The Freudians have set up a great hullaballoo about creative activities as sublimations of the sex instinct, or as they would have it, the libido.  That is their obsession, the confusion of the sex instinct, the instinct for sex life and satisfaction in the relation of the male to the female, with the maternal instinct.  The paternal instinct bears the same relation to the maternal, as the breasts of the male do to those of the female, i.e., a functional hermaphrodite trait.  The maternal instinct is the instinct to create, provide and care for offspring.

The mother expresses the deep craving of protoplasm for immortality.  What drives her is the instinct of Life to preserve itself unto eternity in infinite space and time.  That separates it sharply from the temporary needs of the sex instinct.  The artist, the man of science or letters, the statesman, craftsman and maker of every sort is instigated by the maternal instinct.  He creates for his own pleasure, to be sure.  But it is in its essence the pleasure of the bird making its nest.

It is necessary, therefore, to distinguish between the sex instinct and the maternal instinct.  For different glands of internal secretion have been found responsible for them.  A distinct difference in the quality and amount of the two instincts may be observed in the same person.  A strong maternal instinct may be seen again and again to dominate a woman with but little or no sex urge or passion.  Numerous physiologically frigid women have lived successful and happy married lives because of contented maternity.  Other women, with normal or exaggerated sex instinct who welcome and stimulate the sex life, may have no wish for children, no functioning maternal instinct at all, and if sterile, will accept their fate with indifference or even exultation.  These variations occur because of a difference in chemical source and determination of the two instincts.  While the ovary, stimulated by the thyroid and the adrenal medulla, is the chief determinant of the sex instinct, to the posterior pituitary must be credited the chief hormone of the maternal instinct.  The interactions of the two glands, the ovary and the posterior pituitary, modified by accessory influences, determine the relative intensity of the two instincts.  In a sense, the two glands may be said to be antagonistic and yet one stimulates and complements the other.

THE TRANSFIGURATIONS OF CHILD-BEARING

Though what happens at puberty, what happens all through life through the agencies of the endocrines is amazing enough, what occurs during the period of child-bearing is perhaps the most amazing of all.  As emphasized, pregnancy is the time, among the internal secretions, of a great uprooting and stirring, of fundamental and cataclysmic changes in the most intimate chemistry of the cells.  It is as if a dictator, inspired by his country’s danger, its enemies at the gates