Note 36 — Chapter XL · MARRIAGE

I have been blamed for making an illegitimate use of the word “instinct” (Crawley, The Mystic Rose p. 446). But if, as Dr. Ellis says, “an instinct is fundamentally a more or less complicated series of reflexes set in action by a definite stimulus,” or as Mr. Crawley puts it (op. cit. p. 446), instinct “has nothing in its content except response of function to environment,” then the aversion I speak of may certainly be called an instinct.