Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/778

 764 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

combative instinct-process a glimmer of the battle-scene of the dim past with a demand that opponents under the different condi- tions of today should act the parts of those fighting that "dim battle in the mist." This combative instinct process is found in all forms of activity, political, economic, and religious, and its demand for satisfaction determines in part the form of these different activities. The clergy^man most popular with the masses is one who denounces the enemy: either the devil in theological terminology, or unrighteousness in ethical terms, or the saloon- keeper in plain terms. The belief of the masses in the beneficence of competition — our great economic superstition — and their demand that it be everywhere enforced seems to me to be another )hase of this combative instinct-process.'*'^

The investigation of the conative phase of mental process should begin with a study of the relation of the instincts to the feelings. Here are some illustrations from my groups of what seems to me the true relation. Our isolated family keeps chick- ens, which frequently wander into the kitchen. One of these chickens was lame and otherwise repulsive. A little girl of ten would sometimes drive out the deformed chicken with the ex- clamation, "You miserable little thing" ; at other times she would take it up with the exclamation, "You poor little thing." Whether her instinctive act was one of contempt or of compassion depended not on the external stimulus, which was the same in both cases, but on her mood or her emotional state when the stimulus offered itself. As an example of mood determining her instinctive reaction I observed that when she was hard at work her treatment of the chick was apt to be contemptuous, when she was loitering about or singing it was apt to be compassionate. As an example of emotional state determining her instinctive reaction I observed that if a certain person was in the room with whom she felt sympathetic emotion her instinctive response to the chick tended to be compassionate; if a person was in the room toward whom she felt forceful emotion her reaction tended to be contemptuous. Thus her feeling-states seemed to determine


 * ' Johnson, American Railway Transportation, pp. 239, 258.