INSTINCT AND REASON. 137 



8. Combativeness, in morbid pugnacity and irritability. 



9. Adhesiveness, in morbid aversions and causeless an- 

 tipathies. 



10. Love of liberty, in indifference to captivity. 



Ample illustrations of these perversions are given in the 

 chapters on ' Mental Defect or Derangement,' ' Suicide,' and 

 ' Murder.' In a minor degree, vitiation of instinct occurs as a 

 necessary result of pampering in household pets. This cate- 

 gory fitly includes the non-gratification or repression, as well 

 as the excessive gratification, of the more imperious physical 

 instincts particularly the sexual one the effects of which 

 are specified in the chapters relating to the 'Physical Causes 

 of Mental Disturbance.' 



Certain instincts are either naturally dominant at all 

 times in certain individuals, or they are so at particular 

 times or under special circumstances. There would appear 

 to be a constant or occasional antagonism, or conflict for the 

 mastery, in the individual character between various power- 

 ful instincts, just as there is also between virtues and vices, 

 good and bad impulses ; and sometimes one, sometimes an- 

 other, gains the ascendency for the time, or permanently. 

 Thus love of her offspring maternal affection frequently 

 overcomes the love of life in a mother, developing that 

 recklessness of personal safety which is so characteristic a 

 feature of maternity. In other ways parental solicitude is 

 constantly dominating over, neutralising, natural fear or 

 timidity not always, however, in a way tending to the 

 welfare of the young ; for among the instincts set aside in 

 such cases for the moment there may be some whose abro- 

 gation is fraught with direct or immediate danger. In the 

 dog not a water dog that rescues a child from drowning 

 compassion must overcome not only its natural love of life, 

 but its equally natural fear of water. Timidity, and even 

 suspiciousness, are frequently mastered by wonder or cu- 

 riosity. 



The physical instincts such as hunger and thirst are 

 naturally imperious, overruling sometimes all others. Thus 

 Gould tells us of parrots and honey-eaters in Australia 

 rushing to the edges of pools for water, utterly regardless 



