Thinking and doing / by Harry Roberts.

  • Harry Roberts
Date:
1933
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Thinking and doing / by Harry Roberts. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    believe that animals, whether or not they have in mind the ultimate purpose, are usually conscious of the various steps which they teel impelled to take. Usually, their impulses are made addition- ally compelling by the pleasurable emotion, or relief from painful strain, that accompanies them. It often happens, as I have said earlier, that a re- action which originally served the interest of life- preservation or of race-preservation involves a series of stages, each of which may be pleasure- yielding quite apart from the comfortable feeling which accompanies the achievement of the ulti- mate aim of the whole proceeding. We thus find many examples of instinctive urges surviving long after the fulfilment of their original object can give any possible satisfaction. We are drawn, or, rather, our inclination is strengthened, by the pleasurable associations of some half-way stage, which was at first but one step of many leading to a life-preserving end. The widespread love of hunting, for instance, and the equally common restlessness and desire for travel which periodically overtake us, are probably thus explainable. Originally, when our ancestors lived wild and difficult lives, the urge to wander in search of food, and to hunt it when seen, was essen- tial to self-preservation. But, nowadays, this can rarely be the motive. Moreover, the course of any of the instincts, to a very great extent in man, and to a lesser degree in the higher domestic animals, can, by training and education—that is, by the building up of pleasant and unpleasant associa- tions—be modified out of recognition. People who
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