Notes

1 Not one man in a billion, when taking his dinner, ever thinks of utility. He eats because the food tastes good and makes him want more. If you ask him why he should want to eat more of what tastes like that, instead of revering you as a philosopher he will probably laugh at you for a fool. The connexion between the savoury sensation and the act it awakens is for him absolute and selbst­ver­ständ­lich, an “a priori synthesis” of the most perfect sort needing no proof but its own evidence. . . . To the metaphysician alone can such questions occur as: Why do we smile, when pleased, and not scowl? Why are we unable to talk to a crowd as to a single friend? Why does a particular maiden turn our wits so upside down? The common man can only say, “Of course we smile, of course our heart palpitates at the sight of the crowd, of course we love the maiden, that beautiful soul clad in that perfect form, so palpably and flagrantly made from all eternity to be loved” (W. James, “Principles of Psychology” vol. ii. p. 386).

2 This introspectual quality of the “a priori synthesis of the most perfect sort” is found, for example, in the assumptions upon which is based the bulk of opinion in matters of Church and State, the family, justice, probity, honour, purity, crime, and so forth. Yet clearly we cannot say that there is a specific instinct concerned with each of these subjects, for that, to say the least, would be to postulate an unimaginable multiplicity of instincts, for the most part wholly without any conceivable biological usefulness. For example, there are considerable difficulties in imagining an instinct for making people Wesleyans or Roman Catholics, or an instinct for making people regard British family life as the highest product of civilization, yet there can be no question that these positions are based upon assumptions having all the characters described by James as belonging to the impulses of instinct.

3 Among gregarious insects there are of course physical changes arising out of and closely dependent on the social organization.

4 Many references to the subject will be found in his published works, for example in “The Grammar of Science,” in “National Life from the Standpoint of Science,” and in “The Chances of Death.” In the collection of Essays last named the essay entitled “Socialism and Natural Selection” deals most fully with the subject.

5 “Socialism and Natural Selection” in “The Chances of Death.”

6 Lester F. Ward, “Pure Sociology: a Treatise on the Origin and Spontaneous Development of Society.” New York: The Macmillan Co. 1903. I do not venture to decide whether this work may be regarded as representative of orthodox sociology, if there be such a thing; I have made the choice because of the author’s capacity for fresh and ingenious speculation and his obviously wide knowledge of sociological literature.

7 “Pure Sociology,” p. 134. Italics not in original. Passages of a similar tendency will be found on pp. 200 and 556.

8 For example, the little book of Gustave Le Bon—“Psychologie des Foules,” Paris: Felix Alcan—in which are formulated many gen­er­al­i­za­tions.

9 “The Psychology of Suggestion: a Research into the Subconscious Nature of Man and Society,” by Boris Sidis, with an Introduction by Prof. Wm. James. New York. 1903.

10 “Psychology of Suggestion,” p. 295.

11 In this connexion the “Symposium on the Subconscious” in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology, vol. ii. Nos. 1 and 2, is of much interest. The discussion is contributed to by Münsterberg, Ribot Jastrow, Pierre Janet, and Morton Prince.

12 The wolf pack forms an organism, it is interesting to note, stronger than the lion or the tiger; capable of compensating for the loss of members; inexhaustible in pursuit, and therefore capable by sheer strength of hunting down without wile or artifice the fleetest animals; capable finally of consuming all the food it kills, and thus possessing another considerable advantage over the large solitary carnivora in not tending uselessly to exhaust its food supply. The advantages of the social habit in carnivora is well shown by the survival of wolves in civilized countries even to-day.

13 Any one who has watched the behaviour of the dog and the cat towards warmth and cold cannot have failed to notice the effect of the gregarious habit on the former. The cat displays a moderate liking for warmth, but also a decided indifference to cold, and will quietly sit in the snow in a way which would be impossible to the dog.

14 The word “experience” is used here in a special sense that perhaps renders necessary a word or two of definition. The experience meant is everything that comes to the individual, not only his experience of events in the external world, but also his experience of the instinctive and often egoistic impulses at work within his own personality. 1915.

15 War in itself is by no means necessarily a maximal stimulus to herd instinct if it does not involve a definite threat to the whole herd. This fact is well shown in the course of the South African War of 1899–1901. This war was not and was not regarded as capable of becoming a direct threat to the life of the nation. There was consequently no marked moral concentration of the people, no massive energizing of the Government by a homogeneous nation, and therefore the conduct of the war was in general languid, timid, and pessimistic. The morale of the people was as a whole bad; there was an exaggerated hunger for good news, and an excessive satisfaction in it; an exaggerated pessimism was excited by bad news, and public fortitude was shaken by casualties which we should now regard as insignificant. Correspondingly the activity and vitality of rumour were enormously less than they have been in the present war. The weaker stimulus is betrayed throughout the whole series of events by the weakness of all the characteristic gregarious responses.

16 It may be noted that the members of the small group of so-called “pro-German” writers and propagandists for the most part make it a fundamental doctrine, either explicit or implicit, that there is no psychological difference between the English and the Germans. They seem to maintain that the latter are moved and are to be influenced by exactly the same series of feelings and ideals as the former, and show in reality no observable “strangeness” in their expressions and emotions. By arguments based on this assumption very striking conclusions are reached. All moral advancement has been the work of unpopular minorities, the members of which have been branded as cranks or criminals until time has justified their doctrine. Even the greatest of such pioneers have not, however, been invariably right. Their genius has usually been shown most clearly in matters with which they have been most familiar, while in matters less intimately part of their experience their judgments have often not stood the test of time any better than those of smaller men. If therefore our “pro-Germans” include amongst them men of moral genius, we may expect that such of their psychological intuitions as deal with England are more likely to prove true than those that deal with Germany.

17 I have not included in these pages actual quotations from German authors illustrative of the national char­ac­ter­is­tics they so richly display. Such material may be found in abundance in the many books upon Germany which have appeared since the beginning of the war. The inclusion of it here would therefore have been superfluous, and would have tended perhaps to distract attention from the more general aspects of the subject which are the main objects of this study. During the process of final revision I am, however, tempted to add a single illustration which happens just to have caught my eye as being a representative and not at all an extreme example of the national arrogance I refer to above.

18 The use of this adjective may perhaps call to mind how often the wolf has appeared in fable in just this mood. Usually, however, the fabulist—being of the unsympathetic socialized type—has ascribed the poor creature’s yearnings to hypocrisy.

19 Pp. 137, 138 supra.

20 It is important that it should be quite clear that we have been speaking here of the reaction of the general body of a nation to the occurrence of war, and not of the reasons for which a given war was undertaken. In England and in Germany the feeling of the people that the late war was just and necessary was equally intense and equally a direct consequence of the danger to the herd it represented. It was therefore a non-rational instinctive response without reference to objective justice in either case. Had the threat to the herd on either side seemed less grave, opinion as to the justice of the war would in that country have been cor­res­pon­ding­ly more divided. By her calculated truculence in the years before the war Germany—intending doubtless to intimidate a decaying people—had made it certain that when the threat to this country did come it should be apprehended at once as dangerous to the last degree, and had thus herself organized the practical unanimity of her chief enemy. All such reactions upon the outbreak of war are instinctively determined. It is the burden of the statesman that his decision in a crisis in favour of war automatically renders impossible rational confirmation by the people.

21 It is perhaps of interest to note in passing that war-time opinion and prejudice are char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly pro-national and anti-national, rather than anti-hostile and pro-hostile respectively. The impulse that might have led an isolated German to defend the English at the expense of his countrymen, or an isolated Englishman to defend the Germans at the expense of his countrymen, was in its psychological essence anti-national and animated by no love of the enemy; it was an instinctive revolt against his country, or rather the groups which in the process of social segregation had come to represent it. Such terms, therefore, as pro-German, and in another association pro-Boer, though doubtless convenient implements of abuse, were inexactly descriptive psychologically. “Anti-English” would have been more just, but immensely less effective, as vituperation, for the prejudice it was desired to decry was for the most part a hostility not to the nation, but to its official embodiment. Probably, however, it was the very element of injustice in the term pro-German that made it so satisfactory a vehicle for exasperated feeling.

22 There can be little doubt that national consciousness with regard to the war was very much less developed in this country than in Germany. The theory of his country’s purpose in the war was far less a matter of interest and speculation to the average Englishman than it was to the average German. The German was far more fully aware of the relation the situation bore to general politics and to history, and was much more preoccupied with the defence of his country’s case by rational methods and accepted principles, and he displayed from the first great faith in the value of a propaganda which should appeal to reason. Clumsy and futile as so much of this intellectual effort was ultimately seen to be, it did show that the interest in national affairs was more conscious and elaborate, and stood from the intellectual point of view at a higher level than it did in England.

23 Anxiety has frequently been expressed since the arm­is­tice of Novem­ber, 1918, as to whether Germany has properly assim­i­lat­ed the lesson of her defeat, and undergone the desired change of heart. In the face of such doubts it is well to remember that there is another conclusion about the assimilation of which there need be no anxiety. It is at any rate clearly proved that Germany’s enemies were able to beat her in spite of all the disadvantages of exterior lines, divided counsels, divergent points of view and inadequate preparation. The prestige of invulnerability need never be allowed again to accumulate about a social group of the aggressive migratory type, and to sit like an incubus upon a terrorized world.