The Swarm Spirit 



That unanswered question does not immediately 

 concern us, for in speaking of mind we commonly 

 mean the conscious or reasoning human article, 

 and we are dealing here with the subconscious 

 mind, which seems to work after the same fashion 

 whether it appears on two legs or four. A dog 

 does not know why he becomes excited in a com- 

 motion that does not personally concern him, or 

 why he feels impelled to hasten to an outcry from 

 an unknown source, or why he looks up, contrary 

 to all his habits, when everybody else is looking 

 up; and neither does a man know why he does 

 just such things. Man and brute both act in 

 obedience to something deeper, more primal and 

 more dependable than reason, and in this subcon- 

 scious field they are akin; otherwise it would be 

 impossible for a man ever to train or to under- 

 stand a brute, and our companionable dogs would 

 be as distant as the seraphim. 



When, therefore, the same unreasoning actions 

 that are attributed to a mysterious collective im- 

 pulse among birds or animals are found among 

 men to depend on a succession of individual im- 

 pulses, it is good psychology as well as good nat- 

 ural history to dismiss the whole herd instinct 

 as another thoughtless myth. The familiar social 

 and imitative instincts, the contagion of excite- 

 ment, the outward projection of emotional im- 



[i35l 



