DISCOVERY 



305 



logical one, analysed and established, as he says, with 

 a " quite final delicacy and precision," by Professor 

 William James. James " showed that the impulse 

 of an instinct reveals itself as an axiomatically ob- 

 vious proposition, as something which is so clearly 

 'sense' that any idea of discussing its basis is foolish 

 or wicked." 



So far Mr. Trotter has not departed in any way 

 from the average psychologist's point of view. But 

 his new path begins here, in that he believes that the 

 herd instinct is not only itself the cause of axiomatically 

 obvious impulses, but may lend to any ideal, impulse. 

 habit, or beUef, however recently acquired, this char- 

 acter of immediate obviousness. Such beliefs may 

 be held regarding complex subjects like Home Rule 

 or Guild Socialism, or such apparently simple ones as 

 the propriety of wearing made-up neckties or the correct 

 method of eating asparagus. In these cases the feeling 

 of rightness or wrongness is usually " axiomatically 

 obvious," the phrase " It's not done " and the epithet 

 " outsider " providing further evidence in support of 

 Mr. Trotter's theory. 



We are therefore asked to believe that the herd 

 instinct can suffuse, or, if we may use, not too rigidly, 

 an analogy, electrify or magnetise an impulse which 

 itself is clearly not instinctive, and may be a very 

 recent acquirement, having no existential value. This 

 is not the place to discuss the effect which the ac- 

 ceptance of such a belief would have on psychology in 

 general ; but there is no doubt that some such ex- 

 planation is required to explain an obvious but im- 

 portant fact. Most people, ninety-nine times out of 

 a hundred, do or think things which their community 

 calls moral or right, not because of any anticipation of 

 reward or punishment, material or social, of praise or 

 blame, of approval or disapproval, but just because it 

 never enters their heads to behave otherwise. Their 

 reasons for doing the " right " thing, though frequently 

 interesting, are usually rationalisations after the event. 

 This, if the present reviewer has grasped Mr. Trotter 

 correctly, is one of the essential facts upon which the 

 strength of his theory depends. 



We have no intention of quarrelling here with Mr. 

 Trotter's selection of the words " herd " and " instinct." 

 It is perhaps unfortunate that most of us usually 

 apply the term " herd " to the community (or the 

 plate, to adopt the Spencerian simile) to which someone 

 else belongs, but there is no cogent reason why in 

 future we should not deny ourselves the pleasure of 

 limiting this word's functions to those of a missile. 

 Concerning the word " instinct," however, much more 

 might be said in a technical article, and it seems hkely 

 that Mr. Trotter has been misunderstood because he 

 has used a very ordinary word to stand for an extra- 

 ordinarily complex set of phenomena. To the present 



writer it appears that the difference, for example, be- 

 tween Professor McDougall's use of the term "gregarious 

 instinct " and Mr. Trotter's use of " herd instinct " is 

 not unlike the difference between the chemist's and 

 the temperance advocate's respective uses of the word 

 " alcohol." The latter does not mean seriously that the 

 average man is prone to feel an overwhelming tempta- 

 tion to drink a liquid the chemical constitution of which 

 can be simply written as CaHoO ; what he does mean 

 is that the more companionable liquids against which 

 his energies are directed contain alcohol as their 

 indispensable, but not necessarily as their most char- 

 acteristic, constituent. It may be that upon analysis 

 Mr. Trotter's " herd instinct " will prove to contain 

 a relatively large number of complex products, hke 

 the ingredients which make up the flavour of an old 

 wine. We ma\' surmise that such an analysis would 

 result in the discovery of instincts other than the 

 gregarious instinct, habits, and — to use Mr. A. F- 

 Shand's admirable conception— sentiments and in- 

 tegrations of sentiments. Be that as it may, there is 

 very little doubt that Mr. Trotter, once and for all, 

 has set an example, which most other psychologists 

 would do well to copy, of treating, with the seriousness 

 which they deserve, man's gregarious tendencies, 

 their illimitable possibilities and some of their ghastly 

 actualities. 



Until quite recently a serious defect in the majority 

 of writings upon social psychology was their neglect 

 of one of the most important phenomena of civilised 

 mentality : mental or moral conflict. The character of 

 the ordinary imperfect human being is seldom built up 

 by an uninterrupted sequence of orderly superpositions 

 of moral acquirements. More often, especially if 

 the person in question be the possessor of an alert, 

 sensitive, and imaginative mind, this structure bears 

 only too plainly, even in its outward pattern, the marks 

 of conflict, not only with others, but with himself. 

 The recognition of this fact in twentieth-century 

 psychology is largely, perhaps almost entirely, due to 

 those pioneers of psychological medicine Janet and 

 Freud. Mr. Trotter was inoculated with these views 

 at a comparatively early date, and the way in which 

 they have influenced him may be a little startling to 

 any reader who has derived his conceptions of Freud's 

 teachings from casual conversation, from the writings 

 of our younger novelists, or from a recent delightful 

 poem in Punch. We might go so far as to say that 

 the very nature and functions of Mr. Punch himself 

 would form a most entrancing problem to a student of 

 society who has fully grasped Mr. Trotter's concep- 

 tion of the strengthening influence exerted by mental 

 gregariousness. He might, for example, begin with 

 an analytical comparison of the political cartoons 

 published before and since the Armistice. 



