tion from their fellows. These persons have usually impressed those who observed them as being more like animals or idiots than like normal human beings. They have commonly proved almost uneducable, and most of them have rapidly pined away under the strange pressures of social life."

The problem of "original nature”

The prevailing view of human nature asserts that every human being shows, either at birth or at some time thereafter, and independently of specific environmental influences, a certain array of fairly complex pattern responses which are usually called instincts. It is claimed that these responses are nothing more than a development or flowering of the hereditary materials to be found in the fertilized germ cell, and that there are imbedded in them no ingredients from outside sources. The environment is admitted to be necessary to the appearance of these responses in but two ways: (1) it furnishes the general setting and background for them, in somewhat the same manner that a theater stage is used by actors in giving a play; (2) it furnishes the initial stimulus which sets them off, somewhat as a match might start a fire.

Psychologists have made many attempts to list and describe these inherited pattern responses. The confusion engendered in a candid mind by an inspection of their efforts is appalling. It is fairly easy to demonstrate the presence, prior to all training, of a few of an apparently large number (running probably up into the hundreds of thousands) of very simple activities, such as sneezing, crying, urination, eye, head, hand, arm, trunk, leg, foot, and toe movements, feeding responses, grasping, breathing, etc. But these activities are far too simple, specific, and prosaic to receive consideration as instincts, and they are usually called reflexes. The term instinct is intended to apply to more pretentious actions of some obvious social significance; typical examples are curiosity, motherliness, gregariousness, display, shyness, pugnacity, manipulation, play, self-preservation, mastery, etc. It would seem as though these "instincts" were clearly learned responses, something developed

out of and as a result of experience. The character of the response in each instance differs enormously from person to person and from group to group; the response is not merely set off by the stimulus, but the stimulus accompanies, maintains, and directs the response; and whole environmental structures are implied and required to make the response possible.

With respect to the simpler reflexes the situation is somewhat different. Jennings has recently suggested that these too are really learned responses, and that the environment in which these habits were put on is that of the womb:10

In the group of organisms to which man belongs there is an early period in which it is practically difficult to change effectively the conditions under which the organism develops, because it is enclosed within the mother's body, or within a resistant eggshell. So we have gotten accustomed to calling inherited those characteristics which are determined before it leaves its mother's body or the egg, while those determined later are called acquired characters. But this is an artificial distinction, based on practical considerations.

The doctrine of instincts in its contemporary forms presents a very inadequate picture of the complexity of our biological life, and in addition it fails to give due place to the environmental factors (physical and social) which affect even the simplest of human actions. If there are any such complex unlearned elements of human behavior, they have as yet resisted discovery. The way to find them, if they do actually exist, would seem to be through the painstaking analysis of large masses of anthropological data, and through the careful study of the simpler reflexes. Out of such investigations there may eventually emerge more convincing evidence for the existence of fairly complex innate behavior patterns of direct social significance than is at present available.

General characteristics of human behavior

This chapter will now be concluded with a brief consideration of the human organism as a functioning unit. Like

*

most of the animals, man is built on a generally symmetrical plan, a fact of very great importance in determining how he acts. He differs structurally from all other animals in his upright posture, in the possession of extremely flexible hands (his first and most important tools), of a delicate apparatus for the production of sounds, and of a still more finely equilibrated brain and nervous system. His behavior exhibits great plasticity, as is evidenced by his long period of infancy and immaturity, and by the width of his span of attention and interest. He is unique in the degree to which he can respond to signs-witness his many different systems of communication-and as an inveterate user and maker of tools. He is by no means the only animal who has created a society, but no other animal has lived under so many different social forms as he.

A rapid survey of the whole reach and extent of human behavior reveals the following as among its more prominent characteristics:

(1) The human organism is ceaselessly active. The infant is a going concern from the very start. Even before birth some of his movements in the womb can be felt, and countless others no doubt go unnoticed. It would be difficult to exaggerate the amount of movement going on in a human being, even when he is at rest or asleep. Live muscle, for example, exhibits tonus; that is to say, it is continually receiving excitations from afferent or incoming nerves, and is aquiver at the rate of ten or twelve vibrations per second.11 There is also a certain amount of nonneural tonus. addition to these minor shakings and tremblings, gross body movements of every sort are continually taking place. Multitudinous in number and almost infinite in variety are the activities of the human organism.

In

To ask in general, then, why men act is simply to waste words. And to ask the question in a specific situation is usually to raise a moral problem. Man requires no motive to act-though he is often at pains not to lack one. It is a monstrous assumption, says Dewey, 12

* See Chapter IV for a brief description of the human nervous system.

that man exists naturally in a state of rest so that he requires some external force to set him into action. . . . In every fundamental sense it is false that a man requires a motive to make him do something. . . . The whole concept of motives is in truth extra-psychological. It is an outcome of an attempt of men to influence human action, first that of others, then of a man to influence his own behavior.

With the establishment of this truth, a whole series of false and misleading theories of motivation disappear, and the stage is set for a description of how men really do act, of the concrete modes of response exhibited by them. Inquiry turns from the causes of action to the manner of its organization in the course of experience.

Life, then, is action; and throughout all of its phases action remains of primary significance. Nothing is harder for a little child than to keep still. The power of quiet contemplation is of late growth, and is never very completely established in us. When we think of a thing we list towards it, as though to put ourselves in an easier position to grasp it. Thinking is itself a mode of motor response.* Further, the necessary basis for mental activity, and its necessary conclusion, is to be found in activity. Thinking which does not spring from some gross motor need, and which does not lead to some gross motor consequence, is likely to be feeble and insignificant. It is not a good thing that so much of our intellectual life should be built around "the tiny muscles. that wag the tongue and pen." 13

(2) The organism is in intimate contact with its environment. It is bathed in it. Even more, it is a part of its own environment. Stimulus and response are really not two different things, but two phases of a single process. What the organism does changes the forces which are acting upon it, and these changes in turn alter the reaction of the organism. What shall be capable of evoking a response from the organism is determined not only by external forces but also by the state of the organism itself. An illustration may help to make the point clear. As I sit alone at my work, I am

*This topic will be developed at greater length in Chapter VII.

suddenly brought to a stop. Something is missing that was here a moment ago. What can it be? I make searching movements; I feel among my papers, look here and there, ransack my mind for clues. Each of these operations adds itself to the total situation and becomes, as it were, a part of the whole complex stimulus, arousing other responses which in turn alter the total aspect of things. Suddenly the problem is solved. The clock has stopped. I am strongly moved to get up and wind it, although when I sat down I never noticed whether it was running or not. I resume my writing; but this activity too is affected by what has just happened, and has become a different thing than it was before the interruption. This instance was drawn from adult experience; but the intimate relation of the organism to its environment is no less obvious in the case of the newborn child.

The various categories of academic psychology—sensation, perception, conception, emotion, habit, memory, imagination, reflection, etc., are but names for one phase or another of this process of intimate interaction of an organism with an environment.

(3) The organism responds throughout (though often, indeed, not as a whole) to stimulation. In performing even the simplest acts, the whole body comes into play. All phases of our life interact, and no function is strictly localizable in but a single part. No part of the body is merely vegetative, merely sensuous, merely intellectual. This, essentially, is what Kempf means when, in reaction against efforts to tie specific processes down to specific organs, he observes,14 'In simple terms, we feel and desire with our viscera, think with our muscles, and are conscious with our whole body." This is not to say that human responses are highly coördinated, either at birth or later. It has already been pointed out that the precise opposite is the case. Although the organism responds throughout, all parts do not work together in perfect harmony. A large part of all human activity is

*Of course, as even this quotation suggests, some parts of the body are nearly always more essentially involved than others. Activity usually centers around some special set of processes; or can best be controlled by the application of energies at some special point.