reaction _snatch_, become at last the immediate responses when the
child sees a snatchable object in some one's hands.

The first thing, then, for the teacher to understand is the native
reactive tendencies,--the impulses and instincts of childhood,--so as to
be able to substitute one for another, and turn them on to artificial
objects.

* * * * *

It is often said that man is distinguished from the lower animals by
having a much smaller assortment of native instincts and impulses than
they, but this is a great mistake. Man, of course, has not the
marvellous egg-laying instincts which some articulates have; but, if we
compare him with the mammalia, we are forced to confess that he is
appealed to by a much larger array of objects than any other mammal,
that his reactions on these objects are characteristic and determinate
in a very high degree. The monkeys, and especially the anthropoids, are
the only beings that approach him in their analytic curiosity and width
of imitativeness. His instinctive impulses, it is true, get overlaid by
the secondary reactions due to his superior reasoning power; but thus
man loses the _simply_ instinctive demeanor. But the life of instinct
is only disguised in him, not lost; and when the higher brain-functions
are in abeyance, as happens in imbecility or dementia, his instincts
sometimes show their presence in truly brutish ways.

I will therefore say a few words about those instinctive tendencies
which are the most important from the teacher's point of view.