the next chapter I shall attempt to outline a political psychology
which seems to me more nearly true than that of Marx.

II

DECIDING FORCES IN POLITICS

The larger events in the political life of the world are determined by
the interaction of material conditions and human passions. The
operation of the passions on the material conditions is modified by
intelligence. The passions themselves may be modified by alien
intelligence guided by alien passions. So far, such modification has
been wholly unscientific, but it may in time become as precise as
engineering.

The classification of the passions which is most convenient in
political theory is somewhat different from that which would be
adopted in psychology.

We may begin with desires for the necessaries of life: food, drink,
sex, and (in cold climates) clothing and housing. When these are
threatened, there is no limit to the activity and violence that men
will display.

Planted upon these primitive desires are a number of secondary
desires. Love of property, of which the fundamental political
importance is obvious, may be derived historically and psychologically
from the hoarding instinct. Love of the good opinion of others (which
we may call vanity) is a desire which man shares with many animals; it
is perhaps derivable from courtship, but has great survival value,
among gregarious animals, in regard to others besides possible mates.
Rivalry and love of power are perhaps developments of jealousy; they
are akin, but not identical.

These four passions--acquisitiveness, vanity, rivalry, and love of
power--are, after the basic instincts, the prime movers of almost all
that happens in politics. Their operation is intensified and
regularized by herd instinct. But herd instinct, by its very nature,
cannot be a prime mover, since it merely causes the herd to act in
unison, without determining what the united action is to be. Among
men, as among other gregarious animals, the united action, in any
given circumstances, is determined partly by the common passions of
the herd, partly by imitation of leaders. The art of politics consists
in causing the latter to prevail over the former.

Of the four passions we have enumerated, only one, namely
acquisitiveness, is concerned at all directly with men's relations to
their material conditions. The other three--vanity, rivalry, and love
of power--are concerned with social relations. I think this is the
source of wh