IX

THE HERD INSTINCT


We cannot for long enjoy the illusion that we have solved the riddle of
the group with this formula. It is impossible to escape the immediate
and disturbing recollection that all we have really done has been to
shift the question on to the riddle of hypnosis, about which so many
points have yet to be cleared up. And now another objection shows us our
further path.

It might be said that the intense emotional ties which we observe in
groups are quite sufficient to explain one of their characteristics--the
lack of independence and initiative in their members, the similarity in
the reactions of all of them, their reduction, so to speak, to the level
of group individuals. But if we look at it as a whole, a group shows us
more than this. Some of its features--the weakness of intellectual
ability, the lack of emotional restraint, the incapacity for moderation
and delay, the inclination to exceed every limit in the expression of
emotion and to work it off completely in the form of action--these and
similar features, which we find so impressively described in Le Bon,
show an unmistakable picture of a regression of mental activity to an
earlier stage such as we are not surprised to find among savages or
children. A regression of this sort is in particular an essential
characteristic of common groups, while, as we have heard, in organized
and artificial groups it can to a large extent be checked.

We thus have an impression of a state in which an individual's separate
emotion and personal intellectual act are too weak to come to anything
by themselves and are absolutely obliged to wait till they are
reinforced through being repeated in a similar way in the other members
of the group. We are reminded of how many of these phenomena of
dependence are part of the normal constitution of human society, of how
little originality and personal courage are to be found in it, of how
much every individual is ruled by those attitudes of the group mind
which exhibit themselves in such forms as racial characteristics, class
prejudices, public opinion, etc. The influence of suggestion becomes a
greater riddle for us when we admit that it is not exercised only by the
leader, but by every individual upon every other individual; and we must
reproach ourselves with having unfairly emphasized the relation to the
leader and with having kept the other factor of mutual suggestion too
much in the background.

After this encouragement to modesty, we shall be inclined to listen to
another voice, which promises us an explanation based upon simpler
grounds. Such a one is to be found in Trotter's thoughtful book upon the
herd instinct, concerning which my only regret is that it does not
entirely escape the antipathies that were set loose by the recent great
war.[50]

Trotter derives the mental phenomena that are described as occurring in
groups from a herd instinct ('gregariousness'), which is innate in human
beings just as in other species of animals. Biologically this
gregariousness is an analogy to multicellularity and as it were a
continuation of it. From the standpoint of the libido theory it is a
further manifestation of the inclination, which proceeds from the
libido, and which is felt by all living beings of the same kind, to
combine in more and more comprehensive units.[51] The individual feels
'incomplete' if he is alone. The dread shown by small children would
seem already to be an expression of this herd instinct. Opposition to
the herd is as good as separation from it, and is therefore anxiously
avoided. But the herd turns away from anything that is new or unusual.
The herd instinct would appear to be something primary, something
'which cannot be split up'.

Trotter gives as the list of instincts which he considers as primary
those of self-preservation, of nutrition, of sex, and of the herd. The
last often comes into opposition with the others. The feelings of guilt
and of duty are the peculiar possessions of a gregarious animal. Trotter
also derives from the herd instinct the repressive forces which
psycho-analysis has shown to exist in the ego, and from the same source
accordingly the resistances which the physician comes up against in
psycho-analytic treatment. Speech owes its importance to its aptitude
for mutual understanding in the herd, and upon it the identification of
the individuals with one another largely rests.

While Le Bon is principally concerned with typical transient group
formations, and McDougall with stable associations, Trotter has chosen
as the centre of his interest the most generalised form of assemblage in
which man, that ???? p???t????, passes his life, and he gives
us its psychological basis. But Trotter is under no necessity of tracing
back the herd instinct, for he characterizes it as primary and not
further reducible. Boris Sidis's attempt, to which he refers, at tracing
the herd instinct back to suggestibility is fortunately superfluous as
far as he is concerned; it is an explanation of a familiar and
unsatisfactory type, and the converse proposition--that suggestibility
is a derivative of the herd instinct--would seem to me to throw far more
light on the subject.

But Trotter's exposition, with even more justice than the others', is
open to the objection that it takes too little account of the leader's
part in a group, while we incline rather to the opposite judgement, that
it is impossible to grasp the nature of a group if the leader is
disregarded. The herd instinct leaves no room at all for the leader; he
is merely thrown in along with the herd, almost by chance; it follows,
too, that no path leads from this instinct to the need for a God; the
herd is without a herdsman. But besides this Trotter's exposition can be
undermined psychologically; that is to say, it can be made at all events
probable that the herd instinct is not irreducible, that it is not
primary in the same sense as the instinct of self-preservation and the
sexual instinct.

It is naturally no easy matter to trace the ontogenesis of the herd
instinct. The dread which is shown by small children when they are left
alone, and which Trotter claims as being already a manifestation of the
instinct, nevertheless suggests more readily another interpretation. The
dread relates to the child's mother, and later to other familiar
persons, and it is the expression of an unfulfilled desire, which the
child does not yet know how to deal with in any way except by turning
it into dread.[52] Nor is the child's dread when it is alone pacified by
the sight of any haphazard 'member of the herd', but on the contrary it
is only brought into existence by the approach of a 'stranger' of this
sort. Then for a long time nothing in the nature of herd instinct or
group feeling is to be observed in children. Something like it grows up
first of all, in a nursery containing many children, out of the
children's relation to their parents, and it does so as a reaction to
the initial envy with which the elder child receives the younger one.
The elder child would certainly like to put its successor jealously
aside, to keep it away from the parents, and to rob it of all its
privileges; but in face of the fact that this child (like all that come
later) is loved by the parents in just the same way, and in consequence
of the impossibility of maintaining its hostile attitude without
damaging itself, it is forced into identifying itself with the other
children. So there grows up in the troop of children a communal or group
feeling, which is then further developed at school. The first demand
made by this reaction-formation is for justice, for equal treatment for
all. We all know how loudly and implacably this claim is put forward at
school. If one cannot be the favourite oneself, at all events nobody
else shall be the favourite. This transformation--the replacing of
jealousy by a group feeling in the nursery and classroom--might be
considered improbable, if the same process could not later on be
observed again in other circumstances. We have only to think of the
troop of women and girls, all of them in love in an enthusiastically
sentimental way, who crowd round a singer or pianist after his
performance. It would certainly be easy for each of them to be jealous
of the rest; but, in face of their numbers and the consequent
impossibility of their reaching the aim of their love, they renounce it,
and, instead of pulling out one another's hair, they act as a united
group, do homage to the hero of the occasion with their common actions,
and would probably be glad to have a share of his flowing locks.
Originally rivals, they have succeeded in identifying themselves with
one another by means of a similar love for the same object. When, as is
usual, a situation in the field of the instincts is capable of various
outcomes, we need not be surprised if the actual outcome is one which
involves the possibility of a certain amount of satisfaction, while
another, even though in itself more obvious, is passed over because the
circumstances of life prevent its attaining this aim.

What appears later on in society in the shape of _Gemeingeist_, _esprit
de corps_, 'group spirit', etc., does not belie its derivation from what
was originally envy. No one must want to put himself forward, every one
must be the same and have the same. Social justice means that we deny
ourselves many things so that others may have to do without them as
well, or, what is the same thing, may not be able to ask for them. This
demand for equality is the root of social conscience and the sense of
duty. It reveals itself unexpectedly in the syphilitic's dread of
infecting other people, which psycho-analysis has taught us to
understand. The dread exhibited by these poor wretches corresponds to
their violent struggles against the unconscious wish to spread their
infection on to other people; for why should they alone be infected and
cut off from so much? why not other people as well? And the same germ is
to be found in the pretty anecdote of the judgement of Solomon. If one
woman's child is dead, the other shall not have a live one either. The
bereaved woman is recognized by this wish.

Thus social feeling is based upon the reversal of what was first a
hostile feeling into a positively-toned tie of the nature of an
identification. So far as we have hitherto been able to follow the
course of events, this reversal appears to be effected under the
influence of a common tender tie with a person outside the group. We do
not ourselves regard our analysis of identification as exhaustive, but
it is enough for our present purpose that we should revert to this one
feature--its demand that equalization shall be consistently carried
through. We have already heard in the discussion of the two artificial
groups, church and army, that their preliminary condition is that all
their members should be loved in the same way by one person, the leader.
Do not let us forget, however, that the demand for equality in a group
applies only to its members and not to the leader. All the members must
be equal to one another, but they all want to be ruled by one person.
Many equals, who can identify themselves with one another, and a single
person superior to them all--that is the situation that we find realised
in groups which are capable of subsisting. Let us venture, then, to
correct Trotter's pronouncement that man is a herd animal and assert
that he is rather a horde animal, an individual creature in a horde led
by a chief.