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PREFACE
PREFACE
The first two essays in this book were written some ten years ago and published in the Sociological Review in 1908 and 1909. They had formed a single paper, but it was found necessary to publish in two instalments at an interval of six months, and to cut down to a considerable extent the total bulk. It was lately suggested to me that as the numbers of the review in which the two essays appeared were out of print, the fact that the subject concerned was not without some current interest might jus
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PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
A few errors in the text of the First Edition have been corrected, and a sentence which had caused misunderstanding has been omitted. No other change has been made. A Postscript has been added in order to point out some of the directions in which the psychological inquiry made during the war gave a practical foresight that was confirmed by the course of events, and in order to examine the remarkable situation in which society now finds itself. In the Preface to the First Edition I ventured to su
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I. INTRODUCTION
I. INTRODUCTION
Few subjects have led to discussion so animated and prolonged as has the definition of the science of sociology. It is therefore necessary, as it is hoped that this essay may be capable of sociological applications, that the writer should define the sense in which he uses the term. By calling it a science is, of course, denoted the view that sociology is a body of knowledge derived from experience of its material and co-ordinated so that it shall be useful in forecasting and, if possible, direct
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II. PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF INSTINCT.
II. PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF INSTINCT.
Many years ago, in a famous chapter of his Text Book of Psychology, William James analysed and established with a quite final delicacy and precision the way in which instinct appears to introspection. He showed that the impulse of an instinct reveals itself as an axiomatically obvious proposition, as something which is so clearly “sense” that any idea of discussing its basis is foolish or wicked. 1 1 Not one man in a billion, when taking his dinner, ever thinks of utility. He eats because the f
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III. BIOLOGICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF GREGARIOUSNESS.
III. BIOLOGICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF GREGARIOUSNESS.
The animal kingdom presents two relatively sudden and very striking advances in complexity and in the size of the unit upon which natural selection acts unmodified. These advances consist in the aggregation of units which were previously independent and exposed to the full normal action of natural selection, and the two instances are, of course, the passage from the unicellular to the multicellular, and from the solitary to the social. It is obvious that in the multicellular organism individual
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IV. MENTAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE GREGARIOUS ANIMAL.
IV. MENTAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE GREGARIOUS ANIMAL.
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 profit
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GREGARIOUSNESS AND THE FUTURE OF MAN.
GREGARIOUSNESS AND THE FUTURE OF MAN.
Thus far we have attempted to apply biological conceptions to man and society as they actually exist at present. We may now, very shortly, inquire whether or not the same method can yield some hint as to the course which human development will take in the future. 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
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MAN’S PLACE IN NATURE AND NATURE’S PLACE IN MAN
MAN’S PLACE IN NATURE AND NATURE’S PLACE IN MAN
As the nineteenth century draws away into the past and it is possible to get a comprehensive view of the intellectual legacies it has left to its successor, certain of its ideas stand out from the general mass by reason of the greatness of their scale and scope. Ideas of the first order of magnitude are from their very greatness capable of full appreciation only in a comparatively distant view. However much they have been admired and studied by contemporary thought, it is with the passage of tim
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COMMENTS ON AN OBJECTIVE SYSTEM OF HUMAN PSYCHOLOGY
COMMENTS ON AN OBJECTIVE SYSTEM OF HUMAN PSYCHOLOGY
Until comparatively recent years the fact that what was called psychology did not even pretend to be of any practical value in affairs was tolerated by its professors and regarded as more or less in the nature of things. The science, therefore, outside a small class of specialists was in very dismal reputation. It had come to comprise two divergent schools, one which busied itself with the apparatus of the experimental physiologist and frankly studied the physiology of the nervous system, the ot
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SOME PRINCIPLES OF A BIOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY.
SOME PRINCIPLES OF A BIOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY.
The third method by which it has been attempted to attack the problems of psychology is that which I have called the comparative. Its characteristic note is a distrust of that attitude towards phenomena which I have called the human point of view. Man’s description and interpretation of his own mental experience being so liable to distortion by prejudice, by self-esteem, by his views as to his own nature and powers, as well as so incomplete by reason of his incapacity to reach by ordinary intros
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THE BIOLOGY OF GREGARIOUSNESS.
THE BIOLOGY OF GREGARIOUSNESS.
In order to set forth the evidence on which is based the conclusion that the present juncture of affairs is not merely, as it very obviously is, a meeting-place of epochs in the historical series, but also marks a stage in the biological series which will prove to have been a moment of destiny in the evolution of the human species, it will be necessary to inquire somewhat closely into the biological meaning of the social habit in animals. In an earlier essay certain speculations in the same subj
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CHARACTERS OF THE GREGARIOUS ANIMAL DISPLAYED BY MAN.
CHARACTERS OF THE GREGARIOUS ANIMAL DISPLAYED BY MAN.
When we come to consider man we find ourselves faced at once by some of the most interesting problems in the biology of the social habit. It is probably not necessary now to labour the proof of the fact that man is a gregarious animal in literal fact, that he is as essentially gregarious as the bee and the ant, the sheep, the ox, and the horse. The tissue of characteristically gregarious reactions which his conduct presents furnishes incontestable proof of this thesis, which is thus an ind
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SOME PECULIARITIES OF THE SOCIAL HABIT IN MAN.
SOME PECULIARITIES OF THE SOCIAL HABIT IN MAN.
It is apparent after very little consideration that the extent of man’s individual mental development is a factor which has produced many novel characters in his manifestations of the social habit, and has even concealed to a great extent the profound influence this instinct has in regulating his conduct, his thought, and his society. Large mental capacity in the individual, as we have already seen, has the effect of providing a wide freedom of response to instinctive impulses, so that, while th
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IMPERFECTIONS OF THE SOCIAL HABIT IN MAN.
IMPERFECTIONS OF THE SOCIAL HABIT IN MAN.
The study of man as a gregarious animal has not been pursued with the thoroughness and objectivity it deserves and must receive if it is to yield its full value in illuminating his status and in the management of society. The explanation of this comparative neglect is to be found in the complex irregularity which obscures the social habit as manifested by man. Thus it comes to be believed that gregariousness is no longer a fully functional and indispensable inheritance, but survives at the p
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GREGARIOUS SPECIES AT WAR.
GREGARIOUS SPECIES AT WAR.
The occurrence of war between nations renders obvious certain manifestations of the social instinct which are apt to escape notice at other times. So marked is this that a certain faint interest in the biology of gregariousness has been aroused during the present war, and has led to some speculation but no very radical examination of the facts or explanation of their meaning. Expression, of course, has been found for the usual view that primitive instincts normally vestigial or dormant are a
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ENGLAND AGAINST GERMANY—GERMANY.
ENGLAND AGAINST GERMANY—GERMANY.
In an earlier part of this book the statement was made that the present juncture in human affairs probably forms one of those rare nodes of circumstance in which the making of an epoch in history corresponds with a perceptible change in the secular progress of biological evolution. It remains to attempt some justification of this opinion. England and Germany face one another as perhaps the two most typical antagonists of the war. It may seem but a partial way of examining events if we limit our
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ENGLAND AGAINST GERMANY—ENGLAND.
ENGLAND AGAINST GERMANY—ENGLAND.
It is one of the most impressive facts about the war, that while Germany is the very type of a perfected aggressive herd, England is perhaps the most complete example of a socialized herd. Corresponding with this biological difference is the striking difference in their history. Germany has modelled her soul upon the wolf’s, and has rushed through the possibilities of her archetype in fifty feverish years of development; already she is a finished product, her moral ideal is fulfilled and leaves
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PREJUDICE IN TIME OF WAR.
PREJUDICE IN TIME OF WAR.
With the exception of the two preliminary essays, the foregoing chapters were written in the autumn of 1915. As the chief purpose of the book was to expound the conception that psychology is a science practically useful in actual affairs, it was inevitable that a great deal of the exemplary matter by which it was attempted to illustrate the theoretical discussion should be related to the war of 1914–1918. Rich, however, as this subject was in material with which to illustrate a psychologica
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PSYCHOLOGICAL ANTICIPATIONS
PSYCHOLOGICAL ANTICIPATIONS
The hypothesis was put forward that in the German people the reactions in which the herd instinct was manifesting itself were in accordance with the type to be seen in the predaceous social animals rather than the type which seems to be characteristic of modern Western civilizations. The next step was naturally to inquire whether the known characters of what we called aggressive gregariousness were able to account for the observed German peculiarities in reaction, and then to indicate what s
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AFTER THE WAR.
AFTER THE WAR.
The psychological situation left by the conclusion of the war is likely to attract an increasing amount of attention as time passes, and it may be of interest to examine it in the light of the principles that we have been making use of in dealing with the war. It is a fact fundamental in psychology that the state of war furnishes the most powerful of all stimuli to the social instinct. It sets in motion a tide of common feeling by the power of which union and energy of purpose and self-sacrifice
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THE INSTABILITY OF CIVILIZATION.
THE INSTABILITY OF CIVILIZATION.
The foregoing considerations are enough, perhaps, to make one wonder whether, after all, Western civilization may not be about to follow its unnumbered predecessors into decay and dissolution. There can be no doubt that such a suspicion is oppressing many thoughtful minds at the present time. It is not likely to be dispelled by the contemplation of history or by the nature of recent events. Indeed, the view can be maintained very plausibly that all civilizations must tend ultimately to break dow
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SOME CHARACTERS OF A RATIONAL STATECRAFT.
SOME CHARACTERS OF A RATIONAL STATECRAFT.
If the foregoing discussion has been sound, we may attribute the impermanence of all civilizations of which we have knowledge to the failure of society to preserve with increasing magnitude of its communities a true homogeneity and a progressive integration of its elements. We have seen that there is a type of society—distinguished here as the socialized type—in which a trace of this integrative tendency can be detected at work. Under the threat of war this tendency is accelerated in its action,
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