[Thilly examines Trotter's definition of the herd mentality and the role of biological psychology in the successful future of society.]

[In Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War,] the first edition of which appeared in 1915, Mr. Trotter aims to show that psychology, especially when studied in relation to “other branches of biology,” is capable of becoming a guide in the actual affairs of life, and even of enabling us to foretell in a practical and useful way “some of the course of human behavior.” It is his ambition to lay the foundations for a true science of politics which will be of direct service to the statesman. The first two essays, discussing the psychology of the herd instinct, were first published in the Sociological Review in 1908 and 1909; these are followed by “Speculations upon the Human Mind in 1915” (pp. 66-213), written in 1915, in which the author tries to apply to the affairs of 1915 the principles which had taken shape ten years before. To the second edition is added a “Postscript of 1919” (pp. 214-59), in which it is shown that Mr. Trotter's anticipations with respect to the war, as based upon his biological-psychological hypothesis, have been realized, and what are our hopes and fears for the future.

Mr. Trotter offers us a biological psychology: action is to be studied rather than speech, it being a more important touchstone of motive than the actor's own views; and the whole range of animal life must be surveyed with a view to discovering what instinctive impulses may be expected to operate in man. Criteria must also be found for distinguishing such instinctive impulses from rational motives or at any rate from motives in which the instinctive factor is minimal (p. 92). Moreover, all human psychology must be the psychology of the associated man. It is true that man is prompted by the primitive instincts of self-preservation, nutrition, and sex; but of fundamental importance is the herd instinct, “specialized inherited modes of response to the needs not directly of the individual but of the herd to which he belongs” (p. 97). The responsiveness of the individual to impulses coming from the herd enables large numbers to act as one; and by the gregarious impulse instinctive sanctions may be conferred on any part of the field of belief and action. Owing to this quality of suggestibility, a very considerable proportion of men's beliefs are non-rational, not distinguishable by the subject from rational verifiable knowledge: they have the quality of obviousness, the quality of instinctive opinion, of what we may call belief in the strict sense (p. 43). Opinions which are the result of experience alone, do not possess this quality of primary certitude. Sensitiveness to the herd also has important effects upon feeling: conscience and the feelings of guilt and shame are the peculiar possessions of the gregarious animal (p. 40). Indeed, the herd is not only the source of man's opinions, his credulities, his disbeliefs, and his weaknesses, but of his altruism, his charity, his enthusiasms, and his power. It is pointed out that the gregarious instinct produces manifestations which are directly hostile to each other; thus it prompts to ever-advancing developments of altruism and yet necessarily opposes any advance in it. Society has exercised a repressive force upon new forms of altruism, and yet the instinctive impulse has triumphantly defied the terrors of society. With the appearance of the herd instinct the primitive instincts are balked at every turn by herd suggestion; “not only sex, self-preservation, nutrition are at war with the pronouncements of the herd, but altruism, the ideal of rationality, the desire for power, the yearning for protection, and other feelings which have acquired instinctive force from group suggestion” (p. 50).

This conflict, Mr. Trotter thinks, gives rise to two types of mind: the stable or resistive and the unstable. The former shows a certain relative incapacity to take experience seriously (meaning by the term “everything that comes to the individual”), a certain relative insensibility to the value of feeling and suffering, and a decided preference for herd tradition over all other sources of conduct. The mentally stable, who are still the directing class among the first-class Powers today, may have been adequate in the simple past, but it is the survival of this class in the more complex modern world that will sooner or later bring us to disaster (pp. 53ff). The unstable type of mind is an inevitable consequence of man's biological history, of the conflict forced upon man by his sensitiveness to herd suggestion on the one hand and to experience on the other; it tends to be weak in energy, especially in persistence of energy. “Such minds cannot be stimulated for long by objects adequate to normal ambition; they are apt to be sceptical in such matters as patriotism, religion, politics, social success, but the scepticism is incomplete, so that they are readily won to new causes, new religions, new quacks, and as readily fall away therefrom” (p. 59). Both these types are seriously defective and an evidence that civilization has not yet provided a medium in which the average human mind can grow underformed and to full stature. The unstable are sensitive to feeling and experience; but in society as it now is such sensitiveness leads merely to instability. The problem is to readjust the mental environment in such a way that sensitiveness may develop and confer on man the enormous advantages which it holds for him. This can be effected, says our author, only by an extension of the rational method to the whole field of experience, a process of greatest difficulty but one which must be the next great variation in man's development if that development is to continue to be an evolution and his very tenure of the earth is not to be threatened (pp. 64ff).

Mr. Trotter thinks that such a variation is suggested by the evolutionary process. There is strong reason to believe, he declares, that the process of organic evolution has not been and is not always infinitely slow and gradual; it is more than suspected that, perhaps as the result of slowly accumulated tendency or perhaps as the result of a sudden variation of structure or capacity, there have been periods of rapid change which might have been perceptible to direct observation (p. 101). He believes that the human race stands at such a “nodal point” today. Note, for example, that sympathy has come more and more into recognition as a supreme moral law. “Nature has been hinting to man in less and less ambiguous terms that altruism must become the ultimate sanction of his moral code” (p. 124). To be sure, the hint has not been taken by the common man, for one manifestation of the herd instinct is met and opposed by another. Nevertheless, man's sympathy has been extended beyond the biological unit in which he dwells, and hence tends to appear a sense of international justice, a vague feeling of being responsibly concerned in all human affairs, and the idea of ‘pacifism,’ a doctrine which is a perfectly natural development and ultimately inevitable in an animal having an unlimited appetite for experience and an indestructible inheritance of social instinct (p. 125).

The species is irrevocably committed to a certain evolutionary path by its gregarious inheritance, which means inevitable and serious disadvantages as well as enormously greater potential advantages. The latter must be discovered and developed if the race is to survive and to progress (p. 135). Mr. Trotter likes to call attention to the society of the bee, in which we find an elaborate and exact specialization of the individual and a perfect absorption of the interests of the individual in the hive; in consequence of which the whole unit is powerful, and superior in intelligence to the individual. In human affairs combined action is almost invariably less intelligent than individual action. The moral homogeneity in the society of the bee is replaced by segregation into classes in man, which is unfavorable to national unity; it is in itself dangerous since it provides the individual with a substitute for the true major unit—the nation. “To the biologist our whole intricate system of society is a means for combating the slow, almost imperceptible, pressure of Nature in the direction of a true national homogeneity” (p. 138). This national homogeneity can be attained only by a radical change in the whole human attitude towards society. No state of equilibrium can be reached in a gregarious society short of complete homogeneity; unless some new resource of Nature emerges, the outlook for man as a species is not bright. Such a new principle is the conscious direction of society by man. “Man, conscious as a species of his true status and destiny, realizing the direction of the path to which he is irrevocably committed by Nature, with a moral code based on the unshakable natural foundation of altruism, could begin to draw on those stores of power which will be opened to him by a true combination, and the rendering available in coördinated action of the maximal energy of each individual” (p. 139).

A gregarious unit informed by conscious direction represents a biological mechanism of a wholly new type (p. 162). Such a directing intelligence or group of intelligences would abandon the static view of society and adopt a more dynamic conception of statesmanship as something active, progressive, and experimental. In order to succeed it would have to possess a knowledge of man and his natural history. Mr. Trotter thinks we are able to distinguish three fairly distinct trends of evolution in the gregarious types: the aggressive gregariousness of the wolf and the dog; the protective gregariousness of the sheep and the ox; and the more complex social structure of the bee and the ant, the socialized gregariousness. The latter is said to be the goal of man's development: a transcendental union with his fellows is the destiny of the human individual, and it is the attainment of this towards which the constantly growing altruism of man is directed (p. 167). No nation has ever made a conscious choice. The socialized type may now be regarded as the standard type which has been established by countless experiments, as that which alone can satisfy and absorb the moral as well as the intellectual desires of modern man (p. 169). Owing to the undemocratic organization of Germany she could not seek national inspiration by any development of the socialized type; her rulers were compelled to lapse into the lupine state, to seek new ideals, new motives, and new sources of moral power in a reappearance of the society of the wolf. In his essay of 1915 Mr. Trotter speaks of a deeply rooted instinctive conflict of attitude between the English and German feeling which almost amounts to a specific difference in the biological scale,—a conflict between socialized gregariousness and aggressive gregariousness. “It is,” he says, “as if Nature had set herself to try out in her workshop the strength of the socialized and aggressive types.” “To the socialized peoples she has entrusted the task of proving that her old faith in cruelty and blood is at last an anachronism. To try them she has given substance to the creation of a nightmare, and they must destroy this werewolf or die” (p. 175). Germany is the very type of a perfected aggressive herd, while England is perhaps the most complete example of a socialized herd, having taken as her model the bee. “She has stolidly, even stupidly, and always in a grossly practical spirit, held herself to the task of shaping a society in which free men could live and yet be citizens. She has had no theory of herself, no consciousness of her destiny, no will to power. … And after a thousand years she seems as far as ever from her goal. Her society is irregular, disorganized, incoördinate, split into classes at war with one another, weighted at one end with poverty, squalor, ignorance, and disease, weighted at the other by ignorance, prejudice, and corpulent satisfaction. Nevertheless, her patience is no more shaken by what she is lectured upon as failure than was her composure by what she was assured was imperial success. She is no less bound by her fate than is Germany, and must continue on her path until she reaches its infinitely remoter goal” (p. 202).

In the “Postscript of 1919” Mr. Trotter shows how the events verified his hypothesis regarding what the Germans and the English would do in the war, and holds that his general theory has met the supreme test of scientific validity, which is foresight. In conclusion he again emphasizes the need of scientific statecraft as an indispensable factor in further development. Such a statecraft would recognize how fully man is an instinctive being and how his mental vigor and stability depend entirely upon instinctive expression being adequate. It would understand that the social instinct itself is as deep and powerful as any. The human intellect, however, is the element that most clearly gives the impression of a new and intrusive factor. “The instinctive side of man, with its derivatives, such as his morals, his altruism, and his aspirations falls very easily into line with the rest of the natural order. … The intellect, however, brings with it a capacity for purpose as distinct from and additional to desire, and this does apparently introduce a factor virtually new to the biological series” (p. 255ff). The author does not look to any existing institution or class to inaugurate the era of intelligent direction of society; if it does happily occur, it will come “through a slow elevation of the general standard of consciousness up to the level at which will be possible a kind of free masonry and syndicalism of the intellect” (p. 259).

As we have seen, Mr. Trotter believes that the salvation of society depends upon knowledge of the associated man, and that this can be gained only through a biological psychology. Such a psychology, he holds, must recognize man's status as an animal and the undiminished vigor of instinct in him. “Practical understanding and foresight of man's behavior are attained in proportion as this hypothesis of the complete ‘naturalness’ of man is adhered to” (p. 243). There is no objection to recognizing man's status as an animal, but is it not at least equally important to remember his status as a man? Mr. Trotter's explanation of human life in terms of instinct and of intelligence as a mere masking, transforming, and directing of instinct tells only a part, and not the most significant part of the human story. He himself regards the intellect as a new and intrusive factor in the biological series, which brings with it “a capacity for purpose as distinct from and additional to desire;” how, then, can a biological psychology understand and foresee man's behavior by assuming the complete naturalness of man? However it may be with the lower animals, the intellect is a function of the individual human mind, a function the presence of which leads to the balking of instinct, even of the all-powerful herd instinct, and makes the simplified theory untenable. That this is so is shown by the development of Mr. Trotter's own thought. Intelligence is for him the hoped-for director and savior of society, the factor upon which the fate of civilization will ultimately depend. Biological evolution if left to itself will end in disaster for mankind; unless reason asserts itself against instinct, we are lost: “society can be saved only by the interposition of intellect.” Now the conscious directing intelligence needed to divert society from its biological path and to set it upon the right track is already working in the individual, for example very efficiently in Mr. Trotter; and there is hope that such intelligence may be applied to the government of society as is now employed in conducting the ordinary affairs of life. A “new resource of Nature” has already appeared in the evolutionary process, something not reducible to instinct, and that is human intelligence with its purposes and ideals. We cannot therefore understand completely the behavior of man as individual or social without giving due weight to this factor. It is to be added in this connection that objection will also be raised, even by biological psychologists, to Mr. Trotter's list of instincts, and likewise to his enlarged conception of the herd instinct, which plays such an important rôle in his book: it is made to include among its manifestations a whole host of things: altruism, morality, in fact everything that develops in group life. It is true that social life is the soil upon which the human soul grows, that outside of it there would be no human being; but this does not justify us in conceiving the gregarious instinct, or “an animal's proneness to live together with other members of its species,” as Westermarck defines it, in the all-embracing sense in which our author uses the term.

In spite, however, of Mr. Trotter's insistence on the biological-psychological method, he indulges in philosophical reflections upon the evolutionary process and may even be accused of reading his ethical values into it. He regards socialized gregariousness as the goal of man's development—it is the destiny of the human individual. Nature has been hinting to man that altruism must become the ultimate sanction of his moral code. The socialized type is the standard type which has been established by countless experiments. Nature has already made a great experiment in the war; two great types have been pitted against each other, and the blundering undirected socialized type has defeated the aggressive wolf type whose leaders had a conscious plan that did not heed the hints of Nature. We may fairly question the grounds for this ethical interpretation of Nature, particularly in view of our author's statements that Nature also opposes any advance in altruism, that our whole system of society is a means for combatting the pressure of Nature in the direction of a true national homogeneity, and that unless there is conscious intelligent direction by statesmen (holding Mr. Trotter's ethical and political ideals), man will probably prove to be but one more of Nature's failures. We may fairly ask which of the conflicting tendencies in the evolutionary process represents Nature's real purpose or rather hint, and indeed whether she is hinting anything at all. However that may be, the great factor in the situation is man with his reason and ideals; it is to him after all that Mr. Trotter looks to switch the evolutionary process upon the moral track. Mr. Trotter is awaiting a new resource of Nature, “a gregarious unit informed by conscious direction;” but this can come only through man ‘informed’ by reason and ethical purpose, and such a man is here. The behavior of the wolf, the sheep, and the bee we may be able to explain by instinct; the history of man and his civilization we cannot understand unless we take into account the “new and intrusive factor,” the human intellect “with its capacity for purpose as distinct from and additional to desire.” If it were not for this factor, there could be no such thing as biological psychology, and Mr. Trotter could not have written his book.