root of education,
considered as an enterprise of adults directed towards getting the
young to acquire the behavior of the race; and it also lies at the
root of charity, the desire to protect the helpless.

Is there any instinct in the child answering to the parental, any
"filial" instinct, as it were? Psychologists have usually answered no,
but possibly they have been misled by the word "filial" and looked in
the wrong direction. The parental instinct is an instinct to give, and
the answering instinct would be one to take--not to give in return. It
is probably not instinctive for the child to do for the parent, but is
it not instinctive for the child to take from the parent, and to look
to the parent for what he wants? It is not exactly "unnatural conduct"
in a child to impose on his mother, as it would be in the mother to
impose on the child; but would it not be unnatural in a child to take
an unreceptive and distrustful attitude towards his mother?

Filial love is different. It is not purely instinctive, but depends on
intelligence. It is only possible if the child has the intelligence to
see the parent as something besides a parent--as some one needing care
and protection--and if the child himself takes a parental attitude
towards the parent. But that is a grown-up attitude, seldom taken by
{151} young children. It is not the infantile instinct, which, if
there is such an instinct, is the spring of trustful, docile,
dependent, childlike and childish behavior.

The Play Instincts

Any instinct has "play value", but some have also "survival value" and
so are serious affairs. Survival value characterizes the instincts we
have already listed, both the responses to organic needs and the
responses to other people. But there are other instincts with less of
survival value, but no less of play value, and these we call the play
instincts, without attaching any great importance to the name or even
to the classification.

Playful activity.

The kicking and throwing the arms about that we see in a well-rested
baby is evidently satisfying on its own account. It leads to no result
of consequence, except indeed that the exercise is good for the
child's muscles and nerves. The movements, taken singly, are not
uncoordinated by any means, but they accomplish no definite result,
produce no definite change in external objects, and so seem random and
aimless to adult eyes. It is impossible to specify the stimulus for
any giv