known. Three of the most important reasons for this lack of knowledge
are: first, the fact that all inborn tendencies mature gradually and do
not burst into being; second, we do not know how transitory they are;
and, third, the fact of the great influence of environment in
stimulating or repressing such capacities.

Although the tendency to make collections is most prominent at nine, the
beginnings of it may be found before the child is five. Moll finds that
the sex instinct begins its development at about six years of age,
despite the fact that it is always quoted as the adolescent instinct.
Children in the kindergarten can think out their little problems
purposively, even though reasoning is supposed to mark the high school
pupil. The elements of most tendencies show themselves early in crude,
almost unrecognizable, beginnings, and from these they grow gradually to
maturity.

In the second place how quickly do these tendencies fade? How transitory
are they? It has always been stated in general psychology that instincts
are transitory, that therefore it was the business of teachers to strike
while the iron was hot, to seize the wave of interest or response at its
crest before the ebb had begun. There was supposed to be a "happy moment
for fixing in children skill in drawing, for making collections in
natural history," for developing the appreciative emotions, for training
the social instinct, or the memory or the imagination. Children are
supposed to be interested and attracted by novelty, rhythm, and
movement,--to be creatures of play and imagination and to become
different merely as a matter of the transitoriness of these tendencies
due to growth. When the activities of the adult and the child are
analyzed to see what tendencies have really passed, are transitory, it
is difficult to find any that have disappeared. True, they have changed