When the current has been led into a suitable channel, it is expected to shape its own further course, and even to impose on itself the limits--the containing walls--which are needed if its depth and strength are to be maintained.
Let us now consider each of the six instincts in turn, and see what special steps Egeria takes to foster its growth.
(1) _The Communicative Instinct_.
Through this instinct the child goes out of himself into the lives of other persons and other living things.

The desire is in its essence one for intercourse, for communion, for the interchange of thoughts, of feelings, of experiences.

The normal child is, as we all know, an inveterate chatterbox; but he is also a rapt listener.

If he desires, as he certainly does, to tell others about himself, he desires, in no less a degree, to hear about others, either from themselves, or from those who are best able to tell him about them.

The balance between the two desires is well maintained by Nature; and it should be carefully maintained by those who train the young, if the communicative instinct as a whole is to make healthy growth.
In too many elementary schools the instinct is systematically starved, the scholars being strictly forbidden to talk among themselves, while their conversational intercourse with their teacher is limited to receiving a certain amount of dry information, and giving this back, collectively or individually, when they are expressly directed to do so.