Instincts of the Herd in Peace and WarTrotter, W. (Wilfred)
Science
Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War
Trotter, W. (Wilfred)
Collective behavior; Crowds; Social psychology; World War, 1914-1918 -- Psychological aspects
always at the earliest moment set her new dominions at work upon the
problem in which her wholly unromantic absorption has never relaxed.
And after a thousand years she seems as far as ever from her goal. Her
society is irregular, disorganized, inco-ordinate, split into classes
at war with one another, weighted at one end with poverty, squalor,
ignorance, and disease, weighted at the other end by ignorance,
prejudice, and corpulent self-satisfaction. Nevertheless, her patience
is no more shaken by what she is lectured upon as failure than was her
composure by what she was assured was imperial success. She is no less
bound by her fate than is Germany, and must continue her path until
she reaches its infinitely remoter goal. Nations may model themselves
on her expedients, and found the architecture of their liberty on the
tabernacles she has set up by the wayside to rest in for a night—she
will continue on her road unconscious of herself or her greatness,
absent-mindedly polite to genius, pleasantly tickled by prophets with
very loud voices, but apt to go to sleep under {203} sermons, too
awkward to boast or bluster, too composed to seem strong, too dull
to be flattered, too patient to be flurried, and withal inflexibly
practical and indifferent to dreams.
* * * * *
No more perfect illustration of the characteristics of the two nations
could be found than their attitude before the war. England the empiric,
dimly conscious of trouble, was puzzled, restless, and uneasy in the
face of a problem she was threatened with some day having to study;
Germany, the theorist, cool, “objective,” conscious of herself, was
convinced there was no problem at all.
In studying the mind of England in the spirit of the biological
psychologist, it is necessary to keep in mind the society of the bee,
just as in studying the German mind it was necessary to keep in mind
the society of the wolf.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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