Historical Orientation

( Originally Published 1922 )

According to Durkheim the reality on which all beliefs in magic and religion are based is the experience of being profoundly influenced by a power external to ourselves felt to be more powerful and abiding than the powers that we feel to be strictly our own. As he points out, it is necessary for us to have an experience of this sort before we can wish to account for it. Given an experience of this power, which Durkheim holds comes inevitably as a result of man's group relations, numerous explanations of its nature and origin are possible.

Obviously a great many mistakes are made in the attempt to account for the source of the power or force. But there can be no mistake regarding its reality; for it is true that man, as a gregarious animal, is deeply sensitive to the feelings of the group in which he lives. It is from the group that many of his noble and al-truistic impulses, as well as much of his power and enthusiasm, come. It is the group that compels him to act in the manner approved and cherished by the group, and when he so acts he has a feeling of increased vitality. As Durkheim says:

"Social action does not confine itself to demanding sacrifices, privations, and efforts from us. For the collective force is not entirely outside of us; it does not act upon us wholly from without; but rather, since society cannot exist except in and through individual consciousness, this force must also penetrate us and organize itself within us; it thus becomes an integral part of our being and by that very fact this is elevated and magnified." "For society, this unique force of all that is sacred, does not limit itself to moving us from without and affecting us for the moment. It establishes itself within us in a durable manner. It arouses within us a whole world of ideas and sentiments which express it but which, at the same time, form an integral and permanent part of ourselves."

There should be no doubt of the existence of the force we wish to account for. The power of the group to fill the individual with enthusiasm, to inspire him, to ennoble and exalt him is real. Real also is its power to crush him, to make him feel his unworthiness and insignificance, and to make him acquiesce in his own punishment and even annihilation.

This great power the primitive man interprets in terms of influences from his ancestors, or in terms of a vague impersonal force commonly called mana. It is true that he is wrong in his interpretations. But his mistakes are regarding the source of the power only. lie makes no mistake in recognizing the existence of this power. The experience of this power is genuine. No error regarding its source can invalidate it. We are deeply affected by powers that cannot be regarded as strictly our own. It is for this reason that many of our enthusiasms and inspirations seem due to external forces that have taken their abode within us.

One of the hypotheses most widely held among primitive men to account for the existence of these powerful influences holds that the urges or impressions come from a disembodied ancestor. For, according to primitive conceptions, departed ancestors do not lose all interest in the living. On the contrary, from time to time they return and take their abode in the body of the living in order to befriend or injure him.

It is easy to understand that explanations of behavior in terms of interest of ancestors provide a ready made explanation for whatever may occur. Should the individual do anything unusual or supernatural, it is because an ancestor has taken his abode in him and is directing and inspiring him to perform his wonderful acts. Or, if the behavior is not of this sort, the ancestor may be offended and is punishing the individual for displeasing him. Thus one has an easy explanation for misfortune, happiness, success, failure, sickness, madness, and all strong urgings and impulses that seem in any way unusual. As a result of thus ascribing various phenomena to the souls of the dead, true causes are overlooked, and men find themselves dependent on the hidden entities, which they themselves create.

Primitive peoples are not the only ones who have used theories of preexistence to account for the behavior of the living. The Greeks, likewise, believed that each soul went through a plurality of existences. It was no idle fancy of theirs, for since their conception of causality committed them to the view that Like produces Like, they thought that only soul could give rise to soul. Hence, each birth meant the reincarnation of a disembodied spirit. It is this belief that gives significance to the feast of Anthesteria, at which time the departed souls were entertained and purified preparatory to taking again their abode in the realm of the living. It is this that also gives significance to the Athenian's prayers, on marrying, to his ancestors' ghosts. The hope of children depended on the action of departed souls. On departed souls, or ghosts, the reproductive processes depended, and in addition the character of the offspring depended largely on that of the ghost and on the rites that were supposed to free and purify it from contamination with the underworld or realm of the dead.

So much has been written about the beauty of Greek life that we do not attach sufficient importance to the praise Lucretius showered upon Epicurus for dispelling the mass of superstitious fears that made the life of his age a terrible experience. So little seriously do we take the superstitions of the Greeks that when Plato uses them we like to think that he used them simply as illustrations to emphasize his teachings. So we pass them by with the excuse or apology that they furnished him with means to persuade the masses to accept his ethical teachings, that they helped him to banish and explain difficult problems, or that they rounded out in perfect fulness his ethical ideals. Yet we should remember that the masses did not need such legends or myths. The popularity of the Orphic Cult and the grossness of many of its rites attest sufficiently well to this fact. Nor was Plato directing his teachings to the masses. His teachings were for the intelligentsia of his day, and his hesitancy in using the myths shows how he hated and feared their ridicule.

The myths of Plato form an integral part of his teachings. They cannot be banished lightly. It is very probable that he accepted them, or something similar to them, as the truth. Thus the difficulty of accounting for learning drives him to the theory of reminiscence, or to regard learning as the recollection of experiences undergone in a previous incarnation. His difficulties seem real, and his explanation seems sincere. Because we hold them lightly we should not presume that Plato did.

The same is true of his explanation of the joy we experience at beholding a beautiful object. This joy is but a survival of the great joy we experienced as a disembodied spirit on beholding beauty in its eternal verity. The wandering soul does not forget all it has seen in its heavenly home. It is for this reason that objects on earth cause some of us to recollect the true beauty in the heavens. Recollections of this sort cause an ecstasy, which seems madness to those who do not experience such recollections.

It thus seems certain that Plato took seriously the current beliefs in preexistence and metempsychosis. Indeed, he took great pains to substitute an ordered world of the dead for a disordered one. That is to say, he wished to banish from the world of the living the vast array of disembodied souls, and to assign them a home of their own. In this way he hoped to free the living from the fear of being molested by the dead, as well as from their feelings of dependence on departed ancestors. The dead could not affect the living; nor could the living affect the dead. Hence, the various rites to purify the ghosts before they were to become reincarnated became unnecessary. The living were instructed to attend to their own affairs and leave the dead to attend to theirs.

The world, thus freed from the interference of ghosts, offered a more fitting place for the influence of the Olympian gods. However these, like the souls of the dead, were assigned an abode of their own. It is true they were permitted to interfere occasionally in the affairs of men, but this interference took place for the most part in the remote past. Indeed, at one time, in the very remote past, they lived with men, and this was the Golden Age. But now they have departed, leaving men largely free to work out their own destiny with the aid of the various arts and virtues given by the gods.

As a result of this change, the marvellous deeds that had formerly been regarded as the work of a wonderful ancestor were now regarded as due to certain capacities which the gods had implanted in man. It is in this way that Plato accounts for the existence of the political virtues in the Protagorean Myth, and for virtues in general, when he says: "Virtue is neither natural nor acquired but an instinct given by God to the Virtuous."

It is not necessary that we make much of the fact that Plato took seriously his myths. It is more important to know that they were taken seriously by many. That they were is shown beyond all doubt by the cult practices of the Greeks. Nor are there lacking to-day believers in the conceptions on which they are founded. There have been from the early dawn of culture believers in metempsychosis. In the Orient they run into the millions. In the Occident similar beliefs form the foundation of various "New Thought" cults. From primitive man they have come to us in an unbroken chain, and philosophers have not been lacking to defend them. Thus, from Plato, Origen and Justin Martyr accepted them, holding that in the beginning God created the souls of all men, which subsequently as punishment for sin were incarnated in bodies until discipline rendered them fit for spiritual existence.

Poets have also found this a favorite theme. It is the belief in preexistence and metempsychosis that gives point to Wordsworth's Ode on the Intimations of Immortality :

"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting !
The soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come, From God, who is our home."

The same conceptions are expressed by Browning in Evelyn Hope :

"I claim you still for my own love's sake !
Delayed it may be for more lives yet,
Through worlds I shall traverse not a few;
Much is to learn, much to forget
Ere the time be come for taking you."

More seriously John and Ellis M'Taggart in their recent book Human Immortality and Preexistence, have attempted to defend the belief in preexistence on the ground that preexistence is necessary to account for the behavior of man. How else, according to these writers, can we account for love at first sight? What can be more reasonable than to assume that the lovers had grown attached to each other in a previous existence? Love at first sight is really not love at first sight. It is the result of a long period of intimacy in another existence and the joy at seeing a familiar face. An explanation of the same nature is advanced to ac-count for the fact that some men are wiser than others, that some men are prudent and some are not. These traits, the M'Taggarts tell us, were acquired in a previous existence by their possessors. Those who lack them here failed to acquire them in a previous existence.

Explanations of this sort make behavior and individual differences wonderfully simple. No matter what a man may be or may do, there is no want of an explanation ready-made.

While the belief in metempsychosis is still to be found in Western Thought, it has not had a profound influence. It should be regarded more as a side cur-rent, which has perhaps colored our thinking unconsciously, than as a conception consciously embraced. The more influential conception invoked to explain the activities of organisms that seem to lie beyond their capacities and experience is the thought Plato gave expression to in saying that virtues are the gifts of God.

There can be discerned in this transition from the primitive beliefs in magic and spirits and preexistence to that of gods, and finally to God, a tendency to relieve man always of fears of the spirit world. The dark world of goblins becomes less dark. The fears of spirits become less. The gods become less petty and malicious, while God leaves man in comparative freedom after the creative act. Yet man retains many of the solutions of earlier conceptions. Primitive man regards himself as having sprung from a race of superior beings, who gave rise to a number of lesser beings, among whom he counts himself. Sparks of the divine, however, occasionally flash within him, and around him are still vast numbers of superior ancestors, whose good-will he must win or else suffer the consequences. Later these conceptions give place to a more ordered rule of the gods. The strange or the unusual is not the work of an ancestor or spirit. It is the work of a god. Finally, the wonderful acts are regarded not as the result of the direct action of a god on man. They are regarded rather as due to the endowments given man by God.

This is the point Thomas Aquinas reaches in his explanation of the existence of certain habits in man which seem to lie beyond the natural capacities of man. Thomas seems puzzled that there should be in man the disposition to seek ends which cannot be justified in terms of his egoistic desires. He therefore raises the question: Are there habits infused into man by God? This he answers in the affirmative. The reason he gives for his answer is what interests us. In addition to the scriptural authority which he cites in support of his answer, he holds that there are some habits in man which exceed the goodness of human nature, for they impel man to seek ends which are beyond his nature. Therefore, he concludes, "Such habits can never be in man except by divine infusion, as is the case with all gratuitous virtues."

Bacon also seems to have felt that some of man's moral ideas are too sublime to be the result of his natural powers. Instead of regarding them, however, as habits or dispositions infused by God, he prefers to regard them as survivals of a former state of purity, that is, of the state of man before his fall. At that time man was much more wonderful than now and lived on a higher moral plane. Hence, what seems to lie beyond the natural powers of man to-day may well have been within his powers during the Golden Age. The experience of man at that time may accordingly be used to throw light on his present ideas. Thus Bacon seems to have thought when he held that certain of man's moral ideas are too sublime to have been acquired by his natural powers, and substituted for this method of acquiring them the operation of an "internal instinct " or of the spark which remains of "primitive and pristine purity."

So far had the most progressive philosopher of his day advanced beyond primitive notions of occasional flashes of the divine within us!

This conception of instincts as impressions from God, or as habits infused by him, or as remains of a primitive state of purity, has been a popular one to account for anything unusual or mysterious in behavior. It is this conception that Alciphron complains of when he says: "I am for admitting no inward speech, no holy instincts, or suggestions of light and spirit."

It is not only the unusual that has invited explanations in mystical terms. Even the commonplace in a theological age may be used to show how necessary recourse to divine agencies is in explaining human behavior.

Thus Malebranche held that even the connection between the pleasurable and beneficial could be ac-counted for only on the assumption of divine inter-position. Why, should they be connected? Why should we feel pleasure when we experience the beneficial? f The fact that we do reveals the hand of Deity. Man does not seek pleasure, but pleasure is attached to the objects of the natural inclinations, because the natural inclinations are impressions from God. It is, therefore, in obedience to God's voice when we yield to our instincts in order to satisfy our senses and passions. "Le plaisir est un instinct de la nature, ou parler plus clairement, c'est une impression de Dieu même, qui incline vers quelque bien."

The spirit of inquiry became too strong, however, to permit such explanations and conceptions , to pass unquestioned. Hobbes reacted vigorously against them. Whatever man did was by that fact demonstrated to be within the power of man to do. What we should seek to know, therefore, are the principles regulating his behavior. These principles, Hobbes held, could be reduced to the principle of self interest. Each man seeks what he regards as his own good. , If this serves also the good of others, and has the appearance of sacrifice, so much the better. The appearance of sacrifice, however, should not mislead us. It is a deception. If we could only see the motives lying back of all activity, we should see that all are selfish.

In this attempt to make man's behavior intelligible without recourse to hidden agencies, Hobbes seems to have neglected to take into account the fact that man is profoundly influenced by his group, and that much of his psychic energy comes from society, that is, from sources external to himself. If he had recognized these facts, he would have seen that man is not the calculating machine that he had supposed. He would have found that the intensification of life and the thrills and enthusiasms that result from coming into contact with the group can never be accounted for as the result of hedonistic calculation. He would have found the same true regarding the feeling that back of one there is a force more noble and less selfish directing and helping the individual to ends prized by the group. In his reaction against the mysticism and theological speculations, Hobbes failed to give due consideration to the existence of social forces which make the individual act in a way that is clearly not to the advantage of the individual. Social forces of this nature cannot be reduced to selfish calculation. The reality of these forces consists in the reality of form as opposed to that of matter.

There is no wonder, then, that the explanations of Hobbes aroused a storm of opposition, and that they were attacked as libels on human nature. For man is not the calculating machine Hobbes would make of him. The depths of his personality can never be exhausted in this way. He is a creature of impulse, a creature in whom there are innate moral ideas, a creature whom God directs to noble acts and fills with enthusiasms. So the moral philosophers following Hobbes reacted.

The old conception of innate moral ideas, of instincts implanted by God, of impressions from God, afforded welcomed means for protecting the moral worth of man against the "libels" of Hobbes. These conceptions served admirably to throw around man's activities a mystery, which can but be satisfying to the individual who feels that no matter how he is analyzed there remains something of his personality unaccounted for. This feeling is the stronghold of the objector of analysis. It is felt that personality is too intimate to be spread out in concepts. The heart of a person cannot be learned in this way. It is only dissipated in the process. Hence the feeling that explanations do not explain. Rather they destroy the reality for which an explanation is sought. Analysis does a violence to personality that is distasteful. It is much more comforting to lock the secrets of one's inner being in a mysterious concept that is not open to invetigation than to lay bare one's inmost soul to the gaze of those who cannot appreciate or understand.

It is for these reasons that the attempts, of the physiologists to account for behavior in terms of structure encountered, along with the rationalistic attempts of Hobbes and other hedonists, a storm of opposition, which clearly reveals the love of man for the hidden and obscure when his acts and motives are in question.

The physiologists, like Hobbes and Locke, were wearied of explaining the observed in terms of the less well known. They therefore made the attempt to account for the behavior of organisms in terms of structure and physiological condition. They rightly held that, if behavior cannot be explained in this way, there is no use of making an appeal to innate guides or impressions from Deity. The organization' of the creature is the best key available to its behavior. This is the position of Reimar and Herder.

Cabanis went further in his recognition of the pro-found influence of the physiological condition of the structure on the behavior. Variations of behavior are not due to variations in structure but to variations in the condition of the structure. This is obviously the method physiologists must take, for the structure may be constant, as far as any one can tell, and yet the behavior be different. This Cabanis clearly recognized. He accordingly attempted to trace variations in behavior to variations in the physiological concition of the organism.

One may not be inclined to accept the explanations of Hobbes or of the physiologists and yet admit that these explanations furnish us with illustrations of the kind of explanations that should guide us in our efforts to understand the behavior of organisms. Explanations, to be satisfactory, must be in terms of this nature, rather than in terms of obscure and hidden entities. Yet these attempts could not be tolerated by the age in which they were advanced. They denied the mysterious side of activity; they failed to explain in virtue of what force or agency the organism acted. They therefore stood condemned.

As Lewes says: "The profounder view of Cabanis, which regarded mind as one aspect of life, was replaced by the old metaphysical conception of le Moi—the Ego—the immaterial entity playing upon the brain as the musician plays upon an instrument. Instinct was no longer regarded as determined by the organism* changing with its changes, rendered abortive by mutilations, and rendered active by stimulation; but as a 'mysterious principle' implanted in the organism; a 'something' which although essentially mysterious and unknowable, appeared perfectly well known to the metaphysicians."

Lewes might well have had Hancock in mind when writing the above, for the views he complain$ of are the ones defended vigorously by Hancock.

After an examination of the views of the physiologists, Hancock summarizes them as follows: "Some have considered that a material structure or simple arrangement of organs endowed with the principle of life or living organic structures possessing vital properties give rise to all the phenomena of which we see the brutes to be capable, and that it is not necessary to have recourse to a principle which they affirm to be mysterious and inexplicable like that of instinct."

These views he could not tolerate. For they not only attacked the justice of God, but, much worse, they made for scepticism. To think that God would put man in this world and hold him responsible for his deeds, without an innate moral guide, is but to question the justice of God; while the implication that the organization of an animal is self-sufficient to account for its behavior makes the interposition of God no longer necessary, and as a result makes for scepticism and perhaps even atheism.

When naturalistic interpretations are regarded in this way, it is easy to understand that they would arouse a storm of opposition. The view which regards behavior as due to divine guidance, or as the result of mysterious principles that are open to no investigation, is more heartily accepted. These are the explanations that Hancock prefers. He therefore quotes Addison with approval:

"For my own part, I look upon instinct as upon the principle of gravitation in bodies, which is not to be explained by any known quality inherent in the bodies themselves, nor from the laws of mechanism, but, ac-cording to the notions of our greatest philosophers, is an immediate impression from the First Mover and Di-vine energy acting in the creatures."

In a like manner Reid explains the wonderful work of hive-building by the bees as God working through the bees: "We must therefore conclude that, although the bees act geometrically, yet they understand neither the rules nor the principles of the arts which they practice so skilfully; and that the geometry is not in the bee, but in the great Geometrician who made the bee, and made all things in number, weight, and masure."

This is the conception of instinct that Hancock de-fends. Thus, he writes: "We shall have the opportunity of referring instinct to its proper source the pervading influence of Deity in his works." No wonder he quotes with approval from Boyle's dissertation on The Soul of Brutes : "Deus est anima brutorum."

At first glance it seems strange that man's feelings of worth should be magnified through acclaiming his inability to account for the behavior of brutes along with his own. It seems that he should take pride in knowing. Yet he takes delight in proclaiming his impotence to fathom the springs of behavior. It would seem that he delights to humble himself.

This humility, however, is more apparent than real, for it consists largely in attributing his ignorance to the fact that those things of which he is ignorant are locked in the secrets of Divine mystery. At the same time he claims considerable knowledge about the secrets of God's mind. Thus man at one stroke humbles himself in order that he may be exalted. For the difficulties of investigation are substituted acts of faith. But acts of faith seem even more heavily laden with feelings of satisfaction than knowledge itself. His delight in proclaiming his inability to know saves him the labor of investigation, and at the same time provides him with an opportunity to enjoy the exhilarating effects of a devout act of piety.

An illustration of this is furnished in the delight Garratt takes in declaring the worthlessness of speculations regarding the nature of instincts, and his willingness to leave all problems of this nature where they should be left by all men of faith: 'Much has been written by the ablest pens, and no less profuse by the most profound in philosophy, as to the nature or essence of instinct, and the manner by which it operates; and we think all to no purpose. Both subjects are exceedingly obscure, and we have seen no light thrown upon it, nor shall we expect to see any, for our belief is that it was never intended that the human mind should explore them. We shall have little to say upon these questions which shut up all investigators to despair." "And though they bewilder the sceptic, their mysteries are no source of worry to the man of faith. He knows where to rest them in safety."

I have presented in the foregoing the explanations of behavior in terms of metempsychosis and in terms of impressions from an ancestor or from God. The first is founded on belief in reincarnation. According to this view, the individual in the course of his many incarnations acquires a mass of wisdom and impulses which are manifested in this life. Consequently, any difficulty that may be encountered in understanding the behavior of the individual in question is easily banished by regarding it as due to the experiences undergone in another existence. The latter explanation is based on the assumption that ancestors or God from time to time assume control of the individual. According to this conception, the strange or unusual behavior is regarded as due to an impression from a spirit or from God. Both conceptions provide fund of ready made explanation to meet any possible difficulty.

It is hardly necessary to point out objections to these interpretations of behavior. In the first place, we encounter the same difficulties in attempting to account for the experiences of another incarnation that we do in accounting for experiences in this one. Nor is it any easier to understand the mind of spirits than our own. In the attempt to answer the question, Why does the ancestor give this impression at this time? we are led to transfer the problems of psychology to another realm without any appreciable advantage. In fact, it should be apparent that explanations of this nature consist largely in explaining one Unknown by another Unknown raised to the nth power. Nor do explanations of this nature provide us with the means to control and predict behavior. Spirits may be persuaded, but at best they are notional, and we can never tell whether they will act as we wish or not. Hence, they are not satisfactory as an explanation, for what we should seek in an explanation are the factors which will provide us not only with the key to prediction but also, if possible, to control.

For these reasons explanations of this order have ceased to exert any great influence on Western Thought. With the exception of the poets and the adherents of "New Thought" cults no one regards the individual as bringing with him into this world a mass of experience acquired by him in a previous incarnation. Nor is it longer felt in scientific circles that explanations in terms of impressions from God are satisfactory. The inadequacies of these explanations have resulted in their abandonment. But we still cling to conceptions closely akin. These latter conceptions have sprung up around the theory of evolution.

Instead of regarding the individual as acquiring a mass of psychic dispositions as the result of his experience in other worlds, the individual is regarded as born with a mass of ready-made impulses acquired by the species. The species makes the acquisitions, but they influence no less profoundly the behavior of the individual. The individual is no longer regarded as remembering the experience, but he acts the experience none the less. Hence, as far as the behavior is concerned, there is still assumed back of it a mass of experience indefinitely extended, which serves to pro-vide a fund of ready-made explanations as great as that provided by metempsychosis.

Or, to compare the evolutionary interpretation of behavior with the theological, there has been substituted for the wisdom of God the wisdom of the species, and for the impressions of God have been substituted impulses acquired by the species in the course of its adaptations to conditions long since passed.

Substitution of this order may be seen even in Darwin's writings through his acceptance of the theory of the inheritance of acquired characters. It is more clearly seen, however, in the writings of some of his followers. Maudsley's explanation of the spider's web furnishes an excellent example, which may be brought out most clearly by a comparison of Maudsley's explanation of the spider's web with Reid's explanation of the beehive.

It is to be recalled that when Reid found himself unable to account for the hive-making activities he referred them to the influence of "the great Geometrician" in the bee. When Maudsley is confronted with similar difficulties regarding the spider's web, he banishes them by making an appeal to the experience and wisdom of the species. Thus he writes:

"If the spider's web be not the accumulated design of past structural adaptations time out of mind, whence in a world of natural causes and effects has the achieved design come? Whence every animal instinct if it be not the fit and rational adaptations of self and not self now fixed in structure the incorporate memory in the individual of ancestral experiences through the ages?"

This substitution may be clearly seen also in a comparison of Spencer's account of the innate moral ideas with the conception of innate moral ideas as God-implanted.

This latter view Spencer criticises. Not because he does not believe there are innate moral ideas. He insists that they exist. It is the source of them that he questions. For the intuitionalist, they were implanted by God; for Spencer, they are the result of the ac-cumulated experience of the species. This substitution is clearly seen in the following: "Nor is it other-wise with the pure intuitionists, who hold that moral perceptions are innate in the original sense thinkers whose view is that men have been divinely endowed with moral faculties; not that these have resulted from inherited modifications caused by accumulated experience."

Perhaps one of the best examples of this substitution is provided in a comparison of the explanation of the connection of the pleasurable with the beneficial as advanced by Malebranche and by Sutherland.

According to Malebranche, it is to be remembered, the connection is a God-given one. Sutherland also feels that the connection requires an explanation. Why should we feel pleasure when benefited? A connection can be here only as a result of the slow process of adaptation of the species. So Sutherland insists. It is as a result of such adaptations that we feel pleasure when benefited. "Every pleasure," he says, "that we experience implies a sensation which, having always been beneficial, we are inclined to continue or repeat, because our organisms as a necessary preservative quality have become adapted to respond to them in that way. The more ancient the date of the beginning of the adaptation, the more deeply and mysteriously implanted is the capacity of emotion that is connected therewith."

How bleak must have been the existence Of organ-isms before the species had accustomed themselves to react with pleasure to beneficial stimuli !

In the same paragraph from which the above is quoted, Sutherland makes use of conceptions similar to those of Plato in accounting for the pleasure we feel on seeing certain beautiful scenes.

According to Plato our joy at seeing a beautiful object is due to the recollection of the joy We experienced at seeing true beauty in heaven. According to Sutherland the joy we feel at seeing beautiful wood-land scenes is due to the experiences of our ancestors in the woodland. Thus he writes: "Strange yearnings fill the soul at the deep rustle of the forest, unaccountable impulses at the sight of clear waters through which the sun glimmers up from sandy or pebble bottom. Those instincts of beauty to which the poet so constantly appeals are often somewhat latent; and, when they are at touch awakened, they leave the impression of echoes of a time when our race spent all its time in the open air, echoes vaguely recorded, perhaps in the nerve adaptations from the time when man's progenitors dwelt in the forest or sea-margin."

Thus, if we should ask Plato why we feel pleasure on seeing a beautiful forest scene, he would tell us that it is due to the fact that it causes us to recollect our joy at beholding beauty in its eternal essence. If the same question should be asked Sutherland, he would reply that it is due to the fact that our ancestors spent a great deal of time amid such surroundings, and that as a consequence our organisms have grown,. accustomed to regard them with feelings of pleasure. For Plato the joy is due to our experience in another in-carnation; for Sutherland it is due to our ancestors' experience.

If we accept the theory of plurality of incarnations, Plato's view becomes intelligible, for it is a common experience for us to feel joy and pleasure at the sight of an object which arouses in us certain memories or associations. It is natural to suppose that our own experience should at times be recalled and that it should affect us. Sutherland's view, however, is not so intelligible; for it is hard to understand how our ancestors' experience can affect us*—save, of course, as stimuli may be provided as a result of our ancestors' activities. Both explanations are the result of artificial problems. Neither solves the problems satisfactorily.

The explanation of Plato seems to be due to an exaggeration of the difficulty so commonly experienced in trying to picture a true beginning or novelty. How can things begin to be? How can we acquire knowledge? How can we experience joy at beholding a beautiful object? These experiences can take place only as the result of reminiscences. What the mind experiences or gives rise to, must have been in the mind. The stimuli only call it forth. So Plato held.

A little thought, however, shows us that this does not help us over the difficulty. How did the soul make its acquisitions in a previous existence? The knowledge must have been acquired somewhere. The experience of joy must at one time have been novel. If they are regarded as originating in a previous existence, we wish to know at once why the experience should have given joy in that existence. The answer to this question would probably make it clear that the joy was then aroused for the same reason that the recollection of the joy is now supposed to give pleasure. But if this is true, then we may well abandon the conception of reminiscence, and explain the joy in terms of causes that are operative here and now. For there is no reason to suppose that joy and pleasure cannot begin in this incarnation. On the other hand, we know that they do begin here, for even pleasures due to recollections have a beginning. This beginning must be due to causes that are operating here and now. Hence, the scene which is supposed to arouse pleasure by recollection may be regarded as amply sufficient to arouse the pleasure without the assumption that it had been experienced before.

The conception of Sutherland suffers from the same difficulties. There is no reason to suppose that the delight we experience at beholding a beautiful wood land is due to the fact that our ancestors experienced such delight, or even saw a forest. Such assumptions are quite worthless; for if our pleasure is due to the same causes that aroused it in our ancestors, there is no need to invoke ancestral experiences, since in both cases the same causes produce the same effects. On the other hand, if our pleasure is not due to the same causes, it is difficult to understand how the pleasure of our ancestors, induced in one way, can be used as an explanation of our pleasure induced in another.

In spite of these difficulties, which are common to all attempts to deny true beginnings here and now, whether they take the form of appeals to other in-carnations or to ancestral experience, many appeals are made to phylogeny in the vain hope that the behavior of the individual may be explained in terms of the experience of the species.

Thus Frink explains the roughness of the lover as due to the period in the history of man in which it was 'necessary that he capture his bride. Hall advances a similar explanation of the stages of bashfulness in boys and girls,* and lays down "the general psychonomic law, which assumes that we are influenced in our deeper and more temperamental dispositions by the life habits and codes of conduct of we know not what unnumbered hosts of ancestors, which like a cloud of witnesses are present throughout our lives, and that our souls are echo-chambers in which their whispers reverberate."

Sometimes, according to Patrick, these whispers break out and we have the howl of glee. Indeed, these whispers or ancestral memories are used by him as an explanation of laughter. It is when these memories break through social conventions that we have laugh-ter. Laughter, he holds, "is a form of release, release from the galling grip of social claims. It is the expression of glee when we feel the cogs of civilization slip a little. It is the 'subconscious satisfaction' which we have in old racial memories by the perception of social lapses of all kinds."

The assumption that ancestral memories of this sort profoundly influence the behavior of the present generation is the basis of Patrick's explanation of the play of children and many of the desires and impulses of adults. Thus he writes regarding the play of children:

"The mental habits of the child seem like echoes from the remote past, recalling the life of the cave, the forest, the stream. The instinct exhibited in infancy to climb stairs, ladders, trees, lamp-posts, anything, reminds us of forest life. The hide-and-seek games which appeal so powerfully to even the youngest children recall the cave life of our ancestors, or at least some mode of existence in which concealment from our enemies, whether human or animal, was the condition of survival; while the instinct of infants to gravitate to the nearest pond or puddle, the wading, swimming, fishing, and boating proclivities of every youngster, seem like the reminiscences of the time when our fathers lived near or by means of the water."

To interpret the behavior of the individual in terms of the race's experience, the behavior need not be similar. Thus Patrick accounts for the pleasure we have in speeding cars as a result of the fact that speed was necessary when man had to escape dangers by flight and catch his food in pursuit. In the same way, Wallas, when he wishes to account for the fear that is experienced on coming suddenly into the presence of a sovereign, makes use of the happy thought that if our ancestors had not shown the paralyzing effect of fear of this sort on coming suddenly upon a bear, lion, or cuttlefish, they would have been devoured. Our ancestors when they came upon a cuttlefish suddenly were unable to move on account of fear. Therefore, when the modern man comes upon his king suddenly he too is paralyzed by fear !

One of the great hopes that lie back of the use of our ancestors' experience to account for our behavior is that our behavior may be made intelligible through the intelligible adaptations of the species. That is to say, many impulses and acts of man appear to us irrational. We cannot understand them. If they could only be rationalized in the light of a greatly extended experience, we could understand. If the acts that appear to us irrational were once necessary, then they would become clear.

Thus the play impulses of children are accounted for as the necessary responses of man to primitive conditions of living. The love of racing in high-power cars becomes intelligible when we remember that fleetness was once a condition of survival. The courtship proclivities of women become intelligible when we re-member that formerly woman had to win the man. The fear a man experiences in the presence of his king becomes intelligible when we remember that fear was the condition of survival in the presence of the cuttlefish. The love of man for hunting and fishing, his tendency to tease and bully, become intelligible when we remember that hunting and fishing were once the means of providing self and family with food, and so on. It is thus as a result of the experience and adjustments of our ancestors that we have come into possession of a store of impulses which cause us to act in all sorts of irrational ways.

The use of intelligible adaptations to account for acts that seem irrational is admirably illustrated by the use that Crile makes of the necessity which compelled our ancestors to hunt and fish to account for the pleasure that we experience in such "irrational" modes of behavior.

That a man of wealth should face the discomforts involved in hunting or fishing seems to Crile irrational. Such irrational behavior requires an explanation. In-stead of looking for it, however, in the experience of the individual, he makes an appeal to the history of the race. He thus finds that at one time hunting and fishing were necessary in order to procure food. Consequently, as a result of this necessity, he holds that man still takes pleasure in these pastimes, and feels the same excitement on catching a fish that his re-mote ancestor did, even though the ancestor's life may have depended on the catch, and even though the modern man may be in no need for food.

"How suggestive is it that man, possessing vast fortunes and surrounded by every luxury, frequently yearns to hunt and to fish, to be dirty and hungry and wild, to stalk and to kill, caring not at all for the discomfort or the flight of time that thus easily his civilized veneer may be dispossessed by the spirit of the savage recall. It is the savage in him that is throwing all his resources into the task of catching and killing his prey; and when at last the salmon or trout is hooked, what a display of excitement over the con-quest ! It is as if a life were at stake.

"This is hot strange when we recall that on innumerable occasions the life of the fisherman's progenitors must have depended upon the catching of a single fish. Those individuals who did not exert themselves sufficiently to provide food for themselves were destroyed by the more industrious beasts and left no progeny.

The almost universal excitement of man in the presence of wild game testifies to the tragic seriousness of the ancestral hunt. It is, indeed, a strong and deep savage instinct that can with ease dispossess the brain of business, ambition, worry, and care."

A somewhat similar use of impulses that are the results of the "rational" behavior of the species is made by Thorndike to account for the seeming "irrational" behavior of men today. This is seen in the use he makes of the hunting instinct, which he holds grew up under conditions that made hunting, if not necessary, at least an appropriate method of securing food, to explain such irrational acts as teasing, bullying, cruelty, hounding of Quakers, and so on.

It seems as if he feels it strange that children should wish to tease each other. Since he cannot give a rationalistic interpretation of such behavior in terms of the individual's experience, he makes use of the species' experience in order that he may rationalize it in the light of this greatly extended experience. These are the assumptions that seem to underlie the following explanation of teasing, bullying, etc.:

"The presence of this tendency in man's nature under the conditions of civilized life gets him little food and much trouble. There being no wild animals to pursue, catch, and torment into submission or death, household pets, young and timid children, or even aunts, governesses, or nursemaids, if sufficiently yielding, provoke the response from the young. The older indulge the propensity at great cost of time and money in hunting beasts, or at still greater cost of manhood in hounding Quakers, Chinamen, scabs, prophets, or suffragettes of the non-militant variety. Teasing, bullying, cruelty are thus in part the results of one of nature's means of providing self and family with food; and what grew up as a pillar of human self-support has become so extravagant a luxury as to be almost a vice."

Thus Crile explains the love of hunting and fishing in terms of the necessities of our ancestors. Thorn-dike uses the same necessities to account for the teasing of children and the hounding of Quakers !

In spite of the ridicule Thorndike heaps upon the use of instincts as "magic potencies," which have the power of being aroused by a multitude of situations and of expressing themselves in many ways,t the use he here makes of the hunting instinct seems to be a recall of "magic potencies" in its worst form. Else-where he very rightly maintains that there is no ad-vantage in invoking various agencies to connect various stimuli with various responses. This, however, is what he here does. The hunting instinct, which grew up in the race as a rational adaptation, now becomes an agency to connect many stimuli with many irrational modes of behavior.

The use McDougall makes of instincts as explanations of behavior is more far-sweeping. All activity, he holds, is the result of instincts. Thus he writes: "Take away these instinctive dispositions with their powerful impulses and the organism would become in-capable of activity of any kind; it would lie inert and motionless like a wonderful clockwork whose main-spring had been removed, or a steam-engine whose fires had been drawn. These impulses are the mental forces that maintain and shape all the life of individuals and societies, and in them are we confronted with the central mystery of life and mind and will."

It is in line with the above that McDougall holds that for each activity there must be a corresponding instinct. Thus he tells us that we can never explain "why" men are at times bashful or show shame, unless we assume the existence of an instinct of self abasement. The same necessity of an instinct is felt to account for the fact that we sometimes adopt the suggestion of others and at other times act counter to the suggestion. Behavior of this sort, he says, makes it necessary that we assume the existence of an instinct of suggestion and one of counter-suggestion. He does not tell us what instinct is responsible for intermediate courses which are neither according to the suggestion nor counter to it. Perhaps there should be an instinct of non-suggestion.

The question naturally arises regarding the source or origin of the' powerful drives McDougall posits. McDougall, in answer to this, makes use of two conceptions, namely, the evolutionary and an account based on vitalism. The latter may be regarded as supplementary to the former, for naturally, according to McDougall's view, if instincts are adaptations of the species, the species must have possessed certain forces in virtue of which it could act before the adaptations had taken place. This can be clearly seen in McDougall's account.

In his Social Psychology McDougall tells us that instincts are "innate specific tendencies of mind that are common to all members of any one species, racial characters that have been slowly evolved in the process of adaptation of the species to their environment, and that can neither be eradicated from the mental constitution of which they are innate elements nor acquired by individuals in the course of their lifetime."

To this account of the origin of the "powerful impulses that are necessary for activity," the obvious objection is that it fails to account for activity before the species had made their acquisitions. Before the evolution of the impulses, in virtue of what did the organism act? To answer this question, McDougall makes use of his vitalistic conceptions. Instincts are not merely adaptations of the species; they are the forces in virtue of which the organisms made their adaptations. In brief, instincts are for McDougall differentiations of the Elan Vital, and it is as a result of their activities that the species have come to be what they are. Thus he writes:

"I hold that instincts are differentiations of the 'Elan Vital,' by means of which it pushes along diverging paths, creating by their agency the various great families of the animal kingdom; each animated by the great instincts common to all: the tendencies to seek food and to reproduce their kind; each also animated by special instincts characteristic of the group; each creating for its own service the bodily organs and nervous structures best suited to serve it as an instrument by means of which it may secure the satisfaction of its conative impulses."

This control likewise plays an important part in the development of the embryo: "The embryo seems to be resolved to acquire a certain form and structure, and to be capable of overcoming very great obstacles placed in its path. There is something analogous to the persistence of any creature to achieve its ends or purposes, and the satisfaction of its needs under the driving power of instinctive impulse or craving. In both cases mechanical obstacles turn aside the course of events from the normal or direct path; but in what-ever direction or in whatever manner the turning aside is caused, the organism adjusts itself to the changed conditions, and, in virtue of some obscure directive power, sets itself once more upon the road to its goal; which, under the altered conditions, it achieves only by means of steps that are different, sometimes extremely different, from the normal."

We thus have a complete account of the origin of instincts: They are adaptations of the species. They are differentiations of the Elan Vital, which have directed the course of evolution. They are obscure directive powers, which watch over the development of the individual. How simply difficult problems are banished ! The primitive man banishes them into the world of ancestral spirits; the modern, into "differentiations of the Elan Vital."

Instincts are not only used by psychologists to rationalize the behavior of the individual by indefinitely extending his experience to embrace the experience of the species and to account for activity as a result of the Elan Vital. They are also used by social writers as guides to conduct and social programmes. Indeed, there is a wide-spread belief that the impulses which we possess as a result of the species' adaptations are of greater value than the impulses which we possess as a result of the adaptations that we ourselves have made. As a consequence it is widely held that we need only to follow the promptings of our instincts in order to live most satisfactorily.

Justification for this attitude is based on the assumption that we inherit a number of impulses, which have survived a long process of elimination in which all the unfit have been rejected. The existing innate impulses are, therefore, regarded as the best that the species has been able to produce. Accordingly, they furnish us with the needed guides for ethics. That these impulses are of value is further evinced by the fact that we who possess them have been able to survive. If they had not been of value, we as a species would probably have disappeared. Hence, they may well be regarded as the true and tried companions of man during his long period of struggle.

The validity of this position does not rest on the assumption of the inheritance of acquired characters. It assumes only that there have been slight variations in man's innate characters. Some of these were good, others were not. The characters that were good, or which proved of value, survived. The others did not. As a result of this process of variation and selection going on for hundreds of thousands of years, man finds himself in possession of innate characters that have proved beyond reasonable doubt their genuine value.

We can in the light of the foregoing understand that there should have arisen in the species pleasurable sensations on doing the beneficial. The connection between the beneficial and the pleasurable becomes clear. What pleases us is what the species values. If this be true, then our natural inclinations receive a powerful sanction-for the species in its long history should certainly have learned what is good for its members. We need not be surprised, therefore, that the competency of instincts to furnish us with true motives for conduct should be strongly urged.

This Mclndoo does; according to Mclndoo, the instincts represent the best tendencies that the past has been able to produce. They should, therefore, be taken as the keys to the good life, and should form the basis of our education. Thus he writes: "The highest laws of life, and therefore of education, are the laws whose foundations are on the bed-rock of instinctive tendencies, which represent the very best that the past has to offer the present; for these race tendencies are those courses that made for good in the lives of our forebears. Therefore a true knowledge of how best to educate the child must be obtained through a study of instinct as related to education."

In another place he declares that instincts "are the sum total of the survival values that have been selected from the spontaneous variations, through natural selection, in the struggle of the race for existence. They are the best that the past has to offer the future. On the stage of consciousness each one of these race tendencies or instincts must play its part and stamp its impress upon the life of the child. Thus the best that has survived from the experience of the race is recapitulated and laid down as the permanent stratification in the life of the child."

In the above, instincts become forces which must leave their impress upon the child. It is not determined just how these forces will make their impression. They may be thwarted and repressed in various ways, but none the less their force is going to be exerted. If it can be expressed naturally so much the better. It is in line with this that Hall holds: "The deep and strong cravings in the individual to revive the ancestral experiences and occupations of the race can and must be met, at least in a secondary and vicarious way."

Of all the writers who are greatly impressed with the significance of instinct for ethics and the social sciences, none are more impressed than Parker and Veblen. According to these writers the instincts are all that the species has considered worth saving, and accordingly, "nothing falls within the human scheme of things desirable to be done except what answers to these native proclivities of man."

Conceptions of this nature seem to rest on the assumption so clearly and boldly stated by Spencer, that, since all functions and bodily needs are the products of evolution, they must not only be of value, but that it is the duty of the moral man to give them due exercise or expression. "The truth that the ideally moral man," he writes, "is one in whom the moving equilibrium is perfect, or approaches nearest to perfection, becomes, when translated into physiological language, the truth that he is one in whom the functions of all kinds are duly fulfilled. Each function has some relations, direct or indirect, to the needs of life: the fact of its existence as a result of evolution being itself a proof that it has been entailed, immediately or remotely, by the adjustment of inner to outer actions. Consequently, non-fulfilment of it in normal proportion is non-fulfilment of a requisite to complete life. If there is defective discharge of function, the organ-ism experiences some detrimental result caused by the inadequacy. If the discharge is in excess, there is entailed a reaction upon the other functions, which in some way diminishes their efficiency."

On the basis of this he boldly declares: "Strange as the conclusion looks, it is nevertheless a conclusion to be here drawn, that the performance of every function is, in a sense, a moral obligation."

In the above I have presented briefly three interpretations of behavior that are quite different. Yet in these three interpretations, there are three striking similarities which should be pointed out. In the first place, all agree that in order to understand behavior it must be explained or interpreted in terms of experience somewhere acquired or undergone. In the second place, in each of these explanations of behavior, there is the tendency to regard the activity as the result of an impulse or force, manifesting itself in the observed behavior. And in. the third place, the activities which are regarded as expressions of these forces whether the force be regarded as mana, an ancestor's spirit, impression from God, or a product of evolution does not matter are endowed with a sort of sanction, which tends to justify them irrespective of their consequences.

The fact that the evolutionary interpretation of behavior shows these resemblances to more primitive explanations should not be regarded as detrimental to it. It may as well be regarded as an indication of the fact that man has for a long time been groping in the neighborhood of a true interpretation, and that he has only recently discovered it. The resemblances should be taken as an indication of general truth rather than of general error. To separate the true from the false is our task.

As has been said, where there is so much agreement we should expect to find a great deal of truth. In regard to the need felt to interpret behavior in terms of experience, this need is rightly felt. To understand purposive behavior, behavior which is the result of conation, it is necessary that we suppose back of the behavior a mass of ideas and desires born of the experience of the organism. Ideas and purposes pre-suppose experience. Apart from sight we have no idea of color. Apart from hearing we have no idea of sound. So it is with all ideas and with purposes. Back of them must lie a mass of experience. There is no mistake, then, in assuming that behavior, to be rendered intelligible, must be explained in terms of experience.

The mistake that is made is in extending the field of experience to include the experience the individual may have had in a previous existence, or to include the experience or wisdom of God, or to include the experience of the species. Such an extension of the range of experience is unwarranted. Granted that behavior must be interpreted in terms of experience, it must be in terms of the experience of the individual existing here and now. We have not at our call an unlimited mass of experience. We must confine ourselves to the experience about which we really have knowledge and which we can control. It is through knowledge of experience of this sort that we may hope to discover the true determiners of behavior.

The tendency to interpret behavior in terms of a force or impulse is not altogether in error. It has a basis in reality. It is true that forces and impulses are experienced in behavior. The mistake is in regarding the force in behavior as a force, apart and independent of the situation in which it is experienced.

The primitive man felt that nature was full of such forces, which existed in the form of mana or spirits. Whatever occurred could be viewed as the manifestations of these. The modern man no longer views nature animistically. Nature is robbed of her forces. Human behavior is no longer regarded as due to the influence of forces without the organism; it is viewed as the expression of forces within man. Without these forces, it is held, the human organism would lie as inert as a steam-engine whose fires had been drawn. It is through the various expressions of these forces that behavior is to be understood. But the variety and uncertainty of these transformations and expressions be-come so great that we can tell little more regarding them than we can tell regarding the manifestations of the primitive man's spirits.

Both the primitive and modern man are wrong. There are no forces, which manifest themselves in various ways. The forces that are experienced are the forces that are born of the relation of the agent to his environment. The experience of the social forces of the group is of this sort. The force which the individual here feels is born of his contacts with his group, which, like all contacts, profoundly influence him, and bring into existence a world of new emotions and ideals.

Emotions and ideals of this sort are not to be regarded as individual products or as adequately accounted for as purely one's own. The mistake is not, then, in seeking the origin of these impulses outside of the individual. It is true that the origin is, in a sense, out-side the individual; for they are due to the relations the individual sustains to his environment. The mistake is in regarding them as impressions from an ancestor or from God. The evolutionist makes a mistake equally as great when he regards them as due to impulses acquired by the species. There is no reason to regard the impulses as acquisitions of the species which are handed down to us. For in the last analysis they must come into existence at one time, and there is no reason to limit this time to the remote past. The present affords as many opportunities for their origin as the past. Why should the stimuli in the past be endowed with such an efficiency that they bring into existence impulses, while the stimuli of the present act only to arouse them?

Plato's account of the aesthetic appreciations is interesting in this connection.

The third similarity found in explanations of behavior based on beliefs in metempsychosis, impressions from God, and in instincts is the deference paid to the hidden entities supposed to lie back of the behavior, regarded as a manifestation of the hidden entity.

When the forces lying back of behavior are regarded as urges from an ancestor, it is not surprising that they should be regarded reverently, and should carry great weight on account of their "pathos." Expediency also demands that such urges be given full consideration, for ancestors are powerful beings who are quick to resent any slight.

The speculations of Durkheim are interesting in this connection. If, as he points out, the experience that largely underlies religious conceptions is that of being influenced by a power or force that is recognized as nobler and more praiseworthy than those felt to be our own is true, there should be no difficulty in under-standing that the acts which cannot be adequately interpreted in terms of the individual's capacities and experiences should be regarded in a different way from those that can. For the power that is felt in these experiences is the power of the group. Accordingly, it carries the social approval, and is the power that causes the individual to consider the interest and good of the group rather than the concerns that are more nearly an expression of his egotistic desires. If, then, the enthusiasm and noble zeal for the social welfare, or if the intensification of life that results from contact with one's fellows, are the experiences that first aroused wonder and demanded an explanation in terms other than those of the individual's capacities and powers, it should not appear strange that the activities that seem to lie beyond the range of the individual's capacities should be reverently regarded. In fact, we have here, according to Durkheim, the distinction between the sacred and the profane.

If these speculations are taken seriously, we can readily understand that Plato, marvelling at the political virtues, should regard them as gifts of Zeus, and that moral philosophers, until quite recently, should have held that the individual at birth possesses a store of moral principles or ideas implanted by God. Since these moral principles are irreducible to selfish considerations, and since the individual to act in accordance with them sacrifices his own interest, if need be, they demand our respect, and they must be assigned a source other than in the selfish desires and interests of the individual.

Thus there is a genuine basis in reality for ascribing to the activities that seem to lie beyond the individual's capacities and experiences an approval all their own. As long as they were regarded as due to impressions or habits infused by God, one did not go far wrong; for as such they were born of the social consciousness, and for the most part were reflections of the best moral tone of the age.

The same cannot be said of instincts when used to take the place of impressions of God to account for a certain class of our activities. Nevertheless, instincts have inherited a considerable share of the approval that formerly went with the interpretation of behavior in terms of ancestral or Divine interposition. Yet, as far as social conceptions and consequences are concerned, this use of instinct has effects that are quite the reverse of the effects that followed from the use of the discarded theories. The conceptions that have been abandoned exalted the social; for an impression from God had to show a certain label. Otherwise it was regarded as an impression from the devil. And, as has been said, they were usually the expression of the best moral consciousness of the age. The present use of instincts, on the other hand, exalts the incommunicable, the personal, the individual. For the chief mark of the instinctive is its deep seatedness and persistence. To look to them for guidance, therefore, tends to lend justification to the satisfaction of the egoistic desires rather than to encourage the expression of the social virtues of man.

In the beginning the social virtues of man excited his admiration and demanded an explanation. In time they came to be associated with instincts, with innate moral ideas implanted by God. The interpretations tended to exalt instinct and to give it a certain sanction and weight, and, in spite of the fact that the use of instinct has given rise to quite different effects from those it gave rise to in the beginning, it continues to enjoy the sanction thrown around it when it was associated primarily with the social virtues.

The sanction of instinct need not, however, be regarded as resting on speculations of this nature. The history of its use shows clearly many reasons for its strong appeal. The love of man for the mysterious, the desire to protect his moral worth against naturalistic interpretations, provides instinct with a great appeal. Not only is the moral worth of man safeguarded in this way, but the use of instinct, an unknown, an inscrutable, provides a safe basis for those feelings of personality which seem violated by analysis. Many seem to feel that personality becomes less valuable, that it becomes less real, if it is broken up into concepts, and its secrets exposed to the gaze of the public. Hence, the satisfaction that is found in a mysterious somewhat, an entity which cannot be analyzed but which notwithstanding provides a concept in terms of which behavior may be explained.

The conception of instinct has also grown to have a religious significance. When activities cannot be accounted for, it is held that they must be due to the guidance of God. Hence, instincts were once popularly regarded as evidences of the controlling hand of Deity in all bis works. The more difficulties that could be placed in the way of really understanding behavior, the more room for the guidance of God. Naturally, if instinct s were regarded as impressions and direction from God, they carried a powerful sanction. What better guidance can one wish than direct guidance from Deity !

In addition to the "pathos" that has thus been thrown around instinct, science has stamped its approval on instincts as guides to conduct. It is true instincts are no longer regarded as impressions from God, but their guidance is none the less sure and trust-worthy for this. They are the forces that have made for good in the lives of our forebears, they are the best that the past has to offer the present, they are the tendencies that have proved their worth by their long survival. Consequently, if we follow them, we cannot go far wrong.

Thus religion, philosophy, and science have united to throw around instinct a sanction so powerful that at times we are inclined to value an activity as an "expression" of an innate tendency, rather than in terms of its consequences. Or, if we fall short of this extreme position, we are so convinced that the "expression" of an instinct is good that merely the assertion that an activity is instinctive gives it a certain standing that goes a long way to silence all objection.

There is no wonder, then, that advocates of social programmes should seek the support of this powerful sanction. Nor is there any cause to wonder, in view of the indefiniteness and hidden nature of instinct, that contrary programmes may with a good deal of plausibility be defended by an appeal to instinct. Thus both the radical and conservative with equal assurance justify their attitudes and programmes as being in harmony with man's supply of instincts.