INSTINCT. 395 



aew impulses by tlie habit of old ones already formed. 

 The possession of homes and wives of our own makes U3 

 strangely insensible to the charms of those of other people. 

 Few of us are adventurous in the matter of food ; in fact, 

 most of us think there is something disgusting in a bill of 

 fare to which we are unused. Strangers, we are apt to 

 tliink, cannot be worth knowing, especially if they come 

 from distant cities, etc. The original impulse which got us 

 homes, wives, dietaries, and friends at all, seems to exhaust 

 itself in its first achievements and to leave no surplus 

 energy for reacting on new cases. And so it comes about 

 that, witnessing this torpor, an observer of mankind might 

 say that no instinctive propensity toward certain objects ex- 

 isted at all. It existed, but it existed miscellaneously, or as 

 an instinct pure and simple, only before habit was formed- 

 A habit, once grafted on an instinctive tendency, restricts 

 the range of the tendency itself, and keeps us from reacting 

 on any but the habitual object, although other objects 

 might just as well have been chosen had they been the first- 

 comers. 



Another sort of arrest of instinct by habit is where the 

 same class of objects awakens contrary instinctive impulses. 

 Here the impulse first followed toward a given individual 

 of the class is apt to keep him from ever awakening the 

 opposite impulse in us. In fact, the whole class may be 

 protected by this individual specimen from the application 

 to it of the other impulse. Animals, for example, awaken in 

 a child the opposite impulses of fearing and fondling. But 

 if a child, in his first attempts to pat a dog, gets snapped at 

 or bitten, so that the impulse of fear is strongly aroused, it 

 may be that for years to come no dog will excite in him the 

 impulse to fondle again. On the other hand, the greatest 

 natural enemies, if carefully introduced to each other when 

 young and guided at the outset by superior authority, set- 

 tle down into those ' happy families ' of friends which we 

 see in our menageries. Young animals, immediately after 

 birth, have no instinct of fear, but show their dependence 

 by allowing themselves to be freely handled. Later, how- 

 ever, they grow 'wild/ and, if left to themselves, will not 

 let man approach them. I am told by farmers in the 



