304 



DISCOVERY 



It is impossible to deal adequately here with the 

 substance of the two latter parts of this book, for, as 

 the Irishman said of his three hours' address when 

 asked to summarise it, "it's all gist." The first two 

 essays, however — " Herd Instinct and its Bearing on 

 the Psychology of Civilised Man," and " Sociological 

 Applications of the Psychology of Herd Instinct " — 

 interest the psychologist (or, rather, ought to interest 

 him, for even psychologists have their insensitive 

 sides) because they have already existed in print, 

 and have therefore been open to criticism for ten j'ears. 



It may seem strange to say that those essays were 

 simply a plea that the gregarious instinct in man 

 should be taken seriously. They certainly appeared 

 a little while before Nietzsche became the personal 

 property of our Sunday newspapers, though by this time 

 the " psychology " of crowds was a firmly established 

 journalistic favourite. Books which claimed to deal with 

 sociology were already numerous — why, then, this plea? 



Mr. Trotter's opinion, if we gather it rightly from his 

 book, is that when the average observer of human 

 behaviour attempts to describe man's undoubted 

 tendency to live in herds of rapidly increasing size, 

 he does little more than to state the obvious facts 

 and to give examples of them. Now this bodily 

 gregariousness, as we may call man's tendency to 

 huddle into the physical proximity of his fellows, 

 which leads to that blackening of the earth's surface 

 with human figures on the downs of Epsom or the 

 front at Blackpool, is by no means the most important 

 feature of the gregarious tendencies which he displays. 

 This merely ph3'sical gregariousness is usually described 

 in the detached way which we might expect from an 

 aeroplane observer, or from a philosophical writer 

 peering down from the even remoter altitudes to which 

 he usually soars and at which, not infrequently, he 

 remains. 



But this absentee-account of the behaviour of one's 

 fellow-creatures, however kindly and tolerant it may 

 be — though often it is nothing of the kind — is psycho- 

 logically a thin and poor thing. We would cheerfully 

 exchange most of it for half a dozen of O. Henry's 

 stories of the Four Milhon, or for an account of life in 

 North London as seen by Mr. Pett Ridge. And for 

 this reason : these two writers make us realise something 

 which the observers in the more rarefied atmosphere 

 do not — the deeply pathetic, profoundly ridiculous, 

 savagely cruel, and infinitely noble mental expressions 

 of gregariousness. For all these things arise not as 

 accidents attributable to mere physical proximity, 

 but as definite biological results. Gregariousness, 

 Mr. Trotter believes, " must have consequences as 

 precise, and a significance as ascertainable, as the 

 secretion of the gastric juice or the refracting apparatus 

 of the eye." 



To put this in another way : hitherto the cultured 

 writer, knowing that he is relatively immune to the 

 simple mind's fear of bodily solitude, has implicitly 

 or explicitly congratulated himself on possessing few 

 of the more primitive characteristics of gregariousness. 

 But it often seems to be only another product of this 

 same gregarious instinct which insures our friend 

 against such a fear. His bodily isolation is off-set 

 by the fact that in thought he can choose his own 

 company : that, perhaps, he never feels so sociable 

 as when he is alone. Yet to such a first-class traveller 

 on life's journey, the fear of mental lonehness may 

 some day come with perfectly hideous intensity. 

 The possibihty of being ostracised by his " set "; ex- 

 communicated by his Church ; misunderstood by his 

 nearest and dearest —these may straddle across his 

 path so menacingly that any thought or desire which 

 would conflict with the teachings of his herd is switched 

 off automatically while its faintest incipient glimmer- 

 ings arc still at the back of his mind. Before this 

 striking exhibition of man's gregariousness, the Derby 

 Daj' crowd, " Uke flies on a plate," as Herbert Spencer 

 described it, becomes so simple as to be almost un- 

 interesting. The mental serenity and complacency of 

 the most superior of superior persons may have been 

 derived from his herd in a way only slightly more 

 complex than that which brings about the visible 

 beatitude, described by Galton, of the South African 

 ox, romping into the company' of his fellows after 

 the briefest separation from them. 



It is just here that Mr. Trotter offers to psychology 

 either a new discovery or a challenge. If the former, 

 it is scarcely possible to overrate the significance of 

 his book, not only for psycholog^^ but for history, 

 political science, ethics; in fact for every study which 

 honestly attempts to understand the complexities of 

 social behaviour. On the other hand, if Mr. Trotter's 

 suggestion be a challenge, it is remarkable that his 

 gage has remained on the ground so long. We may 

 proceed more easily upon the path which he has in- 

 dicated if we take some compass-bejirings at its be- 

 ginning. He begins from two truths in biology- and 

 psychology respectivel}'. The first is that gregarious- 

 ness in animals increases enormously their capabilities 

 of offence and defence, and that any member of the 

 herd, in return for the protection from natural selection 

 which his commune affords him, pays the price of a 

 loss of individuality of behaviour. But he goes farther, 

 and points out that, in human beings, this stereotyping 

 of behaviour is paralleled by a similar process in the 

 realm of thought ; that man's political and religious 

 beliefs illustrate the advantages and disadvantages 

 of standardised mass-production even more brilhantly 

 than the most popular motor-car. 



The second fact from which he sets out is a psycho- 



