CHAPTER I MAN AND HIS LUGGAGE Just how much an infant brings with it into the world at birth in the form of attributes which distinguishes it from the lower animals; just what beginnings which later develop into the characteristics common to every individual member of the human race the child possesses at its first glimpse of light, neither philosophy nor science has yet conclusively determined. But certain it is that the infant is born into the world with at least the rudiments of hereditary tendencies to which various psychologists have given differing names, the most common being 1 2 "instincts" "native tendencies" and "impulses"3 The attempts to enumerate and evaluate the instincts by writers on philosophy, sociology and psychology have met with varying success and, even today, disagreement on the subject is rampant. Many years ago, William James taught with the dogmatic finality of a Thomas Aquinas that the instincts reveal themselves as such axiomatically obvious propositions that the mere idea of discussing their basis is sheer foolishness. his "Text Book of Psychology": 4 He wrote in ....To the metaphysician alone can such questions 1. William McDougall, An Introduction to Social Psychology. 2. John Dewey. Human Nature and Conduct 3. Ibid 4. Vol. II, p.386. to a single friend? Why does a particular man can only say, "Of course, we smile, of course, But subsequent writers disregarded the "foolishness" of it all and conducted investigations into the "obvious" yet mysterious realm of instinct. At first, three instincts, selfpreservation, nutrition, and sex, sufficed in the attempt to explain human behavior. So much of the conduct of man could be classified under these three impulses that their proponents soon felt confident that all human behavior could be included under them. But they soon observed that man did not always preserve himself, nourish himself or fall slave to the blandishments of sex. As the complexity of human conduct became more evident, the doctrine of the three basic instincts has had to In the attempt to accommodate those human tendencies that did not obviously fall under self-preservation, nutrition, or sex, the gregarious instinct was added to the list. It was observed that the behavior of non-gregarious animals could be conveniently generalized under the three primitive instincts but the conduct of the gregarious animals presented some phenomena which were clearly absent in that of non-gregarious. Clearly, then, it was reasoned out, the instinct of gregariousness will take care of those phenomena. be abandoned. But the breaking away from the original three primitive instincts set up a valuable precedent which others, in order to 1. W. Trotter. Instinct of the Herd in Peace and War. 1 account for the increasing complexity of behavior, easily followed. Thus McDougall, with a finality equal to that of James, conceived his theory of the seven primary instincts with their corresponding primary emotion, and to guard the possible breakdown of his theory from the necessity of adding others, he has taken great care also to add a number of "many-sided", "nonspecific" innate tendencies. The primary instincts with their corresponding primary emotions, as he conceives them, are the instinct of flight and the emotion of fear, the instinct of repulsion and the emotion of disgust, the instinct of curiosity and the emotion of wonder, the instinct of pugnacity and the emotion of anger, the instincts of self-abasement and of selfassertion and the emotions of subjection and elation, and the parental instinct and the tender emotion. Under his classification of instincts of less well-defined emotional tendency, he mentions those of reproduction, gregariousness, acquisition, suggestion, immitation, sympathy, and construction. 1 His scheme displays an architectural simplicity which has gained for it many adherents. And because of the general acceptance of his theory among his contemporaries, we will, in the following pages, take occasion to compare it with those of other writers who have taken exceptions to it. In the meantime we must briefly notice a new theory of instinct which, if right, must smash every other the ory advanced since William James and which, in contrast to James' "axiomatically obvious theory", would do away with the attempted classification of instincts 1. William McDougall. An Introduction to Social Psychology, Chs. III and IV. |