in the intellectual and emotional fields just as truly as in the
field of action or motor response. The capacity to think in terms of
words and of generals; to understand relationships; to remember; to
imagine; to be satisfied with thinking,--all these, as well as such
special abilities as skill in music, in managing people or affairs, in
tact, or in sympathy, are due to just the same factors as produce fear
or curiosity. These former types of tendencies differ from the latter in
complexity of situation and response, in definiteness of response, in
variability amongst individuals of the same family, and in
modifiability; but in the essential element they do not differ from the
more evident inborn tendencies.

Just what these original tendencies are and just what the situations are
to which they come as responses are both unknown except in a very few
instances. The psychology of original nature has enumerated the
so-called instincts and discussed a few of their characteristics, but
has left almost untouched the inborn capacities that are more peculiarly
human. Even the treatment of instincts has been misleading. For
instance, instincts have been discussed under such heads as the
"self-preservative instincts," "the social instincts," just as if the
child had an inborn, mystical something that told him how to preserve
his life, or become a social king. Original nature does not work in that
way; it is only as the experience of the individual modifies the blind
instinctive responses through learning that these results can just as
easily come about unless the care of parents provides the right sort of
surroundings. There is nothing in the child's natural makeup that warns
him against eating pins and buttons and poisonous berries, or encourages
him to eat milk and eggs and cereal instead of cake and sweets. He will
do one sort of thing just as easily as the other. All nature provides
him with is a blind tendency to put all objects that attract his
attention into his mouth. This response may preserve his life or destroy
it, depending on the conditions in which he lives. The same thing is
true of the "social instinct"--the child may become the most selfish
egotist imaginable or the most self-sacrificing of men, according as his
surroundings and training influence the original tendencies towards
behavior to other people in one way or the other. Of course it is very
evident that no one has ever consistently lived up to the idea ind