Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/777

 A THEORY OF SOCIAL MOTIVES 763

reproduction, yet, as seen in certain populations, these inhibiting forces lead us to believe that the idea of race continuity is not quite axiomatic. We note that individuals who excuse their appetites on the ground of their necessity for race continuity lose their solicitude for the race as soon as new stimuli stir different desires. If ever we face the possibility of race annihila- tion and the state discusses the policy of the regulation of breed- ing in order to insure race continuity, the idea of race continuity may become a factor in social development. But, even then, on what would the idea rest ? It would rest on the conviction that it is worth while for the race to continue to exist. But whether we ever arrive at this conviction will depend on the answer to those very problems which we take up in our studies of per- sonality. I start therefore with no presupposition as to race continuity. I assume simply that we're here — "we're here because we're here" — and estimate processes according to their relation to the total motive process rather than with the view to their relation to particular conserving appetites.

We pass now to the conative phase of mental process. In all forms of activity, political, economic, and religious, I discern instinctive frameworks of motive which seem to survive from conditions of the past. These instinctive frameworks the indi- vidual fills in with perceptions and images derived from present conditions so that they work out in specialized impulses and sentiments. Here is an instance of this instinctive framework of motive adapting itself to new conditions. It is a maxim of politicians never to respond to an attack of an opponent except by counter-attack, because explanation will fall flat, no matter how unwarranted the attack or how convincing the explanation. Why is this true? Because, in the heat of a political campaign, the populace lapses more or less to the third level of conscious- ness in which it is actuated by the primitive combative instinct. The mildest of citizens who was never in his life in a fight shows this reversion to primitive instinct as plainly as the citizen of belligerent experiences. For this reason political speakers, when attacked, cannot effectively expostulate or explain but must return blow with blow. It is as if there accompanied this surviving