“When we look for the sources of these shortcomings … we find a double reason, first, complete neglect of the development of certain sides of human life, secondly early misdirection, early unnatural stages in development, and distortion, through arbitrary interference with human powers, qualities and tendencies good in their source.… Therefore at the bottom of every shortcoming in man, lies a crushed, frustrated quality or tendency, suppressed, misunderstood or misguided.”—E., pp. 119-121.

When we come to the enumeration of the various human instincts we find that Froebel can hardly be said to have omitted any that are important from an educational point of view, except perhaps the instinct of fear, and to this he would be loth to appeal.[25] Moreover, it can be shown that his explanation of certain tendencies suggests a better basis of classification than is supplied by certain recent writers, who might be expected to surpass him with ease.

Before the publication of Mr. McDougall’s “Social Psychology,” there were but few attempts at any classification of instincts within at least the reach of English readers. In July, 1900, there appeared an article in “The Pedagogical Seminary” in which Mr. Eby proposed to reconstruct the Kindergarten on the basis of natural instinct. The writer had apparently no dawning idea that this was the original basis[26] of the institution he proposes to reform, but Froebel’s account of Instinct shows in certain ways a clearer understanding of the subject than does his own.

Mr. Eby’s tabulation was:

I.Language—with gesture and expression.
II.Curiosity, or Instinct for Knowledge.
III.Play Instinct.
(a) Motor Plays.
(b) Hunting and Wandering.
(c) Imitative.
(d) Constructive.
(e) Agricultural.
(f) Improvised.
IV.Artistic and Aesthetic Instincts.
V.Social Instinct.
VI.Instinct of Acquisition and Ownership.
VII.Number Instinct.
VIII.Interest in Stories.

Another classification, well known at least to teachers, is that given by Mr. Kirkpatrick in his “Fundamentals of Child Study.”[27]

His list comprises:

I.Individual or Self-preserving Instincts.
(Feeding, Fear and Fighting.)
II.Parental Instincts.
III.Social or Group Instincts.
(Gregariousness, Sympathy, Love of Approbation, Altruism.)
IV.Adaptive Instincts.
(Imitation, Play, Curiosity.)
V.Regulative.
(Moral, Religious.)
VI.Resultant and Miscellaneous.
(Including such tendencies as those of collecting and constructing, and the tendency to adornment, with the æsthetic pleasure of contemplating beautiful objects.)

Interesting, helpful and suggestive as these lists are, they both serve as examples of the difficulty, if not impossibility, of any hard-and-fast lines of classification. For example, regulative instincts, which Mr. Kirkpatrick divides into moral and religious, must be derived from social instincts; gregarious instincts cannot be satisfactorily separated from instincts of self-preservation, and surely all instincts must be adaptive.