CHAPTER XXII 

 NATURE AND NURTURE 



Acquired emotional impulses are copies of instincts, and automatic actions of 

 reflexes Distinction between reflexes and automatic actions The way in which 

 our dexterities arise The fovea centralis of attention and will Automatic 

 actions differ from reflex actions in that they are controlled by the attention and 

 the will Dreams The distinction between recollection and bearing in mind 

 The difference between physical and mental acquirements Nature and nurture 

 Capacity and mental acquirements Ability and efficiency The factors of 

 efficiency Instincts and acquirements Imbeciles Racial mental characteristics 

 The influence of religion Opinions founded on biometry. 



SPEAKING generally, the impulses to action (emotions) 

 which we gradually acquire and store in our memories, 

 for example, patriotism and religious enthusiasm, are 

 all close copies of instincts. They resemble instincts in all 

 except their mode of origins. Like them they prompt, with 

 various degrees of urgency, to voluntary actions. The resemblance 

 is made all the closer by the fact that, just as a great deal of our 

 acquired physical growth is a prolongation, a mere continuation, of 

 growth that was previously made under the stimulus of nutriment, 

 so some of our acquired impulses to action (e.g. love for some one 

 woman, a curiosity concerning some particular science), are pro- 

 longations or reinforcements of instincts. In other words, many 

 of our permanent impulses to action are partly instinctive and 

 partly acquired ; and the acquired part of the emotion so closely 

 resembles the inborn portion that we cannot distinguish where the 

 one begins and the other ends. The resemblance is made yet 

 closer by the fact that the performance of only a few of the actions 

 to which human instincts (e.g. the sexual and the parental) prompt 

 are instinctive in the sense that they can be performed without 

 previous learning. Thus the human mother not only acquires the 

 special learning which enables her to tend her child, but during 

 her own infancy acquired the necessary power of co-ordinating the 

 muscles of her limbs. The question, then, arises whether imitation 

 reflexes (automatic actions) are as close copies of real reflexes as 

 acquired emotions are of instincts. We learn to do habitual 



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