All these impulses, accompanied by higher or lower degrees of conscious endeavour, are psychical phenomena of fundamental importance. They are not restricted to any particular stage of culture. And their coercive force is equal—nay, even superior to that of the imitative impulse, the play-impulse, and the impulse “to attract by pleasing.” If we could deduce the desire for artistic creation from the activities connected with feeling, we should here find the explanation of its universality as well as of its force. But among the manifestations described in the foregoing chapters there is none which directly leads us to the artistic activity. As against the _Spieltrieb_ theories it was objected that play never develops of itself into art, so it may now be objected, with as much reason, that all immediate or secondary emotional manifestations, however interesting they may be, give us no information on artistic manifestations. The instinctive tendency to express overmastering feeling, to enhance pleasure, and to seek relief from pain, forms the most deep-seated motive of all human activity. We can therefore derive the distinctive qualities of artistic production from this impulse only when it has been proved that art is better able than any other kind of mental function to serve and satisfy the requirements which arise from this impulse when it occurs in its purest form. That this is the case, is the fundamental hypothesis upon which this work is based. It was impossible to prove its validity as long as emotional manifestations were treated as phenomena in the psychical life of the individual. For art is in its innermost nature a social activity. In order to elucidate the connection between art-impulse and emotional activities, we must therefore examine the latter as they appear in the social relations of mankind. We do not believe that any new principles are necessary for this purpose. We need only apply to social phenomena the same laws which were found to be valid for the emotional life of the individual. As, however, the legitimacy of such a course may be questioned, we must first devote some pages to a treatment of what we may call—if the expression is allowed—the interindividual life.