Woman and Womanhood: A Search for Principles

by C. W. Saleeby

THE MATERNAL INSTINCT

The deeds of men and women proceed from certain radical elements of their nature, some evidently noble, others, when looked at askew, apparently ignoble. These elements are classed as instinctive. We are less intelligent than we think. Reason may occupy the throne, but the foundations upon which that throne is based are not of her making. To change the image, reason is the pilot, not the gale or the engine. She does not determine the goal, but only the course to that goal. We are what our nature makes us; our likes and our dislikes determine our acts, and we are guided to our self-determined ends by means of our intelligence. More often, indeed, we use our intelligence merely to justify to ourselves the likes and dislikes, the action and the inaction, which our instinctive tendencies have determined.

Many of our natural instincts, impulses, and emotions bear only remotely upon our present inquiry; as, for instance, the instinct of flight and the emotion of fear, the instinct of curiosity and the emotion of wonder, the instinct of pugnacity and the emotion of anger. Certain others, however, are not merely radical and permanent parts of our nature, but determine human existence, the greater part of its failures and successes, its folly and wisdom, its history and its destiny. Two of these—the parental and racial instincts—we must carefully consider here, and also, very briefly, a supposed third, the filial instinct. I am inclined to question whether such a specific entity as the filial instinct exists at all; it is rather, I believe, a product, by transmutation, of the parental instinct which, in its various forms and potencies and through the tender emotion which is its counterpart in the affective realm of our natures, is the noblest, finest, and most promising ingredient of our constitution.

Instinct and Emotion.—We must be sure, in the first place, that we have a sound idea of what we mean by the word "instinct." It is absurd, for instance, to speak of "acquiring a political instinct"—or any other. That is the most erroneous possible use of the word. An instinct is eminently something which cannot be "acquired"; it is native if anything is native; as native as the nose or the backbone. Instincts may be developed or repressed; it is the great mark of man that in him they may even be transmuted—but acquired never.

When we come to examine the laws of activity we find that, on the application of certain kinds of stimulus, there are certain very definite responses, and these we call instinctive. If the arm or the leg of a sleeper be stroked or touched, or a cold breath of air blows thereon, it will be withdrawn, and such withdrawal is what we call a reflex action. Now, an instinctive action, as Herbert Spencer saw long ago, is a "complex reflex action." It differs from a simple reflex, a mere twitch, such as winking, but it is a complicated, and possibly prolonged, action, which is, at bottom, of the nature of a reflex. One may instance the instinct of flight, which is correlated with fear. In crossing the street we hear "toot, toot," and we run. We do not ratiocinate, we run. All the primary instincts of mankind act similarly. Take, for contrast, the instinct of curiosity. Consider a child watching a mechanical toy; the impulse of this instinct of curiosity is such that he goes to the thing and examines it. By means of the transmutation, which it is the prerogative of man to effect, this instinct may work out into a lifetime devoted to the study of Nature. There is an unbroken sequence from the interest in the unknown which we see in a kitten or a child up to that which triumphs in a Newton or a Darwin.

Thus we begin to learn that human nature is largely a collection of instincts, more or less correlated, and that at bottom we act on our instincts—in accordance with certain innate predilections, likings, and dislikings with which we were born, and which we have inherited from our ancestors. Indissolubly associated therewith is what we call emotion. For instance, in the exercise of the instinct of curiosity we feel a certain emotion, which we call wonder. There is an ignoble wonder and there is a noble wonder; but whether it be an astronomer watching the stars, or the crowd at a cinematograph show, there exists an association between the emotion of wonder and the instinct of curiosity. Dr. McDougall, of Oxford, elaborated some few years ago, and has now established, an extremely important theory of the relation between instinct and emotion. He has shown that our emotions are correlated with our instincts; that the emotion is the inward or subjective side of the working of the instinct. Thus an instinct is more than a "complex reflex action"; it is more than merely that, on hearing something, or seeing something, certain muscles are thrown into action, because along with the action there is emotion, and this is a natural and necessary correlation. We should do well to carry about with us, as part of our mental furniture, this idea of the correlation between instinct and emotion.

Now, if it be true that man is not primarily a rational animal, if he be rather, au fond, a bundle, an assemblage, an organism of instincts, it behoves us to recognize in ourselves and in others the primary instincts, because from them flows all that goes to make up human nature, whether it be good or evil. Amongst these, certainly, is the parental instinct.

Let us first consider its development in the individual, for this bears on the question when to begin education for motherhood. We find it very early indeed. It is commonly asserted that the doll instinct is the precursor, the infantile and childish form, of the parental instinct. Some psychologists, as we have already noted, assure us that this is wrong, that a small child will be just as content to play with anything else as with a doll; that the child gets fond of its possession, and that what we are really witnessing is the instinct of acquisitiveness. The rest may reason and welcome, but those who are fathers know. We have only to watch a child to learn that it very soon differentiates its doll, or rather, the shapeless mass it calls its doll, from other things. Try with your own children and see if you can get them to like anything else as well as they like a doll. They will not. There are few settled questions as yet in psychology, but we may certainly be sure that the parental instinct and its associated emotion may be unmistakably displayed as the master-passion in a child who is not yet two years old. In a case where the possibility of imitation was excluded I have seen a little girl adore a small baby, stroke its hands, whisper quasi-maternal sweet nothings to it—"mother it," in short—as plainly as I have seen the sun at noon; and there is no reason to suppose that this deeply impressive spectacle was exceptional.

The parental instinct is connected subtly with the racial instinct; and it is undisputed that, except in utterly degraded persons, the object of the feelings which are associated with the racial instinct becomes the object of the feelings which are associated with the parental instinct. The object of the emotion of sex becomes also the object of tender emotion. Thus "love," in its lower sense, becomes exalted by Love in the noble sense.

There is also in us an instinct of pugnacity, which especially appears when the working of any other instinct is thwarted. We know that the parental instinct when thwarted, as in the tigress robbed of her whelps, shows itself in pugnacity—even in the female, which commonly has no pugnacity; and in the emotion of anger. It is a reasonable supposition that the fine anger, the passion for justice, the passion against, say, slavery or cruelty to children—that these indignations which move the world are at bottom traceable to the workings of the outraged parental instinct. When we have tender emotion towards a child, or towards an animal, whatever it be, this is really the subjective side of the working of the parental instinct. Now, tender emotion is what has made and makes everything that is good in the individual, and in human society. It is the basis of all morality—all morality that is real morality—everything that permits us to hold up our heads at all, or to hope for the future of the race. That is why the study of the parental instinct, its correlate or source, is as important and serious as any that can be imagined.