438 PBYCHOLOGT. 



with most of tlie persons we meet, especially those ot 

 our own sex.* Thus it comes about that this strongest 

 passion of all, so far from being the most ' irresistible,' 

 may, on the contrary, be the hardest one to give rein to, 

 and that individuals in whom the inhibiting iniiuences are 

 potent may pass through life and never find an occasion to 

 have it gratified. There could be no better proof of the 

 truth of that proposition with which we began our study 

 of the instinctive life in man, that irregularity of behavior 

 may come as well from the possession of too many instincts 

 as from the lack of any at all. 



The instinct of personal isolation, of which we have 

 spoken, exists more strongly in men with respect to one 

 another, and more strongly in women with respect to men. 

 In women it is called coyness, and has to be positively 

 overcome by a process of wooing before the sexual instinct 

 inhibits it and takes its place. As Darwin has shown in 

 his book on the ' Descent of Man and Sexual Selection,' it 

 has played a vital part in the amelioration of all higher 

 animal types, and is to a great degree responsible for what- 

 ever degree of chastity the human race may show. It 

 illustrates strikingly, however, the law of the inhibition of 

 instincts by habits — for, once broken through with a given 

 person, it is not apt to assert itself again ; and habitually 

 broken through, as by prostitutes, with various persons, it 

 may altogether decay. Habit also fixes it in us toward 

 certain individuals : nothing is so particularly displeasing 

 as the notion of close personal contact with those whom 

 we have long known in a respectful and distant way. 

 The fondness of the ancients and of modern Orientals for 

 forms of unnatural vice, of which the notion afiects us with 

 horror, is probably a mere case of the way in which this 

 instinct may be inhibited by habit. We can hardly sup- 

 pose that the ancients had by gift of Nature a propensity 

 of which we are devoid, and were all victims of what is 

 now a pathological aberration limited to individuals. It is 

 more probable that with them the instinct of physical aver- 



* To most of us it is even unpleasant to sit down in a chair still warm 

 from occupancy by anollier person's body. To many, hand-shaking is 

 disaarreeable. 



