members of the species. He comes into the world, also, endowed with certain undefined capacities for learning other forms of behavior, capacities which vary greatly in different individuals. These individual differences and the instincts are what is called original nature.' Sociology is interested in "original nature" in so far as it supplies the raw materials out of which individual personalities and the social order are created. Both society and the persons who compose society are the products of social processes working in and through the materials which each new generation of men contributes to it. Charles Cooley, who was the first to make the important distinction between primary and secondary groups, has pointed out that the intimate, face-to-face associations of primary groups i.e., the family, the neighborhood, and the village community, are fundamental in forming the social nature and ideals of the individual.2 There is, however, an area of life in which the associations are more intimate than those of the primary group as that group is ordinarily conceived. Such are the relations between mother and child, particularly in the period of infancy, and the relations between men and women under the influence of the sexual instinct. These are the associations in which the most lasting affections and the most violent antipathies are formed. We may describe it as the area of touch relationships. Finally, there is the area of secondary contacts, in which relationships are relatively impersonal, formal, and conventional. It is in this region of social life that the individual gains, at the same time, a personal freedom and an opportunity for distinction that is denied him in the primary group. As a matter of fact, many, if not most, of our present social problems have their source and origin in the transition of great masses of the population—the immigrants, for example out of a 'Original nature in its relation to social welfare and human progress has been made the subject-matter of a special science, eugenics. For a criticism of the claims of eugenics as a social science see Leonard T. Hobhouse, Social Evolution and Political Theory (Columbia University Press, 1917). Charles H. Cooley, Social Organization, p. 28. society based on primary group relationships into the looser, freer, and less controlled existence of life in great cities. The "moral unrest" so deeply penetrating all western societies, the growing vagueness and indecision of personalities, the almost complete disappearance of the "strong and steady character" of old times, in short, the rapid and general increase of Bohemianism and Bolshevism in all societies, is an effect of the fact that not only the early primary group controlling all interests of its members on the general social basis, not only the occupational group of the mediaeval type controlling most of the interests of its members on a professional basis, but even the special modern group dividing with many others the task of organizing permanently the attitudes of each of its members, is more and more losing ground. The pace of social evolution has become so rapid that special groups are ceasing to be permanent and stable enough to organize and maintain organized complexes of attitudes of their members which correspond to their common pursuits. In other words, society is gradually losing all its old machinery for the determination and stabilization of individual characters.1 Every social group tends to create, from the individuals that compose it, its own type of character, and the characters thus formed become component parts of the social structure in which they are incorporated. All the problems of social life are thus problems of the individual; and all problems of the individual are at the same time problems of the group. This point of view is already recognized in preventive medicine, and to some extent in psychiatry. It is not yet adequately recognized in the technique of social case work. Further advance in the application of social principles to social practice awaits a more thoroughgoing study of the problems, systematic social research, and an experimental social science. Thomas and Znaniecki, op. cit., III, 63-64. ARE INSTINCTS DATA OR HYPOTHESES? ELLSWORTH FARIS ABSTRACT Lack of agreement concerning instincts.-William James made current the doctrine that man has more instincts than the animals. Later discussion has revealed much disagreement concerning the definition of instincts and even more uncertainty concerning their number. Lists range from forty, thirty, twenty-six, twenty, fifteen, to four, two, and one. The confusion is probably due to the hypothetical nature of instincts. The genetic explanation of instincts.-The genetic explanation is a sort of mythological effort and has resulted in rather ludicrous stories which pass as explanations. The corrective lies in the study of ethnology by which a comparison of different human customs will reveal the fact that much which seemed at first to be native is really the result of social customs. Instincts are hypotheses: social attitudes are data.Instincts emphasize similarities which often have no existence. Sociology has at hand empirical data in the form of attitudes, desires, and wishes, whose classification and explanation should be one of its chief concerns. Temperament. The study of temperamental attitudes is far more profitable for social psychology, for, while temperament is also a hypothesis, it is a necessary one and it concerns individual differences which are of most importance in dealing with problems of personality. The doctrine of human instincts is, in this country, hardly more than a generation old. It is only thirty-one years since James wrote: "Nothing is commoner than the remark that man differs from the lower creatures by the almost total lack of instincts and the assumption of their work by reason." So well did he argue for the existence of instincts in man that we may now say: Nothing is commoner than the belief that we are endowed with instincts inherited from the lower creatures. Whole systems of psychology have been founded on this assumption. And yet the agreement among psychologists has very definite limits. As each came to define and list the instincts, it became increasingly apparent that the subject was very difficult, there being little agreement either as to the nature of the instincts or their number. At the present time there is the widest diversity of opinion as to what an instinct is; there is the utmost confusion as to how many there are. What are the implications of this diversity and this confusion? Perhaps the explanation is that human instincts are explanatory assumptions and not observable phenomena. Let us examine how they are defined and listed. I The definitions vary widely. Says James: "An instinct is the faculty of acting in such a way as to produce certain ends without foresight of the ends and without previous education in their performance." This definition is criticized by several of his successors, including Thorndike. The succeeding attempts agree, for the most part, in being different from that of James, but their similarity goes little farther. Hunter expresses his view in five words, calling an instinct "an inherited coordination of reflexes," adding that "it refers not to a state of consciousness but to a mode of behavior," against which notion McDougall asserts that "instincts are an outcome of a distinctly mental process as well as an innate tendency."4 McDougall represents a tendency which culminates in this curious formulation from Drever: Now we are proposing to call the conscious impulse instinct, when and in so far as it is not itself determined by previous experience, but only determined in experience, while itself determining experience in conjunction with the natural objects or situations determining experience as sensation.5 One is tempted to discuss this gem of verbosity, but I pass to the statement of Münsterberg that the term instinct is not a psychological category at all, but is strictly biological, "the instincts do not introduce any new type of psychological experience," which opinion can be set over against the contradictory assertion of Wundt: "The assumption that instincts belong only to the animal and not to human consciousness is of course entirely unpsychological and contrary to experience." Watson calls it a chain of reflexes, while Pillsbury relates it to openness of synaptic connection. It is perhaps unnecessary to cite further instances, for every student of the literature is aware of the wide variations in I 1 Principles of Psychology, II, 383. Educational Psychology, I, 22. 3 General Psychology, p. 163. 4 Social Psychology, p. 26. 5 Instinct in Man, p. 88. Psychology, General and Applied, p. 186. 7 Outlines of Psychology, p. 317. 8 Essentials of Psychology, p. 240. the formulations of the definitions-not merely verbal differences, for these would not be important, but fundamental differences in conception. But why do they differ so widely? May it not be due to the very nature of the problem itself? Certain of the psychologists have, indeed, written very frankly concerning the difficulties here insisted upon, but the momentum of current opinion, the idols of the theater, have prevented their carrying out the impulse to reject the category as a factual datum. Thus Thorndike admits: Lack of observations of human behavior and the difficulty in interpreting the facts that have been observed which is the consequence of a civilized environment, the transitoriness of instincts and the early incessant and intimate interaction of nature and nurture, thus baffle the cataloguer of original tendencies.' Unfortunately, the baffled feeling did not endure, for on page 52 of the same volume the very same author thus describes the instinct of hunting an instinct which Angell declares not to exist. To a small escaping object, man, especially if hungry, responds, apart from training, by pursuit, being satisfied when he draws nearer to it. When within pouncing distance, he pounces upon it, grasping at it. If it is not seized he is annoyed. If it is seized, he examines, manipulates and dismembers it, unless some contrary tendency is brought into action by its sliminess, sting or the like. To an object of moderate size and not offensive mien moving away from or past him man originally responds much as noted above, save that in seizing the object chased, he is likely to throw himself upon it, bear it to the ground, choke and maul it until it is completely subdued, giving then a cry of triumph. This description lacks nothing in vividness, but one would hardly have expected such a statement from the scholar who wrote the masterly critique of the doctrine of imitation. The description is hardly convincing-it smacks of the armchair. How many children in the city parks may be observed pouncing on the small animals and dismembering them? The chickens, cats, and small dogs are "of moderate size and not offensive mien" and often may be seen "moving away from or past" the children, but the number of times the children can be observed "choking and mauling them till completely subdued, giving then a cry of triumph" is perhaps 1 Educational Psychology, I, 40. |