Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/509

 THE RA CE-PRESER VA TION DOGMA 493

Other words, self-preservation, plainly apprehended as such, becomes a powerful spring of action, and may therefore with propriety be taken into account in all investigations regarding the conduct of man.

But are we justified in affirming as much of the "instinct of race-preservation"? Leaving aside, for the present, the lower animal world, I shall consider the matter from a purely anthropo- logical point of view, and, so as to deal with it more properly, divide it into two different orders of facts: the instinct of sexual intercourse and the instinct of race-preservation proper.

As to the first of these two instincts (which might be more properly called an appetite), it seems sufficiently obvious to me that we are using inaccurate and misleading language when we identify it with the instinct of race-preservation in general ; and the confusion becomes more apparent when we ascend from the lower animals to man — from instinct proper to rationalized instinct. We saw that a rationalized instinct — that is, one that has changed from a reflex into an actually or possibly purposive mode of acting — is characterized by a perception or a representation of its end, and an intention to attain that end ; and that instinctive acts, prompted at first by mere feelings, are afterward performed under the guidance of reason, whether the prompting feelings be present or absent. But does man, in his sexual intercourse, actually propose to himself as an end the production of new individuals ? Does he, when the sexual appe- tite, or the more refined sentiment of love, is absent, devote him- self, influenced only by a representation of the result, to the reproduction of his kind, or make any efforts for the exclusive pur- pose of attaining that end ? Without mentioning those very com mon cases of promiscuous intercourse, from which naturally there results no multiplication, nor those also very common cases in which married couples purposely avoid the birth of offspring, nor still those in which children are exposed or otherwise got rid of, experience seems to declare that the union of two indi- viduals of different sexes rarely, if ever (I speak now of civilized man), results from their desire or express intention of having offspring. Where nature is allowed to follow her course, that