LITMIR.BIZ

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a level in which the biological processes that make for or against homogeneity have but little effect. The task before man is social. It is not so much a consciousness of his destiny as a species that man requires, but of his work as an organized group. It is due to a rapid differentiation and increase in man's desires that he has become a species in which there is internal warfare. It must be by the control of these desires in a conscious process of organization that he will become, if ever, a well-ordered and homogeneous group. Trotter thinks of such a change as a biological phenomenon, as being one of those momentous steps which a very few times have been taken in the development of organic life in the world.

      We cannot discuss fully here these biological views, as they relate to the future organization of the world. That the explanation of wars within the human species this view affords is correct so far as it goes one would admit. Men fight among themselves as animals do not, because of their differences. We should prefer to think of these differences, however, neither as a phase of biological differentiation as structural change nor as functional adaptation by differentiation of reactions to the same stimuli, but as the effect of the new consciousness of desires that came with the rise of man from the animal stage, and the conditions under which these desires could and must be realized. It is the complexity of interests that has given to man his antagonisms and his differences, and these secondary differences have been utilized as a means of still further developing the desires and satisfying them, or justifying their satisfaction. It is man's intelligence and his capacity for being governed in his conduct by many desires that teaches him to make war upon his own kind, and the very same qualities make his associations firm and lasting. But just in this way the human group ceases to be a herd and to be dominated by herd instincts. To interpret war, therefore, as an effect of social instinct or herd instinct upon the instincts of aggression or of self-protection, or as the effect of aroused instincts of aggression and self-protection exciting the herd instinct, is unsatisfactory because it is too simple, and erroneously undertakes to explain human life in terms of instinct and also carries biological analogies too far. These views, if we understand them, seem to have the characteristic faults of all purely biological sociology.

      That, however, the "herd instinct," or the social feeling or the cohesive force in groups, whatever it may be, is exceedingly strong and persistent is shown by the recent war. We see a world highly differentiated, and with wide associations which seemed to have become permanent becoming at once a world in which the lines of cleavage are based upon propinquity and political organization. All ties, except national ties, were broken up. The nation, conscious of itself, becomes a unit or personality, and the sense of personality of a nation becomes greatly intensified in time of war. The individual becomes unimportant, both in his own estimation and in the eye of the law. It is the life of the nation as a whole that is felt to be threatened and under this threat the group as a whole becomes an object of devotion and solicitude. Nicolai (79) comments upon this Massengefuehl and says that, when not counterbalanced by higher elements of social consciousness, it may be a low and dangerous element in the consciousness of groups. Sumner (70) also speaks of the extraordinary power of gregariousness, and says that when the movement is upon a vast scale, the numbers engaged being very large, there is always an exhilaration connected with the movement, and that if the causes involved are believed to be deep and holy, the force of this gregarious mood may become demoniacal.

      There are two especially remarkable changes that take place in the social life in war or in the act of going to war, and which represent the social instinct or feeling at its highest point. These phenomena are types of social reaction, but the question may be raised whether they do not represent something more than reactions in the ordinary sense. We see in times of war, first, a greatly increased sensitiveness to leadership, a craving for devotion to a leader, indeed, which is sometimes pathetic in its effort to transform really commonplace men into religious objects. The leader as a concept and an ideal is a product of the social mood itself, which does for him precisely what romantic love does for its object, exerts a creative effect upon him. The leader is magnified to heroic size and held up before the enemy as a threat. It is plain to be seen that this devotion to leader and imaginative treatment of him is in part a defensive reaction. The individual hides behind this colossal figure, and thus feels himself safe. But this protective impulse that creates the invincible leader is not the only motive; at least it is probably not the only one. The leader represents the ideals and the ambitions of the people, and his prestige and the forms that surround him, especially everything that is aesthetic or suggests the heroic, symbolize the craving for power in a people. The strength and the peculiar abandon and perversity, one may say, of the affections of a nation toward the leader in time of war make the rise of such a leader dreaded by the political powers in every country. Newspapers, in every war, find some heroic figure whom they exploit as a coming dictator, and changes of leadership in the field apparently sometimes have reference to these popular currents. But a nation in love with its leader is strong in defense, and readily becomes aggressive, and this relation of mass to leader is of course one of the main foundations of military morale.

      The second universal social phenomenon of war is the greatly intensified feeling of solidarity as shown in comradeship and united feelings on the part of the people. This too is in part, and only in part, a protective reaction. The individual becomes safe by becoming a part of a whole which then alone seems to have real existence and true value. The individual loses himself in the whole, but the whole group also becomes absorbed and taken into the sphere of protection and interest of the individual. The individual becomes highly sensitive to everything that happens to the group, and peculiarly affected by the social mood of comradeship. This spirit of comradeship becomes one of the most conspicuous qualities of the social life in time of war. Comradeship in arms is of course the highest point of this social solidarity. The mass action, the close physical relationship, subjection to the same narrow routine and the common experiences of danger, induce social states that represent the most complete expression of pure social feeling, and excite moods which, upon occasion may reach the highest degree of ecstasy or intoxication and lead to acts of the most exalted heroism.

      These changes in the social life in time of war are striking and fundamental. To explain them would mean to explain social feeling itself. We may say that these phenomena of the social life are precisely the herd reactions the biological writers speak of, but to do so would mean, from our point of view, to ignore some very significant aspects of human social life. It would ignore first of all the ecstatic quality of the higher social life, which is indeed the essential quality of the social spirit of war. Instead of saying that this intensity of feeling is merely a reflex of an instinctive reaction, we should say that it is the expression of, and in part the satisfaction of, desires that are fulfilled in the social experience of war. The intense social life is craved, not as an instinctive reaction, but as a complex state expressing explicit desires. The craving for this social solidarity and ecstasy of social feeling is a factor in the causes of war. What we experience socially in times of peace is a society in which social feeling is narrow and provincial, in which we are conscious of many antagonistic motives. This social life fails to satisfy the desires which are seeking expression in the social life. That war is in part a creation of the social impulse seeking expression may be assumed from the nature of the social feelings that are excited in war. That such social feeling is a creation in the sense that it is desired, we see if in no other way in the fact that social ecstasy is the most universal form of satisfaction of all those impulses which fuse in the intoxication impulse, where we recognize it as the craving for an abundant or real life. Life is most real in its intensely dramatic social forms. Social ecstasy is in part a conscious adaptation. It is something that is desired and induced, and artificially cultivated in various ways, especially by a variety of aesthetic social experiences, and in the cults of intoxication. Alcohol has been used specifically throughout the world and from the beginning at least of the historical period for the purpose of creating social feeling. Patriotism is in part, we may say, a cultivated, social emotion, and in the art of manners we see the social life given forms which will increase its susceptibility to suggestion, its persuasive force and its organized expression. Such facts show us social emotion which is something more than the feeling side of an instinctive reaction.

      This is hardly the place to try to elucidate the fundamental principles of the psychology of the social feelings or instincts, but it may be helpful to suggest in outline certain divergences in the

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