EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY 



pugnacity, love, fear, jealously, gregariousness, and other 

 forms of behavior can only be overcome by an extraordinary 

 amount of training, and then only partially. To the extent 

 that they can ever be overcome, this is only possible by 

 the utilization of antagonistic or substitute tendencies 

 that are equally native. 



From human nature there is no escape for anyone. The 

 psychologist who would lay down canons for the educa- 

 tion of human beings can no more safely leave native 

 tendencies out of account than the trainer of dogs, fleas, 

 elephants, lions, and seals can ignore the original behavior 

 tendencies of these animals. The limitations of condi- 

 tioning are seen in the fact that no one has ever succeeded 

 in training an animal of one species to behave like an 

 animal of another species. The gregariousness of monkeys, 

 the solitariness of eagles, the wildness of the zebra, the 

 pugnacity of the male seal toward other males, the social 

 behavior of the bees, the feeding activities of the owl, and 

 the maternal behavior peculiar to every species of birds 

 and mammals, are tendencies that can not be ignored by 

 one who has anything to do with these forms of animal 

 life. That human beings are an exception to the rule with 

 respect to the actuality of psychophysical predispositions is 

 wholly unreasonable. 



The fact that in human beings the appearance of native 

 tendencies is often delayed until much learning has taken 

 place, in the case of some of them until adolescence or 

 later, means that instinctive drives cannot be expected 

 to show themselves in exactly the same overt behavior in 

 all. That is to say, there are in human beings no -pure in- 

 stincts, but only instinctive tendencies mixed with habit in 

 varying proportions. Perhaps it would be well if the term 

 instinct were dropped altogether from human psychology 

 in favor of some such term as instinct-habits, or coenotropes, 

 as they are called by Smith and Guthrie. I would suggest 



[99] 



