28 Comparative Psychology . [January, 
lower animals purely material, a position overloaded with 
difficulties. 
If, then, we believe in the dictum, so often flung reproach- 
fully at men of science, that “ the proper study of mankind 
is man,” we must not disdain to begin this study with its 
very alphabet. For want of such modest and discreet pro- 
ceeding we have hitherto made much more haste than good 
speed. 
We are mainly led to these considerations by the appear- 
ance of a work which will, we believe, mark out a turning- 
point in the career of animal psychology. The author takes 
his departure not from a survey of intelligence, but of the 
will, as the more fundamental faculty. Says he : — “ Whether 
the soul has its seat in the pineal gland or somewhere else ; 
what is the relation between the inner and the outer sense ; 
whether we have any a priori ideas ; whether things per se 
differ from our perception of them, are questions on which 
thick volumes have been written and to which a great num- 
ber of good thinkers have consecrated their existence. But 
we are only faintly beginning to reflect on the development 
of the universal motives which have given rise to all intellec- 
tual existence.” 
What are these universal motives, impulses, or, if we 
please, instinCts ? Cynical as it may sound tn the hasty and 
the thoughtless, they are, in their origin, simply visceral. 
All instinctive impulses and all conscious expressions of will 
subserve either the preservation of the life of the individual 
or the production and nurture of its offspring. Self-preser- 
vation is effected by the acquisition of food, and by defen- 
sive precautions and stratagems ; the care for the preserva- 
tion of the species resolves itself into sexual attraction and 
parental duties, and to these four fundamental principles all 
the manifold expressions of animal and human will may be 
reduced. But the nutritive impulse, the craving for food, is 
the root of all animal instincts, for without food safety is 
neither possible nor even useful, and reproduction impracti- 
cable.* Hunger, therefore, Dr. Schneider maintains, is 
“ the ultimate motive power of all activity and spiritual de- 
velopment.” 
Can this contention be true ? If we look at man as now 
existing we find that a very large proportion of his activity 
does not bear even indirectly upon the preservation of the 
individual or the species, and has, indeed, no material objeCt 
“ Sine Baccho et Cerere alget Venus.” 
