Chapter II: Psychological Aspects of Instinct

Many years ago, in a famous chapter of his Text Book of Psychology, William James analysed and established with a quite final delicacy and precision the way in which instinct appears to introspection. He showed that the impulse of an instinct reveals itself as an axiomatically obvious proposition, as something which is so clearly “sense” that any idea of discussing its basis is foolish or wicked.[A]

[A] Not one man in a billion, when taking his dinner, ever thinks
of utility. He eats because the food tastes good and makes him
want more. If you ask him why he should want to eat more of what
tastes like that, instead of revering you as a philosopher he
will probably laugh at you for a fool. The connexion between the
savoury sensation and the act it awakens is for him absolute
and _selbstverständlich_, an “_a priori_ synthesis” of the most
perfect sort needing no proof but its own evidence. . . . To the
metaphysician alone can such questions occur as: Why do we smile,
when pleased, and not scowl? Why are we unable to talk to a crowd
as to a single friend? Why does a particular maiden turn our wits
so upside down? The common man can only say, “_Of course_ we
smile, _of course_ our heart palpitates at the sight of the crowd,
_of course_ we love the maiden, that beautiful soul clad in that
perfect form, so palpably and flagrantly made from all eternity to
be loved” (W. James, “Principles of Psychology” vol. ii. p. 386).

When we recognize that decisions due to instinct come into the mind in a form so characteristic and easily identifiable we are encouraged at once to ask {16} whether all decisions having this form must be looked upon as essentially of instinctive origin. Inquiry, however, reveals the fact that the bulk of opinion based upon assumptions having these introspectual characters is so vast that any answer but a negative one would seem totally incompatible with current conceptions of the nature of human thought.[B]

[B] This introspectual quality of the “_a priori_ synthesis of
the most perfect sort” is found, for example, in the assumptions
upon which is based the bulk of opinion in matters of Church and
State, the family, justice, probity, honour, purity, crime, and so
forth. Yet clearly we cannot say that there is a specific instinct
concerned with each of these subjects, for that, to say the least,
would be to postulate an unimaginable multiplicity of instincts,
for the most part wholly without any conceivable biological
usefulness. For example, there are considerable difficulties
in imagining an instinct for making people Wesleyans or Roman
Catholics, or an instinct for making people regard British family
life as the highest product of civilization, yet there can be no
question that these positions are based upon assumptions having
all the characters described by James as belonging to the impulses
of instinct.

Many attempts have been made to explain the behaviour of man as dictated by instinct. He is, in fact, moved by the promptings of such obvious instincts as self-preservation, nutrition, and sex enough to render the enterprise hopeful and its early spoils enticing. So much can so easily be generalized under these three impulses that the temptation to declare that all human behaviour could be resumed under them was irresistible. These early triumphs of materialism soon, however, began to be troubled by doubt. Man, in spite of his obvious duty to the contrary, would continue so often not to preserve himself, not to nourish himself and to prove resistant to the blandishments of sex, that the attempt to squeeze his behaviour into these three categories began to involve an increasingly obvious and finally intolerable amount of pushing and pulling, as well as so much pretence that he was altogether “in,” {17} when, quite plainly, so large a part of him remained “out,” that the enterprise had to be given up, and it was once more discovered that man escaped and must always escape any complete generalization by science.

A more obvious inference would have been that there was some other instinct which had not been taken into account, some impulse, perhaps, which would have no very evident object as regarded the individual, but would chiefly appear as modifying the other instincts and leading to new combinations in which the primitive instinctive impulse was unrecognizable as such. A mechanism such as this very evidently would produce a series of actions in which uniformity might be very difficult to recognize by direct observation, but in which it would be very obvious if the characters of this unknown “x” were available.

Now, it is a striking fact that amongst animals there are some whose conduct can be generalized very readily in the categories of self-preservation, nutrition, and sex, while there are others whose conduct cannot be thus summarized. The behaviour of the tiger and the cat is simple, and easily comprehensible, presenting no unassimilable anomalies, whereas that of the dog, with his conscience, his humour, his terror of loneliness, his capacity for devotion to a brutal master, or that of the bee, with her selfless devotion to the hive, furnishes phenomena which no sophistry can assimilate without the aid of a fourth instinct. But little examination will show that the animals whose conduct it is difficult to generalize under the three primitive instinctive categories are gregarious. If then it can be shown that gregariousness is of a biological significance approaching in importance that of the other instincts, we may expect to find in it the source of these anomalies of conduct, and if we can also show {18} that man is gregarious, we may look to it for the definition of the unknown “x” which might account for the complexity of human behaviour.