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Choosing his title from a phrase in a play by Beaumont and Fletcher, 'Death is but a game that must be lost', Stokes discusses his belief that there is an intrinsic opposition between basic drives. He follows Freud's life and death instinct theories in so far as there exists a pull toward death that antedates life and the life instinct. 'It cannot be an instinct itself in the ordinary sense—something evolved in the interest of self and species preservation. It can therefore hardly be conceived except as a kind of psychic correlate of entropy—something prior to the instincts proper which were presumably evolved to counteract it.' Anxiety is caused by fear of loss but this, in turn and in part, is based on fear of the instinctual pull toward death. Stokes does not derive aggression from the silent workings of the death instinct, but sees it as an instinctual force in the service of Eros, warding off the impulse toward death. 'I have found it necessary to imagine that in all life-giving and life-preserving responses there is mingled an impulse, however faint, of refusal [to die], in virtue of which no creature needs to be taught about death.'