January 21, 1921] 



SCIENCE 



57 



ogists and explorers it is too apparent to 

 require discussion. It is not lacking, how- 

 ever, in other investigators, all of whom 

 when too old or too lazy to hunt their 

 accustomed prey in the open, delight to sit 

 and hunt for the opinions of others and 

 especially for confirmation of their own 

 opinions, in comfortably heated libraries. 



3. The acquisitive, collecting or hoard- 

 ing instinct, also primarily nutritive in 

 animals and savages, but modified in chil- 

 dren and adults of civilized peoples, in 

 whom it manifests itself in the most extra- 

 ordinary form of amassing all sorts of ob- 

 jects, from newspaper elipipingS' and cigar- 

 bands to meerschaum pipes and shaving 

 mugs. It is unnecessary to dwell on its 

 truly monomaniacal manifestations among 

 zoologists and botanists, who collect every- 

 thing from mites to whales and from bac- 

 teria to sequoias. But even those who look 

 down with contempt on the enthusiastic 

 collectors of bird-lice or coprolites are 

 themselves usually addicted to collecting 

 so-called data or statistics. The sig-nifieant 

 difference between the mere magpie-Like 

 collector and the hamster-like investigator 

 lies, of course, in the use made of the ac- 

 cumulated objects. 



4. The instinct of workmanship, crafts- 

 manship or contrivance, which also has 

 its phylogenetie roots in the constructive 

 activities of very many animals. In man 

 it begins ontogenetieally with the making 

 of mud-pies and may lead to such achieve- 

 ments as the excavation of the Panama 

 Canal or the construction of an airship. 

 It is, as Veblen^ and others have shown, an 

 instinct of the greatest importance. In 

 the investigator it is seen in the inventing 

 of methods and devices and the construc- 

 tion of apparatus and hypotheses, and 



, B " The Instinct of Workmanship, ' ' N. Y., B. "W. 

 Euebsch, 1918. 



reaches its highest manifestations in flights 

 of the creative imagination. 



The four instincts I have been very 

 briefly considering might be caUed individ- 

 ual to distinguish them from four others 

 which are more deeply rooted in the social 

 life of the investigator. These are: 



5. Emulation. The decision as to 

 whether this may be traced among animals 

 to competition for food or for mates may 

 be left to Jung and Freud and their re- 

 spective disciples. According to William 

 Jamics,*' emulation is "a very intense in- 

 stinct, especially rife with young children 

 or at least especially undisguised. Every 

 one knows it. Nine tenths of the work of 

 the world is done by it. "We know that if 

 we do not do the task some one else will 

 do it and get the credit, so we do it." It 

 is powerful and elaborately conditioned 

 in investigators and perliaps the less said 

 about it the better. The word "priority" 

 will conjure up in your minds a sufficient 

 number of emotionally toned ideas to meet 

 the needs of this discussion. 



6. What for lack of a better term I shall 

 call the instinct of communication. It 

 seems to have its roots in the behavior of 

 those more or less gregarious or social 

 animals, which apprise one another by 

 signs or sounds of the presence of danger, 

 of food or of certain sexual states. Its 

 manifestations may be said to range from 

 the chirping of crickets, tree frogs and 

 birds to the invention of language and the 

 effusions of poetry and music, both vocal 

 and instrumental. In both the old and 

 the young of our species it appears also as 

 the by no means sex-limited impulse to 

 gossip and divulge secrets, to communicate 

 news and rumors, much information and 

 no little misinformation. It urges the in- 

 vestigator to communicate the results of 



6 " The Principles of Psychology, ' ' N. Y., Holt 

 & Co., Vol. 2, p. 409. 



