, get more
solid satisfaction from a good fight than from any other amusement.
You see people "itching for a fight", and actually "trying to pick a
quarrel", by provoking some other person who is strictly minding his
own business and not interfering in the least. A battle of words
usually starts in some such way, with no real reason, and a battle of
words often develops into a battle of tooth and nail. Two women were
brought before the judge for fighting, and the judge asked Mrs. Smith
to tell how it started. "Well, it was this way, your honor. I met Mrs.
Brown carrying a basket on her arm, and I says {161} to her, 'What
have ye got in that basket?' says I. 'Eggs', says she. 'No!' says I.
'Yes!' says she. 'Ye lie!' says I. 'Ye lie!' says she. And a 'Whoop!'
says I, and a 'Whoop!' says she; and that's the way it began, sir."

We have, then, to recognize aggressive fighting, in addition to
defensive, and the aggressive sort certainly belongs among the play
instincts.

The instincts that by acting counter to fighting hold it in check are
several: laughter--a good laugh together allays hostility; or the
parental instinct--a parent will stand treatment from his child that
he would quickly resent from any one else; or self-assertion--"Too
proud to fight!" But the most direct checks are afforded by
inertia--"What's the use?"--and especially by fear and caution.

Fighting, both defensive and aggressive, has so close a connection
with the more generalized self-assertive tendency that it might be
included under that instinct. It may be regarded as a special form of
self-assertive behavior, often complicated with the emotion of anger.

Self-assertion.

What then is this wonderful instinct of self-assertion, to which
fighting and much of laughing are subordinate? "Assertiveness",
"masterfulness", and the "mastery impulse" are alternative names. Of
all the native tendencies, this is the one most frequently aroused,
since there is scarcely a moment of waking (or dreaming) life when it
is not more or less in action. It is so much a matter of course that
we do not notice it in ourselves, and often not in other persons; and
even clever psychological observers have seemed entirely blind to it,
and given it no place in their list of instincts.

Self-assertion, like fighting, has two forms, the defensive and the
aggressive, and in either case it may be a response to either people
or things. That gives four varieties of self-assert