neurones the instincts are doubtless highly specific, as Mr. Parmelee holds; but in the course of experience so many new connections are formed among the neurones that the common run of instincts lose their putative sharpness of outline and take on that “ vagueness or generality" which Veblen, the student of culture, finds characteristic of them (p. 13). Thus, by taking considerable pains to remember just what concept each of our three writers has in mind, the reader can reconcile their seemingly inconsistent statements. As future discussions increase our knowledge of these entities, we shall probably agree upon appropriate terms for discriminating among them. Mr. Wallas's adoption of the term "complex dispositions" is a step in this direction. But, as matters stand, we can scarcely chide Mr. Veblen for not entitling his book "The Complex Disposition of Workmanship."

There is one point, however, at which we may fairly ask Mr. Veblen to modify his language. Just as Mr. Wallas seems mistaken in saying that complex dispositions (in his usage) are free from acquired elements, so Mr. Veblen seems mistaken in saying that instincts (in his usage) are "hereditary traits." In making this statement I suspect that he has momentarily reverted from his own meaning of instinct to Mr. Thorndike's meaning. As parts of the original nature of man, instincts are inherited; but instincts "as they take effect in the give and take of cultural growth" have important acquired elements in addition to the elements which are inherited. Perhaps Mr. Veblen's explanatory clause, that instincts are inherited "as spiritual traits emerging from a certain concurrence of physiological unit characters" is a sufficient defense against this criticism. But Mr. Veblen would surely admit that certain characteristics of instincts on which he

their consciously teleological quality, their

lays stress infusion by intelligence emerge from experience. Doubtless, these characteristics could never appear unless the capacity to develop them were inherited; but the same remark holds true of every acquisition of man-for example, his knowledge of this year's fashions. Mr. Veblen's statement as it stands contains, as he remarks in a different connection, “rather a modicum of truth than an inclusive presentation of the facts relevant to the case (p. 115).

Human nature to Mr. Veblen, then, is essentially "the complement of instinctive dispositions." This complement fluctuates widely from one individual to another, and these fluctuations are particularly marked among such hybrids as are practically all individuals among the peoples of the Western culture. 'Yet, even through these hybrid populations there runs a generically human type of spiritual endowment, prevalent as a general average of human nature " (p. 15). And this typical human endowment of instincts" is conceived to have "been transmitted intact from the beginning of humanity, . . . except so far as subsequent mutations have given rise to new racial stocks" (p. 18). Such differences of racial endowment are not considerable, but "a slight bias of this kind, distinctive of any given race, may come to have decisive weight when it works out cumulatively through a system of institutions. (p. 24).

Among all the instincts with which man is endowed, Mr. Veblen ascribes the highest survival value to the instinct of workmanship. For the primary factor in deciding which shall survive among competing racial stocks is "their relative fitness to meet the material requisites of life" (p. 17). (p. 17). And And "chief among those instinctive dispositions that

conduce directly to the

material well-being of the race . . . is perhaps the instinctive. . . sense of workmanship." Its primacy is disputed only by the closely-related "parental bent " (p. 25).

The instinct of workmanship is "an animus for economy and efficiency " (p. 27). "Efficient use of the means at hand and adequate management of the resources available for the purposes of life is itself an end of endeavor, and accomplishment of this kind is a source of gratification" (pp. 31, 32). This instinct is peculiar in that it is an auxiliary to all the other instincts, rather than an independent force. "The generality of instinctive dispositions prompt simply to the direct and unambiguous attainment of their specific ends (p. 32). But the functional content of the instinct of workmanship "is serviceability for the ends of life," and these ends are "at least in the main, appointed and made worth while by the various other instinctive dispositions" (p. 31). The best outcome of this disposition is not had under stress of great excitement or under extreme urgency from any of the instinctive propensities . . . whose ends it serves (p. 33). It does "not commonly run to passionate excess," and yields ground somewhat readily" when brought into competition with "more elemental instinctive propensities" (p. 34). It is also readily bent in various directions, according "as one or another of the instinctive dispositions is predominant in the community's scheme of life" (p. 35). "The grave importance that attaches to it is a matter of its ubiquitous subservience to the ends of life, and not a matter of vehemence" (p. 34).

.

As the instincts constitute the first great factor in culture, so modifications of instinctive behavior through intelligence and habits constitute the second. Tho secondary in origin, these modifications attain decisive

They are

importance because they are cumulative. passed on from generation to generation and each acquired element may become the basis of new acquisitions. Of this nature are usages, customs, conventions, preconceptions, canons of conduct, bodies of knowledge including the customary scheme of technology upon which workmanship proceeds (pp. 6, 7, 38, 39).

Now the great problems of cultural history arise from the fact that while "the typical human endowment of instincts" changes but little, "the habitual elements of human life change unremittingly and cumulatively (p. 18). Conflicts are thus frequently produced between the stable instincts and the evolving institutions. When institutional changes affect materially the ways and means by which a race gets its living, the crucial question arises whether its instincts will enable it to employ the new means and to live under the new institutions which its own progress has created (p. 35). There is, of course, no possibility of solving such a problem by changing the instincts. The only way to restore harmony is to readjust the scheme of institutions. The possibility of making such readjustments is primarily determined by the driving force among the people in question of those instincts which make for material welfare- above all the sense of workmanship and the parental bent — and the resisting force of institutional bonds. ". . . History records," says Mr. Veblen, "more frequent and more spectacular instances of the triumph of imbecile institutions over life and culture than of peoples who have by force of instinctive insight saved themselves alive out of a desperately precarious institutional situation, such, for instance, as now faces the peoples of Christendom " (p. 25).

With these elements in cultural development in mind, Mr. Veblen proceeds to sketch the role played by

the instinct of workmanship from the stone age to the twentieth century.

The slow advance of technology among savage peoples he ascribes in part to the customary rule of the elders and the associated habits of mind which establish a degree of tabu upon innovation. But more obstructive still is "the self-contamination of the sense of workmanship" (p. 52). Animism in its origin is "the naïve imputation of a workmanlike propensity in the observed facts." Now such an imputation is radically misleading in attempts to work inorganic matter, but much less so in dealings with plants and animals. Hence the savage makes vastly better progress with agriculture and domesticating animals than with stoneworking and the like. This keen suggestion Mr. Veblen supports by an impressive body of evidence. Even the one conspicuous case which seems to count against his thesis - the skill of the Eskimo in working bone, skin, sinews, etc. - might perhaps be converted into additional support if skilfully construed.

The chief factor in weakening these obstacles and so in promoting technological advance Mr. Veblen finds in the appearance of three new mutant races, — the three racial stocks of which the European populations and their offshoots are still mainly compounded. Of these races the latest the dolicho-blond -- appeared during the early neolithic period. Now these new races, perhaps, in most eminent degree the dolichoblond, were characterized by an endowment of instincts among which the sense of workmanship, the parental bent, and those dispositions which constitute the "spirit of enterprise" were relatively more powerful than the like propensities had been among the earlier races. Hence the tabu upon innovation counted for less among these mutants than among their forerunners. More