Part 15 (1/2)

CHAPTER XIII

INSTINCT

Nothing iseach 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 cohest powers is present in the babe at birth Education _adds_ nothing to what heredity supplies, but only develops what is present froreat 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 h heredity, the achieveenerations 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 hi hi hi 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 led 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 ination It has never perforet 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 coiven the child a iven him a ready-made nervous system, ready to respond with the proper h the senses

And this nervous syste 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 hiht hiuest list of this old caravansary, he knew his way at once to two places in it--his bedrooenerations of babies had done the sa 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 ht to swim or the baby to suck They have no conscious _end_ in view, though the result hly desirable

Says Jaht 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 si so fra called a mouse appears in his field of vision he _ 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 froreat 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”[6]

You ask, Why does the lark rise on the flash of a sunbea a trail of ht?

Why does the beaver build his da her nest? Why arewhat they were countless generations ago? Why does the lover seek the ? _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 h education, and thus adapts hih 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 foruide their acts, incapable of education Soly marvelous activities, yet their acts are as autoht A species of ht 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 benu, carries it into the new-s on the body of the spider so that the young wasps oes 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 aniher ht, and he is able to formulate purposeful ends and adapt his activities to their accoer number of instincts than the lower anireater number of responses to a e, 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 lahich 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 prory

Also we find useful such abbreviated instincts, called _reflexes_, as sneezing, snuffling, gagging, vo us to do these things Soon co, the instinct of biting enters, and the rubber ring is in demand The time approaches e are to feed ourselves, so the instinct arises to carry everything to theand 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 is quickly and easily

We need a spur to keep us up to our best effort, so the instinct of ees We nacity 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 sy, 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 developin 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 lifetih, 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 re ht of each new experience