icated
by such a treatment of original nature, but certain tendencies in
education are traceable to such psychology. What the child has by nature
is neither good nor bad, right nor wrong--it may become either according
to the habits which grow out of these tendencies. A child's inborn
nature cannot determine the goal of his education. His nature has
remained practically the same from the days of primitive man, while the
goals of education have changed. What nature does provide is an immense
number of definite responses to definite situations. These provide the
capital which education and training may use as it will.

It is just because education does need to use these tendencies as
capital that the lack of knowledge of just what the responses are is
such a serious one. And yet the difficulties of determining just what
original nature gives are so tremendous that the task seems a hopeless
one to many investigators. The fact that in the human being these
tendencies are so easily modified means that from the first they are
being influenced and changed by the experiences of the child. Because of
the quality of our inheritance the response to a situation is not a
one-to-one affair, like a key in a lock, but all sorts of minor causes
in the individual are operative in determining his response; and, on the
other side, situations are so complex in themselves that they contain
that which may call out several different instincts. For example, a
child's response to an animal will be influenced by his own physical
condition, emotional attitude, and recent mental status and by the
conditions of size and nearness of the animal, whether it is shaggy or
not, moving or still, whether he is alone or with others, on the floor
or in his chair, and the like. It will depend on just how these factors
combine as to whether the response is one of fear, of curiosity, of
manipulation, or of friendliness. When to these facts are added the fact
that the age and previous habits of the child also influence his
response, the immense complexity of the problem of discovering just what
the situations are to which there are original tendencies to respond and
just how these tendencies show themselves is evident. And yet this is
what psychologists must finally do if the use by teachers of these
tendencies is to be both economical and wise. Just as an illustration of
the possibilities of analysis, Thorndike in his "Original Nature of Man"
lists eleven differ