For pugnacity has appeared in its true colors as a strong and widely diffused instinct, excited when any other instinct is hampered or thwarted. And those who assert the inevitableness of war assume that a man is the prey of his own instincts and helpless in the face of them; that they have a right of way and must ride rough shod over the paths of his life even when these intersect the ways of other lives. This psychological naturalism is, however, contrary to all observation. Not merely the higher vertebrates: but metazoa and (according to good observers) even certain unicellular animals learn by individual experience, that is to say, they modify their instincts; and man, too, possessed as he is of more instincts than any animal, has advanced precisely in proportion as he has controlled these instincts. This acquired habit of controlling the instincts must be sharply distinguished from any form of ascetic practice. The effort to crush the basal instincts betrays a very inadequate conception of the place of the instincts in human life. For they are the very springs of life and we should. impoverish ourselves if we checked their outpouring of life and energy. But as has just appeared, biology and psychology alike abundantly attest the fact that it is possible to modify instincts without destroying them.
A consideration of the methods of controlling instincts is, therefore, abundantly justified. Such a study at once discloses the fact that the effort to modify an instinct in a purely negative way, by merely willing that it subside or change its direction, is utterly futile. By such a method the attention is simply turned full upon the instinct-to-be-modified with the inevitable result of stimulating it. The control of the instincts is, in truth, always positive and it takes two main forms. Either the instinct is directed toward new objects or it is subordinated to another instinct. Many illustrations of each of these methods suggest themselves. When the dog is taught to retrieve, his instinct is directed away from chickens toward wild birds. And the boy in Miss Alcott’s classic tale diverted his fighting instinct from boys to gnarled roots of trees and was seen
