CHAPTER II. 



PLAY AND INSTINCT. 



Would it not be building on water or shifting sand 

 to attempt the explanation of a psychological phenome- 

 non by means of the mere concept of instinct? " The 

 word instinct," remarked Hermann Samuel Reimarus in 

 1760, " has been until now so vague and unsettled that 

 it scarcely had any certain meaning, or rather it had the 

 most various uses." * This was still quite true up to the 

 middle of the present century of the topic as a whole, 

 and it will probably always continue to be true in 

 regard to many details. " In speaking on instinct," 

 says Ribot, with laconic brevity, "the first difficulty 

 is to define it." f Since the time of Darwin, how- 

 ever, a great and important forward step has been 

 taken, and Darwinism has assumed of late years a form 

 that offers a fixed point of departure for the investi- 

 gation of the problem that concerns us in this chap- 

 ter. It is by no means my intention in what follows to 

 give a history of the idea of instinct — a task never yet 

 undertaken, to my knowledge. Still, it is necessary to 

 clear the way for the comprehension of the problem and 

 the appreciation of the view which I shall advocate, by 



* H. S. Reimarus, Allgemeine Betrachtungen Gber die Triebe 

 der Thiere, hauptsachlich liber ihre Kunsttriebe, Hamburg, 1773. 

 f Th. Ribot, L'Heredite psychologique, Paris, 1894, p. 15. 



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