422 PS7CH0L0GY. 



in which many wild animals, especially rodents, cling to 

 cover, and only venture on a dash across the open as a 

 desperate measure — even then making for every stone or 

 bunch of weeds which may give a momentary shelter — when 

 we see this we are strongly tempted to ask whether such an 

 odd kind of fear in us be not due to the accidental resur- 

 rection, through disease, of a sort of instinct which may in 

 some of our ancestors have had a permanent and on the 

 whole a useful part to play ? 



Appropriation or Acquisitiveness. The beginnings of ac- 

 quisitiveness are seen in the impulse which very young 

 children display, to snatch at, or beg for, any object which 

 pleases their attention. Later, when they begin to speak^ 

 among the first words they emphasize are ' me ' and ' mine.' * 

 Their earliest quarrels with each other are about questions 

 of ownership ; and parents of twins soon learn that it con- 

 duces to a quiet house to buy all presents in impartial du- 

 plicate. Of the later evolution of the proprietary instinct I 

 need not speak. Everyone knows how difficult a thing it is 

 not to covet whatever pleasing thing we see, and how the 

 sweetness of the thing often is as gall to us so long as it is 

 another's. When another is in possession, the impulse to 

 appropriate the thing often turns into the impulse to harm 

 him — what is called envy, or jealousy, ensues. In civilized 

 life the impulse to own is usually checked by a variety of 

 considerations, and only passes over into action under cir- 

 cumstances legitimated by habit and common consent, an 

 additional example of the way in which one instinctive ten- 

 dency may be inhibited by others. A variety of the propri- 

 etary instinct is the impulse to form collections of the same 

 sort of thing. It differs much in individuals, and shows in 

 a striking way how instinct and habit interact. For, al- 



* I lately saw a boy of five (who had been told the story of Hector and 

 Achilles) teaching his younger brother, aged three, how to play Hector, 

 wl ile he himself should play Achilles, and chase him round the walls of 

 Troy. Having armed themselves. Achilles advanced, shouting "Where's 

 my Patroklos ? " Whereupon the would be Hector piped up, quite distract, 

 ed from his role, ' ' Where's my Patroklos ? I want a Patroklos ! I want a 

 Patroklos ! "—and broke up the game. Of wliat kind of a thing a Patroklos 

 might be he had, of course, no notion— enough that his brother had one, 

 for him to claim one too. 



