Dr.
McDougall, of Oxford, elaborated some few years ago, and has now
established, an extremely important theory of the relation between
instinct and emotion. He has shown that our emotions are correlated with
our instincts; that the emotion is the inward or subjective side of the
working of the instinct. Thus an instinct is more than a "complex reflex
action"; it is more than merely that, on hearing something, or seeing
something, certain muscles are thrown into action, because along with
the action there is emotion, and this is a natural and necessary
correlation. We should do well to carry about with us, as part of our
mental furniture, this idea of the correlation between instinct and
emotion.
Now, if it be true that man is not primarily a rational animal, if he be
rather, _au fond_, a bundle, an assemblage, _an organism of instincts_,
it behoves us to recognize in ourselves and in others the primary
instincts, because from them flows all that goes to make up human
nature, whether it be good or evil. Amongst these, certainly, is the
parental instinct.
Let us first consider its development in the individual, for this bears
on the question when to begin education for motherhood. We find it very
early indeed. It is commonly asserted that the doll instinct is the
precursor, the infantile and childish form, of the parental instinct.
Some psychologists, as we have already noted, assure us that this is
wrong, that a small child will be just as content to play with anything
else as with a doll; that the child gets fond of its possession, and
that what we are really witnessing is the instinct of acquisitiveness.
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