[Chapman praises the construction of The Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War.]

Wilfred Trotter, the great surgeon who helped to save George the Fifth's life, died in November 1939, aged sixty-seven. His outstanding book, published in 1916, falls historically and bibliographically into three parts; (1) the first two essays in the book (pp. 1-66 of the first edition); (2) the main part; (3) the “Postscript” of 1919.

(1) In 1905 (or thereabouts) Trotter wrote an essay which he called “Herd Instinct and its Bearing upon the Psychology of Civilized Man.” The essay was designed as one; but because of its bulk it was abridged, and was published in The Sociological Review, July 1908 and January 1909, as two articles, “Herd Instinct and its Bearing on the Psychology of Civilized Man” and “Sociological Applications of the Psychology of Herd Instinct.”

(2) The main section (pp. 66-213) was written, evidently at heat, in the autumn of 1915 and published, with a revised version of the earlier articles, by Fisher Unwin in February 1916. The Preface occupies pp. 5-8.

(3) The post-war “Postscript” (pp. 214-259) and a second Preface (p. 8) first appeared in 1919.

This was the fourth impression (the book was twice reprinted in 1917); later reprints were in 1920, 1921, 1922, 1923, 1924, 1926, 1930. Then comes a significant gap. The ‘thirties had forgotten the hard lessons of the past and Trotter's book was neglected. The book went out of print in 1937 and was not reprinted until 1940, when two impressions appeared. The total number of copies printed to that date was about 20,000. The present publishers are Messrs. Benn.

I turn now to the pre-history of the three sections.

(1) Of the first section there survive: (a) large parts of a manuscript of c. 1905, differing widely from the later version; (b) the typescript which was copy for The Sociological Review articles; (c) offprints of those articles, corrected (but not very substantially) in 1915 for the book; (d) page-proofs, see below.

(2) The original Preface and the main text exist in (a) the MS., which is complete except for the paragraphs on pp. 209-211 of 1916 (see below); (b) typescript; (c) paged proofs. These are hardly at all corrected, and it is safe to assume that an earlier set existed, probably in galley. The page-proofs, however, are not identical with the edition of 1916. The latter part especially Trotter must have corrected a good deal at or near the eleventh hour. In particular the semifinal section (the seven paragraphs which begin on p. 209 of 1916 and later editions, and end with the rule on p. 211) was substituted for a shorter passage of three paragraphs.

(3) Of the second Preface and of the Postscript nothing has survived. But of the Index, which was first added in 1919, a typescript of part (Age—Conscience) exists, which is on notepaper engraved “101 Harley Street.” This shows that the Index, which is very brief, was made by Trotter or under his supervision, not by the publisher. (The typed index is rough; it is not accurately alphabetized, and the wording is not the same as that of the print.)

The manuscripts have recently been given to the Bodleian, through the Friends of the Bodleian, by the author's son. They are on small quarto paper, in a neat current hand, and will repay the curiosity of future students. There are many corrections made current calamo, and not a few passages which were deleted before the typescript was made. Some irregularities in pagination reveal afterthoughts.

Trotter preserved also 56 leaves of rejected manuscript written (as internal evidence shows) in 1915 and representing his first essays towards the “Speculations” which form the bulk of his book. These tentative fragments—for they are short and discontinuous, the folio-numbers running from 1 to 176 with many gaps—do not add much to our knowledge. There is, however, one passage (173-176) which, though its general tenor will be familiar to readers of Instincts of the Herd, has some novelty. On p. 173 is added in pencil, “Not included in the book.” The text follows.

173

and a consequently progressive evolution of sympathy and community of feeling is the one method by which perfect solidarity and moral unity can be attained. Complete equality in moral value is the goal of such a progressive development, and if an approach to that is impossible solidarity of a permanent type cannot be reached. There will necessarily be meanwhile a tendency to the obliteration or at any rate a reduction in the reality of the distinctions produced by social segregation.

Germany however is of all civilized states the one in which social segregation is most rigid and most absolute. It was impossible therefore for the natural line of progress in national union to be followed by her. The least relaxation in the moral distinctions which separated her classes was impossible. She therefore had to decline upon a method of securing national unity out of the line indicated by nature and therefore of necessity less efficient and less resistant to disintegration.

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From this moment an element of impermanence is visible in the imposing structure of the German Empire. Forty years of unparalleled success have in no way served to strengthen the weakness at the foundation and have merely increased the weight which is piled upon it. If the analysis of the strength of the gregarious unit attempted here is sound there can be little doubt that, after what course no one can tell, sooner or later and whatever be the result of the war, this weakness must bring the whole fabric to the ground. Germany has left the path of evolution, her immense strength will hew for her a road until its sources fail and, staggering and smiting (?) wildly she is brought to the ground.

The rigidity of her social segregation compelled her to seek her sources of national unity in passions of the predaceous type—impulses which potent as they appear to superficial examination, lack the consolidating power of the altruistic motives. She has modelled herself after the wolf pack and has found it fatally easy to teach her citizens the ferocity and greed, the arrogance, the insensitiveness, and the blood lust of the wolf. In this she has been helped by her immense worldly success, by the docility of her people, and possibly by a specific inclination in the desired direction already possessed by them. The last point one cannot do more than tentatively suggest; the unsavoury reputation the Prussian soldier has borne for at least a hundred years is some evidence in justification of it.

It may be objected however that the wolf is a genuinely gregarious animal and as such may furnish an ugly but none the less sound example biologically, an aggressively minded nation, frankly predaceous in its ideals could not perhaps choose a better model.

Man however displays so many of the characters of protective as well as of aggressive gregariousness, and is so obviously in his behaviour allied to the sheep, the horse, and the ox as well as to the wolf and the dog that it cannot be supposed that his psychological needs are to be satisfied by the exclusive cultivation of the character of the latter group.

The aggressive gregariousness of the wolf while singularly adapted to the attitude of attack and [sic] far from being equally adapted to the defensive. The life of civilized man can never be an unmixed course of aggression; there must be periods of relaxation, of failure, of depression, of the necessity for defense and for these the wolf ideal provides no resources.

Lupine types of society have existed in the past; they have always been transitory, and however successful they have been in war have tended to be absorbed by the peoples they have con-

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quered and to perish from among the recognizable nations of men.

There is therefore a good deal of evidence that the wolf ideal is not one upon which a permanent society can be founded or one which can yield the forms of national solidarity which are most resistant to disintegration by the checks and disasters from which no human organization however nearly perfect is exempt. The lupine type is so perfectly reproduced in German ideals and behaviour that there can be no question of its being other than an instinctive response. No government however absolute and however fully in possession of all the sources of suggestion could impose an attitude so uniform on a whole people unless the appeal were to a well defined instinctive mechanism from which a constant result was to be obtained.

A somewhat cursory collation of the main MS., that of 1915, with the first edition has revealed a number of places in which it is certain or probable that the print does not represent Trotter's intention, or at least not his original intention. These passages, of no great intrinsic importance, are of interest to the textual critic as illustrating the kinds of error made by typists and compositors, and of the tendency of authors either to overlook the error or to correct it without reference to the MS. I would repeat what I have said elsewhere: that authors hardly ever check their proofs by their MS.; they rely on their memories.

References are to the current (1940) edition, which differs very slightly from that of 1916.

P. 96, l. 7: expression is a misprint; both MS. and typescript have impression.

P. 97, l. 10: directly is a misprint; both MS. and typescript have direct.

P. 105, l. 2 ff.: excluded is the typist's misreading of extruded.

P. 107, l. 11: experience (an awkward repetition) is the typist's error for experiment.

P. 114, l. 2 ff.: the MS. is obscured by a transposition, and after the word philosophy the typist omitted of his politics and penetrates even his science to a considerable extent.

P. 128, l. 20: the typist omitted great before size.

P. 134, l. 16: the typist omitted real before biological, perhaps by haplography (real = biol).

P. 142, l. 16: Trotter wrote man is acting as a member of a minor herd, as a member, etc.; the typist omitted as a member of a minor herd by homœoarcton.

P. 167, l. 19: Trotter wrote are also. This the typist misread as make (in T.'s hand the equations m = re and k = ls are not difficult. He writes a good hand, and the number of “minims” is nearly always right; but the minims are very similar). Trotter corrected the typescript with his pen to are.

P. 177, l. 10 ff.: the typist omitted only before reflect.

P. 178, l. 2 ff.: Trotter wrote us thus, and the typist reproduced it. The pageproofs have us. Since the first proof is missing, we cannot be sure whether we are dealing with a misprint or an author's correction.

P. 188, l. 8 ff.: the typist omitted grasped after consciously.

P. 189, l. 13: the typist misread the political for her political.

P. 193, l. 3 ff.: the typist wrote weary for wearying.

P. 207, last line: Trotter wrote haslong with a single stroke of the pen and with an exaggeratedly long g. It might have been foreseen that his typist would read slong as slowly, and accordingly would read ha as has.

Since, as I have said, the first proof is missing, we are not to draw the conclusion that a typist is more prone to error than a compositor. But she almost certainly is; not only because, in general, she is perhaps a less accurate person (though it is well known that she makes a better typist than her brother), but because the compositor, even when he is working a mechanical keyboard, has to work rather slower; that is partly because he has to space his line more precisely, partly because he is aware that the proof will be read (not by the author) word for word with the MS.