HERD INSTINCT AND ITS BEARING ON THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CIVILIZED MAN

he has done wrong, and he will come to be punished, unwillingly it is true, and as if dragged along by some power outside him, while the cat’s sole impulse is to escape. The rational recognition of the sequence of act and punishment is equally clear to the gregarious and to the solitary animal, but it is the former only who understands {41} that he has committed a crime, who has, in fact, the sense of sin. That this is the origin of what we call conscience is confirmed by the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the latter which are accessible to observation. Any detailed examination of the phenomena of conscience would lead too far to be admissible here. Two facts, however, should be noticed. First, the judgments of conscience vary in different circles, and are dependent on local environments; secondly, they are not advantageous to the species to the slightest degree beyond the dicta of the morals current in the circle in which they originate. These facts—stated here in an extremely summary way—demonstrate that conscience is an indirect result of the gregarious instinct, and is in no sense derived from a special instinct forcing men to consider the good of the race rather than individual desires. 1908