folding serially under appropriate stimulation. The following
is an illustration: At a fairly early age, the child will respond
to a rapid threatening movement of the hand or some other object
as follows: A definite sharp blink of the eyes (which does not
appear until about the 100th day), an upward movement of the
hands and a backward movement of the head. In every instinct
of the more complicated type, we see that the human animal
does the same thing, makes some kind of an adjustment. The
fact accomplished (what he does) may or may not be adaptive.
Many of the hereditary acts are, of course, adaptive, but many
of them are non-adaptive and even anti-adaptive. William James
has made some statements about instinct which are as nearly
true now as when he wrote them:

"The actions we call instinctive all conform to the general
reflex type; they are called forth by determinate sensory stimuli
in contact with the animal's body or at a distance in his environ-
ment." And again: "The older writings on instinct are inef-
fectual waste of words, because their authors never came down
to this definite and simple point of view, but smothered every-
thing in vague wonder at the clairvoyant and prophetic power
of the animals--so superior to anything in man--and at the ben-
eficence of God in endowing them with such a gift. But God's
beneficence endows them, first of all, with a nervous system; and
turning our attention to this makes instinct appear neither more
nor less wonderful than all the other facts of life."

The simplest way for those beginning the study of instinct
is to look upon every definite act that the infant performs at
an early age, and hence without learning, as an instinct. If the
pure instinctive activities are to be isolated we must here also
adopt the genetic method. In advance it may be said that if we
look upon all untutored activity of the child as instinctive, we
shall have to admit that man has a large repertoire of instincts.
but we shall see that they are not all of the full-fledged pattern
type. We do not see the very young infant fighting, running, swim-
ming and burrowing, but we do find him performing a goodly
number of less spectacular acts, some of which we shall soon
describe. At a later age we do find the youth running, fighting,
swimming and doing many other things that the animals do. We

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