OCR Text |
Show Why We Behave Like Human Beings By GEORGE DORSEY, Ph. D., LL. D. WE DO NOT INHERIT INSTINCTS OUR nervous system Is no ladder; lad-der; It Is built around a tube. It hus plenty of reflex arcs, but II Is surmounted by a brain whose big business is to learn and to profit by experience. The baby's spinal cord Is largely organized ut birth ; but its big brain is a clean slate. There Is nothing known ft cannot learn. With man, plastic behavior reaches its highest point. We do not inherit instincts, but an Instinctive mode of vegetative and reproductive reactions ; also an Instinctive activity which by the nature of the stimulus says "yes" or "no," a positive or a negative response. re-sponse. With such activity, we can learn to walk and pull the cat's tall ; we can form habltg. We bump our head against the table; our next response to table is conditioned. condi-tioned. We pull the wroug cut's tall; our habit of response to cats' talis Is conditioned. All our responses re-sponses are conditioned. That Is the way we learn to behave. We do not require Instincts; we can acquire habits. If we get set In them, we can forget our brains and live like ants. Add It up : instincts are Inherited habits. Have we more than a chimpanzee? chim-panzee? We cannot say. But we can say that both of us have enough to start out In life; If not, we are defective de-fective and do not go far. We can also Bay that our Inheritance of reflex re-flex arcs exceeds that of the chimpanzee chim-panzee by several ounces of neurons. neu-rons. As a consequence, we have more nervous machinery In general, more neurons to load, more paths to carry the load. But the fundamental difference between man's and chimpanzee's Inheritance In-heritance is in parents. Once a chimpanzee, always a chimpanzee; but a man may become a skunk or a saint Think of all the kinds of people you know 1 Man's inherited habit-to-live can be modified into thousands of ways of living. We do not inherit habits of shaving, wearing kimonos, three meals a day, plug hats, skyscrapers, abhorance of pork, four wives, faith In Sunday schools, or belief In higher high-er education for women. We do inherit parents who do not want na to disgrace them and who do their best to bring us up in the way we ought to go. Which means that human Inheritance Inheri-tance varle3 from age to age and cradle to cradle. Little the newborn new-born cares about a silver spoon In his mouth he inherited the habit of responding to an empty stomach stom-ach ; or whether the roof over his head is copper or thatch he Inherited Inher-ited the habit of crawling in out of the wet. To describe humnn adjustments in terms of Instincts or analyze speclflt human behavior or our own consciousness into instinctive acts, is to stir the mud. Human culture Is the accumulated responses re-sponses of the man-animal to his man-made environment It accumulates, accumu-lates, it varies, because man can and does talk. This seems a handicap han-dicap at times, but In the long run It has had enormous consequences. Without speech as an organized tool of exchanging, acquiring, and transmitting experiences, human culture is inconceivable. Life learns. An ameba probably learns new tricks not Inherent in original protoplasm. Man also must learn by experience. We Inherit no nail-driving habit. We do not Inherit a motor mechanism mechan-ism which feels good when functioning. func-tioning. We took our first lesson In driving a nail when we banged the rattle on the side of the crib. Later, stimuli of nails, hammer, soft pine, an environment holding other stimuli to activity; countless reflex arcs, some already learned In responses to such stimuli ; thumb smashed, probably; but the nail Is finally driven. And more nails, and more, until finally the Carpenter Carpen-ter drives nails from force of habit like an instinct It Is the first walk that Is the hardest. The steps we acquire later In life are mere child's play compared com-pared with the first step the child teams to make. Balancing the body on one foot on a wire rope Is only possible because we learned first to balance the body on a ball a half-Inch In diameter. Do we learn these acts, or are they Innate responses that appear in due time? We know that the new-born's legs are not only weak, but are nol yet shaped for an upright up-right gnit, and that Its spine has nol yet taken on human curves; legs and spine grow human. Several Sev-eral years elapse before they are entirely human in character. But they are human enough to walk on within twelve or fifteen months. The great, the essential, the refined, re-fined, the delicate movements are learned within three years. That little mechanism grows up with us. Throughout life we call upon it to run, to swim, to climb, to dance, to jump, to "hold 'em," to "knock 'em stiff." ( by George A. Dorsey.) |