--- title: Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War url: https://propagandaarchive.org/library/trotter-instincts-of-the-herd-1916/ description: Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War by Wilfred Trotter (1916), full text with provenance and rights. section: FRAME --- ![Illustration: a First World War field-intelligence collage of trench maps, wireless transmission logs and aerial reconnaissance photographs.](https://propagandaarchive.org/static/generated/detail/hero-wwi.jpg) [Library](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/) · Book # Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War At a glance Trotter's 1916 essays on the herd instinct in human beings, with a 1919 postscript on war and the peace. - **Author:** Wilfred Trotter - **Published:** 1916 - **Origin:** United Kingdom - **Length:** 77,372 words, 23 chapters Full details - **Edition:** Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War. London: T. Fisher Unwin, first published February 1916; this text is the second edition of November 1919 with its postscript of 1919 (Project Gutenberg's proofread transcription) - **Language:** English - **Text source:** [Project Gutenberg, ebook #53453](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/53453) - **Text basis:** Proofread transcription by Project Gutenberg's Distributed Proofreaders, from Internet Archive images. The transcribers relabelled the author's footnotes A to W and moved them to just after the paragraph they belong to, and corrected a few printer's errors; the book's own page numbers, which they marked in braces, are removed. - **Rights:** Published in Britain in 1916 (second edition 1919), so in the public domain in the United States (published before 1931); Project Gutenberg marks the ebook public domain in the USA. Trotter died in 1939, so the British term ended in 2010, before the 1996 date that would have triggered US restoration. - **Rights checked:** October 2, 2026 On this page - [Read the text](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/trotter-instincts-of-the-herd-1916/#read) - [Provenance and rights](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/trotter-instincts-of-the-herd-1916/#provenance) - [Where it appears in the archive](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/trotter-instincts-of-the-herd-1916/#cited) - [Related](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/trotter-instincts-of-the-herd-1916/#related) Wilfred Trotter, a London surgeon, published these essays on the gregarious instinct in 1908-09 and as a book in 1916; the archive's page on Bernays names Trotter among the crowd and group psychologists whose work *Propaganda* draws on. Two of the long chapters, on England and Germany at war, apply the argument to the First World War. The text is the 1919 second edition, with the postscript of 1919. ## Read the text - [Preface](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/trotter-instincts-of-the-herd-1916/01-preface/) 823 words - [Preface to the Second Edition](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/trotter-instincts-of-the-herd-1916/02-preface-to-the-second-edition/) 185 words - Herd Instinct and Its Bearing on the Psychology of Civilized Man - [Introduction](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/trotter-instincts-of-the-herd-1916/03-introduction/) 1,168 words - [Psychological Aspects of Instinct](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/trotter-instincts-of-the-herd-1916/04-psychological-aspects-of-instinct/) 968 words - [Biological Significance of Gregariousness](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/trotter-instincts-of-the-herd-1916/05-biological-significance-of-gregariousness/) 1,542 words - [Mental Characteristics of the Gregarious Animal](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/trotter-instincts-of-the-herd-1916/06-mental-characteristics-of-the-gregarious-animal/) 5,622 words - Sociological Applications of the Psychology of Herd Instinct - [Sociological Applications of the Psychology of Herd Instinct](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/trotter-instincts-of-the-herd-1916/07-sociological-applications-of-the-psychology-of-h/) 5,740 words - [Gregariousness and the Future of Man](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/trotter-instincts-of-the-herd-1916/08-gregariousness-and-the-future-of-man/) 1,616 words - Speculations upon the Human Mind in 1915 - [Man’s Place in Nature and Nature’s Place in Man](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/trotter-instincts-of-the-herd-1916/09-man-s-place-in-nature-and-nature-s-place-in-man/) 1,042 words - [Comments on an Objective System of Human Psychology](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/trotter-instincts-of-the-herd-1916/10-comments-on-an-objective-system-of-human-psychol/) 6,576 words - [Some Principles of a Biological Psychology](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/trotter-instincts-of-the-herd-1916/11-some-principles-of-a-biological-psychology/) 3,110 words - [The Biology of Gregariousness](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/trotter-instincts-of-the-herd-1916/12-the-biology-of-gregariousness/) 3,430 words - [Characters of the Gregarious Animal Displayed by Man](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/trotter-instincts-of-the-herd-1916/13-characters-of-the-gregarious-animal-displayed-by/) 2,447 words - [Some Peculiarities of the Social Habit in Man](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/trotter-instincts-of-the-herd-1916/14-some-peculiarities-of-the-social-habit-in-man/) 3,701 words - [Imperfections of the Social Habit in Man](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/trotter-instincts-of-the-herd-1916/15-imperfections-of-the-social-habit-in-man/) 2,165 words - [Gregarious Species at War](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/trotter-instincts-of-the-herd-1916/16-gregarious-species-at-war/) 5,168 words - [England Against Germany — Germany](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/trotter-instincts-of-the-herd-1916/17-england-against-germany-germany/) 14,145 words - [England Against Germany — England](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/trotter-instincts-of-the-herd-1916/18-england-against-germany-england/) 3,728 words - Postscript of 1919 - [Prejudice in Time of War](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/trotter-instincts-of-the-herd-1916/19-prejudice-in-time-of-war/) 3,191 words - [Psychological Anticipations](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/trotter-instincts-of-the-herd-1916/20-psychological-anticipations/) 3,467 words - [After the War](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/trotter-instincts-of-the-herd-1916/21-after-the-war/) 1,951 words - [The Instability of Civilization](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/trotter-instincts-of-the-herd-1916/22-the-instability-of-civilization/) 2,941 words - [Some Characters of a Rational Statecraft](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/trotter-instincts-of-the-herd-1916/23-some-characters-of-a-rational-statecraft/) 2,646 words [Download as plain text](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/trotter-instincts-of-the-herd-1916/trotter-instincts-of-the-herd-1916.txt) 77,372 words, with the provenance header above the text ## Provenance and rights - **Edition:** Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War. London: T. Fisher Unwin, first published February 1916; this text is the second edition of November 1919 with its postscript of 1919 (Project Gutenberg's proofread transcription) - **Text source:** [Project Gutenberg, ebook #53453](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/53453) - **Text basis:** Proofread transcription by Project Gutenberg's Distributed Proofreaders, from Internet Archive images. The transcribers relabelled the author's footnotes A to W and moved them to just after the paragraph they belong to, and corrected a few printer's errors; the book's own page numbers, which they marked in braces, are removed. - **Rights:** Published in Britain in 1916 (second edition 1919), so in the public domain in the United States (published before 1931); Project Gutenberg marks the ebook public domain in the USA. Trotter died in 1939, so the British term ended in 2010, before the 1996 date that would have triggered US restoration. Checked October 2, 2026. - **Changes made:** Line wraps rejoined and headings set in title case; the Project Gutenberg licence header and footer removed. Wording, spelling and punctuation are the source's own. The contents list and the index are left out, and the printed page numbers (shown in braces in the Gutenberg text) removed. The essays and the postscript are divided into chapters at their own headings. - **Source file checksum:** `0b46406c26845cc1…` (SHA-256 of the download this text was made from) ## Where it appears in the archive - [Edward Bernays, Propaganda (1928)](https://propagandaarchive.org/about/bernays-propaganda/) ## Related - [The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/lebon-the-crowd/)