The primitive instincts of man were for a long time vaguely and loosely defined, until James and later McDougall essayed to give them name and number. But only with Thorndike's critical examination has it become clear how difficult a thing it is to carry the analysis of any situation back to the elemental or “primal movers of all human activity.” Thorndike is satisfied to describe them as nothing save a set of original tendencies to respond to stimuli in more or less definite directions. When he speaks of instincts it is to mean only a “series of situations and responses” or “a set of tendencies for various situations to arouse the feelings of fear, anger, pity, etc. with which certain bodily movements usually go.” Among them, there are those resulting in “food-getting and habitation,” in “fear, fighting and anger” and in “human intercourse.”[47] But McDougall's classification preserves the old phrases, and men are likely to go on speaking of the “instinct of flight,” the “instinct of pugnacity,” “parental instinct,” “gregarious instinct” and the others.[48] For the sociologist it is enough that all agree that men are held under some powerful grip of nature and driven at times almost inevitably to the doing of acts quite irrespective of their social effects.
In catastrophe these primitive instincts are seen most plainly and less subject to the re-conditioning influences of ordinary life. This was especially noticeable at Halifax. The instinct of flight for self-preservation was reflected in the reaction of thousands. “Almost without thought, probably from the natural instinct of self-preservation I backed from the window to a small store-room and stood there dazed.”[49] The experience so described may be said to have been general. This instinct was to be seen again in the action of the crew of the explosives-laden ship. Scarcely had the collision occurred when the whole complement lowered away the boats, rowed like madmen to the nearest shore—which happened to be that opposite to Halifax—and “scooted for the woods.” As the ship, although set on fire immediately after the impact, did not actually blow up until some twenty minutes later, much might have been done by men less under the domination of instinct, in the way of warning and perhaps of minimizing the inevitable catastrophe.[50]
The instinct of pugnacity was to be seen in many a fine example of difficulty overcome in the work of rescue; as also in other instances, some suggestive of that early combat when animals and men struggled for mere physical existence.
The parental instinct was everywhere in evidence, and was reflected not only in the sacrifices made and the privations endured by parents for their young, but in every act of relief, which arose in involuntary response to the cry of the distressed. It perhaps partially explains the phenomenon often noticed in disasters that “immediately and spontaneously neighbors and fellow-townsmen spring to the work of rescue and first aid.”[51]
The gregarious instinct—the instinct to herd—showed itself in the spontaneous groupings which came about and which seemed somehow to be associated with feelings of security from further harm. The refugees found comfort in the group. They rarely remained alone.
These and other instinctive responses in a greater or less degree of complication were to be remarked of the actions not only of individuals but of groups as well. In the latter the typical phenomena of crowd psychology were manifested upon every hand. The crowd was seen to be what it is—“the like response of many to a socially inciting event or suggestion such as sudden danger.” Out of a mere agglomeration of individuals and under the stress of emotional excitement there arose that mental unity, which Le Bon emphasizes.[52] There was noticeable the feeling of safety associated with togetherness which Trotter suggests.[53] There was the suggestibility, with its preceding conditions which Sidis[54] has clarified, namely, expectancy, inhibition, and limitation of the field of consciousness. There were the triple characteristics which Giddings notes: “Crowds are subject to swift contagion of feeling, they are sensitive to suggestion .... and always manifest a tendency to carry suggested ideas immediately into action.”[55]
Of illustrations of impulsive social action there are none more apt than those furnished by the reactions following the Halifax tragedy. Only Pliny's narrative of the flight from the eruption of Vesuvius, or the story of the “Day of Fear” in France,[56] or that depicting the days of the comet[57] are comparable thereto.
At first all was confusion. Some ran to the cellars. Some ran to the streets. Some ran to their shops. Those in the shops ran home. This was in the area of wounds and bruises. Farther north was the area of death. Thither the rescuers turned. Automobiles sped over broken glass and splintered boards toward the unknown. Then came the orders of the soldiers, whose barracks were situated in the very heart of the danger district, for the people to fly southward, Common-ward, to the open spaces—anywhere. Another explosion was imminent. Then came further outbreaks of the flight impulse. Runs a graphic account:
The crowd needed no second warning. They turned and fled. Hammers, shovels and bandages were thrown aside. Stores were left wide open with piles of currency on their counters. Homes were vacated in a twinkling. Little tots couldn't understand why they were being dragged along so fast. Some folks never looked back. Others did, either to catch a last glimpse of the home they never expected to see again or to tell if they could from the sky how far behind them the Dreaded Thing was.... They fled as they were.... Some carried children or bundles of such things as they had scrambled together.... Many were but scantily clad. Women fled in their night dresses. A few were stark naked, their bodies blackened with soot and grime. These had come from the destroyed section of the North End. What a storm-tossed motley throng, and as varied in its aspect and as poignant in its sufferings as any band of Belgian or Serbian refugees fleeing before the Hun.... A few rode in autos, but the great majority were on foot. With blanched faces, bleeding bodies and broken hearts, they fled from the Spectral Death they thought was coming hard after, fled to the open spaces where possibly its shadow might not fall. Soon Citadel Hill and the Common were black with terrified thousands. Thousands more trudged along St. Margaret's Bay road, seeking escape among its trees and winding curves.... Many cut down boughs and made themselves fires—for they were bitterly cold. Here they were—poorly clad, badly wounded, and with not one loaf of bread in all their number, so hastily did they leave, when galloping horsemen announced the danger was over and it was safe to return.[58]
The ever-shifting responsiveness to rumor which distinguishes a crowd was noted.