Instincts of the herd in peace and war / by W. Trotter.

  • Trotter, W. (Wilfred), 1872-1939.
Date:
[1919]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Instincts of the herd in peace and war / by W. Trotter. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    168/272 (page 164)
    It seems to have been in no way a revelation of genius, and, indeed, the absence of any great pro- fundity and scope of speculation is rather remark- able in the minds of the numerous German political philosophers. The idea would appear rather to have been developed out of the circumstances of the country, and to have been almost a habit before it became a conception. At any rate, its appearance was greatly favoured by the political conditions and history of the region in which it arose. If this had not been the case, it is scarcely conceivable that the principle could have been accepted so readily by the people, and in a form which was not without its asperities and its hardships for them, or that it could have been discovered without the necessary biological corollaries which are indispensable to the successful application of it. Germany in some ways resembles a son who has been educated at home, and has taken up the responsibilities of the adult, and become bound by them without ever tasting the free intercourse of the school and university. She has never tasted the heady liquor of political liberty, she has had no revolution, and the blood of no political martyrs calls to her disturbingly from the ground. To such innocent and premature gravity the reasonable claims of what, after all, had to her the appearance of no more than an anxiously paternal Government could not fail to appeal. Explain it how we may, there can be no doubt that to the German peoples the theoretical aspects of life have long had a very special appeal. Generali- zations about national characteristics are notoriously fallacious, but it seems that with a certain reserve one may fairly say that there is a definite contrast in this particular between the Germans and, let us say, the English. To minds of a theoretical bias the appeal of a