SOURCE: “The Philosophy of Wilfred Trotter,” in The Eugenics Review, Vol. XL, No. 3, October, 1948, pp. 149-53.

Usher discusses Trotter's influence on eugenics, the study of external influences that affect innate societal qualities.

Some years ago Wilfred Trotter, in his great work The Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War, drew attention to the vast difference in time scale of history and biology. “It is scarcely to be expected,” he said, “that even a gross movement on the cramped historical scale will be capable of detection in the vast gulf of time the biological series represents.”¹ Nevertheless, he continued, “the infinitely long road still tending upwards comes to where it branches and meets another path, tending perhaps downwards or even upwards at a different slope … a node in the infinite line … a point … capable of recognition by a finite mind and of expression in terms of human affairs...