An introduction to social psychology / by William McDougall.

  • McDougall, William, 1871-1938
Date:
1921
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: An introduction to social psychology / by William McDougall. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    of the words “ instinct ” and “ instinctive,” but, with very few exceptions, they use them so loosely that they have almost spoilt them for scientific purposes. On the one hand, the adjective “ instinctive ” is commonly applied to every human action that is performed without deliberate reflexion ; on the other hand, the actions of animals are popularly attributed to instinct, and in this connexion instinct is vaguely conceived as a mysterious faculty, utterly different in nature from any human faculty, which Providence has given to the brutes because the higher faculty of reason has been denied them. Hun¬ dreds of passages might be quoted from contemporary authors, even some of considerable philosophical culture, to illustrate how these two words are used with a mini- * mum of meaning, generally with the effect of disguising from the writer the obscurity and incoherence of his thought. The following examples will serve to illus¬ trate at once this abuse and the hopeless laxity with which even cultured authors habitually make use of psychological terms. One philosophical writer on social topics tells us that the power of the State “ is dependent on the instinct of subordination, which is the outcome of the desire of the people, more or less distinctly con¬ ceived, for certain social ends ”: another asserts that ancestor-worship has survived amongst the Western peoples as a “ mere tradition and instinct ”: a medical writer has recently asserted that if a drunkard is fed on fruit he will “become instinctively a teetotaler”: a political writer tells us that “the Russian people is rapidly acquiring a political instinct”: from a recent treatise on morals by a distinguished philosopher two passages, fair samples of a large number, may be taken ; one describes the “ notion that blood demands blood ” as an “inveterate instinct of primitive humanity”; the other affirms that “ punishment originates in the instinct