chiefly its immense accession of strength as a hunting and fighting
organism. Protective gregariousness confers on the flock or herd
advantages perhaps less obvious but certainly not less important. A
very valuable gain is the increased efficiency of vigilance which is
possible. Such efficiency depends on the available number of actual
watchers and the exquisite sensitiveness of the herd and all its
members to the signals of such sentries. No one can have watched a
herd of sheep for long without being impressed with the delicacy with
which a supposed danger is detected, transmitted throughout the herd,
and met {111} by an appropriate movement. Another advantage enjoyed
by the new unit is a practical solution of the difficulties incident
upon the emotion of fear. Fear is essentially an enfeebling passion,
yet in the sheep and such animals it is necessarily developed to a high
degree in the interests of safety. The danger of this specialization is
neutralized by the implication of so large a part of the individual’s
personality in the herd and outside of himself. Alarm becomes a
passion, as it were, of the herd rather than of the individual, and the
appropriate response by the individual is to an impulse received from
the herd and not directly from the actual object of alarm. It seems
to be in this way that the paralysing emotion of fear is held back
from the individual, while its effect can reach him only as the active
and formidable passion of panic. The gregarious herbivora are in fact
timid but not fearful animals. All the various mechanisms in which the
social habit shows itself apparently have as their general function
a maximal sensitiveness to danger of the herd as a whole, combined
with maintaining with as little interruption as possible an atmosphere
of calm within the herd, so that the individual members can occupy
themselves in the serious business of grazing. It must be doubted
whether a truly herbivorous animal of a solitary habit could ever
flourish when we remember how incessant must be his industry in feeding
if he is to be properly nourished, and how much such an occupation will
be interfered with by the constant alarms he must be subject to if he
is to escape the attacks of carnivorous enemies. The evidence suggests
that protective gregariousness is a more elaborate manifestation of the
social habit than the aggressive form. It is clear that the security
of the higher herbivora, such as the ox and especially the horse and
their allies, is considerable in relation to the carnivora. One may
{112} permissibly perhaps indulge the speculation that in the absence
of man the horse possibly might have developed a greater complexity
of organization than it has actually been able to attain; that the
facts should seem to contain this hint is a curious testimony to the
wonderful constructive imagination of Swift.
Setting aside such guesses and confining ourselves to the facts, we
may say in summary that we find the infrahuman mammalia to present two
distinctly separable strains of the social habit. Both are of great
value to the species in which they appear, and both are associated with
certain fundamentally similar types of reactive capacity which give a
general resemblance of character to all gregarious animals. Of the two
forms the protective is perhaps capable of absorbing more fully the
personality of the individual than is the aggressive, but both seem to
have reached the limit of their intensification at a grade far lower
than that which has been attained in the insects.
CHARACTERS OF THE GREGARIOUS ANIMAL DISPLAYED BY MAN.
When we come to consider man we find ourselves faced at once by some
of the most interesting problems in the biology of the social habit.
It is probably not necessary now to labour the proof of the fact that
man is a gregarious animal in literal fact, that he is as essentially
gregarious as the bee and the ant, the sheep, the ox, and the horse.
The tissue of characteristically gregarious reactions which his conduct
presents furnishes incontestable proof of this thesis, which is thus an
indispensable clue to an inquiry into the intricate problems of human
society.
It is desirable perhaps to enumerate in a summary {113} way the more
obvious gregarious characters which man displays.
1. He is intolerant and fearful of solitude, physical or mental.
This intolerance is the cause of the mental fixity and intellectual
incuriousness which, to a remarkable degree for an animal with so
capacious a brain, he constantly displays. As is well known, the
resistance to a new idea is always primarily a matter of prejudice,
the development of intellectual objections, just or otherwise, being
a secondary process in spite of the common delusion to the contrary.
This intimate dependence on the herd is traceable not merely in matters
physical and intellectual, but also betrays itself in the deepest
recesses of personality as a sense of incompleteness which compels the
individual to reach out towards some larger existence than his own,
some encompassing being in whom his perplexities may find a solution
and his longings peace. Physical loneliness and intellectual isolation
are effectually solaced by the nearness and agreement of the herd. The
deeper personal necessities cannot be met—at any rate, in such society
as has so far been evolved—by so superficial a union; the capacity
for intercommunication is still too feebly developed to bring the
individual into complete and soul-satisfying harmony with his fellows,
to convey from one to another
Thoughts hardly to be packed
Into a narrow act,
Fancies that broke through language and escaped.
Religious feeling is therefore a character inherent in the very
structure of the human mind, and is the expression of a need which must
be recognized by the biologist as neither superficial nor transitory.
It must be admitted that some philosophers and {114} men of science
have at times denied to the religious impulses of man their true
dignity and importance. Impelled perhaps by a desire to close the
circle of a materialistic conception of the universe, they have tended
to belittle the significance of such phenomena as they were unable to
reconcile with their principles and bring within the iron circle of
their doctrine. To deal with religion in this way has not only been an
outrage upon true scientific method, but has always led to a strong
reaction in general opinion against any radical inquiry by science into
the deeper problems of man’s nature and status. A large and energetic
reaction of this kind prevails to-day. There can be little doubt that
it was precipitated, if not provoked, by attempts to force a harsh and
dogmatic materialism into the status of a general philosophy. As long
as such a system is compelled to ignore, to depreciate, or to deny
the reality of such manifestly important phenomena as the altruistic
emotions, the religious needs and feelings, the experiences of awe and
wonder and beauty, the illumination of the mystic, the rapture of the
prophet, the unconquerable endurance of the martyr, so long must it
fail in its claims to universality. It is therefore necessary to lay
down with the strongest emphasis the proposition that the religious
needs and feelings of man are a direct and necessary manifestation
of the inheritance of instinct with which he is born, and therefore
deserve consideration as respectful and observation as minute as any
other biological phenomenon.
2. He is more sensitive to the voice of the herd than to any other
influence. It can inhibit or stimulate his thought and conduct. It
is the source of his moral codes, of the sanctions of his ethics and
philosophy. It can endow him with energy, courage, and endurance, and
can as easily take these away. {115} It can make him acquiese in his
own punishment and embrace his executioner, submit to poverty, bow to
tyranny, and sink without complaint under starvation. Not merely can
it make him accept hardship and suffering unresistingly, but it can
make him accept as truth the explanation that his perfectly preventable
afflictions are sublimely just and gentle. It is in this acme of
the power of herd suggestion that is perhaps the most absolutely
incontestable proof of the profoundly gregarious nature of man. That
a creature of strong appetites and luxurious desires should come to
tolerate uncomplainingly his empty belly, his chattering teeth, his
naked limbs, and his hard bed is miracle enough. What are we to say of
a force which, when he is told by the full-fed and well-warmed that
his state is the more blessed can make him answer, “How beautiful! How
true!” In the face of so effectual a negation, not merely of experience
and common sense but also of actual hunger and privation, it is not
possible to set any limits to the power of the herd over the individual.
3. He is subject to the passions of the pack in his mob violence and
the passions of the herd in his panics. These activities are by no
means limited to the outbursts of actual crowds, but are to be seen
equally clearly in the hue and cry of newspapers and public after some
notorious criminal or scapegoat, and in the success of scaremongering
by the same agencies.
4. He is remarkably susceptible to leadership. This quality in man
may very naturally be thought to have a basis essentially rational
rather than instinctive if its manifestations are not regarded with
a special effort to attain an objective attitude. How thoroughly
reasonable it appears that a body of men seeking a common object
should put themselves under the guidance of some strong and expert
{116} personality who can point out the path most profitably to be
pursued, who can hearten his followers and bring all their various
powers into a harmonious pursuit of the common object. The rational
basis of the relation is, however, seen to be at any rate open to
discussion when we consider the qualities in a leader upon which his
authority so often rests, for there can be little doubt that their
appeal is more generally to instinct than to reason. In ordinary
politics it must be admitted that the gift of public speaking is of
more decisive value than anything else. If a man is fluent, dextrous,
and ready on the platform, he possesses the one indispensable requisite
for statesmanship; if in addition he has the gift of moving deeply
the emotions of his hearers, his capacity for guiding the infinite
complexities of national life becomes undeniable. Experience has shown
that no exceptional degree of any other capacity is necessary to make
a successful leader. There need be no specially arduous training,
no great weight of knowledge either of affairs or the human heart,
no receptiveness to new ideas, no outlook into reality. Indeed, the
mere absence of such seems to be an advantage; for originality is apt
to appear to the people as flightiness, scepticism as feebleness,
caution as doubt of the great political principles that may happen
at the moment to be immutable. The successful shepherd thinks like
his sheep, and can lead his flock only if he keeps no more than the
shortest distance in advance. He must remain, in fact, recognizable
as one of the flock, magnified no doubt, louder, coarser, above
all with more urgent wants and ways of expression than the common
sheep, but in essence to their feeling of the same flesh with them.
In the human herd the necessity of the leader bearing unmistakable
marks of identification is equally essential. Variations from the
normal standard in intellectual matters are tolerated {117} if they
are not very conspicuous, for man has never yet taken reason very
seriously, and can still look upon intellectuality as not more than
a peccadillo if it is not paraded conspicuously; variations from the
moral standard are, however, of a much greater significance as marks
of identification, and when they become obvious, can at once change a
great and successful leader into a stranger and an outcast, however
little they may seem to be relevant to the adequate execution of
his public work. If a leader’s marks of identity with the herd are
of the right kind, the more they are paraded the better. We like to
see photographs of him nursing his little grand-daughter, we like to
know that he plays golf badly, and rides the bicycle like our common
selves, we enjoy hearing of “pretty incidents” in which he has given
the blind crossing-sweeper a penny or begged a glass of water at a
wayside cottage—and there are excellent biological reasons for our
gratification.
In times of war leadership is not less obviously based on instinct,
though naturally, since the herd is exposed to a special series of
stresses, manifestations of it are also somewhat special. A people
at war feels the need of direction much more intensely than a people
at peace, and as always they want some one who appeals to their
instinctive feeling of being directed, comparatively regardless
of whether he is able in fact to direct. This instinctive feeling
inclines them to the choice of a man who presents at any rate the
appearance and manners of authority and power rather than to one who
possesses the substance of capacity but is denied the shadow. They
have their conventional pictures of the desired type—the strong,
silent, relentless, the bold, outspoken, hard, and energetic—but at
all costs he must be a “man,” a “leader who can lead,” a shepherd, in
fact, who, by his gesticulations and {118} his shouts, leaves his
flock in no doubt as to his presence and his activity. It is touching
to remember how often a people in pursuit of this ideal has obtained
and accepted in response to its prayers nothing but melodramatic
bombast, impatience, rashness, and foolish, boasting truculence; and
to remember how often a great statesman in his country’s need has had
to contend not merely with her foreign enemies, but with those at home
whose vociferous malignity has declared his magnanimous composure to
be sluggishness, his cautious scepticism to be feebleness, and his
unostentatious resolution to be stupidity.
5. His relations with his fellows are dependent upon the recognition
of him as a member of the herd. It is important to the success of a
gregarious species that individuals should be able to move freely
within the large unit while strangers are excluded. Mechanisms to
secure such personal recognition are therefore a characteristic feature
of the social habit. The primitive olfactory greeting common to so many
of the lower animals was doubtless rendered impossible for man by his
comparative loss of the sense of smell long before it ceased to accord
with his pretensions, yet in a thriving active species the function of
recognition was as necessary as ever. Recognition by vision could be of
only limited value, and it seems probable that speech very early became
the accepted medium. Possibly the necessity to distinguish friend
from foe was one of the conditions which favoured the development
of articulate speech. Be this as it may, speech at the present time
retains strong evidence of the survival in it of the function of herd
recognition. As is usual with instinctive activities in man, the actual
state of affairs is concealed by a deposit of rationalized explanation
which is apt to discourage merely superficial inquiry. The function
of conversation is, it is to be supposed, ordinarily regarded {119}
as being the exchange of ideas and information. Doubtless it has come
to have such a function, but an objective examination of ordinary
conversation shows that the actual conveyance of ideas takes a very
small part in it. As a rule the exchange seems to consist of ideas
which are necessarily common to the two speakers, and are known to be
so by each. The process, however, is none the less satisfactory for
this; indeed, it seems even to derive its satisfactoriness therefrom.
The interchange of the conventional lead and return is obviously very
far from being tedious or meaningless to the interlocutors. They can,
however, have derived nothing from it but the confirmation to one
another of their sympathy and of the class or classes to which they
belong.
Conversations of greeting are naturally particularly rich in the
exchange of purely ceremonial remarks, ostensibly based on some
subject like the weather, in which there must necessarily be an
absolute community of knowledge. It is possible, however, for a long
conversation to be made up entirely of similar elements, and to contain
no trace of any conveyance of new ideas; such intercourse is probably
that which on the whole is most satisfactory to the “normal” man and
leaves him more comfortably stimulated than would originality or
brilliance, or any other manifestation of the strange and therefore of
the disreputable.
Conversation between persons unknown to one another is also—when
satisfactory—apt to be rich in the ritual of recognition. When one
hears or takes part in these elaborate evolutions, gingerly proffering
one after another of one’s marks of identity, one’s views on the
weather, on fresh air and draughts, on the Government and on uric
acid, watching intently for the first low hint of a growl, which will
show one belongs to the wrong pack {120} and must withdraw, it is
impossible not to be reminded of the similar manœuvres of the dog, and
to be thankful that Nature has provided us with a less direct, though
perhaps a more tedious, code.
* * * * *
It may appear that we have been dealing here with a far-fetched and
laboured analogy, and making much of a comparison of trivialities
merely for the sake of compromising, if that could be done, human
pretensions to reason. To show that the marvel of human communion
began, perhaps, as a very humble function, and yet retains traces of
its origin, is in no way to minimize the value or dignity of the more
fully developed power. The capacity for free intercommunication between
individuals of the species has meant so much in the evolution of man,
and will certainly come in the future to mean so incalculably more,
that it cannot be regarded as anything less than a master element in
the shaping of his destiny.
SOME PECULIARITIES OF THE SOCIAL HABIT IN MAN.
It is apparent after very little consideration that the extent of man’s
individual mental development is a factor which has produced many novel
characters in his manifestations of the social habit, and has even
concealed to a great extent the profound influence this instinct has in
regulating his conduct, his thought, and his society.
Large mental capacity in the individual, as we have already seen, has
the effect of providing a wide freedom of response to instinctive
impulses, so that, while the individual is no less impelled by instinct
than a more primitive type, the manifestations of these impulses in
his conduct are very varied, and his conduct loses the appearance of a
{121} narrow concentration on its instinctive object. It needs only
to pursue this reasoning to a further stage to reach the conclusion
that mental capacity, while in no way limiting the impulsive power
of instinct, may, by providing an infinite number of channels into
which the impulse is free to flow, actually prevent the impulse from
attaining the goal of its normal object. In the ascetic the sex
instinct is defeated, in the martyr that of self-preservation, not
because these instincts have been abolished, but because the activity
of the mind has found new channels for them to flow in. As might be
expected, the much more labile herd instinct has been still more
subject to this deflection and dissipation without its potential
impulsive strength being in any way impaired. It is this process which
has enabled primitive psychology so largely to ignore the fact that
man still is, as much as ever, endowed with a heritage of instinct and
incessantly subject to its influence. Man’s mental capacity, again,
has enabled him as a species to flourish enormously, and thereby to
increase to a prodigious extent the size of the unit in which the
individual is merged. The nation, if the term be used to describe
every organization under a completely independent, supreme government,
must be regarded as the smallest unit on which natural selection now
unrestrictedly acts. Between such units there is free competition,
and the ultimate regulator of these relations is physical force. This
statement needs the qualification that the delimitation between two
given units may be much sharper than that between two others, so that
in the first case the resort to force is likely to occur readily, while
in the second case it will be brought about only by the very ultimate
necessity. The tendency to the enlargement of the social unit has been
going on with certain temporary relapses throughout human history.
{122} Though repeatedly checked by the instability of the larger
units, it has always resumed its activity, so that it should probably
be regarded as a fundamental biological drift the existence of which is
a factor which must always be taken into account in dealing with the
structure of human society.
The gregarious mind shows certain characteristics which throw some
light on this phenomenon of the progressively enlarging unit. The
gregarious animal is different from the solitary in the capacity
to become conscious in a special way of the existence of other
creatures. This specific consciousness of his fellows carries with
it a characteristic element of communion with them. The individual
knows another individual of the same herd as a partaker in an entity
of which he himself is a part, so that the second individual is in
some way and to a certain extent identical with himself and part of
his own personality. He is able to feel with the other and share his
pleasures and sufferings as if they were an attenuated form of his own
personal experiences. The degree to which this assimilation of the
interests of another person is carried depends, in a general way, on
the extent of the intercommunication between the two. In human society
a man’s interest in his fellows is distributed about him concentrically
according to a compound of various relations they bear to him which
we may call in a broad way their nearness. The centrifugal fading of
interest is seen when we compare the man’s feeling towards one near
to him with his feeling towards one farther off. He will be disposed,
other things being equal, to sympathize with a relative as against a
fellow-townsman, with a fellow-townsman as against a mere inhabitant of
the same county, with the latter as against the rest of the country,
with an Englishman as against a European, with a European as against
an Asiatic, and so on until a limit is reached beyond {123} which
all human interest is lost. The distribution of interest is of course
never purely geographical, but is modified by, for example, trade and
professional sympathy, and by special cases of intercommunication
which bring topographically distant individuals into a closer grade
of feeling than their mere situation would demand. The essential
principle, however, is that the degree of sympathy with a given
individual varies directly with the amount of intercommunication with
him. The capacity to assimilate the interests of another individual
with one’s own, to allow him, as it were, to partake in one’s own
personality, is what is called altruism, and might equally well perhaps
be called expansive egoism. It is a characteristic of the gregarious
animal, and is a perfectly normal and necessary development in him of
his instinctive inheritance.
Altruism is a quality the understanding of which has been much obscured
by its being regarded from the purely human point of view. Judged
from this standpoint, it has been apt to appear as a breach in the
supposedly “immutable” laws of “Nature red in tooth and claw,” as a
virtue breathed into man from some extra-human source, or as a weakness
which must be stamped out of any race which is to be strong, expanding,
and masterful. To the biologist these views are equally false,
superfluous, and romantic. He is aware that altruism occurs only in a
medium specifically protected from the unqualified influence of natural
selection, that it is the direct outcome of instinct, and that it is a
source of strength because it is a source of union.
In recent times, freedom of travel, and the development of the
resources rendered available by education, have increased the general
mass of intercommunication to an enormous extent. Side by side with
this, altruism has come more and more into recognition as a supreme
moral law. There is {124} already a strong tendency to accept
selfishness as a test of sin, and consideration for others as a test of
virtue, and this has influenced even those who by public profession are
compelled to maintain that right and wrong are to be defined only in
terms of an arbitrary extra-natural code.
Throughout the incalculable ages of man’s existence as a social animal,
Nature has been hinting to him in less and less ambiguous terms that
altruism must become the ultimate sanction of his moral code. Her
whispers have never gained more than grudging and reluctant notice from
the common man, and from those intensified forms of the common man, his
pastors and masters. Only to the alert senses of moral genius has the
message been at all intelligible, and when it has been interpreted to
the people it has always been received with obloquy and derision, with
persecution and martyrdom. Thus, as so often happens in human society,
has one manifestation of herd instinct been met and opposed by another.