Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 | Page 4

complexity," and instinctive behavior, he concludes, may be said to comprise "those
complex groups of co-ordinated acts which are, on their first occurrence, independent of
experience; which tend to the well-being of the individual and the preservation of the race;
which are due to the co-operation of external and internal stimuli; which are similarly
performed by all the members of the same more or less restricted group of animals; but
which are subject to variation, and to subsequent modification under the guidance of
experience." Such a definition clearly justifies us in speaking of a "sexual instinct." It
may be added that the various questions involved in the definition of the sexual instinct
have been fully discussed by Moll in the early sections of his _Untersuchungen über die
Libido Sexualis_.
Of recent years there has been a tendency to avoid the use of the term "instinct," or, at all
events, to refrain from attaching any serious scientific sense to it. Loeb's influence has
especially given force to this tendency. Thus, while Piéron, in an interesting discussion of
the question ("Les Problèmes Actuels de l'Instinct," Revue Philosophique, Oct., 1908),
thinks it would still be convenient to retain the term, giving it a philosophical meaning,
Georges Bohn, who devotes a chapter to the notion of instinct (_La Naissance de
l'Intelligence_, 1909), is strongly in favor of eliminating the word, as being merely a
legacy of medieval theologians and metaphysicians, serving to conceal our ignorance or
our lack of exact analysis.

It may be said that the whole of the task undertaken in these Studies is really an attempt
to analyze what is commonly called the sexual instinct. In order to grasp it we have to
break it up into its component parts. Lloyd Morgan has pointed out that the components
of an instinct may be regarded as four: first, the internal messages giving rise to the
impulse; secondly, the external stimuli which co-operate with the impulse to affect the
nervous centers; thirdly, the active response due to the co-ordinate outgoing discharges;
and, fourthly, the message from the organs concerned in the behavior by which the
central nervous system is further affected.[1]
In dealing with the sexual instinct the first two factors are those which we have most fully
to discuss. With the external stimuli we shall be concerned in a future volume (IV). We
may here confine ourselves mainly to the first factor: the nature of the internal messages
which prompt the sexual act. We may, in other words, attempt to analyze the sexual
impulse.
The first definition of the sexual impulse we meet with is that which regards it as an
impulse of evacuation. The psychological element is thus reduced to a minimum. It is
true that, especially in early life, the emotions caused by forced repression of the
excretions are frequently massive or acute in the highest degree, and the joy of relief
correspondingly great. But in adult life, on most occasions, these desires can be largely
pushed into the background of consciousness, partly by training, partly by the fact that
involuntary muscular activity is less imperative in adult life; so that the ideal element in
connection with the ordinary excretions is almost a negligible quantity. The evacuation
theory of the sexual instinct is, however, that which has most popular vogue, and the
cynic delights to express it in crude language. It is the view that appeals to the criminal
mind, and in the slang of French criminals the brothel is le cloaque. It was also the view
implicitly accepted by medieval ascetic writers, who regarded woman as "a temple built
over a sewer," and from a very different standpoint it was concisely set forth by
Montaigne, who has doubtless contributed greatly to support this view of the matter: "I
find," he said, "that Venus, after all, is nothing more than the pleasure of discharging our
vessels, just as nature renders pleasurable the discharges from other parts."[2] Luther,
again, always compared the sexual to the excretory impulse, and said that marriage was
just as necessary as the emission of urine. Sir Thomas More, also, in the second book of
Utopia, referring to the pleasure of evacuation, speaks of that felt "when we do our
natural easement, or when we be doing the act of generation." This view would, however,
scarcely deserve serious consideration if various distinguished investigators, among
whom Féré may be specially mentioned, had not accepted it as the best and most accurate
definition of the sexual impulse. "The genesic need may be considered," writes Féré, "as
a need of evacuation; the choice is determined by the excitations which render the
evacuation more agreeable."[3] Certain facts observed in the lower animals tend to
support this view; it is, therefore, necessary, in the first place, to set forth the main results
of