W.E.A.

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 9 May 1925, Page 13

W.E.A.

HAWERA GLASS. The Hawera W.E.A. Psychologyclass continued its series of weekly lectures in the Old Technical School, last evening, when the tutor, Mr. W. A. Shout, it.A. LL.B., lectmcd upon “The. Nature of instinct in Man and Some Fundamental Human Instincts.” Among psychologists, said the lecturer, tSere was considerable difference of opinion as to the place of instinct in the human mind. Some held that as man’s intelligence and reasoning powers had developed his instincts had atrophied or decayed until now they remained in civilised man only as troublesome vestiges of his pre-human state. The old and popular view that animals acted by instinct and man in acc-ord-once with reason was, however, verymisleading. Instinct and reason or intelligence could not lie sharply separated in this way. The relation of the two to one another might best be expressed, even in the case of the human being, by saying that instinct prescribed the end to be attained by our action, whereas intelligence found the means’ of attaining that end. Those who took this latter view saw that as tion of the higher animals and of man it did not supplant, and so lead to the decay or atrophy of the instincts, but rather controlled or modified their operation. Some psychologists maintained that man had at least as many instincts as any of the higher animals, and assigned them a leading place in the determination of human conduct and mental process. This view had gained ground in recent years. Instinctive actions were displayed in the purest form in animals not very high in the scale of the higher animals, few forms. of behaviour remained purely instinctive, i.e., unmodified',by intelligence and by experience. In the typical case of instinctive behaviour, some sense impression or combination of sense impressions excited some perfectly definite behaviour, some movement or train of movements which was the same in all individuals of .the species, and on all similar occasions. The working ot - an instinct in the mind generally began and ended in relation to an object in the external world. First, it was excited by the object; secondly, certain mental activities took place in regard to the object; and lastly, action resulted with regard to the object-. For example, the instinct of curiosity which had been a powerful factor in the progress of the race, was excited by objects of an unfamiliar character, the mental activity resulting being the feeling or emotion or wonder and the approximate action or response, an impulse to approach and examine the object. The behaviour of mail and of the higher animals in face of the external world in which they lived was primarily based upon such instinctive reactions, though in the case of man, and particularly in civilised man, it was greatly complicated by other factors —so much so that the underlying importance of the instinctive processes had for long been overlooked. While it was doubtful whether the behaviour of any animal was wholly determined by instincts' quite modified by experience, jt was certain that all of the higher animals learned in various and often considerable degrees, to adapt their instinctive actions to peculiar circumstances, and the possibility of such change was greatest in man. In the first place instinctive actions became capable of being excited not only by the objects which naturally excited them, but also by the mere ideas of such objects or even by objects of other kind. For example, the instinct of fear which was naturally aroused by objects of a dangerous character, might also bo- aroused by objects which, though harmless in' themselves, by analogy or similarity to some .other object were perceived' as dangerous by the individual. Very delicate % resemblances between two objects might suffice to render one of them capable of exciting the instinctive response which naturally followed the presentation of the other object. The similarity need not be in respect of those features of the second object which naturally caused it to excite the particular response, but might be in respect of unessential details. Another direction in which instincts might be modified particularly;]’n man, was hi. respect of the action of bodily movement in which the instinctive process expressed itself. These might he suppressed or complicated or controlled to a great extent. The power of intelligent control and imitation, strong in the human being, enabled hipi to control and direct the movements which formed the outward expression of the instinctive process to a much greater degree than" could be done by any of the lower animals. The chief human instincts, including fear, curiosity, pugnacity, repulsion, acquitiveness, constructiveness and the head instinct were all examined in some detail and their operation in human conduct explained.

M ANA IA CLASS. The Manaia Economics class held its weekly meeting on Thursday evening, when the subject of the lecture was “The Abandonment of the Gold Standard and Its Consequences.” The lecturer dealt with the main results that had followed the abandonment of the gold standard, noting especially the fact that with the removal of gold, the common link between the various currency systems of the world had been taken away, and a series of independent paper currencies with no fixed relation to one another substituted for a series of currency systems built on a common foundation of gold, and therefore, in reality, one system, thoiigh measured differently in different countries. Jt was announced that in place of next .week’s lecture a public lecture would lie given by Professir Hunter, on the subject, “The Rural and Urban Minds —A comparison.”