402 P8YCE0L0G7. 



settle into an equilibrium, and live on what we learned 

 when our interest was fresh and instinctive, without adding 

 to the store. Outside of their own business, the ideas 

 gained by men before they are twenty-five are practically 

 the only ideas they shall have in their lives. They cannot 

 get anything new. Disinterested curiosity is past, the 

 mental grooves and channels set, the power of assimilation 

 gone. If by chance we ever do learn anything about some 

 entirely new topic we are afflicted with a strange sense of 

 insecurity, and we fear to advance a resolute opinion. But, 

 with things learned in the plastic days of instinctive curi- 

 osity we never lose entirely our sense of being at home. 

 There remains a kinship, a sentiment of intimate acquaint- 

 ance, which, even when we know we have failed to keep 

 abreast of the subject, flatters us with a sense of power 

 over it, and makes us feel not altogether out of the pale. 



Whatever individual exceptions might be cited to this 

 are of the sort that ' prove the rule.' 



To detect the moment of the instinctive readiness for 

 the subject is, then, the first duty of every educator. As 

 for the pupils, it would probably lead to a more earnest 

 temper on the part of college students if they had less be- 

 lief in their unlimited future intellectual potentialities, and 

 could be brought to realize that whatever physics and polit- 

 ical economy and philosophy they are now acquiring are, for 

 better or worse, the physics and political economy and 

 philosophy that will have to serve them to the end. 



The natural conclusion to draw from this transiency of 

 instincts is that most instincts are implanted for the sake of 

 giving rise to habits, and that, this purpose once accomplished, 

 the instincts themselves, as such, have no raison d'etre in tJie 

 psychical economy, and consequently fade away. That occa- 

 sionally an instinct should fade before circumstances per- 

 mit of a habit being formed, or that, if the habit be formed, 

 other factors than the pure instinct should modify its 

 course, need not surprise us. Life is full of the imperfect 

 adjustment to individual cases, of arrangements which, tak- 

 ing the species as a whole, are quite orderly and regular. 

 Instinct cannot be expected to escape this general risk. 



