Steinbeck by John Steinbeck Page A

curious nostalgia to get away from their individuality and reestablish the group unit the race remembers and wishes. I am not drawing conclusions. Merely trying to see where the stream of all my notes is going.
    One could easily say that man, during his hunting period, had to give up the group since all the game hunters must; and now that his food is not to be taken by stealth and precision, is going back to the group which takes its food by concerted action. That if one lives by the food of the lion he must hunt singly, if by the food of the ruminants he may live in herds and protect himself by his numbers.
    It can be placed somewhat like this for the moment—as individual humans we are far superior in our functions to anything the world has born—in our groups we are not only not superior but in fact are remarkably like those most perfect groups, the ants and bees. I haven’t begun to tell you this thing. I am not ready to.
    Half of the cell units of my mother’s body have rebelled. Neither has died, but the revolution has changed her functions. That is cruel to say. The first line on this thing came from it though. She, as a human unit, is deterred from functioning as she ordinarily did by a schism of a number of her cells.
    And, when the parts of this thesis have found their places, I’ll start trying to put them into the symbolism of fiction.
    The fascinating thing to me is the way the group has a soul, a drive, an intent, an end, a method, a reaction and a set of tropisms which in no way resembles the same things possessed by the men who make up the group. These groups have always been considered as individuals multiplied. And they are not so. They are beings in themselves, entities. Just as a bar of iron has none of the properties of the revolving, circling, active atoms which make it up, so these huge creatures, the groups, do not resemble the human atoms which compose them.
    This is muddled, Dook. I wouldn’t send it to anyone else in this form. But you and I have talked so much together that we can fill in the gaps we leave.
    We were awfully glad to get both your letters. Write often, this is a deadly time for us. And you might put your mind on the problem I have stated. If you could help me put it into form, I probably would have less trouble finding my symbols for reproducing it. You will find the first beginning conception of it among the anthropologists, but none of them has dared to think about it yet. The subject is too huge and too terrifying. Since it splashed on me, I have been able to think of nothing else.
    It is an explanation of so many mysterious things, the reasons for migrations, the desertion of localities, the sudden diseases which wiped races out, the sudden running amok of groups. It would explain how Genghis Khan and Attila and the Goths suddenly stopped being individual herdsmen and hunters and became, almost without transition, a destroying creature obeying a single impulse. It would explain the sudden tipping over of Prohibition, and that ten years ago the constitution of the US was a thing of God and now it is abrogated with impunity. Oh! it is a gorgeous thing. Don’t you think so?
    I am ignorant enough to promulgate it. If I had more knowledge I wouldn’t have the courage to think it out. It isn’t thought out yet, but I have a start. Think of the lemmings, little gophers who live in holes and who suddenly in their millions become a unit with a single impulse to suicide. Think of the impulse which has suddenly made Germany overlook the natures of its individuals and become what it has. Hitler didn’t do it. He merely speaks about it.
    I’ll stop before I drive you as crazy as I have become since all my wonderings have taken a stream like force. All the things I’ve wondered about and pondered about are seeming to make sense at last. Why the individual is incapable of understanding the nature of the group. That is why publishing is unsure, why