efact, it is one which connects up with and has its roots in nature
and in human nature.

This does not explain social control but simplifies the problem of
corporate action. It makes clear, at any rate, that as members of
society, men act as they do elsewhere from motives they do not fully
comprehend, in order to fulfil aims of which they are but dimly or not
at all conscious. Men are activated, in short, not merely by interests,
in which they are conscious of the end they seek, but also by instincts
and sentiments, the source and meaning of which they do not clearly
comprehend. Men work for wages, but they will die to preserve their
status in society, or commit murder to resent an insult. When men act
thus instinctively, or under the influence of the mores, they are
usually quite unconscious of the sources of the impulses that animate
them or of the ends which are realized through their acts. Under the
influence of the mores men act typically, and so representatively, not
as individuals but as members of a group.

The simplest type of social group in which we may observe "social
control" is in a herd or a flock. The behavior of a herd of cattle is,
to be sure, not so uniform nor so simple a matter as it seems to the
casual observer, but it may be very properly taken as an illustration of
the sort of follow-the-leader uniformity that is more or less
characteristic of all social groups. We call the disposition to live in
the herd and to move in masses, gregariousness, and this gregariousness
is ordinarily regarded as an instinct and undoubtedly is pretty largely
determined in the original nature of gregarious animals.

There is a school of thought which seeks in the so-called gregarious
instincts an explanation of all that is characteristically social in the
behavior of human beings.

The cardinal quality of the herd is homogeneity. It is clear
that the great advantage of the social habit is to enable large
numbers to act as one, whereby in the case of the hunting
gregarious animal strength in pursuit and attack is at once
increased to beyond that of the creatures preyed upon, and in
protective socialism the sensitiveness of the new unit to
alarms is greatly in excess of that of the individual member of
the flock.

To secure these advantages of homogeneity, it is evident that
the members of the herd must possess sensitiveness to the
behaviour of their fellows.