giving rise to any particular emotion rather than to another; they are at the common service of all, and belong to none.

When the child is not able to attain its ends by such incomplete instincts as still survive in it, then, so far as it is unassisted, it has to fall back on two other and more general methods for attaining them: imitation or experimentation. In the first it shows itself capable of profiting by the experience of others; in the second, of profiting by its own experience. But how does it come to adopt these methods? It does not acquire them through experience. When therefore these methods are spoken of as 'instinctive,' and the dispositions from which they proceed as 'instincts,' what is meant is that they are hereditary: that the child begins to imitate because the sight of what others are doing is an innate stimulus to its innate and imitative disposition; that it begins to experiment because failure to attain its ends acts innately as a stimulus to vary its means, and to continue to vary them until it achieves success. Thus Preyer remarks that the utilising of experience "may be conceived of as an inherited logical process-i.e., as instinctive.”1

Now we may object to class these hereditary dispositions as instincts, because they do not produce like other instincts a definite behaviour which is substantially the same on different occasions, but, on the contrary, a behaviour that varies with the situation, according to the kind of action that the child has to imitate, or the end which it has to achieve by its experimentation; yet in all this varying behaviour there is still something that stamps it as imitation or experimentation. There is something abstractly the same, though in its particular nature different, which impels us to call it "instinctive." But what we have specially to notice is that these so-called instincts to imitate and to experiment, like those fragmentary instincts to which we last referred, are not connected exclusively with any particular emotion 2; but so far as they are serviceable, may belong to all emotions.

1 'The Mind of the Child,' pt. i. ch. i. Thus Prof. Stout speaks of "the instinctive appreciation of relative success and failure as shown in persistency with varied effort." (Manual of Psy.,' B. III, ch. I, 5, 3rd ed.) 2 See 'Social Psychology,' sect. i. ch. iv.

Besides the hereditary dispositions to which we have referred there are others: there is the constitution of the mind; and besides this constitution common to all persons, there are the special, innate tempers and abilities belonging to different persons. The term 'instinct' may be used in the most general sense to include all innate dispositions; but following the narrower use of the term advocated in recent works,1 we shall exclude all such as are too general, and which like the capacity to feel emotion, to retain what we have learnt, to believe, to compare our ideas, and to make inferences, are not connected with a sufficiently definite mode of behaviour; and on the other side we shall exclude all innate tempers and dispositions that distinguish individuals, and which are so marked in men of original character and genius.

2. The Relation of Instinct to Emotion

The problem we have now to consider is not the speculative question how instincts have been developed ; whether they are purely biological facts as some have contended, "no-wise guided by conscious experience," or whether from the beginning, as others maintain, intelligence and will have influenced their development. We have to start from the fact that we inherit them. It is admitted that in each one of us they are modifiable through our experience; and that even among animals there are few if any instincts that do not become more perfect with practice. Our problem is confined to the question how they are related to the primary emotions. We have distinguished three parts in the system of an emotion: (1) that part which is in consciousness and is alone the felt emotion; (2) that part which is organised in the body; (3) and that part which is present in our behaviour and accessible to external observation. Now assuming that there is some instinct present in the system of an emotion, this instinct will include so much of the second or bodily part of the system as is inherited, and is innately excited by certain 1 See Instinct and Experience,' by Prof. C. L. Morgan, ch. iv., also W. McDougall, 'Social Psychology,' sect. i. ch. ii.

2 C. L. Morgan, op. cit. ch. iv.

3 G. F. Stout, see 'British Journal of Psychology,' vol. v. 1912.

stimuli, and innately evokes a specific kind of behaviour in response. Whether that part of the system which is in consciousness is also part of the instinct, and no more than the subjective expression of its activity, we shall presently have to consider.

A second and delicate question is: what degree of definiteness must be present in the behaviour of a primary emotion before the physical disposition from which it proceeds can be accounted an instinct? This question more particularly concerns us where we are dealing with human rather than with animal instincts. But turning on differences of degree which cannot be measured, the question itself is not susceptible of a definite answer. The instinct and the innate disposition will here shade into one another. For instance, it is generally held that the appetites and such primary emotions as anger and fear are, or contain, instincts. But the hungry infant cannot find its way to the breast. Its movements are at first undefined, or only to be defined by the result or end to which it is persistently groping. These movements are not generally regarded as instinctive, but only the definite action of sucking when the nipple is in the mouth. Again the young child, while very early susceptible of fear and anger, can accomplish very little of the behaviour which is characteristic of these emotions. It cannot at first, under the influence of fear, run away or hide itself, as the young chick runs to and hides under its mother. Under the influence of anger it cannot at first injure anything or inflict pain, the two most familiar manifestations of the emotion. It must first learn to grasp things before it can dash them on the ground or throw them about in anger. It must first learn to balance its body and to walk before it can run away in fear. At first it can only clasp things with its fingers. "The contraposition of the thumb, . . . is very slowly learned by the young child." 1 It falls down many times before it learns to walk securely. Yet all of these movements of grasping, standing upright, and walking are regarded as "predominantly or exclusively instinctive."2 More or less fragmentary and uncertain at first, they grow 1 Preyer, op. cit. second part xi., 'Instinctive Movements.' 2 Ibid.

more definite and coherent as the organs become developed and after practice. But they only become definite because there are dispositions that innately determine the ends to which they are directed, as well as the employment of experiment or imitation to achieve them. And hence the delight of the child when it has at length accomplished the simplest of these movements after repeated failures.

The so-called instincts—or, as we prefer to call them—the emotional systems of fear and anger in the child then contain other and simpler instincts-as those of walking, running, creeping, and throwing things about,-which, in the human child, are incomplete and fragmentary compared with the corresponding instincts of animals; and, organised with them, and assisting their deficiencies, there must be also the instinctive tendencies to experiment and imitate.

The early imperfection of human instincts enables a superior intelligence to profit more by his experience than is possible to other animals held in check by their more complete, and therefore more rigid instincts. He can vary his methods by experimentation and imitation; they are more confined to those which are hereditary. The animal with the more rigid instincts has the advantage at birth over one so much dependent on experience, if both are left to their own resources; the other has an incalculable advantage afterwards.

Human instincts, though so much more fragmentary than those of animals, at least persist as constituents of the more complicated dispositions that are slowly acquired. But if we adopt James' definition, that 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 the performance,” 1 then, since we sooner or later acquire foresight of the ends, we are brought to his conclusion of "the transitoriness of instincts," most of which are " implanted in us for the sake of giving rise to habits," and then "fade away." But this conclusion is simply a consequence of his definition of the term.

Now the chief objection to this definition is that it obscures the recognition of an important fact, namely, that the inherited 1 'Prin. of Psy.,' vol. ii. ch. xxiv 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid.

dispositions, among which are included the instincts, are not superseded, but only modified by habits, and by the acquired foresight of the ends to which they are directed.

We come next to a definition that has the merit of attempting to connect instinct with the psychological fact of emotion, as well as of recognising the permanence of instincts. We have attempted to show that some instincts are parts of the systems of primary emotions. The theory we are now to consider in contrast with this regards the primary emotions as parts of the systems of instincts.

"We may then define an instinct," says Dr. McDougall, "as an inherited psycho-physical disposition which determines its possessor to perceive, and to pay attention to, objects of a certain class, to experience an emotional excitement of a particular quality upon perceiving such an object, and to act in regard to it in a particular manner, or, at least, to experience an impulse to such action." Thus a primary emotion is "the affective aspect of the operation of any one of the principal instincts," 2 and each one of them conditions "some one kind of emotional excitement whose quality is specific or peculiar to it." 3

1

Now in attaching an instinct so rigidly to a primary emotion, and a primary emotion to a particular instinct, three important facts seem to be obscured: (1) that an instinct may be excited, and even evoke the behaviour which is characteristic of it, without exciting a particular emotion; (2) that in the system of a primary emotion there may be not only one but several instincts; (3) that sometimes the same instinct may be found organised in the systems of different emotions.

(1) We have already seen that those fragmentary instincts that are involved in 'standing,' 'sitting,' 'walking,' 'running,' 'sucking,' 'licking' are not connected exclusively with any particular emotion, nor when they are excited must they also excite emotion; and that this is also true of the instincts or innate tendencies to imitate and to experiment. But even when we take the more complex instincts of primary emotions, into which one or other of the former enter as constituents, 1 'Social Psychology,' sect. i. ch. ii. 2 Op. cit. sect. i. ch. iii.

3 Ibid.