The Principles of Psychology, Vols. 1-2

Their case was precisely analogous to that of the Adirondack calves. The two opposite instincts relative to the same object ripen in succession. If the first one engenders a habit, that habit will inhibit the application of the second instinct to that object. All animals are tame during the earliest phase of their infancy. Habits formed then limit the effects of whatever instincts of wildness may later be evolved. Mr. Romanes gives some very curious examples of the way in which instinctive tendencies may be altered by the habits to which their first * objects' have given rise. The cases are a little more complicated than those mentioned in the text, inasmuch as the object reacted on not only starts a habit which inhibits other kinds of impulse toward it (although such other kinds might be natural), but even modifies by its own peculiar conduct the constitution of the impulse which it actually awakens.

Two of the instances in question are those of hens who hatched out broods of chicks after having (in three previous yea,rs) hatched ducks. They strove to coax or to compel their new progeny to enter the water, and seemed much perplexed at their unwillingness. Another hen adopted a brood of young ferrets which, having lost their mother, were put under her. During all the time they were left with her she had to sit on the nest, for they could not wander like young chicks. She obeyed their hoarse growling as she would have obeyed her chickens' peep. She combed out their hair with her bill, and " used frequently to stop and look with one eye at the wriggling nestful, with an inquiring gaze, expressive of astonishment." At other times she would fly up with a loud scream, doubtless because the orphans had nipped her in their search for teats. Finally, a Brahma hen nursed a young peacock during the enormous period of eighteen months, and never laid any eggs during all this time. The abnormal degree of pride which she showed in her wonderful chicken is described by Dr. Romanes as ludicrous.*

* For the cases in full see Mental Evolution in Animals, pp. 21^217. 2. This leads us to the law of tramitorinesSj which ig this : Many instincts ripen at a certain o,ge and then fade away. A consequence of this law is that if, during the time of such an instinct's vivacity, objects adequate to arouse it are met with, a habit of acting on them is formed, which remains when the original instinct has passed away ; but that if no such objects are met with, then no habit will be formed; and, later on in life, when the animal meets the objects, he will altogether fail to react, as at the earlier epoch he would instinctively have done.

No doubt such a law is restricted. Some instincts are far less transient than others — those connected with feeding and * self-preservation ' may hardly be transient at all, and some, after fading out for a time, recur as strong as ever, e.g., the instincts of pairing and rearing young. The law, however, though not absolute, is certainly very widespread, and a few examples will illustrate just what it means. In the chickens and calves above mentioned, it is obvious that the instinct to follow and become attached fades out after a few days, and that the instinct of flight then takes its place, the conduct of the creature toward man being decided by the formation or non-formation of a certain habit during those days. The transiency of the chicken's instinct to follow is also proved by its conduct toward the hen. Mr. Spalding kept some chickens shut up till they were comparatively old, and, speaking of these, he says :

" A chicken that has not heard the call of the mother till until eight or ten days old then hears it as if it heard it not, I regret to find that on this point my notes are not so full as I could wish, or as they might have been. There is, however, an account of one chicken that could not be returned to the mother when ten days old. The hen followed it, and tried to entice it in every way ; still, it continually left her and ran to the house or to any person of whom it caught sight. This it persisted in doing, though beaten back with a small branch dozens of times, and, indeed, cruelly maltreated. It was also placed under the mother at night, but it again left her in the morning."

The instinct of sucking is ripe in all mammals at birth, and leads to that habit of taking the breast which, in the human infant, may be prolonged by daily exercise long beyond its usual term of a year or a year and. a half. But the instinct itself is transient, in the sense that if, for any reason, the child be fed by spoon during the first few days of its life and not put to the breast, it may be no easy matter after that to make it suck at all. So of calves. If their mother die, or be dry, or refuse to let them suck for a day or two, so that they are fed by hand, it becomes hard to get them to suck at all when a new nurse is provided. The ease with which sucking creatures are weaned, by simply breaking the habit and giving them food in a new way, shows that the instinct, purely as such, must be entirely extinct.

Assuredly the simple fact that instincts are transient, and that the effect of later ones may be altered by the habits which earlier ones have left behind, is a far more philosophical explanation than the notion of an instinctive constitution vaguely 'deranged' or * thrown out of gear.' I have observed a Scotch terrier, born on the floor of a stable in December, and transferred six weeks later to a carpeted house, make, when he was less than four months old, a very elaborate pretence of burying' things, such as gloves, etc., with which he had played till he was tired. He scratched the carpet with his forefeet, dropped the object from his mouth upon the spot, and then scratched all about it (with both fore- and hind-feet, if I remember rightly), and finally went away and let it lie. Of course, the act was entirely useless. I saw him perform it at that age, some four or ^:yQ times, and never again in his life. The conditions were not present to fix a habit which should last when the prompting instinct died away. But suppose meat instead of a glove, earth instead of a carpet, hungerpangs instead of a fresh supper a few hours later, and it is easy to see how this dog might have got into a habit of burying superfluous food, which might have lasted all his life. Who can swear that the strictly instructive part of the food-burying propensity in the wild Canidce may not be as short-lived as it was in this terrier ?

A similar instance is given by Dr. H. D. Schmidt* of New Orleans: * Transactions of American Neurological Association, vol. i. p. 129 ** I may cite the example of a young squirrel which I had tamed, a number of years ago, when serving in the army, and when I had sufficient leisure and opportunity to study the habits of animals. In the autumn, before the winter sets in, adult squirrels bury as many nuts as they can collect, separately, in the ground. Holding the nut firmly between their teeth, they first scratch a hole in the grond, and, after pointing their ears in all directions to convince themselves that no enemy is near, they ram — the head, with the nut still between the front teeth, serving as a sledge-hammer — the nut into the ground, and then fill up the hole by means of their paws. The whole process is executed with great rapidity, and, as it appeared to me, always with exactly the same movements ;' in fact, it is done so well that I could never discover the traces of the burial-ground. Now, as regards the young squirrel, which, of course, never had been present at the burial of a nut, I observed that, after having eaten a number of hickory-nuts to appease its appetite, it would take one between its teeth, then sit upright and listen in all directions. Finding all right, it would scratch upon the smooth blanket on which I was playing with it as if to make a hole, then hammer with the nut between its teeth upon the blanket, and finally perform all the motions required to fill up a hole — in the air; after which it would jump away, leaving the nut, of course, uncovered."

Tlie anecdote, of course, illustrates beautifully the close relation of instinct to reflex action — a particular perception calls forth particular movements, and that is all. Dr. Schmidt writes me that the squirrel in question soon passed away from his observation. It may fairly be presumed that, if he had been long retained prisoner in a cage, he would soon have forgotten his gesticulations over the hickory-nuts. One might, indeed, go still further with safety, and expect that, if such a captive squirrel were then set free, he would never afterwards acquire this peculiar instinct of his tribe.*

Leaving lower animals aside, and turning to human instincts, we see the law of transiency corroborated on the * "Mr. Spalding," says Mr. Lewes (Problems of Life and Mind, prob. I. chap. II. § 33, note), "tells me of a friend of his who reared a gosling in the kitchen, away from all water; when this bird was some months old, and was taken to a pond, it not only refused to go into the water, but when thrown in scrambled out again, as a hen would have done. Here was an fcistinct entirely suppressed. " See a similar observation on ducklings in T. R. R. Stebbing : Essays on Darwinism (London, 1871), p. 78.

widest scale by the alternation of different interests and passions as human life goes on. With the child, life is all play and fairy-tales and learning the external properties of ' things ;' with the youth, it is bodily exercises of a more systematic sort, novels of the real world, boon-fellowship and song, friendship and love, nature, travel and adventure, science and philosophy ; with the man, ambition and policy, acquisitiveness, responsibility to others, and the selfish zest of the battle of life. If a boy grows up alone at the age of games and sports, and learns neither to play ball, nor row, nor sail, nor ride, nor skate, nor fish, nor shoot, probably he will be sedentary to the end of his days ; and, though the best of opportunities be afforded him for learning these things later, it is a hundred to one but he will pass them by and shrink back from the effort of taking those necessary first steps the prospect of which, at an earlier age, would have filled him with eager delight. The sexual passion expires after a protracted reign ; but it is well known that its peculiar manifestations in a given individual depend almost entirely on the habits he may form during the early period of its activity. Exposure to bad company then makes him a loose liver all his days ; chastity kept at first makes the same easy later on. In all pedagogy the great thing is to strike the iron while hot, and to seize the wave of the pupil's 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 afterward 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 be one associated with some urgent personal need that keeos 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. Outside of their own business, the ideas gained by men before they are twenty-five are practically the only ideas they shall have in their lives. They cannot get anything new. Disinterested curiosity is past, the mental grooves and channels set, the power of assimilation gone. If by chance we ever do learn anything about some entirely new topic we are afflicted with a strange sense of insecurity, and we fear to advance a resolute opinion. But, with things learned in the plastic days of instinctive curiosity we never lose entirely our sense of being at home. There remains a kinship, a sentiment of intimate acquaintance, which, even when we know we have failed to keep abreast of the subject, flatters us with a sense of power over it, and makes us feel not altogether out of the pale.

Whatever individual exceptions might be cited to this are of the sort that ' prove the rule.' To detect the moment of the instinctive readiness for the subject is, then, the first duty of every educator. As for the pupils, it would probably lead to a more earnest temper on the part of college students if they had less belief in their unlimited future intellectual potentialities, and could be brought to realize that whatever physics and political economy and philosophy they are now acquiring are, for better or worse, the physics and political economy and philosophy that will have to serve them to the end.

The natural conclusion to draw from this transiency of instincts is that most instirwts are implanted for the sake of giving rise to habits, and that, this purpose once accomplished, the instincts themselves, as such, have no raison d'etre in the psychical economy, and consequently fade aivay. That occasionally an instinct should fade before circumstances permit of a habit being formed, or that, if the habit be formed, other factors than the pure instinct should modify its course, need not surprise us. Life is full of the imperfect adjustment to individual cases, of arrangements which, taking the species as a whole, are quite orderly and regular. Instinct cannot be expected to escape this general risk.

Let US now test our principles by turning to human instincts in more detail. We cannot pretend in these pages to be minute or exhaustive. But we can say enough to set all the above generalities in a more favorable light. But first, what kind of motor reactions upon objects shall we count as instincts? This, as aforesaid, is a somewhat arbitrary matter. Some of the actions aroused in us by objects go no further than our own bodies. Such is the bristling up of the attention when a novel object is perceived, or the * expression ' on the face or the breathing apparatus of an emotion it may excite. These movements merge into ordinary reflex actions like laughing when tickled, or making a wry face at a bad taste. Other actions take effect upon the outer world. Such are flight from a wild beast, imitation of what we see a comrade do, etc. On the whole it is best to be catholic, since it is very hard to draw an exact line ; and call both of these kinds of activity instinctive, so far as either may be naturally provoked by the presence of specific sorts of outward fact.

Professor Preyer, in his careful little work, * Die Seele des Kindes,' says *' instinctive acts are in man few in number, and, apart from those connected with the sexual passion, difficult to recognize after early youth is past." And he adds, ** so much the more attention should we pay to the instinctive movements of new-born babies, sucklings, and small children." That instinctive acts should be easiest recognized in childhood would be a very natural effect of our principles of transitoriness, and of the restrictive influence of habits once acquired ; but we shall see how far they are from being * few in number ' in man. Professor Preyer divides the movements of infants into impulsive^ refleXy and instinctive. By impulsive movements he means random movements of limbs, body, and voice, with no aim, and before perception is aroused. Among the first reflex movements are crying on contact with the air, sneezing^ snuffling^ snoring , coughing, sighing, sobhing, gagging, vomiting, hiccuplng, starting, moving the limbs when tickled, touched, or Uoivn upon, etc., etc.

Of the movements called by him instinctive in the child, Professor Preyer gives a full account. Herr Schneider does the same ; and as their descriptions agree with each other and with what other writers about infancy say, I will base my own very brief statement on theirs. SiuiJcing : almost perfect at birth ; not coupled with any congenital tendency to seek the breast, this being a later acquisition. As we have seen, sucking is a transitory instinct.

Biting an object placed in the mouth, chevnng and grinding the teeth ; licking sugar ; making characteristic grimaces over bitter and sweet tastes ; spitting out. Clasping an object which touches the fingers or toes. Later, attempts to grasp at an object seen at a distance. Pointing at such objects, and making a peculiar sound expressive of desire, which, in my own three children, was the first manifestation of speech, occurring many weeks before other significant sounds.

Carrying to the mouth of the object, when grasped. This instinct, guided and inhibited by the sense of taste, and combined with the instincts of biting, chewing, sucking, spitting-out, etc., and with the reflex act of swallowing, leads in the individual to a set of habits which constitute his function of alimentation, and which may or may not be gradually modified as life goes on. Crying at bodily discomfort, hunger, or pain, and at solitude. Smiling at being noticed, fondled, or smiled at by others. It seems very doubtful whether young infants have any instinctive fear of a terrible or scowling face. I have been unable to make my own children, under a year old, change their expression when I changed mine ; at most they manifested attention or curiosity. Preyer instances a protrusion of the lips, which, he says, may be so great as to remind one of that in the chimpanzee, as an instinctive expression of concentrated attention in the human infant.

Turning the head aside as a gesture of rejection, a gesture usually accompanied with a frown and a bending back oi the body, and with holding the breath. Locomotion. The early movements of children's limbs are more or less symmetrical. Later a baby will move his legs in alternation if suspended in the air. But until the impulse to walk awakens by the natural ripening of the nerve-centres, it seems to make no difference how often the child's feet may be placed in contact with the ground ; the legs remain limp, and do not respond to the sensation of contact in the soles by muscular contractions pressing doionwards. No sooner, however, is the standing impulse born, than the child stiffens his legs and presses downward as soon as he feels the floor. In some babies this is the first locomotory reaction. In others it is preceded by the instinct to creep^ which arises, as I can testify, often in a very sudden way. Yesterday the baby sat quite contentedly wherever he was put ; to-day it has become impossible to keep him sitting at all, so irresistible is the impulse, aroused by the sight of the floor, to throw himself forward upon his hands. Usually the arms are too weak, and the ambitious little experimenter falls on his nose. But his perseverance is dauntless, and he ends in a few days by learning to travel rapidly around the room in the quadrupedal way. The position of the legs in * creeping ' varies much from one child to another. My own child, when creeping, was often observed to pick up objects from the floor with his mouth, a phenomenon which, as Dr. O. W. Holmes has remarked, like the early tendency to grasp with the toes, easily lends itself to interpretation as a reminiscence of prehuman ancestral habits.

The walking instinct may awaken with no less suddenness, and its entire education be completed within a week's compass, barring, of course, a little 'grogginess' in the gait. Individual infants vary enormously ; but on the whole it is safe to say that the mode of development of these locomotor instincts is inconsistent with the account given by the older English associationist school, of their being results of the individual's education, due altogether to the gradual association of certain perceptions with certain haphazard movements and certain resultant pleasures. Mr

Bain has tried,* by describing the demeanor of new-born lambs, to show that locomotion is learned by a very rapid experience. But the observation recorded proves the faculty to be almost perfect from the first ; and all others who have observed new-born calves, lambs, and pigs agree that in these animals the powers of standing and walking, and of interpreting the topographical significance of sights and sounds, are all but fully developed at birth. Often in animals who seem to be * learning * to walk or fly the semblance is illusive. The awkwardness shown is not due to the fact that * experience ' has not yet been there to associate the successful movements and exclude the failures, but to the fact that the animal is beginning his attempts before the co-ordinating centres have quite ripened for their work. Mr. Spalding's observations on this point are conclusive as to birds.

" Birds," he says, " do not learn to fly. Two years ago I shut up five unfledged swallows in a small box, not much larger than the nest from which they were taken. The little box, which had a wire front, was hung on the wall near the nest, and the young swallows were fed by their parents through the wires. In this confinement, where they could not even extend their wings, they were kept until after they were fully fledged. ... On going to set the prisoners free, one was found dead. . . . The remaining four were allowed to escape one at a time. Two of these were perceptibly wavering and unsteady in their flight. One of them, after a flight of some ninety yards, disappeared among some trees." No. 3 and No. 4 " never flew against anything, nor was there, in their avoiding objects, any appreciable difference between them and the old birds. No. 3 swept round the Wellingtonia, and No. 4 rose over the hedge, just as we see the old swallows doing every hour of the day. I have this summer verified these observations. Of two swallows I had similarly confined, one, on being set free, flew a yard or two close to the ground, rose in the direction of a beech-tree, which it gracefully avoided ; it was seen for a considerable time sweeping round the beeches and performing magnificent evolutions in the air high above them. The other, which was observed to beat the air with its wings more than usual, was soon lost to sight behind some trees. Titmice, tomtits, and wrens I have made the subjects of similar observations, and with similar results. " *

In the light of this report, one may well be tempted to make a prediction about the human child, and say that if a baby were kept from getting on his feet for two or three weeks after the first impulse to walk had shown itself in him, — a small blister on each sole would do the business, — he might then be expected to walk about as well, through the mere ripening of his nerve-centres, as if the ordinary process of * learning ' had been allowed to occur during all the blistered time. It is to be hoped that some scientific widower, left alone with his offspring at the critical moment, may ere long test this suggestion on the living subject. Climbing on trees, fences, furniture, banisters, etc., is a wellmarked instinctive propensity which ripens after the fourth year.

Vocalization. This may be either musical or significant. Yery few weeks after birth the baby begins to express its spirits by emitting vowel sounds, as much during inspiration as during expiration, and will lie on its back cooing and gurgling to itself for nearly an hour. But this singing has nothing to do with speech. Speech is sound significant. During the second year a certain number of significant sounds are gradually acquired ; but talking proper does not set in till the instinct to imitate sounds ripens in the nervous system ; and this ripening seems in some children to be quite abrupt. Then speech grows rapidly in extent and perfection. The child imitates every word he hears uttered, and repeats it again and again with the most evident pleasure at his new power. At this time it is quite impossible to talk 2vith him, for his condition is that of * Echolalia,' — instead of answering the question, he simply reiterates it. The result is, however, that his vocabulary increases very fast ; and little by little, with teaching from above, the young prattler understands, puts words together to express his own wants and perceptions, and even makes intelligent replies. From a speechless, he has become a speaking, animal. The interesting point with regard to this instinct i« the oftentimes very sudden birth of the impulse to imitate sounds. Up to the date of its awakening the child may have been as devoid of it as a dog. Four days later his whole energy may be poured into this new channel. The habits of articulation formed during the plastic age of childhood are in most persons sufficient to inhibit the for*

mation of new ones of a fundamentally different sort — witness the inevitable ' foreign accent ' which distinguishes the speech of those who learn a language after early youth. Imitation. The child's first words are in part vocables of his own invention, which his parents adopt, and which, as far as they go, form a new human tongue upon the earth ; and in part they are his more or less successful imitations of words he hears the parents use. But the instinct of imitating gestures develops earlier than that of imitating sounds, — unless the sympathetic crying of a baby when it hears another cry may be reckoned as imitation of a sound. Professor Preyer speaks of his child imitating the protrusion of the father's lips in its fifteenth week. The various accomplishments of infancy, making * pat-a-cake,' saying

* bye-bye,' * blowing out the candle,' etc., usually fall well inside the limits of the first year. Later come all the various imitative games in which childhood revels, playing * horse,* * soldiers,' etc., etc. And from this time onward man is essentially the imitative animal. His whole educability and in fact the whole history of civilization depend on this trait, which his strong tendencies to rivalry, jealousy, and acquisitiveness reinforce. * Humani nihil a me alienum puto/ is the motto of each individual of the species ; and makes him, whenever another individual shows a power or superiority of any kind, restless until he can exhibit it himself. But apart from this kind of imitation, of which the psychological roots are complex, there is the more direct propensity to speak and walk and behave like others, usually without any conscious intention of so doing. And there is the imitative tendency which shows itself in large masses of men, and produces panics, and orgies, and frenzies of violence, and which only the rarest individuals can actively withstand. This sort of imitativeness is possessed by man in common with other gregarious animals, and is an instinct in the fullest sense of the term, being a blind impulse to act as soon as a certain perception occurs. It is particularly hard not to imitate gaping, laughing, or looking and running in a certain direction, if we see others doing so. Certain mesmerized subjects must automatically imitate whatever motion their

operator makes before their eyes.* A successful piece of mimicry gives to both bystanders and mimic a peculiar kind of aesthetic pleasure. The dramatic impulse, the tendency to pretend one is someone else, contains this pleasure of mimicry as one of its elements. Another element seems to be a peculiar sense of power in stretching one's own personality so as to include that of a strange person. In young children this instinct often knows no bounds. For a few months in one of my children's third year, he literally hardly ever appeared in his own person. It was always, " Play I am So-and-so, and you are So-and-so, and the chair is such a thing, and then we'll do this or that." If you called him by his name, H., you invariably got the reply, " I'm not H., I'm a hyena, or a horse-car," or whatever the feigned object might be. He outwore this impulse after a time ; but while it lasted, it had every appearance of being the automatic result of ideas, often suggested by perceptions, working out irresistible motor effects. Imitation shades into

Emulation or Rivalry ^ a very intense instinct, especially rife with young children, or at least especially undisguised. Everyone knows it. Nine-tenths of the work of the world is done by it. We know that if we do not do the task someone else will do it and get the credit, so we do it. It has very little connection with sympathy, but rather more with pugnacity, which we proceed in turn to consider. PugnojCity ; anger ; resentment. In many respects man is the most ruthlessly ferocious of beasts. As with all gregarious animals, * two souls,' as Faust says, * dwell within his breast,' the one of sociability and helpfulness, the other of jealousy and antagonism to his mates. Though in a general way he cannot live without them, yet, as regards certain individuals, it often falls out that he cannot live with them either. Constrained to be a member of a tribe, he still has a right to decide, as far as in him lies, of which other members the tribe shall consist. Killing off a few