Given the right positive inducements — to which we respond not rationally but through our conditioned instincts — we shall all become better citizens, submissive to a state that has the good of the community at heart.
Both are works of an artist whose piety, whether genuine or occasioned by opportunity, is conditioned by theatrical instincts; the sweeping momentum from darkness to light in the Mass could make anyone a believer.
But as Mr. Joseph's play illustrates in scenes of jittery intensity, using your head isn't as easy as it seems in the turbulence of war, under the influence of fear, instinct and conditioned responses.
He talks not like a man with a gun to his head but rather like someone who has been so conditioned to restrain his instincts that no weapon is necessary.
He is personally capable of compassion, but his political instincts have been conditioned by defensive parochialism: fear of alienating those parts of the press and the electorate where hostility to foreigners is visceral.
From the moment he makes his entrance, returning to Rome with a train of prisoners, Titus is obviously someone for whom a soldier's instincts have become conditioned reflexes in all aspects of his life.
Conditioned out of her natural, sensible instinct to keep people at a safe distance, her normal flight circle becomes perilously small.
She will no longer trust her instincts to sense hunger, but will be conditioned to eat when presented with food.
Suspicion of outsiders, of people who behave or worship differently, may be an ingrained element of the human condition, a survival instinct from our cave-man days.
The council has tended, for the most part, to reflect his sensibilities, its members influenced by the same harsh conditions, survivor's instinct and notion of racially motivated neglect that shaped the mayor's political philosophy.
