The Mind and Its Education Part 15

CHAPTER XIII

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 b.u.t.terfly 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 pa.s.sed. The generation receiving the gift today lives its own brief life, makes its own little contribution to the sum total and then pa.s.ses on as millions have done before. Through heredity, the achievements, the pa.s.sions, 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, "n.o.body told him what to do. n.o.body 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."[6]

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 a.s.sume an erect att.i.tude, 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 s.e.x, 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 dent.i.tion 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 pa.s.ses 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 circ.u.mstances or unwise authority of parents keeps from mingling with playmates and partic.i.p.ating 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 a.s.sociated 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 s.p.a.ce 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 mult.i.tude 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 coa.r.s.e 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 n.o.bleness 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 ill.u.s.trations 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 role 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.