cts into new channels--meets this special difficulty, for it
does not depend upon the chaining of the instinct. It actually makes use
of the instinct. And the more important to the race the newer reference
of the instinct's functioning turns out to be, the more certain is it to
replace the original reference. If the new mode of functioning brings
marked advantage that is lost by reversion to the earlier manifestation
of the instinct, so that such a reversion to this earlier manifestation
is a detriment to the race, then the change is likely to become a
permanent one.

No better example of this second mode of change of an instinct's
functioning can be found than in the very existence of war itself. The
basic instinct is one that led the savage man to fight to protect
himself or to gain something for himself by aggressive attack. War has
come into being as the result of a transfer of the functioning of this
instinct, which at first had only an individualistic reference, so that
it has come to have a clan or national reference. The early man found he
could not have success as an individual unless he joined with his
fellow-men in defense and aggression; and that meant war.

And note that this transfer of reference of the expression of this
fighting instinct soon became so important to the race that reversion to
its primal individualistic reference had to be inhibited. Aggressive
attack by an individual upon another of his own clan or nation
necessarily tended to weaken the social unit and to reduce its strength
in its protective and aggressive wars; and thus such attacks by
individuals came to be discountenanced and finally in large measure
repressed.

Here, it will be observed, the fighting instinct of the individual has
not been obliterated; it has not even been bound with chains; but its
modes of expression have been altered to have racial significance, and
to have so great a significance in this new relation that reversion to
its primary form of expression has become a serious obstacle to racial
advance.

So it appears after all that, although instincts can rarely if ever be
obliterated, their manifestations may be so altered as to give the
animal quite new characteristics. And this means that if the
characteristics which we describe as the expressions of man's fighting
instincts could be so changed that these expressions were inhibited or
turned into quite new channels, the man would no longer be describable
as a