48 Heredity and Social Progress 



favorable relations in the environment. Adverse elements 

 act against structure and throw the organism back into a 

 more simple undifferentiated state. 



3. Instinct is the psychic expression of the favorable 

 elements that act through structure. Emotion is a like 

 expression of the unfavorable elements that antagonize 

 growth. Instinct acts through structure and emotion 

 against it. 



4. Emotions have no structure or mechanism of their 

 own by which they are expressed. They use structure 

 created for other ends. Emotions are thus primarily 

 destructive, create waste products, and force organisms 

 back to a more primitive state with fewer structural ad- 

 justments to the environment. 



5. Natural selection assumes that improvement is 

 wrought out by the elimination of the weak. If, however, 

 emotions arrest development, the changes in organisms 

 needed for adjustment can be effected more readily and 

 quickly by them than by natural selection. Struggle breeds 

 emotion, not strength. It lowers the tone and throws 

 beings back into more primitive organic conditions. It 

 cannot, therefore, be the cause of the improvements that 

 are attributed to natural selection. 



