Part 9 (1/2)
Like all the other instincts, and more than most, it is frustrated and continually checked in the normal peace-time pursuits of contemporary civilization. Partic.i.p.ation, imaginative at least, in a great collective combat undoubtedly holds some fascination for the citizens of modern industrial society, despite the large-scale horror which war is in itself, and the desolation it leaves in its wake. During peace the fighting instinct for most men receives satisfaction on a small scale, sometimes in nothing more important than small bickerings and peevishness, or in seeing at first hand or on the ticker a champions.h.i.+p prize-fight. The pessimism which many writers have expressed at the possibility of perpetual peace rests in part on their perception of the easy excitability and deep persistence of this impulse, especially among the vigorous and young.
Not only may the fighting instinct be aroused by the possibility of international wars, but it may be used by fomenters and agitators to add a sense of intense pugnacity and violent anger to the genuine friction that does exist between conflicting interests in the same society. The theory of a ”cla.s.s war” possibly finds its appeal for many minds as much in its picturesque stimulation of their instincts of pugnacity as in the logic of its economics.
PUGNACITY AS A BENEFICENT SOCIAL FORCE. While the power of pugnacity and its easy stimulation makes this instinct a peculiarly inflammable and dangerous motive force in civilized society, it is, on the other hand, an indispensable source of social progress. Many psychologists and sociologists, such as McDougall, Bagehot, and Lang, attribute the superiority in culture and social organization of the European races over, say, the Chinese and East Indians, to the fighting instinct.
In the long series of wars that for centuries const.i.tuted much of the history of Europe, those nations which survived, as in earlier times those tribes which survived combat, were those which displayed marked qualities of superiority in allegiance, fidelity, and social cooperation. The intensity and effectiveness of social cooperation in our own country was never so well ill.u.s.trated as during the Great War. In combat between groups those groups survive which do stand out in these respects.
William James in a famous essay[1] recognizes clearly the enormous value of the fighting instinct in stimulating action to an intense effectiveness exhibited under no other circ.u.mstances, and proposes a ”moral equivalent for war”--an army devoted to constructive enterprises, reclaiming the waste places of the land, warring against poverty and disease and the like. Certainly every great reform movement has been intensely stimulated and has gathered about it the energies of men when it has become a ”crusade for righteousness.”
Part of Theodore Roosevelt's power was in his picturesque phrasing of political issues as if they were great moral struggles. No one could forget, or fail to have his heart beat a trifle faster at Roosevelt's trumpet call in the 1912 campaign: ”We stand at Armageddon and we battle for the Lord.” His ”Big Stick” became a potent political symbol.
Astute political leaders have not failed to capitalize the fighting instinct, and any social project will enlist the wider enthusiasm and the more energetic support if it is hailed as a battle or fight against somebody or something.
[Footnote 1: ”A Moral Equivalent of War,” in _Memories and Studies_.]
In personal life also the instinct of pugnacity and the feeling of anger that goes with it seem to set loose immense floods of reserve energy. McDougall exaggerates but a trifle when he says it supplies the zest and determines the forms of all our games and recreations, and nine tenths of the world's work is done by it. ”Our educational system is founded upon it; it is the social force underlying an immense amount of strenuous exertion; to it we owe in a great measure even our science, our literature, and our art; for it is a strong, perhaps an essential, element of ambition, that last infirmity of n.o.ble minds.”[1]
In the overcoming of obstacles, whether in the work itself, or in the difficulties that a surgeon or a scholar meets with, or in frustrations deliberately put in our way by other people, pugnacity is an invaluable stimulant and sustainer of action.
Every great personality of strong convictions and dominant energy has possessed it to some extent; in characters of great moral energy it sometimes takes the form of a volcanic and virtuous wrath, as in the case of the Prophets of the Old Testament, or of later religious and social reformers who brought an earnest and bitter anger against the wrongs they saw and literally fought to overcome.
[Footnote 1: McDougall: _loc. cit._, p. 294.]
THE ”SUBMISSIVE INSTINCT.” Of great importance in the social relations of men is their original tendency to find satisfaction in following, partly submitting to, or completely surrendering to a person or cause more dominating than the individual. Thorndike describes this instinct in its simplest form:
There is an original tendency to respond to the situation, ”the presence of a human being larger than one's self, of angry or mastering aspect,” and to blows and restraint by submissive behavior.
When weak from wounds, sickness, or fatigue, the tendency is stronger. The man who is bigger, who can outyell and outstare us, who can hit us without our hitting him, and who can keep us from moving, does originally extort a crestfallen, abashed physique and mind. Women in general are thus by original nature submissive to men in general. Every human being thus tends by original nature to arrive at a status of mastery or submission toward every other human being, and even under the more intelligent customs of civilized life somewhat of the tendency persists in many men.[1]
[Footnote 1: Thorndike: _Educational Psychology_, briefer course, p. 34.]
The impulse to follow and submit to something not ourselves and more dominating than ourselves is very strong in most men, and is called out by stimuli much less violent than those physical manifestations of power mentioned in the above quotation. Men instinctively long to be led, especially if, as happens in the case of most individuals, there is in them a marked absence of definite interest, conviction, or skill.
This instinct is aroused by any sign of exceptional power, or, more generally still, by any exceptional conspicuousness, whether socially useful or not. Men follow leaders partly because men live in groups with common interests and in any large-scale organization leaders.h.i.+p is necessary. But the power of demagogues, the faithfulness with which men will follow a bad leader as well as a good, are evidence that men find an instinctive satisfaction in submission. Self-dependence stands out as a virtue or an accomplishment precisely because most men feel so utterly at sea without any loyalty, allegiance, or devotion. Any one who has spent a summer at a boy's camp will recall the helplessness of youngsters to mark out a program for themselves and to keep themselves happy on the one afternoon when there was no official program of play. Half the mischief performed on such occasions is initiated by some boy with just a little more independence and persuasiveness than the others. And it is not only among children that there is evinced an almost pathetic bewilderment and unrest in the absence of a leader. There is an equally pathetic and sometimes dangerous attachment among adults to the first sign of leaders.h.i.+p that makes its appearance.
The demoralizing authority of the ward heeler is sometimes dependent on no more trustworthy an index of real power than a booming voice, a rough _camaraderie_, and a physically ”big” personality. And there are, on the other hand, instances where lack of leaders.h.i.+p seemed to be the chief reason why certain cla.s.ses of labor were unable to make their demands effective at a much earlier date than they did. In the first really big strike in the telephone industry in Boston during the autumn of 1918 success seems to have been chiefly due to the remarkable leaders.h.i.+p of one of the young women operators, a type of leaders.h.i.+p which seems to have appeared nowhere else in the telephone industry.[1]
[Footnote 1: See the article by Wm. Hard in the _New Republic_, May 3, 1919.]
The instinct of submissiveness, as has been pointed out in connection with the discussion of all the other of man's original tendencies, is not only strong, but may find its outlets in attachment, both to desirable and to undesirable persons or objects. Once aroused, attachment and submission may become as stanch as they are blind. The signs which arouse our loyalty may be and most frequently are glaring rather than important. As Trotter phrases it:
The rational basis of the relation [following a leader] is, however, seen to be at any rate open to discussion when we consider the qualities in a leader upon which his authority so often rests, for there can be little doubt that their appeal is more generally to instinct than to reason. In ordinary politics it must be admitted that the gift of public speaking is of more decisive value than anything else. If a man is fluent, dextrous, and ready on the platform, he possesses the one indispensable requisite for statesmans.h.i.+p; if in addition he has the gift of moving deeply the emotions of his hearers, his capacity for guiding the infinite complexities of national life becomes undeniable.
Experience has shown that no exceptional degree of any other capacity is necessary to make a successful leader. There need be no specially arduous training, no great weight of knowledge, either of affairs or the human heart, no receptiveness to new ideas, no outlook into reality.[1]
[Footnote 1: Trotter, p. 116.]
Though these be picturesquely exaggerated statements, they do indicate the fact that the outward signs of leaders.h.i.+p, of a conspicuously emotional sort, may be more significant in determining the attachments and loyalties of human beings, than are genuine marks of capacity in the direction of political and social affairs.
This p.r.o.nounced tendency on the part of human beings to follow a lead, and anybody's lead, as it were, has the most serious dangers. It means that a man with qualities that sway men's emotions and stir their imaginations can attach to himself the profoundest loyalties for personal or cla.s.s ends.
The gifts of personal magnetism, of a kindly voice, an air of confidence and calmness, exuberant vitality, and a sensitivity to other people's feelings, along with some of the genuine qualities of effective and expert control of men and affairs, may be used by a demagogue as well as by a really devoted servant of the popular good, by an Alcibiades as well as by a Garibaldi, by a conquering Napoleon as well as by a Lincoln.
Our instincts of following and submission, apart from education, are as easily aroused by specious signs of social power and conspicuousness as by signs of mental effectiveness and genuine altruistic interest. The exploitation of these tendencies by selfish leaders is therefore particularly easy. The large circulation of the ”yellow press,” the power in politics of the unscrupulous, the selfish, and the second-rate, are symptoms of how men's natural tendency to follow has been played upon in support of plans and ambitions which would not be sanctioned by their reason. The genius for leaders.h.i.+p has been exhibited in criminal gangs, in conquests and in fanaticism, as well as in the promotion of good government, of better labor conditions and better education.
But progress in these last-named is dependent on the utilization of men's submissiveness by leaders interested in the promotion of desirable social enterprises. While men may be so easily led, they are responsive to leaders.h.i.+p in good directions as well as bad. No great social movements, the freeing of slaves, the gaining of universal suffrage, the bettering of factory conditions, freedom of thought and action, could have gained headway if men had been born unwilling to follow.
There are (see chapter IX) ineradicable differences in capacity between men, and if the uninformed and the socially helpless could not be aroused to follow those great both in mind and magnanimity, it is difficult to see how the lot of mankind ever could have, or ever can improve. A good leader may make men support, out of instinctive loyalty, purposes and plans which, if they completely understood them, they would support out of reason. Up to the present most people have been, and will probably remain for a long time to come, too ill-educated or too poorly endowed by nature to understand the bearings of the great social movements in which they are involved. In consequence, it is a matter of congratulation that their instinct of submission can be utilized in the interests of their welfare which they frequently not only do not know how to obtain, but do not understand. The Roman populace, enchanted by Augustus, follow him to greatness, without comprehending the imperial destiny which they are helping to build. The barbarian hordes affectionately following the lead of Charlemagne incidentally help to build the whole edifice of European civilization.
MEN DISPLAY QUALITIES OF LEADERs.h.i.+P. The obverse of man's tendency to follow a lead is, of course, his tendency to take it.
Individuals tend to display persistently and conspicuously just those qualities which will win them the allegiance of others.