preventable afflictions are sublimely just and gentle. It is
this acme of the power of herd suggestion that is perhaps the most
absolutely incontestable proof of the profoundly gregarious nature
of man.[1]

[Footnote 1: Trotter: _Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War_,
pp. 114-15.]

To how large a group the individual can respond with spontaneous
and instinctive loyalty is questionable. The small
child throws out his arms and exclaims passionately, "I love
the whole world." Auguste Comte could be imbued with a
fervor for "humanity" in the abstract. The idea of a League
of Nations arouses in some minds a passionate devotion to a
world order that to those themselves habituated to an intense
loyalty to the national group seems incredible. Certainly it is
true that we rapidly outgrow that state of mind common to
enthusiastic adolescence when we can develop a love for the
universe in the abstract. The instinct of gregariousness
seems unquestionably to be most intense where there is intimacy
and vividness of group association. The primary
groups, as Professor Ross calls them, are face-to-face associations,
the family, the play group, the neighborhood group.
If "world patriotism" is a possibility, it is because rapid
communication and the frequency of travel, and the education
of the industrial classes to "the international mind" tend
to break down barriers and to make distant countries and
persons vivid and directly imaginable. But there seems to be
no substitute for direct personal contact. Even devotion to
a country tends to take the form of phrases, places, persons,
and symbols, to which we have been familiarized.

GREGARIOUSNESS IMPORTANT FOR SOCIAL SOLIDARITY. The gregarious
instinct, powerful as it is, is of the greatest significance
for social solidarity, and, if misdirected, for seriously limiting
it. It is, in the first place, the trait without which social
solidarity would be almost impossible. "In early times when
population was scanty, it must have played an important
part in social evolution by keeping men together, and thereby
occasioning the need for social laws and institutions."[1] The
coherence of national, political, or religious groups depends
primarily on the extent to which the gregarious instinct may
be aroused. Allegiance to a group may, of course, be secured
through participation in common ideals. This is illustrated
in the case of the numerous literary and scientific associations
that cut ac