seen to be so general, evidently gives to the environmental influences
which surround the child a fundamental uniformity, and as we have seen,
the theory of the development of the individual mind demands that such
a uniformity of environmental influence should be shown to be in action.
This is no place to follow out the practical consequences of the
fact that every adult necessarily {86} possesses a primary bias in
his attitude towards the young, and a bias which is connected with
instinctive impulses of great mental energy. However much this tendency
is overlaid by moral principles, by altruism, by natural affection,
as long as its true nature is unrecognized and excluded from full
consciousness its influence upon conduct must be excessive and full
of dangerous possibilities. To it must ultimately be traced the
scarcely veiled distrust and dislike with which comparative youth is
always apt to be met where matters of importance are concerned. The
attitude of the adult and elderly towards the enthusiasms of youth is
stereotyped in a way which can scarcely fail to strike the psychologist
as remarkable and illuminating in its commonplaceness. The youthful
revolutionary, who after all is no more essentially absurd than the
elderly conservative, is commonly told by the latter that he too at
the same age felt the same aspirations, burnt with the same zeal, and
yearned with the same hope until he learnt wisdom with experience—“as
you will have, my boy, by the time you are my age.” To the psychologist
the kindly contempt of such pronouncements cannot conceal the pathetic
jealousy of declining power. Herd instinct, inevitably siding with the
majority and the ruling powers, has always added its influence to the
side of age and given a very distinctly perceptible bias to history,
proverbial wisdom, and folklore against youth and confidence and
enterprise and in favour of age and caution, the immemorial wisdom of
the past, and even the toothless mumblings of senile decay.
Any comprehensive survey of modern civilized life cannot fail to yield
abundant instances of the disproportionate influence in the conduct
of affairs which has been acquired by mere age. When we remember how
little in actual practice man proves himself capable of the use of
reason, how very little {87} he actually does profit by experience
though the phrase is always in his mouth, it must be obvious that
there is some strong psychological reason for the predominance of age,
something which must be determinative in its favour quite apart from
its merits and capacity when competing with youth. The “monstrous
regiment” of old men—and to the biologist it is almost as “monstrous”
as the regiment of Mary Stuart was to poor indignant Knox—extends into
every branch of man’s activity. We prefer old judges, old lawyers,
old politicians, old doctors, old generals, and when their functions
involve any immediacy of cause and effect and are not merely concerned
with abstractions, we contentedly pay the price which the inelasticity
of these ripe minds is sometimes apt to incur.
IV
If the propositions already laid down prove to be sound, we must regard
the personality of the adult as the resultant of three groups of forces
to which the mind from infancy onwards is subject; _first_ the egoistic
instincts of the individual pressing for gratification and possessing
the intense mental energy characteristic of instinctive processes,
_secondly_ the specific sensitiveness to environmental influences
which the mind as that of a gregarious animal necessarily possesses,
a quality capable of endowing outside influences with the energy of
instinct and, _thirdly_ the environmental influences which act upon the
growing mind and are also essentially determined in their intensity and
uniformity by instinctive mechanisms.
The work of Freud has been directed mainly to the elucidation of the
processes included in the first group—that is to say, to the study
of the primarily egoistic impulses and the modifications {88} they
develop under restraint. He has worked out, in fact, a veritable
embryology of the mind.
The embryology of the body is to those who have had no biological
training far from being a gratifying subject of contemplation. The
stages through which the body passes before reaching its familiar
form have a superficial aspect of ugly and repulsive caricature with
which only a knowledge of the great compressed pageant of nature they
represent can reconcile the mind. The stages through which, according
to the doctrines of Freud, the developing mind passes are not less
repulsive when judged from the purely human point of view than are
the phases of the body, which betray its cousinship with the fish and
the frog, the lemur and the ape. The works of Nature give no support
to the social convention that to be truly respectable one must always
have been respectable. All her most elaborate creations have “risen
in the world” and are descended in the direct line from creatures of
the mud and dust. It is characteristic of her method to work with the
humblest materials and to patch and compromise at every step. Any given
structure of her making is thus not by any means necessarily the best
that could conceivably be contrived, but a workable modification of
something else, always more or less conditioned in its functioning by
the limitations of the thing from which it was made.
To the biologist, therefore, the fact that Freud’s investigations
of the development of the mind have shown it passing through stages
anything but gratifying to self-esteem will not be either surprising
or a ground for disbelief. That Freud’s conclusions are decidedly
unpalatable when judged by a narrowly human standard is very obvious
to any one who is at all familiar with the kind of criticism they
have received. It must be acknowledged, moreover, that his methods of
exposition have not always tended {89} to disguise the nauseousness
of the dose he attempts to administer. Such matters, however, lie
altogether apart from the question whether his conclusions are or
are not just, though it is perhaps justifiable to say that had these
conclusions been immediately acceptable, the fact would be presumptive
evidence that they were either not new or were false.
The work of Freud embodies the most determined, thorough, and
scientific attempt which has been made to penetrate the mysteries
of the mind by the direct human method of approach, making use
of introspection—guided and guarded, it is true, by an elaborate
technique—as its essential instrument. To have shaped so awkward
and fallacious an instrument into an apparatus for which accuracy
and fruitfulness can be claimed is in itself a notable triumph of
psychological skill.
The doctrines of Freud seem to be regarded by his school as covering
all the activities of the mind and making a complete, though of course
not necessarily exhaustive, survey of the whole field. I have already
pointed out directions in which it appears to me that inquiries by
other methods than those of the psycho-analytic school can be pursued
with success. Regarded in a broad way, the Freudian body of doctrine
which I have already ventured to describe as essentially an embryology
of the mind gives one the impression of being mainly descriptive and
systematic rather than dynamic, if one may with due caution use such
words. It is able to tell us how such and such a state of affairs
has arisen, what is its true significance, and to describe in minute
detail the factors into which it can be analysed. When the question
of acting upon the mind is raised its resources seem less striking.
In this direction its chief activities have been in the treatment of
abnormal mental states, and these are dealt with by a laborious process
of analysis {90} in which the subject’s whole mental development is
retraced, and the numerous significant experiences which have become
excluded from the conscious field are brought back into it.
When the unconscious processes which underlie the symptoms have
been assimilated to the conscious life of the patient, the symptoms
necessarily disappear, and the patient’s mind gains or regains the
“normal” condition. However precious such a cure may be to the patient,
and however interesting to the physician, its value to the species has
to be judged in relation to the value of the “normal” to which the
patient has been restored—that is, in relation to the question as to
whether any move, however small, in the direction of an enlargement
of the human mind has been made. Until some clearer evidence has been
furnished of a capacity for development in this direction the Freudian
system should, perhaps, be regarded as more notably a psychology of
knowledge than a psychology of power.
It is interesting to notice that in discussing the mechanism of
psycho-analysis in liberating the “abnormal” patient from his symptoms,
Freud repeatedly lays stress on the fact that the efficient factor
in the process is not the actual introduction of the suppressed
experiences into the conscious field, but the overcoming of the
resistances to such an endeavour. I have attempted to show that these
resistances or counter-impulses are of environmental origin, and owe
their strength to the specific sensitiveness of the gregarious mind.
Resistances of similar type and identical origin are responsible for
the formation of the so-called normal type of mind. It is a principal
thesis of an earlier essay in this book that this normal type is far
from being psychologically healthy, is far from rendering available
the full capacity of the mind for foresight and {91} progress, and
being in exclusive command of directing power in the world, is a
danger to civilization. An investigation of the resistant forces that
are encountered by the developing mind is clearly, then, a matter
of the utmost importance. They are now allowed to come into being
haphazard, and while they undoubtedly contain elements of social
value and necessary restraints, they are the products, not of a
courageous recognition of facts but of fears, prejudices, and repressed
instinctive impulses, and are consolidated by ignorance, indolence, and
tribal custom.
The interest of the psycho-analytic school has been turned remarkably
little into this field. The speculation may be hazarded that in this
direction it might find the sources of a directer power over the
human mind, and at least some attenuation of that atmosphere of the
consulting-room and the mad-house which does so much to detract from
its pretensions to be a psychological system of universal validity.
SOME PRINCIPLES OF A BIOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY.
The third method by which it has been attempted to attack the problems
of psychology is that which I have called the comparative. Its
characteristic note is a distrust of that attitude towards phenomena
which I have called the human point of view. Man’s description and
interpretation of his own mental experience being so liable to
distortion by prejudice, by self-esteem, by his views as to his own
nature and powers, as well as so incomplete by reason of his incapacity
to reach by ordinary introspection the deeper strata of his mind, it
becomes necessary to make action as far as possible the subject of
observation rather than speech, and to regard it as a touchstone of
motive more important than the actor’s own views. The principle {92}
may be exemplified in a simple and concrete form. If a given piece of
human behaviour bears the closest resemblance to behaviour which is
characteristic of the ape, the sheep, or the wolf, the biologist in
attempting to arrive at the actual cause will ascribe an importance
to this resemblance at least no less than that he will give to any
explanation of the action as rational and deliberate which may be
furnished by the actor or by his own intelligence.
A second principle of the method will be by a study of the whole range
of animal life, and especially of forms whose conduct presents obvious
resemblances to that of man, to discover what instinctive impulses may
be expected to operate in him.
A third principle will be to search for criteria, whereby instinctive
impulses or their derivatives arising in the mind can be distinguished
from rational motives, or at any rate motives in which the instinctive
factor is minimal. Thus will be furnished for the method the objective
standard for the judgment of mental observations which is the one
indispensable requirement in all psychological inquiries.
When it is known what types of instinctive mechanisms are to be
expected, and under what aspects they will appear in the mind, it is
possible to press inquiry into many of the obscurer regions of human
behaviour and thought, and to arrive at conclusions which, while they
are in harmony with the general body of biological science, have the
additional value of being immediately useful in the conduct of affairs.
At the very outset of such researches we are met by an objection which
illustrates how different the biological conception of the mind is from
that current amongst those whose training has been {93} literary and
philosophic. The objection I am thinking of is that of the ordinary
intellectualist view of man. According to this we must regard him as
essentially a rational creature, subject, it is true, to certain feeble
relics of instinctive impulsion, but able to control such without any
great expense of will power, irrational at times in an amiable and
rather “nice” way, but fundamentally always independent, responsible,
and captain of his soul. Most holders of this opinion will of course
admit that in a distant and vague enough past man must have been much
more definitely an instinctive being, but they regard attempts to trace
in modern man any considerable residue of instinctive activities as a
tissue of fallacious and superficial analogies, based upon a shallow
materialism and an ignorance of the great principles of philosophy or a
crudeness which cannot assimilate them.
This objection is an expression of the very characteristic way in which
mankind over-estimates the practical functioning of reason in his mind
and the influence of civilization on his development. In an earlier
essay I have tried to show to how great an extent the average educated
man is willing to pronounce decided judgments, all of which he believes
himself to have arrived at by the exercise of pure reason, upon the
innumerable complex questions of the day. Almost all of them concern
highly technical matters upon none of which has he the slightest
qualification to pronounce. This characteristic, always obvious enough,
has naturally during the war shown the exaggeration so apt to occur
in all non-rational processes at a time of general stress. It is not
necessary to catalogue the various public functions in regard to which
the common citizen finds himself in these days moved to advise and
exhort. They are numerous, and for the most part highly technical.
Generally the {94} more technical a given matter is, the more vehement
and dogmatic is the counsel of the utterly uninstructed counsellor.
Even when the questions involved are not especially such as can be
dealt with only by the expert, the fact that the essential data are
withheld from the public by the authorities renders all this amateur
statecraft and generalship more than usually ridiculous. Nevertheless,
those who find the materials insufficient for dogmatism and feel
compelled to a suspense of judgment are apt to fall under suspicion
of the crime of failing to “realize” the seriousness of the war. When
it is remembered that the duty of the civilian is in no way concerned
with these matters of high technique, while he has very important
functions to carry out in maintaining the nation’s strength if he could
be brought to take an interest in them, it seems scarcely possible to
argue that such conduct is that of a very highly rational being. In
reality the objective examination of man’s behaviour, if attention is
directed to the facts and not to what the actors think of them, yields
at once in every field example after example of similar irrational
features.
When the influence of civilization is looked upon as having rendered
man’s instincts of altogether secondary importance in modern life,
it is plain that such a conclusion involves a misconception of the
nature of instinct. This well-worn term has come to have so vague
a connotation that some definition of it is necessary. The word
“instinct” is used here to denote inherited modes of reaction to bodily
need or external stimulus. It is difficult to draw a sharp distinction
between instinct and mere reflex action, and an attempt to do so with
exact precision is of no particular value. In general we may say that
the reactions which should be classed under the head of instinct are
delayed (that is, not necessarily carried out with fatal promptitude
{95} immediately upon the stimulus), complex (that is, consist of
acts rather than mere movements), and may be accompanied by quite
elaborate mental processes. In a broad way also it may be said that
the mental accompaniments of an instinctive process are for the most
part matters of feeling. During the growth of the need or stimulus
there will be a desire or inclination which may be quite intense, and
yet not definitely focused on any object that is consciously realized;
the act itself will be distinguished to the actor by its rightness,
obviousness, necessity, or inevitableness, and the sequel of the act
will be satisfaction. This mere hint of the psychical manifestations
of instinctive activity leaves quite out of account the complex
effects which may ensue when two instinctive impulses that have come
to be antagonistic reach the mind at the same time. The actual amount
of mental activity which accompanies an instinctive process is very
variable; it may be quite small, and then the subject of it is reduced
to a mere automaton, possessed, as we say, by an ungovernable passion
such as panic, lust, or rage; it may be quite large, and sometimes the
subject, deceived by his own rationalizations and suppressions, may
suppose himself to be a fully rational being in undisputed possession
of free will and the mastery of his fate at the very moment when he
is showing himself to be a mere puppet dancing to the strings which
Nature, unimpressed by his valiant airs, relentlessly and impassively
pulls.
The extent of the psychical accompaniments of instinctive activity
in civilized man should not, therefore, be allowed to obscure the
fact that the instincts are tendencies deeply ingrained in the very
structure of his being. They are as necessarily inherited, as much
a part of himself, and as essential a condition for the survival of
himself and his race, as are the vital organs of his body. {96} Their
persistence in him is established and enforced by the effects of
millions of years of selection, so that it can scarcely be supposed
that a few thousand years of civilized life which have been accompanied
by no steady selection against any single instinct can have had any
effect whatever in weakening them. The common expression that such an
effect has been produced is doubtless due to the great development in
civilized man of the mental accompaniments of instinctive processes.
These mental phenomena surround the naked reality of the impulse
with a cloud of rationalized comment and illusory explanation. The
capacity which man possesses for free and rational thought in matters
untainted by instinctive inclination is of course indubitable, but he
has not realized that there is no obvious mental character attached
to propositions having an instinctive basis which should expose them
to suspicion. As a matter of fact, it is just those fundamental
propositions which owe their origin to instinct which appear to the
subject the most obvious, the most axiomatic, and the least liable to
doubt by any one but an eccentric or a madman.
It has been customary with certain authors—perhaps especially such as
have interested themselves in sociological subjects—to ascribe quite
a large number of man’s activities to separate instincts. Very little
consideration of most of these propositions shows that they are based
upon too lax a definition or a want of analysis, for most of the
activities referred to special instincts prove to be derivatives of the
great primal instincts which are common to or very widely distributed
over the animal kingdom. Man and a very large number of all animals
inherit the capacity to respond to physical need or emergency according
to the demands which we classify, as the three primary instincts of
self-preservation, nutrition, and {97} reproduction. If a series
of animals of increasing brain power be examined, it will be found
that a growth of intelligence, while it does nothing to enfeeble the
instinctive impulse, modifies the appearances of it by increasing the
number of modes of reaction it may use. Intelligence, that is to say,
leaves its possessor no less impelled by instinct than his simpler
ancestor, but endows him with the capacity to respond in a larger
variety of ways. The response is now no longer directly and narrowly
confined to a single path, but may follow a number of indirect and
intricate ways; there is no reason, however, to suppose that the
impulse is any the weaker for that. To mistake indirectness of response
for enfeeblement of impulse is a fundamental error to which all inquiry
into the psychology of instinct is liable.
To man his big brain has given a maximal power of various response
which enables him to indulge his instinctive impulses in indirect and
symbolic activities to a greater extent than any other animal. It is
for this reason that the instincts of man are not always obvious in
his conduct and have come to be regarded by some as practically no
more than vestigial. Indirect modes of response may indeed become
so involved as to assume the appearance of the negation of the very
instincts of which they are the expression. Thus it comes to be no
paradox to say that monks and nuns, ascetics and martyrs, prove the
strength of the great primary instincts their existence seems to deny.