HUMAN INSTINCTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20490, 15 February 1930, Page 1 (Supplement)

HUMAN INSTINCTS.

A CRICKET INCIDENT.

BY MA TANG A

In the recent cricket match, M.C.C. v. Auckland, there was an incident of a very unusual kind. Few who saw it will ever forget it ; certainly the chief participant in it never can. Thousands who did not see it haye heard it. A few more may now read here ot it. In order, however, to avoid unnecessary reference to the M.C.C. player concerned —he naturally will not like to bo pilloried for an act so out of keeping with the established practice of first-class cricket, and is entitled to a good deal of sympathy —let liim be denoted by X. Now, X was batting, not at all badly but anxiously, for the Auckland attack was quite good enough to make runs at that stage hard to get, and even to keep hk wicket intact, was occasioning him some trouble. Came a medium-fast delivery of good length. It kept low. X played it smartly with a partly defensive stroke. Spinning, the ball was stayed, but it was not done with. Instead of being glanced through to fine leg or stopped by a straight-faced bat, it hung a moment near the crease, and then span on along the ground toward the leg stump. Caught 011 the wrong foot, and seeing his wicked endangered, X stooped suddenly, released his nearer hand from the bat and put that hand on the ground between the threatened stump and the spinning ball. 111 a trice he realised his mistake, but too late. His offending hand came quickly up. The bowler appealed. X was given out, and went oft to the pavilion in sportsmanly acceptance of his fate.

The Power of Impulse. There has been much talk of the incident, one probably not to be matched in the annals of first-class cricket. As to whether X actually stopped the ball with his hand is not of chief importance in his memory of what happened. In his obviously excited state of mind he was -probably not able to give quite convincing testimony as to that. What he will chiefly remember is that suddenly, in a moment of critical emergency, he was betrayed iuto attempting to do what was unlawful. There was that ou-spinning ball; there was his precious wicket in danger of being broken; so. in extremis, his bat out of action and himself out of poise, iie shot his hand down to save his wicket and so lost it. He was a victim of his own impulse. He obeyed that sudden impulse to the forgetting of all that'years of knowledge and experience had taught him. Instinct, for the moment, triumphed over everything else, and there lies the chief interest of the incident. It was the instinct of self-preservation, the self-same instinct that makes one shut one's eyes against a threatened i.'iow close to them or to put. out one's hand when in danger of falling. Not all the schooling; of experience can check the dropping eyelids or withhold the outstretched hand". In.a thousand and one ways this power of instinct is instanced every day of our lives. It takes time and colossal effort to counter it.

But to speak of human instinct may seem to some folk to bo wrong. Has there net long been a practice of distinguishing between human beings and other animals by saying that human beings reason, whereas those other animals are creatures of instinctl hey do many wonderful things; not only the animals that have long been domesticated as servants and associates of man. but also the great host of wild creatures unsubdued and untutored bv human company. In a bird's nest, a spider's web, an ant s accomplishments, are things to excite admiration of their intimations of mentality. Current speech, the product of long custom, dismisses tho- idea that reason is indicated, consigning them to the realm of blind instinct.

What is Instinct? This customary distinction has fallen before the researches of psychology, as the science of mind has made its brave advances: and there is room for wonder that the thesis should have had any general credence. The fact as now understood is that instinct and reason, although a distinction may conveniently be drawn for some purposes of discussion, axe not really distinct. When investigation is thoroughgoing it finds, that instinct and reason merge, that many instincts are by no means blind and invariable, and that we are possessed of instincts and the animals of reasoning powers to an extent that must be taken for granted in every effective effort (o understand mental processes.

William James, in his brilliant, work in this research, performed a good service in unravelling the tangled threads of earlier thought. He accepted the nowcurrent definition of instinct as the faculty of acting in such a way as to produce certain ends, without foresight of the ends, and without previous education in the performance. Understood in that sense, instincts play a large part in human life, and the associated truth gives reason a considerable place in animal life generally. " The older writings on instinct," wrote. Professor James. " are ineffectual wastes of words, because their authors never came down to this definite and simple point of view, but smothered everything in vague wonder at the clain'ovant and prophetic power of the animals—so superior to anything in man—and at the beneficence 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, immediately appear neither more nor less wonderful than all the other facts of life." >

Racial Habits. What soon discover, when the whole related domain of instinct and reason is scanned, is that many things wo do instinctively are done, as a result of agelong experience. They arose as elements of conduct just, as arise now other practices, of which we are thoroughly aware and can to a large extent, control, _ We have inherited these instinctive ways of doing things; they are inherent because they arc inherited; and the process of passing on to the race such ingrained habits of action, emerging first as practices dictated by experience, is going on. There comes sometimes a conflict between tiie old and the new things in conduct. Huxley's story of the soldier in barracks carrying his dinner across tile parade-ground is a case in point. A practical jester called • sharply "Attention!" Down came the man's arms, and he lost his dinner in the dust. There it was disciplined habit that was conquoringly present. But there are occasions when all the discipline of newly-acquired habit is ineffectual, as X found" suddenly in his unexpected and critical emergency. Then the old triumphs just as certainly over the new.

Many who saw that incident, amazed as they were at what happened externally, must have been even more interested in tracing the processes in the batsman's mind. He bethought himself, lifting the offending hand as conscious thought dictated, but before that happened he was the helpless slave of a primal impulse that carried his mind off its feet. So strong is instinct, even in human life, and so obviously wrong is it to think of instinct as the distinguishing difference between man and creatures beneath him ill the 1 scale of life. There is, to be sure, a distinguishing difference, but that is another story.