being conspicuous, in shyness and in stage fright. It is, however,
sensitiveness to the behaviour of the herd which has the most important
effects upon the structure of the mind of the gregarious animal.
This sensitiveness is closely associated with the suggestibility of
the gregarious animal, and therefore with that of man. The effect of
it will clearly be to make acceptable those suggestions which come
from the herd, and those only. It is of especial importance to note
that this suggestibility is not general, and that it is only herd
suggestions which are rendered acceptable by the action of instinct.
Man is, for example, notoriously insensitive to the suggestions of
experience. The history of what is rather grandiosely called human
progress everywhere illustrates this. If we look back upon the
development of some such thing as the steam-engine, we cannot fail to
be struck by the extreme obviousness of each advance, and how {33}
obstinately it was refused assimilation until the machine almost
invented itself.
Again, of two suggestions, that which the more perfectly embodies the
voice of the herd is the more acceptable. The chances an affirmation
has of being accepted could therefore be most satisfactorily expressed
in terms of the bulk of the herd by which it is backed.
It follows from the foregoing that anything which dissociates a
suggestion from the herd will tend to ensure such a suggestion being
rejected. For example, an imperious command from an individual known
to be without authority is necessarily disregarded, whereas the same
person making the same suggestion in an indirect way so as to link it
up with the voice of the herd will meet with success.
It is unfortunate that in discussing these facts it has been necessary
to use the word “suggestibility,” which has so thorough an implication
of the abnormal. If the biological explanation of suggestibility here
set forth be accepted, the latter must necessarily be a normal quality
of the human mind. To believe must be an ineradicable natural bias
of man, or in other words an affirmation, positive or negative, is
more readily accepted than rejected, unless its source is definitely
dissociated from the herd. Man is not, therefore, suggestible by fits
and starts, not merely in panics and in mobs, under hypnosis, and
so forth, but always, everywhere, and under any circumstances. The
capricious way in which man reacts to different suggestions has been
attributed to variations in his suggestibility. This in the opinion of
the present writer is an incorrect interpretation of the facts which
are more satisfactorily explained by regarding the variations as due to
the differing extent to which suggestions are identified with the voice
of the herd.
Man’s resistiveness to certain suggestions, and {34} especially to
experience, as is seen so well in his attitude to the new, becomes
therefore but another evidence of his suggestibility, since the new has
always to encounter the opposition of herd tradition.
The apparent diminution in direct suggestibility with advancing years,
such as was demonstrated in children by Binet, is in the case of the
adult familiar to all, and is there usually regarded as evidence of a
gradually advancing organic change in the brain. It can be regarded, at
least plausibly, as being due to the fact that increase of years must
bring an increase in the accumulations of herd suggestion, and so tend
progressively to fix opinion.
In the early days of the human race, the appearance of the faculty of
speech must have led to an immediate increase in the extent to which
the decrees of the herd could be promulgated, and the field to which
they applied. Now the desire for certitude is one of profound depth
in the human mind, and possibly a necessary property of any mind, and
it is very plausible to suppose that it led in these early days to
the whole field of life being covered by pronouncements backed by the
instinctive sanction of the herd. The life of the individual would be
completely surrounded by sanctions of the most tremendous kind. He
would know what he might and might not do, and what would happen if
he disobeyed. It would be immaterial if experience confirmed these
beliefs or not, because it would have incomparably less weight than
the voice of the herd. Such a period is the only trace perceptible
by the biologist of the Golden Age fabled by the poet, when things
happened as they ought, and hard facts had not begun to vex the soul
of man. In some such condition we still find the Central Australian
native. His whole life, to its minutest detail, is ordained for him by
the voice of the herd, and he must not, under the most dreadful {35}
sanctions, step outside its elaborate order. It does not matter to him
that an infringement of the code under his very eyes is not followed
by judgment, for with tribal suggestion so compactly organized, such
cases are in fact no difficulty, and do not trouble his belief, just
as in more civilized countries apparent instances of malignity in the
reigning deity are not found to be inconsistent with his benevolence.
Such must everywhere have been primitive human conditions, and upon
them reason intrudes as an alien and hostile power, disturbing the
perfection of life, and causing an unending series of conflicts.
Experience, as is shown by the whole history of man, is met by
resistance because it invariably encounters decisions based upon
instinctive belief, and nowhere is this fact more clearly to be seen
than in the way in which the progress of science has been made.
In matters that really interest him, man cannot support the suspense
of judgment which science so often has to enjoin. He is too anxious
to feel certain to have time to know. So that we see of the sciences,
mathematics appearing first, then astronomy, then physics, then
chemistry, then biology, then psychology, then sociology—but always
the new field was grudged to the new method, and we still have the
denial to sociology of the name of science. Nowadays, matters of
national defence, of politics, of religion, are still too important for
knowledge, and remain subjects for certitude; that is to say, in them
we still prefer the comfort of instinctive belief, because we have not
learnt adequately to value the capacity to foretell.
Direct observation of man reveals at once the fact that a very
considerable proportion of his beliefs are non-rational to a degree
which is immediately obvious without any special examination, and with
{36} no special resources other than common knowledge. If we examine
the mental furniture of the average man, we shall find it made up of a
vast number of judgments of a very precise kind upon subjects of very
great variety, complexity, and difficulty. He will have fairly settled
views upon the origin and nature of the universe, and upon what he will
probably call its meaning; he will have conclusions as to what is to
happen to him at death and after, as to what is and what should be the
basis of conduct. He will know how the country should be governed, and
why it is going to the dogs, why this piece of legislation is good and
that bad. He will have strong views upon military and naval strategy,
the principles of taxation, the use of alcohol and vaccination, the
treatment of influenza, the prevention of hydrophobia, upon municipal
trading, the teaching of Greek, upon what is permissible in art,
satisfactory in literature, and hopeful in science.
The bulk of such opinions must necessarily be without rational basis,
since many of them are concerned with problems admitted by the expert
to be still unsolved, while as to the rest it is clear that the
training and experience of no average man can qualify him to have any
opinion upon them at all. The rational method adequately used would
have told him that on the great majority of these questions there could
be for him but one attitude—that of suspended judgment.
In view of the considerations that have been discussed above, this
wholesale acceptance of non-rational belief must be looked upon as
normal. The mechanism by which it is effected demands some examination,
since it cannot be denied that the facts conflict noticeably with
popularly current views as to the part taken by reason in the formation
of opinion.
It is clear at the outset that these beliefs are invariably regarded by
the holder as rational, and {37} defended as such, while the position
of one who holds contrary views is held to be obviously unreasonable.
The religious man accuses the atheist of being shallow and irrational,
and is met by a similar reply; to the Conservative, the amazing thing
about the Liberal is his incapacity to see reason and accept the
only possible solution of public problems. Examination reveals the
fact that the differences are not due to the commission of the mere
mechanical fallacies of logic, since these are easily avoided, even by
the politician, and since there is no reason to suppose that one party
in such controversies is less logical than the other. The difference
is due rather to the fundamental assumptions of the antagonists being
hostile, and these assumptions are derived from herd suggestion; to
the Liberal, certain basal conceptions have acquired the quality
of instinctive truth, have become “_a priori_ syntheses,” because
of the accumulated suggestions to which he has been exposed, and a
similar explanation applies to the atheist, the Christian, and the
Conservative. Each, it is important to remember, finds in consequence
the rationality of his position flawless, and is quite incapable of
detecting in it the fallacies which are obvious to his opponent, to
whom that particular series of assumptions has not been rendered
acceptable by herd suggestion.
To continue further the analysis of non-rational opinion, it should be
observed that the mind rarely leaves uncriticized the assumptions which
are forced on it by herd suggestion, the tendency being for it to find
more or less elaborately rationalized justifications of them. This is
in accordance with the enormously exaggerated weight which is always
ascribed to reason in the formation of opinion and conduct, as is very
well seen, for example, in the explanation of the existence of altruism
as being due to man seeing that it “pays.” {38}
It is of cardinal importance to recognize that in this process of
the rationalization of instinctive belief, it is the belief which is
the primary thing, while the explanation, although masquerading as
the cause of the belief, as the chain of rational evidence on which
the belief is founded, is entirely secondary, and but for the belief
would never have been thought of. Such rationalizations are often, in
the case of intelligent people, of extreme ingenuity, and may be very
misleading unless the true instinctive basis of the given opinion or
action is thoroughly understood.
This mechanism enables the English lady, who, to escape the stigma
of having normal feet, subjects them to a formidable degree of
lateral compression, to be aware of no logical inconsequence when she
subscribes to missions to teach the Chinese lady how absurd it is to
compress her feet longitudinally; it enables the European lady who
wears rings in her ears to smile at the barbarism of the coloured
lady who wears her rings in her nose; it enables the Englishman who
is amused by the African chieftain’s regard for the top hat as an
essential piece of the furniture of state to ignore the identity of his
own behaviour when he goes to church beneath the same tremendous ensign.
The objectivist finds himself compelled to regard these and similar
correspondences between the behaviour of civilized and barbarous man as
no mere interesting coincidences, but as phenomena actually and in the
grossest way identical, but such an attitude is possible only when the
mechanism is understood by which rationalization of these customs is
effected.
The process of rationalization which has just been illustrated by some
of its simpler varieties is best seen on the largest scale, and in
the most elaborate form, in the pseudosciences of political economy
and ethics. Both of these are occupied in deriving {39} from eternal
principles justifications for masses of non-rational belief which are
assumed to be permanent merely because they exist. Hence the notorious
acrobatic feats of both in the face of any considerable variation in
herd belief.
It would seem that the obstacles to rational thought which have been
pointed out in the foregoing discussion have received much less
attention than should have been directed towards them. To maintain
an attitude of mind which could be called scientific in any complete
sense, it is of cardinal importance to recognize that belief of
affirmations sanctioned by the herd is a normal mechanism of the human
mind, and goes on however much such affirmations may be opposed by
evidence, that reason cannot enforce belief against herd suggestion,
and finally that totally false opinions may appear to the holder of
them to possess all the characters of rationally verifiable truth, and
may be justified by secondary processes of rationalization which it may
be impossible directly to combat by argument.
It should be noticed, however, that verifiable truths may acquire the
potency of herd suggestion, so that the suggestibility of man does
not necessarily or always act against the advancement of knowledge.
For example, to the student of biology the principles of Darwinism
may acquire the force of herd suggestion through being held by
the class which he most respects, is most in contact with and the
class which has therefore acquired suggestionizing power with him.
Propositions consistent with these principles will now necessarily
be more acceptable to him, whatever the evidence by which they are
supported, than they would be to one who had not been exposed to
the same influences. The opinion, in fact, may be hazarded that the
acceptance of any proposition is invariably the resultant of suggestive
influences, whether the {40} proposition be true or false, and that
the balance of suggestion is usually on the side of the false, because,
education being what it is, the scientific method—the method, that is
to say, of experience—has so little chance of acquiring suggestionizing
force.
Thus far sensitiveness to the herd has been discussed in relation to
its effect upon intellectual processes. Equally important effects are
traceable in feeling.
It is obvious that when free communication is possible by speech,
the expressed approval or disapproval of the herd will acquire the
qualities of identity or dissociation from the herd respectively. To
know that he is doing what would arouse the disapproval of the herd
will bring to the individual the same profound sense of discomfort
which would accompany actual physical separation, while to know that
he is doing what the herd would approve will give him the sense of
rightness, of gusto, and of stimulus which would accompany physical
presence in the herd and response to its mandates. In both cases it
is clear that no actual expression by the herd is necessary to arouse
the appropriate feelings, which would come from within and have, in
fact, the qualities which are recognized in the dictates of conscience.
Conscience, then, and the feelings of guilt and of duty are the
peculiar possessions of the gregarious animal. A dog and a cat caught
in the commission of an offence will both recognize that punishment is
coming; but the dog, moreover, knows that he has done _wrong_, and he
will come to be punished, unwillingly it is true, and as if dragged
along by some power outside him, while the cat’s sole impulse is to
escape. The rational recognition of the sequence of act and punishment
is equally clear to the gregarious and to the solitary animal, but
it is the former only who understands {41} that he has committed a
_crime_, who has, in fact, the _sense of sin_. That this is the origin
of what we call conscience is confirmed by the characteristics of the
latter which are accessible to observation. Any detailed examination
of the phenomena of conscience would lead too far to be admissible
here. Two facts, however, should be noticed. First, the judgments
of conscience vary in different circles, and are dependent on local
environments; secondly, they are not advantageous to the species to
the slightest degree beyond the dicta of the morals current in the
circle in which they originate. These facts—stated here in an extremely
summary way—demonstrate that conscience is an indirect result of the
gregarious instinct, and is in no sense derived from a special instinct
forcing men to consider the good of the race rather than individual
desires.
1908
{42} SOCIOLOGICAL APPLICATIONS OF THE PSYCHOLOGY OF HERD INSTINCT
It was shown in the previous essay that the gregarious mental
character is evident in man’s behaviour, not only in crowds and
other circumstances of actual association, but also in his behaviour
as an individual, however isolated. The conclusions were arrived
at that man’s suggestibility is not the abnormal casual phenomenon
it is often supposed to be, but a normal instinct present in every
individual, and that the apparent inconstancy of its action is due to
the common failure to recognize the extent of the field over which
suggestion acts; that the only medium in which man’s mind can function
satisfactorily is the herd, which therefore is not only the source of
his opinions, his credulities, his disbeliefs, and his weaknesses, but
of his altruism, his charity, his enthusiasms, and his power.
The subject of the psychological effects of herd instinct is so
wide that the discussion of it in the former essay covered only a
comparatively small part of the field, and that in a very cursory way.
Such as it was, however, it cannot be further amplified here, where an
attempt will rather be made to sketch some of the practical corollaries
of such generalizations as were laid down there.
In the first place, it must be stated with emphasis that deductive
speculation of this sort finds its principal value in opening up new
possibilities for {43} the application of a more exact method. Science
is measurement, but the deductive method may indicate those things
which can be most profitably measured.
When the overwhelming importance of the suggestibility of man is
recognized our first effort should be to obtain exact numerical
expressions of it. This is not the place to attempt any exposition
of the directions in which experiment should proceed; but it may be
stated that what we want to know is, how much suggestion can do in the
way of inducing belief, and it may be guessed that we shall ultimately
be able to express the force of suggestion in terms of the number of
undifferentiated units of the herd it represents. In the work that has
already been done, chiefly by Binet and by Sidis, the suggestive force
experimented with was relatively feeble, and the effects consequently
were rendered liable to great disturbance from the spontaneous action
of other forces of suggestion already in the mind. Sidis, for example,
found that his subjects often yielded to his suggestions out of
“politeness”; this source of difficulty was obviously due to his use of
pure individual suggestion, a variety which theory shows to be weak or
even directly resisted.
The next feature of practical interest is connected with the
hypothesis, which we attempted in the former article to demonstrate,
that irrational belief forms a large bulk of the furniture of the
mind, and is indistinguishable by the subject from rational verifiable
knowledge. It is obviously of cardinal importance to be able to
effect this distinction, for it is the failure to do so which, while
it is not the cause of the slowness of advance in knowledge, is the
mechanism by which this delay is brought about. Is there, then, we may
ask, any discoverable touchstone by which non-rational opinion may be
distinguished from rational? Non-rational judgments, being the product
of suggestion, will have {44} the quality of instinctive opinion, or,
as we may call it, of belief in the strict sense. The essence of this
quality is obviousness; the truth held in this way is one of James’s
“_a priori_ syntheses of the most perfect sort”; to question it is to
the believer to carry scepticism to an insane degree, and will be met
by contempt, disapproval, or condemnation, according to the nature of
the belief in question. When, therefore, we find ourselves entertaining
an opinion about the basis of which there is a quality of feeling
which tells us that to inquire into it would be absurd, obviously
unnecessary, unprofitable, undesirable, bad form, or wicked, we may
know that that opinion is a non-rational one, and probably, therefore,
founded upon inadequate evidence.
Opinions, on the other hand, which are acquired as the result of
experience alone do not possess this quality of primary certitude. They
are true in the sense of being verifiable, but they are unaccompanied
by that profound feeling of truth which belief possesses, and,
therefore, we have no sense of reluctance in admitting inquiry into
them. That heavy bodies tend to fall to the earth and that fire burns
fingers are truths verifiable and verified every day, but we do not
hold them with impassioned certitude, and we do not resent or resist
inquiry into their basis; whereas in such a question as that of the
survival of death by human personality we hold the favourable or the
adverse view with a quality of feeling entirely different, and of such
a kind that inquiry into the matter is looked upon as disreputable by
orthodox science and as wicked by orthodox religion. In relation to
this subject, it may be remarked, we often see it very interestingly
shown that the holders of two diametrically opposed opinions, one of
which is certainly right, may both show by their attitude that the
belief is held {45} instinctively and non-rationally, as, for example,
when an atheist and a Christian unite in repudiating inquiry into the
existence of the soul.
A third practical corollary of a recognition of the true gregariousness
of man is the very obvious one that it is not by any means necessary
that suggestion should always act on the side of unreason. The despair
of the reformer has always been the irrationality of man, and latterly
some have come to regard the future as hopeless until we can breed a
rational species. Now, the trouble is not irrationality, not a definite
preference for unreason, but suggestibility—that is, a capacity for
accepting reason or unreason if it comes from the proper source.
This quality we have seen to be a direct consequence of the social
habit, of a single definite instinct, that of gregariousness, the same
instinct which makes social life at all possible and altruism a reality.
It does not seem to have been fully understood that if you attack
suggestibility by selection—and that is what you do if you breed for
rationality—you are attacking gregariousness, for there is at present
no adequate evidence that the gregarious instinct is other than a
simple character and one which cannot be split up by the breeder. If,
then, such an effort in breeding were successful, we should exchange
the manageable unreason of man for the inhuman rationality of the tiger.
The solution would seem rather to lie in seeing to it that suggestion
always acts on the side of reason; if rationality were once to become
really respectable, if we feared the entertaining of an unverifiable
opinion with the warmth with which we fear using the wrong implement at
the dinner table, if the thought of holding a prejudice disgusted us
as does a foul disease, then the dangers of man’s suggestibility would
be turned into advantages. We {46} have seen that suggestion already
has begun to act on the side of reason in some small part of the life
of the student of science, and it is possible that a highly sanguine
prophetic imagination might detect here a germ of future changes.