tendency, restricts the range of the tendency itself, and keeps us from
reacting on any but the habitual object, although other objects might
just as well have been chosen had they been the first-comers.
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 after birth, 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 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 more 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."[49]
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:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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