tSi THE COURTSHIP OF ANIMALS 



actions are the agents of the instinctive. Indifferent per- 

 formance in either, endangers the existence of the 

 individual, and in some directions of the race itself. 



The sexual instincts, with which alone these pages are 

 concerned, are primarily stimulated and sustained by 

 internal forces, generated, as we have already seen, by the 

 juices of certain glands whose relation to the reproductive 

 system has only recently been discovered. Though not 

 commonly realized, and though denied by some, the 

 sexual instincts are the dominant factors in the animal 

 world. Even Man himself, the lord of Creation, knowing 

 good and evil, cannot escape their overmastering rule. 

 Commonly he is by no means inclined to rebel against 

 this control But there be some who, in their arrogance, 

 imagine that its overthrow is an end to be desired. 

 Having scaled some slight intellectual eminence they 

 fondly imagine this feat was accomplished by virtue of 

 some spiritual grace of their own cultivation, and call 

 to their fellow-men to emulate their example. But such 

 preceptors are labouring under a strange delusion : they 

 are suffering from a disease they wot not of, a " Dis- 

 harmony," as Metschnikoff calls it, a disease which blinds 

 their perception of the motive power which has given 

 them all that they believe themselves to have created. 

 For these same despised instincts are the sacred fires of 

 our being, and when they are quenched all that makes us 

 human, love, ambition, and life itself will be extinguished. 

 If the continuance of the race be a thing to be desired 

 it is well that the choice should not be left to us. 



Truisms are sometimes trite, and while it is a truism 

 to say that no race can continue which does not reproduce 

 its kind, it is more exact to say that, other things being 

 equal, the race depends for its existence, primarily, on 



