5S HABIT AND INTELLIGENCE. [cHAP, 



once organisms acquire desires and fears, the law of 

 pleasure and pain stated above causes them to desire 

 what is favourable to their life and health, and to fear 

 life"^ ° what is injurious. This is the ground of the love of 

 life and fear of death. These feelings would be scarcely 

 explicable if they had their roots in thought, or even in 

 sensation ; but their roots are deeper than either thought 

 or sensation, down in the nature that we have in common 

 with all organisms whatever, vegetable as well as animal, 

 which prompts all alike to seek whatever ministers to 

 their life. In other words, the impulse to self-preservation 

 is universal among organisms, sentient and insentient, 

 conscious and unconscious. We have become conscious, 

 and the impulse to self-preservation has become conscious 

 in us, and is called the love of life, or the fear of 

 death. 



In speaking in a former chapter of organic intelligence, 

 I stated that organisms are guided by that intelligence to 

 perform not only such actions as are salutary for the indi- 

 vidual, but also such as are needed for the perpetuation 

 and the prosperity of the race.''- The simplest and the only 

 universal instance of this is the reproductive function. 

 When organisms become sentient "and conscious, the 

 actions which minister to the life of the race, as well 

 as those which minister to the life of the individual, are 

 attended with a sense of pleasure and become objects 

 Sexual, of desire. These feehngs constitute the root of the sexual, 

 and social domestic, and social affections. Thus the instinct of a 

 affections : bird, for instance, causes her to tend her young : she pro- 

 bably has a sense of pleasure in doing so ; and, if she 

 loses them, she shows manifest signs of mental pain. This 

 is an instance of the general fact that the healthful per- 

 formance of every vital function, in so far as it is 

 attended with sensation or consciousness at all, gives rise 

 to a sense of pleasure, and any interference with its per- 

 formance gives rise to a sense of pain. The affection 

 of a bird or other animal for her young has thus 



^ See p. 9. 



