In illustration of the third fact, namely, the effect of environment to stimulat

e or repress, witness the "little mothers" of five and the wage earners of twelv
e who have assumed all the responsibilities with all that they entail of maturit
y. On the other side of the picture is the indulged petted child of fortune who
never grows up because he has had everything done for him all his life, and ther
efore the tendencies which normally might be expected to pass and give place to
others remain and those others never appear. That inborn tendencies do wax, reac
h a maximum, and wane is probably true, but the onset is much more gradual and t
he waning much less frequent than has been taken for granted. Our ignorance conc
erning all these matters outweighs our knowledge; only careful experimentation w
hich allows for all the other factors involved can give a reliable answer.
One reason why the facts of delayedness and transitoriness in instincts have bee
n so generally accepted without being thoroughly tested has been the belief in t
he recapitulation or repeating by the individual of racial development. So long
as this was accepted as explaining the development of inborn tendencies and thei
r order of appearance, transitoriness and delayedness must necessarily be postul
ated. This theory is being seriously questioned by psychologists of note, and ev
en its strongest advocate, President Hall, finds many questions concerning it wh
ich cannot be answered.
The chief reasons for its acceptance were first, on logical grounds as an outgro
wth of the doctrine of evolution, and second, because of an analogy with the gro
wth of the physical body which was pushed to an extreme. On the physiological si
de, although there is some likeness between the human embryo and that of the low
er animals, still the stages passed through by the two are not the same, being a
like only in rough outline, and only in the case of a few of the bodily organs i
s the series of changes similar. In the case of the physical structure which sho
uld be recapitulated most closely, if behavior is to follow the same law,--namel
y, in that of the brain and nervous system,--there is least evidence of recapitu
lation. The brain of man does not follow in its development at all the same cour
se taken in the development of brains in the lower animals. And, moreover, it is
perfectly possible to explain any similarity or parallelism which does exist be
tween the development of man's embryo and that of lower animals by postulating a
general order of development followed by nature as the easiest or most economic
al, traces of which must then be found in all animal life. When it comes to the
actual test of the theory, that of finding actual cases of recapitulation in beh
avior, it fails. No one has been able to point out just when a child passes thro
ugh any stage of racial development, and any attempt to do so has resulted in co
nfusion. There is no clear-cut marking off into stages, but, instead, overlappin
g and coexistence of tendencies characterize the development of the child. The i
nfant of a few days old may show the swimming movements, but at the same time he
can support his own weight by clinging to a horizontal stick. Which stage is he
recapitulating, that of the fishes or the monkeys? The nine-year-old boy loves
to swim, climb trees, and hunt like a savage all at the same period, and, what i
s more, some of these same tendencies characterize the college man. The late mat
uring of the sex instinct, so old and strong in the race, and the early appearin
g of the tendencies towards vocalization and grasping, both of late date in the
race, are facts that are hard to explain on the basis of the theory of recapitul
ation.
As has been already suggested, one of the most important characteristics of all
these tendencies is their modifiability. The very ease with which they can be mo
dified suggests that this is what has most often to be done with them. On examin
ation of the lists of original tendencies there are none which can be kept and f
ixed in the form in which they first appear. Even the best of them are crude and
impossible from the standpoint of civilized society. Take as an illustration mo
ther-love; what are the original tendencies and behavior? "All women possess ori
ginally, from early childhood to death, some interest in human babies, and a res
ponsiveness to the instinctive looks, calls, gestures, and cries of infancy and
childhood, being satisfied by childish gurglings, smiles, and affectionate gestu
res, and moved to instinctive comforting acts of childish signs of pain, grief,
and misery." But the mother has to learn not to cuddle the baby and talk to it a
ll the time it is awake and not to run to it and take it up at every cry, to ste
el her heart against the wheedling of the coaxing gurgles and even to allow the
baby to hurt himself, all for his own good. This comes about only as original na
ture is modified in line with knowledge and ideals. The same need is evidenced b
y such a valuable tendency as curiosity. So far as original nature goes, the ten
dency to attend to novel objects, to human behavior, to explore with the eyes an
d manipulate with the hands, to enjoy having sensations of all kinds merely for
their own sakes, make up what is known as the instinct of curiosity. But what a
tremendous amount of modification is necessary before these crude responses resu
lt in the valuable scientific curiosity. Not blind following where instinct lead
s, but modification, must be the watchword.