MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS. 381 



THE GENESIS AND DEVELOPMENT OF HUMAN INSTINCTS. 



By L. C. WooSTEE, Ph. D., State Normal School, Emporia. 

 Read before the Academy, at Topeka, December 30, 1904. 



TNSTINCT has been defined as the ability i^ossessed by an animal 

 -■- or plant to perform, without foresight of the ends, those acts by 

 which the development and preservation of the individual or species 

 is secured. It is an inherited tendency or a racial instinct- memory 

 that causes each plant and animal to do blindly all things needful for 

 the growth and security of the organism. 



Above and beyond those activities which are instinctive are those 

 which are characteristic of the individual and are performed under 

 the direction of the will. The organism is fully conscious of these 

 activities and of the ends to be attained by them. 



Between those bodily movements and mental processes which are 

 performed instinctively and those which are done consciously is a 

 connecting set of activities, part of which have become habitual from 

 conscious repetition, and part are racial tendencies which induce sub- 

 conscious activities. The habits of body and of mind lie in the 

 nearer borderland of conscious activities and are established by a con- 

 scious repetition of a bodily movement or a mental process. Farther 

 out on the fringe of consciousness are the inherited, semiinstinctive 

 tendencies to activity which have for centuries been a puzzle to the 

 philosophers and have but recently yielded some of their secrets to 

 the psychologists. These are the subconscious or subliminal activi- 

 ties which are exhibited in panics or stampedes of people and horses, 

 of mob violence induced by suggestion, in the frenzy for collecting 

 strange and rare things shown by crows, magpies, and naturalists, and 

 in a host of uncanny manifestations of the subliminal self in trances 

 and hypnotic states. 



There is no question but what conscious activities repeated many 

 times become unconscious activities or habits ; but there is a hesi- 

 tancy on the part of many to take the next step, and believe that 

 habits persisted in by many generations of individuals become in- 

 herited, subconscious activities, and that these in time are established 

 as instincts. 



In my opinion this hesitancy arises from an incorrect method of 

 study of the question, in a failure to grasp the full significance of th,e 

 theory of evolution in its applicability to all phases of plant and ani- 

 mal life, and in neglecting the most important factor of all life, and 

 its possibilities. 



