76 INSTINCTS 



are harmless, they remain as witnesses to the 

 exuberance of Life's eccentricities. Amongst 

 these unpractical impulses the aesthetic are con- 

 spicuous. We are accustomed to regard them as 

 man's peculiar endowment. Not so. Can we 

 deny an appreciation of the aesthetic to a bower 

 bird, or to a robin, singing, when love instincts 

 are dormant, on a chilly November afternoon ? 



Let us now attempt to formulate the heads 

 under which instincts may be classified. 



We may, in the first place, form four groups of 

 impulses that are of essential practical value to 

 organisms in their individual and social lives, in 

 their function of reproducing their species and 

 in their provisions for the future. Next come, 

 in four more groups, impulses that from the 

 utilitarian point of view are superfluous, and 

 are, indeed, if classed in two pairs, antagonistic 

 to one another kindness (or an impulse to 

 fondle), cruelty (or an impulse to hurt), (esthetic 

 impulses which induce self-abandonment, and 

 ethical impulses which induce self-control. There 

 remain two compelling guides to behaviour, 

 directive instinct, and the processes which con- 

 stitute reason. 



INDIVIDUALISTIC. In this group fall the im- 

 pulses that stimulate and direct the development 

 and growth of the body and the functioning 

 of its organs. These arouse no emotions, and are 

 therefore not apprehended. Self-preservation 

 the primary and most imperious object of external 

 behaviour is, on the other hand, actuated by 

 impulses that are generally emotional hunger 

 and thirst, chilliness (the impulse to maintain the 

 temperature of the body), the hunting passion, 



