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This book is an elaboration and amplification of the essays on the herd instinct published by the author in the Sociological Review in 1908 and 1909 and which attracted much favorable comment at that time. To this elaboration he has added an application of the principles involved to an interpretation of the German and the English character as exhibited in the war.
In brief Trotter's thesis is that there is a fourth instinct. The three primary instincts, self-preservation, nutrition, sex, have the common characteristics of “attaining their maximal activities only over short periods and in special sets of circumstances, and of being fundamentally pleasant to yield to.” The fourth instinct, the herd instinct, “exercises a controlling power upon the individual from without,” it introduces duty for the first time with the resulting conflict.
The herd instinct he takes some little pains to analyze and to show that it possesses the same character as other instincts and is therefore properly classified. It has come into existence, like multicellularity, to aid the individual in escaping the rigors of natural selection by creating a larger unit for selection to act upon and thus permitting a wider range of individual variation (specialization) of the individual constituent elements. Trotter believes, therefore, that inasmuch as man is a social animal “all human psychology … must be the psychology of associated man, since man as a solitary animal is unknown to us” and that “the only medium in which man's mind can function satisfactorily is the herd.” Because of these views he finds himself out of touch with much of current psychology and thinks that it is abnormal psychology which has made the most valuable contributions and rescued psychology from sterility by humanizing it. Of all the contributions in this field that of Freud stands out as the most important. The general validity of such propositions as the significance of mental conflict, the importance of the emotional expe