Page:Karl Kautsky - Ethics and The Materialist Conception of History - tr. J. B. Askew (1906).pdf/78

 If conscience and feeling of duty are a consequence of the lasting predominance of the social impulses in many species of animals, if these impulses are those through which the individuals of such species are the most constantly and most enduringly determined, while the force of the other impulses is subject to great oscillations, yet the force of the social impulse is not free from all oscillations. One of the most peculiar phenomena is this: that social animals when united in greater numbers also feel stronger social impulses. It is, for example, a well-known fact that an entirely different spirit reigns in a well-filled meeting than in a small one; that the bigger crowd has in itself alone an inspiring effect on the speaker. In a crowd the individuals are not only more brave—that could be explained through the greater support which each believes he will get from his fellows—they are also more unselfish, more self-sacrificing, more enthusiastic. Certainly only too often so much the more calculating, cowardly and selfish when they find themselves alone. And that applies not only to men, but also to the social animals. Thus Espinas in his book, "The Animal Societies," quotes an observation of Forel. The latter found:—

"The courage of every ant, by the same form, increases in exact proportion to the number of its companions or friends, and decreases in exact proportion the more isolated it is from its companions. Every inhabitant of a very populous ant heap is much more courageous than are similar ones from a small population. The same female worker which would allow herself to be killed ten times in the midst of her companions, will show herself extraordinarily timid, avoid the least danger, fly before even a much weaker ant, so soon as she finds herself twenty yards from her own home."

With the stronger social feeling there need not be necessarily bound up a higher faculty of intelligence. It is probable that, in general, every instinct has the effect of somewhat obscuring the exact observation of the external world. What we wish, that we readily believe; but what we fear, that we easily exaggerate. The instincts can very easily produce the effect that many