THE ANALYSIS OF BEHAVIOUR 143 



are the products of natural selection, as a study of adaptations 

 among wild animals will show. Insanity in man that is not the 

 result of lesions, it has been argued, is to be interpreted as con- 

 flict between the mental complexes that the struggle for existence 

 has engendered on the one hand, and those newer complexes that 

 arise from the development of the herd instinct on the other. 

 As in Mr. Wells's Island of Dr. Moreau, there is a " law " (a 

 series of inhibitions) which comes into tragic antagonism with 

 the naturally evolved animal propensities. 



And so, lacking the inhibitory controls acquired by domestica- 

 tion and centred in its cortex, Golz's dog could growl and bark, 

 and manifest anger and displeasure, but not affection — which to 

 it was something quite secondary— an inhibition of the*" currish " 

 nature of the natural dog. 



And so also a study of social evolution and of mass psychology 

 impels one to the conclusion that what we recognise as " good " 

 is mostly the inhibition of what we may call the lower animal 

 instincts that are in us. The result is, of course, clearly demon- 

 strable in much of our conduct, for our codes of private and 

 public morality are, to a great extent, summaries of the things 

 that may not be done — inhibitions — and which the natural man 

 would often like to do; while our legal systems supply the sanc- 

 tions for those prohibitions and restrictions. What are called 

 " socialist tendencies " are, of course, attempted inhibitions of 

 individualism. The ruthlessness that characterised German 

 methods of warfare far more than those of their opponents was 

 the result of a slackening of inhibitions, a disregard of the 

 amenities of armed conflict (the things that might not be done), 

 and as such it met with general reprobation. The " war 

 psychoses " of European countries during and after the year 1919 

 illustrate the same proposition: one cannot help noticing a 

 tendency to increased dislike of people belonging to other 

 nationalities than our own, and a general indifference to suffering 

 borne by other peoples. Those feelings were potential in us 

 before the war, but they were repressed, and the strains set up 

 by the necessity for natural self-preservation loosened the in- 

 hibition and allowed of their expression. 



The Cortex Cerebri. 



From what has already been said about the progressive 

 development of the cerebral hemisphere in the vertebrate animals 

 the reader will see that we ought not to speak about " the " 



