166 ESSAYS OF A BIOLOGIST 



the lives upon which it is expended take a special 

 course, and in such case it is not easy to place any 

 limit to its activity. We do not know how high the 

 goal that it may reach." ^* 



The change is thus on the one side from the rela- 

 tive independence of the sex instinct towards its sub- 

 ordination to a position in a hierarchy of mental 

 process, but on the other from a rigid limitation of 

 its scope towards a greater universality by establish- 

 ing connections with all other parts of the mind. 

 Further, there is also a change towards greater domi- 

 nance and "self-determination" of the mental as 

 against the physical. 



A great many of the difficulties which beset us, 

 both as individuals and as communities, come from 

 the fact that both these changes are only in process 

 of being made, and are (even approximately) com- 

 plete only in a very small number of persons. 



Lack of restraint is failure to construct a properly- 

 working hierarchy. That is a very simple example. 

 Less easy to analyse but equally vicious, are the 

 innumerable cases in which some sort of equilibrium 

 is only attained not by a free interaction of dominant 

 and subordinate parts, but by repression. Conflicts 

 arise, which persist, either in an open form or in the 

 subterranean regions of the unconscious. In either 

 case they tend to be projected by the subject into 

 his ideas of other people. This projection, or inter- 

 pretation of external reality in terms of one's self, is 



"Rivers, '20, p. 158. 



