On this point we have very little clear knowledge. Some writers do not notice it at all; others content themselves with a haphazard enumeration. W. James, who has seriously occupied himself with the question, lays down the principle that man has as many instincts as the animals, and even more, which seems to me indisputable. But his list, which he closes by saying that some will find it too long and others too short, contains very heterogeneous elements: instincts which are certainly primitive, derived instincts (as the love of possession), instincts whose existence as such is disputed (as imitation), pathological instincts (as the phobias or pathological fears, kleptomania, etc.), which last can only be considered anomalous, and, therefore, very different from simple and indecomposable instincts.[127] ----- Footnote 127: James, _Psychology_, ii. pp. 403-440. ----- Although it is rash to engage in a campaign in which some have fled and others failed, we must nevertheless attempt to draw up a list of primitive instincts (or tendencies), since these are the sources of all pleasures, pains, emotions, and passions. I can see but one method of attaining this end—a method long employed in animal psychology: that of admitting to the list of human instincts only those which present the following characteristics:—(1) They are innate. This does not imply that they appear at the very hour of birth, but that they are anterior to experience, not acquired; that they appear ready made, as soon as the fitting conditions exist. Those which are called _deferred_ instincts, which make their appearance late, such as the sexual instinct in man and many animals, are none the less innate. (2) They are specific. They exist in the entire race, except for some individuals, who by reason of their exemption are, on the point in question, abnormal; so various instincts are wanting in the idiot. (3) They are fixed, in a relative sense; for no one now maintains the theory of the absolute invariability of instinct; and in man its plasticity is extreme, because a superior power, that of intelligence, moulds and adapts it to its designs. These characteristics being determined, it remains to apply them in chronological order, and, starting with the birth of the individual, to draw up the catalogue of actual, strictly innate instincts. We shall then follow the course of life, noting the appearance of every new and indecomposable instinct, and thus continue till we have exhausted the list. I propose to divide the instincts into three groups: the earliest in date being essentially physiological in its nature, the second psycho-physiological, the third essentially psychological. We shall not need to study them all, because some are outside the domain of general psychology, and others unconnected with the psychology of the emotions. The enumeration will be made, for the moment, in a very bald form, like a table of contents.