The instinct of repulsion brings hatred and dislike and, combined with the instinct of pugnacity, may lead to crimes of violence.  When these instincts are strong enough, the weak and superficial barriers cannot stand against them.  An electrical flash showing the scaffold with the noose above it would have no force to stop an instinct and emotion fully aroused.  Through seeing, feeling, hearing, tasting or smelling, some instinct is called into action.  Many times several conflicting instincts are aroused.  The man is like a tree bent back and forth by the storm.  If the storm is hard enough, sooner or later it will break.  Which way the tree falls has nothing to do with the consciousness of the tree, but has to do only with the direction of the prevailing and controlling force.

The instinct of gregariousness draws animals or men together into communities and close relations.  This is one of the strongest instincts and not only preserves life but is fundamental to those human associations that are the basis of civilization.  Except for this, animals would live a lonely life and probably perish from the earth.  Through this instinct, man builds his villages and cities and organizes his states and nations.  With the gregarious instinct and the parental instinct drawing men together, and the instincts and emotions of flight, fear and pugnacity, repelling and pushing them apart, conflict is inevitable.  All that can be done is to create and cultivate as strong habits, customs and laws as possible to stand against the power of instinct and emotion in time of need, and to remove the main inciting causes so far as man has the intelligence and power to remove them.  It is evident that this can never be complete.  There are too many weak machines, too many defective nervous systems, too many badly organized brains.  Accidents are inevitable, and some accidents are called “crimes.”  When the accident is international or world-wide, it means war.  Those who believe that there is any power to stop all the harmful manifestations of man’s instincts, either individually or en masse, do not understand the fundamental nature of man.

Many and probably all instincts work both for good and ill.  Flight, pugnacity, repulsion, sex—­all are life-preserving or life-destroying, as the case may be.  A certain degree of excitation brings life and pleasure.  A stronger or weaker may bring calamity and death.  The parental instinct, with the instinct of reproduction, is fundamental to life.  It is the basis of tenderness and sympathy, and is likewise the foundation of jealousy and often of hatred and pugnacity.  At one time it may mean the deepest and most abiding pleasures of life, and at another it may bring death.  Life cannot exist without it, and yet, that it may persist, Nature seriously overloads many machines with disastrous results.  History is replete with the helplessness of reason and judgment in dealing with these emotions.  Neither when they act for good nor for ill can reason and judgment have the slightest weight when these instincts and emotions are stirred to the depths.