Mutual Service – Chapter 1

Mutual Service and Cooperation

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY

Let it be distinctly understood that the author deliberately chooses to base his case for

mutual service on instinctive emotions, as well as reason, notwithstanding the position

of a particular school of behaviorists who deny that there are any instincts.

In his book, “Behaviorism,” Prof. John B. Watson has attacked instincts as a mere belief

without foundation in fact. But Prof. William McDougall, in recent discussions with hIm,

has completely vindicated instincts and discredited Professor Watson’s position.

While Watson denies there are instincts, he admits that a difference in structure causes

a difference in behavior, which is fatal to his contention. He admits also .that there are

unconditioned reflexes, such as “love behavior,” “fear reflexes,” “rage behavior,” “defensive

movements,” “vocal responses,” and he deals in “impulses” and “drives,” which are

all just a change of name for instincts. Prof. William James gives us a list of thirteen instincts

that we possess.

Another fallacy of Watson is the assumption that if there were any instincts, they would

all be present at Birth. The scientists from Darwin up until today have held that instincts

develop at different ages. For instance, the sex instinct is not present at birth, but is distinctly

manifest some dozen years later. To deny its existence altogether is a doughty

act.

Watson has not disposed of instincts by calling them reflexes. Herbert Spencer named

them that sixty years ago, but he accepted these natural impulses for what they are, just

‘as Darwin did, who called them instincts. After some reflection on reflexes, Watson retired

from the field, and is now teaching salesmanship. He sold his anti-instinct idea to

quite a number of persons, but some of them have recovered on learning that instincts

are still functioning, as they have been from the beginning of life, and will continue for

some time to come.

If the reader cares to follow up the subject of instincts, he can do so by reading Chapter

24 of Prof. William James’ “Principles of Psychology,” Professor McDougall’s “Social

Psychology,” Prof. Leonard T. Hobhouse’s “Morals in Evolution,” and Prof. Charles A.

Ellwood’s “Sociology in Its Psychological Aspects.” These writers, and many others,

have set forth Sufteient evidence to establish the fact that there are instincts.

Watson’s work has its value in showing that teaching is very effective. He demonstrated

that some instinctive actions could be “conditioned,” as he termed it, or changed to suit

the teacher. The Catholic Church has known and practiced this method for almost two

thousand years. It controlled or “conditioned” the sex instinct so completely that the

priests and nuna gave up sexual unions, and devoted their lives and energy to the

church only. But while the instinct was controlled by the individual with the aid of the

Church, the instinct still was there, and frequently overcame the teachings of the Church

and the individual control. Some of the mighty “have fallen” for sex.

In his “Social Psychology,” Prof. William Mc· Dougall states the case for instincts on

page 44 as follows: “We may say, then, that directly or indirectly the instincts are the

prime movers of all human activity; by the conative or impulsive force of some instinct

(or of some habit derived from an instinct), every train of thought, however cold and

passionless it may seem, is borne along towards its end, and every bodily activity is initiated

and sustained. The instinctive impulses determine the ends of all activities and

supply the driving power by which all mental activities are sustained; and all the complex

intellectual apparatus of the most highly developed mind is but a means towards

these ends, is but the instrument by which these impulses seek their satisfactions, while

pleasure and pain do but serve to guide them in their choice of the means.

“Take away these instinctive dispositions with their powerful impulses, and the organism

would become incapable of activity of any kind; it would lie inert and motionless like a

wonderful clockwork whose mainspring had been removed or a steam engine whose

fires had been drawn. These impulses are the mental forces that maintain and shape all

the life of individuals and societies, and in them we are confronted with the central mystery

of life and mind and will.”

The attitude assumed in this book is that instincts or reflexes and emotions are generally

enduring, and can be depended upon to manifest themselves sooner or later in social

relationships. Good or bad, they are to be reckoned with, and to ignore them is to

fail to grasp the truth, and to profit by the beneficial provisions of some instinctive emotions.

That we have outgrown the need of some, such as the pugnacious instincts, is

conceded, but that we are in need of others, like sympathy and mutual service, is insisted

upon. Instinct does for emotions what reason does for ideas. To solve social

problems requires emotions as well as reason.

For two thousand five hundred years, philosophers have used reason to solve the problems

of philosophy, and all admit that no problem of philosophy has been settled by

reason. If reason cannot settle matters in the realm of philosophy, which is the realm of

reason, then what chance has it to settle matters in other realms, especially with the

mass of people who do not understand or use it?

During all these centuries every succeeding philosophy has overthrown the preceding

one, and set up its own, only to be demolished in turn by the following system, until today,

we have . dozens of philosophical systems differing as much from one another as

they differ from those of the past. This is not true of the instinctive emotions. They were

the same thousands of years ago, and will be the same long enough in the future, so

that it behooves us to reckon with them instead of ignoring them as 80 many do in the

attempt to solve social problems.

It was the instinct of curiosity that gave us the experimental sciences, and the empirical

philosophy of a John Dewey. It was the instinct of self-assertion that gave us a Hobbes

and a Nietzsche and the egoistic philosophy. It was the acquisitive instinct that gave us

a Hettie Green and a John D. Rockefeller. It was the instinct of combat that developed a

Caesar and a Napoleon. It was the mating instinct that produced them all. It was the instincts

of gregariousness, mutual service and the constructive instincts, that will ultimately

drive us to a harmonious relationship.

For a hundred and fifty years the social philosophers have made their appeal to reason

to solve the social, ethical and economic questions, but the solutions are as elusive as

ever. Reason is not general; instincts and emotions are.

Reason may guide a few; instincts impel the many. Reason may point the way. but the

road will be untraveled unless instinct drives us over the course. Where reason is the

result of impulse, as it frequently is, action is in harmony with it. But when reason comes

in conflict with emotions and desires, reason cuts a sorry figure.

The instincts and emotions are general to all normal people and influence them much

the same way everywhere. All races, all nations, are moved by much the same appetites,

desires and emotions, but that is not true of reason. One can count on fundamental

instincts anywhere around the world. You can find hundreds of different religions, but

not hundreds of different instincts. Religion has been spoken at as a unifying thing, but it

is not so. Even in the Christian religion alone, there are some four hundred different

sects. Religion is a dividing influence, but there is a general unity of instincts everywhere

all the time.

No one can tell beforehand what sort of a philosophy or religion a strange people may

have, but no race has ever been discovered, or ever will be, without the fundamental

instincts and emotions. Are we to learn nothing from this fact about social direction and

control? Are we to go on preaching at the people something foreign to their natures and

expect it to change them? If we succeed in changing their instincts even for their lifetime,

the same task must be performed with their children and their children’s children

forever. Prof. William James believed that mankind had developed or increased the

number of instincts inherited from the animal world. One thing is certain: we have lost

none in historic time.

A reflex or instinct that has endured through the ages is trustworthy for the future. That it

is weak in some, and educated out of others, is no argument against it, for the social

qualities in the mutual service reflex or emotions are as durable and dependable as any

other biological phenomenon.

Appetites for food fail at times. The digest. ive function fails in some; the sex instinct

fails in some of the young and most of the old. The. liver fails to properly function and

the blood fails to flow properly in many cases. The five senses fail at times in different

individuals, but they are still instinctive and dependable generally. So with the instinct of

mutual service. Because it fails at times or is absent in some individuals, is no argument

against its biological durability. It can be depended upon as a permanent quality in human

nature to build a social structure around. When not perverted by con, trary doctrines,

the common sense of the people will convince them of the value of the mutual

service instinct to the social body. It should be strengthened, not weakened. In the next

chapters of this book are traced the mutual service instinct or reflex, from the lowest

forms of life to the highest forms and into the best of societies. It was the source of gregariousness

in the animal world. It was the source of aggregation in savage, barbarian

or civilized man. It is the source of toleration and social consciousness. It is the source

of mutual ethics and social justice, and is a foundation to build an economic and political

system of equity upon.