live and reproduce his kind.  And he demanded not in vain.  For there came to him slowly an unfolding knowledge of the things necessary for the requirements of his life.  We call this Instinct.  But, pray remember, by Instinct we do not mean the still higher something that is really rudimentary Intellect that we notice in the higher animals.  We are speaking now of the unreasoning instinct observed in the lower animals, and to a certain degree in man.  This Instinctive plane of mentality causes the bird to build its nest before its eggs are laid, which instructs the animal mother how to care for its young when born, and after birth; which teaches the bee to construct its cell and to store up its honey.  These and countless other things in animal life, and in the higher form of plant life, are manifestations of Instinct—­that great plane of the mind.  In fact, the greater part of the life of the animal is instinctive although the higher forms of animals have developed something like rudimentary Intellect or Reason, which enables them to meet new conditions where Intellect alone fails them.

And man has this plane of mind within him, below consciousness.  In fact the lower forms of human life manifest but little Intellect, and live almost altogether according to their Instinctive impulses and desires.

Every man has this Instinctive mental region within him and from it are constantly arising impulses and desires to perplex and annoy him, as well as to serve him occasionally.  The whole secret consists in whether the man has Mastery of his lower self or not.

From this plane of the mind arise the hereditary impulses coming down from generations of ancestors, reaching back to the cavemen, and still further back into the animal kingdom.  A queer storehouse is this.  Animal instincts—­passions, appetites, desires, feelings, sensations, emotions, etc., are there.  Hate, envy, jealousy, revenge, the lust of the animal seeking the gratification of his sexual impulses, etc., etc., are there, and are constantly intruding upon our attention until we have asserted our mastery.  And often the failure to assert this mastery comes from an ignorance of the nature of the desire, etc.  We have been taught that these thoughts were “bad” without being told why, and we have feared them and thought them the promptings of an impure nature, or a depraved mind, etc.  This is all wrong.  These things are not “bad” of themselves—­they came to us honestly—­they are our heritage from the past.  They belong to the animal part of our nature, and were necessary to the animal in his stage of development.  We have the whole menagerie within us, but that does not mean that we should turn the beasts loose upon ourselves or others.  It was necessary for the animal to be fierce, full of fight, passionate, regardless of the rights of others, etc., but we have outgrown that stage of development, and it is ignoble for us to return to it, or to allow it to master us.