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 butterfly 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 passed. The
generation receiving the gift today lives its own brief life, makes its own little
contribution to the sum total and then passes on as millions have done before.
Through heredity, the achievements, the passions, 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