In close connection with the general tendency towards physical activity is the instinct of manipulation.  From this crude root grows constructiveness and destructiveness.  As it shows itself at first it has the elements of neither.  The child inherits the tendency to respond by “many different arm, hand, and finger movements to many different objects”—­poking, pulling, handling, tearing, piling, digging, and dropping objects.  Just what habits of using tools, and the like, will grow out of this tendency will depend on the education and training it gets.  The habits of constructiveness may be developed in different sorts of media.  The order of their availability is roughly as follows:  first, in the use of materials such as wood, clay, raffia, etc.; second, in the use of pencil and brush with color, etc.; third, in the use of words.  We should therefore expect and provide for considerable development along manual lines before demanding much in the way of literary expression.  Indeed, it may be argued that richness of experience in doing is prerequisite to verbal expression.

Acquisitiveness and collecting are two closely allied tendencies of great strength.  Every child has a tendency to approach, grasp, and carry off any object not too large which attracts his attention, and to be satisfied by its mere possession.  Blind hoarding and collecting of objects sometimes valueless in themselves results.  This instinct is very much influenced in its manifestation by others which are present at the same time, such as the food-getting instinct, rivalry, love of approval, etc.  The time at which the tendency to collect seems strongest is at about nine years, judged by the number of collections per child.

Rivalry as an instinct shows itself in increased vigor, in instinctive activity when others are engaged in the same activity, and in satisfaction when superiority is attained.  There is probably no inborn tendency whereby these responses of increased vigor and satisfaction are aroused in connection with any kind of activity.  We do not try to surpass others in the way we talk or in our moral habits or in our intellectual attainments, as a result of nature, but rather as a result of painstaking education.  As an instinct, rivalry is aroused only in connection with other instinctive responses.  In getting food, in securing attention or approval, in hunting and collecting, the activity would be increased by seeing another doing the same thing, and satisfaction would be aroused at success or annoyance at failure.  The use of rivalry in other activities and at other levels comes as a result of experience.