it to nurse in the first instance. The need of the young creature awakens the instinctive affection and desire of the older animal.
It is held that the instinctive feeling and desire of the human creature for a permanent mating and union—the creation and maintenance of “the family”—arose from the longcontinued needs of the human mother and child for the protection of the father. By the time that one child was comparatively able to take care of itself, another infant was there to be protected and provided for. Says Saleeby: “The unique helplessness of the human baby—one of the most wonderful and little appreciated facts in the whole of Nature to eyes that can see—has a supremely practical point of view. The principle of Marriage is that of survivalvalue. Nature’s invariable criterion is that of survivalvalue or service to raceculture. That form of Marriage which does not permit the babies to survive, the babies do not permit it to survive. It is not a question of the father’s taste and fancy; but of what he leaves above ground when he is under ground.”
This then is the deep soil from which has sprung and grown the wonderful love of man and woman for each other, in its highest and most beautiful forms, as well as in its crudest and ugliest phases. From this soil also has sprung the beautiful love of parents for their children, of children for parents. It is the cause of the “cling to” feeling and desire so marked in the woman and the child; of the desire to be “clung to” by the woman and the child which lies deeply embedded in the soul of the man. The soil is “Nature’s needs for the welfare and perpetuation of the race”; the blossoms and flowers are due to man’s and woman’s cultivation of the soil, and tender care for the growing plant.
V
THE EVOLUTION OF DESIRE (CONCLUDED)
THE DESIRE for Property. The desire for property is another elemental feeling and motive to action. Property means: (1) “The exclusive right to possession, enjoyment, and disposal of anything, vested in the individual”; and (2) “that which is possessed, enjoyed, and subject to disposal of the individual.” The love of and desire for possessions is imbedded in the deep soil of human nature. Some of the lower animals possess it to a marked degree; and nearly all the lower animals feel the right of possession of places, positions, etc., as well as their supply of food.
In the case of primitive man, this feeling and desire arose from the necessity of providing for his welfare and that of his family. It was necessary for him to possess a place of abode—a cave, a tree, a tent, etc. It was necessary for him to lay by and accumulate a supply of food at certain seasons; and to have land to till and cultivate for food production. The individuals manifesting this desire, tended to survive and to have their families survive; those in whom it was weak tended to fall in the struggle with environment. The survivors transmitted their tendencies to their descendants; the losers left no descendants to whom their improvident tendencies were transmitted. And so the tendency became “set” as a habit in the mental and emotional nature of the race.
The wants of primitive man were few and simple. A little food laid by for himself and his family; a few skins to cover their bodies; a rude cave, hut, or tent to shelter them; implements of war and of the hunt—this was about all. As man rose in the scale, his wants multiplied, and consequently he began to desire to acquire and to accumulate not only a greater number of things, but also a greater variety of things. The rest is merely a matter of the evolution of this form of desire—a proceeding from the simple to the more complex, from the few things to the many, and so on. This is the story of the Desire for Property, with its accompanying feelings and emotions. Originally based upon necessity, it has now extended to comforts and even luxuries. Normally manifested, it is to the interest of the individual and of the race; abnormally manifested, it is a curse to both.
THE DERIVED DESIRES. In the course of the Evolution of Desire, man has acquired many forms of feeling and desire derived from the elementary desires which are instinctive to him, and which have been considered by us in some detail. Thus his love for his family has extended to his affection for his general family, his tribe, his nation. From this has developed in him the desires of love of country, patriotism, and loyalty to his government, and also the social feelings of friendship, companionship, sympathy, justice, truth, politeness, as well as the desire for the observance of moral codes, laws, rules of right conduct.
In the same way, the necessities of procuring food, defending himself and family, acquiring possessions, and so forth, have aroused in him the feelings and desires connected with invention, creative work, constructive imagination, thought, reasoning and other intellectual powers and activity. The old adage that “Necessity is the mother of invention” may be extended to include in the brood of Necessity the activity of Thought and Reasoning—the entire Rock of the family of Intellect.
From less welldefined sources have sprung the feelings and desires connected with the Aesthetic Emotions—the love of beauty, art, music, literature, culture, refinement, etc. That they sprung from the elemental soil, there can be no doubt; though the line of ascent is not so clearly discernible. From the original enjoyment of the experiences of the hunt, the battle, the conflict with nature, beasts and hostile men, have arisen the feelings and desires connected with games, sports, the drama, stories and other forms of recreation, exercise and “play.” Play has evolved directly from activities concerned with necessity, as all psychologists know; the desires based upon it are reflections of the older and cruder desires of the elemental nature.
From the deep recesses of man’s nature have sprung the feelings and desires connected with what is called “religion.” From the crudest beginnings, and the grossest forms of superstition, have sprung the beautiful plant and flower, blossom and fruit, of the highest conception of religion held by the most advanced of the race today. As Herbert Spencer said: “The ultimate form of the religious consciousness is the final development of a consciousness which at its outset contained a germ of truth obscured by multitudinous errors.” John Fiske said: “That inward conviction, the craving for a final cause, the theistic assumption, is itself one of the master facts of the universe, and is as much entitled to respect as any fact in physical nature can possibly be.” Darwin holds that the religious feelings, emotions, affections and desires are highly complex, consisting of love, complete submission to an exalted and mysterious superior being, coupled with a strong sense of dependence, fear, reverence, gratitude, hope for the future, and perhaps many other elements.
And so, the evolution of man’s desires has proceeded from lowly elemental beginnings and sources to wonderful heights and endings. But the sources and soil must never be forgotten when you consider the subject of the essential nature of Desire. Moreover, be it noted, in times of great stress, necessity, or unusual conditions, it is found that the forms and phases of Desire which have evolved last in the scale—the latest comers into the family of Desire—are the first to be discarded by the man or woman; then follow the next recent, and so on, until if the necessity be sufficiently great and the pressure of circumstances sufficiently strong, the individual tends to revert to the primitive type and to manifest only the most elemental and primitive forms and phases of feeling and Desire. The “cave man” is far nearer to the surface of civilized humanity than most persons realize. Shipwrecked men, men lost in the wild places of earth, men in times of famine and pestilence, often have shown a surprising tendency to revert in a remarkably short time to the plane of their primitive ancestors. It has well been asserted that “Civilization in man is only skin deep.”
Some idealistic thinkers who have become hypnotized by the dream of the culture and refinement which to them seems destined to be the common possession of the coming human race—a state of culture and refinement in which the elemental and fundamental instincts, feelings, emotions and desires of man will have been buried deep beneath the surface of things as unworthy and “unnice”—are greatly disturbed when they are forced to see that at
