immersed in experience which determines what shall excite them as stimulus. "They become capable," as Mr. McDougall says,[1] "of being initiated, not only by the perception of objects of the kind which directly excite the innate disposition, the natural or native excitants of the instinct, but also by ideas of such objects, and by perceptions and by ideas of objects of other kinds."[2]
It is only the "central part of the disposition"[3] says Mr. McDougall further, "that retains its specific character and remains common to all individuals and all situations in which the instinct is excited." The cognitive processes, and the actual bodily movements by which the instinct achieves its end may be indefinitely complicated. In other words, man has an instinct of fear, but what he will fear and how he will try to escape, is determined not from birth, but by experience.
If it were not for this variability, it would be difficult to conceive the inordinate variety of human nature. But when you consider that all the important tendencies of the creature, his appetites, his loves, his hates, his curiosity, his sexual cravings, his fears, and pugnacity, are freely attachable to all sorts of objects as stimulus, and to all kinds of objects as gratification, the complexity of human nature is not so inconceivable. And when you think that each new generation is the casual victim of
- ↑ Introduction to Social Psychology, Fourth Edition, pp. 31–32.
- ↑ "Most definitions of instincts and instinctive actions take account only of their conative aspects . . . and it is a common mistake to ignore the cognitive and affective aspects of the instinctive mental process." Footnote op. cit., p. 29.
- ↑ P. 34.
