reaches its finest and highest expression in altruism, self-sacrifice, chivalry and devotion. Many of the higher animals evidence these traits, as well as human beings at their best.
While sex expression becomes more specialized in the higher animals, and more refined in human beings, unless debased in the latter by lustful degeneracy, its latent influence is nevertheless always in evidence. For instance, the child through the whole period of life is being prepared gradually by nature for the florescence which takes place at the adolescent stage and which normally culminates in the full sexual development of adulthood.
THE TWO PARAMOUNT URGES
Hunger and the Sex Impulse. There are two paramount impulses which dominate organic beings. Life is dynamic, the expression of energy. The constant expenditure of energy implies the need for a steady, ever available source of nutrition. Hence, the primary problem throughout all forms of life is and always has been to take care of the food requirements. Under certain conditions, and particularly in the case of primitive man, the struggle for food was nearly always a pressing one, with occasional feasts when the fortunes of the chase broke well. Naturally, this ever pressing need consumed a vast amount of energy—much more than is now required for the satisfaction of the bare instinct of hunger.
Under modern conditions, there is for the great mass of people also a constant economic struggle, but the object is more diversified, and includes many refinements and cultural accessories that have become virtual necessities with the development of civilized habits.
After the universal urge of hunger, which is an expression of the instinct of self-preservation, there comes the quite
