SOME HUMAN INSTINCTS. 669 



fractured pots, and bushels of such miscellany as is to be found only 

 at the city * dump.' The empty barrels were filled, shelves were filled, 

 every hole and corner was filled, and in order to make more storage- 

 room, ' the hermit ' covered his store-room with a network of ropes, 

 and hung the ropes as full as they could hold of his curious collec- 

 tions. There was nothing one could think of that wasn't in that room. 

 As a wood-sawyer, the old man had never thrown away a saw-blade 

 or a wood-buck. The bucks were rheumatic and couldn't stand up, 

 and the saw-blades were worn down to almost nothing in the middle. 

 Some had been actually worn in two, but the ends were carefully saved 

 and stored away. As a coal-heaver, the old man had never cast off 

 a worn-out basket, and there were dozens of the remains of the old 

 things, patched up with canvas and rope-yarns, in the store-room. 

 There were at least two dozen old hats, fur, cloth, silk, and straw," 

 etc. Of course there may be a great many " associations of ideas " in 

 the miser's mind about the things he hoards. He is a thinking being, 

 and must associate ; but, without an entirely blind impulse in this 

 direction behind all the ideas, such practical results could never be 

 reached.* 



Kleptomania, as it is called, is an uncontrollable impulse to appro- 

 priate, occurring in persons whose " associations of ideas " would nat- 

 urally all be of a counteracting sort. Kleptomaniacs often promptly 

 restore, or permit to be restored, what they have taken ; so the impulse 

 need not be to keep, but only to take. But elsewhere hoarding com- 

 plicates the result. A gentleman, with whose case I am acquainted, 

 was discovered, after his death, to have a hoard in his barn of all sorts 

 of articles, mainly of a trumpery sort, but including pieces of silver 

 which he had stolen from his own dining-room, and utensils which he 

 had stolen from his own kitchen, and for which he had afterward 

 bought substitutes with his own money. 



Constrnctiveness is as genuine and irresistible an instinct in man 

 as in the bee or the beaver. Whatever things are plastic to his hands, 

 those things he must remodel into shapes of his own, and the result of 

 the remodeling, however useless it may be, gives him more pleasure 

 than the original thing. The mania of young children for breaking 

 and pulling apart whatever is given them, is more often the expression 

 of a rudimentary constructive impulse than of a destructive one. 

 "Blocks" are the playthings of which they are least apt to tire. 

 Clothes, weapons, tools, habitations, and works of art are the result 

 of the discoveries to which the plastic instinct leads, each individual 

 starting where his forerunners left off, and tradition preserving all 

 that once is gained. Clothing, where not necessitated by cold, is noth- 



* Cf. Flint, " Mind," vol. i, pp. 330-333 ; Sully, ibid., p. 567. Most people probably 

 have the impulse to keep bits of useless finery, old tools, pieces of once useful apparatus, 

 etc ; but it is normally either inhibited at the outset by reflection, or, if yielded to, the 

 objects soon grow displeasing and are thrown away. 



