The inneity of the altruistic instinct, therefore, seems to me proved beyond the possibility of reply. It may be very energetic in some individuals, or very weak in others; in this it only resembles all instinctive tendencies. As a genus, this instinct comprises several varieties, of a general character, such as benevolence, affection, pity, etc. Finally, it is one of the elements which make up several composite emotions—veneration, admiration, sexual love, etc. It remains only to inquire in what form it first made its entry into the world, what was its earliest manifestation. With regard to this matter, there are only three possible hypotheses: those of maternal love, gregarious instinct, and the very improbable one of sexual instinct. The value of these hypotheses will be discussed later on, in the chapter on moral emotion, which is the natural complement to the present one.[150] ----- Footnote 150: The pathology of tender emotion does not offer sufficient interest to detain us. The altruistic tendency may be totally wanting in certain hypochondriac and demented patients, who, entrenched in an impenetrable egoism, have undergone a real “moral ossification.” Tenderness may become _sentimentality_ towards persons, animals (zoophily), and things (nostalgia), etc. Morel (_Études cliniques_, vol. ii. sec. 4) quotes the case of a man of high intellectual capacity, in whom the most futile and ridiculous causes excited absurd _accès de sensibilité_. “The loss of domestic animals which he had reared threw him into a state of bewilderment and convulsions of tears, as if it had been the death of his best friends. I saw him one day almost delirious with grief at the death of one of the numerous frogs which he kept in his garden.” This morbid emotivity, coinciding with congenital or acquired weakness, and with convalescence or other adynamic states, throws into relief, by its exaggerated character, that state of relaxation which is, as we have seen, one of the principal marks of the tender emotion. ----- CHAPTER V. THE EGO AND ITS EMOTIONAL MANIFESTATIONS. _Reducible to one primary fact: the feeling of strength or weakness—Positive form: type, pride. Its physiological and psychological characteristics. Its relation to joy and anger. Its evolution—Negative form: humility. Its semi-social character—Pathology, positive form: monomania of power, megalomania—Extreme negative form: suicidal tendency—Psychological problem of this practical negation of the fundamental instinct._ I.