324 THE CLASS STRUGGLE THE BIOLOGY OF PEACE 325 his study of the instincts in the lower animal forms, he should have more carefully sifted his facts in human society: Trotter starts his analysis from the recognition of a widespread phenomenon among animals, their clustering into herds or groups. It was thought in the days antedating modern biology that man alone lives in societies, and this because his reason tells him that it is better to live gregariously than isolatedly. And society being thought a purely rational product we had such interpretations as Rousseau social contract. Subsequent examination showed that sociability is not the outgrowth of reason but is of instinctive origin.
Lower animals with little or no intellect live in societies. Bees, ants, wolves, buffaloes, elephants, fishes in schools, birds in flocks, etc. display the gregarious habit.
Natural selection made necessary this primitive gregariousness. Trotter points out that the herbivorous animals, needing to feed constantly, could not exist without gregariousness. They could not give enough attention to means of selfdefense and at the same time be as absorbed in grazing, as they must be, if they were isolated. Gregariousness makes up for the lack of time in the individual grazing animal to pay attention to dangers. In a large flock one can watch while the others feed and perform other functions, etc.
From the biologic fact of gregariousness Trotter shows the consequence of this in human society. He traces the many effects of gregariousness on our ways of thinking. Altruism he shows to be a natural instinctive product. The mental types are affected by the instinct of gregariousness. Those that are more readily influenced by the voice of the herd are insensible to experiences outside it. They are what Trotter calls the stable type which is the most prevalent one. On the other hand are those who find that other experiences not sanctioned by the herd are of vital import. There is then generated a conflict in their minds between the voice of the herd and the voice of experience, using the term to mean everything that comes to the individual not only in events in the outside world but the experience or his own impulses as well. The stable minded are at the top of society. Trotter thinks. 133. Man owes to the social habit his inveterate resistiveness to new ideas, his submission to tradition and precedent, and the very serious fact that governing power in his communities tends to pass into the hands of. the stableminded, a class the members of which are characteristically insensitive to experience, closed to the entry of new ideas and obsessed with the satisfactoriness of things as they are.
While the stable minded deal with an unsatisfactory piece of experience by rejecting its significance, we are told. 57. in certain minds such successful exclusion does not occur, and the unwelcome experience persists as an irritant, so to say, capable neither of assimilation nor rejection.
The important condition to gregariousness is the sensitiveness of the individual to the voice of the herd. He must react to stimuli from the herd. Likewise in society, Trotter insists on the suggestibility of the individual everywhere, and under any circumstances. 33. The author fails to recognize an important fact. The stable minded at the head of society happen to be the Parasites. They do things not because necessarily they have feelings for the herd but because of very material reasons. They are stable because it most decidedly pays to be such to secure themselves possession of the material wealth in the first place and immaterial power in the second. In other words, the stable minded are such because of material reasons.
The instinctive elements in man make up are there, no one denies. But the particular application of them is under control of non instinctive forces. The most important thing that determines the stable mindedness of the Parasite is his economic condition. He in turn influences through his prestige the masses, on whom he depends. The masses as Trotter