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INSTINCT (Sanjna)
THE primary instincts (from in on, and stinguo to sting) are four according to Jainism. These are as follows:
(i) Ahāra (food)
(ii) Bhaya (fear)
(iii) Maithuna (sexual craving), and
(iv) Parigraha (possession or acquisition).
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These are the main moving causes of individual activity. All other tendencies and traits of character arise from their modification. The instincts represent what may be termed the conative side of life. As McDougall points out, the self is a vast organization of conative dispositions which is character, while attention is to be understood as conation revealing itself in cognition (An Introduction to Social Psychology, p. 377). An animal has little or no character; he only conducts himself according to his inborn tendencies. The man who has not succeeded in controlling his movements is but an animal in human form, and no better than a member of cattledom' at large; in the worst cases he will be termed a brute. But as we rise higher and higher in the degree of self-control, character begins to shape itself, till the saint is regarded as the culmination of what is deliberately good. Character, thus, consists in the element of self-control, that is to say, in the curbing of one's desires and lusts, which are the moving causes of embodied existence. In a somewhat narrower sense, character also indicates some persisting trait manifesting itself in the conduct of a human being. Thus understood character is revealed to be a modification of the will. According to Schopenhauer, all living things are expressions of the will, i.e., the elan vitae or life, and each specifically directed conative tendency is a differentiation of this fundamental will-to-live. And McDougall concedes that: each or ganism is endowed, according to its species, with a certain number and variety of conative dispositions, or latent tendencies to action, as a part of its hereditary equipment for the battle of life; and in the
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