第133章

She has, in one word, transferred her entire egoism to the child, and lives only in it.Thus, at least, it is in all unspoiled, naturally-bred mothers, who, alas! seem to be growing rarer; and thus it is with ah the higher animal-mothers.The maternal joys of a cat, for example, are not to be disguised.With an expression of infinite comfort she stretches out her forelegs to offer her teats to her children, and moves her tail with delight when the little hungry mouths tug and suck...But not only the contact, the bare look of the offspring affords endless delight, not only because the mother thinks that the child will someday grow great and handsome and bring her many joys, but because she has received from Nature an instinctive love for her children.She does not herself know why she is so happy, and why the look of the child and the care of it are so agreeable, any more than the young man can give an account of why he loves a maiden, and is so happy when she is near.Few mothers, in caring for their child, think of the proper purpose of maternal love for the preservation of the species.Such a thought may arise in the father's mind ; seldom in that of the mother.The latter feels only A..

that it is an everlasting delight to hold the being which she has brought forth protectingly in her arms, to dress it, to wash it, to rock it to sleep, or to still its hunger."

So far the worthy Schneider, to whose words may be added this remark, that the passionate devotion of a mother -- in herself, perhaps -- to a sick or dying child is perhaps the most simply beautiful moral spectacle that human life affords.Contemning every danger, triumphing over every difficulty, outlasting all fatigue, woman's love is here invincibly superior to anything that man can show.

These are the most prominent of the tendencies which are worthy of being called instinctive in the human species.

It will be observed that no other mammal, not even the monkey, shows so large an array.In a perfectly-rounded development, every one of these instincts would start a habit toward certain objects and inhibit a habit toward certain others.Usually this is the case; but, in the one-sided development of civilized life, it happens that the timely age goes by in a sort of starvation of objects, and the individual then grows up with gaps in his psychic constitution which future experiences can never fill.

Compare the accomplished gentleman with the poor artisan or tradesman of a city: during the adolescence of the former, objects appropriate to his growing interests, bodily and mental, were offered as fast as the interests awoke, and, as a consequence, he is armed and equipped at every angle to meet the world.Sport came to the rescue and completed his education where real things were lacking.He has tasted of the essence of every side of human life, being sailor, hunter, athlete, scholar, fighter, talker, dandy, man of affairs, etc., all in one.Over the city poor boy's youth no such golden opportunities were hung, and in his man-hood no desires for most of them exist.Fortunate it is for him if gaps are the only anomalies his instinctive life presents; perversions are too often the fruit of his unnatural bringing up.

This chapter has already appeared (almost exactly as now printed) in the form of magazine articles in Scribner's Magazine and in the Popular Science Monthly for 1887.

P.A.Chadbourne: Instinct, p.28 (New York, 1872).

It would be very simple-minded to suppose that bees follow their queen, and protect her and care for her, because they are aware that with-out her the hive would become extinct.The odor or the aspect of their queen is manifestly agreeable to the bees -- that is why they love her so.Does not all true love base itself on agreeable perceptions much more than on representations of utility P" (G.H.Schneider, Der Thierische Wille, p.187.) A priori , there is no reason to suppose that any sensation might not in some animal cause angry emotion and any impulse.

To us it seems unnatural that an odor should directly excite anger or fear;

or a color, lust.Yet there are creatures to which some smells are quite as frightful as any sounds, and very likely others to which color is as much a sexual irritants form.

Classics editor = s note: James = insertion Der Thierische Wille, pp.282-3.

In the instincts of mammals, and even of lower creatures, the uniformity and infallibility which, a generation ago, were considered as essential characters do not exist.The minuter study of recent years has found continuity, transition, variation, and mistake, wherever it has looked for them, and decided that what is called an instinct is usually only a tendency to act in a way of which the average is pretty constant, but which need not be mathematically 'true.' Ct.on this point Darwin's Origin of Species: Romanes's Mental Evol., chaps.xi to xvi incl., and Appendix; W.L.Lindsay's Mind in Lower Animals, vol.I.133-141; ii.

chaps, v, xx; and K.Semper's Conditions of Existence in Animals, where a great many instances will be found.

Spalding, Macmillan's Magazine, Feb.1873, p.

287.

Ibid.p.289

For the cases in full see Mental Evolution in Animals.pp.213-217.

Transactions of American Neurological Association, vol.I.p.129(1875).

"Mr.Spalding," says Mr.Lewes (Problems of Life and Mind, prob.chap.ii.' 22, note), "tells me of a friend of his who reared a gosling in the kitchen, away from all water; when this bird was some months old, and was taken to a pond, it not only refused to go into the water, but when thrown in scrambled out again, as a hen would have done.Here was an instinct entirely suppressed." See a similar observation on ducklings in T.R.H.Stebbing : Essays on Darwinism (London, 1871), p.73

"Senses and Intellect.3rd ed.pp.413-675.

Nature, xii.507 (1875).

See, for some excellent pedagogic remarks about doing yourself when you want to get your pupils to do, and not simply telling them to do it, Baumann, Handbuch der Moral (1879), p.

32 ff.