organs, the useless vestiges of organs useful to our remote animal ancestors, atrophied in the course of ages in consequence of modifications that have taken place in the external medium.
These rudimentary organs are not only useless; they are often positively harmful.
But the most serious discordance is that which exists between the physiological functions and the instincts which regulate them. In a well-regulated organism slowly developed by adaptation the instincts and the organs alike should be in relation with the functions. All really natural acts are solicited by an instinct, the satisfaction of which is at once a need and a pleasure. The maternal instinct is awakened at the proper moment in animals, and it disappears as soon as the offspring requires no more assistance. A craving for milk is shown in all new-*born children, and often disappears at an early age.
Nature has endowed man as well as the other animals with peculiar instincts, destined to preside over the different functions and to ensure their accomplishment. And, at the same time, it has enabled him in a measure to deceive those instincts and to satisfy them by other means than the execution of the physiological acts with a view to which they exist. Love and the instinct of reproduction exist in man before the age of puberty. Canova felt the spur of love at the age of five. Dante was in love with Beatrice at nine; and Byron, then scarcely seven, was already in love with Maria Duff. On the other hand, puberty has no necessary relation to the general maturity of the organism.
The family instinct is subject to the same aberrations. Man limits the number of his children. The
