapt his activities to their accomplishment. Possessing a larger number of instincts than the lower animals have, man finds possible a greater number of responses to a more complex environment than do they. This advantage, coupled with his ability to reconstruct his experience in such a way that he secures constantly increasing control over his environment, easily makes man the superior of all the animals, and enables him to exploit them for his own further advancement.

2. LAW OF THE APPEARANCE AND DISAPPEARANCE OF INSTINCTS

No child is born with all its instincts ripe and ready for action. Yet each individual contains within his own inner nature the law which determines the order and time of their development.

INSTINCTS APPEAR IN SUCCESSION AS REQUIRED.-It is not well that we should be started on too many different lines of activity at once, hence our instincts do not all appear at the same time. Only as fast as we need additional activities do they ripen. Our very earliest activities are concerned chiefly with feeding, hence we first have the instincts which prompt us to take our food and to cry for it when we are hungry. Also we find useful such abbreviated instincts, called reflexes, as sneezing, snuffling, gagging, vomiting, starting, etc.; hence we have the instincts enabling us to do these things. Soon comes the time for teething, and, to help the matter along, the instinct of biting enters, and the rubber ring is in demand. The time approaches when we are to feed ourselves, so the instinct arises to carry everything to the mouth. Now we have grown strong and must assume an erect attitude, hence the instinct to sit up and then to stand. Locomotion comes next, and with it the instinct to creep and walk. Also a language must be learned, and we must take part in the busy life about us and do as other people do; so the instinct to imitate arises that we may learn things quickly and easily.

We need a spur to keep us up to our best effort, so the instinct of emulation emerges. We must defend ourselves, so the instinct of pugnacity is born. We need to be cautious, hence the instinct of fear. We need to be investigative, hence the instinct of curiosity. Much self-directed activity is necessary for our development, hence the play instinct. It is best that we should come to know and serve others, so the instincts of sociability and sympathy arise. We need to select a mate and care for offspring, hence the instinct of love for the other sex, and the parental instinct. This is far from a complete list of our instincts, and I have not tried to follow the order of their development, but I have given enough to show the origin of many of our life’s most important activities.

MANY INSTINCTS ARE TRANSITORY.-Not only do instincts ripen by degrees, entering our experience one by one as they are needed, but they drop out when their work is done. Some, like the instinct of self-preservation, are needed our lifetime through, hence they remain to the end. Others, like the play instinct, serve their purpose and disappear or are modified into new forms in a few years, or a few months. The life of the instinct is always as transitory as is the necessity for the activity to which it gives rise. No instinct remains wholly unaltered in man, for it is constantly being made over in the light of each new experience. The instinct of self-preservation is modified by knowledge and experience, so that the defense of the man against threatened danger would be very different from that of the child; yet the instinct to protect oneself in some way remains. On the other hand, the instinct to romp and play is less permanent. It may last into adult life, but few middle-aged or old people care to race about as do children. Their activities are occupied in other lines, and they require less physical exertion.

Contrast with these two examples such instincts as sucking, creeping, and crying, which are much more fleeting than the play instinct, even. With dentition comes another mode of eating, and sucking is no more serviceable. Walking is a better mode of locomotion than creeping, so the instinct to creep soon dies. Speech is found a better way than crying to attract attention to distress, so this instinct drops out. Many of our instincts not only would fail to be serviceable in our later lives, but would be positively in the way. Each serves its day, and then passes over into so modified a form as not to be recognized, or else drops out of sight altogether.

SEEMINGLY USELESS INSTINCTS.-Indeed it is difficult to see that some instincts serve a useful purpose at any time. The pugnacity and greediness of childhood, its foolish fears, the bashfulness of youth-these seem to be either useless or detrimental to development. In order to understand the workings of instinct, however, we must remember that it looks in two directions; into the future for its application, and into the past for its explanation. We should not be surprised if the experiences of a long past have left behind some tendencies which are not very useful under the vastly different conditions of today.

Nor should we be too sure that an activity whose precise function in relation to development we cannot discover has no use at all. Each instinct must be considered not alone in the light of what it means to its possessor today, but of what it means to all his future development. The tail of a polliwog seems a very useless appendage so far as the adult frog is concerned, yet if the polliwog’s tail is cut off a perfect frog never develops.

INSTINCTS TO BE UTILIZED WHEN THEY APPEAR.-A man may set the stream to turning his mill wheels today or wait for twenty years-the power is there ready for him when he wants it. Instincts must be utilized when they present themselves, else they disappear-never, in most cases, to return. Birds kept caged past the flying time never learn to fly well. The hunter must train his setter when the time is ripe, or the dog can never be depended upon. Ducks kept away from the water until full grown have almost as little inclination for it as chickens.

The child whom the pressure of circumstances or unwise authority of parents keeps from mingling with playmates and participating in their plays and games when the social instinct is strong upon him, will in later life find himself a hopeless recluse to whom social duties are a bore. The boy who does not hunt and fish and race and climb at the proper time for these things, will find his taste for them fade away, and he will become wedded to a sedentary life. The youth and maiden must be permitted to “dress up” when the impulse comes to them, or they are likely ever after to be careless in their attire.

INSTINCTS AS STARTING POINTS.-Most of our habits have their rise in instincts, and all desirable instincts should be seized upon and transformed into habits before they fade away. Says James in his remarkable chapter on Instinct: “In all pedagogy the great thing is to strike while the iron is hot, and to seize the wave of the pupils’ interest in each successive subject before its ebb has come, so that knowledge may be got and a habit of skill acquired-a headway of interest, in short, secured, on which afterwards the individual may float. There is a happy moment for fixing skill in drawing, for making boys collectors in natural history, and presently dissectors and botanists; then for initiating them into the harmonies of mechanics and the wonders of physical and chemical law. Later, introspective psychology and the metaphysical and religious mysteries take their turn; and, last of all, the drama of human affairs and worldly wisdom in the widest sense of the term. In each of us a saturation point is soon reached in all these things; the impetus of our purely intellectual zeal expires, and unless the topic is associated with some urgent personal need that keeps our wits constantly whetted about it, we settle into an equilibrium, and live on what we learned when our interest was fresh and instinctive, without adding to the store.”

There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.

THE MORE IMPORTANT HUMAN INSTINCTS.-It will be impossible in this brief statement to give a complete catalogue of the human instincts, much less to discuss each in detail. We must content ourselves therefore with naming the more important instincts, and finally discussing a few of them: Sucking, biting, chewing, clasping objects with the fingers, carrying to the mouth, crying, smiling, sitting up, standing, locomotion, vocalization, imitation, emulation, pugnacity, resentment, anger, sympathy, hunting and fighting, fear, acquisitiveness, play, curiosity, sociability, modesty, secretiveness, shame, love, and jealousy may be said to head the list of our instincts. It will be impossible in our brief space to discuss all of this list. Only a few of the more important will be noticed.

3. THE INSTINCT OF IMITATION

No individual enters the world with a large enough stock of instincts to start him doing all the things necessary for his welfare. Instinct prompts him to eat when he is hungry, but does not tell him to use a knife and fork and spoon; it prompts him to use vocal speech, but does not say whether he shall use English, French, or German; it prompts him to be social in his nature, but does not specify that he shall say please and thank you, and take off his hat to ladies. The race did not find the specific modes in which these and many other things are to be done of sufficient importance to crystallize them in instincts, hence the individual must learn them as he needs them. The simplest way of accomplishing this is for each generation to copy the ways of doing things which are followed by the older generation among whom they are born. This is done largely through imitation.

NATURE OF IMITATION.-Imitation is the instinct to respond to a suggestion from another by repeating his act. The instinct of imitation is active in the year-old child, it requires another year or two to reach its height, then it gradually grows less marked, but continues in some degree throughout life. The young child is practically helpless in the matter of imitation. Instinct demands that he shall imitate, and he has no choice but to obey. His environment furnishes the models which he must imitate, whether they are good or bad. Before he is old enough for intelligent choice, he has imitated a multitude of acts about him; and habit has seized upon these acts and is weaving them into conduct and character. Older grown we may choose what we will imitate, but in our earlier years we are at the mercy of the models which are placed before us.

If our mother tongue is the first we hear spoken, that will be our language; but if we first hear Chinese, we will learn that with almost equal facility. If whatever speech we hear is well spoken, correct, and beautiful, so will our language be; if it is vulgar, or incorrect, or slangy, our speech will be of this kind. If the first manners which serve us as models are coarse and boorish, ours will resemble them; if they are cultivated and refined, ours will be like them. If our models of conduct and morals are questionable, our conduct and morals will be of like type. Our manner of walking, of dressing, of thinking, of saying our prayers, even, originates in imitation. By imitation we adopt ready-made our social standards, our political faith, and our religious creeds. Our views of life and the values we set on its attainments are largely a matter of imitation.

INDIVIDUALITY IN IMITATION.-Yet, given the same model, no two of us will imitate precisely alike. Your acts will be yours, and mine will be mine. This is because no two of us have just the same heredity, and hence cannot have precisely similar instincts. There reside in our different personalities different powers of invention and originality, and these determine by how much the product of imitation will vary from the model. Some remain imitators all their lives, while others use imitation as a means to the invention of better types than the original models. The person who is an imitator only, lacks individuality and initiative; the nation which is an imitator only is stagnant and unprogressive. While imitation must be blind in both cases at first, it should be increasingly intelligent as the individual or the nation progresses.

CONSCIOUS AND UNCONSCIOUS IMITATION.-The much-quoted dictum that “all consciousness is motor” has a direct application to imitation. It only means that we have a tendency to act on whatever idea occupies the mind. Think of yawning or clearing the throat, and the tendency is strong to do these things. We naturally respond to smile with smile and to frown with frown. And even the impressions coming to us from our material environment have their influence on our acts. Our response to these ideas may be a conscious one, as when a boy purposely stutters in order to mimic an unfortunate companion; or it may be unconscious, as when the boy unknowingly falls into the habit of stammering from hearing this kind of speech. The child may consciously seek to keep himself neat and clean so as to harmonize with a pleasant and well-kept home, or he may unconsciously become slovenly and cross-tempered from living in an ill-kept home where constant bickering is the rule.

Often we deliberately imitate what seems to us desirable in other people, but probably far the greater proportion of the suggestions to which we respond are received and acted upon unconsciously. In conscious imitation we can select what models we shall imitate, and therefore protect ourselves in so far as our judgment of good and bad models is valid. In unconscious imitation, however, we are constantly responding to a stream of suggestions pouring in upon us hour after hour and day after day, with no protection but the leadings of our interests as they direct our attention now to this phase of our environment, and now to that.

INFLUENCE OF ENVIRONMENT.-No small part of the influences which mold our lives comes from our material environment. Good clothes, artistic homes, beautiful pictures and decoration, attractive parks and lawns, well-kept streets, well-bound books-all these have a direct moral and educative value; on the other hand, squalor, disorder, and ugliness are an incentive to ignorance and crime.

Hawthorne tells in “The Great Stone Face” of the boy Ernest, listening to the tradition of a coming Wise Man who one day is to rule over the Valley. The story sinks deep into the boy’s heart, and he thinks and dreams of the great and good man; and as he thinks and dreams, he spends his boyhood days gazing across the valley at a distant mountain side whose rocks and cliffs nature had formed into the outlines of a human face remarkable for the nobleness and benignity of its expression. He comes to love this Face and looks upon it as the prototype of the coming Wise Man, until lo! as he dwells upon it and dreams about it, the beautiful character which its expression typifies grows into his own life, and he himself becomes the long-looked-for Wise Man.

THE INFLUENCE OF PERSONALITY.-More powerful than the influence of material environment, however, is that of other personalities upon us-the touch of life upon life. A living personality contains a power which grips hold of us, electrifies us, inspires us, and compels us to new endeavor, or else degrades and debases us. None has failed to feel at some time this life-touch, and to bless or curse the day when its influence came upon him. Either consciously or unconsciously such a personality becomes our ideal and model; we idolize it, idealize it, and imitate it, until it becomes a part of us. Not only do we find these great personalities living in the flesh, but we find them also in books, from whose pages they speak to us, and to whose influence we respond.

And not in the great personalities alone does the power to influence reside. From every life which touches ours, a stream of influence great or small is entering our life and helping to mold it. Nor are we to forget that this influence is reciprocal, and that we are reacting upon others up to the measure of the powers that are in us.

4. THE INSTINCT OF PLAY

Small use to be a child unless one can play. Says Karl Groos: “Perhaps the very existence of youth is due in part to the necessity for play; the animal does not play because he is young, but he is young because he must play.” Play is a constant factor in all grades of animal life. The swarming insects, the playful kitten, the frisking lambs, the racing colt, the darting swallows, the maddening aggregation of blackbirds-these are but illustrations of the common impulse of all the animal world to play. Wherever freedom and happiness reside, there play is found; wherever play is lacking, there the curse has fallen and sadness and oppression reign. Play is the natural rôle in the paradise of youth; it is childhood’s chief occupation. To toil without play, places man on a level with the beasts of burden.

THE NECESSITY FOR PLAY.-But why is play so necessary? Why is this impulse so deep-rooted in our natures? Why not compel our young to expend their boundless energy on productive labor? Why all this waste? Why have our child labor laws? Why not shut recesses from our schools, and so save time for work? Is it true that all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy? Too true. For proof we need but gaze at the dull and lifeless faces of the prematurely old children as they pour out of the factories where child labor is employed. We need but follow the children, who have had a playless childhood, into a narrow and barren manhood. We need but to trace back the history of the dull and brutish men of today, and find that they were the playless children of yesterday. Play is as necessary to the child as food, as vital as sunshine, as indispensable as air.

The keynote of play is freedom, freedom of physical activity, and mental initiative. In play the child makes his own plans, his imagination has free rein, originality is in demand, and constructive ability is placed under tribute. Here are developed a thousand tendencies which would never find expression in the narrow treadmill of labor alone. The child needs to learn to work; but along with his work must be the opportunity for free and unrestricted activity, which can come only through play. The boy needs a chance to be a barbarian, a hero, an Indian. He needs to ride his broomstick on a dangerous raid, and to charge with lath sword the redoubts of a stubborn enemy. He needs to be a leader as well as a follower. In short, without in the least being aware of it, he needs to develop himself through his own activity-he needs freedom to play. If the child be a girl, there is no difference except in the character of the activities employed.

PLAY IN DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION.-And it is precisely out of these play activities that the later and more serious activities of life emerge. Play is the gateway by which we best enter the various fields of the world’s work, whether our particular sphere be that of pupil or teacher in the schoolroom, of man in the busy marts of trade or in the professions, or of farmer or mechanic. Play brings the whole self into the activity; it trains to habits of independence and individual initiative, to strenuous and sustained effort, to endurance of hardship and fatigue, to social participation and the acceptance of victory and defeat. And these are the qualities needed by the man of success in his vocation.

These facts make the play instinct one of the most important in education. Froebel was the first to recognize the importance of play, and the kindergarten was an attempt to utilize its activities in the school. The introduction of this new factor into education has been attended, as might be expected, by many mistakes. Some have thought to recast the entire process of education into the form of games and plays, and thus to lead the child to possess the “Promised Land” through aimlessly chasing butterflies in the pleasant fields of knowledge. It is needless to say that they have not succeeded. Others have mistaken the shadow for the substance, and introduced games and plays into the schoolroom which lack the very first element of play; namely, freedom of initiative and action on the part of the child. Educational theorists and teachers have invented games and occupations and taught them to the children, who go through with them much as they would with any other task, enjoying the activity but missing the development which would come through a larger measure of self-direction.

WORK AND PLAY ARE COMPLEMENTS.-Work cannot take the place of play, neither can play be substituted for work. Nor are the two antagonistic, but each is the complement of the other; for the activities of work grow immediately out of those of play, and each lends zest to the other. Those who have never learned to work and those who have never learned to play are equally lacking in their development. Further, it is not the name or character of an activity which determines whether it is play for the participant, but his attitude toward the activity. If the activity is performed for its own sake and not for some ulterior end, if it grows out of the interest of the child and involves the free and independent use of his powers of body and mind, if it is his, and not someone’s else-then the activity possesses the chief characteristics of play. Lacking these, it cannot be play, whatever else it may be.

Play, like other instincts, besides serving the present, looks in two directions, into the past and into the future. From the past come the shadowy interests which, taking form from the touch of our environment, determine the character of the play activities. From the future come the premonitions of the activities that are to be. The boy adjusting himself to the requirements of the game, seeking control over his companions or giving in to them, is practicing in miniature the larger game which he will play in business or profession a little later. The girl in her playhouse, surrounded by a nondescript family of dolls and pets, is unconsciously looking forward to a more perfect life when the responsibilities shall be a little more real. So let us not grudge our children the play day of youth.

5. OTHER USEFUL INSTINCTS

Many other instincts ripen during the stage of youth and play their part in the development of the individual.

CURIOSITY.-It is inherent in every normal person to want to investigate and know. The child looks out with wonder and fascination on a world he does not understand, and at once begins to ask questions and try experiments. Every new object is approached in a spirit of inquiry. Interest is omnivorous, feeding upon every phase of environment. Nothing is too simple or too complex to demand attention and exploration, so that it vitally touches the child’s activities and experience.

The momentum given the individual by curiosity toward learning and mastering his world is incalculable. Imagine the impossible task of teaching children what they had no desire or inclination to know! Think of trying to lead them to investigate matters concerning which they felt only a supreme indifference! Indeed one of the greatest problems of education is to keep curiosity alive and fresh so that its compelling influence may promote effort and action. One of the greatest secrets of eternal youth is also found in retaining the spontaneous curiosity of youth after the youthful years are past.

MANIPULATION.-This is the rather unsatisfactory name for the universal tendency to handle, do or make something. The young child builds with its blocks, constructs fences and pens and caves and houses, and a score of other objects. The older child, supplied with implements and tools, enters upon more ambitious projects and revels in the joy of creation as he makes boats and boxes, soldiers and swords, kites, play-houses and what-not. Even as adults we are moved by a desire to express ourselves through making or creating that which will represent our ingenuity and skill. The tendency of children to destroy is not from wantonness, but rather from a desire to manipulate.

Education has but recently begun to make serious use of this important impulse. The success of all laboratory methods of teaching, and of such subjects as manual training and domestic science, is abundant proof of the adage that we learn by doing. We would rather construct or manipulate an object than merely learn its verbal description. Our deepest impulses lead to creation rather than simple mental appropriation of facts and descriptions.

THE COLLECTING INSTINCT.-The words my and mine enter the child’s vocabulary at a very early age. The sense of property ownership and the impulse to make collections of various kinds go hand in hand. Probably there are few of us who have not at one time or another made collections of autographs, postage stamps, coins, bugs, or some other thing of as little intrinsic value. And most of us, if we have left youth behind, are busy even now in seeking to collect fortunes, works of art, rare volumes or other objects on which we have set our hearts.

The collecting instinct and the impulse to ownership can be made important agents in the school. The child who, in nature study, geography or agriculture, is making a collection of the leaves, plants, soils, fruits, or insects used in the lessons has an incentive to observation and investigation impossible from book instruction alone. One who, in manual training or domestic science, is allowed to own the article made will give more effort and skill to its construction than if the work be done as a mere school task.

THE DRAMATIC INSTINCT.-Every person is, at one stage of his development, something of an actor. All children like to “dress up” and impersonate someone else-in proof of which, witness the many play scenes in which the character of nurse, doctor, pirate, teacher, merchant or explorer is taken by children who, under the stimulus of their spontaneous imagery and as yet untrammeled by self-consciousness, freely enter into the character they portray. The dramatic impulse never wholly dies out. When we no longer aspire to do the acting ourselves we have others do it for us in the theaters or the movies.

Education finds in the dramatic instinct a valuable aid. Progressive teachers are using it freely, especially in the teaching of literature and history. Its application to these fields may be greatly increased, and also extended more generally to include religion, morals, and art.

THE IMPULSE TO FORM GANGS AND CLUBS.-Few boys and girls grow up without belonging at some time to a secret gang, club or society. Usually this impulse grows out of two different instincts, the social and the adventurous. It is fundamental in our natures to wish to be with our kind-not only our human kind, but those of the same age, interests and ambitions. The love of secrecy and adventure is also deep seated in us. So we are clannish; and we love to do the unusual, to break away from the commonplace and routine of our lives. There is often a thrill of satisfaction-even if it be later followed by remorse-in doing the forbidden or the unconventional.

The problem here as in the case of many other instincts is one of guidance rather than of repression. Out of the gang impulse we may develop our athletic teams, our debating and dramatic clubs, our tramping clubs, and a score of other recreational, benevolent, or social organizations. Not repression, but proper expression should be our ideal.

6. FEAR

Probably in no instinct more than in that of fear can we find the reflections of all the past ages of life in the world with its manifold changes, its dangers, its tragedies, its sufferings, and its deaths.

FEAR HEREDITY.-The fears of childhood “are remembered at every step,” and so are the fears through which the race has passed. Says Chamberlain: “Every ugly thing told to the child, every shock, every fright given him, will remain like splinters in the flesh, to torture him all his life long. The bravest old soldier, the most daring young reprobate, is incapable of forgetting them all-the masks, the bogies, ogres, hobgoblins, witches, and wizards, the things that bite and scratch, that nip and tear, that pinch and crunch, the thousand and one imaginary monsters of the mother, the nurse, or the servant, have had their effect; and hundreds of generations have worked to denaturalize the brains of children. Perhaps no animal, not even those most susceptible to fright, has behind it the fear heredity of the child.”

President Hall calls attention to the fact that night is now the safest time of the twenty-four hours; serpents are no longer our most deadly enemies; strangers are not to be feared; neither are big eyes or teeth; there is no adequate reason why the wind, or thunder, or lightning should make children frantic as they do. But “the past of man forever seems to linger in his present”; and the child, in being afraid of these things, is only summing up the fear experiences of the race and suffering all too many of them in his short childhood.

FEAR OF THE DARK.-Most children are afraid in the dark. Who does not remember the terror of a dark room through which he had to pass, or, worse still, in which he had to go to bed alone, and there lie in cold perspiration induced by a mortal agony of fright! The unused doors which would not lock, and through which he expected to see the goblin come forth to get him! The dark shadows back under the bed where he was afraid to look for the hidden monster which he was sure was hiding there and yet dare not face! The lonely lane through which the cows were to be driven late at night, while every fence corner bristled with shapeless monsters lying in wait for boys!

And that hated dark closet where he was shut up “until he could learn to be good!” And the useless trapdoor in the ceiling. How often have we lain in the dim light at night and seen the lid lift just a peep for ogre eyes to peer out, and, when the terror was growing beyond endurance, close down, only to lift once and again, until from sheer weariness and exhaustion we fell into a troubled sleep and dreamed of the hideous monster which inhabited the unused garret! Tell me that the old trapdoor never bent its hinges in response to either man or monster for twenty years? I know it is true, and yet I am not convinced. My childish fears have left a stronger impression than proof of mere facts can ever overrule.

FEAR OF BEING LEFT ALONE.-And the fear of being left alone. How big and dreadful the house seemed with the folks all gone! How we suddenly made close friends with the dog or the cat, even, in order that this bit of life might be near us! Or, failing in this, we have gone out to the barn among the chickens and the pigs and the cows, and deserted the empty house with its torture of loneliness. What was there so terrible in being alone? I do not know. I know only that to many children it is a torture more exquisite than the adult organism is fitted to experience.

But why multiply the recollections? They bring a tremor to the strongest of us today. Who of us would choose to live through those childish fears again? Dream fears, fears of animals, fears of furry things, fears of ghosts and of death, dread of fatal diseases, fears of fire and of water, of strange persons, of storms, fears of things unknown and even unimagined, but all the more fearful! Would you all like to relive your childhood for its pleasures if you had to take along with them its sufferings? Would the race choose to live its evolution over again? I do not know. But, for my own part, I should very much hesitate to turn the hands of time backward in either case. Would that the adults at life’s noonday, in remembering the childish fears of life’s morning, might feel a sympathy for the children of today, who are not yet escaped from the bonds of the fear instinct. Would that all might seek to quiet every foolish childish fear, instead of laughing at it or enhancing it!

7. OTHER UNDESIRABLE INSTINCTS

We are all provided by nature with some instincts which, while they may serve a good purpose in our development, need to be suppressed or at least modified when they have done their work.

SELFISHNESS.-All children, and perhaps all adults, are selfish. The little child will appropriate all the candy, and give none to his playmate. He will grow angry and fight rather than allow brother or sister to use a favorite plaything. He will demand the mother’s attention and care even when told that she is tired or ill, and not able to minister to him. But all of this is true to nature and, though it needs to be changed to generosity and unselfishness, is, after all, a vital factor in our natures. For it is better in the long run that each one should look out for himself, rather than to be so careless of his own interests and needs as to require help from others. The problem in education is so to balance selfishness and greed with unselfishness and generosity that each serves as a check and a balance to the other. Not elimination but equilibrium is to be our watchword.

PUGNACITY, OR THE FIGHTING IMPULSE.-Almost every normal child is a natural fighter, just as every adult should possess the spirit of conquest. The long history of conflict through which our race has come has left its mark in our love of combat. The pugnacity of children, especially of boys, is not so much to be deprecated and suppressed as guided into right lines and rendered subject to right ideals. The boy who picks a quarrel has been done a kindness when given a drubbing that will check this tendency. On the other hand, one who risks battle in defense of a weaker comrade does no ignoble thing. Children need very early to be taught the baseness of fighting for the sake of conflict, and the glory of going down to defeat fighting in a righteous cause. The world could well stand more of this spirit among adults!

Let us then hear the conclusion of the whole matter. The undesirable instincts do not need encouragement. It is better to let them fade away from disuse, or in some cases even by attaching punishment to their expression. They are echoes from a distant past, and not serviceable in this better present. The desirable instincts we are to seize upon and utilize as starting points for the development of useful interests, good habits, and the higher emotional life. We should take them as they come, for their appearance is a sure sign that the organism is ready for and needs the activity they foreshadow; and, furthermore, if they are not used when they present themselves, they disappear, never to return.

8. PROBLEMS IN OBSERVATION AND INTROSPECTION

1. What instincts have you noticed developing in children? What ones have you observed to fade away? Can you fix the age in both cases? Apply these questions to your own development as you remember it or can get it by tradition from your elders.

2. What use of imitation may be made in teaching (1) literature, (2) composition, (3) music, (4) good manners, (5) morals?

3. Should children be taught to play? Make a list of the games you think all children should know and be able to play. It has been said that it is as important for a people to be able to use their leisure time wisely as to use their work time profitably. Why should this be true?

4. Observe the instruction of children to discover the extent to which use is made of the constructive instinct. The collecting instinct. The dramatic instinct. Describe a plan by which each of these instincts can be successfully used in some branch of study.

5. What examples can you recount from your own experience of conscious imitation? of unconscious imitation? of the influence of environment? What is the application of the preceding question to the esthetic quality of our school buildings?

6. Have you ever observed that children under a dozen years of age usually cannot be depended upon for “team work” in their games? How do you explain this fact?