THEORY OF INSTINCTS 197 



logical point of view will ultimately furnish the data 

 for a scientific ethics. Human happiness is based up- 

 on the possibility of a natural and harmonious satis- 

 faction of the instincts. 1 One of the most important 

 instincts is usually not even recognised as such, 

 namely, the instinct of workmanship." Lawyers, 

 criminologists, and philosophers frequently imagine 

 that only want makes man work. This is an errone- 

 ous view. We are instinctively forced to be active 

 in the same way as ants or bees. The instinct of 

 workmanship would be the greatest source of happi- 

 ness if it were not for the fact that our present social 

 and economic organisation allows only a few to sat- 

 isfy this instinct. Robert Mayer has pointed out that 

 any successful display or setting free of energy is a 

 source of pleasure to us. This is the reason why the 

 satisfaction of the instinct of workmanship is of such 

 importance in the economy of life, for the play and 

 learning of the child, as well as for the scientific or 



o 



commercial work of the man. 



10. We have finally to defend our physiological 

 analysis of instincts against the reproach that it ignores 

 the theory of evolution. In other words, it has been 



1 It is rather remarkable that we should still be under the influence of an 

 ethics which considers the human instincts in themselves low and their gratifi- 

 cation vicious. That such an ethics must have had a comforting effect upon 

 the Orientals, whose instincts were inhibited or warped through the combined 

 effects of an enervating climate, despotism, and miserable economic conditions, 

 is intelligible, and it is perhaps due to a continuation of the unsatisfactory eco- 

 nomic conditions that this ethics still prevails to some extent. 



2 I take this name from Veblen's book on The Theory of the Leisure Class, 

 New York, 1899. 



