Page:Philosophical Review Volume 22.djvu/416

400 the permanent instinctive sources of conduct and these intelligent modifications. Professor Hobhouse, however, does not deny the existence and importance of this relationship, nor that ethical evolution has been largely a shaping and directing of the manner in which these instincts are called forth and express themselves. It therefore seems possible to accept his account in the main, as well as Westermarck's and Sutherland's, and yet believe that the psychological basis of the evolution described by all three lies largely in the social control and direction of an objective element in human instincts that requires an identification and analysis which none of them has furnished.

Fortunately the tools for this analysis lie conveniently at hand in a work that promises, I believe, to be epoch making in its significance for social interpretation, the Social Psychology of Professor William McDougall.

According to this authority, there is a limited number of important primary instincts, which are identified by careful objective tests, each being observable in the higher animals, and possessing a distinct pathological history in human beings, revealing that it is still a relatively distinct functional unit. Each instinct possesses afferent and motor channels in the nervous system that are to some extent modifiable, while its central portions, the conative element and the emotion, are unchanging. Many of us learn not to feel afraid of the dark, and of thunder storms, and so to suppress certain innate afferent channels, while we learn to be alarmed at provocatives that imply the opening of new afferent channels of the instinct. Likewise innate motor channels may be suppressed and new channels opened. Instead of expressing our anger by striking out with our fists, we may reach back for a revolver; or if sufficiently civilized, have recourse to a lawsuit. But the central portion of the instinct, which on the psychical side includes the emotion of fear or anger, remains essentially unchanged throughout our lives. Fear and anger remain the same unique mental experiences. Complex emotions are due to the union of two or more simple emotions simultaneously evoked upon a given occasion, e.g., admiration is combined wonder and self-abasement. Sentiments, which are