The deeds of men and women proceed from certain radical elements of their nature, some evidently noble, others, when looked at askew, apparently ignoble. These elements are classed as instinctive. We are less intelligent than we think. Reason may occupy the throne, but the foundations upon which that throne is based are not of her making. To change the image, reason is the pilot, not the gale or the engine. She does not determine the goal, but only the course to that goal. We are what our nature makes us; our likes and our dislikes determine our acts, and we are guided to our self-determined ends by means of our intelligence. More often, indeed, we use our intelligence merely to justify to ourselves the likes and dislikes, the action and the inaction, which our instinctive tendencies have determined. Many of our natural instincts, impulses, and emotions bear only remotely upon our present inquiry; as, for instance, the instinct of flight and the emotion of fear, the instinct of curiosity and the emotion of wonder, the instinct of pugnacity and the emotion of anger. Certain others, however, are not merely radical and permanent parts of our nature, but determine human existence, the greater part of its failures and successes, its folly and wisdom, its history and its destiny. Two of these--the parental and racial instincts--we must carefully consider here, and also, very briefly, a supposed third, the filial instinct. I am inclined to question whether such a specific entity as the filial instinct exists at all; it is rather, I believe, a product, by transmutation, of the parental instinct which, in its various forms and potencies and through the tender emotion which is its counterpart in the affective realm of our natures, is the noblest, finest, and most promising ingredient of our constitution. _Instinct and Emotion._--We must be sure, in the first place, that we have a sound idea of what we mean by the word "instinct." It is absurd, for instance, to speak of "acquiring a political instinct"--or any other. That is the most erroneous possible use of the word. An instinct is eminently something which cannot be "acquired"; it is native if anything is native; as native as the nose or the backbone. Instincts may be developed or repressed; it is the great mark of man that in him they may even be transmuted--but _acquired_ never.