P REJUDICE IN T IME OF W AR.
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 psychological inquiry, it presented also the great difficulty of being surrounded and permeated by prejudices of the most deeply impassioned kind, prejudices, moreover, in one direction or another from which no inhabitant of one of the belligerent countries could have the least expectation of being free. To yield to the temptation offered by the psychological richness of war themes might thus be to sacrifice the detachment of mind and coolness of judgment without which scientific investigation is impossible. It had to be admitted, in fact, that there were strong grounds for such epistemological pessimism, and it will perhaps be useful in a broad way to define some of these here.
In normal times a modern nation is made up of a society in which no regard is paid to moral unity, and in which therefore common feeling is to {215} a great extent unorganized and inco-ordinate. In such a society the individual citizen cannot derive from the nation as a whole the full satisfaction of the needs special to him as a gregarious animal. The national feeling he experiences when at home among his fellows is too vague and remote to call forth the sense of moral vigour and security that his nature demands. As has already been pointed out1 the necessary consequence is the segregation of society into innumerable minor