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
As we have already seen reason to believe, in the course of organic
development when the limits of size and efficiency in the unicellular
organism were reached, the only possible access of advantage to the
competing organism was gained by the appearance of combination. In
the scale of the metazoa {61} we see the advantages of combination
and division of labour being more and more made use of, until the
individual cells lose completely the power of separate existence,
and their functions come to be useful only in the most indirect
way and through the organisms of which the cells are constituents.
This complete submergence of the cell in the organism indicates
the attainment of the maximum advantages to be obtained from this
particular access in complexity, and it indicates to us the direction
in which development must proceed within the limits which are produced
by that other access of complexity—gregariousness.
The success and extent of such development clearly depend on the
relation of two series of activities in the individual which may in
the most general way be described as the capacity for varied reaction
and the capacity for communication. The process going on in the
satisfactorily developing gregarious animal is the moulding of the
varied reactions of the individual into functions beneficial to him
only indirectly through the welfare of the new unit—the herd. This
moulding process is a consequence of the power of intercommunication
amongst the individual constituents of the new unit. Intercommunication
is thus seen to be of cardinal importance to the gregarious, just as
was the nervous system to the multicellular.
Moreover, in a given gregarious species the existence of a highly
developed power of reaction in the individual with a proportionately
less developed capacity for communication will mean that the species
is not deriving the advantages it might from the possession of
gregariousness, while the full advantages of the type will be attained
only when the two sets of activities are correspondingly strong.
Here we may see perhaps the explanation of the astounding success
and completeness of {62} gregariousness in bees and ants. Their
cycle of development was early complete because the possibilities
of reaction of the individual were so small, and consequently the
capacity for intercommunication of the individual was relatively soon
able to attain a corresponding grade. The individual has become as
completely merged in the hive as the single cell in the multicellular
animal, and consequently the whole of her activities is available for
the uses of the State. It is interesting to notice that, considered
from this aspect, the wonderful society of the bee, with its perfect
organization and its wonderful adaptability and elasticity, owes its
early attainment of success to the smallness of the brain power of the
individual.
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