The most important consequence of this vague way of regarding the social habit of man has been that no exhaustive investigation of its psychological corollaries has been carried out. When we see the enormous effect in determining conduct that the gregarious inheritance has in the bee, the ant, the {22} horse, or the dog, it is quite plain that if the gregariousness of man had been seriously regarded as a definite fact a great amount of work would have been done in determining precisely what reactive tendencies it had marked out in man’s mind. Unfortunately, the amount of precise work of this kind has been very small.
From the biological standpoint the probability of gregariousness being a primitive and fundamental quality in man seems to be considerable. As already pointed out, like the other great enlargement of the biological unit, but in a much more easily recognizable degree, it would appear to have the effect of enlarging the advantages of variation. Varieties not immediately favourable, varieties departing widely from the standard, varieties even unfavourable to the individual may be supposed to be given by it a chance of survival. Now the course of the development of man seems to present many features incompatible with its having proceeded amongst isolated individuals exposed to the unmodified action of natural selection. Changes so serious as the assumption of the upright posture, the reduction in the jaw and its musculature, the reduction in the acuity of smell and hearing, demand, if the species is to survive, either a delicacy of adjustment with the compensatingly developing intelligence so minute as to be almost inconceivable, or the existence of some kind of protective enclosure, however imperfect, in which the varying individuals were sheltered from the direct influence of natural selection. The existence of such a mechanism would compensate losses of physical strength in the individual by the greatly increased strength of the larger unit, of the unit, that is to say, upon which natural selection still acts unmodified.
A realization, therefore, of this function of gregariousness relieves us from the necessity of {23} supposing that the double variations of diminishing physical and increasing mental capacity always occurred pari passu. The case for the primitiveness of the social habit would seem to be still further strengthened by a consideration of such widely aberrant developments as speech and the æsthetic activities, but a discussion of them here would involve an unnecessary indulgence of biological speculation.
IV. MENTAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE GREGARIOUS ANIMAL.
(a) Current Views in Sociology and Psychology.
If we now assume that gregariousness may be regarded as a fundamental quality of man, it remains to discuss the effects we may expect it to have produced upon the structure of his mind. It would be well, however, first, to attempt to form some idea of how far investigation has already gone in this direction. It is of course clear that no complete review of all that has been said concerning a conception so familiar can be attempted here, and, even if it were possible, it would not be a profitable enterprise, as the great bulk of writers have not seen in the idea anything to justify a fundamental examination of it. What will be done here, therefore, will be to mention a few representative writers who have dealt with the subject, and to give in a summary way the characteristic features of their exposition.
As far as I am aware, the first person to point out any of the less obvious biological significance of gregariousness was Professor Karl Pearson.[4] {24}
[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.
He called attention to the enlargement of the selective unit effected by the appearance of gregariousness, and to the fact that therefore within the group the action of natural selection becomes modified. This conception had, as is well known, escaped the insight of Haeckel, of Spencer, and of Huxley, and Pearson showed into what confusions in their treatment of the problems of society these three had been led by the oversight.[5] For example may be mentioned the famous antithesis of the “cosmical” and the “ethical” processes expounded in Huxley’s Romanes Lecture. It was quite definitely indicated by Pearson that the so-called ethical process, the appearance, that is to say, of altruism, is to be regarded as a directly instinctive product of gregariousness, and as natural, therefore, as any other instinct.
These very clear and valuable conceptions do not seem, however, to have received from biologists the attention they deserved, and as far as I am aware their author has not continued further the examination of the structure of the gregarious mind, which would undoubtedly have yielded in his hands further conclusions of equal value.