PREFACE xi 



we are now acquainted. The mechanistic hypothesis 

 carries with it, by implication, the belief that the 

 human animal is an automaton or self-regulating 

 machine, of unfathomable complexity and extreme 

 plasticity with respect to the influence of stimuli 

 of external or internal origin. The doctrine of the 

 illusory nature of the sensation of free will has its 

 basis in this conception of the automatism of the 

 central nervous system. 



In the following seven chapters are discussed the 

 nature of the self-preservative and sexual instincts, 

 which in their phylogeny or racial ancientness appear 

 to be the most fundamental of all instinctive quali- 

 ties in living protoplasm. Other instincts, such as 

 relate, for example, to imitation, affection, the love 

 of beauty, and the awe of the powerful and unin- 

 telligible, seem to be built up on these two primitive 

 instincts, partly through their fusion or interaction. 

 This view is imperfectly expressed, or rather out- 

 lined, in the eleventh chapter. In the final chapters 

 I have been so venturesome as to indicate what 

 seem to me the tendencies in development in educa- 

 tion, literature, music, art, business, politics, and 

 science. Many of the ideas here expressed are put 

 forward with much hesitancy, as the difficult ques- 

 tions which I have touched on so casually do not 

 lend themselves readily to such impressionistic han- 

 dling. My purpose in touching on them at all has 

 been not so much to make correct forecasts of tend- 

 ency, as to show that progress in general, whether 



