At the Natural History Museum, South Kensington, close to the entrance,
you can buy for the sum of fourpence a most fascinating little book on
_The Fossil Remains of Man_. It is official and, I presume,
authoritative. And it tells how, in very remote times, before there was
any South Kensington Museum, or any England, or, I believe, in the
strict sense, any Europe, there lived in swampy forests in various parts
of the world, troops of little lemur-like tree-dwellers. They were, I
suppose, rather like small monkeys, but much prettier. They had nice
fur, good prehensile tails, and effective teeth. Then there fell upon
them, or some of them, a momentous change, a hypertrophy or
over-development of one part of the body. This kind of special increase,
the author tells us, seldom stops till it becomes excessive. With the
lemurs it was the brain which began to grow. It grew and grew, both in
size and in complexity. The rest of the body suffered in consequence.
The fur became mangy and disappeared. The prehensile tails wasted away.
The teeth ceased to be useful as weapons. And in the end, Ladies and
Gentlemen, after incalculable ages, here we are!
Now these lemurs had certain instincts and habits of life. Let us define
our terms. By an instinct I mean, following the exposition of Dr.
McDougall, an innate psycho-physical disposition to notice objects of a
certain class, to feel about them in certain ways and to act
correspondingly. They would notice an enemy, hate him and spit at him;
notice an object that was good to eat, desire it and eat it. They made
love, they protected their young, they defended their group against
other groups. And primitive man inherited, with modifications, their
instincts, and we have similarly inherited his. Some of them were
generally desirable, and are consequently admitted and encouraged;
others were generally undesirable, and have been habitually denied and
suppressed in our conscious life, only to break out in dreams, in fits
of insanity or passion, or more subtly in self-deception. But,
suppressed or unsuppressed, man’s instincts form the normal motive force
in his life, though the direction of that force may from time to time be
controlled by conscious reason.
From this point of view, I wish to consider what has happened to us in
England since August 4, 1914. For that something has happened is quite
clear. There is an inward change, which some people praise and some
blame. There is a greater seriousness in life, less complaining, less
obvious selfishness, and more hardihood. There is a universal power of
self-sacrifice whose existence we never suspected before: on every side
young men are ready to go and face death for their country, and parents
are ready to let them go. There is more brotherhood and more real
democracy; and at the same time, a quality of which we stood in much
need, far more discipline and obedience.
This makes a very strong case on the good side. Yet, on the other, you
will find generally that reformers and idealists are disheartened.
Friends of peace, of women’s causes, of legal reform, of the mitigation
of cruelty to animals, are all reduced to something like impotence. One
hears the statement that ‘there is no Christianity left’. The very
increase of power and devotion which has occurred is directed, so some
say, to the service of evil. The same process has taken place in
Germany, and has there apparently reached a higher degree of intensity.
To leave aside its more insane manifestations, a Danish friend sends me
the following quotation from a German religious poet, much admired in
evangelical circles: ‘We have become the nation of wrath.... We
accomplish the almighty will of God, and will vengefully wreak the
demands of His righteousness on the godless, filled with sacred fury....
We are bound together like a scourge of punishment whose name is War. We
flame like lightning. Our wounds blossom like rose-gardens at the gate
of heaven. Thanks be to Thee, God Almighty! Thy wrathful awakening does
away with our sins. As the iron in Thy hand we smite all our enemies on
the cheekbone.’ Another poet, a clergyman, prays that the Germans may
not fall into the temptation of carrying out the judgements of God’s
wrath with too great mildness. Now the state of mind which these poems
reveal—and I dare say they could be paralleled or nearly paralleled in
England—is compatible with great self-sacrifice and heroism, but it is
certainly not what one would call wholesome.
In order to understand this change as a whole, it is necessary to
analyse it; and I would venture to suggest that, in the main, it
consists simply in an immense stimulation of the Herd or Group
Instincts, though of course other instincts are also involved. For the
present, let us neither praise nor blame, but simply analyse. At the end
we may have some conclusion to draw.
Man is by nature a gregarious animal and is swayed by Herd Instincts, as
a gregarious animal must be; but of course they are greatly modified.
Outside mankind we find these instincts in various grades of
development. They show strongest in ants and bees, with their communal
life of utter self-sacrifice, utter ruthlessness. I see that Professor
Julian Huxley, in his book on _The Individual in the Animal Kingdom_,
doubts whether among ants the single ant or the whole ant-heap is really
the individual. I remember a traveller in northern Australia narrating
how he once saw a procession of white ants making towards his camp, and,
to head them off, sprinkled across their line of advance a train of
bluestone, or sulphate of copper. And instead of turning aside, each ant
as he came up threw himself on the horribly corrosive stuff and devoured
it till he fell dead; and presently the main army marched on over a line
consisting no longer of bluestone, but of dead ants.
The instinct is less overpowering in cattle, horses, wolves, &c. Certain
wild cattle in South Africa are taken by Galton as types of it. In
ordinary herd life they show no interest in each other, much less any
mutual affection. But if one is taken out of the herd and put by himself
he pines, and when he is taken back to the herd he shoves and nozzles to
the very centre of it. Wolves, again, will fight for their pack, but not
from mutual affection. If the pack is not threatened they will readily
fight and kill one another. A dog in domesticated conditions is
especially interesting. He has been taken away from his pack, but he
retains his fundamental habits. He barks to call his mates on every
emergency, even if barking frightens his prey away. He sniffs at
everything when he is out walking, because he has wanted so long to
smell his way home to the lost pack. His real pack is now artificial,
grouped round his master. It will take in his master’s friends and
house-companions, including quite possibly various animals such as cats
and rabbits. Meantime he rejects the strange man and cheerfully kills
the strange cat or rabbit. His delightful friendliness and sympathy are
of course due to his herd habits. A cat has no herd. She has always
‘walked alone’.
Now Man satisfies his Herd Instinct by many groups, mainly artificial.
Like the dog, he may take in other animals. In ordinary life the group
of which he is most conscious is his social class, especially if it is
threatened in any way. Clergymen, land-owners, teachers, coal-miners
tend, as the phrase is, to hang together. They have the same material
interests and the same habits of life. Again, there may be local groups,
counties or villages; or groups dependent on ideas and beliefs, a
church, a party in politics, a clique in art. But of all groups, far the
strongest when it is once roused is the Nation, and it is the Nation
that is roused now.
Normally men of science form a group, so do theologians. But now they
feel no longer as men of science or theologians, they feel as Englishmen
or Germans. I see that the Archbishop of Munich has expressed a doubt
whether ‘any appreciable number of Belgian priests’ have been
‘irregularly killed’ by German soldiers. There is an absence of class
feeling about this remark which few clergymen could attain in peace
time. I see that even the German Jesuits are sharply differing from the
rest of the Jesuits, an Order famous throughout history for its extreme
cohesion and discipline. The only bodies that have at all asserted
themselves against the main current of feeling in the various nations
have been a few isolated Intellectuals and some small groups of
International Socialists. It was easier for these last, since with them
Internationalism was not only a principle but a habit, and besides they
were accustomed in ordinary life to be against their own government and
to differ from their neighbours.
In the main, what has happened is very simple. In all wild herds we find
that the strength of this instinct depends upon the need for it. As soon
as the Herd is in danger, the Herd Instinct flames up in passion to
defend it. The members of the Herd first gather together, and then fight
or fly. This is what has happened to us. Our Herd is in danger, and our
natural Herd Instinct is aflame. Let us notice certain different ways in
which it operates.
First, the Herd unites. Wolves who are quarrelling cease when menaced by
a common enemy. Cattle and horses draw together. We in England find
ourselves a band of brothers; and the same of course occurs in Germany.
Indeed, it probably occurs even more strongly there, since all herd
emotions there tend to be passionately expressed and officially
encouraged. Those who are ordinarily separate have drawn together.
Canada, Australia, India, even Crown colonies like Fiji, seem to be
feeling a common emotion. A year or so ago one might see in the
advertisements of employment in Canadian newspapers the words ‘No
English need apply’. You would not find them now. Even the United States
have drawn close to us. Of course in part this is due to the goodness of
our cause, to sympathy with the wrongs of Belgium, and the like. Most
neutrals are somewhat on our side. But Herd Instinct is clearly present;
or why do the German-Americans side with the Germans?
Even those who are ordinarily at strife have drawn together. Before the
war our whole people seemed at strife with itself, how far from natural
causes and how far from definite intrigue on the part of Germany history
will doubtless show. We had the Militant Suffragists, we had an utterly
abnormal number of strikes and a great deal of rebellion against Trade
Union leaders, we had trouble in India, terrific threats in Ireland.
And, on the whole, these various enemies have now ‘made it up’. Of
course it was much harder for them than for those who were merely
separated by distance. There were serious obstacles in the way; habits
of anger, habits of suspicion; often the mere routine of party attack
which comes natural to small groups in strong opposition to a
government. As a journalist said to me: ‘I mostly keep the truce all
right; but sometimes, when one is tired and has nothing particular to
say, one drops into abusing McKenna.’
The chief problem that arises in this general drawing together is the
problem of fidelity to the Lesser Herd. Sometimes there is no clash
between the lesser and the greater. A man’s emotion towards his family,
his associates, his native district, causes as a rule no clash. On the
contrary, it is usually kindled and strengthened by some sort of analogy
or some emotional infection. The emotions of loyalty, of love to one’s
neighbours and surroundings, are all stirred; and the family emotions in
particular, being themselves very ancient and deep-rooted in our
instinctive nature, have grown stronger together with those of the Herd.
But often there is a clash. For instance, an individual who has recently
been in Germany and made close friends there, will, out of loyalty to
this friendship, rebel against the current anti-German passion, and so
become ‘pro-German’. I mean by ‘pro-German’, not one who wishes the
Germans to win—I know of none such—but one who habitually interprets
doubtful questions in a way sympathetic to Germany. Again, there are a
few people who, on one ground or another, disapproved of the declaration
of war. They are attacked and maligned: their friends naturally stand by
them. The whole group hits back angrily and becomes, in the same sense,
pro-German. Then there are people who are influenced by a peculiar form
of pugnacity which is often miscalled ‘love of justice.’ It is really a
habit of irritation at excess which finds vent not in justice but in
counter-excess. ‘So-and-so is overpraised; for Heaven’s sake let us
bring him down a peg!’ ‘Every fool I meet is emotionalized about the
German treatment of Belgium; can we not somehow show that no harm was
done, or that Belgium deserved it, or at least that it was all the fault
of some one the fools admire?’ People of these types and others, some
generous and some perverse, form, both here and in Germany, a protesting
small Herd in reaction against the great Herd. Thus the Herd draws
together, though lesser and protesting herds within it may do the same.
Secondly, in time of danger the Individual subordinates himself to the
Herd. He ceases to make claims upon it, he desires passionately to serve
it. He is miserable and unsatisfied if there is no public work found for
him. Discipline consequently becomes easy and automatic. I know of one
case where a number of recruits in a certain new regiment were drawn
from a local trade union of pugnacious traditions. One of them was
punished for something or other. The rest instinctively proposed to
strike, but even as they proposed it found themselves in the grip of a
stronger instinct. They hesitated for an instant and then obeyed orders.
Again, I seem to have noticed that there is in most people an active
desire to be ordered about. We like a drill-sergeant to speak to us
severely, much as you speak to a dog which has not yet been naughty but
looks as if he meant to be. In ordinary life, when a man has to obey and
submit, he feels small. The action is accompanied by what Mr. McDougall
calls ‘negative self-feeling’. But now, it seems, we actually have a
sense of pride when we are ordered about. It makes us feel that we are
really serving.
We may notice here a curious side-movement, a counter-action to the main
stream making for union. Such counter-actions are of course always to be
expected and need cause no surprise. Why is it that, among these great
steady forces of union and mutual trust, we have sudden flashes of the
very opposite, especially of wild suspicions of the Herd-leaders? I do
not mean mere spy-mania. That is simple enough, a morbid excess of a
perfectly natural feeling directed against the common enemy. You desire
passionately to capture a real German spy; and, since you cannot find
one, you make up a bogus one and capture him. I mean a similar mania,
though much weaker and rarer, directed against the Herd itself: the
semi-insane suspicions of Prince Louis of Battenberg, of Lord Haldane,
and of persons even more exalted. Partly these impulses are merely the
remains of old quarrels in feeble minds. But partly they have a real
biological origin. For while, in ordinary dangers, the safety of the
future race depends on the individuals serving and trusting their Herd,
there are moments when the only chance of safety lies in their deserting
and rejecting it. If once the Herd is really conquered and in the power
of the enemy, then the cry must be ‘_sauve qui peut_’, and the panic
which is generally disastrous is now a protection. Thus these small
cases of panic, though practically unimportant, are psychologically
interesting and have their proper evolutional explanation.
So far we have found, first, that the Herd draws together, and next,
that the individual subordinates himself to the Herd. Thirdly, it seems
clear that this closer Herd union has an effect upon the emotions, and a
twofold effect. As all readers of psychology know, Herd-union
intensifies all the emotions which are felt in common. The effect is so
strong and so striking that some writers have treated it as a kind of
mystery and described it in language that is almost mythological. But
there does not seem to be anything inexplicable in the matter. Emotion
is infectious. Each member of a Herd which is in the grasp of some
emotion is himself in a ‘suggestible’ state and is also exerting
‘suggestion’ upon his neighbours. They are all directly stimulating his
emotion and he theirs. And doubtless we should also remember that,
Herd-emotion being itself a very old and deep-rooted animal affection,
its stimulation has probably a sympathetic effect on all kinds of
similar disturbances, such as fear and anger and animal desires of
various sorts.
Furthermore, Herd-union often gives the suppressed subconscious forces
their chance of satisfaction. Hence come the atrocities committed by
crowds. Some dormant desire, existing in your nature but normally
suppressed, is suddenly encouraged by suggestion. You see a look in your
neighbour’s face, and he in yours; and in a flash you both know what
that look means. You dare to own a feeling which, in your normal
condition, you would have strangled unborn. Suppressed instinct calls to
instinct across the gulf of personality, and the infamous thing is half
done. For the Herd, besides tempting you, also offers you a road of
impunity. You can repudiate responsibility afterwards. It is never
exactly you that really did the thing. It is the crowd that did it, and
the crowd has now ceased to exist. M. Lenôtre, in his studies of the
French Revolution, has commented on the somewhat ghastly fact that in
moments of Herd-excitement people on the verge of lunacy, people touched
by persecution-mania, by suspicion-mania, by actual homicidal-mania, are
apt to become leaders and inspire confidence. The same phenomenon has
been noticed in certain revolutionary movements in Russia.
In England, fortunately, there has been so far almost no field for this
kind of dangerous Herd-excitement. There has been of course some
ferocity in speech, a comparatively harmless safety-valve for bad
feelings, and in some persons a preferable alternative to apoplexy; but
no violent actions and, I think, among decent people, extraordinarily
little vindictiveness.
But Herd-union does not intensify all emotions. It intensifies those
which are felt in common, but it actually deadens and shuts down those
which are only felt by the individual. The Herd is, as a matter of fact,
habitually callous toward the sufferings of its individual members, and
it infects each member with its own callousness. To take a trifling
instance, a friend writes to me thus: ‘I discovered one day on a march
that my boot was hurting me; after an hour or so it became obvious that
my foot was bleeding. In ordinary times I should have made a fuss and
insisted on sympathy, and certainly not gone on walking for several
miles. But as it was, moving in a steady mass of people who were
uninterested in my boots, and I in theirs, I marched on without making
any remark or even feeling much.’
The ramifications of this Herd-callousness are very curious and
intricate. It acts even with Fear, that most contagious of emotions. The
Herd deadens the fears of the individual as long as they do not become
real Herd-fears. Untrained troops will advance in close masses. It needs
good troops to advance individually in open order. The close masses are
much more dangerous and the open order less so, but in the close mass
the Herd is all round you, buttressing you and warming you, and it
deadens your private fear. It may also be that there is here some
hereditary instinct at work, derived from a time when the act of
huddling together was a real protection, as it is with sheep and cattle
attacked by wolves.
If this Herd-callousness acts with fear, it acts of course far more with
scruples or pities. The first scruple or ruth or criticism of the Herd
must rise in the breast of some individual. If, by good luck, at the
same moment it occurs to some dozen other men, it has a chance of
asserting itself. Otherwise there is only the single unit standing up,
in his infinite weakness, against the great Herd. The scruple is
silenced and dies.
Of course in actual warfare this callousness is immensely increased by
the nature of the work which the combatants are doing, and the immense
change in their habitual standard of expectation. You cannot always be
pitying people, or you would never get on with your business. A friend
of mine, a clever and kindly man, told me how he and his men, after a
long spell in the trenches, utterly tired and chilled and dropping with
sleep, had at last got into their billets—a sort of warm cellar where
they could just squeeze in. They heard the scream of shrapnel sweeping
the street outside, and some soldiers of another regiment and
nationality ran up to the door begging for admittance and shelter. With
one voice, so my friend said, he and his men growled at them and slammed
the door in their faces. It was their own cellar, and these people were
intruders. And they shut them out into the shrapnel much as, in ordinary
circumstances, they would perhaps have felt justified in shutting them
out into the rain. The strangest development of all is perhaps the
disregard of the Herd for its wounded, and the readiness of the wounded
themselves to be so disregarded. Of course there are abundant cases of
the opposite sort, where individuals show the utmost regard for the
wounded, risk their lives for them, and count no labour too hard for
their sake. But I have certainly met with well-authenticated stories,
notably of incidents in the German and Japanese and Turkish armies,
which seem to take one back to some rather primitive instincts. The true
animal Herd hates its wounded and kills them; cattle, wolves, porpoises,
every herd of gregarious animals does the same. Of course it hates them.
They not only tend to hamper its movements, but they present vividly to
its eyes and senses the very thing that it most loathes—its own blood
and pain. And one finds also curious instances where the wounded man
himself is so absorbed in the general Herd-emotion that he insists, even
angrily, on being left alone.
Thus under the influence of Herd-union common emotions are intensified,
individual emotions deadened.
Now thought, unlike emotion, is markedly individual and personal. It is
not infectious. It is communicated by articulate language. The Herd
growls, cries, sobs, sometimes laughs; but it finds speech very
difficult. Again, thought is critical, and the Herd wants unanimity, not
criticism. Consequently Herd-union deadens thought.
True, the herd-leader must think and plan, and the Herd will obey him.
In an organized army, where discipline and organization powerfully
counteract many of the normal herd characteristics, thought sits
enthroned and directs the whole mass. But it is a special kind of
thought, under central control and devoted simply to attaining the
purposes of the Herd. Other thought is inhibited.
For instance, if the Herd is angry it is quite simply angry with another
Herd. This state of mind is normal among savages and primitive men. Some
one belonging to a tribe over the river has speared one of our cows,
therefore we catch some other person belonging to a different tribe over
the river and club him on the head. Herd justice is satisfied. It only
sees things in Herds. ‘The Germans’ did so-and-so; therefore punish ‘the
Germans’: ‘the English’ did so-and-so; therefore punish ‘the English’.
Whenever a Herd is offended by some action it is made happy by punishing
as dramatically as possible several people who did not do it. Collective
anger, collective punishment, are always opposed to Justice, because
Justice only applies to individuals. And again, the more angry a Herd
is, the less evidence it needs that there is due cause for its anger.
Accuse a man of some irregularity in his accounts and the Herd will
expect to have the charge duly proven. But accuse him of having drenched
little girls in paraffin and set fire to them, and the Herd will very
likely tear him—or some one else—to pieces at once without further
evidence.
By this process of killing out thought the Herd sinks all its members in
itself and assimilates them to an average. And this average is in some
ways above but in most considerably below that of the average man in
normal life. For it is that of the average man not thinking but merely
feeling. Only the leader has the function of thinking; hence his
enormous and uncanny power.
Lastly, let us consider the effect of this Herd-union on religion. At
first sight the answer would seem simple. Religion is a network of
primitive collective emotions, and any stimulus which works upon such
emotions is likely, by force of sympathy, to rouse religious emotion at
the same time. At any rate some of the causes which have recently roused
Herd-emotion in Europe are just the causes on which religious emotion is
often said to be based. Man has been made to feel the presence of
terrific forces over which he has no control. He has been taught,
crudely and violently, his dependence on the unknown. On this line of
reasoning, the religious life of the world should be greatly
intensified. Yet there are serious considerations leading to the
opposite conclusion. A world so mad and evil, however terrific, can
hardly seem like the mirror in which to see God. I remember a dreadful
incident in one of the Consular reports of the Armenian massacres of
1895. At that time the universal dread and horror throughout Armenia
sent most people praying day and night in the churches. But the report
tells of one woman who sat by the road and refused to pray. ‘Do you not
see what has happened?’ she said. ‘God has gone mad. It is no use to
pray to Him.’ I have myself talked on different days to two soldiers who
gave vivid accounts of the hideous proceedings of the war in Flanders
and of their own feelings of terror. Their accounts agreed, but the
conclusions they drew were different. One man ended by saying with a
sort of gasp: ‘It made you believe in God, I can tell you.’ The other, a
more thoughtful man, said: ‘It made you doubt the existence of God.’ I
think that the effect of this year of history will be to discourage the
higher kind of religion and immensely strengthen the lower.
Let me try to analyse this conclusion more closely, and see what we mean
in this context by ‘higher’ and ‘lower’. I hope that most of my hearers
will agree with me, or at least not disagree violently, in assuming that
the attributes which a man ascribes to his God are conditioned by his
own mind, its limitations and its direction. I could, if necessary,
quote at least one Father of the Church in support of such a view. Thus
the God whom a man worships is in some form a projection of his own
personality. The respective Gods of a seventeenth-century Puritan, a
Quaker, an Arab, a South Sea Islander, will all differ as their
worshippers differ, and the human qualities attributed to each will be
projections of the emotions of the worshipper. Thus the lower, and often
the more passionate, religion will be directed towards a God who is a
projection of the worshipper’s own terrors and angers and desires and
selfishness. The higher religion weaves its conception of God more out
of its duties and its aspirations. To one of those soldiers whom I
mentioned above God was evidently a Being of pure terror, fitly mirrored
by the action of a host of high-explosive shells. To many people in
great oppression, again, God is almost an incarnation of their desire
for revenge: let those who doubt it read the history of persecution. To
others, an incarnation of Self. Some of you will have seen Mr. Dyson’s
finely tragic cartoon entitled ‘Alone with his God’. It represents the
Kaiser kneeling, a devout and fully armed figure, before another Kaiser
exactly the same in dress and feature, but gigantic, august, enthroned
amid the incense of ruined towns and burning churches, blindly staring
and inexpressibly sad. It is a picture to ponder on.
All these emotions, the self-worship, the hate, the revenge, the terror,
will be stimulated, and so will the kind of religion that depends on
them. The higher religion, of which it is less easy to speak, which
expresses itself in the love of righteousness, in the sense of one’s own
imperfection, in the aspiration after a better life and a world with
more love in it ... that sort of religion, I fear, will chiefly come in
reaction. It cannot be the main flood. There is too much reflection in
it, too much inhibition. The main flood of Herd-emotion will sweep over
it for the time being, but it will not die. There is a strange life in
the things of the spirit.
I suggested at the beginning of this very rough and sketchy analysis
that perhaps at the end we might be able to pass some definite moral
judgement on the change which has taken place in us, and say whether it
is a good or a bad change. But I fear that the suggestion has not been
realized. Herd-instinct in itself is neither good nor bad. It is simply
part of the stuff of life, an immense store of vitality out of which
both good and evil, extreme good and extreme evil, can spring.
Thus it is impossible to say without qualification that we ought to
rejoice in this stimulation of our herd-instincts or that we ought
rigorously to master and reject it. Neither alternative is sufficient.
We must do this and not leave the other undone. We must accept gladly
the quickened pulse, the new strength and courage, the sense of
brotherhood, the spirit of discipline and self-sacrifice. All these
things make life a finer thing. It is nothing against a particular
emotion that mankind shares it with the ape and the tiger. Gorillas are
famous for their family life, and tigresses are, up to their lights,
exemplary mothers. As regards herd-feeling in particular, we should
realize that even in its most unthinking forms it generally makes a man
kinder and more trustworthy towards his immediate neighbours and daily
associates; the evil side of it comes into play much more rarely, since
it is directed against the far-off alien herd which is seldom met or
seen. And lastly, we should remember one piece of certain knowledge
which is both immensely important and very difficult to apply: that
thwarted instincts act like poison in human nature, and a normal and
temperate satisfaction of instinct is what keeps it sweet and sane. At
the present time, for instance, the people whose minds have turned sour
and vicious are almost always those who can neither fight nor serve. The
fighters and doctors and nurses and public servants—as a rule their
herd-desire is satisfied, and they do their work with fervour and
without bitterness.
Yet after all we are thinking beings. If we acknowledge our instincts we
need not worship them. Thinking itself is both an instinct and a form of
public service, and it is our business to watch ourselves. We must see
to it that this fresh force which we feel within us is not wrongly
directed, and that the higher and gentler elements of life are not
swamped by this new strong wine. Millions of men throughout Europe are,
without stint or question, offering all that is in them to the service
of their countries and the command of their leaders. We must see, as far
as lies in our power, that we do not abuse that heroic blindness. And,
among us who remain at home, we must see as far as possible that the
normal texture of life is not lowered or coarsened.
There has been current in England of recent years a reaction against
reason, an avowed worship of instinct and tradition and even prejudice.
The doctrines of this reaction are in themselves fascinating, and they
have been preached by fascinating writers. The way of instinct and old
habit is so full of ease, so facile and strong and untroubled. Look at
the faces of men who are wrapped up in some natural and instinctive
purpose. Look at a dog chasing his prey, a lover pursuing his beloved, a
band of vigorous men advancing to battle, a crowd of friends drinking
and laughing. That shows us, say the writers aforesaid, what life can be
and what it ought to be. ‘Let us not think and question,’ they say. ‘Let
us be healthy and direct, and not fret against the main current of
instinctive feeling and tradition.’
In matters of art such a habit of mind may be valuable; in matters of
truth or of conduct it is, I believe, as disastrous as it is alluring.
True, the way of instinct is pleasant. I happened once to be waiting at
a railway station on a summer afternoon. There were several railwaymen
about, rather wearily engaged on work of one sort or another, when
suddenly something happened which made them look alert and cheerful and
put a kindly smile on their faces. One of them had seen some small
animal—I think, a rat—and a little crowd of them ran blithely and pelted
it to death. One would have seen the same kindly and happy smile, the
same healthy vigour, in the people who amid other circumstances let
loose their hunting instincts on runaway slaves or heretics or Jews. And
the man among them who should feel a qualm, who should check himself and
try to think whether such hunting was really a pleasant and praiseworthy
action, would, I have little doubt, have looked guilty and uneasy and
tongue-tied. His face would have condemned him. ‘Why should he trouble
himself with thinking and criticizing?’ people may say. ‘Why not enjoy
himself with his mates! Thought is just as likely to lead you wrong as
feeling is.’
The answer of mankind to such pleadings should be firm and clear. Human
reason is very far from infallible, but the only remedy for bad thinking
is to think better. The question was really settled for us, thousands
and thousands of years ago, by those little lemurs in the marshy
forests. They took not the path of ease but the path of hard brain-work,
and we their children must go on with it. That is the way of life and
the bettering of life, to think and labour and build up; not to glide
with the current. We of the human race have our work in the scheme of
things; and to do our work we must use all our powers, especially our
greatest powers, those of thinking and judging. And even if we
deliberately set our faces in the other direction, if we yield to the
stream of instinct and let scruples and doubts and inhibitions be swept
away, we shall not really find life easier. At least not for long. For
the powers to which we yield will only demand more and more.
There is one character in Shakespeare, who is often taken as a type—a
very unflattering type, I admit—of the follower of the mere instincts;
who feels the release, the joy, the sense of revelation which they
bring, and thinks that they will lead him to glory. And I suspect that
some modern adorers of instinct as against reason will in the end awake
to disillusion like that of Caliban:
What a thrice-double ass
Was I, to take this drunkard for a God,
And worship this dull fool!
III
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