The child whom the pressure of circumstances or unwise authority of parents
keeps from mingling with playmates and participating 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 associated 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,