far as things are different, an automatic habit becomes a handicap
instead of a help.

This having to act under changed conditions is exactly the trouble
with the reproductive instinct. Under civilization, conditions have
changed but the instinct has not. It is trying to act as it always
has acted, but civilized man wills otherwise. The change that has come
is not in the physical, external environment, but in man himself and
in the social environment which he has created. There is in man an
onward urge toward new and better things. Side by side with the desire
to live as he always has lived, there is a desire to make new
adaptations which are for the advancement of the whole race-life.
Besides the natural wish to take his desires as he finds them, there
is also the wish to modify them and use them for higher and more
socially useful ends.

As the race has found through long experience that monogamy is to be
preferred to promiscuous mating; that the highest interests of life
are fostered by loyalty to the institution of the family; that the
careful rearing of several children rather than the mere production of
many is in the long run to be desired; and that a single standard of
morality is practicable; so society has established for its members a
standard which is in direct opposition to the immeasurable urge of the
past. To make matters worse, there have at the same time grown up in
many communities a standard of living and an economic competition
which still further limit the size of the family and the satisfaction
of the reproductive impulse.

=The Perpetual Feud.= There thus arises the strategic struggle
between that which the race has found good in the past and that which