Love.Of all propensities, the sexual impulses bear on their face the most obvious signs of being instinctive, in the sense of blind, automatic, and untaught.The teleology they contain is often at variance with the wishes of the individuals concerned; and the actions are performed for no assignable reason but because Nature urges just that way.Here, if ever, then, we ought to find those characters of fatality, infallibility, and uniformity, which, we are told, make of actions done from instinct a class so utterly apart.But is this so? The facts are just the reverse:
the sexual instinct is particularly liable to be checked and modified by slight differences in the individual stimulus, by the inward condition of the agent himself, by habits once acquired, and by the antagonism of contrary impulses operating on the mind.One of these is the ordinary shyness recently described; another is what might be called the essential instinct, the instinct of personal isolation, the actual repulsiveness to us of the idea of intimate contact with most of the persons we meet, especially those of 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 influences 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 whatever 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 affects us with horror, is probably a mere case of the way in which this instinct may be inhibited by habit.
me can hardly suppose 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- sion toward a, certain class of objects was inhibited early in life by habits, formed under the influence of example ;
and that then a kind of sexual appetite, of which very likely most men possess the germinal possibility, developed itself in an unrestricted way.
That the development of it in an abnormal way may check its development in the normal way, seems to be a well-ascertained medical fact.And that the direction of the sexual instinct towards one individual tends to inhibit its application to other individuals, is a law, upon which, though it suffers many exceptions, the whole regime of monogamy is based.These details are a little unpleasant to discuss, but they show so beautifully the correctness of the general principles in the light of which our review has been made, that it was impossible to pass them over unremarked.
Jealousy is unquestionably instinctive.
Parental Love is an instinct stronger in woman than in man, at least in the early childhood of its object.I need do little more than quote Schneider's lively description of it as it exists in her:
"As soon as a wife becomes a mother her whole thought and feeling, her whole being, is altered.Until then she had only thought of her own well-being, of the satisfaction of her vanity; the whole world appeared made only for her; everything that went on about her was only noticed so far as it had personal reference to herself ; she asked of every one that he should appear interested in her, pay her the requisite attention, and as far as possible fulfil her wishes.Now, however, the centre of the world is no longer herself, but her child.She does not think of her own hunger, she must first be sure that the child is fed.It is nothing to her that she herself is tired and needs rest, so long as she sees that the child's sleep is disturbed ; the moment it stirs she awakes, though far stronger noises fail to arouse her now.She, who formerly could not bear the slightest carelessness of dress, and touched everything with gloves, allows herself to be soiled by the infant, and does not shrink from seizing its clouts with her naked hands.Now, she has the greatest patience with the ugly, piping cry-baby ( Schreihals ), whereas until now every discordant sound, every slightly unpleasant noise, made her nervous.Every limb of the still hideous little being appears to her beautiful, every movement fills her with delight.
