AND PERSONALITY 



or distaste for food, hunger, thirst, seeking shelter from 

 rain and wind, trust and distrust, attraction and repulsion, 

 pity, cruelty, cheating, lying, stealing, killing these in- 

 herited integrations of the nervous system not only had 

 such survival value in the long ascent of man as to be 

 transmitted from one generation to another over the proto- 

 plasmic bridge but are even today an integration to 

 civilized man. We call them "instincts," but they are 

 merely integrations of the nervous system laid down as 

 action patterns in the long upward evolution of man. Those 

 that benefitted man became a part of the action patterns 

 laid down in the mechanism of his phylogeny. Those that 

 had no survival value to man did not pass over the proto- 

 plasmic bridge. Thus in all the natural tastes and appetites, 

 in fears, in dislikes and attractions in animals as well as in 

 man, the reconditioning of this or that phylogenetic or racial 

 memory awaits refacilitation by the receipt of an adequate 

 stimulus through the special senses. 



It is especially in infancy, childhood, and adolescence 

 that we can see more clearly what came over the proto- 

 plasmic bridge. Over the protoplasmic bridge there came 

 to the female the care of the baby, as is seen universally in 

 the play of little girls with their dolls. Over the protoplasmic 

 bridge there came to the male the struggle of tribal man 

 with his fellow man, as expressed in boys in fighting with 

 each other and playing at fight in competitive games. Over 

 the protoplasmic bridge there also came the once lifesaving 

 necessity for ancestral hunting, trapping, and snaring of 

 animals, alone or with the tamed puppy of the wolf, the 

 dog. Over the protoplasmic bridge there came the loyalties, 

 cooperation, and sympathies, all of which had survival 

 value in the family and the tribe. Throughout the vicissi- 

 tudes of man all that came over the protoplasmic bridge 

 from the apelike ancestors to the present day would seem 

 to have had survival value at some stage in man's evolution. 



Thus the parent and the teacher have no problem in 



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