Another sort of arrest of instinct by habit is where the same class of objects awakens contrary instinctive impulses.Here the impulse first followed toward a given individual of the class is apt to keep him from ever awakening the opposite impulse in us.In fact, the whole class may be protected by this individual specimen from the application to it of the other impulse.Animals, for example, awaken in a child the opposite impulses of fearing and fondling.But if a child, in his first attempts to pat a dog, gets snapped at or bitten, so that the impulse of fear is strongly aroused, it may be that for years to come no dog will excite in him the impulse to fondle again.On the other hand, the greatest natural enemies, if carefully introduced to each other when young and guided at the outset by superior authority, settle down into those 'happy families'
of friends which we see in our menageries.Young animals, immediately afterbirth, have no instinct of fear, but show their dependence by allowing themselves to be freely handled.Later, however, they grow 'wild,' and, if left to themselves, will not let man approach them.I am told by farmers in the Adirondack wilderness that it is a very serious matter if a cow wanders off and calves in the woods and is not found for a week or more.
The calf, by that time, is as wild and almost as fleet as a deer, and hard to capture without violence.But calves rarely show any particular wildness to the men who have been in contact with them during the first days of their life, when the instinct to attach themselves is uppermost, nor do they dread strangers as they would if brought up wild.
Chickens give a curious illustration of the same law.Mr.Spalding's wonderful article on instinct shall supply us with the facts.These little creatures show opposite instincts of attachment and fear, either of which may be aroused by the same object, man.If a chick is born in the absence of the hen, it "will follow any moving object.And, when guided by sight alone, they seem to have no mole disposition to follow a hen than to follow a duck or a human being.Unreflecting lookers-on, when they saw chickens a day old running after me," says Mr.Spalding, "and older ones following me for miles, and answering to my whistle, imagined that I must have some occult power over the creatures: whereas I had simply allowed them to follow me from the first.There is the instinct to follow; and the ear, prior to experience, attaches them to the right object."
But if a man presents himself for the first time when the instinct of fear is strong, the phenomena are altogether reversed.Mr.Spalding kept three chickens hooded until they were nearly four days old, and thus describes their behavior:
"Each of them, on being unhooded, evinced the greatest terror tome, dashing off in the opposite direction whenever I sought to approach it.
The table on which they were unhooded stood before a window, and each in its turn beat against the window like a wild bird.One of them darted behind some books, and, squeezing itself into a corner, remained cowering for a length of time.We might guess at the meaning of this strange and exceptional wildness; but the odd fact is enough for my present purpose.Whatever might have been the meaning of this marked change in their mental constitution-had they been unhooded on the previous day they would have run to me instead of from me -- it could not have been the effect of experience; it must have resulted wholly from changes in their own organizations."
Their case was precisely analogous to that of the Adirondack calves.
The two opposite instincts relative to the same object ripen in succession.
If the first one engenders a habit, that habit will inhibit the application of the second instinct to that object.All animals are tame during the earliest phase of their infancy.Habits formed then limit the effects of whatever instincts of wildness may later be evolved.
Mr.Romanes gives some very curious examples of the way in which instinctive tendencies may be altered by the habits to which their first 'objects'
have given rise.The cases are a little more complicated than those mentioned in the text, inasmuch as the object reacted on not only starts a habit which inhibits other kinds of impulse toward it (although such other kinds might be natural), but even modifies by its own peculiar conduct the constitution of the impulse which it actually awakens.
Two of the instances in question are those of hens who hatched out broods of chicks after having (in three previous years) hatched ducks.They strove to coax or to compel their new progeny to enter the water, and seemed much perplexed at their unwillingness.Another hen adopted a brood of young ferrets which, having lost their mother, were put under her.During all the time they were left with her she had to sit on the nest, for they could not wander like young chicks.She obeyed their hoarse growling as she would have obeyed her chickens' peep.) She combed out their hair with her bill, and "used frequently to stop and look with one eye at the wriggling nestful, with an inquiring graze, expressive of astonishment." At other times she would fly up with aloud scream, doubtless because the orphans had nipped her in their search for teats.Finally, a Brahma hen nursed a young peacock during the enormous period of eighteen months , and never laid any eggs during all this time.The abnormal degree of pride which she showed in her wonderful chicken is described by Dr.Romanes as ludicrous."
2.This leads us to the law of transitoriness , which is this: Many instincts ripen at a certain age and then fade away.A consequence of this law is that if, during the time of such an instinct's vivacity, objects adequate to arouse it are met with, a habit of acting on them is formed, which remains when the original instinct has passed away;
but that if no such objects are met with, then no habit will be formed;
