Part 2

Gregariousness seems frequently to be regarded as a somewhat superficial character, scarcely deserving, as it were, the name of an instinct, advantageous it is true, but not of fundamental importance or likely to be deeply ingrained in the inheritance of the species. This attitude may be due to the fact that among mammals at any rate the appearance of gregariousness has not been accompanied by any very gross physical changes which are obviously associated with it.[C]

[C] Among gregarious insects there are of course physical changes arising out of and closely dependent on the social organization.

To whatever it may be due, this method of regarding the social habit is, in the opinion of the present writer, not justified by the facts, and prevents the attainment of conclusions of considerable fruitfulness.

A study of bees and ants shows at once how {20} fundamental the importance of gregariousness may become. The individual in such communities is completely incapable, often physically, of existing apart from the community, and this fact at once gives rise to the suspicion that even in communities less closely knit than those of the ant and the bee, the individual may in fact be more dependent on communal life than appears at first sight.

Another very striking piece of general evidence of the significance of gregariousness as no mere late acquirement is the remarkable coincidence of its occurrence with that of exceptional grades of intelligence or the possibility of very complex reactions to environment. It can scarcely be regarded as an unmeaning accident that the dog, the horse, the ape, the elephant, and man are all social animals. The instances of the bee and the ant are perhaps the most amazing. Here the advantages of gregariousness seem actually to outweigh the most prodigious differences of structure, and we find a condition which is often thought of as a mere habit, capable of enabling the insect nervous system to compete in the complexity of its power of adaptation with that of the higher vertebrates.

If it be granted that gregariousness is a phenomenon of profound biological significance and one likely therefore to be responsible for an important group of instinctive impulses, the next step in our argument is the discussion of the question as to whether man is to be regarded as gregarious in the full sense of the word, whether, that is to say, the social habit may be expected to furnish him with a mass of instinctive impulse as mysteriously potent as the impulses of self-preservation, nutrition, and sex. Can we look to the social instinct for an explanation of some of the “_a priori_ syntheses of the most perfect sort needing no proof but their own evidence,” which are not explained by the three {21} primitive categories of instinct, and remain stumbling-blocks in the way of generalizing the conduct of man?

The conception of man as a gregarious animal is, of course, extremely familiar; one frequently meets with it in the writings of psychologists and sociologists, and it has obtained a respectable currency with the lay public. It has, indeed, become so hackneyed that it is the first duty of a writer who maintains the thesis that its significance is not even yet fully understood, to show that the popular conception of it has been far from exhaustive. As used hitherto the idea seems to have had a certain vagueness which greatly impaired its practical value. It furnished an interesting analogy for some of the behaviour of man, or was enunciated as a half serious illustration by a writer who felt himself to be in an exceptionally sardonic vein, but it was not at all widely looked upon as a definite fact of biology which must have consequences as precise and a significance as ascertainable as the secretion of the gastric juice or the refracting apparatus of the eye. One of the most familiar attitudes was that which regarded the social instinct as a late development. The family was looked upon as the primitive unit; from it developed the tribe, and by the spread of family feeling to the tribe the social instinct arose. It is interesting that the psychological attack upon this position has been anticipated by sociologists and anthropologists, and that it is already being recognized that an undifferentiated horde rather than the family must be regarded as the primitive basis of human society.

The most important consequence of this vague way of regarding the social habit of man has been that no exhaustive investigation of its psychological corollaries has been carried out. When we see the enormous effect in determining conduct that the gregarious inheritance has in the bee, the ant, the {22} horse, or the dog, it is quite plain that if the gregariousness of man had been seriously regarded as a definite fact a great amount of work would have been done in determining precisely what reactive tendencies it had marked out in man’s mind. Unfortunately, the amount of precise work of this kind has been very small.

From the biological standpoint the probability of gregariousness being a primitive and fundamental quality in man seems to be considerable. As already pointed out, like the other great enlargement of the biological unit, but in a much more easily recognizable degree, it would appear to have the effect of enlarging the advantages of variation. Varieties not immediately favourable, varieties departing widely from the standard, varieties even unfavourable to the individual may be supposed to be given by it a chance of survival. Now the course of the development of man seems to present many features incompatible with its having proceeded amongst isolated individuals exposed to the unmodified action of natural selection. Changes so serious as the assumption of the upright posture, the reduction in the jaw and its musculature, the reduction in the acuity of smell and hearing, demand, if the species is to survive, either a delicacy of adjustment with the compensatingly developing intelligence so minute as to be almost inconceivable, or the existence of some kind of protective enclosure, however imperfect, in which the varying individuals were sheltered from the direct influence of natural selection. The existence of such a mechanism would compensate losses of physical strength in the individual by the greatly increased strength of the larger unit, of the unit, that is to say, upon which natural selection still acts unmodified.

A realization, therefore, of this function of gregariousness relieves us from the necessity of {23} supposing that the double variations of diminishing physical and increasing mental capacity always occurred _pari passu_. The case for the primitiveness of the social habit would seem to be still further strengthened by a consideration of such widely aberrant developments as speech and the æsthetic activities, but a discussion of them here would involve an unnecessary indulgence of biological speculation.

IV. MENTAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE GREGARIOUS ANIMAL.

(_a_) Current Views in Sociology and Psychology.

If we now assume that gregariousness may be regarded as a fundamental quality of man, it remains to discuss the effects we may expect it to have produced upon the structure of his mind. It would be well, however, first, to attempt to form some idea of how far investigation has already gone in this direction. It is of course clear that no complete review of all that has been said concerning a conception so familiar can be attempted here, and, even if it were possible, it would not be a profitable enterprise, as the great bulk of writers have not seen in the idea anything to justify a fundamental examination of it. What will be done here, therefore, will be to mention a few representative writers who have dealt with the subject, and to give in a summary way the characteristic features of their exposition.

As far as I am aware, the first person to point out any of the less obvious biological significance of gregariousness was Professor Karl Pearson.[D] {24}

[D] Many references to the subject will be found in his published works, for example in “The Grammar of Science,” in “National Life from the Standpoint of Science,” and in “The Chances of Death.” In the collection of Essays last named the essay entitled “Socialism and Natural Selection” deals most fully with the subject.

He called attention to the enlargement of the selective unit effected by the appearance of gregariousness, and to the fact that therefore within the group the action of natural selection becomes modified. This conception had, as is well known, escaped the insight of Haeckel, of Spencer, and of Huxley, and Pearson showed into what confusions in their treatment of the problems of society these three had been led by the oversight.[E] For example may be mentioned the famous antithesis of the “cosmical” and the “ethical” processes expounded in Huxley’s Romanes Lecture. It was quite definitely indicated by Pearson that the so-called ethical process, the appearance, that is to say, of altruism, is to be regarded as a directly instinctive product of gregariousness, and as natural, therefore, as any other instinct.

These very clear and valuable conceptions do not seem, however, to have received from biologists the attention they deserved, and as far as I am aware their author has not continued further the examination of the structure of the gregarious mind, which would undoubtedly have yielded in his hands further conclusions of equal value.

We may next examine the attitude of a modern sociologist. I have chosen for this purpose the work of an American sociologist, Lester Ward, and propose briefly to indicate his position as it may be gathered from his book entitled “Pure Sociology.”[F] {25}

[E] “Socialism and Natural Selection” in “The Chances of Death.”

[F] Lester F. Ward, “Pure Sociology: a Treatise on the Origin and Spontaneous Development of Society.” New York: The Macmillan Co. 1903. I do not venture to decide whether this work may be regarded as representative of orthodox sociology, if there be such a thing; I have made the choice because of the author’s capacity for fresh and ingenious speculation and his obviously wide knowledge of sociological literature.

The task of summarizing the views of any sociologist seems to me to be rendered difficult by a certain vagueness in outline of the positions laid down, a certain tendency for a description of fact to run into an analogy, and an analogy to fade into an illustration. It would be discourteous to doubt that these tendencies are necessary to the fruitful treatment of the material of sociology, but, as they are very prominent in connection with the subject of gregariousness, it is necessary to say that one is fully conscious of the difficulties they give rise to, and feels that they may have led one into unintentional misrepresentation.

With this proviso it may be stated that the writings of Ward produce the feeling that he regards gregariousness as furnishing but few precise and primitive characteristics of the human mind. The mechanisms through which group “instinct” acts would seem to be to him largely rational processes, and group instinct itself is regarded as a relatively late development more or less closely associated with a rational knowledge that it “pays.” For example, he says: “For want of a better name, I have characterized this social instinct, or instinct of race safety, as religion, but not without clearly perceiving that it constitutes the primordial undifferentiated plasm out of which have subsequently developed all the more important human institutions. This . . . if it be not an instinct, is at least the human homologue of animal instinct, and served the same purpose _after the instincts had chiefly disappeared_, and when the egotistic reason would otherwise have rapidly carried the race to destruction in its mad pursuit of pleasure for its own sake.”[G]

[G] “Pure Sociology,” p. 134. Italics not in original. Passages of a similar tendency will be found on pp. 200 and 556.

That gregariousness has to be considered amongst {26} the factors shaping the tendencies of the human mind has long been recognized by the more empirical psychologists. In the main, however, it has been regarded as a quality perceptible only in the characteristics of actual crowds—that is to say, assemblies of persons being and acting in association. This conception has served to evoke a certain amount of valuable work in the observation of the behaviour of crowds.[H]

Owing, however, to the failure to investigate as the more essential question the effects of gregariousness in the mind of the normal individual man, the theoretical side of crowd psychology has remained incomplete and relatively sterile.

There is, however, one exception, in the case of the work of Boris Sidis. In a book entitled “The Psychology of Suggestion”[I] he has described certain psychical qualities as necessarily associated with the social habit in the individual as in the crowd. His position, therefore, demands some discussion. The fundamental element in it is the conception of the normal existence in the mind of a subconscious self. This subconscious or subwaking self is regarded as embodying the “lower” and more obviously brutal qualities of man. It is irrational, imitative, credulous, cowardly, cruel, and lacks all individuality, will, and self-control.[J] This personality takes the place of the normal personality during hypnosis and when the individual is one of an active crowd, as, for example, in riots, panics, lynchings, revivals, and so forth. {27}

[H] For example, the little book of Gustave Le Bon—“Psychologie des Foules,” Paris: Felix Alcan—in which are formulated many generalizations.

[I] “The Psychology of Suggestion: a Research into the Subconscious Nature of Man and Society,” by Boris Sidis, with an Introduction by Prof. Wm. James. New York. 1903.

[J] “Psychology of Suggestion,” p. 295.

Of the two personalities—the subconscious and the normal—the former alone is suggestible; the successful operation of suggestion implies the recurrence, however transient, of a disaggregation of personality, and the emergence of the subwaking self as the controlling mind (pp. 89 and 90). It is this suggestibility of the subwaking self which enables man to be a social animal. “Suggestibility is the cement of the herd, the very soul of the primitive social group. . . . Man is a social animal, no doubt, but he is social because he is suggestible. Suggestibility, however, requires disaggregation of consciousness, hence society presupposes a cleavage of the mind. Society and mental epidemics are intimately related; for the social gregarious self is the suggestible subconscious self” (p. 310).

Judged from our present standpoint, the most valuable feature of Sidis’s book is that it calls attention to the undoubtedly intimate relation between gregariousness and suggestibility. The mechanism, however, by which he supposes suggestibility to come into action is more open to criticism. The conception of a permanent subconscious self is one to which it is doubtful whether the evidence compels assent.[K] The essential difference, however, which Sidis’s views present from those to be developed below, lies in his regarding suggestibility as being something which is liable to intrude upon the normal mind as the result of a disaggregation of consciousness, instead of as a necessary quality of every normal mind, continually present, and an inalienable accompaniment of human thought. A careful reading of his book gives a very clear impression that he looks upon suggestibility as a {28} disreputable and disastrous legacy of the brute and the savage, undesirable in civilized life, opposed to the satisfactory development of the normal individuality, and certainly in no way associated at its origin with a quality so valuable as altruism. Moreover, one gets the impression that he regards suggestibility as being manifested chiefly, if not solely, in crowds, in panics, revivals, and in conditions generally in which the element of close association is well marked.

[K] In this connexion the “Symposium on the Subconscious” in the _Journal of Abnormal Psychology_, vol. ii. Nos. 1 and 2, is of much interest. The discussion is contributed to by Münsterberg, Ribot Jastrow, Pierre Janet, and Morton Prince.

(_b_) Deductive Considerations

The functions of the gregarious habit in a species may broadly be defined as offensive or defensive, or both. Whichever of these modes it has assumed in the animal under consideration, it will be correlated with effects which will be divisible into two classes—the general characteristics of the social animal, and the special characteristics of the form of social habit possessed by the given animal. The dog and the sheep illustrate well the characteristics of the two simple forms of gregariousness—offensive and defensive.

1. _Special Characteristics of the Gregarious Animal._

These need not be dealt with here, as they are the qualities which for the most part have been treated of by psychologists in such work as has been done on the corollaries of gregariousness in man. This is because they are qualities which are most evident in man’s behaviour when he acts in crowds, and are then evident as something temporarily superadded to the possibilities of the isolated individual. Hence it has come about that they have been taken for the most part as constituting the whole of man’s gregarious inheritance, while the possibility that that inheritance might have {29} equally important consequences for the individual has been relatively neglected.

2. _General Characteristics of the Gregarious Animal._

The cardinal quality of the herd is homogeneity. It is clear that the great advantage of the social habit is to enable large numbers to act as one, whereby in the case of the hunting gregarious animal strength in pursuit and attack is at once increased to beyond that of the creatures preyed upon,[L] and in protective socialism the sensitiveness of the new unit to alarms is greatly in excess of that of the individual member of the flock.

[L] The wolf pack forms an organism, it is interesting to note, stronger than the lion or the tiger; capable of compensating for the loss of members; inexhaustible in pursuit, and therefore capable by sheer strength of hunting down without wile or artifice the fleetest animals; capable finally of consuming all the food it kills, and thus possessing another considerable advantage over the large solitary carnivora in not tending uselessly to exhaust its food supply. The advantages of the social habit in carnivora is well shown by the survival of wolves in civilized countries even to-day.

To secure these advantages of homogeneity, it is evident that the members of the herd must possess sensitiveness to the behaviour of their fellows. The individual isolated will be of no meaning, the individual as part of the herd will be capable of transmitting the most potent impulses. Each member of the flock tending to follow its neighbour and in turn to be followed, each is in some sense capable of leadership; but no lead will be followed that departs widely from normal behaviour. A lead will be followed only from its resemblance to the normal. If the leader go so far ahead as definitely to cease to be in the herd, he will necessarily be ignored.

The original in conduct, that is to say resistiveness to the voice of the herd, will be suppressed {30} by natural selection; the wolf which does not follow the impulses of the herd will be starved; the sheep which does not respond to the flock will be eaten.

Again, not only will the individual be responsive to impulses coming from the herd, but he will treat the herd as his normal environment. The impulse to be in and always to remain with the herd will have the strongest instinctive weight. Anything which tends to separate him from his fellows, as soon as it becomes perceptible as such, will be strongly resisted.

So far, we have regarded the gregarious animal objectively. We have seen that he behaves as if the herd were the only environment in which he can live, that he is especially sensitive to impulses coming from the herd, and quite differently affected by the behaviour of animals not in the herd. Let us now try to estimate the mental aspects of these impulses. Suppose a species in possession of precisely the instinctive endowments which we have been considering, to be also self-conscious, and let us ask what will be the forms under which these phenomena will present themselves in its mind. In the first place, it is quite evident that impulses derived from herd feeling will enter the mind with the value of instincts—they will present themselves as “_a priori_ syntheses of the most perfect sort needing no proof but their own evidence.” They will not, however, it is important to remember, necessarily always give this quality to the same specific acts, but will show this great distinguishing characteristic that they may give to _any opinion whatever_ the characters of instinctive belief, making it into an “_a priori synthesis_”; so that we shall expect to find acts which it would be absurd to look upon as the results of specific instincts carried out with all the enthusiasm of instinct, and displaying {31} all the marks of instinctive behaviour. The failure to recognize this appearance of herd impulse as a tendency, as a power which can confer instinctive sanctions on any part of the field of belief or action, has prevented the social habit of man from attracting as much of the attention of psychologists as it might profitably have done.

In interpreting into mental terms the consequences of gregariousness, we may conveniently begin with the simplest. The conscious individual will feel an unanalysable primary sense of comfort in the actual presence of his fellows, and a similar sense of discomfort in their absence. It will be obvious truth to him that it is not good for the man to be alone. Loneliness will be a real terror, insurmountable by reason.

Again, certain conditions will become secondarily associated with presence with, or absence from, the herd. For example, take the sensations of heat and cold. The latter is prevented in gregarious animals by close crowding, and experienced in the reverse condition; hence it comes to be connected in the mind with separation, and so acquires altogether unreasonable associations of harmfulness. Similarly, the sensation of warmth is associated with feelings of the secure and salutary. It has taken medicine many thousands of years to begin to doubt the validity of the popular conception of the harmfulness of cold; yet to the psychologist such a doubt is immediately obvious.[M]

[M] Any one who has watched the behaviour of the dog and the cat towards warmth and cold cannot have failed to notice the effect of the gregarious habit on the former. The cat displays a moderate liking for warmth, but also a decided indifference to cold, and will quietly sit in the snow in a way which would be impossible to the dog.