666 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



could for it they have let it alone ; they have not corrupted it by 

 their intrigues, nor vulgarized it by their squabbles ; and they being 

 what they are, and science being what it is, that is probably the best 

 service they could have rendered it. 



-- 



SOME HUMAN INSTINCTS * 



By WILLIAM JAMES, 



PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN HARVARD COLLEGE. 

 II 



IN a previous article I passed in review a certain number of those 

 instincts which may be considered fundamental in man. In the 

 pages which follow I propose to complete the list. The reader will 

 perhaps remember my main thesis, which is that man, so far from 

 having an unusually small number of instincts, is more richly endowed 

 in this respect than any other mammal ; so richly, indeed, that his in- 

 stincts often block one another's path. This phenomenon, combined 

 with the transitoriness of many of them, and with what I have called 

 the law of inhibition of instincts by habits, sufficiently account for the 

 indeterminateness of man's conduct in presence of the same objective 

 stimuli an indeterminateness which has usually been supposed incom- 

 patible with his possession of any instincts at all. 



The last instinct I touched upon was fear. Let me next say a few 

 words about appropriation or acquisitiveness. Once more the reader 

 will remember that an instinct is nothing more than an inborn path of 

 reflex discharge in the nervous centers, such that a certain sort of ob- 

 ject falling on the senses awakens an impulse to act in a determinate 

 way. The beginnings of acquisitiveness are seen in the impulse which 

 very young children display to snatch at, or beg for, any object which 

 pleases their attention. Later, when they begin to speak, among the 

 first words they emphasize are " me " and " mine." f Their earliest 

 quarrels with each other are about questions of ownership ; and par- 

 ents of twins soon learn that it conduces to a quiet house to buy all 

 presents in impartial duplicate. Of the later evolution of the proprie- 

 tary instinct I need not speak. Every one knows how difficult a thing 

 it is not to covet whatever pleasing thing we see, and how the sweet- 

 ness of the thing often is as gall to us so long as it is another's. When 



* See "The Popular Science Monthly " for June, 1887. 



f I lately saw a boy of five (who had been told the story of Hector and Achilles) teach- 

 ing his younger brother, aged three, how to play Ilector, while he himself should play 

 Achilles, and chase him round the walls of Troy. Having armed themselves, Achilles ad- 

 vanced, shouting " Where's my Patroklos ? " Whereupon the would-be nector piped up, 

 quite distracted from his role, " Where's my Patroklos ? I want a Patroklos ! I want a 

 Patroklos ! " and broke up the game. Of what kind of a thing a Patroklos might be 

 he had, of course, no notion enough that his brother had one, for him to claim one too. 



