Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/759

 A THEORY OF SOCIAL MOTIVES 745

This feeling-oscillation, in adults, assumes a habitual form, in adaptation to the physical environment where it coincides with the diurnal rhythm from light to darkness. Thus daybreak is the symbol which suggests to the farmer, in our isolated family, his habitual work activities. The nervous basis of these activities and the feelings concomitant therewith, I call the forceful mood. The expansive mood has its basis largely in the sympathetic division of the nervous system,* out of which spring those hab- itual reactions through which the population finds recreation at the close of day. Thus at the close of the day our isolated farmer gathers his children about him, reads his Bible, and makes use of other stimuli and symbols which induce expansive feeling. If he is asked to entertain a friend in the morning when in the forceful mood he is thrown into agitation. If he is obliged to work in the evening when accustomed to rest he is thrown into agitation. The agitative mood has its basis in the depletion of the nervous system out of which spring those habitual reactions with which the individual endeavors to regain or to intensify the waning feeling or to accomplish the transition to the waxing feeling.'^

This oscillation of moods is a result of the discipline of the environment. Children show an oscillation of the feelings but it does not occur with the regularity displayed by the oscillation of moods in adults. Thus children as well as adults show a greater tendency to forceful activity in the morning after rest than later in the day. This feeling finds vent in the rough and tumble of which children soon tire and relax into instinctive and im- pulsive acts of sympathy. Thus children, left to their own devices, pass from one kind of feeling and activity to the other with little regularity. In the household of the workingman, however, children are disciplined by the parents who seek to bring the activity of the children into harmony with their own oscillation of moods. Thus, in our isolated family, the girl of thirteen is, in disposition, a hard worker, while the boy of nine

Giddings, "Darwinism in the Theory of Social Evolution," Pop. Sc. Mon., July, 1909.
 * Sutherland, Origin and Growth of the Moral Instinct, Vol. II, pp, 215-26.

•Cuhel, Zur Lehre von den BedUrfnissen, pp. 142, 143.