THE SELF-PRESERVATION INSTINCT
The self-preservation instinct appears to our consciousness under the
guise of that deep-rooted clinging to life, that desire to live, which
characterises every living thing. It is this instinct, functioning
simply in simply organised creatures, that leads them to seek food and
avoid danger, and also causes that complex organism, a civilised man,
to carry out the elaborate activities of “earning a living.”
It is essentially a selfish instinct, for it leads the individual
to regard his own welfare alone, and to consider others only so far
as their existence is essential to his. For instance, shooting and
hunting during the breeding season are forbidden by law, not out of
consideration for the hunted creatures, but because the continuation of
their species is useful to us.
Its influence, however, is often modified by the two other great
instincts whose influence may become so strong under certain
circumstances as to induce a man not only to disregard his own
interests, but even to lay down his life for others.
In many varieties of animals, however, only two instincts are present,
self-preservation and reproduction; but in animals that are associated
together into herds or packs, a third instinct is developed, the social
instinct. When this occurs, the functioning of the self-preservation
instinct is greatly modified; the individual no longer owes his
existence solely to his power to cope with his environment, but depends
mainly upon his ability to keep his place in the herd; and upon the
social organisation devolves the task of adaptation and survival. The
strayed sheep is soon hunted down, the solitary wolf starves.
This is equally true of man, who is also a social animal. The misery of
Central Europe, in the breakdown of social organisation following upon
the war, has shown us the helplessness of the individual human being
and his complete dependence upon herd life.
The self-preservation instinct and its ruthless functioning under the
law of natural selection has furnished a theme to many moralists and
sociologists of the materialistic type, but they are apt to forget that
the socialisation of humanity has changed the nature of the problem;
the unit of survival is no longer the individual, but the social
organisation of which he is a member. The law of self-preservation
has given place to the law of group preservation, and the centre of
psychic gravity is shifted. The importance of this point cannot be
over-estimated in practical psychology.
By some psychologists the instinct of nutrition is distinguished from
that of self-preservation, but for all practical purposes they are
identical.
It must be borne in mind, in applying the standards of psychology
to the human character, that in the more highly developed types of
human being the self-preservation instinct is not fulfilled simply
by the continuance of physical life; there is self-preservation of
the personality as well as of the bodily existence, and unless a man
has adequate scope for self-expression and self-development, he will
experience that sense of incompleteness and imperfection characteristic
of the repression of an instinct.