According to the extreme behaviorists, practically all of a child's reactions are the result of "conditioning,"in Pavlov's sense. Human beings seem to have instincts of the sort designated by such terms as pugnacity, fear, sex, maternal love, gregariousness, ascendency, submission, etc., only because of the conditioning effects of social environment. It is argued that, given appropriate environmental stimuli, a child could be caused to grow up without evincing any of the modes of behavior we are accustomed to designate as instinctive. From this point of view, the newborn infant, if not exactly a blank tablet, is at most a wriggling mass of random activity plus a few minor reflexes. On this almost formless foundation, it is argued, any kind of structure can be raised by the simple method of conditioning. Watson promises to take any normal healthy infant and to mould him to any pattern whatever - that of musician, artist, scientist, fool, hermit, social lion, introvert, extravert, coward, hero, lover, hater of sex, or anything else. Education counts for everything, original equipment for nothing. According to this view, if educational psychology is to make any progress, it must give up its superstitious belief in instincts and learn how to build up the behavior patterns it wants by the method of the conditioned response.

Actual data in support of so extreme a view are very scanty. The few experiments that have been made with infants do show that, in the field of the emotions, conditioning plays an important role. Whether a child's fear responses are called forth by snakes, furry animals, horses, dogs, mice, automobiles, trains, or by none of these agents, depends upon experience. It is a far cry from such facts, however, to the conclusion that the possibilities of conditioning are unlimited and that it takes place in one direction as readily as in another. Such a conclusion is belied by the fact of the essential similarity of human nature that is found in all the widely varying types of social environment. For example, although the mores that have to do with courtship and mating vary infinitely, the part played by sex in human relationships is very much the same the world over. The same is true of pugnacity, fear, maternal love, jealousy, gregariousness, ascendency, submission, etc. The overt behavior in which these native tendencies are expressed takes on every conceivable form, but the motivating influences are everywhere the same. The native equipment of the human being predetermines him to differ in important respects from any other animal, even from the anthropoids which are biologically nearest to him. No amount of conditioning is capable of making a Goethe out of a gorilla. To make of the average normal human infant an unselfish saint, utterly unconcerned about his food, his sex needs, and his relations to other human beings is difficult enough. The natural tendencies to anger, pugnacity, love, fear, jealously, gregariousness, and other forms of behavior can only be overcome by an extraordinary amount of training, and then only partially. To the extent that they can ever be overcome, this is only possible by the utilization of antagonistic or substitute tendencies that are equally native.

From human nature there is no escape for anyone. The psychologist who would lay down canons for the education of human beings can no more safely leave native tendencies out of account than the trainer of dogs, fleas, elephants, lions, and seals can ignore the original behavior tendencies of these animals. The limitations of conditioning are seen in the fact that no one has ever succeeded in training an animal of one species to behave like an animal of another species. The gregariousness of monkeys, the solitariness of eagles, the wildness of the zebra, the pugnacity of the male seal toward other males, the social behavior of the bees, the feeding activities of the owl, and the maternal behavior peculiar to every species of birds and mammals, are tendencies that can not be ignored by one who has anything to do with these forms of animal life. That human beings are an exception to the rule with respect to the actuality of psychophysical predispositions is wholly unreasonable.

The fact that in human beings the appearance of native tendencies is often delayed until much learning has taken place, in the case of some of them until adolescence or later, means that instinctive drives cannot be expected to show themselves in exactly the same overt behavior in all. That is to say, there are in human beings no pure instincts, but only instinctive tendencies mixed with habit in varying proportions. Perhaps it would be well if the term instinct were dropped altogether from human psychology in favor of some such term as instinct-habits, or coenotropes, as they are called by Smith and Guthrie. I would suggest the term X-Y traits, indicating that the behavior trait, as we find it, is a compound composed of two elements combined in unknown proportions - X representing original nature, and Y representing the factor of nurture.

The scientifically minded psychologist naturally regrets that the relative contributions of these two factors cannot at present be precisely delimited; but for the practical purposes of education this is not so important. What is important for the educator is to know what X-Y traits are present in children when they present themselves in the schools, and how best these traits can be used in the process of moulding children according to the patterns furnished by the social ideals. Just what traits shall be included in such an X-Y list will depend upon where the line is to be drawn with respect to the amount of saturation with the X element before the trait is so classed. In one sense, every trait the child exhibits is an X-Y trait. It always contains some element of original nature and some elements that have been contributed by experience. Limitation of the number to one, such as the Freudian sex motif or Adler's will-to-mastery, ignores a large part of the total realm of human behavior. To extend the list to include only anger, fear, and love, as does Watson, also fails to do justice to the richness of human nature. I forbear to add a list of my own, but would refer the reader to the lists of James, McDougall, and Thorndike as representing what I regard as, on the whole, reasonably satisfactory inventories.