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| A treatise on many things, including Yahoos |
The first dose:
30. 52. Let there be what we will call a Yahoo herd: a community whose members are hardly, if at all, distinguishable in bodily structure from human beings, at any rate to the superficial glance of the observer whose anatomical and physiological knowledge is small; but let them lack the intelligence we are accustomed to expect in human beings. To be precise, let their mental development have been arrested at the point . . . just short of free will.
30. 53. This herd might have a sort of leader, dominant over the rest in virtue of his strength, his cunning, and the violence of his emotions.
30. 54. He would in a sense know what he was doing; he would be conscious of the situation in which he was acting, and his actions would be to him second-order objects of consciousness; but they could not be objects of his will, for he would have no will. Purpose would be impossible to him. But he would exercise, though not voluntarily, a certain control over the rest of the herd; biting and beating them or making as if to bite and beat them whenever they did anything he disliked, and so forcing them into the mould of a communal life pleasing to himself.
Collingwood, R. G.. The New Leviathan. Read Books Ltd. Kindle Edition.
Does this remind anyone of any current movements or persons?
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