n it rightly or deal with it rightly until we
indeed perceive what the business of this instinct is, and regard as
somewhat less than worthy of mankind any other attitude towards it. Of
course there are men who live to eat, yet the instincts concerned with
eating exist not for the titillation of the palate but for the
sustenance of life; and, likewise, though there are those who live to
gratify this instinct, it exists not for sensory gratification, but for
the life of this world to come. Can we not find a term which shall
express this truth, shall be inoffensive and so doubly suitable for the
purposes of our cause?

The term reproductive instinct is often employed. It is vastly superior
to sexual instinct, because it does refer to that for which the instinct
exists; but it hints at reproduction, and though Mrs. Grundy can
tolerate the idea of parenthood, reproduction she cannot away with. We
cannot speak of it as the parental instinct, because that term is
already in employment to express the best thing and the source of all
other good things in us. Further, the sexual instinct and the parental
instinct are quite distinct, and it would be disastrous to run the
possibility of confusing them--one the source of all the good, and the
other the source of much of the evil, though the necessary condition of
all the good and evil, in the world.

For some years past, in writing and speaking, I have employed and
counselled the employment of the term "the racial instinct." This seems
to meet all the needs. It avoids the tabooed adjective, and if it fails
to allude at all to the fact of sex, who needs reminding thereof? It is
formed from the term race, which prudery permits, and it expresses once
and for all that for which the instinct exists--not the individual at
all, but the race which is to come after him. Doubtless its satisfaction
may be satisfactory for him or her, but that does not testify to
Nature's interest in individuals, but rather to her skill in insuring
that her supreme concern shall not be ignored, even by those who least
consciously concern themselves with it.

These are perhaps the three most important instances of the verbal, or
perhaps more than verbal, issues that arise in the fight with prudery.
One has tried to show that they are not really in the nature of
concessions to Mrs. Grundy, but that the terms commended are in point of
fact of more intrinsic worth than those to which she objects. Other
instance