680 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



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 chil- 

 dren. 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 ever- 

 lasting delight to hold the being which she has brought forth protect- 

 ingly 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, triumph- 

 ing 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 



* 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 nar- 

 row 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 ad- 

 vantage, 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 Trkbe 

 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 intel- 

 lect 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 (nu- 

 trition, motion) ; sociability (imitation, juridical and ethical arrangements) ; and per- 

 sonal 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. 



