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
The moral homogeneity so plainly visible in the {137} society of the
bee is replaced in man by a segregation into classes which tends always
to obscure the unity of the nation and often is directly antagonistic
to it. The readiness with which such segregation occurs seems to be due
to the invincible strength of the gregarious impulse in the individual
man and to the immense size and strength of the modern major unit of
the species. It would appear that in order that a given unit should
develop the highest degree of homogeneity within itself it must be
subject to direct pressure from without. A great abundance of food
supply and consequent relaxed external pressure may in the bee lead
to indiscriminate swarming, while in man the size and security of the
modern State lead to a relaxation of the closer grades of national
unity—in the absence of deliberate encouragement of it or of the
stimulus of war. The need of the individual for homogeneity is none the
less present, and the result is segregation into classes which form, as
it were, minor herds in which homogeneity is maintained by the external
pressure of competition, of political or religious differences and so
forth. Naturally enough such segregations have come to correspond in
a rough way with the various types of imperfect specialization which
exist. This tendency is clearly of unfavourable effect on national
unity, since it tends to obscure the national value of specialization
and to give it a merely local and class significance. Segregation in
itself is always dangerous in that it provides the individual with a
substitute for the true major unit—the nation—and in times when there
is an urgent need for national homogeneity may prove to be a hostile
force.
It has been characteristic of the governing classes to acquiesce in
the fullest developments of segregation and even to defend them by
force and to fail to realize in times of emergency that national {138}
homogeneity must always be a partial and weakly passion as long as
segregation actively persists.
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Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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