Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/780

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husband. The mother vaguely realized the true situation, namely, that the difference in the instinctive reactions of the daughter to her mother and to her husband was due to the difference in her emotional relation to each. In the first case the reaction of the girl was to her expansive, in the second to her forceful emotional state. The stimulus in both cases was merely the occasion of the reactions and did not determine their nature. That is, the effect of the stimulus, which the husband or the mother might apply at any time, was due not to the intrinsic nature of the stimulus but to the association of the latter with the symbol, husband or mother, of a permanent emotional attitude.

Genetic studies emphasize the instincts because, in animals and infants, only reactions can readily be observed. However, I have numerous facts showing the fundamental importance of physiological and feeling-states even in animals. For instance, a cat whose kittens had been killed brought in three small squirrels one after another and nursed them until they grew old enough to shift for themselves. I have a photograph of the cat nursing the squirrels. A friend of mine replaced the eggs in a hawk's nest with hen's eggs and the hawk incubated the eggs and fed the chicks until they were taken from the nest to prevent their falling. Human parents sometimes adopt children when they have lost their own. The more perfectly the adopted thing is adapted to the variety of instinctive acts prompted by the parental mood, the stronger is the expansive feeling of which the thing becomes the symbol. Animals which have lost their young and lick many things they come into contact with adopt only those things which can be carried, played with, and fed, as well as licked. In the competition of various stimuli for the instinctive responses of ex- pansive feeling the offspring when at hand is not always selected. I have watched a cat hesitate between lying with its kittens in a dark corner and lying by the window in the sun and finally choose the sunny spot. Human parents sometimes choose travel or artistic work and leave the children to nurses. The so-called "pa- rental instinct" may therefore be reduced to lower terms. As such it is a physiological and an expansive feeling-state which gives rise to many instinctive acts, which fix upon the offspring as