440 PSYCHOLOGY. 



mothers, who, alas ! seem to be growing rarer ; and thus it is with all 

 the higher animal-motliers. The maternal joys of a cat, for example, 

 are not to be disguised. With an expression of infinite comfort she 

 stretches out her fore-legs to offer her teats to her children, and moves 

 her tail with delight when the little hungry mouths tug and suck. . . . 

 But not only the contact, the bai*e look of the offspring affords end- 

 less delight, not only because the mother thinks that the child will some 

 day grow great and handsome and bring her many joys, but because 

 she has received from Nature an instinctive love for her children. She 

 does not herself know why she is so happy, and why the look of the 

 child and the care of it are so agreeable, any more than the young man 

 can give an account of why he loves a maiden, and is so happy when 

 she is near. Few mothers, in caring for their child, think of the proper 

 purpose of maternal love for the preservation of the species. Such a 

 thought may arise in the father's mind ; seldom in that of the mother. 

 The latter feels only . . . that it is an everlasting delight to hold the 

 being which she has brought forth protectingly in her arms, to dress it. 

 to wash it, to rock it to sleep, or to still its hunger." 



So far the worthy Schneider, to whose words may be 

 added this remark, that the passionate devotion of a mother 

 — ill herself, perhaps — to a sick or dying chikl is perhaps 

 the most simply beautiful moral spectacle that human life 

 affords. Contemning every danger, triumphing over every 

 difficulty, outlasting all fatigue, woman's love is here in- 

 vincibly superior to anything that man can show. 



These are the most prominent of the tendencies which 

 are worthy of being called instinctive in the human species.* 



* Some will, of course, find the list too large, others too small. With 

 the boundaries of instinct fading into reflex action below, and into ac- 

 quired habit or suggested activity above, it is likely that there will always 

 be controversy about just what to include under the class-name. Shall we 

 add the propensity to walk along a curbstone, or any other narrow path, to 

 the list of instincts ? Shall we subtract secretiveuess, as due to shyness or 

 to fear? Who knows? Meanwhile our physiological method has this in- 

 estimable advantage, that such questions of limit have neither theoretical 

 nor practical importance. The facts once noted, it matters little how they 

 are named. Most authors give a shorter list than that iu the text. The 

 phrenologists add adhesiveness, inhabitiveness, love of approbation, etc., 

 etc., to their list of ' sentiments,' which in the main agree with our list of 

 instincts. Fortlage, in his System der Psychologic, classes among the 

 TriebeSiW the vegetative physiological functions. Santlus (Zur Psychologic 

 der Menschlichen Triebe, Leipsic, 1864) says there are at bottom but three 

 instincts, that of 'Being,' that of 'Function,' and that ot 'Life,' The 

 ' Instinct of Being ' he subdivides into animal, embracing the activities of 



