nite comfort she stretches out her fore-legs to offer her teats to her children, and moves her tail with delight when the little hungry mouths tug and suck. ...
"But not merely the contact, the mere look of the offspring affords endless delight, not only because the mother thinks that the child will some day 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 ... 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—ill 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.[1] 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
- ↑ Some will, of course, find the list too large, others too small. With the boundaries of instinct fading off into reflex action below, and acquired habit or suggested activity above, it is likely that there will always be controversy about just what to include under the class-name. Shall we add the propensity to walk along a curbstone, or any other narrow path, to the list of instincts? Shall we subtract secretiveness, as due to shyness or to fear? Who knows? Meanwhile our physiological method has this inestimable advantage, that such questions of limit have neither theoretical nor practical importance. The facts once noted, it matters little how they are named. Most authors give a shorter list than that in the text. The phrenologists add adhesiveness, inhabitiveness, love of approbation, etc., etc., to their list of "sentiments," which in the main agree with our list of instincts. Fortlage, in his "System der Psychologie," classes among the Triebe all the vegetative physiological functions. Santlus ("Zur Psychologie der Menschlichen Triebe," Leipsic, 1864) says there are at bottom but three instincts, that of "Being," that of "Function," and that of "Life." The "Instinct of Being" he subdivides into animal, embracing the activities of all the senses; and psychical, embracing the acts of the intellect and of the "transempiric consciousness." The "Instinct of Function" he divides into sexual, inclinational (friendship, attachment, honor); and moral (religion, philanthropy, faith, truth, moral freedom, etc.). The "Instinct of Life" embraces conservation (nutrition, motion); sociability (imitation, juridical and ethical arrangements); and personal interest (love of independence and freedom, acquisitiveness, self-defense). Such a muddled list as this shows how great are the advantages of the physiological analysis we have used.
