ABSTRACT
Passing now to the participative instincts which we call sexual and social, we have to do with the peculiar influence exerted by one creature upon another of its own kind. As thus broadly defined, social influence includes the attitude and the behavior of sexual attraction; yet it would probably be incorrect to speak of the instinct of sex as though it were a subsidiary form derived from the more general attitude and behavior of gregariousness, because many species are not markedly gregarious, whereas all higher forms of animal must mate for regeneration. But when we recall our derivation of instinct from an undifferentiated response of the “all-or-none” type, we see that it is unnecessary to assign priority to any one of the three types, individual, gregarious, or regenerative. Instead, it is far safer to accept the general proposition that both the integration and the differentiation which characterize each of these responses take place together, the particular species in its particular environment determining how much development and what special qualities of attitude and behavior shall be worked into the pattern of the instinct. Prior to all manifestations of sex and social influence there is a stage of development in which individuality and social control are implicit rather than explicit, and it is only by maturation working in and through experience that the individual is thrown up, as it were, against the environment, to which it reacts. At the same time and in the same way, the environment separates itself into those influences which signify likeness of kind from those which signify alien or neutral influences. We must suppose, however, a special innate interest in the behavior of one’s own kind— at least at the mating season among those members of a species that require conjugation for reproduction. But this interest before it becomes a specific attraction between individuals of opposite sex is vague and general.
