56 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. LIII. No. 1360 



is one of the fields in which it is still pos- 

 sible to do a certain amount of loose think- 

 ing with impunity. I may hope to return 

 sufficiently intact to proceed with the dis- 

 cussion. 



It is often supposed that the investi- 

 gator enters his latooratory full of instru- 

 ments and glassware and proceeds, with 

 the use of this equipment, his sense organs 

 and his carefully controlled ratiocinative 

 powers to excogitate the discoveries which 

 our newspaper editors occasionally deign 

 to distort for the benefit of the readers of 

 their Sunday supplements. But every in- 

 vestigator who observes his own activities 

 or those of other investigators knows that 

 this is, to say the least, a very inadequate 

 account of the process, and every psychol- 

 ogist knows that while the proper employ- 

 ment of the senses and the reasoning 

 powers is extremely important, the real 

 "drives" are the instincts, emotions and 

 interests, or what some authors prefer to 

 call in more anaemic terms, the propensi- 

 ties, conative tendencies, sentiments or dis- 

 positions. To the biologist, who takes a 

 behavioristic view of the instincts, it is 

 difficult to single out the various drives 

 that initiate, determine and sustain such 

 intricate activities as those leading to 

 scientific discovery and invention, and the 

 psychologists themselves are far from 

 unanimous on this matter. The list sub- 

 mitted in the sequel is, therefore, merely 

 an approximation to the true state of 

 affairs, though it is probably adequate for 

 the purpose I have in mind. 



To merit the designation of human in- 

 stincts, in the conventional sense, tenden- 

 cies or dispositions must be innate and 

 purposive, common to all the normal indi- 

 viduals of our species, less overlaid or 

 camouflaged 'by habits and therefore more 

 evident ia the young than in the adult and 

 represented by similar though more rudi- 



mentary tendencies in the higher mam- 

 mals. Such instincts seem to be rather 

 numerous and several of them are exhi'b- 

 ited by the investigator in a highly special- 

 ized form or are at any rate evoked and 

 conditioned by very specific objects or 

 situations. "We can recognize: 



1. Curiosity, which seems to be clearly 

 manifested in many mammals, like the cow 

 which stares at us across the pasture, and 

 in the open-mouthed wonder of the child. 

 It is so characteristic not only of individ- 

 uals but of whole peoples that the Germans 

 often refer to it as a national peculiarity 

 of the Saxons. In the investigator it is 

 commonly insatiable and very intense, be- 

 cause restricted to certain objects and rela- 

 tions, particularly to the causal relations 

 among phenomena. Its importance has 

 been noticed by many writers. McDougaU* 

 says that in men in whom curiosity is in- 

 nately strong, "it may become the main 

 source of intellectual energy and effort; to 

 its impulse we certainly owe most of the 

 purely disinterested labors of the highest 

 types of intellect. It must be regarded as 

 one of the principal roots of both science 

 and religion. " It is perhaps worthy of note 

 that "inquiry" is often used as a synonym 

 of investigation, and that any problem is 

 most naturally and most concisely stated 

 in the form of an interrogatory sentence. 



2. The hunting instinct, which is pri- 

 marily nutritive in animals and remains so 

 very largely in savages. In children and 

 adults of civilized man it persists in the 

 form of sport and the love of rapid move- 

 ment in such intensity that it is leading 

 to the extinction of our native faunas and 

 an enormous development of the automo- 

 bile industry, while in the investigators — 

 the word itself means followers of an ani- 

 mal's spoor — such as zoologists, archeol- 



, * "An Introduction to Social Psychology," Bos- 

 ton, Luce & Co., 1910, p. 59. 



