158 ANIMAL BEHAVIOUR 



57. ON SUBLIMATION 

 It is desirable to extend the meaning of this term : by it is 

 meant that the manifestations of an urge have acquired, in the 

 process of evolution, new motives. The matter of this section 

 applies particularly to man. 



57«. Pleasure and Pain. These feelings are to be associated 

 with the conception of normality. A need that is satisfied is 

 no longer felt, having led, through appropriate behaviour, to 

 normality. In the latter state there is incipient pleasure, which 

 becomes heightened by excess of the behaviour that led to nor- 

 mality. To evoke this pleasure now becomes an additional 

 motive of behaviour (over-eating, prostitution, etc.). The 

 failure to satisfy the primitive urge implies dissatisfaction, and 

 unavailing functional or behaviouristic activity implies abnor- 

 mality, deepening in consciousness into pain. There is the 

 additional motive, in behaviour, to avoid dissatisfaction and 

 pain. Normality thus sublimes into pleasure. 



57^^. Animal Play. Play is plainly anticipatory behaviour 

 carried out by the immature animal and modelling those activities 

 which it will carry out when it becomes mature. It can be 

 analysed so as to display fighting, pursuing, flight with the 

 motives of self-preservation ; hunting and killing with the 

 motive of nutrition ; fabrication of things by the human child ; 

 the making of shelters ; maternity, etc. It is amplified, but not 

 initiated, in all animals, by imitation and instruction by the 

 elders. Sport in adult men and women is play that is rational- 

 ized. Killing for sport and cruelty in sport are clearly excess- 

 value of the satisfaction obtained by the obtaining of food. Joy 

 in sport is the sublimation of the satisfaction of the urges upon 

 which the play, or sport, is based. Games involving skill can 

 be analysed, as to motives and origins, in the same general way. 

 Games involving chance imply the property instinct. 



57^. The Property-" instinct," or Urge ; the Gre- 

 garious Urge. These urges are manifested in the behaviour 

 of the lower animals. Hoarding food, for instance, clearly 

 leads to behaviour similar to ours with regard to property and 

 the gregarious herd, or pack, clearly anticipates the human 

 community. On the one hand, the property-urge sublimates 

 into the group of motives that we call " love of country," 



