te."
After giving a description of the instincts he writes:--
"The importance to me of the following description of the innate
tendencies or instincts lies in their relation to my main explanation of
economic behavior which is,--
"First, that these tendencies are persistent, are far less warped or
modified by the environment than we believe; that they function quite as
they have for several hundred thousand years; that they, as motives, in
their various normal or perverted habit-form, can at times dominate
singly the entire behavior, and act as if they were a clear character
dominant.
"Secondly, that if the environment through any of the conventional
instruments of repression, such as religious orthodoxy, university
mental discipline, economic inferiority, imprisonment, physical
disfigurement,--such as short stature, hare-lip, etc.,--repress the full
psychological expression in the field of these tendencies, then a
psychic revolt, slipping into abnormal mental functioning, takes place,
and society accuses the revolutionist of being either willfully
inefficient, alcoholic, a syndicalist, supersensitive, an agnostic, or
insane."
I hesitate somewhat to give his programme as set forth in this paper. I
have already mentioned that it was written in the spring of 1917, and
hurriedly. In referring to this very paper in a letter from New York, he
said, "Of course it is written in part _to call out_ comments, and so
the statements are strong and unmodified." Let that fact, then, be borne
in mind, and also the fact that he may have altered his views somewhat
in the light of his further studies and readings--although again, such
studies may only have strengthened the following ideas. I cannot now
trust to my memory for what discussions we may have had on the subject.
"Reform means a militant minority, or, to follow Trotter, a small Herd.
This little Herd would give council, relief, and recuperation to its
members. The members of the Herd will be under merciless fire from the
convention-ridden members of general society. They will be branded
outlaws, radicals, agnostics, impossible, crazy. They will be lucky to
be out of jail most of the time. They will work by trial and study,
gaining wisdom by their errors, as Sidney Webb and the Fabians did. In
the end, after a long time, parts of the social sham will collapse, as
it did in England, and small promises will become milestones of
progress.
"From where, then, can we g
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