MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICO1SON AT this season of the year garden-addicts, to whom has been accorded the gift of ever-recurrent youth, start thinking of the spring. Stiff paper bags, or cardboard boxes crammed with straw and moss, arrive by post and train. Out come the bowls and fibre, out come the trowel and the trug—the heavy hint of autumn becomes white and yellow with the thought of all the jonquils and narcissus to come. Tight small bundles of wooden labels are prepared, names are inscribed with indelible pencils, the beds are raked, and we forget that within a week or two all our inscriptions will be deleted and that the clean young labels will take on the drab bedraggled look of middle age. No botanist has ever told me why it is that the spring bulbs are so anxious to peep out into this world that they do not mind in the least whether they are planted in congenial soil or in soil that is either acrid or stiff. Why should these little plants, who have to risk the frosts of early March, be less fastidious than the fat lily bulbs who, maturing in the richer soil prepared for them, develop fungi and lassitude before June is out ? It is the extraordinary optimism of the spring plants—the jauntiness, for instance, of the netted iris that in February starts to preen—that gives them half their beauty. How slim they seem in comparison to the herba- ceous matrons who. I am glad to say, are by now already thinking that hibernation must be near. I do not, however, wish to deface this page with springtime sob-stuff. What I want to say is that no practising gardener can possibly be, or remain, a behaviourist. He knows full well that, with the possible exception of the perky little adventurers of spring, every plant is born with some con- genital disabilities- or aptitudes. The soil in which the plant is set and nurtured must be specially prepared in order to suit its character. No gardener believes that a carnation and an azalea will behave identically when set in lime. ,. * * * * The behaviourists were all s so busy watching the conduct of animals that they left themselves no time to consider the behaviour of plants. I am prepared to believe that you can, with patience, "condition" an Alsatian to adopt any given line of conduct. I am prepared to believe that, if you set your mind to it, if you spend many years observing the formation of habit in dogs, you can convince yourself that this form of conditioning can usefully be described as "infra-human learning." I am pre- pared to believe that in animals what used to be called " instinct" is in fact largely a matter of behaviour, acquired through the processes of trial and error. I will go even further, and agree with the behaviourists that habit plays in human character a part that can scarcely be over-estimated and that deserves to be carefully observed and watehed. But when Mr. J. B. Watson and his school seek to persuade me that environment is every- thing and heredity nothing, then I stick my feet firmly in the soil of experience. What the behaviourists say about these things simply is not true. It is not a fact that if you take a week-old daughter of a Scottish crofter and a week-old daughter of a Rumelian violinist, and subject these infants to an identical environment, you will obtain as a result two women as alike as two peas. The behaviourists would reply that they never claimed any such thing. They would say that undoubtedly there would be slight differences between these two infants in such matters as pigmentation and aurarmemory. But they would claim that such variations were due, not to instincts or heredity, but to what they call (and it is a phrase that makes me twitch with rage) "uterine behaviour." The gipsy maiden does not inherit her gipsiness ; she is " conditioned ' to it in her pre-natal state.
Although, therefore, I regret that the behaviourists did not devote as much time to studying vegetable conduct as they gave to studying animal-conduct ; although I believe—and, if I had more space, could assuredly prove—that human beings are more akin to plants than they are to animals ; although I am convinced that heredity accounts for 80 per cent. of human conduct and environment only for the remaining 20 per cent. ; although I dis- agree with Mr. Watson and his followers almost along the whole line—yet I am, I hope, modest enough to have learnt that it is a gross error to dismiss as nonsensical any theory to which serious men and women have devoted years of experiment and study. There is always the salutary reflection that it may be you, and not they, who have got it all wrong. Moreover, the behaviourists, in throwing this great emphasis on habit, have provided parents and educationists with a pregnant precept. We all know now that vice, however individual or esoteric it may seem, is the result, not so much of inherent viciousness, as of environment and habit. Naturally there exists a predisposition, due to inherited tendencies and the given gland structure of the indi- vidual, that render some vices habit-forming in some people and not habit-forming in others. I know, for instance, that no amount of repetition would make me enjoy night-clubs ; but I also know that only a firm Protestant upbringing, fortified by an iron will, prevented me from forming habits which I should today find it embarrassing to possess. Conditioning, there can be no doubt about it, counts.
The behaviourists do not, of course, deny the existence of all natural instincts. They admit that in every human being, animal or plant there exists a desire to obtain nourishment and propa- gate the species which can only be described as an instinctive or hereditary desire. So frequent an urge cannot be dismissed simply as an embryological response. But they go further, and it is here that I feel so grateful to them. They admit that the daughter of the Highland crofter and the daughter of the gipsy violinist would each of them furnish an unconditioned response to two important stimulants, namely : (1) a sudden report and (2) loss of support. In other words, if you explode a paper bag a few inches from the ear either of a gipsy or a Highland infant, each of them will make an identical movement of resentful sur- prise. Similarly if, from a considerable height, you allow the two babies to fall to the ground, their dislike of this "loss of support" will assume a similar form. This discovery is surely a great advance in the science of child-welfare. The permutations and variations of the cells that constitute heredity are too unpre- dictable to furnish us with any constants. But if even the behaviourists, who are fastidious in such things, admit that there exist these two congenital instincts common to all babies, then we have at least two fixed points from which, in our devotion to our children, we can safely proceed. No bags must be banged in future in close proximity to the ears of any English child..4nt more importantly, and more seriously, comes the second instinct. No child in any circumstances must be exposed to loss of support.
Let this tremendous rule sink into the minds of all mothers, fathers, uncles, aunts and educationists. It means that what all children require is certainty of protection. Parents, therefore, need not worry so much about being charming ; all that need pre- occupy them is the huge necessity of being reliable. They must never tell lies, quarrel in front of their children, lose their tempers, break a promise, get drunk, behave ungainly, display incompetence, or indulge in the presence of their children in pursuits or pastimes at which they know themselves to be inept. Every parent, sooner or later, is bound to be found out ; all his energies should be devoted to securing that the moment when his children see through him is postponed. Rhythm, certainty, assurance—these are what give to young plants the sense of support. Thereafter, they must grow as they please.
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