Word: instinctiveness
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...seem, as a nation, to have lost the capacity to generalize and the instinct to imagine. Our newspapers are not sensations, in that they do not deal in the unexpected. All is anteriorly familiar to the alert for our managing editors never print really important news until someone has shown them that it is important and our minds are already prepared for the impact. The American breed of journalism is the tamest in the world, for it never carries on the exciting warfare of principle, it is never inflamed by the ardor of a great cause. Mr. G. K. Chesterton...
...claustrophobia's existence and begins to look for cause & cure, he finds himself adrift in theory. In a letter to the Times, Dr. Harry Campbell, veteran British neurologist, spoke for the older school when he declared that claustrophobia is simply the morbid expression of a universal animal instinct to avoid capture. Dr. W. Stephenson, University of London psychologist, tartly retorted through the Times that Dr. Campbell's theory was 'very inadequate. . . . Much more satisfactory is ... the current psychoanalytical theory." Psychoanalysis holds, roughly, that morbid fear is the result of a distressing experience in early life, later repressed...
...fellows. Granted the all-pervasive importance of cultivating intellectual refinement and of developing intellectual power, means must be found for making these available primarily to those possessed of potential strength of character, of latent, if not active, attributes which make for personality, and of group consciousness which can dominate instinct for individual acquisitiveness at the expense, of the public weal. Likewise, credentials from our houses of learning ought to be withheld from those without evidence of interest in developing these qualities...
...possessed the same physical advantages. Unfortunately neither of these conditions was fulfilled, with the result that the freshmen have rushed like sheep other toward the Houses which first got under way or toward those most attractive physically. Yet the majority of these Freshmen are only acting with the herd instinct; they have no real reason for preferring a particular House other than the fact that everybody else seems to be going there. The outcome of this stampeding has been deplorable; the desired cross sections are in certain cases either non-existent or overbalanced at one end, the demarcations...
Most illiterate dagoes* have the killer instinct, especially when their animal comfort is disturbed. In the countrysides they are notorious pothunters. Hunting U. S. Presidents or other public officials is far easier for deranged dagoes than pothunting afield. All Joe Zangara had to do was go to Miami's Bay Front Park and take a front seat, wait like an ardent if stupid-looking patriot until the President-elect should come within range...