OUR OVERWORKED INSTINCTS
Instinct is a good thing in its place. We, in common with other animals, have instincts, especially in our racial youth; but as reason waxes, instinct wanes. At present, thanks to the development of the brain and even the beginnings of education, we have few instincts left. What we have, we work pretty hard.
Among both men and women, the most primal instincts are still deified. The instinct of self-preservation, which in every species is promptly subordinated to race preservation, we solemnly hail as "Nature's First Law!" It may be first, as creeping comes before walking, but is no more honorable for that!
Then there is the sex instinct, a good second to this first, an ancient, useful and generally pleasant incentive to action; but we, in our simplicity, have set up this contributive impulse as the Lord of Life. "The Life Force," we call it; when it is only one form of expression for the Life Force, and a limited one.
Self-preservation does very well to keep the cards on the table, and race preservation goes on giving us a new deal, but neither of them alone, nor both of them together, is The Game.
What we are really here for is Growth, Improvement, Progress—and we have a deep and UNIVERSAL instinct towards that, too; but little is said about it! It is our primitive animal instincts we are so proud of: our social instincts we scarcely recognize.
Men have the instinct of combat, a very useful thing in its place. But in their exclusive preoccupation of being men, they have assumed this masculine proclivity to be something of universal importance and solemnly assure us that "Life is a Struggle."
Life is a Growth, a Progress, a Journey, if you will. It may be interrupted by having.to stop and struggle, but the struggling is at its best only incidental. Nature, seeking always the line of least resistance, avoids opposition when possible: the masculine instinct of combat courts it, and he idealizes his own instincts.
So also the woman. She has her one, great original maternal instinct; and both man and woman worship it. They assume something intrinsically holy in the feelings of a mother, and something superlatively efficacious in her ministrations. Motherhood is a beautiful and useful institution, but it is not enough to take right care of children.
Every furry animal has a mother: every naked savage has a mother: every ignorant peasant has a mother; and every mother has a compelling instinct which causes her to love and protect her young. But furry animal, naked savage, ignorant peasant they remain for all of their mothers.