Title: The Group Mind - A Sketch of the Principles of Collective Psychology
Author: McDougall, William, 1871-1938
Language: English
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THE GROUP MIND

  A SKETCH OF THE PRINCIPLES OF COLLECTIVE PSYCHOLOGY WITH SOME
  ATTEMPT TO APPLY THEM TO THE INTERPRETATION OF NATIONAL LIFE
  AND CHARACTER


BY

WILLIAM McDOUGALL, F.R.S.

  LATE FELLOW OF ST JOHN’S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, FELLOW OF CORPUS
  CHRISTI COLLEGE AND WILDE READER IN MENTAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE
  UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD


    “Une nation est une âme, un principe spirituel. Deux choses
    qui, à vrai dire, n’en font qu’une constituent cette âme, ce
    principe spirituel. L’une est dans le passé, l’autre dans le
    présent. L’une est la possession en commun d’un riche legs de
    souvenirs; l’autre est le consentement actuel, le désir de
    vivre ensemble, la volonté de continuer à faire valoir
    l’héritage qu’on a reçu indivis.”
                                                   ERNEST RENAN.


  CAMBRIDGE
  AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
  1920



TO

PROFESSOR L. T. HOBHOUSE

  in admiration of his work in philosophy, psychology, and sociology,
  and in the hope that he may discern in this book some traces of the
  spirit by which his own writings have been inspired.



PREFACE


In this book I have sketched the principles of the mental life of groups
and have made a rough attempt to apply these principles to the
understanding of the life of nations. I have had the substance of the
book in the form of lecture notes for some years, but have long
hesitated to publish it. I have been held back, partly by my sense of
the magnitude and difficulty of the subject and the inadequacy of my own
preparation for dealing with it, partly because I wished to build upon a
firm foundation of generally accepted principles of human nature.

Some fifteen years ago I projected a complete treatise on Social
Psychology which would have comprised the substance of the present
volume. I was prevented from carrying out the ambitious scheme, partly
by the difficulty of finding a publisher, partly by my increasing sense
of the lack of any generally accepted or acceptable account of the
constitution of human nature. I found it necessary to attempt to provide
such a foundation, and in 1908 published my _Introduction to Social
Psychology_. That book has enjoyed a certain popular success. But it was
more novel, more revolutionary, than I had supposed when writing it; and
my hope that it would rapidly be accepted by my colleagues as in the
main a true account of the fundamentals of human nature has not been
realised.

All this part of psychology labours under the great difficulty that the
worker in it cannot, like other men of science, publish his conclusions
as discoveries which will necessarily be accepted by any persons
competent to judge. He can only state his conclusions and his reasonings
and hope that they may gradually gain the general approval of his
colleagues. For to the obscure questions of fact with which he deals it
is in the nature of things impossible to return answers supported by
indisputable experimental proofs. In this field the evidence of an
author’s approximation towards truth can consist only in his success in
gradually persuading competent opinion of the value of his views. My
sketch of the fundamentals of human nature can hardly claim even that
degree of success which would be constituted by an active criticism and
discussion of it in competent quarters. Yet there are not wanting
indications that opinion is turning slowly towards the acceptance of
some such doctrine as I then outlined. Especially the development of
psycho-pathology, stimulated so greatly by the esoteric dogmas of the
Freudian school, points in this direction. The only test and
verification to which any scheme of human nature can be submitted is the
application of it to practice in the elucidation of the concrete
phenomena of human life and in the control and direction of conduct,
especially in the two great fields of medicine and education. And I have
been much encouraged by finding that some workers in both of these
fields have found my scheme of use in their practice and have even, in
some few cases, given it a cordial general approval. But group
psychology is itself one of the fields in which such testing and
verification must be sought. And I have decided to delay no longer in
attempting to bring my scheme to this test. I am also impelled to
venture on what may appear to be premature publication by the fact that
five of the best years of my life have been wholly given up to military
service and the practical problems of psycho-therapy, and by the
reflection that the years of a man’s life are numbered and that, even
though I should delay yet another fifteen years, I might find that I had
made but little progress towards securing the firm foundation I desired.

It may seem to some minds astonishing that I should now admit that the
substance of this book was committed to writing before the Great War;
for that war is supposed by some to have revolutionised all our ideas of
human nature and of national life. But the war has given me little
reason to add to or to change what I had written. This may be either
because I am too old to learn, or because what I had written was in the
main true; and I am naturally disposed to accept the second explanation.

I wish to make it clear to any would-be reader of this volume that it is
a sequel to my _Introduction to Social Psychology_, that it builds upon
that book and assumes that the reader is acquainted with it. That former
volume has been criticised as an attempted outline of _Social
Psychology_. One critic remarks that it may be good psychology, but it
is very little social; another wittily says “Mr McDougall, while giving
a full account of the genesis of instincts that act in society, hardly
shows how they issue into society. He seems to do a great deal of
packing in preparation for a journey on which he never starts.” The last
sentence exactly describes the book. I found myself, like so many of my
predecessors and contemporaries, about to start on a voyage of
exploration of societies with an empty trunk, or at least with one very
inadequately supplied with the things essential for successful
travelling. I decided to avoid the usual practice of starting without
impedimenta and of picking up or inventing bits of make-shift equipment
as each emergency arose; I would pack my trunk carefully before
starting. And now although my fellow travellers have not entirely
approved my outfit, I have launched out to put it to the test; and I
cannot hope that my readers will follow me if they have not at their
command a similar outfit—namely, a similar view of the constitution of
human nature.

I would gratefully confess that the resolve to go forward without a
further long period of preparation has been made possible for me largely
by the encouragement I have had from the recently published work of Dr
James Drever, _Instinct in Man_. For the author of that work has
carefully studied the most fundamental part of my _Social Psychology_,
in the light of his wide knowledge of the cognate literature, and has
found it to be in the main acceptable.

The title and much of the substance of the present volume might lead a
hasty reader to suppose that I am influenced by, or even in sympathy
with, the political philosophy associated with German ‘idealism.’ I
would, therefore, take this opportunity both to prevent any such
erroneous inference and to indicate my attitude towards that system of
thought in plainer language than it seemed possible to use before the
war. I have argued that we may properly speak of a group mind, and that
each of the most developed nations of the present time may be regarded
as in process of developing a group mind. This must lay me open to the
suspicion of favouring the political philosophy which makes of the state
a super-individual and semi-divine person before whom all men must bow
down, renouncing their claims to freedom of judgment and action; the
political philosophy in short of German ‘idealism,’ which derives in the
main from Hegel, which has been so ably represented in this country by
Dr Bosanquet, which has exerted so great an influence at Oxford, and
which in my opinion is as detrimental to honest and clear thinking as it
has proved to be destructive of political morality in its native
country. I am relieved of the necessity of attempting to justify these
severe strictures by the recent publication of _The Metaphysical Theory
of the State_ by Prof. L. T. Hobhouse. In that volume Prof. Hobhouse has
subjected the political philosophy of German ‘idealism,’ and especially
Dr Bosanquet’s presentation of it, to a criticism which, as it seems to
me, should suffice to expose the hollowness of its claims to all men
for all time; and I cannot better define my own attitude towards it than
by expressing the completeness of my sympathy with the searching
criticism of Mr Hobhouse’s essay. In my youth I was misled into
supposing that the Germans were the possessors of a peculiar wisdom; and
I have spent a large part of my life in discovering, in one field of
science after another, that I was mistaken. I can always read the works
of some German philosophers, especially those of Hermann Lotze, with
admiration and profit; but I have no longer any desire to contend with
the great systems of ‘idealism,’ and I think it a cruel waste that the
best years of the lives of many young men should be spent struggling
with the obscure phrases in which Kant sought to express his profound
and subtle thought. My first scientific effort was to find evidence in
support of a new hypothesis of muscular contraction; and, in working
through the various German theories, I was dismayed by their lack of
clear mechanical conceptions. My next venture was in the physiology of
vision, a branch of science which had become almost exclusively German.
Starting with a prepossession in favour of one of the dominant German
theories, I soon reached the conclusion that the two German leaders in
this field, Helmholtz and Hering, with their hosts of disciples, had, in
spite of much admirable detailed work, added little of value and much
confusion to the theory of vision left us by a great Englishman,—namely,
Thomas Young; and in a long series of papers I endeavoured to restate
and supplement Young’s theory. Advancing into the field of physiological
psychology, I attacked the ponderous volumes of Wundt with enthusiasm;
only to find that his physiology of the nervous system was a tissue of
unacceptable hypotheses and that he failed to connect it in any
profitable manner with his questionable psychology. And, finding even
less satisfaction in such works as Ziehen’s _Physiologische
Psychologie_, with its crude materialism and associationism, or in the
dogmatic speculations of Verworn, I published my own small attempt to
bring psychology into fruitful relations with the physiology of the
nervous system. This brought me up against the great problem of the
relations between mind and body; and, having found that, in this sphere,
German ‘idealism’ was pragmatically indistinguishable from
thorough-going materialism, and that those Germans who claimed to
reconcile the two did not really rise much above the level of Ernst
Haeckel’s wild flounderings, I published my _History and Defense of
Animism_. And in this field, though I found much to admire in the
writings of Lotze, I derived most encouragement and stimulus from Prof.
Bergson. In working at the foundations of human nature, I found little
help in German psychology, and more in French books, especially in those
of Prof. Ribot. In psycho-pathology I seemed to find that the claims of
the German and Austrian schools were far outweighed by those of the
French writers, especially of Prof. Janet. So now, in attacking the
problems of the mental life of societies, I have found little help from
German psychology or sociology, from the elaborations of Wundt’s
_Völkerpsychologie_ or the ponderosities of Schäffle, and still less
from the ‘idealist’ philosophy of politics. In this field also it is
French authors from whom I have learnt most and with whom I find myself
most in sympathy, especially MM. Fouillée, Boutmy, Tarde, and Demolins;
though I would not be thought to hold in low esteem the works of many
English and American authors, notably those of Buckle, Bagehot, Maine,
Lecky, Lowell, and of many others, to some of which I have made
reference in the chapters of this book.

I have striven to make this a strictly scientific work, rather than a
philosophical one; that is to say, I have tried to ascertain and state
the facts and principles of social life as it is and has been, without
expressing my opinion as to what it should be. But, in order further to
guard myself against the implications attached by German ‘idealism’ to
the notion of a collective mind, I wish to state that politically my
sympathies are with individualism and internationalism, although I have,
I think, fully recognised the great and necessary part played in human
life by the Group Spirit and by that special form of it which we now
call ‘Nationalism.’

I know well that those of my readers whose sympathies are with
Collectivism, Syndicalism, or Socialism in any of its various forms will
detect in this book the cloven foot of individualism and leanings
towards the aristocratic principle. I know also that many others will
reproach me with giving countenance to communistic and ultra-democratic
tendencies. I would, therefore, point out explicitly at the outset that,
if this book affords justification for any normative doctrine or ideal,
it is for one which would aim at a synthesis of the principles of
individualism and communism, of aristocracy and democracy, of
self-realization and of service to the community. I can best express
this ideal in the wise words of Mr F. H. Bradley, which I extract from
his famous essay on ‘My Station and its Duties.’ “The individual’s
consciousness of himself is inseparable from the knowing himself as an
organ of the whole; ... for his nature now is not distinct from his
‘artificial self.’ He is related to the living moral system not as to a
foreign body; his relation to it is ‘too inward even for faith,’ since
faith implies a certain separation. It is no other-world that he can not
see but must trust to; he feels himself in it, and it in him; ... the
belief in this real moral organism is the one solution of ethical
problems. It breaks down the antithesis of despotism and individualism;
it denies them, while it preserves the truth of both. The truth of
individualism is saved, because, unless we have intense life and
self-consciousness in the members of the state, the whole state is
ossified. The truth of despotism is saved, because, unless the member
realizes the whole by and in himself, he fails to reach his own
individuality. Considered in the main, the best communities are those
which have the best men for their members, and the best men are the
members of the best communities.... The two problems of the best man and
best state are two sides, two distinguishable aspects of the one
problem, how to realize in human nature the perfect unity of homogeneity
and specification; and when we see that each of these without the other
is unreal, then we see that (speaking in general) the welfare of the
state and the welfare of its individuals are questions which it is
mistaken and ruinous to separate. Personal morality and political and
social institutions can not exist apart, and (in general) the better the
one the better the other. The community is moral, because it realizes
personal morality; personal morality is moral, because and in so far as
it realizes the moral whole.”

Since correcting the proofs of this volume I have become acquainted with
two recent books whose teaching is so closely in harmony with my own
that I wish to direct my readers’ attention to them. One is Sir Martin
Conway’s _The Crowd in Peace and War_, which contains many valuable
illustrations of group life. The other is Miss M. P. Follett’s _The New
State; Group Organization the Solution of Popular Government_, which
expounds the principles and advantages of collective deliberation with
vigour and insight.

I am under much obligation to the general editor of this series, Prof.
G. Dawes Hicks. He has read the proofs of my book, and has helped me
greatly with many suggestions; but he has, of course, no responsibility
for the views expressed in it.

   W. McD.

   OXFORD,
   _March 1920_.



CONTENTS


PREFACE


PART I. GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF COLLECTIVE PSYCHOLOGY
                                                                    PAGES
 CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION. THE PROVINCE OF COLLECTIVE PSYCHOLOGY

   The need for a more concrete psychology—the conception of the
   group mind—objections to the conception examined—the conception
   not a new one but familiar in political philosophy and law—the
   essential problem                                                 1-20

 CHAPTER II. THE MENTAL LIFE OF THE CROWD

   The crowd presents the phenomena of collective life in crude
   and simple forms—the formation of the psychological crowd—its
   peculiarities—spread and intensification of emotions—how that
   takes place—the notion of ‘collective consciousness’
   provisionally rejected—the submergence of personality in the
   crowd—the low intelligence of crowds—suggestibility—lack of
   individual responsibility                                        21-47

 CHAPTER III. THE HIGHLY ORGANISED GROUP

   The principal conditions of organisation—the army as the
   type—how its organisation raises the soldier to a higher plane
   of collective life—the nature of collective will
   illustrated—influence of leaders                                 48-61

 CHAPTER IV. THE GROUP SPIRIT

   The self-consciousness of the group—the group idea and the
   group sentiment—the group consciousness in primitive
   life—views of Cornford and Lévy Bruhl examined—‘collective
   representations’—the peculiar merit of the group
   spirit—multiple group consciousness—the hierarchy of
   groups—interaction of groups                                     62-87

 CHAPTER V. PECULIARITIES OF GROUPS OF VARIOUS TYPES

   Rudimentary groups—natural and artificial groups—purposive,
   traditional and mixed groups                                     88-95


PART II. THE NATIONAL MIND AND CHARACTER

 CHAPTER VI. WHAT IS A NATION?

   Difficulty of defining nationhood—Prof. Ramsay Muir’s
   definition not adequate—mental organisation, resting on
   tradition, the most essential condition—lack of clear
   conceptions has given currency to many obscure notions—the
   study of nationhood essentially the work of group psychology    96-105

 CHAPTER VII. THE MIND OF A NATION

   National character defined—conditions essential to its
   formation—homogeneity a prime condition—the influence of
   racial qualities on national character—the durability of
   racial qualities—acquired mental homogeneity as illustrated by
   the American nation—the influence upon it of geographical
   conditions                                                     106-130

 CHAPTER VIII. FREEDOM OF COMMUNICATION AS A CONDITION OF NATIONAL LIFE

   Large nations impossible in the ancient world—the tendency of
   nations to grow larger with increase of means of communication 131-134

 CHAPTER IX. THE PART OF LEADERS IN NATIONAL LIFE

   Nations owe their existence to influence of leaders—men of
   genius—men of talent—their _rôle_ in national life             135-141

 CHAPTER X. OTHER CONDITIONS OF NATIONAL LIFE

   A common purpose—war the unifier—national
   responsibilities—continuity of national life—organisation of
   the national mind analogous to that of the individual
   mind—national self-consciousness—types of organisation         142-154

 CHAPTER XI. THE WILL OF THE NATION

   Rousseau’s doctrine of the general will—Prof. Bosanquet’s view
   inadequate—the national mind has both organic unity and the
   unity of self-consciousness—increase of national
   self-consciousness the leading fact of recent world
   history—self-consciousness of nations developed by rivalry and
   intercourse between them                                       155-168

 CHAPTER XII. IDEAS IN NATIONAL LIFE

   The idea of the nation is constitutive—ideas work as forces in
   national life only in virtue of sentiments grown up about
   their objects—the notions of society as an organism and as
   founded on contract synthesised in the conception of the
   nation as a contractual organism—the value of nationality
   examined—ideas of conquest—of ancestor worship—of liberty and
   equality—of progress—of solidarity                             169-186

 CHAPTER XIII. NATIONS OF THE HIGHER TYPE

   National deliberation—the influence on it of organisation
   and of traditions—certain advantages of the representative
   system—public opinion arises from an informal organisation—the
   problem of the high level of public opinion—its solution
   to be found in the influence of leaders                        187-199


PART III. THE DEVELOPMENT OF NATIONAL MIND AND CHARACTER

 CHAPTER XIV. FACTORS OF NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

   Civilisation does not imply improvement of racial qualities—it
   abolishes selection by the physical environment—it consists
   in improved intellectual and moral traditions and is dependent
   on favourable social organisation                              200-207

 CHAPTER XV. THE RACE-MAKING PERIOD

   Differentiation of races from a common stock—human evolution
   differs from that of the animals in becoming group
   evolution—physical environment supplanted by social environment
   and organisation—the direct effects of climate
   on the body—on the mind                                        208-219

 CHAPTER XVI. THE RACE-MAKING PERIOD (_continued_)

   Physical environment determines racial adaptation directly
   by selection—indirectly by determining occupations and
   social organisation—the protective spirit in France—the
   spirit of independence in England—attempts of Buckle,
   Boutmy and Sir H. Maine to account for these not successful    220-232

 CHAPTER XVII. THE RACE-MAKING PERIOD (_continued_)

   The influence of occupations—the leading principle of the
   school of Le Play—the development of the spirit of protection
   in the people of Gaul—the development of the spirit of
   independence in the ancestors of the English—the crossing of
   races—its bad and its good results                             233-245

 CHAPTER XVIII. RACIAL CHANGES DURING THE HISTORIC PERIOD

   Race substitution—the population of Greece—internal
   selection—its effects in Spain—various forms of social
   selection—mostly negative or injurious to national
   stock—economic selection and the social ladder—the innate
   moral disposition—the question of its improvement              246-269

 CHAPTER XIX. THE PROGRESS OF NATIONS IN THEIR YOUTH

   The rarity of progress—the conditions enabling progress—group
   selection—in what has progress consisted?—views of Buckle and
   Kidd—conquest and domination an early condition of
   progress—variability of crossed races—influence of physical
   environment—western civilisation and social organisation       270-286

 CHAPTER XX. THE PROGRESS OF NATIONS IN THEIR MATURITY

   Liberty and social organisation—caste makes for rigidity—the
   growth of toleration—imaginative sympathy increases with
   increasing freedom of intercourse, bringing strife and
   understanding—the group spirit as the main agent of further
   progress                                                       287-301


 INDEX                                                            302-304



CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION


THE PROVINCE OF COLLECTIVE PSYCHOLOGY

To define exactly the relations of the several special sciences is a
task which can never be completely achieved so long as these sciences
continue to grow and change. It is a peculiarly difficult task in
respect of the biological sciences, because we have not yet reached
general agreement as to the fundamental conceptions which these sciences
should employ. To illustrate this difficulty I need only refer to a
recent symposium of the Aristotelian Society in which a number of
distinguished philosophers and biologists discussed the question “Are
physical, biological and psychological categories irreducible?” The
discussion revealed extreme differences of opinion, and failed to bring
the disputants nearer to a common view. The difficulty is still greater
in respect of the human sciences—anthropology, psychology, ethics,
politics, economics, sociology, and the rest; and it is not to be hoped
that any general agreement on this difficult question will be reached in
the near future. Yet it seems worth while that each writer who aspires
to break new ground in any part of this field of inquiry should
endeavour to make clear to himself and others his conception of the
relations of that part to the rest of the field. It is, then, in no
dogmatic spirit, or with any belief in the finality of the position
assigned to my topic, that I venture the following definition of the
province of psychology with which this book is concerned.

I have chosen the title, “The Group Mind,” after some hesitation in
favour of the alternative, “Collective Psychology.” The latter has the
advantage that it has already been used by several continental authors,
more especially French and Italian psychologists. But the title I have
chosen is, I think, more distinctively English in quality and denotes
more clearly the topic that I desire to discuss.

An alternative and not inappropriate title would have been “An Outline
of Social Psychology”; but two reasons prevented the adoption of this.
First, my _Introduction to Social Psychology_ has become generally known
by the abbreviated title _Social Psychology_. This was an unforeseen
result and unfortunate designation; for, as I have explained in the
Preface to the present volume, that other work was designed merely as a
propaedeutic; it aimed merely at clearing the ground and laying the
foundations for Social Psychology, while leaving the topic itself for
subsequent treatment. Secondly, I conceive Group Psychology to be a part
only, though a very large part, of the total field of Social Psychology;
for, while the former has to deal only with the life of groups, the
latter has also to describe and account for the influence of the group
on the growth and activities of the individual. This is the most
concrete part of psychology and naturally comes last in the order of
development of the science; for, like other sciences, psychology began
with the most abstract notions, the forms of activity of mind in
general, and, by the aid of the abstract conceptions achieved by the
earlier workers, progresses to the consideration of more concrete
problems, the problems presented by actual living persons in all their
inexhaustible richness and complexity.

Until the later decades of the nineteenth century, psychology continued
to concern itself almost exclusively with the mind of man conceived in
an abstract fashion, not as the mind of any particular individual, but
as the mind of a representative individual considered in abstraction
from his social settings as something given to our contemplation fully
formed and complete.

Two important changes of modern thought have shown the necessity of a
more concrete treatment of psychological problems. The first has been
the coming into prominence of the problems of genesis which, although
not originated by Darwin, received so great an impetus from his work.
The second has been the increasing realisation of the need for a more
synthetic treatment of all fields of science, the realisation that
analysis alone carries us ever farther away from concrete problems and
leads only to a system of abstract conceptions which are very remote
from reality, however useful they may prove in the physical sciences.
The biological and the human sciences especially have been profoundly
affected by these two changes of modern thought. As Theodore Merz has so
well shown in the fourth volume of his monumental work[1], the need has
been increasingly felt of the _vue d’ensemble_, of the synthetic mode of
regarding organisms, men, and institutions, not as single things,
self-contained and complete in themselves, but as merely nodes or
meeting points of all the forces of the world acting and reacting in
unlimited time and space.

Psychology was, then, until recent years the science of the abstract
individual mind. Each worker aimed at rendering by the aid of
introspection an analytic description of the stream of his own
consciousness, a consistent classification of the elements or features
that he seemed to discover therein, and some general laws or rules of
the order of succession and conjunction of these features; postulating
in addition some one or more explanatory principles or active agencies
such as ‘the will’ or the desire of pleasure, the aversion from pain, or
‘the association of ideas,’ to enable him to account for the flow of the
distinguishable elements of consciousness. The psychology achieved by
these studies, necessary and valuable as they were, was of little help
to men who were struggling with the concrete problems of human life and
was therefore largely ignored by them. But, as I have pointed out in the
Introduction to my _Social Psychology_, those who approached these
problems were generally stimulated to do so by their interest in
questions of right and wrong, in questions of norms and standards of
conduct, the urgency of which demanded immediate answers for the
practical guidance of human life in all its spheres of activity, for the
shaping of laws, institutions, governments, and associations of every
kind; or, as frequently perhaps, for the justification and defence of
standards of conduct, modes of belief, and forms of institution, which
men had learnt to esteem as supremely good.

Thus the political science of Hobbes was the expression of his attempt
to justify the monarchy established by the Tudors and endangered by the
failings of the Stuart kings; while that of Locke was equally the
outcome of his desire to justify the revolution of 1668. Hobbes felt it
worth while to preface his _magnum opus_ on political philosophy with a
fanciful sketch of human nature and of primitive society; yet, as Mr
Gooch remarks, “neither Hobbes nor his contemporaries knew anything of
the actual life of primitive communities[2].” And it may be added that
they knew as little of the foundations of human nature. Again, the
social doctrines of Rousseau, with all their false psychology, were
formulated in order to stir men to revolt against the conditions of
social life then prevalent in Europe. In a similar way, in the
development of all that body of social doctrine that went under the name
of Utilitarianism and which culminated in the political science and
economy of the Manchester School, every step was prompted by the desire
to find theoretical guidance or justification for rules governing human
activity. And, if we go back to the _Politics_ of Aristotle, we find the
normative or regulative aim still more prominent.

Thus, in all the human sciences, we see that the search for what is has
been inextricably confused with and hampered by the effort to show what
ought to be; and the further back we go in their history, the more does
the normative point of view predominate. They all begin in the effort to
describe what ought to be; and incidentally give some more or less
fallacious or fantastic account of what is, merely in order to support
the normative doctrines. And, as we trace their history forward towards
the present time, we find the positive element coming more and more to
the front, until it tends to preponderate over and even completely to
supplant the normative aim. Thus even in Ethics there is now perceptible
in some quarters a tendency to repudiate the normative standpoint. All
the social sciences have, then, begun their work at what, from the
strictly logical point of view, was the wrong end; instead of first
securing a basis of positive science and then building up the normative
doctrines upon that basis, they have advanced by repeatedly going
backwards towards what should have been their foundations. Now the most
important part of the positive basis of the social sciences is
psychology; we find accordingly the social sciences at first ignoring
psychology and then gradually working back to it; they became gradually
more psychological and, in proportion as they did so, they became more
valuable. Modern writers on these topics fall into two classes; those
who have attempted to work upon a psychological foundation, and those
who have ignored or denied the need of any such basis. The earlier
efforts of the former kind, among which we may reckon those of Adam
Smith, Bentham, and the Mills, although they greatly influenced
legislation and practice in general, have nevertheless brought the
psychological method into some disrepute, because they reasoned from
psychological principles which were unduly simplified and in fact
misleading, notably the famous principle of psychological hedonism on
which they so greatly relied. Their psychology was, in brief, too
abstract; it had not achieved the necessary concreteness, which only the
introduction of the genetic standpoint and the _vue d’ensemble_ could
give it. Other writers on the social sciences were content to ignore the
achievements of psychology; but, since they dealt with the activities of
human beings and the products of those activities, such as laws,
institutions and customs, they could hardly avoid all reference to the
human mind and its processes; they then relied upon the crude
unanalysed psychological conceptions of popular speech; often they went
further and, aspiring to explain the phenomena they described, made vast
assumptions about the constitution and working of the human mind. Thus,
for example, Renan, when he sought to explain some feature of the
history of a nation or society, was in the habit, like many others, of
ascribing it to some peculiar instinct which he postulated for this
particular purpose, such as a political or a religious instinct or an
instinct of subordination or of organisation. Comte made egoism and
altruism the two master forces of the mind. Sir Henry Maine asserted
that “satisfaction and impatience are the two great sources of political
conduct,” and, after asserting that “no force acting on mankind has been
less carefully examined than Party, and yet none better deserves
examination,” he was content to conclude that “Party is probably nothing
more than a survival and a consequence of the primitive combativeness of
mankind[3].” More recently Prof. Giddings has discovered the principal
force underlying all human associations in _Consciousness of Kind_.
Butler and the intuitive moralists postulated ‘conscience’ or moral
sense as something innately present in the souls of men; while the
creators of the classical school of political economy were for the most
part content to assume that man is a purely rational being who always
intelligently pursues his own best interest, a false premise from which
they deduced some conclusions that have not withstood the test of time.
Similar vague assumptions may be found in almost every work on the
social sciences,—all illustrating the need for a psychology more
concrete than the older individual psychology, as a basis for these
sciences, a positive science, not of some hypothetical Robinson Crusoe,
but of the mental life of men as it actually unfolds itself in the
families, tribes, nations, societies of all sorts, that make up the
human world.

The general growth of interest in genetic problems, stimulated so
greatly by the work of Darwin, turned the attention of psychologists to
the problem of the genesis of the developed human mind,—the problem of
its evolution in the race and its development in the individual. Then it
at once became apparent that both these processes are essentially
social; that they involve, and at every step are determined by,
interactions between the individual and his social environment; that,
while the growth of the individual mind is moulded by the mental forces
of the society in which it grows up, those forces are in turn the
products of the interplay of the minds composing the society; that,
therefore, we can only understand the life of individuals and the life
of societies, if we consider them always in relation to one another. It
was realised that each man is an individual only in an incomplete sense;
that he is but a unit in a vast system of vital and spiritual forces
which, expressing themselves in the form of human societies, are working
towards ends which no man can foresee; a unit whose chief function it is
to transmit these forces unimpaired, which can change or add to them
only in infinitesimal degree, and which, therefore, has but little
significance and cannot be accounted for when considered in abstraction
from that system. It became clear that the play of this system of forces
at any moment of history is predominantly determined by conditions which
are themselves the products of an immensely long course of evolution,
conditions which have been produced by the mental activities of
countless generations and which are but very little modified by the
members of society living at any one time; so that, as has been said,
society consists of the dead as well as of the living, and the part of
the living in determining its life is but insignificant as compared with
the part of the dead.

Any psychology that recognises these facts and attempts to display the
reciprocal influences of the individual and the society in which he
plays his part may be called Social Psychology. Collective or Group
Psychology is, then, a part of this larger field. It has to study the
mental life of societies of all kinds; and such understanding of the
group life as it can achieve has then to be used by Social Psychology in
rendering more concrete and complete our understanding of the individual
life.

Group Psychology itself consists properly of two parts, that which is
concerned to discover the most general principles of group life, and
that which applies these principles to the study of particular kinds and
examples of group life. The former is logically prior to the second;
though in practice it is hardly possible to keep them wholly apart. The
present volume is concerned chiefly with the former branch. Only when
the general principles of group life have been applied to the
understanding of particular societies, of nations and the manifold
system of groups within the nation, will it be possible for Social
Psychology to return upon the individual life and give of it an adequate
account in all its concrete fulness.

The nature of Group Psychology may be illustrated by reference to
Herbert Spencer’s conception of sociology. Spencer pointed out that, if
you set out to build a stable pile of solid bodies of a certain shape,
the kind of structure resulting is determined by the shapes and
properties of these units, that for example, if the units are spheres,
there are only very few stable forms which the pile can assume. The same
is true, he said, of such physical processes as crystallisation; the
form and properties of the whole or aggregate are determined by the
properties of the units. He maintained with less plausibility that the
same holds good of animal and vegetable forms and of the elements of
which they are composed. And he went on to argue that, in like manner,
the structure and properties of a society are determined by the
properties of the units, the individual human beings, of which it is
composed.

This last proposition is true in a very partial sense only. For the
aggregate which is a society has, in virtue of its past history,
positive qualities which it does not derive from the units which compose
it at any one time; and in virtue of these qualities it acts upon its
units in a manner very different from that in which the units as such
interact with one another. Further, each unit, when it becomes a member
of a group, displays properties or modes of reaction which it does not
display, which remain latent or potential only, so long as it remains
outside that group. It is possible, therefore, to discover these
potentialities of the units only by studying them as elements in the
life of the whole. That is to say, the aggregate which is a society has
a certain individuality, is a true whole which in great measure
determines the nature and the modes of activity of its parts; it is an
organic whole. The society has a mental life which is not the mere sum
of the mental lives of its units existing as independent units; and a
complete knowledge of the units, if and in so far as they could be known
as isolated units, would not enable us to deduce the nature of the life
of the whole, in the way that is implied by Spencer’s analogies.

Since, then, the social aggregate has a collective mental life, which is
not merely the sum of the mental lives of its units, it may be contended
that a society not only enjoys a collective mental life but also has a
collective mind or, as some prefer to say, a collective soul.

The tasks of Group Psychology are, then, to examine the conception of
the collective or group mind, in order to determine whether and in what
sense this is a valid conception; to display the general principles of
collective mental life which are incapable of being deduced from the
laws of the mental life of isolated individuals; to distinguish the
principal types of collective mental life or group mind; to describe the
peculiarities of those types and as far as possible to account for them.
More shortly, Group Psychology has, first, to establish the general
principles of group life (this is general collective psychology);
secondly, it has to apply these principles in the endeavour to
understand particular examples of group life. Group Psychology, thus
conceived, meets at the outset a difficulty which stands in the way of
every attempt of psychology to leave the narrow field of highly abstract
individual psychology. It finds the ground already staked out and
occupied by the representatives of another science, who are inclined to
resent its intrusion as an encroachment on their rights. The science
which claims to have occupied the field of Group Psychology is
Sociology; and it is of some importance that the claims of these
sciences should be reconciled, so that they may live and work
harmoniously together. I have no desire to claim for Group Psychology
the whole province of Sociology. As I conceive it, that province is much
wider than that of Group Psychology. Sociology is essentially a science
which has to take a comprehensive and synthetic view of the life of
mankind, and has to accept and make use of the conclusions of many other
more special sciences, of which psychology, and especially Group
Psychology, is for it perhaps the most important. But other special
sciences have very important if less intimate contributions to make to
it. Thus, if it be true that great civilisations have decayed owing to
changes of climate of their habitats, or owing to the introduction of
such diseases as malaria into them, then Climatology and Epidemiology
have their contributions to make to Sociology. If peculiarities of diet
or the crossing of racial stocks may profoundly affect the vigour of
peoples, Physiology must have its say. General biology and the science
of Genetics are bringing to light much that must be incorporated in
Sociology. Economics, although needing to be treated far more
psychologically than it commonly has been, has its special contribution
to make. These are only a few illustrations of the fact that the field
of Sociology is very much wider and more general than that of Group
Psychology, however important to it the conclusions of the narrower
science may be.

In this book it will be maintained that the conception of a group mind
is useful and therefore valid; and, since this notion has already
excited some opposition and criticism and is one that requires very
careful definition, some attempt to define and justify it may usefully
be made at the outset; though the completer justification is the
substance of the whole book. Some writers have assumed the reality of
what is called the ‘collective consciousness’ of a society, meaning
thereby a unitary consciousness of the society over and above that of
the individuals comprised within it. This conception is examined in
Chapter II and provisionally rejected. But it is maintained that a
society, when it enjoys a long life and becomes highly organised,
acquires a structure and qualities which are largely independent of the
qualities of the individuals who enter into its composition and take
part for a brief time in its life. It becomes an organised system of
forces which has a life of its own, tendencies of its own, a power of
moulding all its component individuals, and a power of perpetuating
itself as a self-identical system, subject only to slow and gradual
change.

In an earlier work, in which I have sketched in outline the program of
psychology[4], I wrote: “When the student of behaviour has learnt from
the various departments of psychology ... all that they can teach him of
the structure, genesis, and modes of operation of the individual mind, a
large field still awaits his exploration. If we put aside as unproven
such speculations as that touched on at the end of the foregoing chapter
(the view of James that the human mind can enter into an actual union or
communion with the divine mind) and refuse to admit any modes of
communication or influence between minds other than through the normal
channels of sense-perception and bodily movement, we must nevertheless
recognise the existence in a certain sense of over-individual or
collective minds. We may fairly define a mind as an organised system of
mental or purposive forces; and, in the sense so defined, every highly
organised human society may properly be said to possess a collective
mind. For the collective actions which constitute the history of any
such society are conditioned by an organisation which can only be
described in terms of mind, and which yet is not comprised within the
mind of any individual; the society is rather constituted by the system
of relations obtaining between the individual minds which are its units
of composition. Under any given circumstances the actions of the society
are, or may be, very different from the mere sum of the actions with
which its several members would react to the situation in the absence of
the system of relations which render them a society; or, in other words,
the thinking and acting of each man, in so far as he thinks and acts as
a member of a society, are very different from his thinking and acting
as an isolated individual.”

This passage has been cited by the author of a notable work on
Sociology[5], and made by him the text of a polemic against the
conception of the group mind. He writes: “This passage contains two
arguments in favour of the hypothesis of super-individual ‘collective’
minds, neither of which can stand examination. The ‘definition’ of a
mind as ‘an organised system of mental or purposive forces’ is totally
inadequate. When we speak of the mind of an individual we mean something
more than this. The mind of each of us has a unity other than that of
such a system.” But I doubt whether Mr Maciver could explain exactly
what kind of unity it is that he postulates. Is it the unity of soul
substance? I have myself contended at some length that this is a
necessary postulate or hypothesis[6], but I do not suppose that Maciver
accepts or intends to refer to this conception. Is it the unity of
consciousness or of self-consciousness? Then the answer is that this
unity is by no means a general and established function of the
individual mind; modern studies of the disintegration of personality
have shown this to be a questionable assumption, undermined by the many
facts of normal and abnormal psychology best resumed under Dr Morton
Prince’s term ‘co-consciousness.’

The individual mind is a system of purposive forces, but the system is
by no means always a harmonious system; it is but too apt to be the
scene of fierce conflicts which sometimes (in the graver psychoneuroses)
result in the rupture and disintegration of the system. I do not know
how otherwise we are to describe the individual mind than as a system of
mental forces; and, until Maciver succeeds in showing in what other
sense he conceives it to have “a unity other than that of such a
system,” his objection cannot be seriously entertained. He asks, of the
alleged collective mind: “Does the system so created think and will and
feel and act[7]?” My answer, as set out in the following pages, is that
it does all of these things. He asks further: “If a number of minds
construct by their interactivity an organisation ‘which can only be
described in terms of mind,’ must we ascribe to the construction the
very nature of the forces which constructed it?” To this I reply—my
point is that the individual minds which enter into the structure of the
group mind at any moment of its life do not construct it; rather, as
they come to reflective self-consciousness, they find themselves
already members of the system, moulded by it, sharing in its activities,
influenced by it at every moment in every thought and feeling and action
in ways which they can neither fully understand nor escape from,
struggle as they may to free themselves from its infinitely subtle and
multitudinous forces. And this system, as Maciver himself forcibly
insists in another connection, does not consist of relations that exist
external to and independently of the things related, namely the minds of
individuals; it consists of the same stuff as the individual minds, its
threads and parts lie within these minds; but the parts in the several
individual minds reciprocally imply and complement one another and
together make up the system which consists wholly of them; and
therefore, as I wrote, they can “only be described in terms of mind.”
Any society is literally a more or less organised mental system; the
stuff of which it consists is mental stuff; the forces that operate
within it are mental forces. Maciver argues further: “Social
organisations occur of every kind and every degree of universality. If
England has a collective mind, why not Birmingham and why not each of
its wards? If a nation has a collective mind, so also have a church and
a trade union. And we shall have collective minds that are parts of
greater collective minds, and collective minds that intersect other
collective minds.” By this my withers are quite unwrung. What degree of
organisation is necessary before a society can properly be said to enjoy
collective mental life or have a group mind is a question of degree; and
the exponent of the group mind is under no obligation to return a
precise answer to this question. My contention is that the most highly
organised groups display collective mental life in a way which justifies
the conception of the group mind, and that we shall be helped to
understand collective life in these most complex and difficult forms by
studying it in the simpler less elaborated groups where the conception
of a group mind is less clearly applicable. As regards the overlapping
and intersection of groups and the consequent difficulty of assigning
the limits of groups whose unity is implied by the term group mind, I
would point out that this difficulty arises only in connexion with the
lower forms of group life and that a parallel difficulty is presented by
the lower forms of animal life. Is Maciver acquainted with the
organisation of a sponge, or of the so-called coral ‘insect,’ or with
that of the Portuguese man-o’-war? Would he deny the unity of a human
being, or refuse to acknowledge his possession of a mind, because in
these lower organisms the limits of the unit are hard or impossible to
assign? Maciver goes on: “The second argument is an obvious fallacy. If
each man thinks and acts differently as a member of a crowd or
association and as an individual standing out of any such immediate
relation to his fellows, it is still each who thinks and acts; the new
determinations are determinations still of individual minds as they are
influenced by aggregation.... But this is merely an extreme instance of
the obvious fact that every mind is influenced by every kind of
environment. To posit a super-individual mind because individual minds
are altered by their relations to one another (as indeed they are
altered by their relations to physical conditions) is surely
gratuitous[8].” To this I reply—the environment which influences the
individual in his life as a member of an organised group is neither the
sum of his fellow members as individuals, nor is it something that has
other than a mental existence. It is the organised group as such, which
exists only or chiefly in the persons of those composing it, but which
does not exist in the mind of any one of them, and which operates upon
each so powerfully just because it is something indefinitely greater,
more powerful, more comprehensive than the mere sum of those
individuals. Maciver feels that “it is important to clear out of the way
this misleading doctrine of super-individual minds corresponding to
social or communal organisations and activities,” and therefore goes on
to say that “there is no more a great ‘collective’ mind beyond the
individual minds in society than there is a great ‘collective’ tree
beyond all the individual trees in nature. A collection of trees is a
wood, and that we can study as a unity; so an aggregation of men is a
society, a much more determinate unity; but a collection of trees is not
a collective tree, and neither is a collection of persons or minds a
collective person or mind. We can speak of qualities of tree in
abstraction from any particular tree, and we can speak of qualities of
mind as such, or of some particular kind of mind in relation to some
type of situation. Yet in so doing we are simply considering the
characteristic of like elements of individual minds, as we might
consider the characteristic or like elements discoverable in individual
trees and kinds of trees. To conceive because of these identities, a
‘collective’ mind as existing _beside_ those of individuals or a
collective tree beside the variant examples is to run against the wall
of the Idea theory.” Now, I am not proposing to commit myself to this
last-named theory. It is not because minds have much in common with one
another that I speak of the collective mind, but because the group as
such is more than the sum of the individuals, has its own life
proceeding according to laws of group life, which are not the laws of
individual life, and because its peculiar group life reacts upon and
profoundly modifies the lives of the individuals. I would not call a
forest a collective tree; but I would maintain that in certain respects
a forest, a wood, or a copse, has in a rudimentary way a collective
life. Thus the forest remains the same forest though, after a hundred or
a thousand years, all its constituent trees may be different
individuals; and again the forest as a whole may and does modify the
life of each tree, as by attracting moisture, protecting from violent
and cold winds, harbouring various plants and animals which affect the
trees, and so on.

But I will cite an eloquent passage from a recent work on sociology in
support of my view. “The bonds of society are in the members of society,
and not outside them. It is the memories, traditions, and beliefs of
each which make up the social memories, traditions and beliefs. Society
like the kingdom of God is within us. Within us, within each of us, and
yet greater than the thoughts and understandings of any of us. For the
social thoughts and feelings and willings of each, the socialised mind
of each, with the complex scheme of his relation to the social world, is
no mere reproduction of the social thoughts and feelings and willings of
the rest. Unity and difference here too weave their eternal web, the
greater social scheme which none of us who are part of it can ever see
in its entirety, but whose infinite subtlety and harmony we may more and
more comprehend and admire. As a community grows in civilisation and
culture, its traditions are no longer clear and definite ways of
thinking, its usages are no longer uniform, its spirit is no longer to
be summed up in a few phrases. But the spirit and tradition of a people
become no less real in becoming more complex. Each member no longer
embodies the whole tradition, but it is because each embodies some part
of a greater tradition to which the freely-working individuality of each
contributes. In this sense the spirit of a people, though existing only
in the individual members, more and more surpasses the measure of any
individual mind. Again, the social tradition is expressed through
institutions and records more permanent than the short-lived members of
community. These institutions and records are as it were stored social
values (just as, in particular, books may be called stored social
knowledge), _in themselves nothing_, no part of the social mind, but the
instruments of the communication of traditions from member to member, as
also from the dead past to the living present. In this way too, with
the increase of these stored values, of which members realise parts but
none the whole, the spirit of a people more and more surpasses the
measure of any individual mind. It is these social forces within and
without, working in the minds of individuals whose own social
inheritance is an essential part of their individuality, stored in the
institutions which they maintain from the past or establish in the
present, that mould the communal spirit of the successive generations.
In this sense too a community may be called greater than its members who
exist at any one time, since the community itself marches out of the
past into the present, and its members at any time are part of a great
succession, themselves first moulded by communal forces before they
become, so moulded, the active determinants of its future moulding.” An
admirable statement! “The greater social scheme which none of us can see
in its entirety”—“the spirit of a people” which “more and more surpasses
the measure of any individual mind”—“the communal spirit of the
successive generations”—“the community” which is “greater than its
members who exist at any one time”; all these are alternative
designations of that organised system of mental forces which exists over
and above, though not independently of, the individuals in each of whom
some fragment of it is embodied and which is the group mind. And the
writer of this statement is Mr R. M. Maciver; the passage occurs in the
section of his book designed to “clear out of the way this misleading
doctrine of super-individual minds.” In the same section he goes on to
say that “every association, every organised group, may and does have
rights and obligations which are not the rights and obligations of any
or all of its members taken distributively but only of the association
acting as an organised unity.... As a unity the association may become a
‘juristic person,’ a ‘corporation,’ and from the legal standpoint the
character of unity so conceived is very important.... The ‘juristic
person’ is a real _unity_, and therefore more than a _persona ficta_,
but the reality it possesses is of a totally different order of being
from that of the persons who establish it.” But, perversely as it seems
to me, Maciver adds “the unity of which we are thinking is not mechanic
or organic or even psychic.” I cannot but think that, in thus denying
the organic and psychic nature of this unity, Maciver is under the
influence of that unfortunate and still prevalent way of thinking of the
psychic as identical with the conscious which has given endless trouble
in psychology; because it has prompted the hopeless attempt, constantly
renewed, to describe the structure and organisation of the mind in
terms of conscious stuff, ignoring the all-important distinction between
mental activity, which is sometimes, though perhaps not always,
consciousness, and mental structure which is not. The structure and
organisation of the spirit of the community is in every respect as
purely mental or psychic as is the structure and organisation of the
individual mind.

Maciver very properly goes on to bring his conclusions to the pragmatic
test, the test of practical results. He writes: “These false analogies
... are the sources of that most misleading antithesis which we draw
between the individual and society, as though society were somehow other
than its individuals.... Analyse these misleading analogies, and in the
revelation of their falsity there is revealed also the falsity of this
essential opposition of individual and society. Properly understood, the
interests of ‘the individual’ are the interests of society[9].” But is
it true that the interests of the individual are identical with the
interests of society? Obviously not. We have only to think of the
condemned criminal; of the mentally defective to whom every enlightened
society should deny the right of procreation; of the young soldier who
sacrifices his health, his limbs, his eyesight, or his life, and perhaps
the welfare of his loved ones, in serving his country. It is true that
the progress of society is essentially an approximation towards an ideal
state in which this identification would be completed; but that is an
ideal which can never be absolutely realised. Nor is it even true that
the interests of society are identical with the interests of the
majority of its members existing at any one time. It is, I think, highly
probable that, if any great modern nation should unanimously and
wholeheartedly embark upon a thorough-going scheme of state-socialism,
the interests of the vast majority of individuals would be greatly
promoted; they would be enabled to live more prosperously and
comfortably with greater leisure and opportunity for the higher forms of
activity. It is, however, equally probable that the higher interests of
the nation would be gravely endangered, that it would enter upon a
period of increasing stagnation and diminishing vitality and, after a
few generations had passed away, would have slipped far down the slope
which has led all great societies of the past to destruction.

The question may be considered in relation to the German nation. As will
be pointed out in a later chapter, the structure of that nation was,
before the Great War, a menace to European civilisation. If the Germans
had succeeded in their aims and had conquered Europe or the world,
their individual interests would have been vastly promoted; they would
have enjoyed immense material prosperity and a proud consciousness of
having been chosen by God to rule the rest of mankind for their good.
And this would have confirmed the nation in all its vices and would have
finally crushed out of it all its potentialities for developing into a
well-organised nation of the higher type, fitted to play an honourable
part in the future evolution of mankind. The same truth appears if we
consider the problem of the responsibility of the German nation for the
War. So long as that people might retain its former organisation, which,
I repeat, rendered it a menace to the civilisation and culture of the
whole world, its antagonists could only treat it as a criminal and an
outlaw to be repressed at all costs and punished and kept down with the
utmost severity. But, if it should achieve a new organisation, one which
will give preponderance to the better and saner elements and traditions
still preserved within it, then, although it will consist of the same
individuals in the main, it will have become a new or at least a
transformed nation, one with which the other nations could enter into
normal relations of amity or at least of mutual toleration, one which
could be admitted to a place in the greater society which the League of
Nations is to become. In other words, the same population would in
virtue of a changed organisation, have become a different nation.

Although Maciver, in making his attack upon the conception of the group
mind, has done me the honour to choose me as its exponent, I do not
stand alone in maintaining it. I am a little shy of citing in its
support the philosophers of the school of German ‘idealism,’ because, as
I have indicated in the Preface, I have little sympathy with that
school. Yet, though one may disapprove of the methods and of most of the
conclusions of a school of thought, one may still adduce in support of
one’s opinion such of its principles as seem to be well founded. I may,
then, remind the reader that the conception of the State as a
super-individual, a superhuman quasi-divine personality, is the central
conception of the political philosophy of German ‘idealism.’ That
conception has, no doubt, played a considerable part in bringing upon
Europe its present disaster. It was an instance of one of those
philosophical ideas which claim to be the product of pure reason, yet in
reality are adopted for the purpose of justifying and furthering some
already existing interest or institution. In this case the institution
in question was the Prussian state and those, Hegel and the rest, who
set up this doctrine were servants of that state. They made of their
doctrine an instrument for the suppression of individuality which
greatly aided in producing the servile condition of the German people.
Yet the distortions and exaggerations of the political philosophy of
German ‘idealism’ should not prejudice us against the germ of truth
which it contains; and the more enlightened British disciples of this
school, from T.H. Green onwards, have sought with much success to winnow
the grain from the chaff of the doctrine; and I cannot adduce better
support for the conception of the group mind than the sentences in which
a recent English writer, a sympathetic student of German ‘idealism,’
sums up the results of this winnowing process[10]. Discussing the
deficiencies of the individualist philosophy of the English utilitarian
school, he writes: “Not a modification of the old Benthamite premises,
but a new philosophy was needed; and that philosophy was provided by the
idealist school, of which Green is the greatest representative. That
school drew its inspiration immediately from Kant and Hegel, and
ultimately from the old Greek philosophy of the city-state. The vital
relation between the life of the individual and the life of the
community, which alone gives the individual worth and significance,
because it alone gives him the power of full moral development; the
dependence of the individual, for all his rights and for all his
liberty, on his membership of the community; the correlative duty of the
community to guarantee to the individual all his rights (in other words,
all the conditions necessary for his, and therefore for its own, full
moral development)—these were the premisses of the new philosophy. That
philosophy could satisfy the new needs of social progress, because it
refused to worship a supposed individual liberty which was proving
destructive of the real liberty of the vast majority, and preferred to
emphasise the moral well-being and betterment of the whole community,
and to conceive of each of its members as attaining his own well-being
and betterment in and through the community. Herein lay, or seemed to
lie, a revolution of ideas. Instead of starting from a central
individual, to whom the social system is supposed to be adjusted, the
idealist starts from a central social system, in which the individual
must find his appointed orbit of duty. But after all the revolution is
only a restoration; and what is restored is simply the _Republic_ of
Plato[11].” The same writer reminds us that “both Plato and Hegel thus
imply the idea of a moral organism”; and he adds, “It is this conception
of a moral organism which Bradley urges. It is implied in daily
experience, and it is the only explanation of that experience. ‘In fact,
what we call an individual man is what he is because of and by virtue of
community, and communities are not mere names, but something real.’
Already at birth the child is what he is in virtue of communities: he
has something of the family character, something of the national
character, something of the civilised character which comes from human
society. As he grows, the community in which he lives pours itself into
his being in the language he learns and the social atmosphere he
breathes, so that the content of his being implies in its every fibre
relations of community. He is what he is by including in his essence the
relations of the social State.... And regarding the State as a system,
in which many spheres (the family, for instance) are subordinated to one
sphere, and all the particular actions of individuals are subordinated
to their various spheres, we may call it a moral organism, a systematic
whole informed by a common purpose or function. As such it has an outer
side—a body of institutions; it has an inner side—a soul or spirit which
sustains that body. And since it is a moral organism—since, that is to
say, its parts are themselves conscious moral agents—that spirit resides
in those parts and lives in their consciousness. In such an organism—and
this is where it differs from an animal organism, and why we have to use
the word moral—the parts are conscious: they know themselves in their
position as parts of the whole, and they therefore know the whole of
which they are parts. So far as they have such knowledge, and a will
based upon it, so far is the moral organism self-conscious and
self-willing.... Thus, on the one hand, we must recognise that the State
lives; that there is a nation’s soul, self-conscious in its citizens;
and that to each citizen this living soul assigns his field of
accomplishment[12].” On a later page of the same book we read—“All the
institutions of a country, so far as they are effective, are not only
products of thought and creations of mind: they _are_ thought, and they
_are_ mind. Otherwise we have a building without a tenant, and a body
without a mind. An Oxford college is not a group of buildings, though
common speech gives that name to such a group: it is a group of men. But
it is not a group of men in the sense of a group of bodies in
propinquity: it is a group of men in the sense of a group of minds. That
group of minds, in virtue of the common substance of an uniting idea,
is itself a group-mind. There is no group-mind existing apart from the
minds of the members of the group; the group-mind only exists in the
minds of its members. But nevertheless it exists. There is a college
mind, just as there is a Trade Union mind, or even a ‘public mind’ of
the whole community; and we are all conscious of such a mind as
something that exists in and along with the separate minds of the
members, and over and above any sum of those minds created by mere
addition[13].”

The political philosophers of the idealist school have not stood alone
in recognising the reality of the group mind. Some of the lawyers,
notably Maitland, have arrived at a very similar doctrine; and I cannot
better summarise their conclusions than Barker has done in the following
passage in the book from which I have already cited so freely. “The new
doctrine,” he writes, “runs somewhat as follows. No permanent group,
permanently organised for a durable object, can be regarded as a mere
sum of persons, whose union, to have any rights or duties, must receive
a legal confirmation. Permanent groups are themselves persons,
group-persons, with a group-will of their own and a permanent character
of their own; and they have become group-persons of themselves, without
any creative act of the State. In a word, group-persons are real
persons; and just because they are so, and possess such attributes of
persons as will and character, they cannot have been made by the
State[14].”

I am not alone, then, in postulating the reality of the group mind. And
I am glad to be able to cite evidence of this, because I know well that
very many readers may at first find themselves repelled by this notion
of a group mind, and that some of them will incline to regard it as the
fantastic fad of an academic crank.

I would say at once that the crucial point of difference between my own
view of the group mind and that of the German ‘idealist’ school (at
least in its more extreme representatives) is that I repudiate,
provisionally at least, as an unverifiable hypothesis the conception of
a collective or super-individual consciousness, somehow comprising the
consciousness of the individuals composing the group. I have examined
this conception in the following chapter and have stated my grounds for
rejecting it. The difference of practical conclusions arising from this
difference of theory must obviously be very great.

Several books dealing with collective psychology have been published in
recent years. Of these perhaps the most notable are G. le Bon’s
_Psychology of the Crowd_, his _Evolution psychologique des peuples_;
Sighele’s _La foule criminelle_; the _Psychologie collective_ of Dr A.
A. Marie; and Alfred Fouillée’s _La Science sociale contemporaine_. It
is noteworthy that, with the exception of the last, all these books deal
only with crowds or groups of low organisation; and their authors, like
almost all others who have touched on this subject, are concerned
chiefly to point out how participation in the group life degrades the
individual, how the group feels and thinks and acts on a much lower
plane than the average plane of the individuals who compose it.

On the other hand, many writers have insisted on the fact that it is
only by participation in the life of society that any man can realise
his higher potentialities; that society has ideals and aims and
traditions loftier than any principles of conduct the individual can
form for himself unaided; and that only by the further evolution of
organised society can mankind be raised to higher levels; just as in the
past it has been only through the development of organised society that
the life of man has ceased to deserve the epithets ‘nasty, brutish and
short’ which Hobbes applied to it.

We seem then to stand before a paradox. Participation in group life
degrades the individual, assimilating his mental processes to those of
the crowd, whose brutality, inconstancy, and unreasoning impulsiveness
have been the theme of many writers; yet only by participation in group
life does man become fully man, only so does he rise above the level of
the savage.

The resolution of this paradox is the essential theme of this book. It
examines and fully recognises the mental and moral defects of the crowd
and its degrading effects upon all those who are caught up in it and
carried away by the contagion of its reckless spirit. It then goes on to
show how organisation of the group may, and generally does in large
measure, counteract these degrading tendencies; and how the better kinds
of organisation render group life the great ennobling influence by aid
of which alone man rises a little above the animals and may even aspire
to fellowship with the angels.



PART I

GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF COLLECTIVE PSYCHOLOGY



CHAPTER II

THE MENTAL LIFE OF THE CROWD


It is a notorious fact that, when a number of men think and feel and act
together, the mental operations and the actions of each member of the
group are apt to be very different from those he would achieve if he
faced the situation as an isolated individual. Hence, though we may know
each member of a group so intimately that we can, with some confidence,
foretell his actions under given circumstances, we cannot foretell the
behaviour of the group from our knowledge of the individuals alone. If
we would understand and be able to predict the behaviour of the group,
we must study the way in which the mental processes of its members are
modified in virtue of their membership. That is to say, we must study
the interactions between the members of the group and also those between
the group as a whole and each member. We must examine also the forms of
group organisation and their influence upon the life of the group.

Groups differ greatly from one another in respect of the kind and degree
of organisation they possess. In the simplest case the group has no
organisation. In some cases the relations of the constituent individuals
to one another and to the whole group are not in any way determined or
fixed by previous events; such a group constitutes merely a mob. In
other groups the individuals have certain determinate relations to one
another which have arisen in one or more of three ways:

(1) Certain relations may have been established between the individuals,
before they came together to form a group; for example, a parish council
or a political meeting may be formed by persons belonging to various
definitely recognised classes, and their previously recognised relations
will continue to play a part in determining the collective
deliberations and actions of the group; they will constitute an
incipient organisation.

(2) If any group enjoys continuity of existence, certain more or less
constant relations, of subordination, deference, leadership and so
forth, will inevitably become established between the individuals of
which it is composed; and, of course, such relations will usually be
deliberately established and maintained by any group that is united by a
common purpose, in order that its efficiency may be promoted.

(3) The group may have a continued existence and a more or less
elaborate and definite organisation independently of the individuals of
which it is composed; in such a case the individuals may change while
the formal organisation of the group persists; each person who enters it
being received into some more or less well-defined and generally
recognised position within the group, which formal position determines
in great measure the nature of his relations to other members of the
group and to the group as a whole.

We can hardly imagine any concourse of human beings, however fortuitous
it may be, utterly devoid of the rudiments of organisation of one or
other of these three kinds; nevertheless, in many a fortuitous concourse
the influence of such rudimentary organisation is so slight as to be
negligible. Such a group is an unorganised crowd or mob. The unorganised
crowd presents many of the fundamental phenomena of collective
psychology in relative simplicity; whereas the higher the degree of
organisation of a group, the more complicated is its psychology. We
shall, therefore, study first the mental peculiarities of the
unorganised crowd, and shall then go on to consider the modifications
resulting from a simple and definite type of organisation.

Not every mass of human beings gathered together in one place within
sight and sound of one another constitutes a crowd in the psychological
sense of the word. There is a dense gathering of several hundred
individuals at the Mansion House Crossing at noon of every week-day; but
ordinarily each of them is bent upon his own task, pursues his own ends,
paying little or no regard to those about him. But let a fire-engine
come galloping through the throng of traffic, or the Lord Mayor’s state
coach arrive, and instantly the concourse assumes in some degree the
character of a psychological crowd. All eyes are turned upon the
fire-engine or coach; the attention of all is directed to the same
object; all experience in some degree the same emotion, and the state of
mind of each person is in some degree affected by the mental processes
of all those about him. Those are the fundamental conditions of
collective mental life. In its more developed forms, an awareness of the
crowd or group as such in the mind of each member plays an important
part; but this is not an essential condition of its simpler
manifestations. The essential conditions of collective mental action
are, then, a common object of mental activity, a common mode of feeling
in regard to it, and some degree of reciprocal influence between the
members of the group. It follows that not every aggregation of
individuals is capable of becoming a psychological crowd and of enjoying
a collective life. For the individuals must be capable of being
interested in the same objects and of being affected in a similar way by
them; there must be a certain degree of similarity of mental
constitution among the individuals, a certain mental homogeneity of the
group. Let a man stand on a tub in the midst of a gathering of a hundred
Englishmen and proceed to denounce and abuse England; those individuals
at once become a crowd. Whereas, if the hundred men were of as many
races and nations, their attention would hardly be attracted by the
orator; for they would have no common interest in the topic of his
discourse. Or let the man on the tub denounce the establishment of the
Church of England, and the hundred Englishmen do not become a crowd;
for, although all may be interested and attentive, the words of the
orator evoke in them very diverse feelings and emotions, the sentiments
they entertain for the Church of England being diverse in character.

There must, then, be some degree of similarity of mental constitution,
of interest and sentiment, among the persons who form a crowd, a certain
degree of mental homogeneity of the group. And the higher the degree of
this mental homogeneity of any gathering of men, the more readily do
they form a psychological crowd and the more striking and intense are
the manifestations of collective life. All gatherings of men that are
not purely fortuitous are apt to have a considerable degree of mental
homogeneity; thus the members of a political meeting are drawn together
by common political opinions and sentiments; the audience in a concert
room shares a common love of music or a common admiration for the
composer, conductor, or great executant; and a still higher degree of
homogeneity prevails when a number of persons of the same religious
persuasion are gathered together at a great revival meeting. Consider
how under such circumstances a very ordinary joke or point made by a
political orator provokes a huge delight; how, at a concert, the
admiration of the applauding audience swells to a pitch of frantic
enthusiasm; how, at the skilfully conducted and successful revival
meeting, the fervour of emotion is apt to rise, until it exceeds all
normal modes of expression and men and women give way to loud weeping or
even hysterical convulsions.

Such exaltation or intensification of emotion is the most striking
result of the formation of a crowd, and is one of the principal sources
of the attractiveness of the crowd. By participation in the mental life
of a crowd, one’s emotions are stirred to a pitch that they seldom or
never attain under other conditions. This is for most men an intensely
pleasurable experience; they are, as they say, carried out of
themselves, they feel themselves caught up in a great wave of emotion,
and cease to be aware of their individuality and all its limitations;
that isolation of the individual, which oppresses every one of us,
though it may not be explicitly formulated in his consciousness, is for
the time being abolished. The repeated enjoyment of effects of this kind
tends to generate a craving for them, and also a facility in the spread
and intensification of emotion in this way; this is probably the
principal cause of the greater excitability of urban populations as
compared with dwellers in the country, and of the well-known violence
and fickleness of the mobs of great cities.

There is one kind of object in the presence of which no man remains
indifferent and which evokes in almost all men the same emotion, namely
impending danger; hence the sudden appearance of imminent danger may
instantaneously convert any concourse of people into a crowd and produce
the characteristic and terrible phenomena of a panic. In each man the
instinct of fear is intensely excited; he experiences that horrible
emotion in full force and is irresistibly impelled to save himself by
flight. The terrible driving power of this impulse, excited to its
highest pitch under the favouring conditions, suppresses all other
impulses and tendencies, all habits of self-restraint, of courtesy and
consideration for others; and we see men, whom we might have supposed
incapable of cruel or cowardly behaviour, trampling upon women and
children, in their wild efforts to escape from the burning theatre, the
sinking ship, or other place of danger.

The panic is the crudest and simplest example of collective mental life.
Groups of gregarious animals are liable to panic; and the panic of a
crowd of human beings seems to be generated by the same simple
instinctive reactions as the panic of animals. The essence of the panic
is the collective intensification of the instinctive excitement, with
its emotion of fear and its impulse to night. The principle of primitive
sympathy[15] seems to afford a full and adequate explanation of such
collective intensification of instinctive excitement. The principle is
that, in man and in the gregarious animals generally, each instinct,
with its characteristic primary emotion and specific impulse, is capable
of being excited in one individual by the expressions of the same
emotion in another, in virtue of a special congenital adaptation of the
instinct on its Cognitive or perceptual side. In the crowd, then, the
expressions of fear of each individual are perceived by his neighbours;
and this perception intensifies the fear directly excited in them by the
threatening danger. Each man perceives on every hand the symptoms of
fear, the blanched distorted faces, the dilated pupils, the high-pitched
trembling voices, and the screams of terror of his fellows; and with
each such perception his own impulse and his own emotion rise to a
higher pitch of intensity, and their expressions become correspondingly
accentuated and more difficult to control. So the expressions of each
member of the crowd work upon all other members within sight and hearing
of him to intensify their excitement; and the accentuated expressions of
the emotion, so intensified, react upon him to raise his own excitement
to a still higher pitch; until in all individuals the instinct is
excited in the highest possible degree.

This principle of direct induction of emotion by way of the primitive
sympathetic response enables us to understand the fact that a concourse
of people (or animals) may be quickly turned into a panic-stricken crowd
by some threatening object which is perceptible by only a few of the
individuals present. A few persons near the stage of a theatre see
flames dart out among the wings; then, though the flames may be
invisible to the rest of the house, the expressions of the startled few
induce fear in their neighbours, and the excitement sweeps over the
whole concourse like fire blown across the prairie.

The same principle enables us to understand how a few fearless
individuals may arrest the spread of a panic. If they experience no
fear, or can completely arrest its expressions, and can in any way make
themselves prominent, can draw and hold the attention of their fellows
to themselves, then these others, instead of perceiving on every hand
only the expressions of fear, perceive these few calm and resolute
individuals; the process of reciprocal intensification of the excitement
is checked and, if the danger is not too imminent and obvious, the panic
may die away, leaving men ashamed and astonished at the intensity of
their emotion and the violent irrational character of their behaviour.

Other of the cruder primary emotions may spread through a crowd in very
similar fashion, though the process is rarely so rapid and intense as in
the case of fear[16]. And in every case the principal cause of the
intensification of the emotion is the reciprocal action between the
members of the crowd, according to the principle of sympathetic
induction of emotion in one individual by its expressions in others.

In panic, the dominance of the one emotion and its impulse is so
complete as to allow no scope for any of the subtler modes of collective
mental operation. But in other cases other conditions co-operate to
determine the character of the emotional response of the crowd. Of these
the most important are the awareness of the crowd as a whole in the mind
of each member of it and his consciousness of his membership in the
whole. When a common emotion pervades the crowd, each member becomes
more or less distinctly aware of the fact; and this gives him a sense of
sharing in a mighty and irresistible power which renders him reckless of
consequences and encourages him to give himself up to the prevailing
emotion without restraint. Thus, in the case of an audience swept by an
emotion of admiration for a brilliant singer, the thunder of applause,
which shows each individual that his emotion is shared by all the rest,
intensifies his own emotion, not only by way of sympathetic induction,
but also because it frees him from that restraint of emotion which is
habitual with most of us in the presence of any critical or adversely
disposed spectators, and which the mere thought of such spectators tends
to maintain and strengthen. Again, the oratory of a demagogue, if
addressed to a large crowd, will raise angry emotion to a pitch of
intensity far higher than any it will attain if he is heard by a few
persons only; and this is due not only to accentuation of the emotion by
sympathetic induction, but also to the fact that, as the symptoms of the
emotion begin to be manifested on all sides, each man becomes aware that
it pervades the crowd, that the crowd as a whole is swayed by the same
emotion and the same impulse as he himself feels, that none remains to
criticise the violence of his expressions. To which it must be added
that the consciousness of the harmony of one’s feelings with those of a
mass of one’s fellows, and the consequent sense of freedom from all
restraint, are highly pleasurable to most men; they find a pleasure in
letting themselves go, in being swept away in the torrent of collective
emotion. This is one of the secrets of the fascination which draws many
thousands of spectators to a football match, and brings together the
multitudes of base-ball ‘fans’ bubbling over with eager anticipation of
an emotional orgy.

The fact that the emotions of crowds are apt to be very violent has long
been recognised, and the popular mind, in seeking to account for it, has
commonly postulated very special and even supernatural causes. The negro
author of a most interesting book[17] has given the following
description of the religious frenzy of a crowd of Christian negroes: “An
air of intense excitement possessed the mass of black folk. A suppressed
terror hung in the air and seemed to seize us,—a pythian madness, a
demoniac possession, that lent terrible reality to song and word. The
massive form of the preacher swayed and quivered as the words crowded to
his lips. The people moaned and fluttered and then a gaunt brown woman
suddenly leaped into the air and shrieked like a lost soul, while round
about came wail and groan and outcry, a scene of human passion such as I
had never even imagined.” The author goes on to say that this frenzy is
attributed by the black folk to the direct influence of the Spirit of
the Lord, making mad the worshippers with supernatural joy, and that
this belief is one of the leading features of their religion. Similar
practices, depending upon the tendency of collective emotion to rise to
an extreme intensity, have been common to the peoples of many lands in
all ages; and similar supernatural explanations have been commonly
devised and accepted. I need only remind the reader of the Dionysiac
orgies of ancient Greece.

The facts are so striking that for the popular mind they remain
unaccountable, and not to be mentioned without some vague reference to
magnetism, electricity, hypnotism, or some mysterious contagion; and
even modern scientific writers have been led to adopt somewhat
extravagant hypotheses to account for them. Thus Dr Le Bon[18] speaks of
“the magnetic influence given out by the crowd” and says that, owing to
this influence, “or from some other cause of which we are ignorant, an
individual immerged for some length of time in a crowd in action soon
finds himself in a special state, which much resembles the state of
fascination in which the hypnotised individual finds himself in the
hands of the hypnotiser.” He goes on to say that in the hypnotised
subject the conscious personality disappears and that his actions are
the outcome of the unconscious activities of the spinal cord. Now,
crowds undoubtedly display great suggestibility, but great
suggestibility does not necessarily imply hypnosis; and there is no
ground for supposing that the members of a crowd are thrown into any
such condition, save possibly in very rare instances.

There are however two hypotheses, sometimes invoked for the explanation
of the peculiarities of collective mental life, which demand serious
consideration and which we may with advantage consider at this point.

One is the hypothesis of telepathy. A considerable amount of respectable
evidence has been brought forward in recent years to prove that one mind
may directly influence another by some obscure mode of action that does
not involve the known organs of expression and of perception; and much
of this evidence seems to show that one mind may directly induce in
another a state of consciousness similar to its own. If, then, such
direct interaction between two minds can take place in an easily
appreciable degree in certain instances, it would seem not improbable
that a similar direct interaction, producing a lesser, and therefore
less easily appreciable, degree of assimilation of the states of
consciousness of the minds concerned, may be constantly and normally at
work. If this were the case, such telepathic interaction might well play
a very important part in collective mental life, and, where a large
number of persons is congregated, it might tend to produce that
intensification of emotion which is so characteristic of crowds. In
fact, if direct telepathic communication of emotion in however slight a
degree is possible and normal, and especially if the influence is one
that diminishes with distance, it may be expected to produce its most
striking results among the members of a crowd; for the emotion of each
member might be expected to be intensified by the telepathic influence
radiating from every other member. Some slight presumption in favour of
such a mode of explanation is afforded by the fact that the popular use
of the word contagion in the present connexion seems to imply, however
vaguely, some such direct communication of emotion. But telepathic
communication has not hitherto been indisputably established; and the
observations that afford so strong a presumption in its favour indicate
that, if and in so far as it occurs, it does so sporadically and only
between individuals specially attuned to one another or in some abnormal
mental state that renders them specially sensitive to the influence[19].
And, while the acceptance of the principle of sympathetic induction of
an emotion, as an instinctive perceptual response to the expressions of
that emotion, renders unnecessary any further principle of explanation,
the consideration of the conditions of the spread of emotion through
crowds affords evidence that this mode of interaction of the individuals
is all-important and that telepathic communication, if it occurs, is of
secondary importance. For the spreading and the great intensification of
emotion seem to depend upon its being given expressions that are
perceptible by the senses. So long as its expressions are suppressed,
the emotion of an assembly does not become excessive. It is only by
eliciting and encouraging the expressions of emotions that the
revivalist, the political orator, or the comic man on the music-hall
stage, achieves his successes. That the expressions of an emotion are
far more effective in this way than the emotion itself is recognised by
the practice of the _claqueurs_. When an audience has once been induced
to give expression to a common emotion, its members are, as it were, set
in tune with one another; each man is aware that he is in harmony with
all the rest as regards his feelings and emotions, and, even in the
periods during which all expressions are suppressed by the audience,
this awareness serves to sustain the mood and to prepare for fresh
outbursts. The mere silence of an audience, the absence of coughs,
shufflings, and uneasy movements, suffices to make each member aware
that all his fellows are attentive and are responding with the
appropriate emotion; but it is not until the applause, the indignation,
or the laughter, breaks out in free expression that the emotion reaches
its highest pitch. And a skilful orator or entertainer, recognising
these facts, takes care to afford frequent opportunities for the
collective displays of emotion.

We must recognise, then, that, even if telepathic communication be
proved to be possible in certain cases, there is not sufficient evidence
of its operation in the spread of emotion through crowds, and that the
facts are sufficiently explained by another principle of general and
indisputable validity, the principle of primitive sympathy.

The second hypothesis to be considered in this connexion is that of the
‘collective consciousness.’ The conception of a collective consciousness
has been reached by a large number of authors along several lines of
observation and reasoning and is seriously defended at the present time,
more especially by several French and German writers. They maintain
that, in some sense and manner, the consciousnesses of individuals are
not wholly shut off from one another, but may co-operate in the genesis
of, or share in the being of, a more comprehensive consciousness that
exists beside and in addition to them. The conception varies according
to the route by which it is reached and the use that is made of it; but
in all its varieties the conception remains extremely obscure; no one
has succeeded in making clear how the relation of the individual
consciousness to the collective consciousness is to be conceived. In the
writings of many metaphysicians, of whom Hegel is the most prominent,
‘the Absolute’ seems to imply such a collective consciousness, an
all-inclusive world-consciousness of which the individual consciousness
of each man is somehow but a constituent element or fragmentary
manifestation. But it would be unprofitable to attempt any discussion of
the conception. We are concerned only with the empirical conception of a
collective consciousness based on observation and induction.

Such a conception finds its strongest support in the analogy afforded by
a widely current view of the nature and conditions of the psychical
individuality of men and animals; the view, namely, that the individual
consciousness of any man or animal is the collective consciousness of
the cells of which his body, or his nervous system, is composed. We
know that the nervous system is made up of cells each of which is a
vital unit, capable of living, of achieving its essential vital
processes, independently of other cells; and we see free living cells
that in many respects are comparable with these and to which we seem
compelled, according to the principle of continuity, to attribute some
germ of psychical life however rudimentary. What is known of the
phylogenetic and ontogenetic development of the multicellular animal
seems to justify us in regarding it as essentially an aggregate of such
independent vital units, which, being formed by repeated fission from a
single cell, adhere together and undergo differentiation and
specialisation of functions. If then the parent cell, the germ cell, has
a rudimentary psychical life, it is difficult to deny it altogether to
the cells formed from it by fission; and it is argued that all these
cells continue to enjoy a psychical life and that the consciousness of
the individual man or animal is the collective consciousness of some or
all of these cells. Now we know that the consciousness of any one of the
higher animals has for its physical correlate at any moment processes
going on simultaneously in many different parts and elements of the
brain. It is argued, then, that we must suppose each cell of the brain
to enjoy, whenever it is active, its own psychical life, and at the same
time to contribute something towards the unitary ‘collective
consciousness’ of the whole organism, which thus exists beside, but not
independently of, these rudimentary consciousnesses of the cells. If the
view be accepted, it affords a close analogy with the supposed
‘collective consciousness’ of a group of men or a society.

This conception of the collective nature of the consciousness of complex
organisms finds strong support in two classes of facts. First, it finds
support in the fact that, if individuals of many of the animal species
of an intermediate grade of complexity, such as some of the worms and
some of the radiate animals, be cut into two or more parts, each part
may continue to live and may become a complete organism by
reconstitution of the lost parts. Since, then, we can hardly deny some
integrated psychical life to such organisms, some rudimentary
consciousness, we seem compelled to believe that this consciousness may
be divided into two or more consciousnesses, each of them being
associated with the vital activities of one of the parts into which the
organism is divided by the knife. Division of the organism into two
parts is also the normal mode of reproduction in the animal world. Even
the coming into existence of every human being seems to be bound up with
the separation of a cell from the parent organism; and his existence as
a separate psychical individual seems to result from the same process of
physical division. And if one cell, when thus separated from the parent
organism, can thus prove its possession of a psychical life by
developing into a fully conscious organism, it is difficult to deny that
all other cells have also their own psychical lives, even though they
may be incapable of making it manifest to us by growing up into complex
organisms when separated.

The second class of facts that seem to justify this conception of the
consciousness of complex organisms are facts which have been studied and
discussed widely in recent years under the head of mental dissociation
or disintegration of personalities. Such disintegration seems to occur
spontaneously as the essential feature of severe hysteria, and to be
producible artificially and temporarily in some subjects, when they are
thrown into deep hypnosis. In certain of these cases the behaviour of
the human being seems to imply that it is the expression of two separate
psychical individuals, formed by the splitting of the stream of
consciousness and of mental activity of the individual into two streams.
The two streams may be of co-ordinate complexity; but more frequently
one of them seems to be a mere trickle diverted from the main stream of
personal consciousness. Since it is, from the nature of the case, always
impossible to obtain any direct and certain proof that any behaviour
other than one’s own is the expression of conscious mental processes, it
is not possible to prove that such division or disintegration of the
personal consciousness actually takes place. But the facts appear to
many of the psychologists who have studied them most carefully[20] to
demand this interpretation; and this psychical disintegration seems to
be accompanied by a functional dissociation of the nervous system into
two or more systems each of which functions independently of the
others,—that is to say, a division of the nervous system comparable with
the division of the nervous system of the worm by the stroke of the
knife which seems to split the psychical individual into two.

The facts of both these orders would appear, then, to indicate that the
physical organisation of the cells of a complex organism is accompanied
by an organisation of their psychical lives to form a ‘collective
consciousness,’ which in the human being becomes a personal
self-consciousness; and they would seem to show that the unity of
personal consciousness has for its main condition the functional
continuity of the protoplasm of the cells of the nervous system.

Even before the facts of disintegration of personalities were known,
several authors, notably von Hartmann[21] and G. T. Fechner[22], did not
hesitate to make this last assumption; and to assert that, if the brain
of a man could be divided by a knife into two parts each of which
continued to function, his consciousness would thus be divided into two
consciousnesses; and conversely, that, if a functional bridge of nervous
matter could be established between the brains of two men, their
consciousnesses would fuse to a single consciousness. The discovery of
these facts has greatly strengthened the case for this view; and it has
been accepted by so sound a psychologist and sober a philosopher as
Fouillée[23].

It may be claimed that the consideration of the nature and behaviour of
animal societies points to a similar conclusion, and supplements in an
important manner the argument founded on the divisibility of individual
organisms. Such a line of reasoning has been most thoroughly pursued by
Espinas in his very interesting book on animal societies[24]. He begins
by considering the lower polycellular forms of animal life. Among them,
especially among the hydrozoa or polypes, we find compound or colonial
animals; such an animal is a single living mass of which all the parts
are in substantial and vital connexion with one another, but is yet made
up of a number of parts each of which is morphologically a complete or
almost complete creature; and these parts, though specialised for the
performance of certain functions subserving the economy of the whole
animal or coherent group of animals, are yet capable, if separated from
the mass (as they sometimes are by a natural process), of continuing to
live, of growing, and of multiplying. There are found among such
creatures very various degrees of specialisation of parts and of
interdependence of parts; and in those cases in which the specialisation
and interdependence of parts is great, the whole compound animal
exhibits in its reactions so high a degree of integration that we seem
justified in supposing that a common or ‘collective consciousness’ is
the psychical correlate of these integrated actions of the separable
parts. Why then, it is asked, should this ‘collective consciousness’
cease to be, when the substantial continuity of the parts is
interrupted?

Espinas then goes on to describe animal societies of many types, and
shows how, as we follow up the evolutionary scale, association and
intimate interdependence and co-operation of their members tend to
replace more and more completely the individualistic antagonism and
unmitigated competition of the lowest free-living organisms. He
considers first the type of animal society which is essentially a
family, a society of individuals all of which are derived from the same
parent by fission or by budding. He argues that each such society of
blood-relatives is a harmonious whole only because it enjoys a
‘collective consciousness’ over and above the consciousnesses of its
constituent members; that, for example, a swarm of bees, which exhibits
so great a uniformity of feeling and action and of which all the members
come from the body of one parent, is in reality the material basis of a
‘collective consciousness,’ which presides over and is expressed by
their collective actions; that the ants of one household have such a
collective consciousness, that they “are, in truth, a single thought in
action, like the various cellules and fibres of the brain of a mammal.”
For, as he maintains, “the consciousness of animals is not an absolute,
indivisible thing. It is on the contrary a reality capable of being
divided and diffused ... thought in general and the impulses illuminated
by it, are, like the forces of nature, susceptible of diffusion, of
transmission, of being shared, and can like these lie dormant where they
are thinly diffused, or become vivid and intensified by concentration.
The beings that have these attributes are no doubt monads; but these
monads are open to and communicate with one another.”

Espinas extends the view to other animal societies of which the members
are not all derived from one parent, including human societies; and
concludes that, except in the case of the Infusoria at the bottom of the
scale and of the highly organised societies at the top of it, every
individual consciousness is a part of a superior more comprehensive
consciousness of an individual of a higher order. He illustrates at
length the fact with the consideration and explanation of which this
chapter is concerned, the fact namely that, in all social groups,
emotions and impulses are communicated and intensified from one
individual to another; and he asks—“If the essential elements of
consciousness add themselves together and accumulate from one
consciousness to another, how should the consciousness itself of the
whole not be participated in by each?” He argues that to be real is not
to be known to some other consciousness, but is to exist for oneself, to
be conscious of oneself; that, in this sense, the ‘collective
consciousness’ of a society is the most real of all things; that every
society is therefore a living individual; and that, if we deny
self-conscious individuality to a society, we must deny it equally to
the mass of cells that make up an animal body; that, in short, we can
find unity and individuality nowhere.

This doctrine of the ‘collective consciousness’ of societies may seem
bizarre to those to whom it is altogether novel; but it is one that
cannot be lightly put aside; it demands serious consideration from any
one who seeks the general principles of Collective Psychology. We have
no certain knowledge from which its impossibility can be deduced; and
the new light thrown upon individuality by modern studies in
psycho-pathology shows us that the indivisibility and strictly bounded
unity of the individual human soul is a postulate that we must not
continue to accept without critical examination. Nor is the conception
one that figures only in the writings of philosophers and therefore to
be regarded with contemptuous indulgence by men of affairs as but one of
the strange harmless foibles of such persons. It has a certain vogue in
more popular writings; thus Renan wrote—“It has been remarked that in
face of a peril a nation or a city shows, like a living creature, a
divination of the common danger, a secret sentiment of its own being and
the need of its conservation. Such is the obscure impulsion which
provokes from time to time the displacement of a whole people or the
emigration of masses, the crusades, the religious, political, or social
revolutions.” Phrases such as the soul of a people, the genius of a
people, have long been current, and in almost every newspaper one may
find important events and tendencies ascribed to the instinct of a
people. It is probable that these phrases are written in many instances
without any explicit intention to imply a ‘collective national
consciousness,’ but merely as well-sounding words that cloak our
ignorance and give a vague appearance of understanding. Nevertheless,
from its application to the life of nations, the doctrine of a
collective consciousness mainly derives its importance. It is seriously
used by a number of vigorous contemporary writers, of whom Schaeffle[25]
is perhaps the most notable, to carry to its extreme the doctrine of
Comte and Spencer that Society is an organism. Spencer specifically
refused to complete his analogy between society and an animal organism
by the acceptance of the hypothesis of a collective consciousness; and
he insisted strongly on the importance, for legislation and social
effort of every kind, of holding fast to the consciousness of
individual men as the final court of appeal, by reference to which the
value of every institution and every form of social activity must be
judged, the importance of regarding the welfare and happiness of
individual men as the supreme end, in relation to which the welfare of
the State is but a means. But those who, like Schaeffle, complete the
analogy by acceptance of this hypothesis, regard a nation as an organism
in the fullest sense of the word, as an organism that has its own
pleasure and pain and its own conscious ends and purposes and strivings;
as in fact a great individual which is conscious and may be more or less
perfectly self-conscious, conscious of itself, its past, its future, its
purposes, its joys and its sorrows. And they do not scruple to draw the
logical conclusion that the welfare of the individual should be
completely subjected to that of the State; just as the welfare of an
organ or cell of the human body is rightly held to be of infinitesimal
value in comparison with that of the whole individual and to derive its
importance only from its share in the constitution of the whole. This
conception of the ‘collective consciousness’ has thus been used as one
of the supports of ‘Prussianism’ and has played its part in bringing
about the Great War with all its immense mass of individual anguish.

We must, then, examine the arguments upon which the doctrine is based,
and ask—Do they suffice to render it probable, or to compel our
acceptance of it, and to justify the complete subjection of the
individual to the State?

We have seen that a strong case is made out for the view that the
consciousness of a complex organism is the ‘collective consciousness’ of
all its cells, or of the cells of its nervous system; and it must be
admitted that, if this view could be definitely established, it would go
far to justify the doctrine of the collective consciousness of
societies. Yet the view is by no means established; there are great
difficulties in the way of its acceptance. There is the difficulty which
meets a doctrine of ‘collective consciousness’ in all its forms from
that of Haeckel to that of Hegel,—the difficulty that the consciousness
of the units is used twice over, once as the individual consciousness,
once as an element entering into the collective consciousness; and no
one has been able to suggest how this difficulty can be surmounted. It
has been argued also, most forcibly perhaps by Lotze[26], that what we
know of the structure and functions of the brain compels us to adopt a
very different interpretation of the facts. It is said that, since we
cannot find any evidence of a unitary brain-process that might be
regarded as the immediate physical correlate of the unitary stream of
consciousness of the individual, but find rather that the physical
correlate of the individual’s consciousness at any moment is a number of
discrete processes taking place simultaneously in anatomical elements
widely scattered in different parts of the brain, we are compelled to
assume that each of these acts upon some unitary substance, some
immaterial entity (which may be called the soul) producing a partial
affection of its state. According to this view, then, the consciousness
of any moment is the unitary resultant of all these influences
simultaneously exerted on the soul, the unitary reaction of the soul
upon these many influences[27].

But, even if we could accept the view that the consciousness of the
complex organism is the ‘collective consciousness’ of its cells, the
analogy between an organism and a society, which constitutes the
argument for the ‘collective consciousness’ of a society, would remain
defective in one very important respect. If we accept that view, we must
believe that the essential condition of the fusion of the
consciousnesses of the cells is their spatial continuity, no matter how
utterly unintelligible this condition may seem; for the apparent
disruption of consciousness on the solution of material continuity
between the cells is the principal ground on which this view is founded.
Now, no such continuity of substance exists between the members of any
human group or society, and its absence constitutes a fatal flaw in the
analogical argument.

If we pass by these serious difficulties, others arise as soon as we
inquire what kinds of human groups have such ‘collective consciousness.’
Does the simple fortuitously gathered crowd possess it? Or is it
confined to highly organised groups such as the leading modern nations?
If every psychological crowd possesses it and owes its peculiarities of
behaviour to it, does it come into being at the moment the individuals
have their attention attracted to a common object and begin to be
stirred by a common emotion? And does it cease to be as soon as the
crowd is resolved into its elements? Or, if it is confined to nations or
other highly organised groups, at what stage of their development does
it come into being, and what are the limits of the groups of which it is
the ‘collective consciousness’? Do the Poles share in the ‘collective
consciousness’ of the German nation, or the Bavarians in that of
Prussia? Or do the Irish or the Welsh contribute their share to that of
the English nation?

Coming now to close quarters with the doctrine, we may ask those who,
like Schaeffle and Espinas, regard the ‘collective consciousness’ as a
bond which unites the members of a society and makes of them one living
individual,—Is this ‘collective consciousness’ merely epiphenomenal in
character? Or are we to regard it as reacting upon the consciousnesses
or minds of the individuals of the group, and, through such reaction,
playing a part in determining the behaviour of the group, or rather of
the individuals of which the group is composed? For the actions of the
group are merely the sum of the actions of its individuals. If the
former alternative be adopted, then we may confidently say that the
existence of a ‘collective consciousness’ must from the nature of the
case remain a mere speculation, incapable of verification; and that, if
it does exist, since it cannot make any difference, cannot in any way
affect human life and conduct, it is for us unreal, no matter how real
it may be for itself, as Espinas maintains; and we certainly are not
called upon to have any regard for it or its happiness, nor can we
invoke its aid in attempting to explain the course of history and the
phenomena of social life. If, on the other hand, the ‘collective
consciousness’ of groups and societies and peoples reacts upon
individual minds and so plays a part in shaping the conduct of men and
societies, then the conception is a hypothesis which can only be
justified by showing that it affords explanations of social phenomena
which in its absence remain inexplicable. If it were found that social
aggregates of any kind really do exhibit, as has often been maintained,
great mass-movements, emigrations, religious or political uprisings, and
so forth, for which no adequate explanations can be found in the mental
processes of individuals and the mental interactions of individuals by
the ordinary means of expression and perception, a resort to some such
hypothesis would be permissible; but it is an offence against the
principles of scientific method to invoke its aid, before we have
exhausted the possibilities of explanation offered by well-known
existents and forces. That certainly has not yet been done, and the
upholders of the doctrine have hardly made any attempt to justify it in
this the only possible manner in which it could be justified. The only
evidence of this sort adduced by Espinas is the rapid spread of a common
emotion and impulse throughout the members of animal and human groups;
and of such phenomenon we have already found a sufficient explanation in
those special adaptations of the instincts of all gregarious creatures
which are unmistakably implied by the way in which the expression of an
emotion directly evokes a display of the same emotion in any onlooking
member of the species.

We may, then, set aside the conception of a ‘collective consciousness’
as a hypothesis to be held in reserve until the study of group life
reveal phenomena that cannot be explained without its aid. For it may be
confidently asserted that up to the present time no such evidence of a
‘collective consciousness’ has been brought forward, and that there is
no possibility of any such evidence being obtained before the principles
of social psychology have been applied far more thoroughly than has yet
been done to the explanation of the course of history. In adopting a so
far unsympathetic attitude towards this doctrine, we ought to admit
that, if there be any truth in it, the ‘collective consciousness’ of
even the most highly organised society may be still in a rudimentary
stage, and that it may continue to gain in effectiveness and
organisation with the further evolution of the society in question.

After this digression we may return to the consideration of the
emotional characteristics of simple crowds. We have to notice not only
that the emotions of crowds are apt to be excessively strong, but also
that certain types of emotion are more apt than others to spread through
a crowd, namely the coarser simpler emotions and those which do not
imply the existence of developed and refined sentiments. For many of the
individuals of most crowds will be incapable of the more subtle complex
emotions and will be devoid of the more refined sentiments; while such
sentiments as the individuals possess will be in the main more diverse
in proportion to their refinement and special character; hence the
chances of any crowd being homogeneous as regards these emotions and
sentiments is small. Whereas the primary emotions and the coarser
sentiments may be common to all the members of a crowd; any crowd is
likely to be homogeneous in respect to them.

On the other hand, a crowd is more apt to be swayed by the more generous
of the coarser emotions, impulses, and sentiments than by those of a
meaner universally reprobated kind. For each member of the crowd acts
in full publicity; and his knowledge of, and regard for, public opinion
will to some extent incline him to suppress the manifestation of
feelings which he might indulge in private but would be ashamed of in
public. Hence a crowd is more readily carried away by admiration for a
noble deed, or by moral indignation against an act of cruelty, than by
self-pity or jealousy or envy or a meanly vengeful emotion.

At the same time, a crowd is apt to express feelings which imply less
consideration and regard for others than the individual, representing
the average morality and refinement of its members, would display when
not under the influence of the crowd. Thus men, when members of a crowd,
will witness with enjoyment scenes of brutality and suffering which,
under other circumstances, they would turn away from, or would seek to
terminate. To see a man thrown heavily to the ground is not pleasing to
most individuals; yet the spectacle provokes roars of delight from the
crowd at a football match. How many of the spectators, who, as members
of a crowd, hugely enjoy looking on at a prize-fight or a bull-fight,
would shrink from witnessing it as isolated individuals! How many boys
will join with a crowd of others in cruelly teasing another boy, an
animal, an old woman, or a drunken man, who individually are incapable
of such ‘thoughtless’ conduct! It may be doubted whether even the
depraved population of Imperial Rome could have individually witnessed
without aversion the destruction of Christians in the Coliseum.

This character of crowds seems to be due to two peculiarities of the
collective mental state. In the first place, the individual, in becoming
one of a crowd, loses in some degree his self-consciousness, his
awareness of himself as a distinct personality, and with it goes also
something of his consciousness of his specifically personal relations;
he becomes to a certain extent depersonalised. In the second place, and
intimately connected with this last change, is a diminution of the sense
of personal responsibility: the individual feels himself enveloped and
overshadowed and carried away by forces which he is powerless to
control; he therefore does not feel called upon to maintain the attitude
of self-criticism and self-restraint which under ordinary circumstances
are habitual to him, his more refined ideals of behaviour fail to assert
themselves against the overwhelming forces that envelope him.


THE INTELLECTUAL PROCESSES OF SIMPLE CROWDS

No fact has been more strongly insisted upon by writers on the
psychology of crowds than the low degree of intelligence implied by
their collective actions. Not only mobs or simple crowds, but such
bodies as juries, committees, corporations of all sorts, which are
partially organised groups, are notoriously liable to pass judgments, to
form decisions, to enact rules or laws, so obviously erroneous, unwise,
or defective that anyone, even the least intelligent member of the group
concerned, might have been expected to produce a better result.

The principal ground of the low order of intelligence displayed by
simple crowds is that the ideas and reasonings which can be collectively
understood and accepted must be such as can be appreciated by the lower
order of minds among the crowd. These least intelligent minds bring down
the intelligence of the whole to their own level. This is true in some
degree even of crowds composed of highly educated persons; for, as in
the case of the emotions and sentiments, the higher faculties are always
more or less specialised and differentiated in various ways through
differences of nurture and training; whereas the simpler intellectual
faculties and tendencies are common to all men.

A second condition, which co-operates with the foregoing to keep the
intellectual processes of crowds at a low level, is the increased
suggestibility of its members. Here is one of the most striking facts of
collective mental life. A crowd impresses each of its members with a
sense of its power, its unknown capacities, its unlimited and mysterious
possibilities; and these, as I have shown in Chapter III of my _Social
Psychology_, are the attributes that excite in us the instinct of
subjection and so throw us into the receptive suggestible attitude
towards the object that displays them. Mere numbers are capable of
exerting this effect upon most of us; but the effect of numbers is
greatly increased if all display a common emotion and speak with one
voice; the crowd has then, if we are in its presence, a well nigh
irresistible prestige. Hence even the highly intelligent and
self-reliant member of a crowd is apt to find his critical reserve
broken down; and, when an orator makes some proposition which the mass
of the crowd applauds but which each more intelligent member would as an
individual reject with scorn, it is apt to be uncritically accepted by
all alike; because it comes to each, not as the proposition of the
orator alone, but as a proposition which voices the mind of the crowd,
which comes from the mass of men he sees around him and so comes with
the power of a mass-suggestion.

A further ground of the suggestibility of the crowd is that prevalence
of emotional excitement which was discussed in the foregoing pages. It
is well recognised that almost any emotional excitement increases the
suggestibility of the individual, though the explanation of the fact
remains obscure. I have suggested that the explanation is to be found in
the principle of the vicarious usage of nervous energy, the principle
that nervous energy, liberated in any one part of the nervous system,
may overflow the channels of the system in which it is liberated and
re-enforce processes initiated in other systems. If this be true, we can
see how any condition of excitement will favour suggestibility; for it
will re-enforce whatever idea or impulse may have been awakened and made
dominant by ‘suggestion.’ The principle requires perhaps the following
limitation. Emotion which is finding outlet in well-directed action is
probably unfavourable to all such ‘suggestions’ as are not congruent
with its tendencies. It is vague emotion, or such as finds no
appropriate expression in action, that favours suggestibility. The most
striking illustrations of the greatly increased suggestibility of crowds
are afforded by well-authenticated instances of collective
hallucination, instances which, so long as we fail to take into account
the abnormal suggestibility of the members of crowds, seem utterly
mysterious, incredible, and super-normal.

Again, the capacity of crowds to arrive at correct conclusions by any
process of reasoning is apt to be diminished in another way by the
exaltation of emotion to which, as we have seen, they are peculiarly
liable. It is a familiar fact that correct observation and reasoning are
hampered by emotion; for all ideas congruent with the prevailing emotion
come far more readily to consciousness and persist more stably than
ideas incongruent with it, and conclusions congruent with the prevailing
emotion and desire are accepted readily and uncritically; whereas those
opposed to them can hardly find acceptance in the minds of most men, no
matter how simple and convincing be the reasoning that leads to them.

The diminution or abolition of the sense of personal responsibility,
which results from membership in a crowd and which, as we have seen,
favours the display of its emotions, tends also to lower the level of
its intellectual processes. Wherever men have to come to a collective
decision or to undertake collective action of any sort, this effect
plays an important part. The weight of responsibility that would be
felt by any one man, deciding or acting alone, is apt to be divided
among all the members of the group; so that for each man it is
diminished in proportion to the number of persons taking part in the
affair. Hence the attention and care devoted by each man to the task of
deliberation, observation, or execution, are less keen and continuously
sustained, and a judgment or decision is more lightly and easily arrived
at, grounds which the individual, deliberating alone, would reject or
weigh again and again serving to determine an immediate judgment. The
principle is well recognised in practical life. We do not set ten men to
keep the look-out on ship-board, but only one; though the safety of the
ship and of all that it carries depends upon his unremitting alertness.
We see the principle recognised in the institution of the jury. But for
the weakening of the individual sense of responsibility, juries would
seldom be found capable of finding a prisoner guilty of murder and so
condemning him to death; while, by the restriction of the jury to a
comparatively small number, the worst features of collective mental life
are avoided.

We see the working of the principle not only in simple crowds, but also
in groups of very considerable degrees of organisation. We see it in the
way in which many a man, who would shrink from the responsibility of
directing a great and complicated commercial undertaking, will
cheerfully join a board of directors each of whom is perhaps no better
qualified than himself to conduct the business of the concern. We may
recognise its effects also in the cheerful levity, not to say hilarity,
that frequently pervades our House of Commons; for most of its
well-meaning members would be utterly crushed under the weight of their
legislative responsibility, were it not divided in small fractions among
them.

But the low sense of responsibility of the crowd is not due to the
division of responsibility alone. In the case of the simple crowd, it is
due also in large part to the fact that such a crowd has but a very low
grade of self-consciousness and no self-regarding sentiment; that is to
say, the members of the crowd have but a dim consciousness of the crowd
as a whole, but very little knowledge of its tendencies and capacities,
and no sentiment of love, respect, or regard of any kind for it and its
reputation in the eyes of men. Hence, since the responsibility falls on
the whole crowd, and any loss or gain of reputation affects the crowd
and hardly at all the individuals who are merged in it, they are not
stimulated to exert care and self-restraint and critical deliberation in
forming their judgments, in arriving at decisions, or in executing any
task collectively undertaken. The results of these two conditions of
collective mental life are well summed up in the popular dictum that a
corporation has no conscience.

Since all these factors co-operate to keep the intellectual activity of
the simple crowd on a low level, it follows that very simple
intellectual processes must be relied on by the orator who would sway a
crowd; he must rely on abuse and ridicule of opponents, or unmeasured
praise of friends; on flattery; on the _argumentum ad hominem_; on
induction by simple enumeration of a few striking instances; on obvious
and superficial analogies; on the evocation of vivid representative
imagery rather than of abstract ideas; and, above all, on confident
assertion and reiteration, and on a display of the coarser emotions.

Since the individuals comprised in a crowd are apt to be influenced in
all these ways by the mass of their fellows, it follows that the mental
processes, the thoughts and feelings and actions, of each one will be as
a rule very different from what they would be if he faced a similar
situation as an isolated individual; the mental processes of each one
are profoundly modified by his mental interactions with all the other
members of the crowd. Therefore the collective actions of a crowd are
not simply the resultants of all the tendencies to thought and action of
the individuals, as such, but may be very different from any such
resultant. And they are not merely the expression of the individual
tendencies of the average member, nor yet of the mass of least
intelligent and refined members; they may be, and often are, such as no
one of the members acting alone would ever display or attempt.

It must be added that all the peculiarities of collective mental process
mentioned above express themselves very readily in the actions of simple
crowds, because such a crowd is incapable of resolution and volition in
the true sense of the words. I have shown[28] that individual resolution
and volition are only rendered possible by the possession of a
well-developed self-consciousness and self-regarding sentiment. But a
simple crowd has at the most only a rudimentary self-consciousness and
has no self-regarding sentiment. Hence its actions are the direct issue
of the various impulses that are collectively evoked; and, though it may
be collectively conscious of the end towards which it is impelled, and
though all the individuals may desire to effect or realise this end, and
to that extent may be said to be capable of purpose; yet such an
impulse or desire cannot be steadied, strengthened, renewed, or
supported and maintained, in opposition to any other impulse that may
come into play, by an impulse springing from the self-regarding
sentiment in the way which constitutes resolution and volition. Just so
far as the self-regarding sentiment of individuals comes into play and
they exert their individual volitions, they cease to act as members of a
crowd. The actions of the simple crowd are thus not the outcome of a
general will, nor are they the resultant of the wills of all its
members; they are simply not volitional in the true sense, but rather
impulsive. They are comparable with the actions of an animal rather than
with those of a man. It is the lack of the conditions necessary to
collective resolution and volition that renders a crowd so fickle and
inconsistent; so capable of passing from one extreme of action to
another, of hurrying to death the man whom it glorified at an earlier
moment, or of turning from savage butchery to tender and tearful
solicitude. Such incapacity of the crowd for resolution and volition,
together with the increased suggestibility of its members, accounts for
the fact that a crowd may be easily induced to follow as a leader any
one who, by means of the elementary reasoning processes suited to its
intellectual capacity, can succeed in suggesting to it the desirability
of any course of action.

We may sum up the psychological characters of the unorganised or simple
crowd by saying that it is excessively emotional, impulsive, violent,
fickle, inconsistent, irresolute and extreme in action, displaying only
the coarser emotions and the less refined sentiments; extremely
suggestible, careless in deliberation, hasty in judgment, incapable of
any but the simpler and imperfect forms of reasoning; easily swayed and
led, lacking in self-consciousness, devoid of self-respect and of sense
of responsibility, and apt to be carried away by the consciousness of
its own force, so that it tends to produce all the manifestations we
have learnt to expect of any irresponsible and absolute power. Hence its
behaviour is like that of an unruly child or an untutored passionate
savage in a strange situation, rather than like that of its average
member; and in the worst cases it is like that of a wild beast, rather
than like that of human beings.

All these characteristics of the crowd were exemplified on a great scale
in Paris at the time of the great revolution, when masses of men that
were little more than unorganised crowds escaped from all control and
exerted supreme power; and writers on the topic have drawn many
striking illustrations from the history of the days of the Terror[29].
The understanding of these more elementary facts and principles of group
psychology will prevent us falling into such an error as was committed
by our greatest political philosopher, Edmund Burke, when he condemned
the French people in the most violent terms on account of the terrible
events of the Revolution; for he attributed to the inhabitants of France
in general, as individuals, the capacities for violence and brutality
and the gross defects of intelligence and self-restraint that were
displayed by the Parisian crowds of the time; whereas the study of
collective psychology has led us to see that the actions of a crowd
afford no measure of the moral and intellectual status of the
individuals of which it is composed. So, when we hear of minor outrages
committed by a crowd of undergraduates or suffragettes, a knowledge of
group psychology will save us from the error of attributing to the
individuals concerned the low grade of intelligence and decency that
might seem to be implied by the deeds performed by them collectively.
The same understanding will also resolve for us some seeming paradoxes;
for example, the paradox that, while in the year 1906 the newspapers
contained many reports of almost incredible brutalities committed by the
peasants in many different parts of Russia, an able correspondent, who
was studying the peasants at that very time, ascribed to them, as the
most striking quality of their characters, an exceptional humaneness and
kindliness[30].

It will be maintained on a later page that we may properly speak not
only of a collective will, but also of the collective mind of an
organised group, for example, of the mind and will of a nation. We must,
then, ask at this stage—Can we properly speak of the collective mind of
an unorganised crowd? The question is merely one as to the proper use of
words and therefore not of the first importance. If we had found reason
to accept the hypothesis of a ‘collective consciousness’ of a group, and
to believe that the peculiarities of behaviour of a crowd are due to a
‘collective consciousness,’ then we should certainly have to admit the
propriety of regarding the crowd as having a collective mind. But we
have provisionally rejected that hypothesis, and have maintained that
the only consciousness of a crowd or other group is the consciousnesses
of its constituent individuals. In the absence of any ‘collective
consciousness’ we may still speak of collective minds; for we have
defined a mind as an organised system of interacting mental or psychical
forces. This definition, while allowing us to speak of the collective
mind of such a group as a well-developed nation, hardly allows us to
attribute such a mind to a simple crowd: for the interplay of its mental
forces is not determined by the existence of an organised system of
relations between the elements in which the forces are generated; and
such determination is an essential feature of whatever can be called a
mind.



CHAPTER III

THE HIGHLY ORGANISED GROUP


The peculiarities of simple crowds tend to appear in all group life; but
they are modified in proportion as the group is removed in character
from a simple crowd, a fortuitous congregation of men of more or less
similar tendencies and sentiments. Many crowds are not fortuitous
gatherings, but are brought together by the common interest of their
members in some object or topic. These may differ from the simple
fortuitous crowd only in being more homogeneous as regards the
sentiments and interests of their members; their greater homogeneity
does not in itself raise them above the mental level of the fortuitous
crowd; it merely intensifies the peculiarities of group life, especially
as regards the intensity of the collective emotion.

There is, however, one condition that may raise the behaviour of a
temporary and unorganised crowd to a higher plane, namely the presence
of a clearly defined common purpose in the minds of all its members.
Such a crowd, for example a crowd of white men in one of the Southern
States of North America setting out to lynch a negro who is supposed to
have committed some flagrant crime, will display most of the
characteristics of the common crowd, the violence and brutality of
emotion and impulse, the lack of restraint, the diminished sense of
responsibility, the increased suggestibility and incapacity for arriving
at correct conclusions by deliberation and the weighing of evidence. But
it will not exhibit the fickleness of a common crowd, the easy yielding
to distracting impressions and to suggestions that are opposed to the
common purpose. Such a crowd may seize and execute its victim with
inflexible determination, perhaps with a brutality and a ruthless
disregard of all deterrent considerations of which no one of its members
would be individually capable; and may then at once break up, each man
returning quietly and seriously to his home, in a way which has often
been described by witnesses astonished at the contrast between the
behaviour of the crowd and that of the individuals into which it
suddenly resolves itself.

The behaviour of a crowd of this kind raises the problem of the general
or collective will. It was said in the foregoing chapter that the
actions of a common crowd cannot properly be regarded as volitional,
because they are the immediate outcome of the primary impulses. Yet the
actions of a crowd of the kind we are now considering are the issue of
true resolutions formed by each member of the crowd, and are, therefore,
truly volitional. Nevertheless, they are the expression not of a general
or collective will, but merely of the wills of all the individuals; and,
even if there arise differences between the members and a conflict of
wills as to the mode of achieving the common end, and if the issue be
determined simply by the stronger party overbearing the weaker and
securing their co-operation, that still does not constitute the
expression of a general will. For a collective or general will only
exists where some idea of the whole group and some sentiment for it as
such exists in the minds of the persons composing it. But we may with
advantage examine the nature of collective volition on a later page, in
relation to the life of a highly organised group, such as an army.

There are five conditions of principal importance in raising collective
mental life to a higher level than the unorganised crowd can reach, no
matter how homogeneous the crowd may be in ideas and sentiments nor how
convergent the desires and volitions of its members. These are the
principal conditions which favour and render possible the formation of a
group mind, in addition to those more fundamental conditions of
collective life which we have noted in the foregoing chapter.

The first of these conditions, which is the basis of all the rest, is
some degree of continuity of existence of the group. The continuity may
be predominantly material or formal; that is to say, it may consist
either in the persistence of the same individuals as an
intercommunicating group, or in the persistence of the system of
generally recognised positions each of which is occupied by a succession
of individuals. Most permanent groups exhibit both forms of continuity
in a certain degree; for, the material continuity of a group being
given, some degree of formal continuity will commonly be established
within it. The most highly organised groups, such as well-developed
nations, exhibit both forms in the highest degree.

A second very important condition, essential to any highly developed
form of collective life, is that in the minds of the mass of the members
of the group there shall be formed some adequate idea of the group, of
its nature, composition, functions, and capacities, and of the relations
of the individuals to the group. The diffusion of this idea among the
members of the group, which constitutes the self-consciousness of the
group mind, would be of little effect or importance, if it were not
that, as with the idea of the individual self, a sentiment of some kind
almost inevitably becomes organised about this idea and is the main
condition of its growth in richness of meaning; a sentiment for the
group which becomes the source of emotions and of impulses to action
having for their objects the group and its relations to other groups.

A third condition very favourable to the development of the collective
mind of a group, though not perhaps absolutely essential, is the
interaction (especially in the form of conflict and rivalry) of the
group with other similar groups animated by different ideals and
purposes, and swayed by different traditions and customs. The importance
of such interaction of groups lies chiefly in the fact that it greatly
promotes the self-knowledge and self-sentiment of each group.

Fourthly, the existence of a body of traditions and customs and habits
in the minds of the members of the group determining their relations to
one another and to the group as a whole.

Lastly, organisation of the group, consisting in the differentiation and
specialisation of the functions of its constituents—the individuals and
classes or groups of individuals within the group. This organisation may
rest wholly or in part upon the conditions of the fourth class,
traditions, customs, and habits. But it may be in part imposed on the
group and maintained by the authority of some external power.

The capacity for collective life of an organised group whose
organisation is imposed upon it and wholly maintained by an external
authority is but little superior to that of a simple crowd. Such a group
will differ from the simple crowd chiefly in exhibiting greater control
of its impulses and a greater continuity of direction of its activities;
but these qualities are due to the external compelling power and are not
truly the expression of its collective mental life. An army of slaves
or, in a less complete degree, an army of mercenaries is the type of
this kind of organised group; and a people ruled by a strong despot
relying on a mercenary or foreign army approximates to it. The first aim
of the power that would maintain such an organisation must always be to
prevent and suppress collective life, by forbidding gatherings and
public discussions, by rendering communications between the parts
difficult, and by enforcing a rigid discipline. For such an organisation
is essentially unstable.

We may illustrate the influence of these five conditions by considering
how in a group of relatively simple kind, in which they are all
present, they favour collective life and raise it to a higher level of
efficiency. Such a group is a patriot army fighting in a cause that
elicits the enthusiasm of its members; such were the armies of Japan in
the late Russo-Japanese war; they exhibited in a high degree and in
relative simplicity the operation of all the conditions we have
enumerated.

Such an army exhibits the exaltation of emotion common to all
psychological crowds. This intensification of emotion enables men to
face danger and certain death with enthusiasm, and on other occasions
may, even in the armies of undoubtedly courageous and warlike nations,
result in panic and a rout. But in all other respects the
characteristics of the simple crowd are profoundly modified. The formal
continuity of the existence of the army and of its several units secures
for it, even though its personnel be changed at a rapid rate, a past and
therefore a tradition, a self-consciousness and a self-regarding
sentiment, a pride in its past and a tradition of high conduct and
achievement; for past failures are discreetly forgotten and only its
past successes and glories are kept in memory. The traditional group
consciousness and sentiment are fostered by every wise commander, both
in the army as a whole and in each separate department and regiment. Is
not the superiority in battle of such bodies as the famous Tenth Legion
due as much to such self-conscious tradition and sentiment as to the
presence of veterans in its ranks? And is not the same true of such
regiments as the Black Watch, the Gordons, the Grenadier Guards, and the
other famous regiments of the British army?

The third of the conditions mentioned above is also very obviously
present in the case of an army in the field—namely, interaction with a
similar group having different purposes, traditions, and sentiments. And
in this case the interaction, being of the nature of direct competition
and conflict, is of the kind most favourable to the development of the
collective mind. It accentuates the self-consciousness of the whole;
that is to say, it defines more clearly in the mind of each individual
the whole of which he is a part, his position in, his organic connexion
with, and his dependence upon, the whole; with each succeeding stage of
the conflict he conceives the whole more clearly, obtains a fuller
knowledge of the capacities and weaknesses of the whole and its parts.
Each soldier learns, too, something of the character of the opposing
army; and, in the light of this knowledge, his conception of his own
army becomes better defined and richer in meaning. In short, through
interaction with the opposing army, the army as a whole becomes more
clearly reflected in the mind of each of its members, its
self-consciousness is clarified and enriched. In a similar way,
intercourse and rivalry between the various regiments greatly promotes
the growth of the self-knowledge and self-sentiment of each of these
lesser groups. A standing army inevitably possesses a wealth of
traditions, habits and customs, over and above its formal organisation,
and these play an important part in promoting the smooth working of the
whole organism; the lack of these is one of the chief difficulties in
the way of the creation of a new army, as was vividly illustrated in the
making of the ‘Kitchener army’ during the Great War. The customs of the
various officers’ messes were but a small part of this mass of custom
which does so much to bind the whole army together.

An army obviously possesses organisation, generally in a very high
degree. The formal continuity of its existence enables the organisation
impressed upon it by external authority to acquire all the strength that
custom alone can give; while its material continuity enables its
organisation to generate, in the individual soldiers, habits through
which the inferior members are raised, as regards the moral qualities
required for efficiency in the field, towards the level of the best.

The organisation of the whole army has two aspects and two main
functions; the one is executive, the securing of the co-ordination of
action of the parts in the carrying out of the common plan; the other is
recipient and deliberative, the co-ordination of the data supplied by
the parts through deliberation upon which the choice of means is arrived
at. Deliberation and choice of means are carried out by the
commander-in-chief and his staff, the persons who have shown themselves
best able to execute this part of the army’s task. It is important to
note that, in the case of such an army as we are considering, the
private soldier in the ranks remains a free agent performing truly
volitional actions; that he in no sense becomes a mechanical agent or
one acting through enforced or habitual obedience merely. He wills the
common end; and, believing that the choice of means to that end is best
effected by the appropriate part of the whole organisation, he accepts
the means chosen, makes of them his proximate end, and wills them.

This is the essential character of the effective organisation of any
human group; it secures that while the common end of collective action
is willed by all, the choice of means is left to those best qualified
and in the best position for deliberation and choice; and it secures
that co-ordination of the voluntary actions of the parts which brings
about the common end by the means so chosen. In this way the collective
actions of the well-organised group, instead of being, like those of the
simple crowd, merely impulsive or instinctive actions, implying a degree
of intelligence and of morality far inferior to that of the average
individual of the crowd, become truly volitional actions expressive of a
degree of intelligence and morality much higher than that of the average
member of the group: i.e. the whole is raised above the level of its
average member; and even, by reason of exaltation of emotion and
organised co-operation in deliberation, above that of its highest
members.

Here we must consider a little more fully the nature of the collective
or general will, a subject that has figured largely in the discussions
of political philosophers on the nature of the State. Rousseau
wrote—“There is often a great difference between the will of all and the
general will; the latter looks only to the common interest; the former
looks to private interest, and is nothing but a series of individual
wills; but take away from these same wills the plus and minus that
cancel one another and there remains, as the sum of the differences, the
general will.” “Sovereignty is only the exercise of the general will.”
By this he seems to mean that a certain number of men will the general
good, while many will only their private goods; and that while the
latter neutralise one another, as regards their effects on the general
interest, the former co-operate and so form an effective force to
promote the general good. This doctrine was an approximation towards the
truth, though like all Rousseau’s social speculations, his handling of
it was vitiated by his false psychology, which set out from the fiction
of man as an independent purely self-contained and self-determining
absolute individual. Later writers do not seem to have improved upon
Rousseau’s doctrine of the general will to any great extent.

The problem of the general will, like all problems of collective
psychology, becomes extremely complex when we consider the life of
nations; and it is, therefore, important to make ourselves clear as to
the nature of collective volition by consideration of the relatively
simple case of a patriot army. It is of course impossible to arrive at a
clear notion of collective volition, until individual volition has been
clearly defined and the nature of the distinction between it, on the one
hand, and mere impulsive action, desire, and simple conflict of desires,
on the other hand, has been made clear. The lack of such clear notions
and adequate definitions has rendered much of the discussion of this
topic by political philosophers sterile and obscure. In the light of the
conclusions reached in my chapter on individual volition[31], the
question of the nature of collective volition presents little
difficulty. It was found that volition may be defined and adequately
marked off from the simpler modes of conation by saying that it is the
reinforcement of any impulse or conation by one excited within the
system of the self-regarding sentiment. And in an earlier chapter[32] it
was shewn how the self-regarding sentiment may become extended to other
objects than the individual self, to all objects with which the self
identifies itself, which are regarded as belonging to the self or as
part of the wider self. This extension depends largely on the fact that
others identify us with such an object, so that we feel ourselves to be
an object of all the regards and attitudes and actions of others
directed towards that object, and are emotionally affected by them in
the same ways that we are affected by similar regards, attitudes, and
actions directed towards us individually. It was shewn also that such a
sentiment may become wider and emotionally richer than the purely
self-regarding sentiment, through fusing with a sentiment of love for
the object that has grown up independently. These facts were illustrated
by consideration of the parental sentiment for the child, which, it was
said, has commonly this twofold character and source, being formed by
the compounding of the self-regarding sentiment with the sentiment of
love of which the dominant disposition is that of the tender or
protective instinct.

In a similar way a similarly complex sentiment may become organised
about the idea of one’s family, or of any still larger group having
continuity of existence of which one becomes a member. In the case of
the patriot’s sentiment for his country or nation, the self-regarding
sentiment and the sentiment of love may be from the first combined in
the patriotic sentiment; since he knows himself to be a part of the
whole from the time that an idea of the whole first takes shape in his
mind.

In this respect the case of the soldier in a patriot army is relatively
simple. As a boy he may have acquired a sentiment of loving admiration
for the army; and, when he becomes a member of it, the dispositions that
enter into the constitution of his self-regarding sentiment, become
incorporated with this previously existing sentiment, so that the
reputation of the army becomes as important to him as his own; praise
and approval of it become for him objects of desire and sources of
elation; disapproval and blame of it, or the prospect of them, affect
him as painfully as if directed to himself individually, fill him with
shame and mortification.

A similar complex sentiment, the sentiment of patriotism, becomes
organised about the idea of his country as a whole; and, when war breaks
out and the army is pitted against that of another nation, while the
eyes of the whole world are turned upon it, it becomes the
representative of the nation and the special object of the patriotic
sentiment, which thus adds its strength to that of the more special
sentiment of the soldier for the army[33]. When, then, the patriot army
takes the field, it is capable of collective volition in virtue of the
existence of this sentiment in the minds of all its members. The
soldiers of a purely mercenary army are moved by the desire of
individual glory, of increased pay, of loot, by the habit of obedience
and collective movement acquired by prolonged drilling, by the
pugnacious impulse, by the desire of self-preservation; and they may be
led on to greater exertions by the influence of an admired captain. But
such an army is incapable of collective volition, because no sentiment
for the army as a whole is common to all its members. The soldiers of
the patriot army on the other hand may act from all the individual
motives enumerated above; but all alike are capable also of being
stirred by a common motive, a desire excited within the collective
self-regarding sentiment, the common sentiment for the army; and this,
adding itself to whatever individual motives are operative, converts
their desires into collective resolutions and renders their actions the
expressions of a collective volition.

Each soldier of the mercenary army may desire that his side shall win
the battle and may resolve that he will do his best to bring victory to
his side, and he may perform many truly volitional actions; and, in so
far as the actions of the army express these individual volitions
towards a common result, they are the expressions of the ‘will of all,’
but not of the collective will; because these volitions, though they are
directed to the one common end, spring from diverse motives and are
individual volitions.

The essence of collective volition is, then, not merely the direction of
the wills of all to the same end, but the motivation of the wills of all
members of a group by impulses awakened within the common sentiment for
the whole of which they are the parts. It is the extension of the
self-regarding sentiment of each member of the group to the group as a
whole that binds the group together and renders it a collective
individual capable of collective volition.

The facts may be illustrated more concretely by taking a still simpler
example of collective volition. Consider the case of a regiment in
battle commanded to occupy a certain hill-top in face of fierce
opposition. If the regiment is one to which the self-regarding sentiment
of each member has become extended, the soldiers may be animated
individually by the pugnacious impulse and by the desire of individual
glory, but they are moved also by the common desire to show what the
regiment can do, to sustain its glorious reputation; they resolve that
we, the regiment, will accomplish this feat. As they charge up the hill,
the hail of bullets decimates their ranks and they waver, the impulse of
fear checking their onward rush; if then their officer appeals to the
common sentiment, each man feels the answering impulse; and this is
strengthened by the cheer which shows him that the same impulse rises in
all his comrades; and so this impulse, awakened within the collective
self-regarding sentiment and strengthened by sympathetic induction from
all to each, comes to the support of the pugnacious impulse or whatever
other motives sustain each man, enables these to triumph over the
impulse to flight, and sweeps them all on to gain their object by truly
collective volitional effort. If, on the other hand, the men of the
regiment have no such common sentiment, then, when the advancing line
wavers, the onward impulsion checked by the impulse of retreat, there is
no possibility of arousing a collective volition; the regiment, which
from the first was a crowd organised only by external authority and the
habits created by it, acts as a crowd and yields to the rising impulse
of the emotion of fear, which, becoming intensified by induction from
man to man, rises to a panic; and the regiment is routed.

We may distinguish, then, five modes of conation which will carry all
the members of a group towards a common object, five levels of
collective action.

Let the group be a body of men on a road leading across a wilderness to
a certain walled city. A sudden threat of danger from a band of robbers
or from wild beasts may send them all flying in panic towards the city
gate. That is a purely impulsive collective action. It is not merely a
sum of individual actions, because the fear and, therefore, the impulse
to flight of each man is intensified by the influence of his fellows.

Secondly, let them be a band of pilgrims, fortuitously congregated, each
of whom has resolved to reach the city for his own private purposes. The
whole body moves on steadily, each perhaps aided in maintaining his
resolution in face of difficulties by the presence of the rest and the
spectacle of their resolute efforts. Here there is a certain
collectivity of action, the individual wills are strengthened by the
community of purpose. But the arrival of the band is not due to
collective volition; nor can it properly be said to be due to the will
of all; for each member cares nothing for the arrival of the band as a
whole; he desires and wills only his own arrival.

Thirdly, let each member of the band be aware that, at any point of the
road, robbers may oppose the passage of any individual or of any company
not sufficiently strong to force its way through. Each member will then
desire that the whole band shall cohere and shall reach the city, and
the actions of the group will display a higher degree of co-operation
and collective efficiency than in the former cases; but the successful
passage of the band will be desired by each member simply in order that
his own safe arrival may be secured. There is direction of all wills
towards the production of the one result, the success of the whole band;
but this is not truly collective volition because the motives are
private and individual and diverse.

Fourthly, let the band be an army of crusaders, a motley throng of
heterogeneous elements of various nationalities, united by one common
purpose, the capture of the city, but having no sentiment for the army.
In this case all members not only will the same collective action and
desire the same end of that action, but they have similar motives
arising from their sentiment for the city or that which it contains.
Still their combined actions are not the issue of a collective volition
in the full and proper sense of the words, but of a coincidental
conjunction of individual volitions. They might perhaps be said to be
the expression of the general will; and by giving that meaning to the
term ‘general will,’ while reserving the expression collective will or
volition for the type of case illustrated by our next instance, we may
usefully differentiate the two expressions.

Lastly, let the band approaching the city be an army of crusaders of one
nationality, and let us suppose that this army has enjoyed a
considerable continuity of existence and that in the mind of each member
the self-regarding sentiment has become extended to the army as a whole,
so that, as we say, each one identifies himself with it and prizes its
reputation and desires its success as an end in itself. Such a
sentiment would be greatly developed and strengthened by rivalry in
deeds of arms with a second crusading army. Each member of this army
would have the same motives for capturing the city as those of the army
of our last instance; but, in addition to these motives, there would be
awakened within the extended self-regarding sentiment of each man an
impulse to assert the power, to sustain the glory of the army; and this,
adding its force to those other motives, would enable them to triumph
over all conflicting tendencies and render the resolution of the army to
capture the city a true collective volition; so that the army might
properly be said to possess and to exercise a general or collective
will.

This distinction between the will of all and the collective will, which
we have considered at some length, may seem to be of slight importance
in the instances chosen. But it becomes of the greatest importance when
we have to consider the life of a nation or other enduring community.
The power of truly collective volition is no small advantage to any body
of fighting men and receives practical recognition from experienced
captains.

The importance of these different types of volition was abundantly
illustrated by the incidents of the Boer war and of the Russo-Japanese
war. That the success of its undertaking shall be strongly willed by all
is perhaps the most important factor contributing to the success of an
army; and if also the army exercises a true collective volition, in the
sense defined above, it becomes irresistible. Though it is questionable
whether the Boer armies can be said to have exercised a collective
volition, it is at least certain that individually the Boers strongly
willed their common end, the defeat of the British. On the other hand,
the British armies were defective in these respects. The motives of
those who fought in the British armies against the Boers were very
diverse. The pay of the regulars, the five shillings a day of the
volunteers, the desire to live for a time an adventurous exciting life,
the desire to get home again on the sick-list as soon as possible, the
desire for personal distinction; all these and other motives were in
many minds mixed in various proportions with the desire to assert the
supremacy of the British rule and support the honour of the flag. This
difference between the Boer and British armies was undoubtedly a main
cause of many of the surprising successes of the former. In the
Russo-Japanese war the opposed armies probably differed even more widely
in this respect. The Japanese soldiers not only willed intensely the
common end, but their armies would appear to have exercised truly
collective volition. Many of the several regiments also, being recruited
on the territorial system, were animated by collective sentiments rooted
in local patriotism. The Russian armies on the other hand were largely
composed of peasants drawn from widely separated regions of the Russian
empire, knowing little or nothing of the grounds of quarrel or of the
ends to be achieved by their efforts, caring nothing individually for
those ends, and having but little patriotic sentiment and still less
sentiment for the army.

It would, then, be a grave mistake to infer from the course of events in
these two wars that the British soldier was individually inferior to the
Boer, or the Russian to the Japanese; in both cases the principal
psychological condition of successful collective action—namely, a common
end intensely desired and strongly willed, individually or
collectively—was present in high degree on the one side, because the
preservation of the national existence was the end in view; while it was
lacking or comparatively deficient on the other side. As Sir Ian
Hamilton, a close observer of both these wars, has said—“the army that
will not surrender under any circumstances will always vanquish the army
whose units are prepared to do so under sufficient pressure.”

The same considerations afford an explanation of a peculiarity of
Russian armies which has often been noted in previous wars, and which
was very conspicuous in the late wars; namely, their weakness in attack
and their great strength when on the defensive. For, in attacking, a
Russian army is in the main merely obeying the will of the
commander-in-chief in virtue of custom, habit, and a form of strong
collective suggestion; but in retreat and on the defensive, each man’s
action becomes truly volitional, all are animated by a common purpose,
and all will the same end, the safety of the whole with which that of
each member is bound up.

The psychology of a patriot army is peculiarly simplified, as compared
with that of most other large human groups, by two conditions; on the
one hand, the restriction of the intellectual processes, by which the
large means for the pursuit of the common end are chosen, to one or a
few minds only; on the other hand, the definiteness and singleness of
its purpose and the presence of this clear and strong purpose in the
minds of all.

Other groups that enjoy in some degree the latter condition of
simplicity of collective mental life are associations voluntarily formed
and organised for the attainment of some single well-defined end. In
them the former condition is generally completely lacking and the
deliberative processes, by which their means are chosen, are apt to be
very complex and ineffective, owing to lack of customary organisation.
Such associations illustrate more clearly than any other groups the part
played by the idea of the whole in the minds of the individuals in
constituting and maintaining the whole. A desire or purpose being
present in many minds, the idea of the association arises in some one or
more of them, and, being communicated to others, becomes the immediate
instrument through which the association is called into being; and only
so long as this idea of the whole as an instrument for attaining the
common end persists in the minds of the individuals does the association
continue to exist. In this respect such an association is at the
opposite end of the scale from the fortuitous crowd, which owes its
existence to the accidents of time and place merely. Human groups of
other kinds owe their existence in various proportions to these two
conditions; such groups, for example, as are constituted by the members
of a church, of a university or a school, of a profession or a township.
Others, such as nations, owe their inception to the accidents of time
and place, to physical boundaries and climatic conditions; and, in the
course of their evolution, become more and more dependent for their
existence on the idea of the whole and the sentiment organised about it
in the minds of their members; and they may, like the Jewish people,
arrive in the course of time at complete dependence on the latter
condition.

The life of an army illustrates better than that of any other group the
influence of leadership. That great strategists and skilful tacticians
perform intellectual services of immeasurable importance for the common
end of the army goes without saying. But the moral influence of
leadership is more subtle in its workings, and is perhaps less generally
recognised in all its complexity and scope. It is well known that such
commanders as Napoleon inspired unlimited confidence and enthusiasm in
the veteran armies that had made many campaigns under their leadership.
Yet in the Great War, in which the British armies were, in its later
stages, composed so largely of new recruits, the same influence was
perceptible. Both the British and the French armies were very fortunate
in having in supreme command men in whom the common soldier felt
confidence. The solidity, the justice, the calm resolution of Marshal
Joffre were felt throughout the French army in the early days of the war
to be the one certain and fixed point in a crumbling universe. “Il est
solid, le Père Joffre” was repeated by thousands who, remembering the
disaster of 1870, were inclined to suspect treachery and weakness on
every hand. And the genius of Marshal Foch and of other brilliant
generals was a main source of the astonishing dogged resolution with
which the French armies, in spite of their terrible losses, sustained
the prolonged agony. The British army also was fortunate in having in
Field-Marshal Haig a man at its head who was felt to be above all things
resolute and calm and just; and, when the British armies in France were
placed under the supreme control of Foch, it was generally felt
throughout the ranks that this would not only give unity of control and
purpose, but also supply that touch of genius which perhaps had been
lacking in British strategy.

But it was not only the supreme command that exercised this influence
over the minds of all ranks. At every level confidence in the leadership
was of supreme importance. The character and talents of each general and
colonel, of each captain, lieutenant, sergeant and corporal, made
themselves felt by all under their control; felt not only individually
but corporately and collectively. The whole area under the command of
any particular general might be seen to reflect and to express in some
degree his attributes. The reputations of the higher officers filtered
down through the ranks in an astonishingly rapid and accurate manner;
perhaps owing largely to the fact that these armies, in a degree unknown
before, were composed of men accustomed to read and to think and to
discuss and criticise the conduct of affairs. If the German higher
command had been exercised from the first by a man who inspired the just
confidence that was felt in the old Field-Marshal v. Moltke by the
Prussian armies of 1870, it is probable that the issue of the Great War
would have been fatally different.

The moral effects of good leadership are, perhaps, of more importance to
an army than its intellectual qualities, especially in a prolonged
struggle; and these work throughout the mass of men by subtle processes
of suggestion and emotional contagion rather than by any process of
purely intellectual appreciation. And the whole organisation of any
wisely directed army is designed to render as effective as possible
these processes by which the influence of leaders is diffused through
the whole.



CHAPTER IV

THE GROUP SPIRIT


In considering the mental life of a patriot army, as the type of a
highly organised group, we saw that _group self-consciousness_ is a
factor of very great importance—that it is a principal condition of the
elevation of its collective mental life and behaviour above the level of
the merely impulsive violence and unreasoning fickleness of the mob.

This self-consciousness of the group is the essential condition of all
higher group life; we must therefore study it more nearly as it is
manifested in groups of various types. It is unfortunate that our
language has no word that accurately translates the French expression
‘esprit de corps’; for this conveys exactly the conception that we are
examining. I propose to use the term group spirit as the equivalent of
the French expression, the frequent use of which in English speech and
writing sufficiently justifies the attempt to specialise this compound
word for psychological purposes.

We have seen that, in virtue of the sentiment developed about the idea
of the army, all its members exhibit _group loyalty_; it is only as the
sentiment develops about the idea that this idea of the whole, present
to the mind of each member, becomes a power which can hold the whole
group together, in spite of all physical and moral difficulties. We see
this if we reflect how armies of mercenaries, in which this collective
sentiment is lacking or rudimentary only, are apt to dissolve and fade
away by desertion as soon as serious difficulties are encountered.

The importance of the collective idea and sentiment appears still more
clearly, when we reflect on the type of army which has generally proved
the most efficient of all—namely, an army of volunteers banded together
to achieve some particular end. Such an army (for example the army of
Garibaldi) owes its existence to the operation of this idea in the minds
of all. The idea of the army is formed in the mind perhaps of one only
(Garibaldi); he communicates it to others, who accept it as a means to
the end desired by all of them individually. The idea of the whole thus
operates to create the group, to bring it into existence; and then, as
the idea is realised, it becomes more definite, of richer and more
exact meaning; the collective sentiment grows up about it, and habit and
formal organisation begin to aid in holding the group together; yet
still the idea of the whole remains constitutive of the whole.

Any group that owes its creation and its continued existence to the
collective idea may be regarded from the psychological standpoint as of
the highest type; while a fortuitously gathered crowd that owes its
existence to accidents of time and place and has the barest minimum of
group self-consciousness is of the lowest type. Every other form of
association or of human group may be regarded as occupying a position in
a scale between these extreme types; according to the relative
predominance of the mental or the physical conditions of its origin and
continuance, that is to say, according to the degree in which its
existence is teleologically or mechanically determined.

The group spirit, the idea of the group with the sentiment of devotion
to the group developed in the minds of all its members, not only serves
as a bond that holds the group together or even creates it, but, as we
saw in the case of the patriot army, it renders possible truly
collective volition; this in turn renders the actions of the group much
more resolute and effective than they could be, so long as its actions
proceed merely from the presence of an impulse common to all members, or
from the strictly individual volitions of all, even though these be
directed to one common end.

Again, the group spirit plays an important part in raising the
intellectual level of the group; for it leads each member deliberately
to subordinate his own judgment and opinion to that of the whole; and,
in any properly organised group, this collective opinion will be
superior to that of the average individual, because in its formation the
best minds, acting upon the fullest knowledge to the gathering of which
all may contribute, will be of predominant influence. Each member, then,
willing the common end, accepts the means chosen by the organised
collective deliberation, and, in executing the actions prescribed for
him, makes them his own immediate ends and truly wills them for the sake
of the whole, not executing them in the spirit of merely mechanical
unintelligent obedience or even of reluctance.

In a similar way the group spirit aids in raising the moral level of an
army. The organised whole embodies certain traditional sentiments,
especially sentiments of admiration for certain moral qualities,
courage, endurance, trustworthiness, and cheerful obedience; and these
sentiments, permeating the whole, are impressed upon every member,
especially new members, by way of mass suggestion and sympathetic
contagion; every new recruit finds that his comrades accept without
question these traditional moral sentiments and confidently express
moral judgments upon conduct and character in accordance with them, and
that they also display the corresponding emotional reactions towards
acts; that is to say, they express in verbal judgments and in emotional
reactions their scorn for treachery or cowardice, their admiration for
courageous self-sacrifice and devotion to duty. The recruit quickly
shares by contagion these moral emotions and soon finds his judgment
determined to share these opinions by the weight of mass suggestion; for
these moral propositions come to him with all the irresistible force of
opinion held by the group and expressed by its unanimous voice; and this
force is not merely the force derived from numbers, but is also the
force of the prestige accumulated by the whole group, the prestige of
old and well-tried tradition, the prestige of age; and the more fully
the consciousness of the whole group is present to the mind of each
member, the more effectively will the whole impress its moral precepts
upon each.

And the organisation of the army renders it possible for the leaders to
influence and to mould the form of these moral opinions and sentiments.
Thus Lord Kitchener, by issuing his exhortation to the British Army on
its departure to France, did undoubtedly exert a considerable influence
towards raising the moral level of the whole force, because he
strengthened the influence of those who were already of his way of
thinking against the influence of those whose sentiments and habits and
opinions made in the opposite direction. His great prestige, which was
of a double kind, both personal and due to his high office, enabled him
to do this. In the same way, every officer in a less degree can do
something to raise the moral level of the men under his command. Thus,
then, the organisation of the whole group, with its hierarchy of offices
which confer prestige, gives those who hold these higher offices the
opportunity to raise the moral level of all members.

Of course, if those who occupy these positions of prestige feel no
responsibility of this sort and make no effort to exert such influence,
but rather aim at striking terror in the foe at all costs, if they
countenance acts of savagery such as the destruction of cities, looting,
and rapine, if they publicly instruct their soldiers to behave as Huns
or savages; then the organisation of the army works in the opposite
way—namely, to degrade all members below their normal individual level,
rather than to raise them above it; and then we hear of acts of
brutality on the part of the rank and file which are almost incredible.

But the main point to be insisted on here is that the raising of the
moral level is not effected only by example, suggestion, and emotional
contagion, spreading from those in the positions of prestige; that,
where the group spirit exists, those enjoying prestige can, if they
wish, greatly promote the end of raising the moral tone of the whole by
appealing to that group spirit; as when Lord Kitchener asked the men to
obey his injunctions for the sake of the honour of the British Army.

And the group spirit not only yields this direct response to moral
exhortation; it operates in another no less important manner. Each
member of a group pervaded by the collective sentiment, such as a
well-organised army of high traditions, becomes in a special sense his
brother’s keeper. Each feels an interest in the conduct of every other
member, because the conduct of each affects the reputation of the whole;
each man, therefore, punishes bad conduct of any fellow soldier by scorn
and by withdrawal of sympathy and companionship; and each one rewards
with praise and admiration the conduct that conforms to the standards
demanded and admired. And so each member acts always under the jealous
eyes of all his fellows, under the threat of general disapprobation,
contempt, and moral isolation for bad conduct; under the promise of
general approval and admiration for any act of special excellence.

The development of the group spirit, with the appropriate sentiment of
attachment or devotion to the whole and therefore also to its parts, is
the essence of the higher form of military discipline. There is a lower
form of discipline which aims only at rendering each man perfectly
subservient to his officers and trained to respond promptly and
invariably, in precise, semi-mechanical, habitual fashion, to every word
of command. But even the drill and the system of penalties and minute
supervision, which are the means chosen to bring about this result,
cannot fail to achieve certain effects on a higher moral and
intellectual level than the mere formation of bodily habits of response.
By rendering each soldier apt and exact in his response to commands,
they enable each one to foresee the actions of his fellows in all
ordinary circumstances, and therefore to rely upon that co-operation
towards the common end, be it merely a turning movement on the drill
ground or the winning of a battle, which is the essential aim and
justification of all group life.

The group spirit, involving knowledge of the group as such, some idea of
the group, and some sentiment of devotion or attachment to the group, is
then the essential condition of all developed collective life, and of
all effective collective action; but it is by no means confined to
highly developed human associations of a voluntary kind.

Whether the group spirit is possessed in any degree by animal societies
is a very difficult question. We certainly do not need to postulate it
in order to account for the existence of more or less enduring
associations of animals; just as we do not need to postulate it to
account for the coming together of any fortuitous human mob. Even in
such animal societies as those of the ants and bees, its presence,
though often asserted, seems to be highly questionable. When we observe
the division of labour that characterises the hive, how some bees
ventilate, some build the comb, some feed the larvae and so on; and
especially when we hear that the departure of a swarm from the hive is
preceded by the explorations of a small number which seek a suitable
place for the new home of the swarm and then guide it to the chosen
spot, it seems difficult to deny that some idea of the community and its
needs is present to the minds of its members. But we know so little as
yet of the limits of purely instinctive behaviour (and by that I mean
immediate reactions upon sense-perceptions determined by the innate
constitution) that it would be rash to make any such inference. The same
may be said of associations of birds or mammals, in which division of
labour is frequently displayed; when, for example, it is found that one
or more sentinels constantly keep watch while a flock or herd feeds or
rests, as is reported of many gregarious species.

But, however it may be with animal societies, we may confidently assert
that the group spirit has played an important part in the lives of all
enduring human groups, from the most primitive ages onwards.

It has even been maintained with some plausibility that group
self-consciousness preceded individual self-consciousness in the course
of the evolution of the human mind. That again is, it seems to me, a
proposition which cannot be substantiated. But it is, I think, true to
say that the two kinds of self-consciousness must have been achieved by
parallel processes, which constantly reacted upon one another in
reciprocal promotion.

In the lives of the humblest savages the group spirit plays an immensely
important part. It is the rule that a savage is born into a small
closed community. Such a community generally has its own locality within
which it remains, even if nomadic; and, if settled, it wholly lives in a
village, widely separated in space from all others. In this small
community the child grows up, becoming more or less intimately
acquainted with every member of it, and having practically no
intercourse with any other persons. Throughout his childhood he learns
its laws and traditions, becomes acutely aware of its public opinion,
and finds his welfare absolutely bound up with that of the village
community. He cannot leave it if he would; the only alternative open to
him is to become an outcast, as which he would very soon succumb in the
struggle for life. There is nothing comparable with this in our complex
civilised societies. The nearest parallel to it is the case of the young
child growing up in a peculiarly secluded family isolated in the depths
of the country.

This restriction of the intercourse of the young savage to the members
of his own small society and his absolute dependence upon it for all
that makes his survival possible would in themselves suffice to develop
his group consciousness in a high degree. But two other conditions,
well-nigh universal in savage life, tend strongly towards the same
result.

When the young savage begins to come into contact with persons other
than those of his own group, he learns to know them, not as individuals,
John Smith or Tom Brown, but as men of such or such a group; and he
himself is known to them as a man of his group, as representing his
group, his village community, tribe, or what not; and he displays
usually some mark or marks of his group, either in dress or ornament or
speech.

The other great condition of the development of the group spirit in
primitive societies is the general recognition of communal
responsibility. This no doubt is largely the result of the two
conditions previously mentioned, especially of the recognition of an
individual by members of other groups as merely a representative of his
group, rather than as an individual, and of the fact that his deeds, or
those of any one of his fellows, determine the attitudes of other groups
towards his group as a whole. But the influence of the principle of
communal responsibility, thus established, becomes immensely
strengthened by its recognition in a number of superstitious and
religious observances. The savage lives, generally speaking, bound hand
and foot by _tabus_ and precise prescriptions of behaviour for all
ordinary situations; and the breach of any one of these by any member of
the community is held to bring down misfortune or punishment on the
whole group; so far is this principle carried, that the breach of custom
by some individual is confidently inferred from the incidence of any
communal misfortune[34].

The recognition of communal responsibility is the great conservator of
savage society and customary law, the very root and stem of all savage
morality; it is the effective moral sanction without which the
superstitious and religious sanctions would be of little effect. By its
means, the idea of the community is constantly obtruded on the
consciousness of the individual. Through it he is constantly led, or
forced, to control his individualistic impulses and to undertake action
with regard to the welfare of the group rather than to his own private
interest. Through it the tendency of each to identify himself and each
of his fellows with the whole group is constantly fostered; because it
identifies their interests.

We may then say that, just as the direct induction of emotion and
impulse by sense-perception of their bodily expressions is the cement of
animal societies, so group self-consciousness is the cement and
harmonising principle of primitive human societies.

And the group spirit is not only highly effective in promoting the life
and welfare of the group; it is also the source of peculiar
satisfactions. The individual revels in his group-consciousness; hence
the principle is apt to run riot in savage societies, and we find that
in very many parts of the world a great variety of complex forms of
association is maintained, beside the primary and fundamental form of
association of the village community or nomadic band (the kinship or
subsistence group), apparently for no other reason than the attainment
and intensification of the satisfactions of the group spirit. Hence,
among peoples so low in the scale of savagery as the Australians, we
find a most complex system of grouping cutting across the subsistence
grouping; hence totem clans and phratries, exogamous groups, secret
societies, initiation ceremonies.

I lay stress on the satisfaction which group self-consciousness brings
as a condition or cause of these complexities of savage society,
because, I think, it has been unduly neglected as a socialising factor
and a determinant of the forms of association. If we ask—What are the
sources of this satisfaction?—we may find two answers. First, the
consciousness of the group and of oneself as a member of it brings a
sense of power and security, an assurance of sympathy and co-operation,
a moral and physical support without which man can hardly face the
world. In a thousand situations it is a source of settled opinions and
of definite guidance of conduct which obviates the most uncomfortable
and difficult necessity of exerting independent judgment and making up
one’s own mind. And in many such situations, not only does the savage
find a definite code prescribed for his guidance, but he shares the
collective emotion and feels the collective impulse that carries him on
to action without hesitation or timidity.

Secondly, we may, I think, go back to a very fundamental principle of
instinctive life, the principle, namely, that, in gregarious animals,
the satisfaction of the gregarious impulse is greater or more complete
the more nearly alike are the individuals congregated together. This
seems to be true of the animals, but it is true in a higher degree of
man; and, in proportion as his mind becomes more specialised and
refined, the more exacting is he in this respect. To the uncultivated
any society is better than none; but in the cultivated classes we become
extraordinarily exacting; we find the gregarious satisfaction in our own
peculiar _set_ only—a process carried furthest, perhaps, in university
circles. In savage life this shows itself in practices which accentuate
the likeness of members of a group and mark it off more distinctly from
other groups—for example, totems, peculiarities of dress, ornaments and
ceremonies; things which are closely paralleled by the clubs, blazers,
colours, cries, and so forth of our undergraduate communities.

The life of the savage, then, is in general dominated by that of the
group; and this domination is not effected by physical force or
compulsion (save in exceptional instances) but by the group spirit which
is inevitably developed in the mind of the savage child by the material
circumstances of his life and by the traditions, especially the
superstitious and religious traditions, of his community. Such group
self-consciousness is the principal moralising influence, and to this
influence is due in the main the fact that savages conform so strictly
to their accepted moral codes.

Group self-consciousness in savage communities brings then, I suggest,
two great advantages which account for the spontaneous development and
persistence among so many savage peoples of what, from a narrowly
utilitarian point of view, might seem to be an excess of group
organisation, such as the totemic systems of the Australians and of the
American Indians;—namely, firstly, the moralising influences of the
group spirit; secondly, the satisfactions or enjoyments immediately
accruing to every participant in active group life.

And these two advantages, being in some degree appreciated, lead to a
deliberate cultivation of group life for the securing of them in higher
measure. The cultivation of group life shows itself in the many
varieties of grouping on a purely artificial basis and in the practice
of rites and ceremonies, especially dances, often accompanied by song
and other music. There is nothing that so intensifies group
consciousness, at the cost of consciousness of individuality, as
ceremonial dancing and singing; especially when the dance consists of a
series of extravagant bizarre movements, executed by every member of the
group in unison, the series of movements being at the same time peculiar
to the particular group that practises them and symbolical of the
peculiar functions or properties claimed by the group. Many savage
dances have these characters in perfection; as, for example, those of
the Murray islanders of Torres Straits, where, as I have witnessed, the
several totemic groups—the dog-men, the pigeon-men, the shark-men, and
other such groups—continue, in spite of the partial destruction by
missionaries of their totemistic beliefs, to revel in night-long
gatherings, at which each group in turn mimics, in fantastic dances and
with solemn delight, the movements of its totem animal.

The importance of group consciousness in savage life has been recently
much insisted on by some anthropologists, and indeed, in my view,
overstated. Cornford[35] writes “When the totem-clan meets to hold its
peculiar dance, to work itself up till it feels the pulsing of its
common life through all its members, such nascent sense of individuality
as a savage may have—it is always very faint—is merged and lost; his
consciousness is filled with a sense of sympathetic activity. The group
is now feeling and acting as one soul, with a total force much greater
than any of its members could exercise in isolation. The individual is
lost, ‘beside himself,’ in one of those states of contagious enthusiasm
in which it is well known that men become capable of feats which far
outrange their normal powers.” And again “Over and above their
individual experience, all the members of the group alike partake of
what has been called the collective consciousness of the group as a
whole. Unlike their private experience, this pervading consciousness is
the same in all, consisting in those epidemic or infectious states of
feeling above described, which, at times when the common functions are
being exercised, invade the whole field of mentality, and submerge the
individual areas. To this group-consciousness belong also, from the
first moment of their appearance all representations which are
collective, a class in which all religious representations are included.
These likewise are diffused over the whole mentality of the group, and
identical in all its members.... The collective consciousness is thus
super-individual. It resides, of course, in the individuals composing
the group. There is nowhere else for it to exist, but it resides in all
of them together and not completely in any one of them. It is both in
myself and yet not myself. It occupies a certain part of my mind and yet
it stretches beyond and outside me to the limits of my group. And since
I am only a small part of my group, there is much more of it outside me
than inside. Its force therefore is much greater than my individual
force, and the more primitive I am the greater this preponderance will
be. Here, then, there exists in the world a power which is much greater
than any individual’s—super-individual, that is to say superhuman.”

“Because this force is continuous with my own consciousness, it is, as
it were, a reservoir to which I have access, and from which I can absorb
superhuman power to reinforce and enhance my own. This is its positive
aspect—in so far as this power is not myself and greater than myself, it
is a moral and restraining force, which can and does impose upon the
individual the necessity of observing the uniform behaviour of the
group.” This writer makes group consciousness the source of both
morality and religion. “The collective consciousness is also immanent in
the individual himself, forming within him that unreasoning impulse
called conscience, which like a traitor within the gates, acknowledges
from within the obligation to obey that other and much larger part of
the collective consciousness which lies outside. Small wonder that
obedience is absolute in primitive man, whose individuality is still
restricted to a comparatively small field, while all the higher levels
of mentality are occupied by this overpowering force[36].” The first
religious idea is that of “this collective consciousness, the only moral
power which can come to be felt as imposed from without.” And Cornford
goes yet further and makes of the group self-consciousness the source of
magic as well as of religion and morality. This primary reservoir of
super-individual power splits, he says, into two pools, human and
non-human; the former is magic power, the latter is divine power.

On this I would comment as follows. Although Cornford is right in
insisting upon the large influence of group consciousness, he is wrong,
I think, in underestimating individuality. He does not go so far as
some writers who suggest that group self-consciousness actually precedes
individual self-consciousness, but he says of individual
self-consciousness that it is but very faint in savages. I am more
inclined to agree with Lotze, who in a famous passage asserted that even
the crushed worm is in an obscure way aware of itself and its pain as
set over against the world. Many facts of savage behaviour forbid us to
accept the extreme view that denies them individual
self-consciousness—individual names, secret names, private property,
private rites, religious and magical, individual revenge, jealousy,
running _amok_, leadership, self-assertion, pride, vanity, competition
in games of skill and in technical and artistic achievement. The
flourishing of these and many other such things in primitive communities
reveals clearly enough to the unbiassed observer in the field the
effective presence of individual self-consciousness in the savage mind.
In this connexion I may refer to two pieces of evidence bearing very
directly on the question reported by Dr C. Hose and myself. Among the
Sea-Dayaks or Ibans of Borneo we discovered the prevalence of the belief
in the ‘nyarong’ or private ‘spirit helper,’ some spiritual or animated
individual power which a fortunate individual here and there finds
reason to believe is attached to him personally for his guidance and
help in all difficult situations. His belief in this personal helper and
the rites by aid of which he communicates with it are kept secret from
his fellows; so that it was only after long and intimate acquaintance
with these people that Dr Hose began to suspect the existence of this
peculiarly individualistic belief[37]. In the same volumes we have
described the Punans of Borneo, a people whose mode of life is in every
respect extremely primitive. In this respect they are perhaps unequalled
by any other existing people. Yet no one who is acquainted with these
amiable folk could doubt that, although their group consciousness is
highly developed, they enjoy also a well developed individual
self-consciousness. How otherwise can we interpret the fact that a Punan
who suffers malicious injury from a member of another tribe will nurse
his vengeful feeling for an indefinite period and, after the lapse of
years, will find an opportunity to bring down his enemy secretly with
blow-pipe and poisoned dart?

With Mr Cornford’s view of the part played by the group spirit in
moralising conduct I agree. I agree also that it is the collective life
or mind that develops religion and in part magic; but in my view
Cornford attributes to the savage far too much reflective theorising; he
represents him as formulating a theory of the collective consciousness
which is really almost identical with the interesting speculation of M.
Lévy Bruhl presently to be noticed, and he regards his conduct, his
religious and magical practices, as guided by these theories. But that
is to reverse the true order of things—to make theory precede practice;
whereas in reality, especially in religion and magic, practice has
everywhere preceded theory, often, as in this case, by thousands of
generations[38].

It is true that the savage often behaves as though he held this theory
of the collective consciousness as a field of force in which he
participates; that his conduct seems to require such a theory for its
rational justification. But it by no means follows that he has
formulated any theory at all. What the savage is conscious of is, not a
collective consciousness as a mysterious superhuman power, but the group
itself, the group of concrete embodied fellow men. He behaves and feels
as he does, because participation in the life of the group directly
modifies his individual tendencies and directly evokes these feelings
and actions; he does not discover, or seek, any theory by which to
explain them. Still less is it true that he performs these actions
because he has formulated a theory of a collective consciousness.

Mr Cornford regards the savage idea of a collective consciousness as the
germ of the idea of divine power or of God. Now this is connected with
the question of animism, preanimism, and dynanimism. It may be true that
the notion of _mana_ is the common prime source of religious and magical
ideas, but it does not follow that the idea of God is arrived at by way
of a notion of collective _mana_. No doubt that would be the probable
course of events, if the savage had so little sense of his individuality
as Cornford supposes; but it seems to me rather that the savage’s strong
sense of individuality has led at an early stage to the personalisation,
the individuation, of _mana_, the vaguely conceived spiritual power and
influence, and that it was only by a long course of religious and
philosophical speculation that men reached the conception of the
Absolute or of God as a universal power of which each personal
consciousness is a partial manifestation.

It is interesting to note that, if we could accept Cornford’s views, we
could now claim to witness the completion of one full cycle of the
wheel of speculation, the last step having been made in an article in a
recent number of the _Hibbert Journal_[39]; for it is there suggested
that the only God or super-individual power we ought to recognise and
revere is, not a collective consciousness conceived as a
supra-individual unity of consciousness, but the collective mind of
humanity in the sense in which I am using the term, a system of mental
forces that slowly progresses towards greater harmony and integration.

M. Lévy Bruhl has written an interesting, though highly speculative,
account of savage mental life which he represents as differing
profoundly from our own, chiefly in that it is dominated by ‘collective
representations[40].’ His view is not unlike that put forward by
Cornford.

Collective representations or ideas are rightly said to be the product
of the group mind rather than of any individual mind; that is to say,
they have been gradually evolved by collective mental life; and they are
said to differ from our ideas in being “states more complex in which the
emotional and motor elements are integral parts of the ideas.” Thinking
by aid of these collective representations is said to have its own laws
quite distinct from the laws of logic.

These statements are no doubt correct; but both Lévy Bruhl and Cornford
commit the great error of assuming that the mental life of civilised man
is conducted by each individual in a purely rational and logical manner;
they overlook the fact that we also are largely dominated by collective
representations; for these collective representations are nothing but
ideas of objects to which traditional sentiments, sentiments of awe, of
fear, of respect, of love, of reverence, are attached. Almost the whole
of the religion and morality of the average civilised man is based on
his acquisition of such collective representations, traditional
sentiments grown up about ideas of objects, ideas which he receives
ready made and sentiments which are impressed upon him by the community
that has evolved them.

It is no doubt true that in the main the field of objects to which
collective representations apply is larger in savage life; and these
ideas are more uniform and more powerful and unquestioned, because the
group is more homogeneous in its sentiments. But it is, fortunately,
only a rare individual here and there among us who in considerable
degree emancipates himself from the influence of such representations
and becomes capable of confronting all objects about him in a perfectly
cool, critical, logical attitude—who can “peep and botanise upon his
mother’s grave.” Only by strict intellectual discipline do we progress
towards strictly logical operations in relation to real life, towards
pure judgments of fact as opposed to judgments of value. For our
judgments of value are rooted in our sentiments; and whatever is for us
an object of a sentiment of love or hate, of attachment or aversion, can
only with the greatest difficulty, if at all, be made an object of a
pure judgment of fact.

And Cornford and Lévy Bruhl make the same mistake in regard to
‘collective representations’ as in regard to the group
self-consciousness—namely, they credit the savage with theories for the
explanation of the beliefs implicitly involved in the ‘collective
representations,’ for example, the theory of mystic participation, which
is said to replace for the savage the civilised man’s theory of
mechanical causation. But, when we regard any material object as holy,
or sacred, or as of peculiar value, because it was given us by a
departed friend, or belonged to and perhaps was once worn by a beloved
person, our behaviour towards it is not determined by any theory of
participation; if, for example, we touch it tenderly and with reverent
care, that is the direct expression of our feeling. We even behave as if
we held the theory of participation, to the extent of believing that the
dead or distant person will suffer pain if we ill-use or neglect the
object which is associated with him in our minds, but without actually
holding that belief; and still more without elaborating a theory of the
nature of the process by which our action will produce such an effect.
It is only a late and highly sophisticated reflection upon behaviour of
this kind which leads to theories for the justification of such
behaviour. It is not true, then, that we are logical individuals, while
savages are wholly prelogical in virtue of the dominance among them of
the collective mental life. The truth rather is that, wherever emotion
qualifies our intellectual operations, it renders them other than purely
and strictly logical; and the savage or the civilised man departs more
widely from the strictly logical conduct of his intellect, in proportion
as his conceptions of things are absorbed without critical reflection
and analysis and are coloured with the traditional sentiments of his
community. The average savage, being more deeply immersed in his group,
suffers these effects more strongly than the average civilised man. Yet
the interval in this respect between the modern man of scientific
culture and the average citizen of our modern states is far greater
than that between the latter and the savage.

If one had to name the principal difference between the conditions of
life of the typical savage and those of the average civilised man, one
would, I think, have to point to the lack in civilised life of those
conditions which so inevitably develop the group consciousness of the
savage. The family circle supplies to the young child something of these
conditions, but in a very imperfect degree only. At an early age this
influence is much weakened by general intercourse. As the individual
approaches maturity, he finds himself at liberty to cut himself off
completely from all his natural setting, to transplant himself to any
part of the world, and to share in the life of any civilised community.
He can earn his livelihood anywhere, and he knows nothing of communal
responsibility.

Progressive weakening of the conditions that force the development of
group self-consciousness has characterised the whole course of the
development of civilisation, and has reached its climax in the
conditions of life in our large cities.

In primitive communities the conditions of group self-consciousness are,
as we have seen, fourfold; namely kinship, territorial, traditional and
occupational association. All these are present in the highest degree in
the nomadic group under the typical patriarchal system.

When kinship groups take to agriculture and become permanently settled
on one spot, the kinship factor tends to be weakened, through the
inclusion of alien elements; and the territorial factor becomes the most
important condition. Throughout European history the territorial factor,
expressing itself in the form of the village-community, remained of
universal importance in this respect; the Roman Empire and the Roman
Church weakened it greatly; but everywhere outside those spheres it
continued to be of dominant importance until the great social revolution
of the modern industrial period.

The village community maintained much of the tradition and custom that
tend to develop group self-consciousness with its moralising influence.
But at the present time almost the only condition of wide and general
influence that continues in times of peace to foster group
self-consciousness is occupational association. And so we find men
tending more and more to be grouped for all serious collective
activities according to their occupations. From the earliest development
of European industry this tendency has been strong; it produced the
trading and craft guilds which played so great a part in medieval
Europe; and, though the monarchical and capitalistic regimes of modern
times have done all they can to repress and break up these occupational
groups, and have greatly restricted their influence, they have failed to
suppress them entirely. The climax of this tendency for the occupational
to replace and overshadow all other forms of self-conscious grouping is
present-day Syndicalism.

The natural conditions of group self-consciousness, which in primitive
societies rendered its development inevitable and spontaneous in every
man, have then been in the main destroyed. But man cannot stand alone;
men cannot live happily as mere individuals; they desire and crave and
seek membership in a group, in whose collective opinions and emotions
and self-consciousness and activities they may share, with which they
may identify themselves, thereby lessening the burden of individual
responsibility, judgment, decision and effort.

Hence in this age the natural groupings and the involuntary developments
of group consciousness are largely replaced by an enormous development
of artificial voluntary groupings, over and above the natural groupings
that are still only in very imperfect measure determined by the weakened
force of the natural conditions, namely kinship, neighbourhood and
occupation.

In part these artificial groupings are designed to reinforce the natural
conditions, as, for example, village festivals. The whole population of
a country such as our own is permeated by a vast and complexly
interwoven, or rather tangled, skein of the bonds of voluntary
associations. Many of these are, of course, formed to undertake some
definite work, to achieve some end which can only be achieved by
co-operative effort. But in the majority of such cases the satisfactions
yielded by group life play a very great part in leading to the formation
of and in maintaining the groups, for example, groups of philanthropic
workers, the makers of charity bazaars, the salvation army, the
churches, the chapels, the sects. Most of such associations that have
any success and continuity of existence contain a nucleus of persons who
identify themselves in the fullest possible manner with the group, make
its interest their leading concern, the desire of its welfare their
dominant motive, and find in its service their principal satisfaction
and happiness.

And in very many voluntary associations the group-motives, the desire
for the satisfactions to be found in group life, are of prime
importance, predominating vastly over the desire to achieve any
particular end by co-operative action. Such are our countless clubs and
societies formed frankly for recreation, or for mutual improvement, and
for all kinds of ostensible purposes which serve merely as excuses or
reasons for the existence of the club. In the majority of instances
these declared purposes really serve merely or chiefly to exert a
certain natural selection of persons, to bring together persons of
similar tastes as voluntary associates, to enable, in short, birds of a
feather to flock together. Even some of our enduring historical
institutions owe their continuance chiefly to the advantages and
satisfactions that proceed from group consciousness, for example,
colleges, school-houses, and political parties, especially perhaps in
America. Party feeling, as Sir H. Maine rightly said, is frequently a
remedy for the inertia of democracy.

The savage, when he maintains associations other than those determined
by natural conditions, intensifies his group consciousness by wearing
badges and totem marks, by tatooing and scarring, and by indulging in
various rites and ceremonies, about which a certain secrecy and mystery
is maintained. And civilised men exhibit just the same tendency and take
very similar measures to intensify group consciousness. We have our club
colours and ribbons and blazers, our college gowns and colours, our
Oxford accent, our badges of membership, and so on. Freemasonry, with
its lodges and badges and mysterious rites, seems to be the purest
example on a large scale. And, when the group consciousness and the
group sentiment have been acquired, we continue to cultivate it purely
for its own sake, by holding annual dinners and reunions of old boys,
and so forth.

It is of the greatest importance that this tendency to seek and maintain
a share in group consciousness, which, as we have seen, manifests itself
everywhere even under the most adverse conditions, not merely yields
comfort and satisfaction to individuals, but brings about results which
are in almost every way extremely advantageous for the higher
development of human life in general.

We have seen that, in the well-organised group, collective deliberation,
judgment, and action are raised to a higher plane of effectiveness than
is possible to the average member of the group. But apart from that, the
group spirit continues with us, as with the savage (though in a less
effective degree) to be the great socialising agency. In the majority of
cases it is the principal, if not the sole, factor which raises a man’s
conduct above the plane of pure egoism, leads him to think and care and
work for others as well as for himself. Try to imagine any man wholly
deprived of his group consciousness and set over against all his
fellowmen as an individual unit, and you will see that you could expect
but little from him in the way of self-sacrifice or public service—at
most a care for his wife and children and sporadic acts of kindliness
when direct appeals are made to his pity; but none of that energetic and
devoted public service and faithful self-sacrificing co-operation
without which the continued welfare of any human society is impossible.

The group spirit destroys the opposition and the conflict between the
crudely individualistic and the primitive altruistic tendencies of our
nature.

This is the peculiar merit and efficiency of the complex motives that
arise from the group spirit; they bring the egoistic self-seeking
impulses into the service of society and harmonise them with the
altruistic tendencies. The group spirit secures that the egoistic and
the altruistic tendencies of each man’s nature, instead of being in
perpetual conflict, as they must be in its absence, shall harmoniously
co-operate and re-enforce one another throughout a large part of the
total field of human activity.

For it is of the essence of the group spirit that the individual
identifies himself, as we say, with the group more or less; that is to
say, in technical language, his self-regarding sentiment becomes
extended to the group more or less completely, so that he is moved to
desire and to work for its welfare, its success, its honour and glory,
by the same motives which prompt him to desire and to work for his own
welfare and success and honour; as in the case of the student working
for a scholarship or university prize, or the member of an exploring
expedition or fighting group. Further, the motives supplied by the group
spirit may be stronger than, and may overpower, the purely
individualistic egoistic motives, just because they harmonise with, and
are supported by, any altruistic tendency or tendencies comprised in the
make up of the individual; which altruistic tendencies will, where the
group spirit is lacking, oppose and weaken the effects of purely
egoistic motives. To illustrate this principle, let us imagine an
Englishman who, in a Congo forest, finds a white man sick or in
difficulties. To succour the sick man may be to incur grave risks, and
he is tempted to pass on; but the thought comes to him that in so doing
he will lower the prestige of the white man in the eyes of the natives;
and this idea, evoking the motives of the group spirit which unites all
white men in such a land, brings victory to his sense of pity in its
struggle with selfish fear.

In this way, that is by extension to the group, the egoistic impulses
are transmuted, sublimated, and deprived of their individualistic
selfish character and effects and are turned to public service. Hence it
is that it is generally so difficult or impossible to analyse the
motives of any public service or social activity and to display them as
either purely egoistic or altruistic; for they are, as Herbert Spencer
called them, ego-altruistic. And hence it comes about that both the
cynic and the idealist can make out plausible cases, when they seek to
show that either egoism or altruism predominates in human life. Both are
right in a partial sense.

Another noteworthy feature of the group spirit renders it extremely
effective in promoting social life; namely the fact that, although the
group sentiment is apt to determine an attitude of rivalry, competition,
and antagonism towards similarly constituted groups, yet a man may share
in the self-consciousness of more groups than one, so long as their
natures and aims do not necessarily bring them into rivalry. And in our
complex modern societies this principle of multiple group consciousness
in each man is of extreme importance; for without it, and in the absence
or comparative lack of the natural conditions of grouping other than the
occupational, the whole population would become divided into
occupational groups, each fighting collectively against every other for
the largest possible share of the good things of life. A tendency
towards this state of things is very perceptible, in spite of the
correcting cross-connexions of kinship, of church and political party,
and of territorial association.

But another principle of multiple group consciousness is, perhaps, of
still greater importance, namely that it allows the formation of a
hierarchy of group sentiments for a system of groups in which each
larger group includes the lesser; each group being made the object of
the extended self-regarding sentiment in a way which includes the
sentiment for the lesser group in the sentiment for the larger group in
which it is comprised. Thus the family, the village, the county, the
country as a whole, form for the normal man the objects of a harmonious
hierarchy of sentiments of this sort, each of which strengthens rather
than weakens the others, and yields motives for action which on the
whole co-operate and harmonise rather than conflict.

Such a hierarchy is seen in savage life. It often happens that a man is
called on to join in the defence of some village of the tribe other than
his own. In such cases he is moved not only by his tribal sentiment, but
also by his sentiments for his village and family. The sentiment for the
part supports the sentiment for the whole.

It is of considerable importance also that in general the development of
a sentiment of attachment to one group not only does not prevent, but
rather facilitates, the development of similar sentiments for other
groups. And this is especially true when the groups concerned are
related to one another as parts and wholes, that is, when they form a
hierarchy of successively more widely inclusive groups. The sentiment
for the smaller group (e.g. the family) naturally develops first in the
child’s mind; if only for the reason that this is the group of which he
can first form a definite idea, and with the whole of which he is in
immediate relations. The strong development of this first group
sentiment prepares the child’s mind for the development of other and
wider group sentiments. For it increases his power of grasping
intellectually the group of persons as a complex whole; and it
strengthens by exercise those impulses or primary tendencies which must
enter into the constitution of any group sentiment; and, thirdly, it
prevents the excessive development of the purely individualistic
attitude, of the habit of looking at every situation and weighing all
values from the strictly individualistic and egoistic standpoint; which
attitude, if once it becomes habitual, must form a powerful hindrance to
the development of the wider group sentiments, when the child arrives at
an age to grasp the idea of the larger group.

The organisation of an army again illustrates these principles in
relatively clear and simple fashion. In our own army the regiment is the
traditional self-conscious unit about which traditional sentiment and
ritual have been carefully fostered, in part through realisation of
their practical importance, in part because this unit is of such a size
and nature as to be well suited to call out strongly the natural group
tendencies of its component individuals. On the whole the military
authorities, and especially Lord Haldane in the formation of the
territorial army, seem to have wisely recognised the importance of the
group spirit of the regiment; although during the Great War it was,
under the pressure of other considerations, apparently lost sight of at
certain times and places, with, I believe, deplorable consequences.

In modern warfare, and especially in the Great War, the Division has
tended to become of predominant importance as the unit of organisation;
and accordingly, without destroying or superseding regimental group
consciousness, the sentiment for the Division has been in many instances
a very strong factor in promoting the spiritual cohesion and efficiency
of the army. Certain Divisions, such as the 10th and the 29th, have
covered themselves with glory, so that the soldiers have learnt to feel
a great pride in and a devotion to the Division.

This larger group, although of comparatively ephemeral existence and
therefore devoid of long traditions coming down from the past, is in
perfect and obvious harmony, in purpose and spirit and material
organisation, with the battalions and other units of which it is
composed; and, accordingly, the sentiment for the larger group does not
enter into rivalry with that for the battalion, the battery, or other
smaller unit; rather it comprises this within its own organisation and
derives energy and stability from it.

These psychological principles of group consciousness are, I think, well
borne out inductively, by any comparative survey; that is to say, we
find that, where family sentiment and the sentiment for the local group
are strong, there also the wider group sentiments are strong, and good
citizenship, patriotism, and ready devotion to public services of all
kinds are the rule. The strongest most stable States have always been
those in which family sentiment has been strong, especially those in
which it has been strengthened and supported by the custom of ancestor
worship, as in Rome, Japan and China. Scotchmen again (Highlanders
especially) are noted for clannishness, and Scotch cousins have become a
bye-word; a fact which implies the great strength of the family
sentiment. The clan sentiment, which is clearly only an extension of the
family sentiment, is also notoriously strong. The sentiment for Scotland
as a whole is no less strong in the hearts of all her sons. But, and
this is the important point, these strong group sentiments are perfectly
compatible with and probably conducive to a sentiment for the still
wider group, Great Britain or the British Empire; and the public
services rendered to these larger groups by men of Scottish birth are
equally notorious.

In these considerations we may see, I think, a principal ground of the
importance of the institution of the family for the welfare of the
state. The importance has often been insisted upon; but too much stress
is usually laid upon the material aspects, and not enough upon the
mental effects, of family life.

It has been a grave mistake on the part of many collectivists, from
Plato onwards, that they have sought to destroy the family and to bring
up all children as the children of the state only, in some kind of
barrack system. It is not too much to say that, if they could succeed in
this (and in this country great strides in this direction are being
rapidly made), they would destroy the mental foundations of all
possibility of collective life of the higher type.

We touch here upon a question of policy of the highest importance. There
are, it seems to me, three distinct policies which may be deliberately
pursued, for the securing of the predominance of public or social
motives over egoistic motives. First, we may aim at building up group
life on the foundation of a system of discipline which will result in
more or less complete suppression of the egoistic tendencies of
individuals, the building up in them of habits of unquestioning
obedience to authority. I imagine that the Jesuit system of education
might fairly be taken as the most successful and thorough-going
application of this principle. The organisation of an army of unwilling
conscripts to fight for a foreign power must rest on the same basis.
Some group spirit no doubt will generally grow up. But, though wonderful
results have been obtained in this way, the system has two great
weaknesses. First, it seeks to repress and destroy more than half of the
powerful forces that move men to action—namely, the egoistic motives in
general—instead of making use of them, directing them to social ends.
Secondly, it necessarily crushes individuality and therefore all
capacity of progress and further development in various directions; it
results in a rigidly conservative system without possibility of
spontaneous development.

The second system is that which aims at developing in all members of the
state or inclusive group a sentiment of devotion to the whole, while
suppressing the growth of sentiments for any minor groups within the
whole. This was the system of Plato’s _Republic_ and is essentially the
collectivist ideal. It is the policy of those who would suppress all
sentimental groupings, all local loyalties and patriotisms, in favour of
the ideal of the brotherhood of man, the cosmopolitan ideal. I have
already pointed out one great weakness of this plan,—namely, that this
sentiment for the all-inclusive group cannot be effectively developed
save by way of development of the minor group sentiments. And, though it
may succeed with some persons, there will always be many who cannot
grasp the idea of the larger whole sufficiently firmly and intelligently
to make it the object of any strong and enlightened sentiment of
attachment; such persons will be left on the purely egoistic level,
whereas their energies might have been effectively socialised by the
development of some less inclusive group consciousness.

Again, the smaller group is apt to call out a man’s energies more
effectively, because he can see and foresee more clearly the effects of
his own actions on its behalf. Whereas the larger the group, the more
are the efforts of individuals and their effects obscured and lost to
view in vast movements of the collective life. That is to say, the
smaller groups harmonise more effectively than the larger groups the
purely egoistic and the altruistic motives (except of course in the case
of those few persons who can play leading parts in the life of the
larger group). For, though a man may be moved by his devotion to the
group to work for its welfare, he will work still more energetically if,
at the same time, he is able to achieve personal distinction and
acknowledgment, if the purely egoistic motives can also find
satisfaction in his activities. Hence this second policy also, no matter
how successful, fails to make the most of men, fails to bring to the
fullest exercise all their powers in a manner that will promote the
welfare of the whole. Thirdly, this system loses the advantages of the
healthy rivalry between groups within the whole; which rivalry is a
means to a great liberation of human energies. These are the weaknesses
of the over-centralised state, such as modern France or the Roman
Empire.

Only the third policy can liberate and harmonise the energies of men to
the fullest extent; namely, that which aims at developing in each
individual a hierarchy of group sentiments in accordance with the
natural course of development.

One other virtue of the group spirit must be mentioned. Although it
tends to bring similar groups into keen rivalry and even into violent
conflict, the antagonism between men who are moved to conflict by the
group spirit is less bitter than that between individuals who are
brought into conflict by personal motives; for the members of each group
or party, though they may wish to frustrate or even to destroy the other
party as such, may remain benevolent towards its members individually.
And this is rendered easier by the fact that the members of each group,
recognising that their antagonists are also moved by the group spirit,
by loyalty and devotion to the group, will sympathise with and respect
their motives far more readily and fully than they would, if they
ascribed to their opponents purely egoistic motives. This recognition,
even though it be not clearly formulated, softens the conflict and
moderates the hostile feelings that opposition inevitably arouses in men
keenly pursuing any end, especially one which they hold to be a public
good; in this way it renders possible that continuance of friendly
relations between members of bitterly opposed parties which has happily
been the rule and at the same time the seeming anomaly of English public
life.

In our older educational system, and especially in the ‘public schools’
and older universities, the advantages and the importance of developing
the group spirit have long been practically recognised—‘esprit de corps’
has been cultivated by the party system, by rivalry of groups within the
group; by forms, school-houses, colleges, clubs, teams, games, and by
keeping the honour and glory of the school, college, or other unit,
prominently before the minds of the scholars in many effective ways. It
is, I think, one of the gravest defects of our primary system of
education that it makes so little provision for development of this
kind; that, while it weakens the family sentiment, it provides no
effective substitute for it. Something has been done in recent years to
remedy this defect, notably the fostering of the boy-scout movement; but
every opportunity of supplying this need should be seized by those who
are responsible for the direction of educational policy.

The importance of the group spirit may be illustrated by pointing to
those individuals and classes which are denied its benefits. The tramp,
the cosmopolitan globe-trotter, the outcast in general, whether the
detachment from group life be due to the disposition or choice of the
individual or to unfortunate circumstances, is apt to show, only too
clearly, how little man is able, standing alone, to maintain a decent
level of conduct and character. On a large scale this is illustrated by
the casteless classes in caste communities, and especially by Eurasians
of India and by other persons and classes of mixed descent, who fail to
identify themselves wholly with either of the groups from which they
derive their blood. The moral defects of persons of these classes have
often been deplored, and they have usually been attributed to the
mixture of widely different hereditary strains. There is probably some
truth in the view; but in general the moral shortcomings of persons of
these classes are chiefly due to the fact that they do not fully share
in the life of any group having old established moral traditions and
sentiments.


SUMMARY OF PRINCIPAL CONDITIONS OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE GROUP SPIRIT

We have seen that the group spirit plays a vastly important part in
raising men above the purely animal level of conduct, in extending each
man’s interests beyond the narrow circle of his own home and family, in
inspiring him to efforts for the common good, in stimulating him to
postpone his private to public ends, in enabling the common man to rise
at times, as shown by a multitude of instances during the Great War, to
lofty heights of devotion and self-sacrifice.

The development of the group spirit consists in two essential processes,
namely, the acquisition of knowledge of the group and the formation of
some sentiment of attachment to the group as such. It is essential that
the group shall be apprehended or conceived as such by its members.
Therefore the group spirit is favoured by whatever tends to define the
group, to mark it off distinctly from other groups; by geographical
boundaries; by peculiarities of skin-colour or of physical type, of
language, or accent, of dress, custom, or habit, common to the members
of the group; that is to say, by homogeneity and distinctiveness of type
within the group.

And, though definition of the group as such within the minds of its
members is the prime condition of the growth of the group spirit, that
spirit will be the more effective the fuller and truer is the knowledge
of the group in the minds of its members. Just as individual
self-knowledge favours self-direction and wisdom of choice, so group
self-knowledge must, if it is to be fully effective, comprise not only
the conception of the group as a whole but also the fullest possible
knowledge of the component parts and individuals and an understanding of
their relations to one another. In this respect smallness and
homogeneity of the group are obviously favourable. But knowledge of the
group, however exact and widely diffused, is of itself of no effect, if
there be not also widely diffused in the members some sentiment of
attachment to the group. The prevailing group sentiment is almost
inevitably one of attachment. There are exceptional instances in which
men are compelled to act as members of a group which they hate or
despise, notably in some cases of compulsory military service and in
convict gangs; but it must be rare that, even under such conditions,
some sense of common interest, some fellow feeling for other members in
like distressing circumstances, does not lead to the growth of some
group spirit, provided only that the group has some continuity and some
homogeneity in essentials.

In all natural and spontaneously formed groups, the extension of the
self-regarding sentiment to the group is a normal and inevitable
process; and, like the self-regarding sentiment, the sentiment so formed
may range from an insane and incorrigible pride (as often in the case of
the family sentiment) to a decent self-respect that is perfectly
compatible with a modest attitude and with reasonable claims upon and
regard for the interests of other groups.

The main difference between the self-regarding sentiment and the
developed group sentiment is that the latter commonly involves an
element of devotion to the group for its own sake and the sake of one’s
fellow members. That is to say, the group sentiment is a synthesis of
the self-regarding and the altruistic tendencies in which they are
harmonised to mutual support and re-enforcement: the powerful egoistic
impulses being sublimated to higher ends than the promotion of the
self’s welfare[41].

Further, the group has, or may have, a greater continuity of existence
than the individual, both in the past and in the future; and for this
reason, and because also it includes the purely altruistic tendency, the
group sentiment is capable of idealisation in a high degree and of
yielding satisfactions far more enduring and profound than the most
refined self-sentiment.

Both knowledge of the group and the growth of the group sentiment are
greatly promoted by two processes, in the absence of which the group
spirit can attain only a very modest development. These are free
intercourse within the group and free intercourse between the group and
other groups. We shall have occasion to discuss and illustrate them in
later chapters.



CHAPTER V

PECULIARITIES OF GROUPS OF VARIOUS TYPES


We have discussed the psychology of the simple crowd or unorganised
group; and taking an army as an extreme and relatively simple type of
the highly organised group, we have used it to illustrate the principal
ways in which organisation of the group modifies its collective life,
raising it in many respects high above that of the crowd.

I propose now to discuss very briefly the peculiarities of groups of
several types. Some classification of groups seems desirable as an aid
to the discovery of the general principles of collective life and their
application to the understanding of social life in general. It seems
impossible to discover any single principle of classification. Almost
every group that enjoys a greater continuity of existence than the
simple crowd partakes in some degree of qualities common to all. But we
may distinguish the most important qualities and roughly classify groups
according to the degrees in which they exhibit them.

Apart from crowds, which, as we have seen, may be either fortuitously
gathered or brought together by some common purpose, there are many
simple groups which, though accidental in origin (i.e. not brought
together by common purpose or interest) and remaining unorganised, yet
present in simple and rudimentary form some of the features of group
life.

The persons seated in one compartment of a railway train during a long
journey may be entirely strangers to one another at the outset; yet,
even in the absence of conversation, they in the course of some hours
will begin to manifest some of the peculiarities of the psychological
group. To some extent they will have come to a mutual understanding and
adjustment; and, when a stranger adds himself to their company, his
entrance is felt to some extent as an intrusion which at the least
demands readjustments; he is regarded with curious and to some extent
hostile glances. If an outsider threatens to encroach on the rights of
one of the company, the others will readily combine in defence of their
member; and any little incident affecting their one common interest
(namely, punctual arrival of the train at its destination) quickly
reveals, and in doing so strengthens, the bond of common feeling.

On a sea voyage the group spirit of the passenger ship attains a greater
development, by reason of the longer continuance of the group, its more
complete detachment and definition, the sense of greater hazard
affecting all alike, the sense of dependence on mutual courtesy and
good-will and sympathy for the comfort and enjoyment of all. Very soon
the experienced traveller, contrasting and comparing this present
company with those of previous voyages, sums up its qualities and
defects and lays his plans accordingly. And by the time that an
intermediate port is reached, where perhaps the most ‘grumpy’ and least
entertaining member of the company disembarks, even his departure is
felt by the rest as a loss that leaves a gap in the structure of the
group.

Such fortuitous and ephemeral groups apart, all others may be classed in
the two great divisions of natural and artificial groups.

The natural groups again fall into two main classes which partly
coincide,—namely, those rooted in kinship and those determined by
geographical conditions. The family is the pure example of the former;
the population of a small island, the type of the latter kind. The main
difference is that the bonds of the kinship group are purely or
predominantly mental and therefore can, and commonly do, remain
effective in spite of all spatial separation and of all lack of common
purpose or of material benefits accruing from membership in the group.

The artificial groups may be divided into three great classes, the
purposive, the customary or traditional, and the mixed; those of the
last kind combining the purposive and the traditional characters in
various proportions.

The purposive group is brought together and maintained by the existence
of a common purpose in the minds of all its members. It is, in respect
of efficiency, the highest type; for it is essentially self-conscious,
aware of its ends and of its own nature, and it deliberately adopts an
organisation suited to the attainment of those ends. The simplest and
purest type is the social club, a body of people who meet together to
satisfy the promptings of the gregarious instinct and to enjoy the
pleasures of group life. In the great majority of instances, the social
club adopts some form of recreation—debating, music, chess, whist,
football, tennis, cycling—the practice of which gives point and
definition to the activities of members and secures secondary
advantages. It is noteworthy that on this purely recreational plane,
clubs and societies of all sorts seek in almost all cases to enhance the
group consciousness and hence the satisfactions of group life by
entering into relations, generally relations of friendly rivalry, but
sometimes merely of affiliation and formal intercourse, with other like
groups. For not only is the group consciousness enriched and
strengthened by such intercourse; but, when the rival or communicating
groups, becoming aware of one another, become informally or, more
generally, formally allied to constitute a larger whole, the
consciousness of participation in this larger whole gratifies more fully
the gregarious impulse and enhances the sense of power and confidence in
each member of each constituent group. This seems to be the main ground
of that universal tendency to the formation of ever more inclusive
associations of clubs and societies, which, overleaping even national
boundaries and geographical and racial divisions, has produced numerous
world-wide associations.

Another very numerous class of strictly purposive groups is to be found
in the commercial companies. In these the group spirit commonly remains
at the lowest level; for the dominant motive is individual financial
gain, and the only common bond among the shareholders is their interest
in the management of the company so far as it affects the private and
individual end of each one. Group self-knowledge, organisation,
tradition, and group sentiment are all at a minimum; accordingly the
group remains incapable of effective deliberation or action. It operates
through its board of directors and officers and, owing to its incapacity
for group action, has to rely upon the provisions of the Company Laws
for the control of their actions.

A third large class of purposive groups are the associations formed for
the furthering of some public end. Many such groups are purely
altruistic or philanthropic; but in the majority the members hope to
share in some degree in the public benefits for the attainment of which
the group is formed. In many such associations, group life hardly rises
above the low level of the commercial company; the main difference being
that, in virtue of the ‘disinterested’ or public-spirited nature of the
dominant purpose, the members regard one another and their executive
officers with greater confidence and sympathy; even though remaining
personally unacquainted. Notable instances of such associations,
achieving great public ends, are ‘The National Trust for the
Preservation of Places of Natural Beauty or Historic Interest,’ and ‘The
Public Footpaths Association.’ Other associations of this kind have
something of the nature of a commercial company: e.g. ‘The First Garden
City Company,’ and ‘The Trust Houses Company.’ The peculiarity of these
is that the motive of financial gain is subordinated to, while
co-operating with, the desire for achievement of a public good, a
benefit to the whole community in which the members of the group share
in an almost inappreciable degree only. Such associations are very
characteristic of the life of this country; and it may be hoped that
their multiplication and development will prove to be one of the
ameliorating factors of the future, softening the asperities of
commercial life, correcting to some degree that narrowing of the
sympathies, and preventing that tendency to class antagonisms, which
purely commercial associations inevitably produce. The great
co-operative societies seem to have something of this character; for,
although the dominant motive of membership is probably in most cases
private advantage, yet membership brings with it some sense of
participation in a great movement for better social organisation, some
sense of loyalty to the group, some rudimentary group knowledge and
group spirit, some interest in and satisfaction in the prosperity of the
group for its own sake, over and above the strictly private interest of
each member. The introduction of various forms of profit sharing will
give something of this character to commercial companies.

The recent investments in government loans by millions of individuals,
acting in part from patriotic motives, must have a similar tendency; and
a similar effect on a large scale must be produced by any
nationalisation of industries, a fact which is one of the weightiest
grounds for desiring such nationalisation; though it remains uncertain
whether, when the scale of the association becomes so large as to
include the whole nation, the bulk of the citizens will be able
effectively to discern the identity of their public and private
interests, and whether, therefore, such nationalisation will greatly
promote that fusion or co-operation of public and private motives which
is the essential function and merit of the group spirit.

The most characteristic British group of the purposive type is the
association formed for some public or quasi-public end and operating
through a democratically elected committee or committees and
sub-committees. Such groups are the cradle of the representative
principle and the training ground of the democratic spirit, especially
of its deliberative and executive faculties. In them each member, taking
part in the election of the committee, delegates to them his share of
authority, but continues to exert control over them by his vote upon
reports of the committee and in the periodic re-election of its
members. On this ground the citizens are trained to understand the
working of the representative principle; to yield to the opinion of the
majority on the choice of means, without ceasing loyally to co-operate
towards the common end; to observe the necessary rules of procedure; to
abide by group decisions; to influence group opinion in debate, and in
turn to be influenced by it and respect it; to differ without enmity; to
keep the common end in view, in spite of the inevitable working of
private and personal motives; to understand the necessity for
delegation, and to respect the organisation through which alone the
group raises itself above the level of the crowd.

Traditional groups of pure or nearly pure character are relatively
infrequent. Perhaps the castes of the Hindu world are, of all large
groups, those which most nearly approach the pure type. Traditional
grouping is characteristic of stagnant old established populations, of
which it is the basis of organisation and principal cement. No doubt in
almost every case the formation of the traditional group was in some
degree purposive; but the original purpose has generally been lost sight
of; myths and legends have grown up to explain the origin of and give a
fictitious purpose or ‘raison d’être’ to the group. In the absence of
any definite practical purpose animating the group and holding it
together, its stability is secured and its tradition is re-enforced and
given a visible presentation by the development of ritual. Of all the
great groups among us the Free Masons perhaps afford the best
illustration of this type.

Far more important in the British world are the groups of the mixed
type, partly traditional and partly purposive, groups having a long
history and origins shrouded in the mists of antiquity, but having some
strong and more or less definite common purpose. Of such groups the
Christian Church is the greatest example. In the Roman Church, whose
history has been so little interrupted, tradition attains its fullest
power, and the regard for the past is strengthened and supplemented by
the prospect of an indefinitely prolonged future directed towards the
same ends. Its organisation has grown gradually under the one continued
overshadowing purpose, every addition becoming embodied and established
in the great tradition, the strength of which is perpetually maintained
by ritual. And this traditional organisation is not only borne in the
minds of each generation of members of the Church, but, in an ever
increasing degree, has embodied itself in a material system of stone and
glass and metal and printed words; these constitute a visible and
enduring presentment which, though entirely disconnected and
heterogeneous in a merely material sense, yet provides fixed points in
the whole organisation, contributing immensely to its stability, and
aiding greatly in bringing home to the minds of its members the unity of
the whole group in the past, the present, and the future. Many groups or
sects having the same essential purpose as the Roman Church have aimed
to establish a tradition without the aid of such material embodiments:
but their ephemeral histories illustrate the wisdom of the mother Church
which, in building up her vast organisation, has recognised the
limitations and the frailties of the human mind and has not scorned to
adapt herself to them in order to overcome them.

On a smaller scale our ancient universities and their colleges
illustrate the same great type of the partly traditional partly
purposive group, and the same great principles of collective
life,—namely, the stability derived from the continuity of tradition,
from its careful culture, and its partial embodiment in ritual and
material structure.

An essential weakness of all such groups in a progressive community is
that tradition tends to overshadow purpose; hence every such group tends
towards the rigidity and relative futility of the purely traditional
group. Its organisation tends to set so rigidly that it is incapable of
adapting itself to the changing needs of the present and the future; the
maintenance of tradition, which is but a means towards the acknowledged
end, becomes an end in itself to which the primary purpose of the whole
is in danger of being subordinated.

The churches and the universities alike illustrate vividly the
principles of a group within a group. Each of the older universities is
a microcosm, a small model of the national life, and largely to this
fact is due its educational value as a place of residence. Each college
evokes a strong group spirit in all its members; and this sentiment for
the college, though it may and does in some minor matters conflict with
the sentiment for the university, is in the main synthesised within
this, and indeed is the chief factor in the strength of that sentiment.

The group spirit of each college owes much of its strength to the
carefully fostered, but perfectly friendly, rivalry between the several
colleges in sports and studies and other activities. The close
companionship and emulation between a number of small communities of
similar constitution and purpose, each having a long and distinct
tradition as well as a clearly defined material habitat which embodies
and symbolises its traditions in a thousand different ways, has raised
the self-knowledge and sentiment of the groups to a high level. It is
well known that the few years spent in one of the colleges develops in
every member (with few exceptions) a sentiment of attachment that
persists through life and extends itself in some degree to every other
member, past, present and future; so that, in whatever part of the world
and under whatever circumstances two such men may meet, the discovery of
their common membership of the college at once throws them into a
friendly attitude towards each other and prepares each to make
disinterested efforts on behalf of the other.

The same is true in a less degree of the universities themselves. Oxford
and Cambridge have, partly in consequence of their proximity and close
intercourse, developed on closely parallel lines. They are therefore so
similar in constitution and aims as to be keen though friendly rivals.
This has been of great benefit to both, the self-knowledge and group
sentiment of each having been greatly promoted by this close
intercourse, rivalry, and reciprocal criticism. And this rivalry has not
prevented the growth of some sentiment for the larger group constituted
by the members of both universities, each of whom is always ready to
defend the common interests of the larger group against the rest of the
world.

Again, within each college there are numerous smaller groups, each with
its traditions and group spirit; and, so long as these groups do not
become too exclusive, do not absorb all the devotion of their members,
but leave each one free to join in the life of other minor groups, their
influence is good, the group spirit of each such minor group
contributing to the strength of the larger group sentiment and enriching
the spiritual life of the whole.

In the middle ages occupational groups were of great importance and
influence. They were of the mixed type, for most of them, though
essentially purposive, developed strong traditions; and in their remote
origins many of them were perhaps rather natural than artificial
formations. The violent changes of industrial life, the development of
the capitalist system and modern industrialism, dislocated and largely
destroyed these occupational groups to the great detriment of social
well-being. At the present time we see a strong tendency to the growth
of occupational groups of the purely purposive type, which, lacking the
guidance and conservative power of old traditions, and depending for
their strength largely upon the identification of the material interests
of each member with those of the group, show a narrowness of outlook, a
lack of stability and internal cohesion, and a tendency to ignore the
place and function of the group in the whole community. They show, in
short, a lack of the enlightened group spirit which only time, with
increasing experience and understanding of the nature and functions of
group life, can remedy. It may be hoped that with improved internal
organisation, with the growth of more insight into the mutual dependence
of the various groups on one another and on the whole community, these
groups, which at present seem to some observers to threaten to destroy
our society and to replace the rivalry of nations by an even more
dangerous rivalry of vast occupational groups, may become organised
within the structure of the whole and play a part of the greatest value
in the national life.



PART II

THE NATIONAL MIND AND CHARACTER



CHAPTER VI

INTRODUCTORY

WHAT IS A NATION?


Having studied the most general principles of the collective mental
life, as exemplified in the two extreme forms of the unorganised crowd
and the highly organised army, having briefly noted the principal
classes of groups that enjoy a collective mental life, and having
examined the nature and function of the group spirit in the organisation
of the group mind, we may now take up the study of the most interesting,
most complex and most important kind of group mind, namely the mind of a
nation-state[42].

Many attempts have been made to define more exactly the popular notion
of a nation. The word has sometimes been applied to large groups of
primitive folk that show evidence of close racial affinity and
similarity of customs, such as the Iroquois tribes of North America, or
the Hun invaders of medieval Europe. In popular usage the word is more
commonly restricted to the great nation-states of modern times. It must
be recognised that, since human societies of present and past times
present every conceivable variety of composition and structure, it is
impracticable to lay down any strict definition and to classify
populations as falling definitely within or outside the class.

But, though we may not hope to lay down a definition which shall clearly
mark off the nation from all other human groups, we may usefully define
the nation-state or nation in the most highly developed form that it has
yet attained, and recognise that various peoples partake of the nature
of, or approach the type of, the nation in so far as they exhibit
something of its essential character.

It is perhaps hardly necessary to point out that it is only in the
nation-state, or nation in the fullest sense of the word, that the state
becomes identical with the nation, and that this identification has only
been achieved in modern history by the growth among a few peoples of
representative institutions and the democratic spirit.

In the work mentioned above Prof. Ramsay Muir writes—“What do we mean by
a Nation? It is obviously not the same thing as a race, and not the same
thing as a state. It may be provisionally defined as a body of people
who feel themselves to be naturally linked together by certain
affinities which are so strong and real for them that they can live
happily together, are dissatisfied when disunited, and cannot tolerate
subjection to peoples who do not share these ties[43].” The provisional
definition has the merit of recognising that nationhood is essentially a
mental condition and must be defined in psychological terms. The author
goes on to inquire—“What are the ties of affinity which are necessary to
constitute a nation?” He then considers the following conditions: (1)
“occupation of a defined geographical area,” (2) “unity of race,” (3)
“unity of language,” (4) “unity of religion,” (5) “common subjection,
during a long stretch of time, to a firm and systematic government,” (6)
“community of economic interest, with the similarity of occupations and
outlook which it brings,” (7) “the possession of a common tradition, a
memory of sufferings endured and victories won in common, expressed in
song and legend, in the dear names of great personalities that seem to
embody in themselves the character and ideals of the nation, in the
names also of sacred places wherein the national memory is enshrined.”
Of the last he says that it is “the most potent of all nation-moulding
factors, the one indispensable factor”; thus showing his sense of the
essentially psychological nature of nationhood. But of all the other six
‘factors’ enumerated, he shows that they are unessential. After reaching
this negative conclusion, that nationhood cannot be defined by any one
of these marks or factors, he writes: “Nationality, then, is an elusive
idea, difficult to define. It cannot be tested or analysed by formulæ,
such as German professors love. Least of all must it be interpreted by
the brutal and childish doctrine of racialism. Its essence is a
sentiment, and in the last resort we can only say that a nation is a
nation because its members passionately and unanimously believe it to be
so. But they can only believe it to be so if there exist among them real
and strong affinities; if they are not divided by any artificially
maintained separation between the mixed races from which they are
sprung; if they share a common basis of fundamental moral ideas, such as
are most easily implanted by common religious beliefs; if they can glory
in a common inheritance of tradition; and their nationality will be all
the stronger if to these sources of unity they add a common language and
literature and a common body of law. If these ties, or the majority of
them, are lacking, the assertion of nationality cannot be made good.
For, even if it be for the moment shared by the whole people, as soon as
they begin to try to enjoy the freedom and unity which they claim in the
name of nationality, they will fall asunder, and their freedom will be
their ruin.” In the last sentence the author clearly shows that the
conclusion at which he seemed to have arrived, namely that “a nation is
a nation because its members passionately and unanimously believe it to
be so,” is untenable. At the present time there are populations claiming
the rights of nationality just upon this fallacious ground; a fact which
illustrates the importance of achieving some satisfactory definition of
nationhood. Indeed at the present moment, when Europe is being remoulded
by the Paris Conference, the need for clear notions and some working
definition of nationhood has acquired a most urgent importance. For, as
our author remarks, “we say, loosely, that every nation has a _right_ to
freedom and unity,” and the principle of “self-determination of nations”
has become almost universally accepted as a kind of moral axiom of
political justice; and this axiom is being applied to determine the
political boundaries of the world now and for all time. Yet how can we
hope to make a proper use of this principle, if we cannot define a
nation, if a modern historian, who has devoted himself to the study of
nationality, finds himself compelled in the year 1917 to give up the
attempt to define the meaning of the term nation? For that is the issue
of Prof. Ramsay Muir’s interesting discussion. “We have not attained,”
he confesses, “in this discussion any very clear definition of
nationality, or any very satisfactory test of the validity of the claims
put forward for national freedom. We are not to base the doctrine of
nationality upon abstract rights. We must recognise that there is no
single infallible test of what constitutes a nation, unless it be the
peoples’ own conviction of their nationhood, and even this may be
mistaken or based upon inadequate grounds[44].” And the dire
consequences of this failure are made clear on the following page—“There
seems no escape from the conclusion that nationhood must mainly
determine itself by conflict. That conclusion appears to be the moral of
the history of the national idea in Europe.” Which is as much as to say
that, when any population declares itself to be a nation and claims the
rights of nationhood, the Statesmen of the Paris Conference are to
reply—“We do not know whether your claim is well-founded; for the
historians and political philosophers cannot tell us the meaning of the
word ‘nation.’ Go to and fight, and, if you survive, we shall recognise
the ‘fait accompli’ and hail you a Nation.”

I have dwelt at some length on this perplexity of the historian,
grappling with the task of defining nationhood, because it illustrates
so well a fact on which I wish to insist—namely, that it is not
sufficient for the historian and the political philosopher to be willing
to recognise the mental factors in the phenomena with which he deals. It
is necessary to recognise that these factors are of overwhelming
importance, and that they cannot be satisfactorily dealt with by aid of
the obscure and confused psychological concepts of popular thought and
speech. We must recognise these political problems for what they truly
are—namely, psychological through and through, and only to be attacked
with some hope of success if we call to our aid all that psychological
science can give us. This conclusion cannot fail to be unpalatable to
very many workers in this field; for it implies that equipment for such
work demands some additional years of preparatory study. But, it may
fairly be asked, if the medical man must devote six years to the
intensive study of the human body, before he is permitted to practise
upon it, and even then without any scientific knowledge of the human
mind, should not he who would practise upon the body politic, in which
not merely the bodies but the minds of men interact in the most subtle
and complex fashion, prepare himself for his exalted task by an even
more extended course of study?

Prof. Ramsay Muir has the merit of recognising the essentially
psychological nature of his problem; for his provisional definition
(cited above) is wholly psychological, and he tells us that the essence
of nationality is a sentiment; but he reveals the inadequacy of his
psychological equipment by telling us in the same paragraph that its
essence is a belief, the belief that they are a nation, passionately and
unanimously held by the members of some group. If we look again at the
list of seven proposed marks of nationhood, we shall see that they are
rather of the nature of conditions favourable to the growth of
nationhood; and, as we shall find, this list may be considerably
enlarged. He comes nearest to the truth perhaps when he says “its
essence is a sentiment.” But he does not attempt to tell us what is the
nature of this sentiment, nor even what is its object.

We may imagine a group of people of considerable magnitude, say the
Mormons, or the Doukhobors, the Swedenborgians, or the Christian
Scientists, withdrawing themselves to some defined territory, in order
to form themselves into a nation; then, although each of the seven
conditions enumerated by Prof. Ramsay Muir might be realised, and even
though the community possessed the two conditions described by him as
the essence of nationality—namely, a strong sentiment (presumably one of
loyalty to the group) and a passionate belief in its nationality—it
would, in the absence of other essential conditions, lamentably fall
short of being a nation and would suffer the fate indicated; namely “as
soon as they begin to try to enjoy the freedom and unity which they
claim in the name of nationality, they will fall asunder, and their
freedom will be their ruin[45].”

What, then, is the essential condition for lack of which any such people
would fall short of nationhood? What is the factor which has escaped the
analysis of Prof. Ramsay Muir? The answer must be—organisation; not
material organisation, but such mental organisation as will render the
group capable of effective group life, of collective deliberation and
collective volition. The answer to the riddle of the definition of
nationhood is to be found in the conception of the group mind. A nation,
we must say, is a people or population enjoying some degree of political
independence and possessed of a national mind and character, and
therefore capable of national deliberation and national volition. In
this and the succeeding chapters we have to examine the nature of such
national mind and character, to give fuller meaning to these vague
popular terms, and to study the way in which various conditions of
national life contribute to their development.

Nationhood is, then, essentially a psychological conception. To
investigate the nature of national mind and character and to examine the
conditions that render possible the formation of the national mind and
tend to consolidate national character, these are the crowning tasks of
psychology.

Let me remind the reader at this point of the general sense of the words
mind and character. The two words really cover the same content; when we
speak of the individual mind or character, we mean the organised system
of mental or psychical forces which expresses itself in the behaviour
and the consciousness of the individual man. Any such organised system
has two aspects or sides which, though intimately related, maybe
considered abstractly as distinct—namely, the intellectual or cognitive
aspect and the volitional, conative, or affective aspect. When we use
the word ‘mind’ in speaking of any such system, we give prominence to
its intellectual side; when we say ‘character’ we draw attention to its
conative or affective side. The group mind of a nation is a mind in the
sense that, like the mind of the individual, it is an organised system
of mental or psychical forces; and, like the individual mind, it also
has its intellectual and its affective sides or aspects. And this
remains true whether or no there be any truth in that notion of the
‘collective consciousness’ as a synthesis of minor consciousnesses which
we have provisionally rejected[46]; that is to say, we accept
unreservedly the notion of the collective mind, while suspending
judgment upon the notion of ‘collective consciousness,’ until we shall
find that this hypothesis is, or is not, required for the interpretation
of the facts.

It will be observed that we are getting far away from the old-fashioned
conception of psychology which limited its province to the introspective
description of the contents of the individual’s consciousness. The wider
conception of the science gives it new tasks and new branches, of which
the study of the national mind is one. Like the main trunk of psychology
and most of its branches, this branch has to become an empirical science
which shall take the place of what has long been regarded as a branch of
speculative philosophy and pursued by the deductive _a priori_ methods
of philosophy. In this case the branch of philosophy in question has
generally been called the Philosophy of History. It has been well said
by Fouillée that the Philosophy of History of the past is related to the
psychological social science, that is now beginning to take shape, as
alchemy was related to chemistry, or astrology to astronomy. That is to
say, it was a realm of obscure and fanciful ideas, of sweeping and
ill-based assumptions and slipshod reasoning. It was an elaborate
attempt “to lay the intellect to rest on a pillow of obscure ideas.”
The task of scientific analysis and research was avoided by bringing in,
as the main explanatory principles or causal agencies, vaguely conceived
entities regarded as presiding over the development of peoples—such
entities as Providence, or the Destiny of nations, the _Genius_ of a
people, or the Instinct of a nation, the Unconscious Soul of a people,
or the Spirit of the Age; and, when the problem was to account for some
great secular change, for example, some change of national character,
nothing was commoner than to appeal to _Time_ itself, and thus to make
of this most empty of all abstractions a directive agency and an all
powerful cause of change. The strictly national gods of various nations
were popular conceptions of this order; the gods who directly intervened
in battles and enabled their chosen peoples to smite their enemies hip
and thigh so that not one was left alive. Of this class the “good old
German god” of the late German emperor was, it may be hoped, the last
example.

In a less crude form similar hypotheses of direct supernatural
intervention have been seriously maintained in modern times. Thus the
poet Schiller argued as follows—“The individuals of whom a nation is
composed are dominated by egoism, each seeking only his own good, yet
their actions somehow secure the good of the whole; hence we must
believe that the history of a people unrolls itself beneath the glance
of a wisdom that looks on from afar, that knows how to control the
ill-regulated caprices of liberty by the laws of a directing necessity
and to make the particular ends pursued by individuals subservient to
the unconscious realisation of a general plan.”

In estimating the claims to consideration of a doctrine of this sort, we
must put aside its deleterious moral effects, the fact that its
acceptance would necessarily tend to weaken our sense of responsibility,
to paralyse altruistic effort, and to justify purely egoistic conduct.
We have to consider only its truth or probability in the light of
history. When we do that, it appears merely as a fictitious solution of
the larger problems of social science, a solution which may relieve us
of the necessity of intellectual effort, but which brings no
enlightenment and is supported by no serious argument. The one argument
advanced is a libel on human nature; for it denies the reality and
efficacy of the disinterested social efforts of the leaders of humanity,
to which its progress has been in the main due; and it ignores the great
mass of human activity due to the group spirit with its fusion of
egoistic and altruistic motives. Further, it ignores the fact that the
history of the world is not merely the history of the rise of nations,
but rather of the perpetual rise and _fall_ of nations. When we are told
that a power of this sort has constantly intervened in the course of
history, and that the rise of peoples has been due to its guidance, we
may fairly ask—Why has it repeatedly withdrawn its support, just when
civilisation has achieved such a degree of development as might have
rendered possible the flowering of all the finer capacities of human
nature and the alleviation of the hard lot of the great mass of men? If
the contemplation of the course of history compelled us to believe that
such a power intervenes, we should certainly have to regard it as a
malign power that delights in mocking human efforts by first encouraging
and then bringing them to naught.

Very similar is the rôle in history assigned by von Hartmann to his
‘Unconscious.’ “It carries away the peoples that it dominates,” says von
Hartmann, “with a demoniac power towards unknown ends; it teaches them
the way that they must take; though they often believe themselves to be
marching towards a goal very different from that to which they are being
conducted.”

Others maintain that the great men of a nation, who are the principal
agents in moulding its destiny, are in some mystical sense the products
and expressions of the ‘unconscious soul’ of the people, that they are
the means by which its ideas are realised, through which they become
effective; and they usually make the assertion, altogether unwarranted
by history, that the moment of great need in the life of a people always
produces a great man or hero to lead the people through the crisis. That
is, or may appear to be, true of those peoples that have survived to
pass into history. But what of those peoples that have gone down,
leaving no trace of all their strivings, beyond some mounds of rubble,
some few material monuments, or some strange marks on brick or stone or
rock?

All such assumptions are the very negation of science. We have no right
to appeal to such obscure and mystical powers, until by prolonged effort
we shall have exhausted the possibilities of understanding and
explanation in terms of known forces and conditions[47].

On the other hand, a number of writers have sought to interpret the
course of history and the rise and fall of nations in a more scientific
manner; but most of these have studied some one aspect of national life,
and have professed to find in that one aspect the key which shall
unlock all doors and solve all problems. Thus some, adopting the notion
of a variety of human races, each endowed with a certain peculiar and
unalterable combination of qualities, seek to explain all history by the
aid of biological laws, especially the Darwinian principles, as a
struggle for survival between individuals and between races. Others,
like Karl Marx and Guizot, see in economic conditions and the struggles
between the social classes within each nation, the all important
factors. Others again, like Montesquieu and to some extent Buckle and
more recently Matteuzzi, have seen in the influences of physical
environment the key to the understanding of differences of national
character and history; while others profess to have found it in
differences of religious system, or of the forms of government and
systems of laws. Others again, like le Bon[48], in a few dominant ideas
which, they say, being possessed by any nation (or possessing a nation)
determine its character and civilisation. All these are exaggerations of
partial truths; and in opposition to all of them it must be laid down
that the understanding of the _mind_ of a nation is an indispensable
foundation for the interpretation of its history.

Just as there are two kinds of psychology of individuals, so there are
two kinds of psychology of peoples. There is the individual psychology
which is primarily descriptive, which is the biography of persons, and
whose aim is to impart an accurate conception of the general tendencies
of a person and of the course of his development. And there is the
psychology whose aim is to explain in general terms the conduct of
individual men in general by the aid of conceptions and laws of general
validity. The former, of course, was developed much earlier than the
latter, which is in the main of quite modern growth. As this explanatory
psychology develops, its principles begin to find application in the
sphere of biographical or individual psychology, raising it also to the
explanatory plane.

Just so there are two parallel kinds of psychology of peoples. There is
the descriptive psychology of the tendencies of particular peoples, the
biography of nations and peoples, which is what commonly is meant by
‘history’; and there is the psychology which seeks to explain in general
terms how these tendencies arise, which seeks the general laws of which
these diverse national tendencies are the outcome.

This last is the modern science which is beginning to take shape and to
undertake the task so inadequately dealt with by the so-called
Philosophy of History. It is essentially a branch, and by far the most
important part, of Group Psychology[49]. Now individual psychology tends
more and more to be a genetic psychology; because we do not feel that we
really understand the individual mind, until we know how it has come to
be what it is, until we know something of its development and racial
evolution. Just so the explanatory psychology of peoples must be a
genetic psychology. Here it differs from individual psychology in that
the distinction between individual development and racial evolution
disappears. For the national mind is a continuous growth; it is not
embodied in a temporal succession of individuals, but in a single
continuously evolving organism.

Nevertheless, we may with advantage consider separately (1) the nature
of the general conditions necessary to the existence and operation of a
national mind; (2) the processes of evolution by which such minds are
formed and their peculiarities acquired. I propose to take up the former
problem in the following chapter.



CHAPTER VII

THE MIND OF A NATION


We have prepared ourselves for the study of the national mind by our
preliminary examination of the two extreme types of collective mental
life, that of the quite unorganised group, the simple crowd, on the one
hand, that of a very highly organised group, the army, on the other
hand. We have seen that in the former type the collective actions imply
a collective mental life much inferior, both intellectually and morally,
to that of the average component individuals; and that in the other type
they imply a collective mental life and capacities much superior to
those of the average individual.

The mind of any nation occupies some intermediate position in the scale
of which these are the extreme types; and it differs from both in being
immensely more complex, and also in that the influence of the past
dominates and determines to a much greater extent the mental life of the
present.

The study we have already made of collective mental life will enable us
to understand what we mean, or ought to mean, when we speak of national
character. There are two senses in which this phrase is used, and they
are often confused. On the one hand, the phrase may be used to denote
the character of individuals who are taken to be typical representatives
or average specimens of their nations. On the other hand, it may be
taken to mean the character of the nation as a collective whole or mind.
These two things are by no means the same; they are rather very
different. We saw that this was true in the case of the crowd and also
of the army; and it is true in a still higher degree of the nation than
of any other social aggregate, just because the influence of its past
over its present is greater than in any of the others. It is in the
second and preferable sense that Fouillée uses this expression. He
writes—“The national character is not the simple sum of the individual
characters. In the bosom of a strongly organised nation, there are
necessarily produced reciprocal actions between the individuals which
issue in a general manner of feeling, thinking and willing very
different from that of the individuals existing in isolation, or even
from the sum or resultant of all the mental actions of isolated
individuals. The national character is not simply the average type
which one would obtain if one could imitate for minds the procedure
adopted by Galton in the case of faces and so obtain a collective or
generic image. The face which the process of compound photography
produces exerts no action and is not a cause; while the national spirit
does exert an effect which is different from all effects of individual
minds; it is capable of exerting a sort of pressure and a constraint
upon the individuals themselves; it is not only an effect, but is also
in turn a cause; it is not only fashioned by individuals, it fashions
them in turn. The average type of the Frenchman existing to-day, for
example, does not adequately represent the French national character,
because each people has a history, and ancient traditions, and is
composed, as it is said, of the dead even more than of the living. The
French national character resumes the physical and social actions that
have been taking place through centuries, independently of the present
generation, and imposes itself upon this generation through all the
national ideas, the national sentiments and national institutions. It is
the weight of the entire history to which the individual is subjected in
his relations with his fellow citizens. Just, then, as the nation, as a
certain social group, has an existence different from (though not
separable from) the existence of the individuals, so the national
character implies that particular combination of mental forces of which
the national life is the external manifestation[50].” That is a precise
and admirable statement of what we are to understand by national mind
and character.

We must now consider in turn the principal conditions of the existence
of highly developed national mind and character, and first those which,
as we have seen, are essential to all collective mental life.

A certain degree of mental homogeneity of the group, some similarity of
mental constitution of the individuals composing it, is the prime
condition. The homogeneity essential to a nation may be one of two
kinds, native or acquired; both of these are usually combined, but one
of them predominates in some nations, the other in others.

In considering racial or native homogeneity, we touch upon one aspect of
a much disputed question, the influence of race on national character
and history, in regard to which the greatest diversity of opinion has
prevailed and still prevails. A correct estimate of this influence is of
fundamental importance. I have stated elsewhere the view I take[51],
but we must consider the question more fully here. On the one hand are
those who would explain all differences of national character and
action, all success and failure of nations, as arising from racial
composition. This view is the basis of much of the ill-founded national
pessimism which, before the Great War, was widely prevalent among the
peoples who speak the Romance or Latin languages and who are falsely
called by these pessimists the Latin races. It was also the foundation
of that overweening national pride which has corrupted the German people
and led them to disgrace and disaster; for, following Gobineau[52] and a
host of his disciples, among whom H. S. Chamberlain is perhaps the most
notorious, they had come to believe, against the most obvious and
abundant evidence, that they were the purest representatives of a race
from whose blood all great men and all good things have come, a race
fitted by native superiority to rule all the peoples of the earth[53].

On the other hand, popular humanitarianism would regard all men and all
races as alike and equal in respect of native endowment; and we have
seen so distinguished a sociologist as Durkheim denying any importance
or influence to racial composition of a people. Many others put aside
all explanations based on racial differences as cheap and meretricious
means of avoiding difficulties. J. S. Mill, for example, wrote “Of all
vulgar modes of escaping from the consideration of the effect of social
and moral influences on the human mind, the most vulgar is that of
attributing the diversities of conduct and character to inherent natural
differences”; and Buckle, in his great work on the _History of
Civilisation_, quoted this remark with cordial approval[54].

Both these extreme views are false; the truth lies somewhere in the
midst between them. At the time when Mill and Buckle wrote, biology and
anthropology had not shown, as now they have, the enormous power of
heredity in determining individual character and the great persistence
of innate qualities through numberless generations. Buckle especially
overrated the power of physical environment, and Mill the power of
education and of social environment, to change the innate qualities of a
people; and it was this overestimation that led them, and leads others
still, to underestimate the importance of racial composition. There are
involved in this dispute two theses which are often confused together.
When people speak of the influence of ‘race’ on national character and
institutions, they may, and sometimes do, mean by ‘race’ the sum of
innate inborn qualities or tendencies of the people at any given point
of history. On the other hand, by influence of race they may mean the
influence of the prehistoric races which have entered into the social
composition of the nation—that is, those races from which its population
is descended. Some authors mean to deny importance to race in both these
senses; Buckle and Mill and Durkheim meant, I think, to deny it in both,
because they believed that human nature is very plastic and easily
moulded as regards its innate qualities by its environment; they
believed that, if only a system of institutions, especially educational
institutions, adapted to promote the intellectual and moral development
of each generation of a people, can be established among it, then the
influence of such institutions will so vastly predominate over that of
innate qualities that these become a negligible quantity. From this it
would follow that we should expect to see any two or more populations
endowed with similar institutions form nations of similar character
which will continue to develop along similar lines, except in so far as
minor unessential differences of physical environment produce
differences of modes of occupation, dress, food and so forth.

This view of the insignificance of innate qualities was in harmony with,
and was determined by, the dominant psychological doctrine of the time;
the view which came down from Locke, according to which the mind of the
new-born individual is a _tabula rasa_, entirely similar in all men,
without specific tendencies and peculiarities of any importance, on
which individual experience impresses itself, moulding all its
development according to the principle of the association of ideas.

This doctrine, explicitly or implicitly adopted, has played a great part
in determining British policy in its relations with British dependencies
and their populations, notably India. It is a striking example of the
way in which theory affects practice, and of the danger of our profound
indifference to theory; we are influenced by it though we pretend to
ignore it. It is well to make ourselves clear as to what theories we
hold, even if we do not allow our practice to be governed by them
exclusively.

There are commonly confused together, under the head of the influence
of race on national character, three problems which must be
disentangled.

(1) Are there differences of innate mental constitution between the
various branches of mankind?

(2) If there are such differences, are these important for national
life? Do they in any considerable degree determine national character?
Or are they capable of being swamped and submerged and altogether
over-ridden by the moulding influences brought to bear by environment on
each generation?

(3) If such innate differences exist, what degree of permanence do they
possess? Do they persist through thousands of years, in spite of vast
changes of physical or cultural conditions? Or may they undergo
considerable modification or complete transformation in the course of a
few generations?

These are questions of fundamental importance. And they admit of no
positive clean-cut answers at the present time. They offer vast fields
for research, and only when prolonged research shall have been directed
to them shall we be able to answer them positively.

In the past, since their importance could not be altogether overlooked,
it has been usual to dispose of them by dogmatically asserting one
extreme view and pouring scornful epithets upon the other extreme view.
A principal task for science in its present stage is to define the
questions clearly. It is not possible, perhaps, to keep them quite
separate; for, if there are considerable differences of innate mental
constitution, then their importance for national character must depend
greatly upon their degree of permanence; and, again, there is the great
difficulty of distinguishing between innate and acquired mental
qualities in any individual and still more in groups.

Nevertheless, we may safely say that both extreme views in regard to
race, the positive and the negative, are gross exaggerations, plausible
only while we ignore one part of the evidence; the truth lies in between
somewhere.

There can, I think, be no reasonable doubt that there are great
differences between races, and that these may be, and in many cases have
been, persistent through thousands of generations.

The recognition that the mind of the human infant is not a _tabula
rasa_, but that its innate constitution comprises a number of instincts,
specifically directed tendencies to thought, feeling, and action,
prepares us to accept this view and gives us some basis for the
definition of these differences. Whether all differences can be defined
in such terms is a further problem. That they cannot be wholly defined
in this way seems to be obvious, when we consider how quite specialised
idiosyncrasies are transmitted in families through several generations,
often with a leap across one generation, peculiarities of taste and
feeling, of aesthetic endowment and temperament, abilities such as the
musical, mathematical and artistic.

When we compare widely different peoples such as the Negro, the White,
and the Yellow, the fact of profound differences cannot be overlooked.
These differences cannot be ascribed to the action of environment upon
each generation. Perhaps the only differences of this kind which at
present are accurately measurable are those of the size and form of the
brain. The negro brain is decidedly smaller than that of the white and
yellow races. And there are small but distinct differences of sensory
endowment which are highly significant. For, if there are racial
differences in these most fundamental and racially oldest endowments, we
may expect still greater differences in the later evolved powers of the
mind; although these are much more difficult to detect and define.

Still, the negro race wherever found does present certain specific
mental peculiarities roughly definable, especially the happy-go-lucky
disposition, the unrestrained emotional violence and responsiveness,
whether its representatives are found in tropic Africa, in the jungles
of Papua, or in the highly civilised conditions of American cities.

The Semitic stock again is one which, though widely scattered, seems to
present certain constant peculiarities. And among closely allied
branches of the white race of similar culture, we can hardly refuse to
recognise innate differences. Differences of temperament are, perhaps,
the clearest and the most generally recognised, even between peoples of
allied stock and similar civilisation. Who can question that Irishmen in
general are very different from Englishmen in temperament, that they are
less phlegmatic, more easily moved to joy, or sorrow, or enthusiasm,
more easily touched by poetry, have a more varied and lively emotional
experience? That this is an innate racial difference seems clear; for it
can be accounted for in no other way, and it obtains in some degree
between all communities of similar racial stocks, in spite of
similarities or differences of history and of present conditions. For
example, similar differences, roughly definable as the difference
between the so-called Celtic temperament and the Anglo-Saxon, seem
evidently to obtain between the Breton and the Norman, who represent in
the main the same two stocks.

And, even in intellectual quality, there appear to be not only
differences of degree, but also differences of kind, inexplicable save
as racial differences. The logical deductive tendencies of the French
intellect and the empirical inductive tendency of the English, seem to
be rooted in race; though here of course tradition accumulates and
accentuates such differences from generation to generation.

But the best evidence of persistent innate differences is afforded by
differences and similarities expressed in national life which cannot be
accounted for in any other way. The innate differences and peculiarities
of individuals are largely obscured by these national characteristics.
And the more highly organised the collective life of any people, the
more clearly will it express their racial qualities.

The social environment in a developed nation is in harmony with the
individual innate tendencies, because in the main it is the natural
outcome and expression of those tendencies. For, throughout the history
of such a nation, the elements of its social environment—its customs,
beliefs, institutions, language, its culture in general—have been slowly
evolved under the steady pressure of the individual innate tendencies,
which in each succeeding generation are the same. A part of this culture
is of native origin; a part, in every European nation probably by far
the larger part, is of foreign origin, and has been acquired by the
acceptance of ideas and beliefs from without its borders, by the copying
of institutions, customs, arts, from foreign models. In both cases the
idea or custom or other cultural element only becomes embodied in the
national culture through widespread or general imitation[55].

In the case of elements of native origin, it is by imitation of the
individuals of original powers of thought or feeling that the element
becomes embodied in the national culture; in the case of foreign
elements, by imitation of foreign models, acceptance of foreign ideas,
through literature and personal contacts. In both cases, such general
imitation will only take place when the culture-element in question is
more or less congenial to the innate qualities of the bulk of
individuals. All other novel elements will be ignored, or will fail to
propagate themselves successfully; if they obtain a first footing, they
will fail to pass beyond the stage of fashion into that of custom. And,
when once accepted, the cultural element will usually undergo
modification in the direction of more complete harmony with the innate
tendencies; its less congenial features will be allowed to die out, its
more congenial will be accentuated from generation to generation.

The social environment of any civilised people is, then, very largely
the result of a long continued process of selection, comparable with the
natural selection by which, according to the Darwinian theory, animal
species are evolved; a constant favouring of certain elements, a
constant rejection of others. We may in fact regard each distinctive
type of civilisation as a species, evolved largely by selection; and the
selective agency, which corresponds to and plays a part analogous to the
part of the physical environment of an animal species, is the innate
mental constitution of the people. The sum of innate qualities is the
environment of the culture-species, and it effects a selection among all
culture variations, determining the survival and further evolution of
some, the extermination of others. And, just as animal species
(especially men) modify their physical environment in course of time,
and also devise means of sheltering themselves from its selective
influence, so each national life, each species of civilisation, modifies
very gradually the innate qualities of the people and builds up
institutions which, the more firmly they are established and the more
fully they are elaborated, override and prevent the more completely the
direct influence of innate qualities on national life.

These principles are illustrated, perhaps, most clearly by the spread
and modification of religious systems among peoples of different races.
Take the case of the Moslem religion, which has gained acceptance among
one-sixth of the population of the world in historic and in fact recent
times, and is still spreading. The leading feature of this system is its
acceptance of all that is and happens as being the will of God, the act
of an entirely arbitrary, inscrutable, and absolutely powerful
individual, before which men must simply bow without question or
criticism; it is characterised by its simplicity and its fatalism. There
seems good reason to believe that the tendency to unquestioning
obedience to authority is a strong innate tendency of most Asiatics
(except perhaps the Chinese and their relatives), far stronger than in
most individuals of European peoples; for we see it expressed in many
ways in their institutions and history, both of those who are and those
who are not Moslems[56]; and Asiatic fatalism has, in fact, become
proverbial. With the causes or origin of this innate quality we are not
now concerned; but, accepting it as a fact, we may note that it is among
Asiatics that Mohammedanism has secured the great mass of its converts;
and that in India, in spite of many minor features that are opposed to
the spirit of Hindooism, it continues to spread largely; while
Christianity makes but little progress. Buddhism on the other hand has
almost faded away, after an initial success in the country of its
origin, but has continued to gain adherents and has become the dominant
religion among the yellow peoples further east, in Burma, China, Thibet,
Japan. The Moslem religion, having been thus accepted in virtue of the
fact that its dominant tendency is in harmony with the strong innate
tendency to unquestioning submission to a supreme will, then accentuates
this tendency in all its converts, moulding their political relations to
the same type, so that all recognise one earthly regent of God; and it
has led to the almost complete suppression of any spark of the spirit of
inquiry and scepticism that might otherwise display itself among these
peoples.

Another good illustration of the fact is afforded by the distribution of
the two great divisions of the Christian religion in Western Europe.
Among all the disputes and uncertainties of the ethnographers about the
races of Europe, one fact stands out clearly—namely, that we can
distinguish a race of northerly distribution and origin, characterised
physically by fair colour of hair and skin and eyes, by tall stature and
dolichocephaly (i.e. long shape of head) and mentally by great
independence of character, individual initiative, and tenacity of will.
Many names have been used to denote this type, but the usefulness of
most of them has been spoilt through their application to denote
linguistic groups (e.g. Indo-Germanic, Aryan), and by the false
assumption that linguistic groups are racial groups. Hence recently the
term _Homo Europaeus_, first applied by Linnaeus to this type, has come
into favour; and perhaps it is the best term to use, since this type
seems to be exclusively European. It is also called the Nordic type.

The rest of the population of Europe, with the exception of some peoples
in the extreme north and east of partly mongoloid or yellow racial
origin, seems to be chiefly derived from two stocks. Of these, the one
type, which occupies chiefly the central regions, is most commonly
denoted by the name _Homo Alpinus_; the other, chiefly in the south, by
the name _Homo Mediterraneus_. Both are of dark or brunette complexion
and the principal physical difference between them is that the former,
_H. Alpinus_, has a short broad head (i.e. is brachycephalic) and also
is of short stature; while the latter, _H. Mediterraneus_, is
long-headed like the northern type and is perhaps taller than _H.
Alpinus_. Mentally both these differ from the northern or European type
in having less independence and initiative, a greater tendency to rely
upon and seek guidance from authority[57]. Now we find that the
distribution of the Protestant variety of Christianity coincides very
nearly with the regions in which the fair type predominates; while in
all other regions the Roman Catholic or Greek orthodox churches hold
undisputed sway. North and South Germany illustrate the point. And
Motley’s account of the Netherlands shows how closely the line between
Protestant Holland and Roman Catholic Belgium coincides with the line of
racial division. We may note also that ‘Celts’ of Ireland and Scotland
early proved the superior strength of their religious tendencies by
sending missionaries to England.

It would be absurd to hold that this coincidence is fortuitous. It is
clearly due to the assimilation of the form of the religious and
ecclesiastical system to the innate tendencies of the people. The
northern peoples have given the system a turn compatible with the
independence of spirit which is their leading racial quality; and among
ourselves the tendency is apt to be pushed to an anarchical extreme in
the rise of numerous small peculiar sects; this we must connect with the
fact that the English represent in greatest purity the most independent
branch of the Northern race.

The peoples among whom the other racial elements predominate have
developed and maintained a religion of authority. And it is clear how,
this differentiation having been achieved, either form of religion
favours and accentuates in the peoples among whom it has become
established the innate tendencies that have shaped it. The religion of
authority tends, both by its general teachings and by the deliberate
efforts of its official representatives, to suppress the spirit of
independent thought and inquiry and action; the Protestant religion,
relatively at least, favours the development of the independent
tendencies of individuals. This is not to say that any individual is a
Mohammedan or a Protestant, because he belongs to this or that race;
that would be a parody of my statement. The form of each man’s religious
belief is, in the vast majority of cases, determined for him by the fact
of his growing up within a community in which that form of belief
prevails. My thesis is that in the main the racial qualities of each
community have played a great part in determining which form of belief
it shall accept. If the reader will reflect how, at the time of the
Reformation, various communities hung for a time in the balance, he will
see that the innate differences we have noted may well have played the
determining rôle.

The same facts are illustrated by the political life of the European
peoples. Only those among whom the northern race is predominant have
developed individualistic forms of political and social organisation.
Among the rest there appears clearly the tendency to rely upon the
supreme authority of the state and to look to it for all initiative and
guidance, a tendency to centralised and paternal administration; and
this is the same, whether the external form of the political
organisation be a monarchy or a republic. Thus France, in becoming a
republic, did not overthrow the centralised system perfected by Henry
IV, Louis XIV, Richelieu and Napoleon; for that system was congenial to
the innate qualities of the mass of the people. It is clear that the
centralised and therefore rigid system of government tends to
accentuate, among the people subjected to it, their tendency to rely on
authority and to repress individual initiative; while the other form,
such as obtains in this country and still more in the United States of
America, tends to the development of the initiative and independence of
individuals, giving them free scope and throwing them upon their own
resources. Among any people, an institution or other cultural element
that has had a history of this kind will, then, cause a great
development in the mass of individuals of just those innate or racial
tendencies of which it is itself the slowly accumulated result or
product.

If a nation is composed from stocks not too diverse, or if the original
stocks have fused by intercrossing and have produced a fairly
homogeneous people; and if this nation has enjoyed a long period of
natural evolution undisturbed by violent influences from outside,
conquests or invasions or immigrations on a great scale; then the social
environment will have been brought in the main into harmony with the
innate qualities of the people, and it will mould the individuals of
each generation very strongly, accentuating and confirming those innate
tendencies. This for two reasons. First, the social environment will be
strongly organised and homogeneous; that is to say, the various
elements, the beliefs, customs, institutions, and arts that go to
compose it, will be in harmony with one another and of strongly marked
character; and they will be almost universally accepted by that people
as above criticism. Secondly, the institutions and customs have not to
fight against the innate tendencies of the people in the formation of
the adult minds, but co-operate harmoniously with them.

Now, when authors dispute over the question of the influence of race in
determining the nation, they usually fail to distinguish clearly between
the direct effects and the indirect effects of racial qualities.

Those who, like Mill, attribute to the social environment unlimited
power of moulding individuals and who regard the influence of race as
insignificant, are misled by the contemplation of such nations as we
have been considering, the class of which our own is the most notable
example, nations in which a strongly organised social environment makes
in the direction of the innate tendencies. They overlook the fact that
in any such nation the social environment, the body of institutions and
traditions, is in the main the outcome and expression of these innate
tendencies; they fail to see that the racial tendencies exert their
strongest influence on national thought and action by means of the
institutions, customs, and traditions on the growth of which they have
exerted a constant directive pressure throughout many generations. In
order to realise fully the influence of race, we must consider peoples
whose culture and much else that enters into their social environment
has been impressed upon them from without. We then see how little the
social environment can accomplish in the moulding of a people, when it
is not congenial to and in harmony with the racial tendencies.

The modern world contains certain instructive instances, of which Hayti
is perhaps the most striking. There a circumscribed population of negro
race has had a political and social and religious organisation and the
elements of higher culture impressed upon it by Europeans, in the belief
that it would be possible to construct a social environment which would
mould the people. France, at a time of revolutionary enthusiasm for
liberty, equality, and fraternity, withdrew from the island and granted
the people self-government. The consequence has been a rapid relapse
into barbarism and savagery of the worst kinds[58].

It was the ignoring of the importance of race and the overestimation of
the moulding influence of culture and institutions, eloquently voiced
by Lord Macaulay, that led England eighty years ago to set out on the
task of endowing the millions of India with British culture and
institutions. The task has been pursued in a half-hearted manner only;
but already we see some of the incongruity of the results of these
efforts; and the best observers assure us that, were the task
accomplished and the reins of a representative government left in native
hands, it would be but a few years before the whole country would be
reduced to a chaotic anarchic condition no better than that in which we
found it. Others go further and assert with some plausibility that
Western culture is positively injurious to the intellect and moral
nature of Indians[59].

In the Philippines the Americans seem to have applied similar mistaken
ideas in a reckless fashion in the first years of their administration;
with the result that, according to some accounts, they were in a fair
way to plunge those islands into poverty and debt and chronic rebellion,
while failing to secure affection, trust, or respect for themselves.

We must conclude, then, that innate mental constitution, and therefore
race, is of fundamental importance in determining national character,
not so much directly as indirectly; for it gives a constant bias to the
evolution of the social environment, and, through it, moulds the
individuals of each generation. It will help to make clear the influence
of innate qualities, if, by an effort of imagination, we suppose every
English child to have been exchanged at birth for an infant of some
other nation (say the French) during some fifty years. At the end of
that period the English nation would be composed of individuals of
purely French origin or blood; it would have the innate qualities of the
present French nation; and the French nation would be, in the same
sense, English. What would be the effect? Presumably things would go on
much as before for a time. There would be no sudden transformation of
our language, our laws, our religious or political institutions; and
those who make little of the influence of race might point to this
result as a convincing demonstration of the truth of their view. But
gradually, we must suppose, certain changes would appear; in the course
of perhaps a century there would be an appreciable assimilation of
English institutions to those of France at the present day, for example,
the Roman Catholic religion would gain in strength at the cost of the
Protestant.

This view has been challenged and described as an extreme view[60]. But
it is not. Both extreme opposite views continue to be maintained just
because the importance of the indirect cumulative effect of innate
qualities on culture is ignored. The innate qualities are of great
importance, but only in the course of centuries can they exert their
full effect on culture.

If then innate qualities have this importance, in what degree are they
permanent? Here again two extreme views remain opposed to one another.
Even as regards physical qualities this is still the case; and the
problem is much more difficult and at the same time infinitely more
important as regards mental qualities. One reason for the belittling of
innate qualities by Mill and Buckle, and for their overweening
confidence in the power of institutions and environment, was the opinion
generally prevailing in their time that, in so far as racial
peculiarities exist, they can be modified and transformed in a few
generations by physical and social environment.

But, when, under the influence of Welshman’s theories, the majority of
biologists came to the conclusion that acquired qualities are not
transmitted, the position of the ‘race theorisers’ was immensely
strengthened. For selection, natural or social or artificial, remained
as the only recognised cause of change of racial qualities; and, since
it is clear that the development of civilisation tends to bring to an
end the operation of natural selection, owing to the more efficient
shielding of the weaker by the stronger members of societies, and since
no other form of selection seems to have operated forcibly to change
race qualities, it was inferred that race qualities endure throughout
long ages with very little change.

Another revolution of opinion has had a similar effect. One of the old
assumptions which seemed to justify the belief in rapid modifiability of
race qualities was that the difference of culture between ourselves and
our savage ancestors corresponds to, and is the expression of, an almost
equally great difference of innate capacities, intellectual and moral.
But this was in the main a misunderstanding. One well established fact
suffices to show its improbability—namely, the larger size of the brains
of Palæolithic men as compared with our own. Our superiority of
civilisation is due to slow accumulation, each generation adding
comparatively little to the mass of intellectual and moral tradition
which it inherits and passes on to later coming generations. In so far
as differences of cultural level are associated with differences of
level of innate intellectual and moral qualities, cultural superiority
must be regarded as the effect, rather than the cause, of innate mental
superiority. There are strong grounds for holding that, in so far as
Europeans are innately superior to negroes, that superiority was
achieved not by means of, and in the process of, the development of,
civilisation; but rather before civilisation began; and that the
principal mental differences of the various human stocks were, like
their principal physical differences, produced in the course of the
immensely long ages of human life that preceded the dawn of
civilisation, or at any rate of history, ages compared with which the
historic period is but a very brief span.

This view—namely, that there has been no great change, and certainly no
great increase, of the mental powers of men during the historic
period—was forcibly maintained by Dr A. R. Wallace[61]. Wallace pointed
to the pyramids of Egypt and other great achievements of earlier
civilisations, such as writing, as evidence of the highly developed
intellectual powers of men thousands of years before the Christian era.
He concluded that the men of the early stone age were probably our
equals, intellectually and morally, in respect to innate qualities.

If, then, so little change of man’s mental constitution has been
produced in the course of many thousand years, even though the growth of
civilisation has so profoundly modified his mode of life and the nature
of his pursuits, that is good evidence of the great persistency of
racial mental qualities. But we have more direct evidence of their
persistence. As Wallace points out, the negro and the yellow races are
scattered over many parts of the earth, and, though these regions
present great diversities of physical environment, men of either of the
two races everywhere present the same mental peculiarities or strong
similarities, for example, the Papuan and African and American negroes.
And the characteristic differences between the two races are not
diminished even where, as in the islands of the far East, they have been
subjected to the same physical environment and modes of life for long
periods of time. In the eastern Archipelago, Papuans and Malayans
occupying the same or adjoining islands are cited by Wallace as
illustrating the persistence of racial mental differences; and I can
bear out his remarks from my own observations in that region.

But we must beware of excess in the direction of the unalterability of
race. The dogma of the non-transmissibility of acquired qualities is by
no means established; it seems not improbable that mental acquisitions
are so transmitted in some degree, though with only very slight effect
in each generation. Even now, when the difficulties of the principle of
transmission of acquired qualities are generally understood, almost all
those who deal with the problem of the genesis of mental and physical
peculiarities of races find themselves driven to postulate the principle
in order to explain the facts. And this in itself constitutes evidence
of a certain value in support of the validity of the principle.

Again, we must beware of assuming that there are no selective processes
operating among us. Although natural selection may be almost
inoperative, there may well be at work other forms of selection, social
selections; and these are specially powerful amongst populations of
blended stocks.

Summing up on the durability of racial peculiarities, we may say that
racial qualities are extremely persistent; but that, nevertheless, they
are subject to slow modifications when the conditions of life are
greatly changed, as by emigration, or by changes of climate, or by
social revolutions, and especially among populations of mixed origin.

To return now to the question of mental homogeneity of a population as a
condition of national character and collective mental life. Purity of
race is the most obvious condition of such homogeneity; but few, if any,
nations that have attained any high level of civilisation have been
racially homogeneous; probably for the simple reason that the
civilisation of such a nation would crystallise at an early stage into
rigid forms which would render further progress impossible. This has
been the fate of most civilisations of the past; as Walter Bagehot put
it, their cake of custom has so hardened as to become brittle, incapable
of partial modification and growth, so that, like a crystal, it must
either resist completely every modifying influence or be shattered
irretrievably[62].

Certainly none of the European nations are racially homogeneous.
Nevertheless, some of them approach homogeneity of innate qualities, or,
rather, the degree of heterogeneity is much less in some than in others.
Consider the case of England. Before the Anglo-Saxon invasion the
population consisted in all probability of a mixture of the northern
fair race with a darker race, probably that of _H. Mediterraneus_, in
some proportion that we cannot determine, with small islands of _H.
Alpinus_ or of stocks formed by an earlier blending of this with the
Nordic race. The Anglo-Saxon invasion brought great numbers of the pure
representatives of the Northern race of closely allied stocks; and these
did not confine themselves to any one region, but, entering at many
points of the south and east coasts, diffused themselves throughout
almost all England, imposing themselves as masters upon those Britons
whom they did not drive out. Ever since that time a crossing of the
stocks has been going on freely, little hindered by differences of area,
language, law, or custom. And, with the exception of small numbers of
the Northern stock, Danes and Normans, the population has not received
any considerable additions since the Saxon invasion.

Now it has been shown by a simple calculation that, given three
generations to the century, each one of us might claim ten million
ancestors in the year 1000 A.D.; while in the fifth century, when this
process of intermarriage began, the number would be enormous, some
thousands of millions; that is, if consanguine marriages had never taken
place. These figures make it clear that, in any mixed population in
which intermarriage takes place freely, the two or more stocks must,
after a comparatively brief period of time, become thoroughly blended,
on one condition—namely, that the cross between the pure stocks is a
stable stock, fertile _inter se_ and with both the parent stocks. There
seems to be no doubt that this was the case with the British and the
Anglo-Saxon stocks, and that the English form now a stable new subrace,
or secondary race, in which the qualities of the northern race
predominate. The subrace may be regarded as innately homogeneous in
fairly high degree; not so homogeneous as a people of unmixed racial
origin, or one formed by a blending of more remote date, but more so
than most of the European nations. This is the sense in which we must
understand the word race, in discussing the influence of race upon
national character.

In most of the European countries the original mixture of races has been
greater and the degree of blending less intimate. Thus France has the
three stocks, _H. Europaeus_, _Alpinus_, _Mediterraneus_, all largely
represented; but they have remained in some degree geographically
separated in three belts running east and west[63]. Hence there are
greater innate mental differences between Frenchmen than between
Englishmen. Nevertheless the strength of the Roman civilisation of Gaul
sufficed to abolish differences of language and institutions and to
assimilate the later coming Northmen, Franks and Normans; while the
centralised system of administration, established in accordance with the
innate tendencies of the major part of the population, has completed the
work of a long series of national wars, and has produced a firmly united
nation, bound by common traditions and moulded by common institutions.
The greater centralisation of France seems to have compensated for the
less degree of innate uniformity, so that the French people is hardly,
if at all, less truly a nation than our own.

In our own nation one racial cleft still remains. The Irish have never
undergone that intimate mixture and blending with the Anglo-Saxon stock
which has produced the English subrace; and so they remain an element
which seriously disturbs the harmony of the national mind. And the same
is perhaps true in a less degree of the Welsh people. On the other hand,
the Scottish people, although they enjoyed their independent system of
government for much longer periods than the Irish and Welsh and have a
system of laws and customs differing in many respects from the English,
and indeed may be said to have achieved a considerable degree of
independent nationhood, have nevertheless become thoroughly incorporated
in the British nation; for in the main mass of the Scotch the same
Northern race is the greatly predominant element.

But it is not till we consider such a country as Austria-Hungary that we
see the full importance of homogeneity of a people for the development
of a national mind. There several races and subraces, one at least with
a strong yellow strain, are grouped together under one flag; but they
remain separated by language and by distribution and by tradition, and,
therefore, are but little mixed and still less blended. Under such
conditions a national mind cannot be formed. The elements of different
racial stock threaten to fall apart at any moment[64].

Going further afield, contrast India with China, two regions
geographically comparable in area and in density of population and in
other ways. The population of China is the most racially homogeneous of
all large populations in the world. Hence an extreme uniformity of
culture and social environment, which still further accentuates the
uniformity of mental type. Hence, in spite of the imperfection of means
of communication, we find great political stability and a considerable
degree of national feeling, likely to be followed before long by
harmonious national thought and action on the part of this vast nation.
The one great distracting and disturbing factor in the life of China has
been the intrusion of the Manchus, a people of somewhat different race
and traditions.

On the other hand, India is peopled by many different stocks, and,
although these are geographically much mixed, they are but very little
blended, owing to the prevalence from early times of the caste system.
The light coloured intellectual Brahman lives side by side with small
black folk, as different physically and mentally as the Englishman and
the Hottentot; and there are also large numbers of other widely
differing racial stocks, including some of yellow race. Hence an extreme
diversity of social environment, save in the case of the Moslem
converts, who, however, being scattered among the rest, do but increase
the endless variety of custom, creed, and social environment. Hence the
people of India have never been bound together in the slightest degree,
save purely externally by the power of foreign conquerors, the Moguls
and the British; and hence, even though nations have begun at various
times to take form in various areas, as e.g. the Sikh nation, they have
never achieved any high degree of permanence and stability and are
restricted in area and numbers.

Now let us consider for a moment an apparent exception from the
conclusion to which the foregoing argument seems to point—namely, that
homogeneity of innate qualities is the prime condition of a developed
and harmonious national life.

The most striking exception is afforded by the people of the United
States of America, or the American nation. There we see a great area
populated by immigrants from every part and race of Europe in times so
recent that, although they are pretty well mixed, they are but little
blended by crossing; a considerable part of the population still
consisting of actual immigrants and their children. Here, then, there
can be no question of any homogeneity as regards innate mental
qualities. Nevertheless, the people is truly a nation and, perhaps,
further advanced in the evolution of national consciousness, thought,
and action than many other of the civilised peoples. This we must
attribute to homogeneity of mental qualities which is in the main not
innate but acquired, a uniformity of acquired qualities, especially of
all those that are most important for national life.

Following Münsterberg’s recent account of _The Psychology of the
American People_ we may recognise as individual characteristics, almost
universally diffused, a spirit of self-direction and selfconfidence, of
independence and initiative of a degree unknown elsewhere, a marvellous
optimism or hopefulness both in private and public affairs, a great
seriousness tinged with religion, a humourousness, an interest in the
welfare of society, a high degree of self-respect, and a pride and
confidence in the present and still more in the future of the nation; an
intense activity and a great desire for self-improvement; a truly
democratic spirit which regards all men (or rather all _white_ men) as
essentially or potentially equal, and a complete intolerance of caste.

Such high degree of acquired homogeneity of individual qualities seems
to be due in about equal parts to uniformity of social and of physical
environment, both of which make strongly in the same direction. The
physical environment consists in a great and rich territory, still only
partially developed, a fairly uniform climate, and a uniformity of the
physical products of human labour resulting from the immense development
of the means of communication. The importance of the physical uniformity
we may realize on reflecting that the one great divergence of physical
conditions, the sub-tropical climate of the southern States, gave rise
to the one great and dangerous division of the people which for a time
threatened the harmonious development of the national life; that is to
say, the civil war was due to the divergence of the social system and
economic interests of the southern States resulting from their
sub-tropical climate.

The uniformity of social environment we must ascribe, firstly and
chiefly, to the fortunate circumstance that the first immigrants were
men of one well marked and highly superior type, men who possessed in
the fullest measure the independence of character and the initiative of
the fair northern race, and who firmly established the superior social
environment of individualistic type that had been gradually evolved in
England. Secondly, to the fact that the peopling of the whole country
has taken place by diffusion from this strongly organised initial
society; its institutions and ideas, especially its language, its
political freedom, its social seriousness, being carried everywhere.
Thirdly, to the fact that the country was just such as to give the
greatest scope to, and so to develop, these innate tendencies of the
earliest settlers and their successors. Fourthly, to the fact that the
great diffusion of the population of mixed origin has only taken place
since the means of communication have become very highly developed.
Consider, as one example of the effects of the ease of communication
between all parts, the influence of the American Sunday newspapers.
These papers are read on an enormous scale all over the continent; and
the bulk of the contents of those published in different places is
identical, being prepared and printed in New York, or other great city,
and then sent out to be blended with a little local matter in each
centre of publication; thus every Sunday morning vast numbers are
reading the same stuff. Lastly, it must be added, it is largely due to
the fact that in the main the population has been recruited by those
elements of different European peoples who shared in some degree the
leading tendencies of the American character, independence, initiative,
energy and hopefulness; for it is only such people who will tear
themselves from their places in an old civilisation and face the unknown
possibilities of a distant continent. In spite of an increasing
proportion of emigrants of a rather unlike type from south-eastern
Europe, there seems good ground for hope that these factors will
continue to secure a sufficient uniformity of acquired qualities, until
the diverse elements shall have been fused by intermarriage to a new and
stable subrace, innately homogeneous.

The Americans are, then, no exception to the rule that the evolution of
a national mind presupposes a certain considerable degree of homogeneity
of mental qualities among the individuals of which the nation is
composed. They merely show that, under peculiarly favourable physical
and social conditions, a sufficient degree of such homogeneity may
perhaps be secured in spite of considerable racial heterogeneity. But
the favourable issue of the vast experiment is not yet completely
assured.

There remains in the American people one great section of the
population, namely the negroes and the men of partly negro descent,
whose innate qualities, mental and physical, are so different from those
of the rest of the population, that it seems to be incapable of
absorption into the nation. This section remains within the nation as a
foreign body which it can neither absorb nor extrude and which is a
perpetual disturber and menace to the national life. The only hope of
solving this difficult problem seems to lie in the possibility of
territorial segregation of the coloured population in an area in which
it might, with assistance from the American people, form an independent
nation. At present it illustrates in the most forcible manner the thesis
of this chapter.

The geographical peculiarities of the country inhabited by a nation may
greatly favour, or may make against, homogeneity, in so far as this
depends on acquired interests and sentiments.

The division of the territory occupied by a nation by any physical
barrier makes against homogeneity and therefore against national unity;
whereas absence of internal barriers and the presence of well marked
natural boundaries afford conditions the most favourable to homogeneity.

Almost all the great and stable nations have occupied well-defined
natural territories. In Great Britain and Japan the national spirit is
perhaps more developed than elsewhere. How much does Great Britain or
Japan owe this to the insular character of its territory, which from
early days has sharply marked off the people from all others, making of
them a well-defined and closed group, within which free intermarriage
has given homogeneity of innate qualities, and within which a national
culture has grown up undisturbed; so that by mental and physical type,
and by language, religion, tradition and sentiment, the people are
sharply marked off from all others, and assimilated to one another!

A unitary well-defined territory of well marked and fairly uniform
character tends to national unity, not only through making the community
a relatively closed one, but also by aiding the imagination to grasp the
idea of the nation and offering a common object to the affections and
sentiments of the people.

Contrast in this respect the physical characters of England and Germany.
The boundaries of the latter are almost everywhere artificial and
arbitrary and have fluctuated greatly. It would be impossible for a poet
to write of Germany as Shakespeare wrote of England:—

   This fortress built by Nature for herself
   Against infection and the hand of war;
   This happy breed of men, this little world,
   This precious stone set in the silver sea,

and all the rest of that splendid passage. France, Spain, Italy, Greece,
Denmark, Scandinavia, are all more fortunate than Germany or Austria in
this respect; and the lack of such natural boundaries has been in the
past, and threatens to be in the future, a source of weakness to the
German nation. We may, I think, not improbably attribute, in part at
least, to this circumstance a peculiarity often noticed in German
emigrants—namely, that they rapidly become denationalised and
assimilated by the peoples among whom they settle, and that an
Americanised German, for example, has often less sympathetic feeling for
Germany than a foreigner. For, owing largely to the lack of natural
boundaries and the consequent fluctuations that have occurred, and the
mingling and blending with other peoples, Germany is a less clear-cut
conception than Great Britain or France; to be a German is something
much less definite than to be an Englishman or a Japanese, or even a
Frenchman or a Spaniard[65]. And the presence or lack of definite
natural territorial boundaries operates in a similar way through many
centuries, determining on the one hand historical continuity to a people
as a whole, or on the other hand breaches of historical continuity.

The United States of America afford a fine example of the binding
influence of a well-defined territory; for here the effect is clearly
isolated from racial factors and from slowly accumulated tradition. The
Monroe doctrine is the outward official expression of this effect. The
private individual effect is a sense of part ownership of a splendid
territory with a great future before it. And we are told, I believe
truly, that this sense is very strong and very generally diffused even
among immigrants; that it inspires an unselfish enthusiasm for the work
of developing the immense resources of the country; that this is the
idealistic motive of much of the intense activity which we are apt to
ascribe to the love of the ‘almighty dollar’; and that it is one of the
main causes of the rapid assimilation of immigrants to the national type
of mind.

The Chinese nation, again, owes its existence and its homogeneity of
mental and physical type to geographical unity. Roughly, China consists
of the basins of two immense rivers, not separated from one another by
any great physical barrier, but forming a compact territory well marked
off save in the north. It comprises no such partially separate areas as
in Europe are constituted by Spain, or Italy, or Greece, or Scandinavia,
or even France; almost all parts are well adapted for agriculture.
Hence, largely, the national unity and the national sentiment which have
long existed, and possibly a latent capacity for national thought and
action.

Perhaps the most striking instance of all is ancient Egypt. There, in
the long strip of land rendered fertile by the waters of the Nile, a
people of mixed origin was long shut up and isolated; there all men felt
their immediate dependence on the same great powers, the great river
which once a year overflows its banks, and the scorching sun which
passes every day across a cloudless sky. There all men looked out on
the same unvarying and unvaried landscape, hoped and feared for the same
causes, suffered the same pains, prayed for the same goods. There was
formed one of the most stable and enduring of nations, whose uniform
culture certainly bears the impress of the uniform monotonous physical
environment[66].

The other way in which physical environment affects homogeneity is by
determining similarity or difference of occupations and, through them,
similarities or differences of practical interests and of acquired
qualities. So long as such differences are determined in many small
areas, the result is merely a greater differentiation of the parts,
without danger to the unity of the whole nation. But, when the physical
differences divide a whole people into two or more locally separate
groups differing in occupation and interests and habits, they endanger
the unity of the whole. There are to-day many countries in which the
distribution of mineral wealth is exerting an influence of this sort,
giving rise to the differentiation of an industrial area from
agricultural areas and a consequent divergence of interests and of
mental habits; notably South Africa, Spain, and Italy.

Great Britain is fortunate in this respect also. Its geological
formation presents on a small scale all the principal strata from the
oldest to the most recent, a fact which secures great diversity within a
compact area, an area too compact to allow of divergences of population
being produced by differences of geological formation; so that it enjoys
the advantages of diversity without its drawbacks. Although a certain
degree of differentiation between north and south may be noted, it is
not sharp or great enough to be dangerous. But let us imagine that coal
and iron had been confined to Scotland. Would there be now the same
harmony between the two countries as actually obtains? The United States
of America afford a good illustration of this principle, as I have
already pointed out; the sub-tropical climate of the southern states
gave rise to a differentiation of occupation, and consequently of ideas
and interests and sentiments, which was almost fatal to the unity of the
nation. A similar differentiation between the agricultural west and the
industrial and commercial east seems to be the greatest danger to the
future unity of the nation; and the same may be said of the Canadian
people.

Ireland illustrates well the effects of both kinds of physical
influence. The Irish Channel has perpetuated that difference of race
and consequent difference of religion, which, but for it, would
probably have been wiped out by free intermarriage; while the lack of
coal and iron in the greater part of the country has prevented the
spread of industrialism, and has thus accentuated the difference between
the Irish people and the English. And it is obvious that among the
Protestants of Ulster the accessibility of coal and iron, maintaining a
divergence of occupations and of interests which prevents racial and
cultural blending, perpetuates the racial and traditional differences
between them and the rest of the population.



CHAPTER VIII

FREEDOM OF COMMUNICATION AS A CONDITION OF NATIONAL LIFE


Let us consider now very briefly in relation to the life of a nation a
second essential condition of all collective mental life—namely, that
the individuals shall be in free communication with one another. This is
obviously necessary to the formation of national mind and character. It
is only through an immense development of the means of communication,
especially the printing press, the railway and the telegraph, that the
modern Nation-State has become possible, and has become the dominant
type of political organism. So familiar are we with this type, that we
are apt to identify the Nation and the State and to regard the large
Nation-State as the normal type of State and of Nation, forgetting that
its evolution was not possible before the modern period.

In the ancient world the City-State was the dominant type of political
organism; and to Plato and Aristotle any other type seemed undesirable,
if not impossible. For they recognised that collective deliberation and
volition are essential to the true State. Aristotle, trying to imagine a
vast city, remarks—“But a city, having such vast circuit, would contain
a nation rather than a state, like Babylon.” The translator there uses
the word ‘nation,’ not in the modern sense, but rather as we use
‘people’ to denote a population of common stock not organised to form a
nation. The limits of the political organism capable of a collective
mental life were rightly held to be set by the number of citizens who
could live so close together as to meet in one place to discuss all
public affairs by word of mouth.

The great empires of antiquity were not nations; they had no collective
mental life. Although the Roman Empire, in the course of its long and
marvellous history, did succeed in generating in almost all its subject
peoples a certain sentiment of pride in and attachment to the Empire, it
cannot be said to have welded them into one nation; for, in spite of the
splendid system of roads and of posting, communication between the parts
was too difficult and slow to permit the reciprocal influences essential
to collective life. As in all the ancient empires, the parts were held
together only by a centralised despotic executive organisation; there
was no possibility of collective deliberation and volition[67].

All through history there has obviously been some correlation between
the size of political organisms and the degree of development of means
of communication. At the present time those means have become so highly
developed that the widest spaces of land and sea no longer present any
insuperable limits to the size of nations; and the natural tendency for
the growth of the larger states at the expense of the smaller, by the
absorption of the latter, seems to be increasingly strong. It seems not
unlikely that almost the whole population of the world will shortly be
included in five immense States—the Russian or Slav, the Central
European, the British, the American, and the Yellow or East Asiatic
State. The freedom of communication between the countries of Europe is
now certainly sufficient to allow of their forming a single nation, if
other conditions, such as diversities of racial type and of historical
sentiments, would permit it.

Although, then, the platform and the orator and the assembly remain
important influences in modern times, it is primarily the telegraph,
wireless telegraphy, the printing press, and the steam engine, that have
rendered possible the large modern nations; for these have facilitated
the dissemination of news and the expression of feeling and opinion on a
large scale, and the free circulation of persons[68].

Without this freedom of communication the various parts of the nation
cannot become adequately conscious of one another; and the idea of the
whole must remain very rudimentary in the minds of individuals; each
part of the whole remains ignorant of many other parts, and there can be
no vivid consciousness of a common welfare and a common purpose. But,
more important still, there can be none of that massive influence of the
whole upon each of the units which is of the essence of collective
mental life. Of these means of reciprocal influence the press is the
most important; though, of course, its great influence is only rendered
possible by the railway and the telegraph.

Hence we find that it is as regards the press that Great Britain and
America differ most markedly from such states as Germany, and still more
Russia. To an Englishman or American the meagre news-sheets which in
Germany take the place of our daily and weekly press bring a shock of
astonishment when he first discovers them; and that astonishment is not
diminished when he finds that the best people hardly trouble to look at
them occasionally[69].

It is interesting to note how the general election of January, 1910
illustrated the importance of improved means of communication. It was
found that the number of citizens voting at the polls was a far larger
proportion of those on the register than at any previous election; and,
in this respect, the election was a more complete expression of the will
of the people than any preceding one. This seems to have been due to the
use of the motor-car, at that time the latest great addition to our
means of communication.

The modern improvements of means of communication tend strongly to
diminish the importance of the geographical factors we considered in the
foregoing chapter; for they practically abolish what in earlier ages
were physical barriers to intercourse; they render capital and labour
more mobile; and they make many forms of industry less dependent upon
local physical conditions and, therefore, less strictly confined by
geographical factors. As instances of important developments of this
order in the recent past or near future, the reader may be reminded of
the railway over the Andes between Chile and Argentina, the tunnels
through the Alps, the Channel tunnel, the Siberian railway, the Suez and
Panama canals, the Cape to Cairo railway, and, above all, aerial
transport. All these make for free intercourse between peoples.

Easy means of communication promote development in the direction of the
organic unity of a nation in another way—namely, they promote
specialisation of the functions of different regions; they thus render
local groups incapable of living as relatively independent closed
communities; for they make each local group more dependent upon others,
each upon all and the whole upon each; hence they develop the common
interest of each part in the good of the whole.

This influence already extends beyond national groups and it had been
hoped that its further growth was about to render war between nations
impossible[70]. To-day England is contemplating a task never before
attempted, the fusing into one nation of the peoples of the
mother-country and her distant colonies. Whether or no she will succeed
depends upon whether the enormously increased facilities of
communication can overcome the principal effects of physical barriers
that we have noted—namely, lack of intermarriage and divergence of
occupations, with the consequent divergence of mental type and
interests. The task is infinitely more difficult than the establishment
of such an Empire as the Roman; not because the distances are greater,
but because the union must take the form of nationhood, because it must
take the form of a collective mind and not that of a merely executive
organisation. But, in the considerations which have shown us that
membership in and devotion to a smaller group is by no means adverse to
membership in and devotion to a larger group, we have ground for
believing that the task is not impossible of achievement.

The slow rate of progress towards nationhood of such peoples as the
Russian and the Chinese has been largely due to lack of means of free
communication between the parts of these countries. On the introduction
of improved communications, we may expect to see rapid progress of this
kind; for many of the other essential conditions are already present in
both countries.

The fact that in the Nation-State the communications between individuals
and between the parts of the whole are in the main indirect, mediated by
the press, the telegraph, and the printed word in general, rather than
by voice and gesture and the other direct bodily expressions of thought
and emotion, modifies the primary manifestations of group life in
important ways which we must notice in a later chapter.



CHAPTER IX

THE PART OF LEADERS IN NATIONAL LIFE


We turn now to a third very important condition of the growth of the
national mind, one which also has its analogue in both the crowd and the
army. A crowd always tends to follow some leader in thought, feeling,
and action; and its actions are effective in proportion as it does so.
To follow and obey a leader is the simplest, most rudimentary fashion in
which the crowd’s action may become more effective, consistent,
intelligent, controlled. Not any one can be such a leader; exceptional
qualities are necessary. In every army the importance of leadership is
fully recognised. A hierarchy of leaders is the essence of its
organisation. In the deliberately organised army, the appointment of
leaders is the principal and almost the sole direct means taken by the
State to organise the army. Everything is done to give to the leaders of
each grade the greatest possible prestige, especially by multiplying and
accentuating the distinctions between the grades. Though much can be
accomplished in this way, unless the men chosen as leaders have in some
degree the superior qualities required by their position in the
hierarchy, the whole organisation will be of little value.

The same is true in much higher degree of nations. If a people is to
become a nation, it must be capable of producing personalities of
exceptional powers, who will play the part of leaders; and the special
endowments of the national leader require to be more pronounced and
exceptional, of a higher order, than those required for the exercise of
leadership over a fortuitous crowd.

Such personalities, more effectively perhaps than any other factors,
engender national unity and bring it to a high pitch. There are regions
in which the other main conditions of national unity have long obtained,
but which have failed to become the seat of any enduring nation.
Although the greater part of Africa, perhaps the richest continent of
the globe, has been in the possession of the negro races during all the
ages in which the European, Asiatic, and American civilisations were
being developed, those races have never founded a nation. Nevertheless
many, perhaps most, negroes are capable of acquiring European culture
and of turning it to good account. And, when brought under the
influence of Arabs or men of other races, they have formed rudimentary
nations[71]. The incapacity to form a nation must be connected with the
fact that the race has never produced any individuals of really high
mental and moral endowments, even when brought under foreign influences;
and it would seem that it is incapable of producing such individuals;
the few distinguished negroes, so called, of America—such as Douglas,
Booker Washington, Du Bois—have been, I believe, in all cases mulattoes
or had some proportion of white blood. We may fairly ascribe the
incapacity of the negro race to form a nation to the lack of men endowed
with the qualities of great leaders, even more than to the lower level
of average capacity. On the other hand, there is at least one people
which, in the absence of every other condition, has continued to retain
something of the character of a nation for many generations—namely, the
Jews. The Jews are not even racially homogeneous, and they are scattered
through all the world under the most varied physical conditions; yet the
influence of a succession of men of exceptional power, Moses and his
successors the prophets, all devoted to the same end—namely, the
establishment of the Jewish nation and religion—has lived on through
many generations and still holds this people together, marking it off
from all others.

This is an extreme instance. But another almost equally striking case is
that of the Arab nation, which has owed its existence to one man. The
Arab nation was made by the genius of Mahomet, who welded together, by
the force of his personality and the originality and intensity of his
religious conviction, the warring idolatrous clans of Arabia. Until his
advent these had been a scattered multitude, in spite of racial and
geographical uniformity, geographical isolation, and fairly free
intercommunication. We have here one of the purest, clearest instances
of the effect of great personalities in furthering nationhood; for there
seems to be no reason to believe that, if Mahomet had not lived, any
such development of the Arabian people would have taken place.

M. le Bon has produced a curious piece of evidence bearing on this
question. He has measured the cranial capacity of a great number of
skulls of different races, and has shown that any large collection of
skulls from one of the peoples who have formed a progressive nation
invariably contains a certain small number of skulls of markedly
superior capacity, implying exceptionally large brains; while any
similar collection of skulls from one of the unprogressive peoples, like
the negro, differs, not so much in the smaller average size of the
brain, as in the greater uniformity of size, that is to say, the absence
of individuals of exceptionally large brains[72]. He, rightly, I think,
sees in the absence of such individuals a main condition of the
unprogressive character of these races; and, in the exceptionally large
brains produced among the other peoples, a main condition of their
progress.

These indications are borne out by a review of the history of any nation
that has achieved a considerable development. Every such people has its
national heroes whom it rightly glorifies or worships; for to them it
owes in chief part its existence.

To them also it owes in large measure the forms of its institutions, its
religion, its dominant ideas and ideals, its morals, its art and
literature, all that of which it is most proud, all its victories of
peace as well as of war, the memory of which and the common pride in
which is the strongest of all national bonds[73].

Who can estimate the enormous influence of Confucius and Laotse in
moulding and rendering uniform the culture of China? The influence of
single individuals has undoubtedly been greater in the early than in the
later stages of civilisation; for there was then a more open field, a
virgin soil, as it were, for the reception of their influence. In the
developed nation the mass of accumulated knowledge and tradition is so
much greater, that the modifications and additions made by any one man
necessarily are relatively small.

The leading modern nations owe their position to their having produced
great men in considerable numbers; for that reason also no one man
stands out so prominently as Mahomet or Confucius or Moses. Nevertheless
their existence can in many cases be traced to some few great men. Would
Germany now be a nation, but for Frederick the Great and Bismarck? Would
America, but for Washington, Hamilton, and Lincoln? Would Italy, but for
Garibaldi and Mazzini and Cavour? How greatly is the unity of national
spirit and tradition among Englishmen due to the great writers who have
produced the national literature, and to the great statesmen and
soldiers and sailors who have given her a proud position in the world!
What would England be now if Shakespeare, Newton and Darwin, Cromwell
and Chatham, Marlborough and Nelson and Wellington had never been born?

And it is not only the men of great genius who are essential to the
modern nation, but also men of more than average powers, though not of
the very highest.

Let us try to imagine the fifty leading minds in each great department
of activity suddenly removed from among us. That will help us to realise
the extent to which the mental life of the nation is dependent on them.
Clearly, we should be reduced to intellectual, moral, and aesthetic
chaos and nullity in a very short time. If a similar state of affairs
should continue for some few generations, Britain would very soon cease
to be of any importance in the world. The force of national traditions
might keep up a certain unity; but we should be a people, or a crowd,
living in the past, without energy, without pride in the present or hope
in the future, having perhaps a little melancholy national sentiment,
but incapable of national thought or action.

The continuance of the power and prosperity and unity of national life,
the continued existence of the national mind and character, depends,
then, upon the continued production of numbers of such men of more than
average capacity. It is these men who keep alive from generation to
generation, and spread among the masses and so render effective, the
ideas and the moral influence of the men of supremely great powers.
These men exert a guidance and a selection over the cultural elements
which the mass of men absorb. They praise what they believe to be good,
and decry what they believe to be bad; and, in virtue of the prestige
which their exceptional powers have brought them, their verdict is
accepted and moulds popular opinion and sentiment.

Consider how great in this way has been the influence of men like
Carlyle, Matthew Arnold, and Ruskin. The tone and standard of taste,
thought, and sentiment are set and maintained by such men. It is in
their minds chiefly that the system of ideals and sentiments, which are
the guiding principles and moving forces of the national mind, is
perpetuated. They are truly ‘the salt of the earth’; without them the
nation would soon fall into fragments, or become an inert and powerless
mass of but low degree of organisation and unity.

It is because the national ideals and sentiments are formed by these
leading spirits, and are perpetuated and developed by them, and by them
impressed in some degree upon the mass of the people, and because in
all national movements their influence predominates, that the judgments
and actions, the character and the sentiments, of a nation may be
different from, and in the higher nations are superior to those of the
average men of the nation. As Fouillée said—“The national character is
not always best expressed by the mass, by the vulgar, nor even by the
actual majority. There exists a natural _élite_ which, better than all
the rest, represents the soul of the entire people, its radical ideas
and its most essential tendencies. This is what the politicians too
often forget[74].” That is to say, it is what they forget when, as is
too often the case in this country, they consider that no movement must
be undertaken till the mass of the people demands it. They ignore the
fact that leadership is essential to the maintenance of national life at
a high level, and, instead of exercising initiative, they wait for it to
come from below—wait for a mandate, as they say. The late President
Rooseveldt was a fine example of the contrary type of statesmanship. The
character of the talents displayed by these exceptionally gifted
individuals determines largely the form of the civilisation and, through
shaping the social environment, tends to bring the minds of the mass of
individuals more or less into harmony with it, giving them something of
the same tendencies.

The men of genius of certain peoples, more especially peoples of
relative racial purity, have excelled in some one direction. Thus the
Semites have produced great religious teachers and little else, and have
given to the world its three great monotheistic religions. The Tartar
race has produced from time to time great soldiers and little else. It
has made immense conquests and established dynasties ruling over other
peoples. But, as in the case of the Turks, who owe their national
existence to a line of great despots of the house of Othman, they make
little progress in civilisation and they do not unify the peoples they
rule; for they produce ability of no other kind.

We see in most of the leading European nations the predominance of
certain forms of genius. Modern Italy boasts chiefly men great in
religion and art, perhaps owing to the predominance of _Homo
Mediterraneus_; Spain in pictorial art and military conquest; England in
poetry and administration and science; Germany in music and philosophy.
Nevertheless, each of these peoples has produced men of the greatest
power in all or several kinds; and this we may connect with the fact
that they are all of very mixed racial composition. And we may add that
France, the most composite or mixed racially, has produced the greatest
variety of genius.

The production of the largest numbers of eminent men by peoples of mixed
and blended racial elements, not too widely different, is what
biological knowledge would lead us to expect. For, if a subrace is
produced by crossing of varieties, it will be one of much greater
variability than a pure race; as we see in the cases of the domesticated
horse and dog and pigeon, of which the modern varieties are only kept
pure by continual rejection of the departures from the standards, and of
which the great variability renders possible the production, by
selection of very marked new features in a brief period of time.

The many elements which go to form the mental constitution of an
individual become, in a mixed race, variously combined. If the crossed
races are very widely different, the results seem to be in nearly all
cases bad. The character of the cross-bred is made up of divergent
inharmonious tendencies, which give rise to internal conflict, just as
the physical features appear in bizarre combination; what examples we
have—the Spanish Americans, the Eurasians, the Mulattoes, the
half-breeds of Java and Canada—seem to show that a people so composed
will produce few great men and will not become a great nation.

But, when the crossed races are less widely divergent, the elements of
which the mental constitution is composed (and which direct observation
and analogy with physical heredity show to be transmitted more or less
independently of one another from parent to offspring) have
opportunities to come together in new combinations, which result in
mental constitutions unlike those of either parent (that is to say, the
cross-breds are variable); and among these new combinations, while some
will form minds below the average, others will form minds above the
average in various degrees; and these, so long as the constitution is
not too much weakened by radical lack of harmony of its elements, will
be the effective great men.

Incidentally, these considerations perhaps throw light on a fact much
discussed—namely, that exceptional powers, especially when of highly
specialised nature, are often exhibited by persons of unstable mental
constitution; whence arises the popular belief that genius is allied to,
or is a form of, insanity.

These considerations also raise a presumption that peoples derived by
the blending of several stocks may be expected to have progressed
further in civilisation and in national growth than those of purer
stock; and that, while the racial purity of a people may give stability,
such a people will be liable to arrest and crystallisation of
civilisation at an early stage, before culture is sufficiently advanced
to render possible a highly developed national life. These indications
are well borne out by a survey of the peoples of the world. We may see
here, in all probability, one of the main causes of the early
crystallisation of Chinese civilisation. Homogeneity and racial purity
have produced extreme stability, but at the cost of the variability
which produces great and original minds, and, therefore, at the cost of
capacity for national progress beyond an early stage.



CHAPTER X

OTHER CONDITIONS OF NATIONAL LIFE


In the two foregoing chapters, we have considered in relation to the
life of nations three principal conditions essential to all collective
mental life and action, even that of the unorganised crowd—namely,
homogeneity, free communications and leadership. We have now to consider
other conditions which may render the collective mental processes of
nations very different from, and superior to, those of a mere crowd.

In considering a patriot army as exemplifying collective life of a
relatively high level, we distinguished five principal conditions that
raise it above the level of the mental life of the crowd, in addition to
one which is present in some crowds. This last was a common well-defined
purpose present to, and dominant in, the minds of all individuals. It is
this condition mainly that renders the collective mental life of such an
army so simple, so relatively easy to understand, and so extremely
effective.

This condition—a clearly defined common purpose dominant in the minds of
the great mass of the constituent units—is for the most part lacking in
the life of nations; its absence is one of the principal reasons for the
ineffectiveness and bewildering complexity of their mental life. It is,
however, occasionally realised in national life, and then we see how
immense is its influence. Such an occasion is a war for national
existence. Consider how, when the excesses of the French Revolution
excited all the monarchies of Europe to attack France, the French
nation, becoming animated with the one strong purpose of asserting its
right to exist and to choose its own form of government, successfully
drove back all its enemies and rose to a height of power and glory
greater than at any other period; and how, at the same time, its parts
were welded more firmly together, so that it displayed a high degree of
unity as well as of efficiency. Having achieved this high degree of
unity and efficiency, the French nation, led on by the ambitions of
Napoleon, became aggressive. And we are told by the historians that the
attacks of Napoleon upon the various European peoples, which threatened
to destroy whatever degree of national life those peoples had attained,
were like the blows of a smith’s hammer and resulted in welding together
and hardening into nations the loosely aggregated races ruled over by
the various monarchs; and that in this way these attacks initiated the
modern period of Nation-States[75].

War for national existence unifies nations. So long as the nation is not
utterly shattered and crushed, such war greatly develops the national
mind; because it makes one common purpose dominate the minds of all the
citizens.

We are told that it is a practical maxim of cynical rulers to plunge
their people into war when they are faced by dangerous internal
discontents; and the reason usually given is that war diverts the
attention of the people from their domestic grievances. But if it is a
national war, a war in which the national existence is at stake, it does
far more than merely divert attention; it binds the nation into a
harmonious efficient whole by creating a common purpose; whereas, if the
war is not of this order and is waged in some distant country and merely
for some territorial aggrandisement, it has little or no such effect.
Thus the recent Russo-Japanese war did little or nothing at the time to
raise the Russian people in the scale of nationhood; it was followed by
a period of national weakness; the national existence was not
endangered, the objects of the war were too remote from the interests of
the mass of the people to appeal to them strongly. Whereas the same war
and the years of preparation for it, following upon the previous
Chino-Japanese war, have made the Japanese one of the most efficient and
harmonious nations of the world.

Another striking example of the same principle was the formation of
modern Bulgaria as a strong Nation-State out of a population of quiet
peasant proprietors united only by spatial proximity and by their racial
distinctness from the surrounding populations. This creation of a strong
nation out of a mere population of peasants was in the main the work of
the war of 1885, by which the unprovoked attack of Servia was
triumphantly repelled[76].

The unity and nationhood of modern Germany is largely due to similar
causes; and the war of 1871 may fairly be said to have led to a further
integration of the national life of the French people, in spite of their
defeat. America owes something of the same kind to the Spanish war; and
the entry of that nation into the Great War, long delayed as it was,
will probably be found to have had a similar effect. The French and
Italian nations have undoubtedly been welded more firmly by the Great
War; while England and her sister and daughter nations (with the one sad
exception of the Irish) have been united, by their co-operation in the
one great purpose, to a degree which no other conceivable event could
have achieved and which many generations of peaceful industry and
enlightened political efforts might have failed to approach.

History offers no parallel to these effects of war; and it is difficult
or impossible to imagine any other common purpose which could exert this
binding influence in a similar degree. But it is worth while to notice
that other and minor forms of international rivalry have corresponding
effects. The international rivalry in aeronautics affords a contemporary
illustration. Perhaps every one in this country has felt some degree of
interest and satisfaction in the achievements of the adventurous spirits
of our nation who have traversed the Atlantic by air. And it is probably
largely owing to the prevalence of this national pride and purpose that,
at a time demanding strict national economy, no voice has been raised
against the enormous current expenditure of the government upon
aeronautics.

Another and more important effect of the same kind is produced by the
assumption of great national responsibilities in the way of
administration in respect of backward peoples and undeveloped
territories. The greatest example in history is the responsibility of
Great Britain for the administration of India, gradually and only
half-consciously assumed, but now keenly felt as at once a legitimate
ground of national pride and a moral responsibility that cannot be laid
aside. It is like the responsibility of the father of a family in its
semi-instinctive origin and in its effects in steadying and
strengthening character, for it imposes a responsibility which the
nation, like the individual, cannot discharge indifferently without
seriously damaging its reputation and prestige in the eyes of the world.
Holland owes some of the strength of her nationhood to such influences;
and the assumption by the American nation of responsibility for the
peoples of Cuba and of the Phillipine islands cannot fail to bring them
in some degree similar moral benefits[77].

Of the five other conditions of the higher development of a collective
mind, let us notice, first and very briefly, continuity of existence,
material and formal. Of course every nation has this in some degree, but
some have it in much higher degree than others. The English nation is
fortunate in this respect also. It has preserved both its formal and
its material continuity in very high degree throughout many centuries,
in fact ever since the Norman Conquest. No European nation can compare
with it in this respect; it is only surpassed by China and perhaps
Japan. The French nation has preserved its material continuity, its
population and territory, in high degree. But the Great Revolution cut
across and destroyed to a great extent its formal continuity, so that,
as is sometimes said, the French nation has cut itself off from its past
and made a new start; although, in doing so, it did not get rid of its
highly centralised system of administration. The modern Italian and
German nations are quite recent growths, their formal continuity having
been subject to many interruptions. Spain, with her almost insular
position, might have had continuity; but it was greatly disturbed by the
imperial ambitions of her rulers in the sixteenth century and by the
expulsion of the Moors. Greece is a striking example of loss of both
material and formal continuity. The population of ancient Greece, which
put her in the van of civilisation, has been largely abolished and
supplanted by a different race; and her formal continuity also has
suffered a number of complete ruptures.

Now material and formal continuity is, as we said, the essential
presupposition of all the other main conditions of development of the
collective mind. On it depends the strength of custom and tradition and,
to a very great extent, the strength of national sentiment. It is,
therefore, a principal condition of national stability; from it arise
all the great conservative tendencies of the nation, all the forces that
resist change; accordingly, the more complete and long enduring such
continuity has been in the past, the greater is the prospect of its
prolongation in the future. It is owing to the unbroken continuity of
the English nation through so long a period that its organisation is so
stable, its unwritten constitution so effective, at once stable and
plastic, its national sentiment so strong, its complex uncoded system of
judge-made law so nearly in harmony with popular feeling and therefore
so respected. National organisation resting upon this basis of custom
and traditional sentiment is the only kind that is really stable, that
is not liable to be suddenly overthrown by internal upheavals or impacts
from without. For it alone is rooted in the minds of all citizens in the
forms of habit and sentiment. All other organisation is imposed by
authority.

In this respect modern England and Germany offer a striking contrast
that forces itself upon the most casual observation. As regards the mass
of the people, the position of each individual in the organism of the
German nation is officially determined by the written and codified law
of the State; all personal status and relations are formally determined
by official positions in this recently created system. Almost every
individual carries about some badge or uniform indicating his position
within the system. In England, the status and relations of individuals
are determined by factors a thousand times more subtle and complex,
involving many vaguely conceived and undefined traditions and
sentiments. In Germany, it is almost true to say, if a man has no
official position he has no position at all. In England, the
comparatively few persons who have official positions have also their
social positions by which their private relations are determined. They
are officials only in their offices; whereas the German official is an
official everywhere.

Other important topics we have to consider are (1) the organisation of
the national mind; (2) the national self-consciousness; (3) the
interaction of the nation as a whole with other nations. All these we
may advantageously consider in the light of an analogy, the analogy
between the individual mind and the collective mind of the nation. This
is a much closer and more illuminating analogy than that between the
nation, or society, and the material organism. The latter analogy has
been developed in detail by H. Spencer, Schäffle[78] and others; it has
now fallen into some disrepute. It has no doubt a certain value, but it
is popularly used in a way that leads to quite unjustifiable
conclusions. Of these fallacies by far the most commonly accepted is
that which asserts that, just as every animal organism inevitably grows
old and dies, so too must nations.

This is one of the most popular dogmas of amateur philosophers, and so
distinguished a statesman as the late Lord Salisbury gave it
countenance; while Mr A. J. Balfour in his recent Sidgwick Memorial
Lecture[79] courageously breaks away and proposes to substitute for
senility as the cause of decay the word _decadence_—a proposal which
merely implies that he trusts less to the analogical argument from the
material organism and more to empirical induction, to the observation of
the fact that so many nations have decayed.

All this serves to illustrate the dangers of analogy. We need no special
cause to account for the fall and the decay of nations, no obscure
principle of senility or decadence; the wonderful thing is that they
exist at all; and what needs explanation is not so much the decay of
some, but rather the long persistence of others.

Let us turn, then, to the analogy between the organisation of the
national collective mind and that of the individual mind, which, I say,
is so much closer and more illuminating than that between a society and
a bodily organisation.

The actions of the individual organism are the expression of its mental
constitution or organisation; in some creatures this organisation is
almost wholly innate—the organisation consists of a number of reflex and
instinctive dispositions each specialised for bringing about a special
kind of behaviour under certain circumstances. Such old established
racial dispositions with their special tendencies have their place in
more complexly developed minds; but in these their operations are
complicated and modified by the life of ideas, and by a variety of
habits developed under the guidance of ideas and in the light of
individual experience.

The enduring reflex and instinctive dispositions of the individual mind
we may liken to the established institutions of a nation, such as the
army and navy, the post office, the judicial and the administrative
systems of officials. These, like the instincts, are specialised
executive organisations working in relative independence of one another,
each discharging some specialised function adapted to satisfy some
constantly recurring need of the whole organism. In both cases such
semi-independent organisations, the instincts or the institutions, are
relatively fixed and stable, and they work, if left to themselves,
quasi-mechanically along old established lines, without intelligent
adaptation to new circumstances; and they are incapable of
self-adaptation. In both cases, the mental organisation is in part
materialised, the instinct in the form of specialised nervous structure,
the institution in the form of the material organisation essential to
its efficient action, the buildings, the printed codes, the whole
material apparatus of complex national administration. In both cases,
the actions in which they play their part are not purely mechanical but
to some extent truly psychical—though of a low order.

If we accept the view, which is held by many, that instincts and
reflexes are the semi-mechanised results of successive mental
adaptations effected by the mental efforts of successive generations,
then the analogy is still closer; for the permanent national
institutions are also the accumulated semi-mechanised products of the
efforts at adaptation of many generations.

The organisation of some nations resembles that of the minds of those
animals whose behaviour is purely instinctive. Such is a nation whose
organisation takes the form of a rigid caste system. Each caste performs
its special functions in the prescribed manner in relative independence
of all the others. And, in both cases, the organisation of the mind
includes no means of bringing the different fixed tendencies or
dispositions into harmonious co-operation in the face of unusual
circumstances. The whole system lacks plasticity and adaptability; for
it is relatively mechanical and of a low degree of integration. Any true
adaptation of the whole organism by mental effort is impossible in both
cases.

The higher type of individual mind is characterised by the development
of the intellectual organisation by means of which the activities of the
various instincts, the executive organisations, may be brought into
co-operation with, or duly subordinated to, one another; and the
activities of each such individual may be further adapted to meet novel
combinations of circumstances not provided for in the innate
organisation; hence, the activities of the whole organism, instead of
being a succession of quasi-mechanical actions, and of crude conflicts
between the impulses or tendencies of the different instincts, reveal a
higher degree of harmony of the parts, a greater integration of the
whole system, and a much greater adaptability to novel circumstances;
while, at the same time, the behaviour of the whole, in face of any one
of the situations provided for by innate organisation or instinct, is
liable to be less sure and perfect than in the case of the less complex,
less highly evolved type of mind.

Exactly the same is true of the more highly evolved type of national
mind. Like the lower type, it has its executive institutions and
hierarchies of officials, organised for the carrying out of specialised
tasks subserving the economy of the whole. But, in addition, it has a
deliberative organisation which renders possible a play of ideas; and,
through this, the operations of the institutions are modified and
controlled in detail and are harmonised in a way which constitutes a
higher integration of the whole.

In both cases ideas and judgments reached by the deliberative processes
can only become effective in the world of things and conduct by setting
to work, or calling into play, one or more of the executive dispositions
or institutions.

In both cases, ideas and the deliberative processes, which to some
extent control the operations of the innate or traditional dispositions,
produce, in so doing, some permanent modification of them in the
direction of adaptation to deal with novel circumstances; so that the
dispositions or institutions grow and change under the guidance of the
deliberative processes, slowly becoming better adapted for the
expression of the ruling ideas; they become better instruments, and more
completely at the service of ideas and of the will.

Just as the animal, on the instinctive plane of mental life, displays a
very efficient activity in the special situation which brings some one
instinct into play, so any one caste of a caste-nation may perform its
function under normal circumstances with great efficiency, the priestly
caste its priestly function, the warrior caste, or the caste of
sweepers, its function; and, in both cases, the development of the
deliberative organisation is apt to interfere to some extent with the
perfect execution of these specialised functions.

Again, in the individual mind, adaptation of conduct to novel
circumstances, or to secure improved action in familiar circumstances,
requires the direction of the attention, that is the concentration of
the whole energy of the mind, upon the task; whereas, when the new mode
of behaviour is often repeated, it becomes more and more automatic; for,
owing to the formation of new nervous organisation, the attention is set
free for other tasks of adaptation. Just in the same way new modes of
national behaviour are only effected when the attention of the nation’s
mind is turned upon the situation; whereas, with recurrence of the need
for any such novel mode of action, there is formed some special
executive organisation, say a Colonial Office, or an Unemployed Central
Committee, or an Imperial Conference, which deals with it in a more or
less routine fashion, and which, as it becomes perfected, needs less and
less to be controlled and guided by national attention and therefore
operates in the margin of the field of consciousness of the national
mind, while public attention is set free to turn itself to other tasks
of national adaptation.

We may also regard the customs of a nation as analogous with the habits
of the individual, if (for the sake of the analogy) we accept the view
that instincts are habits that have become hereditary; for custom is an
informal mode in which routine behaviour is determined, and it tends to
lead on to, and to become embodied in, formal institutions; it is like
habit, a transition stage between new adaptation and perfected
organisation. Individual adaptation, habit and instinct are parallel to
national adaptation, custom and legal institution.

At the risk of wearying the reader, I will refer to one last point of
the analogy. Individual minds become more completely integrated in
proportion as they achieve a full self-consciousness, in proportion as
the idea of the self becomes rich in content and the nucleus of a strong
sentiment generating impulses that control and override impulses of all
other sources. In a similar way, the national mind becomes more
completely integrated in proportion as it achieves full
self-consciousness, that is, in proportion as the idea of the nation
becomes widely diffused among the individual minds, becomes rich in
content and the nucleus of a strong sentiment that supplies motives
capable of overriding and controlling all other motives.

Consider now in the light of this analogy the principal types of
national organisation. The organisation of some peoples is wholly the
product of the conflicts of blind impulses and purely individual
volitions working through long ages. This is true of many peoples that
have not arrived at a national self-consciousness or, as the French say,
a social consciousness, and are not held in servitude by a despotic
power. It is a natural stage of evolution which corresponds to the stage
of the higher mammals in the scale of evolution of the individual mind.
A nation of this sort has no capacity for collective deliberation and
volitional action. What collective mental life it has is on the plane of
impulse and unregulated desire. Such ideas as are widely accepted may
determine collective action; but such action is not the result of the
weighing of ideas in the light of self-consciousness; hence they are
little adapted to promote the welfare of the nation, and, because there
is no organisation adapted for their expression, they can be but
imperfectly realised.

We may perhaps take China (as she was until recently) as the highest
type of a nation of this sort. Hers was a complex and vast organisation
consisting of very ancient institutions and customs, slowly evolved by
the conflict of impulses and in part imposed by despotic power and
individual wills; not formed by a national will under the guidance of
national self-consciousness[80]. Hence China was incapable of vigorous
national thought or volition, and its nearest approach to collective
action was expressed in such blind impulsive actions as the Taeping
Rebellion or the Boxer Rising. This last seems to have been prompted by
a dawning national self-consciousness which had not, however, so moulded
the national organisation as to make it an efficient instrument of its
will.

Of other nations the organisation is, in part only, a natural growth,
having been, in large part, impressed upon it by an external power.
Such is the case in all those many instances in which a foreign power of
higher social organisation has conquered and successfully governed for a
long period a people of lower civilisation. We may see a parallel to
this type in the mind of an individual whose behaviour is in the main
the expression of a number of habits engendered by a severe discipline
which has continued from his earliest years, and which has never
permitted the free development of his natural tendencies and character.
Such was England under the feudal system imposed upon her by her Norman
conquerors. Such also France under Louis XIV. Such was Russia when the
Varegs, the conquering Northmen, imposed on the almost unorganised mass
of Slavs their rule and a national organisation; and such it remained up
to the outbreak of the Great War, a mass of men in whom the national
consciousness was only just beginning to glimmer here and there, crudely
organised by the bureaucratic power of a few. Even in the minds of these
few the national consciousness and purpose was but little developed.
Individual purposes and individual self-consciousness predominated.
Hence Russia had no capacity for national thought and action; and when,
as recently, ideas stirred the masses to action, their actions were
those of unorganised crowds, impulsive and ineffective; the ends were
but vaguely conceived, the means were not deliberately chosen, or, if so
chosen, found no executive organisation for the effective expression of
the collective purpose.

In such nations the organisation, which has been in the main created by
a small governing class, is adapted only for the execution of its
purposes, and not at all for the formation of a national mind and the
expression of the collective will. The organisation consists primarily
in a system for the collecting of taxes and the compulsory service of a
large army. The revenue is raised for two primary purposes—the support
of the governing class or caste in luxury and the support of the army;
and the end for which the army is maintained is primarily the gathering
of the taxes, and the further extension of the tax-collecting system
over larger areas and populations—a vicious circle. On the other hand,
the conditions which tend to the formation of national mind and
character (which would have quite other ends than these) are naturally
suppressed as completely as possible by the governing few.

Russian history in modern times exemplifies these principles in the
clearest and most complete manner. The effects of this sort of
organisation were very clearly illustrated by Count Tolstoi’s articles
in the _Fortnightly Review_[81], in which he expressed as his social
creed and ideal a complete anarchy to be achieved by passive resistance;
denied that nations have or can have any existence; and asserted that
the idea of a nation is as fictitious as it is pernicious. He had in
mind only this type of organisation of a people, which hardly entitles
it to be called a nation. And the same considerations explain the wide
prevalence of philosophic anarchy in Russia.

Another type of national organisation results when the natural evolution
of the national mind and character has been artificially and unhealthily
forced by the pressure of the external environment of a people, when the
need of national self-preservation and self-assertion compels the mass
of the people to submit to an organisation which is neither the product
of a natural evolution through the conflict of individual wills, nor the
expression of the general mind and will, nor is altogether imposed upon
it for the individual purposes of the few, but is a system planned by
the few for the good of the whole, and by them imposed upon the whole.
This is the kind of organisation of which a modern army stands as the
extreme type and which is best represented among modern nations by
Germany as she was before the War.

Under such a system there appears inevitably a tendency rigorously to
subordinate the welfare of individuals to that of the nation as a whole.
And that was just the state of affairs in Germany. German political
philosophy showed the opposite extreme from Tolstoi’s; the individual
existed for the nation only. Hence we find this condition of affairs
justified by such writers as Blüntschli[82], Treitschke and Bernhardi,
who represent the State as having an existence and a system of rights
superior to that of all individuals; and we see attempts to justify the
subordination of individual interests by means of the doctrine of the
‘collective consciousness[83].’

In such States as that of the foregoing type the one kind of
organisation is alone highly developed, namely the executive
organisation; while the deliberative organisation is very imperfect and
is repressed and discouraged by the governing power. Such a State is
likely to appear very strong in all its relations with other States, and
its material organisation may be developed in an effective and rapid
way, as we have seen in pre-war Germany. But its actions are not the
expression of the national will and are not the outcome of the general
mind. They are designed by the minds of the few for the good not of
all, but of the whole, the good, that is, not of individuals but of the
State.

Organisation of this type is not of high stability, in spite of its
appearance of strength and its efficiency for certain limited purposes,
such as industrial organisation and the promotion and diffusion of
material well-being. In a State so organised there inevitably grows up
an antagonism between individual rights and interests and the rights and
interests of the State. It is psychologically unsound. This fact was
revealed in Germany by the tremendous growth of social democracy, which
was the protest against the subordination of individual welfare to that
of the State. The defect of such organisation was illustrated by the
fact that Germany, though its well-governed population increased
rapidly, for many years continued to lose great numbers of its
population to other countries. For the mass of the people felt itself to
be not so much of the State as under it. And it is, I think, obvious
that the advent of a bad and stupid monarch might easily have brought on
a revolution at any time.

The inherent weakness of the system induced the governing power to all
sorts of extreme measures directed to maintain its equilibrium and
cohesion. Among such State actions the gravest were perhaps the
deliberate falsification of history by the servile historians and the
suppression and distortion of news by the press at the command and
desire of the State. The expropriation of the Polish landowners and the
treatment of Alsace-Lorraine were other striking manifestations of the
imperfect development of the national mind and of the corresponding
practice and philosophy of the State-craft which the world has learnt to
describe as Prussian.

The organisation of pre-war Germany was, then, very similar to that of
an army and was efficient in a similar way, that is to say for the
attainment of particular immediate ends. In a wider view, such national
organisation is of a lower nature than that of England or France or
America; for the ends or purposes of a nation are remote, they transcend
the vision of the present and cannot be defined in terms of material
prosperity or military power; and only the development of the national
mind, as a natural and spontaneous growth, can give a prospect of
continued progress towards those indefinable ends. Germany was organised
from above for the attainment of a particular end, namely material
prosperity and power among the peoples of the world; and, as the bulk of
her population had been led to accept this narrow national purpose, the
organisation of the nation, like that of an army, was extremely
effective for the purpose. It gave her a great advantage as against the
other nations, among whom the lack of any such clear cut purpose in the
minds of all was a principal difficulty in the way of effective national
thought and action. For a like reason the existence of a nation
organised in this way is a constant threat to the nations of higher
type; and, as we have seen, it may compel them at any time to revert to
or adopt, temporarily at least and so far as they are able, an
organisation of the lower and more immediately effective kind. And this
threat was the justification of the nations of the Entente, when they
demanded a radical change in this political organisation of Germany. In
a similar way, in the past, the Huns, the Turks, and the Arabs, peoples
organised primarily for war and conquest, had to be destroyed as nations
if the evolution of nations of higher type was to go forward.



CHAPTER XI

THE WILL OF THE NATION[84]


Rousseau, in his famous treatise, _Le Contrat Social_, wrote “There is
often a great difference between the will of all and the general will;
the latter looks only to the common interest; the former looks to
private interest, and is nothing but a sum of individual wills; but take
away from these same wills the plus and minus that cancel one another
and there remains, as the sum of the differences, the general will.”
“Sovereignty is only the exercise of the general will.” That is to say,
a certain number of men will the general good, while most men will only
their private good; the latter neutralise one another, while the former
co-operate to form an effective force.

Dr Bosanquet[85], criticising Rousseau’s doctrine, says that the general
will is expressed by the working of the institutions of the community
which embody its dominant ideas; that no one man really grasps the
nature and relations of the whole society and its tendencies; that the
general will is thus unconscious (by which he seems to mean that the
nation is unconscious of itself and of its ends or purposes); and he
goes on to say that the general will is the product of practical
activities making for nearer smaller ends, and that its harmony depends
on the fact that the activities of each individual are parts of a
systematic whole.

Bosanquet’s theory amounts to a justification of the old individualist
_laissez faire_ doctrine—the doctrine that the good of the whole is best
achieved by giving freest possible scope to the play and conflict of
individual purposes and strivings—the philosophic radicalism of Bentham
and Mill, which teaches that, if each man honestly and efficiently
pursues his private ends, the welfare of the State somehow results. How
this systematic whole which is the State arises he does not explain; and
it seems to me that Bosanquet leaves unsolved that difficulty which, as
we saw, led Schiller and others to postulate an external power guiding
each people—the difficulty, if we assume that individual wills strive
only after private egoistic ends, of explaining how the good of the
whole is nevertheless achieved.

In all societies many general changes result, and in some nations no
doubt the good of the whole is achieved in a measure by fortunate
accident, in the way Bosanquet describes—namely, by the interplay of
individual wills working for near individual ends. But, I think, it is
improper to say that in such a case any general will exists. Such a
nation, if it displays any collective activity, only does so in an
impulsive blind way which is not true volition, but is comparable rather
with instinctive action; for, as we have seen, self-consciousness is
essential to volition; a truly volitional action is one which issues
from the contemplation of some end represented in relation to the idea
of the self and found to be desirable. And the changes of a society
which result in the way Bosanquet claims as the expression of the
general will are unforeseen and unwilled; they are no more the
expression and effects of a general will than are the movements of a
billiard ball struck simultaneously by two or more men each of whom aims
at a different position.

Bosanquet maintains that the national will is unconscious of its ends;
but that the life of a nation does express a general will, in virtue of
the fact that the individuals, who will private and less general ends
than the ends of the nation, live in a system of relations that
constitutes them an organism; and that it is in virtue of this organic
system of relations that the individual volitions work out to an
unforeseen unpurposed resultant, which he calls the end willed by the
general will. He makes of this organic unity the essential difference
between a mere crowd and a society or nation—defining an organism or
organic unity as a system of parts the capacities and functions of each
of which are determined by the general nature and principle of the whole
group.

That is an excellent definition of an organism; and we have recognised
fully the importance of organisation in national life, consisting in
specialisation of the parts such that each part is adapted to perform
some one function that subserves the life of the whole, while itself
dependent upon the proper functioning of all other parts.

We may admit too that, in proportion as this specialisation of functions
is carried further, organic unity is promoted because the life of the
whole becomes more intimately dependent on the life of each part, and
each part more intimately and completely dependent on the life of the
whole.

But unity of this sort is characteristic of all animal bodies; and,
though the mind has this kind of organic unity, it acquires, in
proportion as self-consciousness develops, over and above this kind of
unity, a unity of an altogether new and unique kind; a unity which
consists in the whole (or the self) being present to consciousness,
whether clearly or obscurely, during almost every moment of thought, and
pervading and playing some part in the determination of the course of
thought and action.

Now, the national mind also has both the lower and the higher kinds of
unity. In both cases—that is, in the development both of the individual
and of the national mind—a certain degree of organic unity must be
achieved, before self-consciousness can develop and begin to play its
part; but in both cases, when once it has begun to operate,
self-consciousness goes on greatly to increase the organic unity, to
increase the specialisation of functions and the systematic
interdependence of the parts.

Consider a single illustration of this parallelism of the individual
with the national mind. Take the aesthetic faculty. In the individual
mind there develops a certain capacity for finding pleasure in certain
objects and impressions, such as young children and even the animals
have; and then, with the growth of self-consciousness, the individual
sets himself deliberately to cultivate this faculty, to specialise it
along particular lines and to exercise it as something apart from his
other mental functions; while, nevertheless, it becomes for him, in
proportion as it is developed and specialised, more and more an
essential part of his total experience. Just so there spontaneously
develop in a people some rudimentary aesthetic practices and traditions
and some class of persons, say the bards, who are more skilled than
other men in ministering to the aesthetic demands of their fellows.
Then, as national self-consciousness develops, the place and value of
these functions in the system of national life becomes explicitly
recognised, and they are deliberately fostered by the establishment of
national institutions, schools of art, academies of letters and music,
the award of public titles and honours and so forth; whereby the
specialisation of these national functions is increased, their
dependence on the life of the whole rendered more intimate, and, at the
same time, the life of the whole rendered more dependent upon the life
of these parts, because the richer aesthetic development of the parts
reacts upon the whole, diffusing itself through and elevating the life
of the whole.

Bosanquet recognises in national life only the lower kind of unity and
not the unity of self-consciousness. He seems to reject the notion of
national self-consciousness, on the ground that the life of a nation is
so complex that it cannot be fully and adequately reflected in the
consciousness of any individual; yet in this respect the difference
between the national mind and the individual mind is one of degree only
and not of kind. In the individual mind also, even the most highly
developed and self-conscious, the capacities and dispositions and
tendencies that make up the whole mind are never fully and adequately
present to consciousness; the individual never knows himself
exhaustively, though he may continually progress towards a more nearly
complete self-knowledge. Just so the national mind may progress towards
a more complete self-knowledge, and, though at the present time no
nation has attained more than a very imperfect self-knowledge, yet the
process is accelerating rapidly among the more advanced nations; and
such increasing self-knowledge promises to become the dominating factor
in the life of nations, as it is in the lives of all men, save the most
primitive.

Suppose that all those conditions making for national unity which we
have considered in the foregoing chapters were realised, but that
nevertheless all men continued to be moved only by self-regarding
motives, or by those which have reference to the welfare of themselves
and their family circle or to any ends less comprehensive than the
welfare of the whole nation. We could not then properly speak of the
tendencies resulting from the interplay and the conflict of all these
individual wills as expressions of the general will, as Bosanquet and
others have done, even though the organic unity of the whole secured a
harmonious resultant national activity, if such a thing were possible.
But there is no reason to suppose that such a thing is possible.

I think we may say that it is only in so far as the idea of the people
or nation as a whole is present to the consciousness of individuals and
determines their actions that a nation in the proper sense of the word
can exist or ever has existed. Without this factor any population
inhabiting a given territory remains either a mere horde or a population
of slaves under a despotism. Neither can be called a nation; wherever a
nation has appeared in the history of the world, the consciousness of
itself as a nation has been an essential condition of its existence and
still more of its progress.

We may see this, even more clearly, in the case of the smaller
aggregations of men, the smaller social units, the family, the clan, the
tribe. The family is a family only so long as it is conscious of itself
as a family, and only in virtue of that self-consciousness and of the
part which this idea and the sentiments gathered about it play in
determining the actions of each member. How carefully such family
consciousness is sometimes fostered and how great a part it plays in
social life is common knowledge. In the early stages of Greek and Roman
history, the family consciousness was the dominant social force which
long succeeded in overriding and preventing the development of any
larger social consciousness. Just as the _gens_ played this part in
early Rome, so the clan has played a similar part elsewhere, for example
in the highlands of Scotland. Such peoples form the strongest nations.

Just so with the tribe. It exists as a tribe only because, and in so far
as, it is conscious of itself, and in so far as the idea of the tribe
and devotion to its service determines the actions of individuals. The
mere fact of the possession of a tribal name suffices to prove the
existence of this self-consciousness. And, as a matter of fact, tribal
self-consciousness is in many cases extremely strongly developed; the
idea of the tribe, of its rights and powers, of its past and its future
plays a great part among warlike savages; and an injury done to the
tribe, or an insult offered to it, will often be kept in mind for many
years, even for generations, and will be avenged when an opportunity
occurs, even in spite of the certainty of death to many individuals and
the risk of extermination of the whole tribe.

The federation of Iroquois tribes to form a rudimentary nation seems to
have been due to a self-conscious collective purpose. And, when other
tribes become fused to form nations, the same holds true. Consider the
Hebrew nation, one of the earliest historical examples of a number of
allied tribes becoming fused to a nation. Surely the idea of the nation
as the chosen people of Jehovah played a vital part in its
consolidation, implanted and fostered as it was by a succession of great
teachers, the prophets. Their work was to implant this idea and this
sentiment strongly in the minds of the people, to create and foster this
traditional sentiment by the aid of supernatural sanctions. The national
self-consciousness thus formed has continued to be not only one factor,
but almost the only factor or condition, of the continued existence of
the Jewish people as a people, or at any rate the one fundamental
condition on which all the others are founded—their exclusive religion,
their objection to intermarriage with outsiders, their hope of a future
restoration of the fortunes of the nation, and so forth.

And the same is true of every real nation; its existence and its power
are grounded in its consciousness of itself, the idea of the nation as a
dominant factor in the minds of the individuals. The dominant sentiment
which centres about that idea is very different in the various nations.
It may be chiefly pride in the nation’s past history, as in Spain; or
hope for its future, as in Japan; or the need of self-assertion in the
present, as in pre-war Germany.

The political history of Europe in the nineteenth century is chiefly the
history of the national actions that have sprung from increase of
national self-consciousness resulting from the spread of education, from
the improvement of means of communication within each people and from
increase of intercourse between nations. The opening pages were the wars
in which the French people, suddenly aroused to an intense national
consciousness, successfully resisted and drove back all the other
European powers. Of other leading events the formation of modern Italy
and of modern Germany, of Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece, were results of the
awakening of national self-consciousness[86].

The resistance of the Japanese to the Russians and their victory over
them were in the fullest sense the immediate outcome of the idea of the
Japanese nation in the minds of all its people, leading to a strong
collective volition for the greater power, glory, and advancement of the
nation. The recent unrest in China is recognised on all hands to be the
expression of a dawning national self-consciousness. In Europe, Poland,
Finland, Hungary, and Ireland exemplify its workings very clearly in
recent years. The Magyars were not oppressed by the Austrians. They,
economically and individually, had nothing material to gain by a
separation from Austria; and in separating themselves they would have
risked much, their lives, and their material welfare; yet the idea of
the Magyar nation impelled them to it. The Poles of Germany were not
rebellious because they were ill-treated and their affairs
maladministered. If they could and would have cast out from their minds
the idea of the Polish nation, they might have comfortably shared in the
marvellously advancing material prosperity of Germany. But they were
severely treated by the Germans, because they were moved by this idea
and this sentiment; and the bad treatment it brought upon them did but
render the idea more vividly, more universally, present to the
consciousness of all, even of the little children at school, and, by
inflaming the passions which have their root in the national sentiment,
strengthened that sentiment.

But for the idea of the Boer nation and the dawning national sentiment,
the late Boer war would never have occurred; and that sentiment was, as
in the case of the Japanese in their late war, the principal source of
the great energy displayed by the Boers and of such success as they
achieved.

Even in India, the proposal to divide Bengal has suddenly discovered
among the Bengalese, the most submissive part of the population, the
part which has seemed most devoid of national spirit, the existence and
the importance as a political factor of the idea of the Bengalese as a
people and of sentiments centred upon that idea.

The rapid increase of national self-consciousness among the peoples of
the world and the increasing part everywhere played by the sentiment for
national existence are in short the dominant facts in the present period
of world history; their influence overshadows all others.

Since, then, any nation exists only in virtue of the existence of the
idea of the nation in the minds of the individuals of whom it is
composed, and in virtue of the influence of this idea upon their
actions, and since this idea plays so great a part in shaping the
history of the world, it is absurd to maintain that the general will is
but the blind resultant of the conflict of individual wills striving
after private ends and unconscious of the ends or purposes of the
nation. In opposition to such a view, we must maintain that a population
seeking only individual ends cannot form or continue to be a nation,
though all the other conditions we have noticed be present; that a
nation is real and vigorous in proportion as its consciousness of its
self is full and clear. In fact national progress and power and success
depend in chief part upon the fulness and the extension, the depth and
width of this self-consciousness—the accuracy and fulness with which
each individual mind reflects the whole; and upon the strength of the
sentiments which are centred upon it and which lead men to act for the
good of the whole, to postpone private to public ends. And the same
holds good of all the many forms of corporate life within the nation.
Each individual’s sense of duty, in so far as it is a true sense of
duty, and not a fictitious sense due merely to superstitious fear or to
habit formed by suggestion and compulsion, is chiefly founded upon the
consciousness of the society of which he forms a part, upon the group
spirit that binds him to his fellows and makes him one with them. And
the nations in which this national self-consciousness is strongest and
most widely diffused will be the successful nations.

Reflect a little on these facts vouched for by General Sir Ian Hamilton.
No soldier of the Japanese army, none even of the coolies, would accept
anything in the shape of a tip even for honest services rendered, lest
the purity of his motives should be sullied; and each man always went
into action not merely prepared to die if necessary, but actually
prepared and expecting to conquer and to die for the good and glory of
his nation. He writes “Japanese officers have constantly to explain to
their men that they must not consider the main object of the battle is
to get killed[87].” And he goes on to show that they are not fanatics,
are not inspired by any idea of the supernatural or by any hope of
rewards after death, as is usually the case of the Moslem soldier who
displays an equal recklessness of life. Surely, if in any nation the
national consciousness could inspire and maintain all classes of its
people in all relations of life to this high level of strenuous
self-sacrifice for the welfare of the nation, that nation would soon
predominate over all others, and be impregnably strong, no matter what
defects of individual and national character it might display.

The idea of the nation is, then, a bond between its members over and
above all those bonds of custom, of habit, of economic interdependence,
of law and of self-interest, of sympathy, of imitation, of collective
emotion and thought, which inevitably arise among a homogeneous people
occupying any defined area; and it is the most powerful and essential of
them all. As Fouillée put it, the essential characteristic of human
society is that “it is an organism which realises itself in conceiving
and in willing its own existence. Any collection of men becomes a
society in the only true sense of the word, when all the men conceive
more or less clearly the type of organic whole which they can form by
uniting themselves and when they effectively unite themselves under the
determining influence of this conception. Society is then an organism
which exists because it has been thought and willed, it is an organism
born of an idea[88].” In this sense Society has never yet been perfectly
realized, but it is the ideal towards which social evolution tends.

National group self-consciousness plays, then, an all-important part in
the life of nations, is in fact the actual, the most essential
constitutive factor of every nation; and nationhood or the principal of
nationality is the dominant note of world history in the present epoch;
that is to say, the desire and aspiration to achieve nationhood, or to
strengthen and advance the life of the nation, is the most powerful
motive underlying the collective actions of almost all civilised and
even of semi-civilised mankind; and the consequent rivalry between
nations overshadows every other feature of modern world history, and is
convulsing and threatening to destroy the whole of modern civilisation.
It is surely well worthy of serious study. Yet, owing to the backward
and neglected state of psychology, not only is this study neglected,
but, as we have seen, some of our leading political philosophers have
not yet even realized the essential nature of the problem; and many of
the historians, economists and political writers are even further from a
grasp of its nature. They have been forced by the prominence and urgency
of the facts to recognise what they call the principle of nationality;
and even now the majority of them are demanding that, in the European
settlement and in the affairs of the world in general, the principle of
nationality shall be given the leading place and the decisive voice. But
they do not recognise that the understanding of this principle, this
all-powerful political factor, is primarily and purely a psychological
problem. We find them, in discussing the nature of nations and the
conditions of nationality, perhaps mentioning the psychological view of
nations as a curious aberration of a few academic cranks, from which
they turn to discover the true secret of nationality in such
considerations as geographical boundaries, race, language, history, and
above all economic factors; they do not see that each and all of these
conditions, real and important though they are and have been in shaping
the history and determining the existence of nations, only play their
parts indirectly by affecting men’s minds, their beliefs, opinions, and
sentiments, especially by favouring or repressing the development in
each people of the idea of the nation.

The all-dominant influence of the idea of the nation, I insist, is not a
theory or a speculative suggestion, it is a literal and obvious fact.
Let every other one of the favouring conditions of nationality, the
geographical, historical, economic be realised by a population; yet, if
that population has no collective self-consciousness, is not strongly
actuated to collective volition by the group spirit, it will remain not
a nation, but a mere aggregate of individuals, having more or less
organic unity due to the differentiation and interdependence of its
parts, but lacking that higher bond of unity which alone can ensure its
stability and continuity, and which, especially, can alone enable it to
withstand and survive the peaceful pressure or the warlike impact of
true nations.

I am not at present defending nationality; I shall come back to the
question of its value. I am now only concerned with the psychological
problem of the nature and conditions of the development of national
self-consciousness. I have been using the latter phrase and the phrase
‘the idea of the nation’ as a shorthand expression; but I must remind
the reader that we have to beware of the intellectualist error of
regarding ideas as moving powers; ideas as merely intellectual
representations or conceptions have no motive power, they are in
themselves indifferent. It is only in so far as the object conceived
becomes the object of some sentiment that the conception of it moves us
strongly to feeling and action. I must refer, therefore, to what I have
written on the sentiments and the self-regarding sentiment[89]. Here I
would insist on the strictness in this point of our analogy between the
individual and the national mind. I have pointed out that the
individual’s idea of himself only develops beyond a rudimentary stage in
virtue of and in so far as this idea becomes the nucleus of a strong
self-regarding sentiment which gives him an interest in himself, directs
his attention upon his own personality and its relations, and impels him
to strive to know himself. So that a developed individual
self-consciousness never is and never can be a purely intellectual
growth, but always involves a strong sentiment, a centering of emotional
conative tendencies upon this object, the self. Exactly the same is true
of nations.

Hence national self-consciousness can never develop except in the form
of an idea of strong affective tone, that is to say a sentiment. Hence,
whenever we speak of national self-consciousness or the idea of the
nation as a powerful factor in its life, the sentiment is implied, and I
have implied it when using these expressions hitherto. This national
sentiment, which, if we use the word in its widest sense, may be called
patriotism, is, like all the other group sentiments, developed by way
of extension of the self-regarding sentiment of the individual to the
group, and may be further complicated and strengthened by the inclusion
of other tendencies. A point of especial importance is that this great
group sentiment can hardly be developed otherwise than by way of
extension of sentiments for smaller included groups, the family
especially. For the idea of the nation is too difficult for the grasp of
the child’s mind, and cannot, therefore, become the object of a
sentiment until the intellectual powers are considerably developed.
Hence the development of a family sentiment, or of one for some other
small easily conceived group, is essential for the development in the
child of those modes of mental action which are involved in all group
feeling and action. For this reason the family is the surest, perhaps
essential, foundation of national life; and national self-consciousness
is strongest, where family life is strongest.

The development of the group spirit in general and of national
self-consciousness in particular is favoured by, and indeed dependent
upon, conditions similar to those which develop the self-consciousness
of individuals. Here is another striking point of the analogy between
the individual and the national mind. Passing over other conditions, let
us notice one, the most important of all. The individual’s consciousness
of self is developed chiefly by intercourse with other individuals—by
imitation, by conflict, by compulsion, and by co-operation. Without such
intercourse it must remain rudimentary. The individual’s conception of
himself is perpetually extended by his increasing knowledge of other
selves; and his knowledge of those other selves grows in the light of
his knowledge of himself. There is perpetual reciprocal action. The same
is true of peoples. A population living shut off, isolated from the rest
of the world, within which no distinctions of tribe and race existed,
would never become conscious of itself as one people and, therefore,
would not become a nation. Some such conditions obtained for long ages
among the pastoral hordes of the central Eurasian Steppes, which, so
long as they remained there, have never formed a nation; and the same
was true of the tribes of Arabia, until Mahomet impelled them by his
religion of the sword to hurl themselves upon neighbouring peoples.

Of civilised peoples, China has had least intercourse with the outer
world. The Chinese knew too little of other races to imitate them; they
did not come into conflict or co-operation with others, save in a very
partial manner at long intervals of time, or only with their Mongol
conquerors, whom they despised as inferior to them in everything but
warfare, and whom they abhorred. Hence, in spite of the homogeneity of
the people, of the common culture, and of the vast influence of great
teachers, national consciousness and the group spirit in all its forms
remained at a low level. Hence, a great deficiency in those virtues
which have their root in the social consciousness; a low standard of
public duty, a lack of the sense of obligation to society. Hence, the
corruptness and hollowness of all official transactions and political
life. Want of honesty in public affairs is not the expression of an
inherent defect of the Chinese character; for in commercial relations
with Europeans the Chinaman has proved himself extremely trustworthy,
much superior indeed in this respect to some other peoples. It is
probable that, if China, like Europe, had long ago been divided into a
number of nations, each of them, through action and reaction upon the
rest, would have developed a much fuller national consciousness than
exists at present and some considerable degree of public spirit and
would consequently have advanced very much farther in the scale of
social evolution, instead of standing still as the whole people has done
for so long.

Everywhere we can see the illustrations of this law. Of all forms of
intercourse, conflict and competition are the most effective in
developing national consciousness and character, because they bring a
common purpose to the minds of all individuals; and that is the
condition of the highest degree and effectiveness of collective mental
action and volition. It is under these conditions that the idea of the
nation and the will to protect it and to forward its interests become
predominant in the minds of individuals; and the more so the greater the
public danger, the greater and the more obvious the need for the
postponement of private ends to the general end.

Already there is beginning to develop a European self-consciousness and
a European purpose, provoked by the demonstration of the hitherto latent
power of Asia; and, if a federation of European peoples is ever to be
realised, it will be the result of their further development through
opposition to a great and threatening Asiatic power, a revived Moslem
empire, or possibly a threatened American domination[90].

Although war has hitherto been the most important condition of the
development of national consciousness, it is not the only one; and it
remains to be seen whether industrial or other forms of rivalry can play
a similar part. Probably, industrial rivalry cannot; the accumulation
of wealth is too largely dependent upon the accidents of material
conditions to become a legitimate source of national satisfaction; for,
unlike the satisfaction arising from successful exertion of military
power, it does not imply intrinsic superiorities. If the natural
conditions of material prosperity could be equalised for all nations,
then the acquisition of superior wealth, implying as it would superior
capacities, might become a sufficiently satisfying end of national
action; just as the equalisation of conditions among individuals in
America has for the present rendered the accumulation of wealth a
sufficient end, because such accumulation implies superior powers and is
the mark of personal superiority.

Other forms of rivalry—rivalry in art, science, letters, in efficiency
of social and political organisation, even in games and sports, all play
some part; and it is possible that together they might suffice to
constitute sufficient stimulus, even though the possibility of war
should be for ever removed[91].

But national self-consciousness is not developed by conflict and rivalry
only. It is refined and enriched by all other forms of intercourse. In
studying other peoples, their organisation and their history, we become
more clearly aware of the defects and the qualities and potentialities
of our own nation. And in this way, refinement of national consciousness
is now going on rapidly in the European peoples. The latest considerable
advance is due to the observation of Japan; for this has clearly
demonstrated the imperfection of many conceptions that were current
among us and has brought a certain abatement of national complacency and
a greater earnestness of national self-criticism, which is highly
favourable to increase of national self-knowledge[92].

We might place nations in a scale of nationhood. The scale would
correspond roughly to one in which they were arranged according to the
degree to which the public good is the end, and the desire of it the
motive, of men’s actions; this in turn would correspond to a scale in
which they were arranged according to the degree of development and
diffusion of the national consciousness, of the idea of the nation or
society as a whole; and this again to one in which they were arranged
according to the degree of intercourse they have had with other nations.
At the bottom of the scale would stand the people of Thibet, the most
isolated people of the world; near them the Chinese, who also have until
recently been almost entirely excluded from international intercourse.
Such peoples have a national consciousness and sentiment which is
extremely vague and imperfect. They do not realise their weakness, their
strength or their potentialities, but have an unenlightened pride
without aspiration for a higher form of national life. A little above
them would stand Russia, which has remained for so long outside the area
of European international life. While at the top of the scale would be
those nations which have borne their part in all the strain and stress
and friction of European rivalry and intercourse.

These degrees of international intercourse have been very largely
determined by geographical conditions; isolation, and consequent
backwardness in national evolution, being in nearly every case due to
remoteness of position. The most important factor of modern times making
for more rapid social evolution is probably the practical destruction or
overcoming of the barriers between peoples; for thus all peoples are
brought into the international arena, and their national spirit is
developed through international intercourse and rivalry.

It is this increasing contact and intercourse of peoples, brought about
by the increased facilities of communication, which has quickened the
growth of national self-consciousness throughout all the world and has
made the principle of nationality or, more properly, the desire for
nationhood and for national existence and development, for
self-assertion and for international recognition, the all-important
feature of modern times, overshadowing every other phenomenon that
historians have to notice, or statesmen to reckon with.

The American nation is interesting in this connexion. If we ask—Why is
their public life on a relatively low level, in spite of so many
favouring conditions, including a healthy and strong public opinion?—the
answer is that they have been until recently too much shut off from
collective intercourse with other nations, too far removed from the
region of conflict and rivalry. And judicious well-wishers of the
American nation rejoice that it has recently entered more fully into the
international arena, and has not continued to pursue the policy of
isolation, which was long in favour; because, as is already manifest,
this fuller intercourse and intenser rivalry with other nations must
render fuller and more effective their national spirit, develop the
national will and raise the national life to a higher plane, giving to
individuals higher ends and motives than the mere accumulation of
wealth, and removing that self-complacency as regards their national
existence which hitherto has characterised them in common with the
peoples of Thibet and China.



CHAPTER XII

IDEAS IN NATIONAL LIFE


We have seen that the idea of the nation can and does, in virtue of the
formation of the sentiment of devotion to it, lead men to choose and
decide and act for the sake of the nation; they desire the welfare and
the good of the nation as a whole, they value its material prosperity
and its reputation in the eyes of other nations; and, in so far as the
decisions and actions of a nation proceed from this motive, co-operating
with and controlling other motives in the minds of its members, such
decision and action are the expressions of true collective volition.

It is truly volition because it conforms to the true type of volition.
Individual volition can only be marked off from every impulsive action
and every lower form of effort, by the fact that in true volition, among
all the impulses or motives that may impel a man to action or decision,
the dominant rôle is played by a motive that springs from his
self-regarding sentiment. This motive is a desire to achieve a
particular end, which, viewed as the achievement of the self, brings him
satisfaction, because the thought of himself achieving this end is in
harmony with the ideal of the self which he has gradually built up and
has learnt to desire to realize under the influence of his social
setting. The same is true of national volition.

And it is collective volition in so far as the deliberations by which
the decision of the nation has been reached have been effected through
those formally and informally organised relations and channels of
communication and by means of all the various modes of interaction of
persons by which public opinion is formed and in which it is guided and
controlled by the living traditions of the nation.

That this is the true nature of national volition may be more clearly
realized on considering some instances of national action which could
not properly be called the expression of the will of the Nation. A
tariff might be adopted because a large number of men desired it, each
in order that he himself might get rich more quickly; and, even though a
large majority, or even all men, desired it, each for his private end,
it would not be the expression of the national will, it would not be due
to collective volition; it would be the expression of the will of all.
Nor would it be an expression of the national will, even if each
believed that, not only he, but also all his fellows would be enriched,
and if he desired it for that reason also; that would be an expression
of the will of all for the good of all. Only if and in so far as the
decision was reached through the influence of those who desired it,
because it seemed to them to be for the good of the whole nation, would
it be the expression of the will of the nation.

And the difference would be not merely a difference of motive; the
difference might be very important in respect both of the deliberative
processes by which the decision was reached and also in respect of its
ultimate consequences. For the will of all for the good of all would
have reference only to the immediate future; whereas the truly national
will would be influenced not only by consideration of the good of all
existing citizens, but, in an even greater degree, by the thought of the
continued welfare of the whole nation, in the remote future.

Again, suppose that, on the occasion of an insult or injury to the
nation (I remind the reader of the incident in the North Sea when the
Russian fleet fired on our fishing boats), a wave of anger against the
offending nation sweeps over the whole country and that this outburst of
popular fury plunges the nation into war. That would be collective
mental process, but not volition; it would be action on the plane of
impulse or desire, unregulated by reflection upon the end proposed in
relation to the welfare of the nation and by the motives to action that
are stirred by such reflection.

Again, suppose a nation of which every member was patriotic, and suppose
that some proposed national action were pondered upon by each man apart
in his own chamber, without consultation and discussion with his fellows
in public and private. Then, though the decision would be true volition,
in so far as it was determined by each man’s desire for the national
welfare, it yet would not be collective or national volition; because
not reached by collective deliberation.

We have seen that the idea of the nation, present to the minds of the
mass of its members, is an essential condition of the nation’s existence
in any true sense of the word nation; that the idea alone as an
intellectual apprehension cannot exert any large influence; that it
determines judgment and action only in virtue of the sentiment which
grows up about this object—a sentiment which is transmitted and fostered
from generation to generation, just because it renders the nation an
object of value. The consideration should be obvious enough; but it has
commonly been ignored by philosophers of the intellectualist school.
They treat the individual mind as a system of ideas; they ignore the
fact that it has a conative side which has its own organisation,
partially distinct from, though not independent of, the intellectual
side; and consequently they ignore equally the fact that the national
mind has its conative organisation.

Imagine a people in whom anti-nationalism (in the form of
cosmopolitanism, syndicalism or philosophic anarchism) had spread, until
this attitude towards the nation-state as such had become adopted by
half its members, while the other half remained patriotic. Then there
would be acute conflict and discussion, and the idea of the nation would
be vividly present to all minds; but the nature of the sentiment
attached to it would be different and opposite in the two halves; one of
attachment and devotion in the one half; of dislike, aversion, or at
least indifference (i.e. lack of sentiment) in the other half. And the
efforts of the one half to maintain the nation as a unit would be
antagonised and perhaps rendered nugatory by the indifference or
opposition of the other half, who would always seek to break down
national boundaries and would refuse co-operation in any national
action, and who would league themselves with bodies of similar interests
and anti-national tendencies in other countries. Then, even though all
might be well-meaning people desiring the good of mankind, the nation
would be very greatly weakened and probably would soon cease to exist as
such.

The illustration shews the importance of the distinction which Rousseau
did not draw in his discussion of the general will—namely, the
distinction between the good of all and the good of the whole, i.e. of
the nation as such. It might be argued that the distinction is purely
verbal; it might be said that, if you secure the good of all, you
thereby _ipso facto_ secure the good of the whole, because the whole
consists of the sum of existing individuals; and that this is obvious,
because, if you take them away, no whole remains. But to argue thus is
to ignore the fact on which we have already insisted—namely, that the
whole is much more than the sum of the existing units, because it has an
indefinitely long future before it and a part to play, through
indefinitely long periods of time, as a factor in the general welfare
and progress of mankind.

So much greater is the whole than the sum of its existing parts, that it
might well seem right to sacrifice the welfare and happiness of one or
two or more generations, and even the lives of the majority of the
citizens, if that were necessary to the preservation and future welfare
of the whole nation as such. This is no merely theoretical distinction,
it is one of the highest practical importance, which we may illustrate
in two ways.

A whole nation may be confronted with the alternative, may be forced to
choose between the good of all and the good of the whole. Such a choice
was, it may be said without exaggeration, suddenly presented to the
Belgian people, and only less acutely to ourselves and to Italy, by the
recent European conflagration; and in each case the good of the whole
has been preferred. Is it not probable and obvious that, if each or all
of these peoples had consented to the domination of Germany, the
material welfare of all their existing citizens might well have been
increased, rather than diminished, and that their choice has involved
not only the loss of life of large numbers of their citizens and great
sufferings for nearly all the others, but also enormous sacrifice of
material prosperity, in order that the whole may survive and eventually
prosper as a nation working out its national destiny free from external
domination? There are, or were, those who say that they would just as
soon live under German rule, because they would be governed at least as
well and perhaps better than by their own government hitherto; and there
is perhaps nothing intrinsically bad or wrong in this attitude; the
question of its rightness or wrongness turns wholly on the valuation of
nationality. It is easier to appreciate this plea on behalf of another
people than our own. One may hear it said even now that, after all, it
would have been better for Belgium that she should have entered into the
group of Germanic powers in some sort of federal system or Customs
union; that, in general, it is ridiculous that the small states should
claim sovereign powers and pretend to have their own foreign policy and
so forth; that they are struggling against the inevitable, against a
universal and necessary tendency for the absorption of the smaller
states by the larger.

We may illustrate the difference between regard for the good of all
members of the nation and of the nation itself in another way—namely, by
reference to socialism, the principle which would abolish inequalities
of wealth and opportunity, as far as possible, by abolishing or greatly
restricting the rights of private property and capital, especially the
right of inheritance. There can, I think, be little doubt that the
adoption of socialism in this sense by almost any modern nation would
increase the well being and happiness of its members very decidedly on
the whole for the present generation and possibly for some generations
to come. It is in respect of the continued welfare of the whole and of
its perpetuation as an evolving and progressing organism that the
effects seem likely to be decidedly bad. The socialists are in the main
those who fix their desire and attention on the good of all; hence they
are for the most part inclined to set a low value on nationality, even
while they demand a vast extension of the functions of the State,
conceived as an organised system of administration. Those, on the other
hand, who repudiate socialism, not merely because they belong to the
class of ‘Haves,’ must seek their justification in the consideration of
the probable effects of such a change on the welfare of the nation
conceived as an organism whose value far transcends the lives of the
present generation.

When, then, we attribute to the idea of the nation or to the national
consciousness this all-important creative, constitutive, and
conservative function, we must be clear that the idea is not an
intellectual conception merely, but implies an enduring emotional
conative attitude which is the sentiment of devotion to the nation; and,
further, we must remember that the nation means not simply all existing
individuals, the mere momentary embodiment of the nation, but something
that is far greater, because it includes all the potentialities embodied
in the existing persons and organisation.

It is the presence and operation in the national mind of the idea of the
nation in the extended sense just indicated that gives to national
decisions and actions the character of truly collective volitions; they
approach this type more nearly, the more the idea is rich in meaning and
adequate or true, and the more widely it is spread, and the more
powerful and widely spread is the sentiment which attaches value to the
nation and sways men to decision and action for the sake of the whole,
determining the issue among all other conflicting motives.

And it is the working of the national spirit and the acceptance of and
devotion to the national organisation which render the submission of the
minority to the means chosen by the majority a voluntary submission; for
it is of the essence of that organisation that, while all accept and
will the same most general end, namely the welfare of the whole, the
choice of means must be determined by the judgment of the majority,
formed and expressed as a collective judgment and opinion by way of all
the many channels of reciprocal influence that the national
organisation, both formal and informal, provides. In so far as each man
holds this attitude, esteeming the nation and accepting loyally its
constitution or organisation, the decision determined by even a bare
majority vote of parliament becomes the expression of the national will;
and the co-operation in carrying it out of those who did not judge the
method to be wise, and who therefore voted against it, yet becomes a
truly voluntary co-operation, in so far as they accept the established
organisation.

The point may be illustrated by the instance of a nation going to war. A
large minority may be against war, for reasons which to them may seem to
be of the highest kind; it may be that they judge the nation to be
morally in the wrong in the matter in dispute, or very questionably in
the right, as many Englishmen did during the Boer War; and yet, if, by
the accepted organised channels of national deliberation and decision,
war has been declared, then, although it was their duty to do what they
could to make their opinion prevail before the decision was reached,
there is no moral inconsistency in their supporting the war measures
with all their strength. It is in fact implied in their loyalty, if they
are loyal and patriotic, that they shall yield their individual opinion
to the expression of the national will and shall accept the means chosen
to the common end. That is the truth implied in the phrase—My country
right or wrong. Of course, this phrase may be taken in a reprehensible
sense, as meaning that any opportunity of forwarding the immediate
interests of one’s country must be taken, regardless of the interests of
other communities and of the obligations of common honesty and humanity
upon which all human welfare depends.

In the same way, a man might disapprove of a particular tax, say on
liquor, or of obligatory military service; and yet he may accept the
national will and serve faithfully as a soldier, without inconsistency,
and without ceasing to be a free agent truly willing the acts imposed by
his position in the whole organisation; just as during the late war many
priests served as soldiers in the French army. Or, to take an extreme
instance, a man who has broken the law and even incurred the death
penalty may be truly said to undergo his punishment of imprisonment or
death as a morally free agent, if he is loyal to his country and its
institutions, accepting the penalty, while yet believing his action to
be right. Such perfect loyalty to the nation is of course rare; and in
all actual nations men have progressed towards it in very different
degrees. Most existing nations have emerged from preceding despotisms by
the repeated widening of the sphere of freedom, as the growth of loyalty
in strength and extension rendered such freedom consistent with the
survival of the State and its administrative functions.

Thus a people progresses from the status of an organism, in which the
parts are subordinated to the whole without choice or free volition on
their part, or even against their wills, towards the ideal of a
Nation-state, an organic whole which is founded wholly upon voluntary
contract between each member and the whole, and in which the distinction
between the State and the nation becomes gradually overcome and replaced
by identity. For, as national self-consciousness develops and each man
conceives more fully and clearly the whole nation and his place and
function in it, and grows in loyalty to the nation, he ceases to obey
the laws merely because he is constrained by the authority and force of
the State. An increasing proportion of citizens obey the law and render
due services voluntarily, because they perceive that, in so doing, they
are contributing towards the good of the whole which they value highly;
in so far as they act in this spirit, the actions and restraints
prescribed by law become their voluntary actions and restraints.

Thus the theory that society is founded upon a _Social Contract_, which,
if taken as a description of the historical process of genesis, is
false, is true, if accepted as the constitutive principle of the ideal
State towards which progressive nations are tending.

And, as the organisation of a nation becomes less dependent upon outer
authority and upon mere custom and the unreasoning acceptance of
tradition, and more and more upon free consent and voluntary contract,
the nation does not cease to be an organism; it retains that formal and
informal organisation which has developed in large part without the
deliberate guidance of the collective will and which is essential to its
collective life; the national mind, as it grows in force and extension
and understanding of its own organisation, accepts those features which
it finds good, and gradually modifies those which appear less good in
the light of its increasing self knowledge; and so it tends more and
more to become a contractual organism, which, as Fouillée has insisted,
is the highest type of society.

It should be noticed that this ideal of the contractual organism
synthesises the two great doctrines or theories of society which have
generally been regarded as irreconcilable alternatives: the doctrine of
society as an organism, and that of society as founded upon reason and
free will. They have been treated as opposed and irreconcilable
doctrines, because those who regarded society as an organism, taking
the standpoint of natural science, have laid stress upon its evolution
by biological accidents and by the interaction and conflict of many
blind impulses and purely individual volitions, in which collective
volition, governed by an ideal of the form to be achieved, had no part.
While, on the other hand, the idealist philosophers, describing society
or the nation as wholly the work of reason and free will, have been
guilty of the intellectualist fallacy of regarding man as a purely
rational being; they have ignored the fact that all men, even the most
intellectual, are largely swayed and moulded by processes of suggestion,
imitation, sympathy, and instinctive impulse, in quite non-rational
ways; and they have ignored still more completely the fact that the
operation of these non-rational processes continues to be not only of
immense influence but also inevitable and necessary to the maintenance
of that organic unity of society upon which as a basis the
contract-unity is superimposed as a bond of a higher, more rational and
more spiritual quality.

The former doctrine logically tends to the paralysis of social effort
and to the adoption of extreme individualism, to the doctrine of each
man for himself, and of _laissez faire_, doctrines such as those of
Herbert Spencer. The other, the idealist theory of the state as being
founded and formed by reason, tends equally logically towards extreme
State socialism; because its overweening belief in reason leads it to
ignore the large and necessary basis of subrational organisation and
operation.

Only a synthesis of the two in the doctrine of the contractual organism
can reconcile them and give us the ideal of a nation in which the
maximum and perfection of organisation shall be combined with the
maximum of liberty, because in it each individual will be aware of the
whole and his place and functions in it, and will voluntarily accept
that place and perform those functions.

The highest, most perfectly organised and effective nation is, then, not
that in which the individuals are disposed of, their actions completely
controlled, and their wills suppressed by the power of the State. It is,
rather, one in which the self-consciousness and initiative and volition
of individuals, personality in short, is developed to the highest
degree, and in which the minds and wills of the members work
harmoniously together under the guidance and pressure of the idea of the
nation, rendered in the highest degree explicit and full and accurate.


THE VALUE OF NATIONALITY

At the present time, while the mass of men continue to accept the duty
of patriotism unquestioningly, and historians for the most part are
content to describe with some astonishment the immense development of
nationalism in the past century, many voices are loudly raised for and
against nationality. The great mass of men no doubt are swept away in
the flood of patriotic feeling. But the war has also intensified the
antipathy, and given increased force to the arguments, of those who
decry nationality and deprecate patriotism—for these are but two
different modes of expressing the same attitude.

There are two principal classes of the anti-nationalists. First, the
philosophic anarchists, who would abolish all states and governments, as
unnecessary evils, men like Kropotkin and Tolstoi. Secondly, the
cosmopolitans, who, while believing in the necessity of government and
even demanding more centralised administration, would yet abolish all
national boundaries as far as possible, boundaries of geography, of
language, race and sentiment, and all national governments, and would
aim at the establishment of one great world state.

Though the aims of these two parties are so widely different, they use
much the same arguments against nationalism. According to the
anti-nationalist view, nationalism and the patriotism in which it is
founded are a kind of disease of human nature, which, owing to the
unfortunate fact that mankind has retained the gregarious instinct of
his animal ancestors, inevitably breaks out as soon as any community
begins to come into free contact and rivalry with other communities, and
which tends to grow in force in a purely instinctive and irrational
manner the more these contacts and rivalries increase.

The liability to patriotism is thus regarded as closely comparable with
mankind’s unfortunate liability to drunkenness, to feel the fascination
of strong liquor—as merely a natural and inevitable result or by-product
of an unfortunate flaw in human nature—a tendency which will have to be
sternly repressed and, if possible, eradicated, before men can hope to
live in peace and tolerable security and to develop their higher
capacities.

The fact that patriotism of some degree and form is universally
displayed, and that it breaks out everywhere into heat and flame when
certain conditions are realized, does not for them in any degree justify
it; and it should not, they hold, reconcile us to its continued
existence; they draw an indictment not merely against a whole people,
but against the whole human race. They attack nationalism, firstly, by
describing what in their opinion patriotism is and whence it comes;
secondly, by describing what they believe to be the natural consequences
and effects of nationalism.

The most common mode of attack is to identify patriotism with jingoism;
they speak of “jelly-bellied flag-flappers” of flag-wagging and
mafficking; they assert that the essence of patriotism is hatred and all
uncharitableness towards other countries and their citizens.[93]

Less virulent is the criticism of those who, looking coldly upon
patriotism, describe it as the mere blind expression of the working of
the gregarious instinct among us, and as something therefore quite
irrational, which must and will tend to disappear, as men become more
enlightened and are guided more by reason and less by instinct.[94]

Again, it is said that patriotism is a form of selfishness and therefore
bad; that it is a limitation of our sympathies, a principle of
injustice; that it stands in the way of the realisation of universal
justice, of the universal brotherhood of man, which is the ideal we
obviously must accept and aim at. Or in other words, and this is the
main indictment, it is alleged that patriotism and nationalism
inevitably tend to produce war, that they keep the rival nations
perpetually arming for possible wars and actually in commercial and
economic war, if not at real war. And of course the evils of warfare and
of such perpetual preparation for war are great and obvious enough in
modern Europe. In support of this indictment, they point to the golden
age of the Roman Empire, when the inhabitants of all its parts were
content to sink their differences of race and country and were proud to
proclaim themselves citizens of the Roman Empire; and they say that in
consequence the civilised world attained then a pitch of prosperity and
contentment never known before or since over any large area of the
earth.

This is a formidable indictment, to which the exponents and advocates of
patriotism have for the most part been content to reply by renewed
exhortations to patriotism, by emotional appeals, by rhetoric, by the
quotation of patriotic verses, the citation of the glorious deeds of our
armies and soldiers now and in past times, by all the arts of persuasion
and suggestion. As a fine example of this method one may cite Mr
Stratford Wingfield’s _History of British Patriotism_, in which he not
only confines himself to these methods, but shows a positive dislike and
contempt for all attempts to apply reason and scientific method to the
study of human affairs.[95] In maintaining this attitude, the advocates
of patriotism give some colour to the claim of their opponents that
patriotism or nationalism is essentially irrational, in the sense that
it is incapable of justification by reason.

The politicians and historians, on the other hand, who are so generally
demanding that the European settlement after the war must accept
nationality as its fundamental principle, are commonly content to note
the strength and the wide distribution of the patriotic sentiment,
without enquiring into its origin, nature, or value.

Let us examine the arguments against patriotism and then see what reason
can advance in its defence. For, though a rational defence of patriotism
will have little direct effect in making patriots, we may be sure that,
if such defence cannot be maintained, patriotism will have to fight a
losing battle.

In disparaging patriotism by describing it as the work of an instinct,
the gregarious or the pugnacious or other instinct, or of several
instincts, its critics are guilty of two psychological errors and a
popular fallacy. The last is the fallacy that the worth of any thing is
to be judged by the course from which it springs. Even if patriotism
were nothing more than the direct expression of the gregarious instinct
which we possess in common with many of the higher animals, that would
not in itself condemn it. But this description of it, as a product of
instinct as opposed to the principles we attain by reason, involves that
false disjunction and opposition of reason to instinct which is
traditional and which the intellectualist philosophers commonly adopt,
when they condescend to recognise in any way the presence of instinctive
tendencies in human nature.

The other psychological error is the failure to recognize that
patriotism although, like all other great mental forces, it is rooted in
instinct, is not itself an instinct or the direct expression of any
instinct or group of instincts, but is rather an extremely complicated
sentiment, which has a long and complex history in each individual mind
in which it manifests itself; that it is, therefore, capable of infinite
variety and of an indefinite degree of intellectualisation and
refinement; that the cult of patriotism is, therefore, a field for
educational effort of the highest order, and that in this field moral
and intellectual education may achieve their noblest and most
far-reaching effects.

The psychological justification of patriotism has already been
indicated, but may be concisely stated here. The moral value of the
group spirit was considered in an earlier chapter; we saw how it, and it
alone, raises the conduct of the mass of men above the plane of simple
egoism or family selfishness. The sentiment of devotion or loyalty to
any group has this virtue in some degree; but loyalty to the nation is
capable of exalting character and conduct in a higher degree than any
other form of the group spirit. For the nation alone has continuity of
existence in the highest degree; a long past which gives a large
perspective of past history, involving the history of long series of
self-sacrificing efforts and many heroic actions; and the prospect of an
indefinitely prolonged future, with the possibility of continued
progress and development of every kind, and therefore some security for
the perpetuation of the results achieved by individual efforts[96].

Further, the nation alone, is a self-contained and complete organism;
other groups within it do but minister to the life of the whole; their
value is relative to that of the whole; the continuance of results
achieved on their behalf is dependent upon the continued welfare of the
whole (for example, the welfare of any class or profession—a fact too
easily overlooked by those in whom class spirit grows strong). Hence,
the nation, as an object of sentiment, includes all smaller groups
within it; and, when the nation is regarded from an enlightened point of
view, the sentiment for it naturally comes to include in one great
system all minor group sentiments and to be strengthened by their
incorporation.

It is important to notice also that, just as the minor group sentiments
are not incompatible with, but rather may strengthen, the national
sentiment, when subordinated to and incorporated in it, so the national
sentiment is not incompatible with still more widely inclusive group
sentiments—for example, that for a European system of nations, for the
‘League of Nations’ or for Western Civilisation in general. And, while
loyalty to humanity as a whole is a noble ideal, it is one which can
only be realized through a further step of that process of extension of
the object of the group sentiment, of which extension patriotism itself
is the culmination at present for the great mass of civilised mankind.
The attempt to achieve it by any other road is bound to fail because
psychologically unsound[97].

Let us note in passing that neglect of this truth gives rise to two of
the extreme forms of political doctrine or ideal, current at the present
day; first, the ideal of the brotherhood of man in a nationless world;
secondly, the extreme form of democratic individualism which assumes
that the good of society is best promoted by the freest possible pursuit
by individuals of their private ends, which believes that each man must
have an equal voice in the government of his country, because that is
the only way in which his interests and those of his class can be
protected and forwarded; a doctrine which regards public life as a mere
strife of private and class interests. Both ideals fly in the face of
psychological facts; and, though they are in appearance extreme
opposites, they are apt to be found associated in the same minds.

At the other end of the scale, we have the philosophical conservatism of
such a thinker as Edmund Burke, which is keenly aware of the organic
unity of society and looks constantly to the good of the whole, deriving
from that consideration its leading motives and principles, and which
trusts principally to the growth of the group spirit for the holding of
the balance between conflicting interests and for the promotion of the
public welfare.

Having seen the importance for national life of the idea of the nation,
the diffusion of which through the minds of the people constitutes
national self-consciousness, let us glance for a moment at the way other
ideas may play leading rôles in national life. Such are ideas which
became national ideals, that is to say, ideas of some end to be realised
by the nation which became widely entertained and the objects of strong
sentiments and of collective emotion and desire and which, therefore,
determine collective action.

I shall not attempt to deal separately with various classes of such
ideas, or ideals—the political, the religious, the economic; but shall
only note the fact that they have played and may yet play great parts in
the history of the world.

Men are not swayed exclusively by considerations of material
self-interest, as the older school of economists generally assumed; nor
even by spiritual self-interest, as too much of the religious teaching
of the past has assumed; nor even by consideration of the welfare of the
social groups of which they are members. Many of the great events of
history have been determined by ideas that have had no relation to
individual welfare, but have inspired a collective enthusiasm for
collective action, for national effort, of a disinterested kind; and the
lives of some nations have been dominated by some one or two such ideas.
These ideas are first conceived and taught by some great man, or by a
few men who have acquired prestige and influence; they then become
generally accepted by suggestion and imitation, accepted more or less
uncritically and established beyond the reach of argument and reasoning.

No matter what the character of the idea, its collective acceptance by a
people enhances for the time the homogeneity of mind among them, renders
the people more intimately a unity, and serves also to mark it off more
sharply from other peoples among whom other ideas prevail.

But, besides thus binding together at any period of its history the
people that entertains it the generally accepted idea, if it endures,
may produce further effects by becoming incorporated in the national
organisation; in so far as it determines the form of activity of the
people, it moulds their institutions and customs into harmony with
itself, until they become in some measure its embodiment and expression;
and in any vigorous nation there are usually one or two dominant ideas
at work in this way.

It is a favourite dogma with some writers (for example M. le Bon) that
ideas, before they can exert great effects in the life of a nation, must
first become unconscious ideas, incorporated as they say in the
unconscious soul of a people. This is an obscure confused doctrine,
which, if it is meant to be taken literally, we can only reject. If it
is to have any real meaning, it must be taken in the sense that the long
prevalence of the ideal moulds the institutions and customs and the
executive organisation of a people, so that national action towards the
ideal end becomes more or less automatic or routine.

If the ideal so accepted and incorporated in the organised structure of
the national mind, is one that makes for strength and at the same time
permits of progress, it lives on; in other cases it may destroy the
nation, or petrify it, arresting all progress.

Consider one or two examples of ideas that have played dominant rôles in
the lives of nations. They are mostly political, or religious, or, most
powerful of all, politico-religious. The idea of world-conquest has
dominated and has destroyed several great nations, of which the latest
example is the German Empire. The idea of conversion by the sword,
accepted with enthusiasm by the Arab nation, gave it for a time
tremendous energy, but contained no potency of permanent power or of
progress. The idea of immortality, or desire of continued existence
after death, seems to have dominated the minds of the ancient Egyptian
people; the idea of escape from the evils of this world, those who have
fully accepted Buddhism, like the Burmans[98]. The idea of caste as an
eternal and impassable barrier has largely determined the history of
India.

All these are ideas which have proved ineffective to sustain national
vigour or to promote social evolution. It would not be strictly true to
say that the fall, or the unprogressive condition, of the peoples that
have entertained these ideas is the result of those ideas; because the
general acceptance of them proves that they were in harmony with the
type of mind of the people. Yet the formulation of the ideas by the
leading minds who impressed them on the peoples must have accentuated
those tendencies with which they harmonised; and in each case, if the
idea had never been formulated, or if others had been effectively
impressed on the mind of the people, the course of its history would
have been changed. Of ideas less adverse to national life take the idea
of ancestor worship, and the idea of personal loyalty to the ruler,
ideas which commonly go together and have played an immense part in the
life of some peoples, notably in Japan; they have served as effective
national bonds in periods of transition through which despotically ruled
populations have progressed to true nationhood. The idea of the divine
right of kings played for a time a similar rôle in Europe.

A good example of the operation of an ideal in a modern nation is that
of the ideal of a great colonial empire in the French nation. No doubt,
hopes of economic advantages may have played some part in this case; but
the growth of the immense oversea empire of modern France, as well as
of the great extra-European conquests which France has made in the past
but has ceased to control, seems to have been due in the main to the
operation of this ideal in the national mind. France has no surplus
population, and no Frenchman desires to leave his beautiful France;
everyone regards himself as cruelly exiled if compelled to live for a
time in any of the oversea possessions; and most of these, notably the
Indo-Chinese Empire are very expensive, costing the nation far more in
administrative expenses than any profits derived from them, and
involving constant risks of international complications and war, as in
Morocco in recent years. Nevertheless, the ideal still holds sway and,
under its driving power, the oversea territories of France, especially
in Africa, have grown enormously. And this ideal has inevitably
incorporated itself in the organisation of the nation, in a colonial
office and a foreign legion, and all the administrative machinery
necessarily set up for securing the ends prescribed by the ideal.

In modern times the most striking illustration of the power of ideas on
national life is afforded by the influence of the ideals of liberty and
equality. It was the effective teaching of these ideals of liberty and
equality, primarily by Rousseau, to a people prepared by circumstances
to receive them, which produced the French Revolution; and all through
the nineteenth century they have continued to determine great changes of
political and social organisation in many countries of Europe and in
America.

In England the idea of liberty has long been current and long ago had
become incorporated and expressed in the national organisation; but its
application received a vast extension when in 1834 England insisted on
the liberation of all British-owned slaves and paid twenty million
sterling in compensation. That the idea still lives on among us, with
this extended application, seems to have been proved by the results of
recent elections which were influenced largely by the force of the
no-slavery cry in relation to coloured labour. It is an excellent
example of an established collective ideal against which reason is of no
avail.

The ideal of liberty never entered the minds of the most advanced
peoples of antiquity; their most enlightened political thinkers could
not imagine a State which was not founded upon slavery. Yet it has
become collectively accepted by all the leading nations, and the
ordinary man has so entirely accepted it that he cannot be brought to
reason about it. Facts and arguments tending to show that the greater
part of the population of the world might be happier without liberty and
under some form of slavery cannot touch or enter his mind at all.

The ideal of political equality is of still later growth, and is in a
sense derivative from that of liberty; it was in the main accepted as a
means to liberty, but has become an end in itself. It is moulding
national organisation everywhere; through its influence parliamentary
government and universal suffrage are becoming the almost universal
rule, and, through leading to their adoption, this ideal is in a fair
way to wreck certain of the less firmly organised nations, and possibly
our own also.

But the ideal which, beyond all others, characterises the present age of
almost all the nations of the world is the ideal of progress. Hardly
anyone has any clear notion what he means by progress, or could
explicate the idea; but the sentiment is very strong, though the idea is
very vague. This idea also was unknown to the leading thinkers of
antiquity and is of recent growth; yet it is so almost universally
accepted, and it so permeates the mental atmosphere in every direction,
that it is hard for us to realise how new a thing in the history of the
world is the existence, and still more the effective dominance, of the
idea. It is perhaps in America that its rule is most absolute; there the
severest condemnation that can be passed by the average man upon any
people or institution is to say that it is fifty years behind the time.
The popular enthusiasm for flying-machines, which threatens to make life
almost unlivable, is one of the striking illustrations of the force of
this ideal.

More recent still, and perhaps equally important, is the idea of the
solidarity of the human race and of the responsibility of each nation
towards the rest, especially towards the weaker and more backward
peoples. We no longer cheerfully and openly exterminate an inferior
people; and, when we do so, it is with some expressions of regret and
even of indignation.

But this moral idea is still in process of finding acceptance and
illustrates well that process. It has been taught by a few superior
minds and none dares openly repudiate it; hence, it gains ground and is
now commonly accepted, verbally at least, and is just beginning to
affect national action.

The four ideas, liberty, equality, progress, and human solidarity or
universal responsibility, seem to be the leading ideas of the present
era, the ideas which, in conjunction with national sentiments, are more
than any other, fashioning the future of the world.

The last two illustrate exceptionally well the capacity of nations to be
moved by abstract ideas not directly related to the welfare of the
individuals whose actions they determine; they show once more how false
is the doctrine that national life is but the conflict of individual
wills striving after individual goods. They show that, through his life
in and mental interaction with organised society, man is raised morally
and intellectually high above the level he could individually achieve.



CHAPTER XIII

NATIONS OF THE HIGHER TYPE


Let us consider now the type of nation which from our present point of
view is the most interesting, the type which approximates most nearly to
a solution of the problem of civilisation, to the reconciliation of
individuality with collectivity, to the synthesis of individualist and
collectivist ideals; that in which the rights and wills of individuals
are not forcibly subordinated to those of the State by the power of a
governing class, and in which the deliberative side of the national mind
is well developed and effective.

Such are in a certain degree the French, but still more the British and
the American nations. In the two latter countries the rights of the
individual are made supreme over all other considerations, the welfare
of the whole is only to be advanced by measures which do not override
individual wills and rights; or, at least, the only power which is
admitted to have the right in any degree to override individual wills is
the will of the majority. In such a nation the greatest efforts are
concentrated on the perfection of the deliberative organisation, by
means of which the general mind may arrive at collective judgment and
choice of means and may express its will. A vast amount of time and
energy is devoted to this deliberative work; while the executive
organisation, by which its decisions have to be carried into effect, is
apt to be comparatively neglected and hence imperfect.

These two complementary features of such states we see well exemplified
here and in America[99]; where the amount of time, money, and effort
spent upon the deliberative processes and the elaboration of the
organisation through which they are effected is enormously greater than
in other nations. And, in spite of the energy expended on deliberative
processes and on the elaboration of their organisation, the interests of
the nation as a whole are not at present forwarded in a manner at all
comparable with those of such a State as Germany. Nevertheless, such
national actions as we do achieve are far more truly the expression of
the national will; and, if the national mind is to be developed to a
high level, this vast expenditure of energy, which to some impatient
spirits seems wasteful and useless, must go on.

As was said in a former chapter, such collective deliberation of modern
nations is only rendered possible by the great facilities of
communication we enjoy; telegraph, post, and railway, and especially the
press. The ancients saw truly enough that, with their limited means of
communication, the higher form of state-organisation must be restricted
to a small population of some thousands only—the City-State.

It is important to note that not only do modern facilities of
communication render possible a truly collective mental life for the
large Nation-States of the present age; but that these modern conditions
actually carry with them certain great advantages, which tend to raise
the collective mental life of modern nations to a higher level than was
possible for the ancient City-State, even though its members were of
high average capacity and many of them of very great mental power, as in
Athens.

The assembly of citizens in one place for national deliberation rendered
them much more susceptible to those less desirable peculiarities of
collective mental life which characterise simple crowds; particularly,
the excess of emotional excitement, increased suggestibility, and,
hence, the ease with which the whole mass could be swayed unduly by the
skilful orator. In the modern nation, on the other hand, the
transmission of news by the press secures a certain delay, and a lack of
synchronism, in its reception by different groups and individuals; and
it secures also a certain delay in the action and reaction of mind on
mind, which gives opportunity for individual deliberation. Also the
sympathetic action of the mass mind on the individual mind is in large
part indirect, rather than direct, representative rather than
perceptual, and therefore less overwhelming in its effects. These
conditions greatly temper the violence of the emotional reactions and
permit of a diversity of feeling and opinion; an opposed minority has
time to form itself and to express an opinion, and so may temper the
hasty and emotional reaction of the majority in a way that is impossible
in a general assembly.

A further advantage of the large size of nations may arise from the fact
that actual decision as to choice of means for effecting national action
has to be achieved by means of representatives who come together in one
place. Representative government is not merely an inferior substitute
for government by general assembly; it is superior in many respects. If
each representative were a mere delegate, an average specimen of the
group he represents, chosen by lot and merely charged to express their
will, this feature would modify the crude collective mental processes in
one important respect only; namely, it would counteract to some extent
that weakening of individual responsibility which is characteristic of
collective mental action. But, in addition to this, internal
organisation, in the form of tradition and custom, comes in to modify
very greatly the collective process.

We see such modifying influence very clearly in the election of the
English House of Commons and in the methods of its operations. Owing
partly to a natural tendency, partly to a fortunate tradition, the
people do not elect just any one of themselves to serve as a delegate or
average sample of the mass; but as a rule they choose, or try to choose,
some man who displays special capacity and special qualifications for
taking part in the national deliberations. In so far as they are
successful in this, their representatives are able men and men to whose
minds the social consciousness, the consciousness of the whole people,
of its needs and tendencies and aspirations, is more fully and clearly
present than to the average mind. They are also in the main men of more
than average public spirit. Hence it is not unknown that a purely
working class constituency, being offered liberal, conservative, and
labour candidates, instead of choosing the labour man, one of
themselves, gives him only a small fraction of the total votes. Then,
within the body of representatives, this process, by which greater
influence is given to the abler men, to those whose minds reflect most
fully the whole people, is carried further still. A small group of these
men exerts a predominant influence in all deliberations; and not only
are they in the main the best qualified (for they only attain their
leading positions by success in an intense and long continued
competition) but they are put in a position in which they can hardly
fail to feel a great responsibility resting upon them; and in which they
feel the full force of political traditions. The deliberative
organisation of the American nation illustrates, when compared with our
own, the importance of these traditions; for its lesser efficiency is
largely due to the absence of such traditions, and to the fact that
their system banishes from the House of Representatives its natural
leaders and those on whom responsibility falls most heavily.

Lastly, the existence of two traditionally opposed parties ensures that
every important step shall be fully discussed. The traditional division
into two parties, which from one point of view seems so irrational,
nevertheless exerts very important and valuable influences, of which the
chief is that it prevents the assembly of legislators becoming a mere
psychological crowd easily swayed to a decision by collective emotion
and skilful suggestion; for each suggestion coming from the one party
acts by contra-suggestion upon the other and provokes an opposition that
necessitates discussion[100].

In these two ways, then;—first, through the culmination of national
deliberation among a selected group of representatives, among whom again
custom and tradition accord precedence and prestige to the natural
leaders, the most able and those in whose consciousness the nation, in
the past, present and future is most adequately reflected; secondly, by
means of the party system, which ensures vigorous criticism and full
discussion of all proposals, under a system of traditional conventions
evolved for the regulation of such discussions;—in these two ways the
principal vices of collective deliberation are corrected, and the formal
deliberations and decisions of the nation are raised to a higher plane
than the collective deliberations of any assembly of men lacking such
traditional organisation could possibly attain. The part played by
unwritten tradition in the working of the British constitution is of
course immense, as for example, the existence and enormous prestige of
the cabinet, and the tradition that a party coming into power must
respect the legislation of the party previously in power. Without this
last, representative government, or at any rate the party system, would
be impossible. The smooth working of the system depends entirely upon
the influence of these and similar traditions which exist only in the
minds of men. Or, take as another example, the tradition of absolute
impartiality on the part of the Speaker and of loyal acceptance of his
rulings by every member of the House; or the tradition which
distinguishes sharply between political and private relations, in virtue
of which the parties to a most bitter political strife may and very
generally do remain in perfectly friendly private relations.

These and other such traditions, which secure the efficient working of
the organisation for national deliberation, all rest in turn upon a
traditional and tacit assumption—namely, the assumption that both
parties are working for the good of the nation as they conceive and
understand it, that both parties have this common end and differ only in
their judgment as to the means by which it can best be achieved. They
rest also on the traditional and tacit admission that one’s own
judgment, and that of one’s party, may be mistaken, and that in the long
run the legislation which any party can effect is an expression of the
organised national mind and is therefore to be respected. It is this
acquiescence in accomplished legislation in virtue of this tacit
assumption which gives to the decisions of Parliament the status, not
merely of the expression of the will of a bare majority, but of the
expression of the will of practically the whole nation. Underlying the
stability of the whole system, again, is the tradition, sedulously
fostered and observed by the best and leading minds, that the _raison
d’être_ and purpose of the representative parliament is to organise, and
to give the most complete possible expression to, the national mind and
will; and that no constitutional change or change of procedure is
justifiable unless it tends to the more complete realisation of these
objects.

In virtue of these traditions our Parliament and Press constitute
undoubtedly the best means for effecting organisation of the national
mind in its deliberative aspect that has yet been evolved; and we should
remember this when we feel inclined to gird at the ‘great talking shop,’
at the slowness of its procedure and at the logical absurdities of the
two-party system; and, above all, we should realize how valuable and
worthy of conservation are these scarcely formulated traditions, for
they are absolutely essential to its efficiency. It is just because the
efficiency of the deliberative organisation of a nation depends upon the
force of such traditions, that, though it is possible to take the system
of parliamentary representation and establish it by decree or plebiscite
in a nation which has hitherto had no such deliberative organisation, it
is not possible to make it work smoothly and efficiently amongst such a
people. Hence, although almost every civilised nation has done its best
to imitate the British system of parliamentary government, hardly any
one has made a success of it; and, in nearly all, it is in constant
danger of being superseded by some more primitive form of government—one
need only mention Mexico, Portugal, Russia, France, Austria-Hungary. In
all these countries, and even in America, there seems to be already a
not very remote possibility of the supersession of parliamentary
government by a dictatorship—a process which has actually occurred in
many of the municipal governments of America, and the fear of which has
constantly checked the smooth working of the parliamentary system in
France.

As a single illustration of the way in which the conditions we have been
considering affect the collective acts of the nation, consider what
happened at the time of the Russian outrage in the North Sea during the
Russo-Japanese war. When a Russian fleet fired upon our fishing boats
doing considerable damage to them, the means of communication were
sufficiently developed among us to allow of the action and reaction of
all on each which produces the characteristic results of collective
mental action, the exaltation of emotion, the suggestibility, the sense
of irresponsible power; and, in the absence of the deliberative
organisation which, by concentrating influence and responsibility in the
hands of a few of the best men, controlled and modified this collective
action, we should have rushed upon the Russian fleet and probably have
brought on a general European war. The control and counteraction of this
kind of outburst of collective emotion and impulsive action is one of
the heaviest responsibilities of those to whom predominant influence is
accorded.

It is only in virtue of the strong organisation of the national mind
resting upon these long traditions of parliamentary government, that at
such a time control of the popular emotion and impulse is possible. And
the weaker and less efficient is such traditional organisation, the more
does any such incident tend to provoke a collective manifestation which
approximates in its uncontrollable violence and unconsidered
impulsiveness to the behaviour of an unorganised crowd. Hence
governments, where the democratic principle is acknowledged but the
traditional organisation is less strong, are constantly in danger of
having their hands forced by some outburst of popular passion—as in
France.

It is worth noting that, when Aristotle inveighed against democracy as
an evil form of government, the only form of democratic government he
had in mind was government by the voices of a mob gathered together in
one place and lacking all the safeguards which, as we have seen, render
our British national deliberations so much superior to those of a mere
crowd of persons of equally good average capacity and character.

But it is not only in the formal deliberations of the nation that
internal organisation, resting on tradition, secures the predominance of
the influence of the best and ablest minds. The same is true of all
national thought and feeling. There exists in every great nation the
vague influence we call public opinion, which is the great upholder of
right and justice, which rewards virtue and condemns vice and
selfishness. Public opinion exists only in the minds of individuals (for
we have rejected, provisionally at least, the conception of a collective
consciousness); yet it is a product not of individual, but of
collective, mental life. And it has in any healthy nation far higher
standards of right and justice and tolerance than the majority of
individuals could form or maintain; that is to say, it is in these
respects far superior to an opinion which would be the mere resultant or
algebraic sum of the opinions of all the living individuals. In
reference to any particular matter its judgment is far superior to that
of the average of individuals, and superior probably in many cases to
that which even the best individuals could form for themselves.

How does public opinion come to be superior to individual and to average
opinion? There seems to be something paradoxical in the statement.

The fact is of the utmost importance; for public opinion is the ultimate
source of sanctions of all public acts, the highest court of appeal
before which every executive act performed in the name of the nation
must justify itself. If public opinion were merely the immediate
expression of the collective feelings and judgments of an unorganised
mass of men, its verdicts would be (as we have seen) inferior to those
of the average individuals, whereas, as a matter of fact, its
expressions are much superior to those of the average individuals.

The influence of public opinion is especially clear and interesting in
its relations to law. In this country it is not made by law, but makes
law. Where law is imposed and long maintained by the authority of
despotic power, it will of course mould public opinion; but, in any
progressive highly organised nation, law and the lawyers are always one
or two or more generations behind public opinion. The most progressive
body of law formally embodies the public opinion of past generations
rather than of the generation living at the time.

The fact of the superiority of public opinion is generally admitted and
various explanations are current, for the most part very vague and
incomplete. There is the mystical explanation embodied in the dictum
that the voice of the people is the voice of God. A rather less vague
explanation is that adopted by Mr Beattie Crozier[101] (among others).
It is said that the average man carries within him a germ of an ideal
of justice and right, and that he applies this to the criticism or
approval of the actions of other men; though he often fails to apply it
to his own actions, because, where his own interests are concerned, he
is apt to be the sport of purely egoistic impulses.

But this explanation is only partially true. It represents the average
man as more hypocritical than he really is, and as falling farther below
the standards he acknowledges than he actually does fall. It leaves
unexplained the fact that he has this sentiment for an ideal of justice
and right; and it proceeds on a false assumption as to the nature of the
problem, in assuming that men judge the actions of other men by higher
standards than those which they apply to their own conduct; whereas this
is by no means generally true.

Is it, then, that superior abilities, which enable a man to gain
prestige and to impress his ideas and sentiments upon his fellow men and
so to influence public opinion, are commonly combined with a natural
superiority of moral sentiment, with a love of right and a hatred of
injustice? There may be some degree of such natural correlation of
superior abilities with superior moral qualities, but the supposition
seems very doubtful; and certainly, if it exists, it is not sufficient
to account for the elevation of public opinion. We frequently see
consummate ability combined with most questionable moral sentiments, as
in Napoleon and many other historic personages.

The true explanation is, I submit, to be found in the basal fact that
the moral sentiments are essentially altruistic, while the immoral and
non-moral sentiments are in the main self-regarding[102]. Hence, the
person who has great abilities but is lacking in moral sentiments and
altruism applies his abilities to secure his personal satisfactions and
aggrandisement; and, in so far as he aims at affecting the minds of
others, he tries only to secure their obedience to his commands and
suggestions, to inspire them with deference, admiration, fear and awe,
and to evoke an outward display of these feelings. But, as to the ideas
and sentiments of the people in general, save in so far as they affect
his own gratification, he cares nothing. Accordingly we never find great
abilities deliberately, consistently and directly applied to the
degradation of public opinion and morals, save occasionally in relation
to some particular end. And we find few or no great works of literature
and art deliberately aiming at such degradation.

But with those persons in whom great abilities are naturally combined
with moral disposition the case is very different. The moral disposition
is essentially altruistic; it is concerned for the welfare of others, of
men in general. Hence such a man deliberately applies his abilities to
influence the minds of others. The exertion of such influence is for him
an end in itself. He seeks and finds his chief satisfaction in exerting
an influence, as wide and deep as possible, over the minds of men; not
merely in evoking fear or admiration of himself, but in inspiring in
them the same elevated sentiments and sympathies which he finds within
himself.

For this reason such men as G. F. Watts, Carlyle and Ruskin exert a much
greater and more widespread and lasting influence over the minds of men
than do equally able men who are devoid of moral disposition; for the
former make the exertion of this influence their chief end, while the
others care not at all about the state of public opinion and the minds
of the mass. Still less does the non-moral man of great ability strive
with all his powers to make others act upon base motives like his own
and to degrade their sentiments; rather, he sees that he can better
accomplish his selfish ends if other men are unlike himself and are
governed by altruistic sentiments; and he sees also that he can better
attain his ends if he does lip-service to altruistic ideals; and he is,
therefore, apt to exert whatever direct influence he has over the
sentiments of men in the same direction as the moral leaders, praising
the same actions, upholding in words the same ideals. In this way the
men of great abilities, but of immoral or non-moral character, actually
aid the moral leaders to some extent in their work; whereas under no
conditions is the relation reversed; the moral leaders never praise or
acquiesce in bad actions, but always denounce them and use their
influence against them.

It follows that, in a well organised nation, public opinion, which is
formed and maintained so largely by the influence of leading
personalities, will usually be more in conformity with the sentiments of
the best men than of the average man, will be above rather than below
private opinion. For, if the bad and the good men of exceptional powers
were equal in numbers and capacity, the sum of their influences tending
directly to exalt public opinion would be enormously greater than the
sum of their influences tending to degrade it; and, as a matter of fact,
the influence for good of a few altruistic leaders is able to outweigh
the degrading influences of a much larger number of purely selfish men
of equally great capacities, and is able to maintain a high standard of
public opinion.

We have distinguished a formal and an informal organisation of the
national deliberative processes, the latter expressing itself as public
opinion. These two organisations co-exist and are, of course, not
altogether independent of one another; yet they may be to a considerable
extent independent; though the more intimate the functional relations
and the greater the harmony between them, the healthier will be the
national life.

We may note in passing an interesting difference in respect to
organisation of the national mind between the English and the American
peoples, a difference which illustrates this relative independence of
the formal and informal organisations.

In England both the formal and informal organisations have achieved a
pretty good level; in both cases the best minds are enabled to exert and
have long exerted a dominant influence; and the interaction between the
two organisations is very intimate. But in America, while the informal
organisation expressed in public opinion seems to be very highly
developed, the formal organisation is much inferior; it has not yet such
traditions as give the greatest influence to the best minds and embody
the effects of their influence. And the better Americans tend to value
lightly the formal organisation, to take no part in the working of it,
deliberately to ignore it, and to rely rather upon public opinion to
repress any evils when they are in danger of reaching an intolerable
development.

Both in the formal organisation of the national mind, which is the
parliamentary or other national assembly, and in the informal
organisation which is public opinion, we see, then, that (in the nation
of higher civilisation at least) organisation results in a raising of
the collective mental process above the level of the average minds,
because it gives a predominant influence to the best minds who form and
maintain the traditions, especially the moral traditions; and these
press upon the minds of all members of the community from their earliest
years, moulding them more or less into conformity with themselves,
fostering the better, repressing the purely egoistic, tendencies.

And the ideal organisation after which we ought to strive, is that which
would give the greatest possible influence of this sort to the best
minds, an influence which consists not in merely organising and
directing the energies of the people in the manner most effective for
material or even scientific progress, as in modern Germany; but one
which, by moulding the sentiments and guiding the reasoning of the
people in all matters, public and private alike, secures their consent
and agreement and the co-operation of their wills in all affairs of
national importance.

When such organisation is in any degree attained and a more or less
consistent system of national traditions is embodied in the political,
religious, literary, and scientific culture, which moulds in some degree
the minds of all men, the national mind clearly becomes, as we said in
an earlier chapter, a system of interacting mental forces which are not
merely tendencies of the living members of the nation, but are also, in
an even greater degree, the ideas and tendencies of the dead; and we see
also that in such a people the national consciousness is most truly
embodied, not in the minds of the average men, but in the minds of the
best men of the time.

The term ‘public opinion’ is sometimes, perhaps generally, used in a
looser and wider sense than the meaning implied in the foregoing pages.
It is used in the looser sense by President Lowell in his _Public
Opinion and Popular Government_. By ‘public opinion’ he seems to mean
simply the algebraic sum or balance of individual opinions; he writes
“the opinion of the whole people is only the collected opinions of all
the persons therein[103].” In accordance with this view, he regards
representative institutions as merely one means by which this sum of
opinions may be collected and recorded. And he seems to be prepared to
regard the ‘referendum’ or the ‘initiative’ in any of their forms, or
other methods of direct legislation, as equally good methods, if only
all individuals would take the trouble to register their votes upon
every question proposed to them. He is aware, of course, that this can
hardly be expected of persons who have other interests and occupations
than the purely political, and that the direct methods are therefore
impracticable as general methods of legislation. If it were true that
representative institutions do and should merely collect and record the
individual opinions of all members of the public, then it is obvious
that each representative should be merely a delegate sent to record the
votes of the majority of his constituents. Whereas, if representative
institutions should, and in various degrees do, constitute the formal
deliberative organisation of the national mind, through which national
deliberation and judgment are raised to a higher plane than that of a
mere crowd, it follows that the representative should exert his own
powers of reasoning and judgment, aided by his special knowledge and
equipment, by the special sources of information that he enjoys, in the
light of the discussions in which he takes part, and influenced by all
those political traditions whose force he experiences in exceptional
fulness by reason of his priviledged position. President Lowell, in
discussing the functions of the representative, does not decide in
favour of the former view, as consistency should perhaps lead him to do;
thereby showing that he is not wholly committed to the individualist
view. He discusses the question whether the member of Parliament or
Congress should regard himself as representing the interests of his
constituents alone, or as concerned primarily and chiefly with the
interests of the whole people; and he rightly inclines to the latter
view. This is not quite the same distinction as that which is insisted
upon in these pages. Even if each representative were concerned only for
the welfare of the nation as a whole, yet so long as he regarded it as
his sole function to vote as he believes the majority of the citizens
would vote in any process of direct legislation, he would fall short of
the highest duty which is laid upon him by his position—namely, not
merely that of recording the opinion of the majority, but that of taking
part in the organised deliberative activities of the national mind by
which it arrives at judgments and decisions of a higher order than any
purely individual, or algebraic sum of individual, judgments and
decisions[104].

Public opinion, in the sense in which I have used the words in this
chapter (which seems to me the only proper use of them) is, then, not a
mere sum of individual opinions upon any particular question; it is
rather the expression of that tone or attitude of mind which prevails
throughout the nation and owes its quality far more to the influence of
the dead than of the living, being the expression of the moral
sentiments that are firmly and traditionally established in the mind of
the people, and established more effectively and in more refined forms
in the minds of the leaders of public opinion than in the average
citizen. This tone of the national mind enables it to arrive at just
judgments on questions of right and wrong, of duty and honour and public
desert; though it may have little bearing upon such practical questions
as bimetallism, tariff reform, or railway legislation. The current use
of the term, in this country at least, does, I think, recognise that
public opinion properly applies only to the sphere of moral judgments
and can and should have no bearing upon the practical details of
legislation. Public opinion is, both in its development and in its
operations, essentially collective; it is essentially the work of the
group mind. Its accepted standards of value are slowly built up under
the influence of the moral leaders of past ages; and, in the application
of those standards to any particular question, the influence of the
moral leaders of the time makes itself felt. I have kept in mind in the
foregoing pages the public opinion of the nation; but every community,
every association, every enduring group has its own public opinion,
which, though it is influenced by, and indeed is, as it were, a branch
of, the main stem of national public opinion and is therefore of the
same fibre and texture, has nevertheless its own peculiar tone and
quality, especially in regard to the moral questions with which each
group is specially concerned.



PART III

THE DEVELOPMENT OF NATIONAL MIND AND CHARACTER



CHAPTER XIV

INTRODUCTORY


In the first Part of this book we have reviewed the most general
principles of collective mental life, beginning with the unorganised
crowd as affording the simplest example, considering then an army as the
simplest example of the profound modifications of collective mental life
effected by organisation of the group. In the second Part we passed on
to apply these principles to the understanding of the mind of the nation
as the most important, complex, and interesting of all types of the
group mind.

In the third Part I take up the consideration in a general way of the
processes by which national mind and character are gradually built up
and shaped in the long course of ages. For, just as we cannot understand
individual minds, their peculiarities and differences, without studying
their development, so we cannot hope to understand national mind and
character and the peculiarities and differences of nations, without
studying the slow processes through which they have been built up in the
course of centuries.

In an earlier chapter, in connexion with the question of the importance
of homogeneity of mental qualities as a condition of the existence of
the national mind, I argued that race has really considerable influence
in moulding the type of national mind. I recognized that differences of
innate qualities between races, at any rate between allied subraces, are
not great, and that they can be, and generally are, almost completely
over-ridden and obscured in each individual by the moulding power of the
social environment in which he grows up; but I urged that these racial
qualities are very persistent, and that they exert a slight but constant
pressure or bias upon the development of all that constitutes social
environment, upon the forms of institutions, customs, traditions, and
beliefs of every kind, so that the effect of such slight but constant
bias accumulates from generation to generation, and in the long run
exerts an immense influence.

One way of treating the part played by the racial mental qualities in
the development of the national mind would be to attempt to define the
racial or innate peculiarities of the peoples existing at the present
time, and to assume that these peculiarities were produced in the remote
past, before the formation of nations began, and that they have
persisted unchanged throughout the period of the development of nations.
Something of this sort was proposed by Walter Bagehot in his _Physics
and Politics_. He distinguished in the development of peoples two great
periods—on the one hand the race-making period, which roughly
corresponds to the whole prehistoric period, and on the other hand the
nation-making period, which roughly corresponds to the historic period.
This distinction has undoubtedly a certain validity.

It seems probable that man was evolved from his prehuman ancestry as a
single stock, probably a stock somewhat widely distributed in the heart
of the Eurasian continent, or possibly in Africa according to the recent
view of some authors, or in the area which is now the Indian Ocean. If
this be true, it follows that the differentiation of the mental and
physical qualities of the principal human races, the differentiation of
the white and black and yellow and brown races, as well as of the chief
subraces, such as the Semitic, the races of Europe—the _Homo Europaeus_,
_Alpinus_ and _Mediterraneus_—was the work of the immensely prolonged
prehistoric period. For these races and subraces, as we now know them,
seem to have been in existence and to have had recognisably and
substantially the same leading qualities, both mental and physical, that
they now have, before the beginning of the historic period.

The racial differentiation during the prehistoric period must have been
much greater than during the historic period; and this was not only
because the former period was immensely longer, but also because, in all
probability, the rate of racial change has been on the whole slower in
the historic period.

The differentiation of racial types in the prehistoric period must have
been in the main the work of differences of physical environment,
operating directly by way of selection, by way of the adaptation of each
race to its environment through the extermination of the strains least
suited to exist under those physical conditions. But this process, this
direct moulding of racial types by physical environment, must have been
well nigh arrested as soon as nations began to form. For the formation
of nations implies the beginning of civilisation; and civilisation very
largely consists in the capacity of a people to subdue their physical
environment, or at least to adapt the physical environment to men’s
needs to a degree that renders them far less the sport of it than was
primitive man; it consists, in short, in replacing man’s natural
environment by an artificial environment largely of his own choice and
creation.

In a second and perhaps even more important way, the formation of
nations with the development of civilisation modified and weakened the
moulding influence of the physical environment; namely, it introduced
social co-operation in an ever increasing degree, so that the perpetual
struggle of individuals and of small family groups with one another and
with nature was replaced by a co-operative struggle of large communities
against the physical environment and with one another. And in this
process those members of each community who, by reason of weakness,
general incapacity, or other peculiarity, would have been liable to be
eliminated under primitive conditions became shielded in an ever
increasing degree by the powers of the stronger and more capable against
the selective power of nature and against individual human forces. And,
although within the community the rivalry of individuals and families
still went on, it was no longer so much a direct struggle for existence,
but rather became more and more a struggle for position in the social
scale; and failure in the struggle no longer necessarily meant death, or
even incapacity to leave an average number of descendants. That is to
say, primitive man’s struggle for existence against the forces of nature
and against his fellow men, which made for racial evolution and
differentiation through survival of those fittest to cope with various
environments, tended to be replaced by a struggle which no longer made
for racial evolution towards a higher type, and which may even have made
for race-deterioration, at the same time that civilisation and national
organisation continued to progress.

We may, then, recognise a certain truth in Bagehot’s distinction of two
great periods, the race-making and the nation-making periods.
Nevertheless, it would not be satisfactory to follow the course
suggested above and simply assume certain racial characters as given
fixed data without further consideration. For, firstly, it is
interesting and perhaps not altogether unprofitable to indulge in
speculations on the race-making processes of the prehistoric period.
Secondly, although it seems likely that racial changes have been in the
main slower and on the whole relatively slight in the historic period,
yet they have not been altogether lacking; and, in proportion to their
magnitude, such changes as have occurred have been of great importance
for national life; and changes of this kind are still playing their part
in shaping the destinies of nations. Possible racial changes of mental
qualities must therefore be considered, when we seek to give a general
account of the conditions of the development of nations.

On the other hand, we must reject root and branch the crude idea, which
has a certain popular currency, that the development of civilisation and
of nations implies a parallel evolution of individual minds. That idea
we have already touched upon and rejected in a previous chapter, where
we arrived at the conclusion that there is no reason to suppose the
present civilised peoples to be on the whole innately superior to their
barbaric ancestors.

If we use the word ‘tradition’ in the widest possible sense to denote
all the intellectual and moral gains of past generations, in so far as
they are not innate but are handed on from one generation to another by
the personal intercourse of the younger with the older generation, and
if we allow the notion of tradition to include all the institutions and
customs that are passed on from generation to generation, then we may
class all the changes of a people that constitute the evolution of a
national character under the two heads: _evolution of innate qualities_
and _evolution of traditions_. Using the word ‘tradition’ in the wide
sense just now indicated, the traditions of a people may be said to
include the recognised social organisation of the whole people into
classes, castes, clans, phratries, or groups of any kind, whose
relations to one another and whose place in the national system are
determined by law, custom and conventions of various kinds. This part of
the total tradition is relatively independent of the rest, and we may
usefully distinguish the development of such social organisation as
social evolution—giving to the term this restricted and definite
meaning—and we may set it alongside the other two conceptions as of
co-ordinate value.

If we thus set apart for consideration under a distinct head the
evolution of social organisation, the rest of the body of national
traditions may be said to constitute the civilisation of a people. For
the civilisation of a people at any time is essentially the sum of the
moral and intellectual traditions that are living and operative among
them at that particular time. We are apt in a loose way to consider the
civilisation of a people to consist in its material evidences; but it is
only in so far as these material evidences, the buildings, industries,
arts, products, machinery, and so forth, are the expression and outcome
of its mental state that they are in any degree a measure of its
civilisation. We may realize this most clearly by considering the case
of a people on which the material products of civilisation have been
impressed from without. Thus the peasants of India live amongst, and
make use of, and benefit materially by, the railways and irrigation
works created by their British rulers, and are protected from invasion
and from internal anarchy by the British military organisation and
equipment; and they play a subordinate though essential part in the
creation and maintenance of all these material evidences of
civilisation. But these material evidences are not the expression of the
mental state of the peoples of India, and form no true part of their
civilisation; and, in fact, they affect their civilisation astonishingly
little; although if these products of a higher civilisation should be
maintained for a long period of time they would, no doubt, produce
changes of their civilisation, probably tending in some degree to
assimilate their mental state to that of Western Europe.

We may, then, with advantage distinguish between the social organisation
and the civilisation of a people. In doing so we are of course making an
effort of abstraction, which, though it results in an artificial
separation of things intimately related, is nevertheless useful and
therefore justifiable. In a similar way the progress of civilisation may
be distinguished from social evolution. Social evolution is profoundly
affected by the progress of civilisation, and in turn reacts powerfully
upon it; for any given social organisation may greatly favour or
obstruct the further progress of civilisation. There could have been no
considerable advance of civilisation without the evolution of some
social organisation; but that the two things are distinct is clear, when
we reflect that there may be a very complex social organisation,
implying a long course of social evolution, among a people that has
hardly the rudiments of civilisation. Extreme instances of social
organisation in the absence of civilisation are afforded by some animal
societies—for example, societies of ants, bees, and wasps. Among
peoples, the native tribes of Australia illustrate the fact most
forcibly. They are at the very bottom of the scale of civilisation; yet
it has been discovered that they have a complex and well-defined social
organisation, which can only have been achieved by a long course of
social evolution. These people are divided into totem clans, which
clans are grouped in phratries, each individual being born, according to
well recognised rules, into a clan of which he remains a life-long
member; and his membership in the clan and phratry involves certain
well-defined rights and obligations, and well-defined relations to other
persons, especially as regards marriage; and these rights, obligations
and relations are recognised and rigidly maintained throughout immense
areas.

On the other hand, although no people has attained any considerable
degree of civilisation without considerable social organisation,
nevertheless we can at least imagine a people continuing to enjoy a high
civilisation, practising and enjoying much of the arts, sciences,
philosophy, and literature, which we regard as the essentials of
civilisation, yet retaining a bare minimum of social organisation. And
this state of affairs is not only conceivable, but is held up as a
practicable ideal by philosophical anarchists such as Tolstoi and
Kropotkin; and it is, I think, true to say that the American nation
presents an approximation to this condition.

Again, a very high state of civilisation may co-exist with a relatively
primitive social organisation. Thus the civilisation of Athens in the
classical age was equal to, or even superior to, our own in many
respects; yet the social organisation was very much less highly evolved.
It had hardly emerged from the barbaric patriarchal condition, and had
at its foundation a cruel system of slavery[105]; and it had also
another great point of inferiority—namely, the very restricted number of
persons included in the social system. These deficiencies, this
rudimentary character, of its social organisation was the principal
cause of the instability and brief endurance of that brilliant
civilisation.

We have so far distinguished three principal factors or groups of
factors in the evolution of national mind and character: (1) Evolution
of innate or racial qualities: (2) Development of civilisation: (3)
Social evolution, or the development of social organisation.

Now the first two of these we may with advantage divide under two
parallel heads, the heads of intellectual and moral development. No
doubt, the intellectual and the moral endowment of a people continually
react on each other; and many of the manifestations of the national mind
are jointly determined by the intelligence and the morality of a people;
especially perhaps is this true of their religion and their art.
Nevertheless, it is clear that we can distinguish pretty sharply
between the intellectual and the moral traditions of a people; and that
these may vary independently of one another to a great extent. A rich
and full intellectual tradition may go with a moral tradition of very
low level, as in the Italian civilisation of the renascence; and a very
high moral tradition with a relative poverty of the intellectual, as in
the early days of the puritan settlements of New England.

The same distinction between the intellectual and the moral level is
harder to draw in the case of the racial qualities of a people, but it
undoubtedly exists and is valid in principle, no matter how difficult in
practice to deal with.

We have, then, to distinguish five classes of factors, five heads under
which all the factors which determine the evolution of national
character may be distributed. They are

   (1) Innate moral disposition       }    racial qualities.
   (2) Innate intellectual capacities }
   (3) Moral tradition           } national civilisation.
   (4) Intellectual tradition    }
   (5) Social organisation.

Every nation that has advanced from a low level to a higher level of
national life has done so in virtue of development or progress in one or
more of these respects. And a principal part of our task, in considering
the evolution of national mind and character, is to assign to each of
these its due importance and its proper place in the whole complex
development.

The distinction between the racial and the traditional level of a people
is too often ignored; chiefly, perhaps, for the reason that it has
usually been assumed that whatever is traditional becomes innate and
racial through use. Since in recent years it has been shown that this
assumption is very questionable, a number of authors have recognised the
importance of the distinction as regards the intellectual qualities of a
people; but, as regards the moral qualities, the distinction is still
very generally overlooked.

The neglect of these distinctions between the innate and the traditional
has in great measure vitiated much of the keen dispute that has been
waged over the question whether the progress of civilisation depends
primarily on intellectual or on moral advance. For example, T. H. Buckle
and Benjamin Kidd agreed in recognising clearly the distinction between
the innate and the traditional intellectual status of a people; and they
agreed in maintaining that we have no reason to believe that in the
historic period any people has made any considerable advance in innate
intellectual capacity; and that any such advance, if there has been any,
has not been a principal factor in the progress of civilisation. But
they differed extremely in that Buckle maintained that the primary cause
of all progress of national life is the improvement of its intellectual
tradition, that is, increase in the quantity and the worth of its stock
of knowledge and accepted beliefs, and improvements in methods of
intellectual operation; and he held that improvements of morals and of
social organisation have been secondary results of these intellectual
gains. Kidd, on the other hand[106], maintained that the progress of
European civilisation has been primarily due to an improvement of the
morality of peoples; that this has led to improvement of social
organisation; and that this in turn has been the essential condition of
the progress of the intellectual tradition, because it has secured a
stable social environment, a security of life, a free field for the
exercise of intellectual powers; in the absence of which conditions the
intellectual powers of a nation cannot effectively organise themselves
and apply themselves to the understanding of man and nature, or to
securing the traditional perpetuation of the gains which they may
sporadically achieve. We have to examine these views and try to
determine what truth they contain, and to show that they are not wholly
opposed but can in some measure be combined.

I propose to make first a very brief critical survey of some of the most
notable attempts that have been made to account for racial qualities,
and I shall try to supplement and harmonise these as far as possible. We
may with advantage consider at the outset the race-making period, and
afterwards go on to consider changes of racial qualities in the historic
period. This Part of the book is necessarily somewhat speculative, but
its interest and importance for our main topic may justify its
inclusion.



CHAPTER XV

THE RACE-MAKING PERIOD


Let us now see what can be said about the process of racial
differentiation which, as we saw in the foregoing chapter, was in its
main features accomplished in the prehistoric or race-making period. We
cannot hope to reach many positive conclusions, but rather merely to
discuss certain possibilities and probabilities in regard to the main
factors of the differentiation of racial mental types.

I would point out at once that the answer to be given to the
question—Are acquired qualities transmitted? Are the effects of use
inherited? is all important for our topic. I do not propose to discuss
that difficult question now. I will merely say that the present state of
biological science makes it seem doubtful whether such inheritance takes
place, and that, although the question remains open, we are not
justified in assuming an affirmative answer; that, therefore, we must
not be satisfied with any explanation of racial and national
characteristics based upon this assumption; and in the following
discussion I shall provisionally assume the truth of the Neo-Darwinian
principle that acquired modifications are not transmitted.

Assuming, as we must, that all peoples are descended from some one
original stock, the problem is—Can anything be said of the conditions
which have determined the differentiation of races of different mental
constitutions, of the development of racial qualities which, having
become relatively fixed, have led to the evolution of different types of
national organisation and culture? And especially we have to consider
the conditions which have produced, and may still produce in the future,
the qualities that make for the progress of nations.

We must suppose a certain social organisation to have obtained among
that primitive human stock from which all races have been evolved,
probably an organisation in small groups based on the family under the
rule and leadership of a patriarch.

It is possible that considerable divergences of social organisation may
have taken place, without any advance towards civilisation; such
divergences of social organisation must have tended to divert the
course of mental evolution along various lines; but they must themselves
have had their causes; they cannot in themselves be the ultimate causes
of divergence of racial mental types.

Such ultimate causes of the differentiation of mental qualities must
have been of two orders only, so far as I can see: (1) differences of
physical environment; (2) spontaneous variations in different directions
of the innate mental qualities of individuals, especially of the more
gifted and energetic individuals of each people.

In the mental evolution of animals these two factors are not
distinguishable. We may say that the main and perhaps the sole condition
of their evolution is the selection by the physical environment of
spontaneous favourable variations and mutations of innate mental
qualities; if we include under the term physical environment of the
species all the other animal and vegetable species of its habitat. For
it is only by its selective influence upon individual variations that
physical environment can determine differentiation of races.

But with man the case is different; spontaneous variation not only
provides the new qualities which, by determining the survival of the
individual in his struggle for existence with the physical environment,
secure their own perpetuation by transmission to the after coming
generations. The new qualities determine mental evolution in another
manner, by a mode of operation which is almost completely absent in
animal evolution; namely, the spontaneous variations create a social
environment which profoundly modifies the influence of the physical
environment, and itself becomes a principal factor in the determination
of the trend of racial evolution.

Man is distinguished from the animals above all things by his power of
learning. Whereas the behaviour of animals, even of the higher ones,
consists almost entirely of purely instinctive actions, innate modes of
response to a limited number of situations; man has an indefinitely
great capacity for acquiring new modes of response, and so of adapting
himself in new and more complex ways to an almost indefinite variety of
situations. And his new mental acquisitions are not made only by the
slow process of adaptation in the light of his own individual experience
of the consequences of behaviour of this and that kind; as are most of
the few acquisitions of the animals. By far the greater part of the
mental stock-in-trade by which his behaviour is guided is acquired from
his fellow men; it represents the accumulated experience of all the
foregoing generations of his race and nation. Man’s life in society,
together with the great plasticity of his mind, its great capacity for
new adaptations, secures him this enormous advantage; the two things are
necessarily correlated. Without the plasticity of mind, his life in
society would benefit him relatively little. Many animals that lead a
social life in large herds or flocks are not superior, but rather
inferior, in mental power to animals that lead a more solitary life; and
indeed this seems to be generally true, as we see on comparing generally
the herbivorous gregarious animals with the solitary carnivores that
prey upon them. The social life of such animals, rendering individual
intelligence less necessary for protection and escape from danger, tends
actually against mental development.

On the other hand, man’s great plastic brain would be of comparatively
little use to him if he lived a solitary unsocial life. His great brain
is there to enable him to assimilate and make use of the accumulated
experience, the sum of knowledge and morality, which is traditional in
the society into which he is born a member; that is to say, the
development of social life, which depended so much upon language and for
the forwarding of which language came into existence, must have gone
hand in hand with the development of the great brain, which enables full
advantage to be secured from social co-operation and which, especially,
renders possible the accumulation of knowledge, belief, and traditional
sentiment.

Now this traditional stock of knowledge and morality has been very
slowly accumulated, bit by bit; and every bit, every least new addition
to it, has been a difficult acquisition, due in the first instance to
some spontaneous variation of some individual’s mental structure from
the ancestral type of mental structure. That is to say, throughout the
evolution of civilisation, progress of every kind, increase of knowledge
or improvement of morality, has been due to the birth of more or less
exceptional individuals, individuals varying ever so slightly from the
ancestral type and capable, owing to this variation, of making some new
and original adaptation of action, or of perceiving some previously
undiscovered relation between things.

These new acquisitions, first made by individuals, are, if true or
useful, sooner or later imitated or accepted by the society of which the
original-minded individual is a member, and then, becoming incorporated
in the traditional stock of knowledge and morality, are thereby placed
at the service of all members of that society.

Thus favourable spontaneous variations do not, as with the animals,
render possible mental evolution merely by conducing to the survival
of, and the perpetuation of the qualities of, those individuals in whom
the variations occur. They may do this, or they may not; but, in
addition and more importantly, they contribute to the stock of
traditional knowledge and morality, and so raise the social group as a
whole in the scale of civilisation; they render it more capable of
successfully contending against other groups and against the adverse
influence of the physical environment; and they promote the solidarity
of the group by adding to its stock of common tradition; thus the
acquisitions of each member benefit the group as a whole and all its
members, quite apart from any philanthropic purpose or intention of
producing such a result.

The achievement of this unconscious undesigned solidarity of human
societies is one of two great steps in the evolution of the human race
by which the process is rendered very different from, and is raised to a
higher plane than, the mental evolution of the animal world. The second
and still more important step is one which is only just beginning to be
achieved in the present age; I shall have to touch on it in a later
chapter.

The original or primary divergence of mental type between any two
peoples must, then, have been due to these fundamental causes—namely,
differences of physical environment and spontaneous variations of mental
structure, the latter adding to the traditional stock of knowledge and
belief, of moral precepts and sentiments.

Intellectual or moral divergence produced by these two primary causes
would tend to determine the course of social evolution along different
lines and so to produce different types of social organisation. And
different social organisations thus produced would then react upon the
moral and intellectual life of the people to produce further divergence;
for example, one type of social organisation determined by physical
environment, say a well developed patriarchal system, may have made for
progress of intellect and morals; another, say a matriarchal
organisation, or one based on communal marriage, may have tended to
produce stagnation.

As social evolution proceeded and brought about more extensive and more
complex forms of social organisation, which included, within any one
society or group, larger numbers of individuals in more effective forms
of association, social organisation must have assumed a constantly
increasing importance as a condition of mental evolution relatively to
all other factors, especially as compared with the influence of physical
environment; until, in the complex societies of the present time, it has
an altogether predominant importance. This truth is concisely stated in
the old dictum that “in the infancy of nations men shape the State; in
their maturity the State shapes the men.” Accordingly, in considering
the mental evolution of peoples we must never lose sight of the
influence of social organisation. It follows that the conditions of the
mental evolution of man are immensely more complex than those of the
mental evolution of animals.

We must recognise not only the selection, through survival in the
struggle for existence, of new mental qualities arising as spontaneous
variations of individual mental structure. This, which is the only, or
almost the only, process at work in the mental evolution of animals, is
immensely complicated and overshadowed in importance by two processes.
The first is the accumulation of knowledge and morality in traditional
forms. The traditional accumulation, which so far outweighs the mental
equipment possible to any individual isolated from an old society, not
only constitutes in itself a most important evolutionary product, but it
modifies profoundly the conditions of evolution of the individual innate
qualities of mind; for example, the greater and more valuable the stock
of traditional knowledge and morality becomes, the more does fitness to
survive consist in the capacity to assimilate this knowledge and to
conform to these higher moral precepts, the less does it consist in the
purely individualistic qualities, such as quickness of eye and ear,
fleetness of foot, or strength and skill of hand. Secondly, the
processes of natural selection are complicated by the social evolution,
which tends progressively to abolish the struggle for existence between
individuals, and to replace it by a struggle between groups; in which
struggle success is determined not only by the qualities of individuals,
but also very largely by the social organisation and by the traditional
knowledge and morality of the groups.

Each variety of the human species, each race considered as a succession
of individuals having certain innate mental qualities, has been evolved,
then, not merely under the influence of the physical environment, like
the animal species, but also and to an ever increasing extent under the
influence of the social environment. The social environment we regard as
consisting of two parts; namely, the social organisation and the body of
social tradition; for these, though interdependent and constantly
interacting, may yet with advantage be kept apart in thought. We must,
then, bear constantly in mind the fact that man creates for himself an
environment which becomes ever more complex and influential,
overshadowing more and more in importance the physical environment.

Here I would revert to some points of the analogy, drawn in Chapter X,
between the mind of a nation and that of an individual. The mind of an
individual human being develops by accumulating the results of his
experience; and so does that of a people. In this respect the analogy
holds good. But the development possible to an individual is strictly
limited in two ways. First, by the short duration of the material basis
of his mental life; secondly by the extent of his innate capacities.
Neither of these limitations applies to the national mind. Its material
basis is in principle immortal, because its individual components may be
incessantly renewed; and its development has no limit set to it by its
innate capacities, because these may be indefinitely extended and
improved. In these respects the national mind resembles the species
rather than the individual.

The development of the national mind, and of the minds of those who
share in the mental life of the nation, thus combines the methods and
advantages of the development of individuals and of species, methods
which are essentially different. The result is that the mental
development of man, since his social life began, has been radically
different from that of the animals; it has been a social process; it has
been the evolution of peoples rather than of individuals. The evolution
of man as an individual has been wholly subordinated to that of peoples;
and it is incapable of being understood or profitably considered apart
from the development of the group mind.

Assuming, as we must, that all the races of men are derived from a
common stock, it is obvious, I think, that the first differentiation of
racial types was determined almost exclusively by differences of
physical environment, and that the other conditions only very slowly
developed and did not assume their predominant importance until the time
which may be roughly defined as the beginning of the historic or
nation-making period.

Physical environment affects the mental qualities of a people in three
ways: firstly, it directly influences the minds of each generation;
secondly, it moulds the mental constitution by natural selection,
adapting the race to itself; thirdly, it exerts indirect influence by
determining the occupations and modes of life and, through these, the
social organisation of a people. We may consider these three modes of
influence in turn.

There has been much speculation on the direct influence of the physical
environment in moulding the mental type of a people, but little or
nothing can be said to be established.

There is a fair concensus of opinion to the effect that what we may
call climate exerts an important influence. In climate the two factors
recognised as of chief importance are temperature and moisture. High
temperature combined with moisture certainly tends to depress the vital
activity of Europeans and to render them indolent, indisposed to
exertion of any kind. On the other hand, high temperature combined with
dryness of the atmosphere seems to have the effect of rendering men but
little disposed to continuous activity, and yet capable of great
efforts; it tends to produce a violent spasmodic activity. A cold
climate seems to dispose towards sustained activity and, when combined
with much moisture, to a certain slowness.

These effects, which we ourselves experience and which we see produced
upon other individuals on passing from one climate to another, we seem
to see impressed upon many of the races which have long been subjected
to these climates; for example, the slow and lazy Malays have long
occupied the hottest moistest region of the earth. The Arabs and the
fiery Sikhs may be held to illustrate the effect of dry heat. The
Englishman and the Dutchman seem to show the effects of a moist cool
climate, a certain sluggishness embodied with great energy and
perseverance.

In these and other cases, in which the innate temperament of a people
corresponds to the effects directly induced by their climate, it seems
natural to suppose that the innate temperament has been produced by the
transmission and accumulation from generation to generation of the
direct effects of the climate. The assumption is so natural that it has
been made by almost every writer who has dealt with the question. And
these instances of conformity of the temperament of peoples to the
direct effects of climate are sometimes offered as being among the most
striking evidences of the reality of hereditary transmission of acquired
qualities; and the argument is reinforced by instances of what seem to
be similar results produced by climate on physical types. Thus, it is
said that in North America a race characterised by a new specific
combination of mental and physical qualities is being rapidly formed;
and it seems to be well established that long slender hands are among
these features; for in Paris a specially long slender glove is made
every year in large quantities for the American market. Again, we see
apparently a change of physical type in the white inhabitants of
Australia. They seem to be becoming taller and more slender
‘cornstalks’; and this is commonly regarded as the direct effect of
climate.

Now, that a new race or subrace with a specific combination of qualities
should be forming in America is certainly to be expected from the fact
that the intimate blending of a number of European stocks has been going
on for some generations. But what gives special support to the
assumption that these new qualities are the direct effects of climate is
that these qualities, the physical at least, seem to be approximations
to the type of the Red Indians, the aboriginal inhabitants. And, it is
said, this approximation of type can only be due to hereditary
accumulation of the direct effects of the climate on individuals.

Another way in which climate has been held to modify racial mental
qualities by direct action is through the senses, especially the eye. M.
Boutmy, in his book on the English people makes great play with this
principle[107]. He points out that the thick hazy state of the air, so
common in our islands, renders vague and dull all outlines and colours,
so that the eye does not receive that wealth of well-defined hues and
forms which give so great a charm to some more sunny lands, such as the
Mediterranean coast lands. Hence, he says, the senses become or remain
relatively dull, and the sense-perceptions slow and relatively
indiscriminating. Such relative deficiency of aesthetic variety and
richness in the appearance of the outer world produces secondarily a
further and deeper modification of mental type. In the lands where
nature surrounds man with an endless variety of rich and pleasing
scenes, he can find sufficient satisfaction in mere contemplation of the
outer world; and, when he takes to art production, he tends merely to
reproduce in more or less idealised forms the objects and scenes he
finds around him; his art tends to be essentially objective. On the
other hand, in the dull northern climes, man has not ever at hand these
sources of satisfaction in the mere contemplation of the outer world;
consequently he is driven back upon his own nature, to find his
satisfactions in a ceaseless activity of mind and body, but chiefly of
the latter. Hence, races so situated are characterised by great bodily
activity and their art and literature are essentially subjective. The
thick air, the monotony of vague form and colour, drive the mind to
reflection upon itself; and in art the objects of nature serve merely as
symbols by aid of which the mind seeks to express its own broodings.
“The painter paints with the intentions of the poet, the poet describes
or sings with the motives of the psychologist or moralist. All the
literature of imagination of the English shows us the internal reacting
incessantly upon the external with a singular power of transfiguration
and interpretation[108].” Hence also poetry is the privilege of a few
rare spirits and is for them the product of deep reflection, not a
simple lyrical expression in which all can equally share.

It is certainly true that climate tends to produce these effects by its
direct action on individuals. Anyone who has lived for a time in the
southern climes must have noted these effects upon himself. But we have
no proof that the effects of climate are directly inherited. It suffices
to suppose that the direct effects are imposed afresh by the climate on
the minds of each generation. This view is borne out by the fact that
two races may live for many generations in the same climate and yet
remain very different in temperament in these respects; for example the
Irish climate is very similar to the English, perhaps even more misty
and damp; yet the Irish have much more wit and liveliness than the
English. And in every case in which adaptation to physical environment
has clearly become innate or racial, an explanation can be suggested in
terms of selection of spontaneous variations, or of crossing of races.
Thus, the approximation of the American people to the type of the
aboriginals, if it is actual, and some observers deny it, may well be
due to the small infusion of the native blood which has admittedly taken
place. It may well be that certain qualities of the Red Indian, for
example, the straight dark hair and prominent cheek bones, are what the
biologists call ‘dominant characters’ when the Indian is crossed with
the European; that is, qualities which always assert themselves in the
offspring, to the exclusion of the corresponding quality of the other
race involved in the cross. If that is so, a very small proportion of
Indian blood would suffice to make these features very common throughout
the population of America. As an exception to the supposed law of direct
hereditary adaptation to climate take the colour of the skin. The black
negroes live in the hot moist regions of Africa, and it has been said
that pigmentation is the hereditary effect of a hot moist climate. But
there are men of a different race who have long lived in an equally hot
and moist climate, but who do not show this effect—namely, tribes in the
heart of Borneo, right under the equator, whose skins are hardly darker
than the average English skins and less dark than the Southern
Europeans’. Take again the indolence of the peoples of warm hot climates
and the energy of peoples of colder climates. These certainly seem to be
racial qualities; but their distribution is adequately explained by the
indirect effect of physical environment exerted by way of natural
selection; and these differences of energy afford the best illustration
of such indirect action of physical environment in determining racial
mental qualities.

Before considering the question further, let us note yet another way in
which the physical environment affects men’s minds and has been supposed
directly to induce certain racial qualities. Buckle pointed out with
great force the influence on the mind of what he called the external
aspects of nature. He showed that where, as in India and the greater
part of Asia, the physical features of a country are planned upon a very
large scale; where the mountains are huge, where rivers are of immense
length and volume, where plains are of boundless extent, and the sun
very hot, there the forces of nature are exerted with an intensity that
renders futile the best efforts of man, at any rate of man in a state of
low civilisation, to cope with them. In such countries men are exposed
to calamities on an enormous scale, great floods, violent storms and
deluges of rain, earthquakes, excessive droughts resulting in famine and
plague; and they are exposed to the attacks of many dangerous animal
species, which are bred by the great heat in the dense and unconquerable
forests. These disasters have repeatedly occurred on a scale such that
in comparison with them the recent earthquake in California appears a
mere trifle. Millions have been destroyed in a few hours in some of the
floods of the Yellow River of China.

The magnitude of these objects and the appalling and irresistible
character of such devastating forces produce, said Buckle, two principal
and closely allied effects upon the mind; they stimulate the imagination
to run riot in extravagant and grotesque fancies; at the same time, they
discourage any attempt to cope with these great forces and to understand
their laws, and thus keep men perpetually in fearful uncertainty as to
their fate; for they cannot hope to control it by their own unaided
efforts.

Hence, the encouragement of superstition; hence, the dominance of a
degrading religion of fear throughout the greater part of such regions;
hence, the supremacy of priests and religious orders and the
discouragement of scientific reasoning. Hence, in the arts, the
literature, and the religion of India, we see a dominant tendency to the
grotesque, the enormous, the fearful; we see gods portrayed with many
arms, with three eyes and terrible visages. The legends of their heroes
contain monstrous details, as that they lived for many thousands or
millions of years. “All this,” says Buckle, “is but a part of that love
of the remote, that straining after the infinite, and that indifference
to the present, which characterises every branch of Indian intellect.
Not only in literature, but also in religion and in art, this tendency
is supreme. To subdue the understanding, and indulge the imagination, is
the universal principle. In the principles of their theology, in the
character of their gods, and even in the form of their temples, we see
how the sublime and threatening aspects of the external world have
filled the mind of the people with those images of the grand and the
terrible, which they strive to reproduce in a visible form, and to which
they owe the leading peculiarities of their national culture.”[109]

That these peculiarities of the mental life of such peoples are causally
related with those terrible aspects of nature is, I think, sufficiently
established by Buckle. But if we admit this, there remain two questions:
(1) Have these tendencies become innate racial qualities? (2) If so, how
have they been rendered innate? Buckle did not raise these questions and
offered no opinion in regard to them. But he seems to have assumed that
these tendencies have become innate; and there is much to be said for
that view. Yet, if that could be shown conclusively, it still would not
prove inheritance of these acquired qualities. It may have resulted in
some such way as this: the physical environment stimulates the
imagination, and it represses the tendency to control imagination and
superstition by reason and calm inquiry after causes; acting thus upon
successive generations of men, it determines the peculiarities of the
religious system and of the art and literature of the people.
Individuals in whom the same tendencies are innately strong will then
flourish under such a system; whereas those whose innate tendencies are
in the direction of reason and scepticism will find the system
uncongenial, unfavourable for the exercise of their best powers; they
will fail to make their mark; they may, as in many instances of European
inquirers, actually have lost their lives or their liberty through the
religious zeal of those who maintain the traditional system. Thus the
social environment, working through long ages, may have constantly
determined a certain degree of selection of the innate tendencies
congenial to it, and a weeding out of the opposed tendencies; until the
former have predominated in the race[110].

We have here a very important principle which we must constantly bear in
mind—namely, that not only the physical environment, but also the
social environment, may determine the survival of those temperaments and
qualities of mind best fitted to thrive in it, and, by handicapping
those least fitted to it, may gradually bring the mental qualities of
the race into conformity with itself. We shall later see other examples
by which this principle is more clearly illustrated.

We conclude that, while physical environment may act powerfully upon the
minds of individuals, moulding their acquired qualities in the three
ways noticed—namely, influencing the mind through bodily habit, through
the senses, and through the imagination—there is no sufficient evidence
that the acquired qualities so induced ever become innate or racial
characters by direct transmission. In those instances in which the
racial qualities approximate to these direct effects of physical
environment, it may well be because the physical environment has brought
about adaptation of the race by long continued selection of individuals,
or because it has determined peculiarities of social environment, which
in turn have brought about adaptation of the racial qualities by long
continued selection.



CHAPTER XVI

THE RACE-MAKING PERIOD (_continued_)


We considered in our last chapter the principal modes in which physical
environment affects the character of a people—namely, (1) influence on
temperament exerted chiefly through climate acting upon the bodily
functions: (2) influence through the senses, exerting secondary effects
upon the higher mental processes: (3) direct influence on the
imagination. We concluded that these effects become innate in some
degree; though whether they are impressed on the race by direct
inheritance, or by processes of direct or of social selection, or in all
three ways, remains an open question.

We distinguished, besides these direct modes of influence, two indirect
modes by which physical environment affects the mind and character of a
people: (1) by its selective action on individuals apart from its
influence upon their minds: (2) by determining occupations and social
organisation. We may consider them in turn.

It is recognised, as I pointed out above, that the races inhabiting hot
moist countries are commonly indolent, while those of the moderately
cold and moist climates tend to be extremely active and energetic.

This difference is well brought out by Mr Meredith Townsend in an essay
on the charm of Asia for the Asiatics[111]; and he is speaking not of
Asia in general but of Southern Asia. He says Asiatics “will not, under
any provocation, burden themselves with a sustained habit of taking
trouble. You might as well ask lazzaroni to behave like Prussian
officials.” After quoting Thiers’ description of the immense labours of
detailed administration which he supported while minister of State, he
says “No Asiatic will do that.... One half the weakness of every
Oriental government arises from the impossibility of finding men who
will act as M. Thiers did.” These races, bred in the tropics, are in
fact incurable lotus-eaters, their chief desire is for the afternoon
life or, as is commonly said of the Malays throughout the Eastern
Archipelago, they are great leg-swingers, they prefer to undertake no
labour more arduous than sitting still swinging their legs. All this,
though more or less true of the tropical races in general, is
pre-eminently true of those inhabiting regions which are moist as well
as hot, the Malays, the Burmese, the Siamese, the Papuans, the Negroes
of the African jungle regions.

Such peoples have failed to acquire the energy which leads men to
delight in activity for its own sake, not merely because a hot moist
climate inclines directly to indolence, but rather because the prime
necessities of life are to be had almost without labour; the heat
dispenses with the necessity for clothing and shelter, while the hot sun
and the moisture provide an abundance of vegetable food in response to a
minimum of labour. Hence, no man perishes through lack of energy to
secure the prime necessities of life; and there has been no great
weeding out of the indolent by severe conditions of life, such as alone
can produce an innately energetic race, one that loves activity for its
own sake. For the same reason these same peoples also exercise but
little foresight, they are naturally improvident; the abundance of
nature renders it possible to survive and propagate without any prudent
provision for the future.

Contrast with these races the northerly races—in Asia the Japanese,
whose energy and industry we all recognise, and the northern Mongols or
Tartars, who have so often overrun and conquered with fire and sword the
less energetic peoples of the south, or the Goorkhas or Pathans of the
highlands of northern India. But more especially contrast with them the
English people. M. Boutmy rightly asserts that “the taste for and the
habit of effort must be regarded as the most essential attribute, the
profound and spontaneous quality, of the race[112].” It is displayed in
the English love of sport and adventure and travel, especially in such
recreations as mountain climbing, which is pre-eminently an English
sport; also throughout our social life, in the intensity of commercial
and industrial activity, often carried on ardently by men far removed
from any necessity of making money. In our political life, where a vast
amount of effort is constantly expended in achieving comparatively small
results, we always seem to prefer to achieve any reform by the methods
which give scope to and demand the greatest amount of public activity
and effort. It is shewn also in the immense amount of public service
rendered without remuneration, for the mere love of activity and the
exercise of power. It is very striking in English colonies in tropical
lands, and has been no doubt an important factor in our success in
tropical administration and in colonisation.

Boutmy is inclined to attribute to this love of activity, as a secondary
effect, the dislike of the mass of Englishmen for generalisations and
for theoretical construction; for, he says, these are the results
naturally achieved by the reflective mind, whereas the English mind gets
no time for reflection, its attention is perpetually drawn off from
general principles by its tendency to pursue some immediate practical
end. Hence, he says, abstraction is subordinated to practical ends and
does not soar for its own sake. This truth is well illustrated by the
fact that all our English philosophers, Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, Mill,
Bentham, Spencer, etc., have been practical moralists, and have
conducted their investigations always with an eye to concrete
applications to the conduct of the State or of private life.

Boutmy regards this love of activity, together with foresight and
self-control, as racial qualities engendered by the severity of the
climate, working chiefly by way of natural selection. In the prehistoric
period more especially, when man had little knowledge of means of
protection from climate and hardship such as have been developed by
civilised societies, those individuals who were deficient in these
qualities must have succumbed to the rigours of the climate, leaving
their more energetic fellows to propagate the race.

That there is truth in the view is shown by the fact that the degree to
which the love of activity is developed seems to vary roughly with the
severity of the climate even among the closely allied races of Europe.
As we pass northward from the coast of the Mediterranean, we find the
quality more and more strongly marked; and it is in accordance with this
principle that the dominant power, the leadership in civilisation, has
passed gradually northwards in the historic period. Civilisation first
developed in the sub-tropical regions, in which the abundance of nature
first gave men leisure to devote themselves to things of the mind, to
contemplation and inquiry; while the northern races were still battling
as savages against the inclemency of the climate, were still being
ruthlessly weeded out by the rigorousness of the physical environment,
and so were being adapted to it, that is to say, were being rendered
capable of sustained and vigorous effort. But, as the means of subduing
nature and of protecting himself against nature have been developed by
man, the dominance has passed successively northwards to peoples whose
innate energy and love of activity were more highly developed in
proportion to the severity of the selection exerted upon many preceding
generations.

The severe climate has not been the only cause of this evolution of an
energetic active type. No doubt military selection played its part also.
The Northern races of Europe, more particularly the Nordic, the
fair-haired long-headed race, underwent a prolonged and severe process
of such military group selection, before branches of it settled in our
island; and, among the qualities which must have tended to success and
survival in this process, energy and capacity for prolonged and frequent
effort, especially bodily effort, must have been one of the chief.
Still, even such group selection was probably a secondary result of the
direct climatic selection; for it must have been the love of activity
and enterprise that led these peoples perpetually to wander, and so to
come into conflicts with one another, conflicts in which the more
energetic would in the main survive and the less energetic succumb. In
part also it must have been determined in the third and the most
indirect manner in which physical environment shapes racial
qualities—namely, by determining occupations and modes of life, and
through these the forms of social organisation, both of which then react
upon the racial qualities.

In illustration of this third mode of action of physical conditions, let
us take a striking difference of mental quality between the French and
the English peoples, and inquire how the difference has arisen; a
difference which is recognised by every capable observer who has
compared the two peoples and which has been of immense importance in
shaping the history of the modern world. I mean the greater sociability
of the French and the greater independence of the English, a greater
self-reliance and capacity for individual initiative. The difference
finds expression in every aspect of the national life of the two
peoples. The sociability and sympathetic character of the French, on
which they justly pride themselves[113], is the inverse aspect of their
lack of the characteristic English qualities, independence and
self-reliance. In political life the difference appears in the
centralised organisation of the French nation, every detail of
administration being controlled by the central power through a rigidly
organised hierarchy of officials, in a way that leaves no scope for
initiative and independence in local administrations. Connected with
this is the almost universal desire of educated men to become state
functionaries, parts of the official machinery of administration, and
the consequent excessive growth of this class of persons.

The same quality of the French shows itself in the tendency to prefer
the monarchical rule of any man who shows himself capable of ruling, a
tendency which constantly besets the republican State with a
well-recognised danger. These are not local and temporary
manifestations, but have characterised the French nation throughout the
whole period of its existence. In the feudal period which preceded its
formation, there was considerable local independence; but the feudal
system was due to the dominant influence of Frankish chiefs, of the same
race as our Saxon forefathers, who overran most of France as a ruling
caste, but did not contribute any large element to the population, and
whose blood therefore has been largely swamped. It appears in the
greater violence among the French people of collective mental processes,
those of mobs, assemblies, factions, and groups of all kinds. Each
individual is easily carried away by the mass; there are none to
withstand the wave of contagion and, by so doing, to break and check its
force.

In England on the other hand political activity has always been
characterised by extreme jealousy of the central power, and by the
tendency to achieve everything possible by local action and voluntary
private effort. All reforms are initiated from the periphery, instead of
from the centre as in France. Great institutions, the universities,
schools, colleges, hospitals, railways, canals, docks, insurance
companies, even water supplies and telephones and many other things
which, it would seem, should naturally and properly be undertaken by the
State, or other official public body, have been generally set on foot
and worked by individuals or private associations of individuals. Even
vast colonial empires—India, Rhodesia, Canada, Sarawak, Nigeria, North
Borneo—have been in the main acquired through the enterprise and efforts
of individuals or associations of individuals; the State only
intervening when the main work has been accomplished.

In their religion, too, the English are markedly individualistic; our
numerous dissenting bodies have mostly dispensed with the centralised
official hierarchy which in Roman Catholic countries mediates between
God and man, and have insisted upon a direct communion with God; and we
have many little churches each of which governs itself in absolute
independence of every other. In the family relations the same difference
appears very strongly. The French family regards itself, and is
regarded by law, as a community which holds its goods in common; each
child has his legal claim upon his share, relies upon his family for
support in his struggle with the world, and is encouraged by his parents
to do so. In the English family, on the other hand, the father is a
supreme despot, who disposes of his property as he wills. The children
are not encouraged to look for further support, when once they become
adult, but are taught that they must go out into the world to seek their
fortunes unaided. At an early age, the English boy is usually thrust out
of the family into the life of a school in which, by his own efforts, he
must find and keep his position among his fellows; and he lives a life
which, compared with that of the French boy, is one of freedom and
independence. In the distribution of the people on the land we see the
same difference of mental qualities revealed. The French peasants are
for the most part congregated sociably in villages and small towns; the
English farmer builds his homestead apart upon his own domain. And this
determines one of the most striking differences in the aspect of the
rural districts of both countries. In the towns also the same tendencies
are clearly shown; in the separate little homes of the English and in
the large houses of the French shared by several families.

It is in the expansion in the world of the two peoples that the effects
of this difference are most clearly expressed and assume the greatest
importance. The English race has populated a vast proportion of the
surface of the world, and rules over one-fifth of the total population.
Whereas the French people, who have conquered large areas, have never
succeeded in permanently colonising any considerable portion of their
conquests and they have failed to maintain their domination in many
regions where they have for a time established it. In every
extra-European region where they have come into conflict with the
English race they have been worsted.

The secret of the difference in the expansion of the two peoples is the
difference of innate mental quality that we are considering, enhanced by
the differences of custom and of political and family organisation
engendered by it. For, like all other innate tendencies, the two to
which we are referring obtain accentuated expression through moulding
customs, institutions and social organisation in ways which foster in
successive generations just those tendencies of which these institutions
are themselves the traditional outcome and expression. Thus, it is the
individualistic nature of the political, religious, and family
organisation of the English people which, having been engendered by
innate independence of character and having in turn accentuated it in
each generation, has enabled the people to achieve its marvels of
colonisation and tropical administration. We see these tendencies
playing a predominant part in the history of every British colony.

The difference was well brought out by Volney, a French observer of the
French and English colonists in the early days of the settlement of
North America. He wrote “The French colonist deliberates with his wife
upon everything that he proposes to do; often the plans fall to the
ground through lack of agreement.” “To visit one’s neighbours, to chat
with them, is for the French an habitual need so imperious that on all
the frontier of Louisiana and Canada you will not find a single French
colonist established beyond sight of his neighbour’s home.” “On the
other hand, the English colonist, slow and taciturn, passes the whole
day continuously at work; at breakfast he coldly gives his orders to his
wife; ... and goes forth to labour.... If he finds an opportunity to
sell his farm at a profit, he does so and goes ten or twenty leagues
further into the wilderness to make himself a new home[114].”

It is the French authors themselves who have most insisted upon this
mental difference between the French and the English, which seems to be
determining a great difference in the destinies of the two peoples; and
most of them, while justly valuing the sympathetic and sociable quality
of the French mind, deeply regret its lack of the English
independence[115]. There has been no lack of speculation and inquiry as
to the origin and causes of this supremely important difference. It is
perhaps worth while to glance at some of these attempts.

The most superficial attempt at explanation is to say that the political
and social institutions of the French people foster in each individual
the social tendencies in question, while the English institutions
develop their opposites. It is true, but it obviously is not the
explanation of the difference; for that we must go further back, in
order to find the origin of these differences of institution.

An explanation a little less superficial is that the domination of the
first Napoleon and the strong centralised system of administration
established by him accounts for the difference. But the permanence, if
not the very possibility, of that system, and the rise to power of
Napoleon himself, were but symptoms of this deep-lying tendency of the
French mind.

Buckle, recognising the profound difference which we are considering,
summed it up in the phrases ‘the dominance of the protective spirit in
France’ and of ‘the spirit of independence in England,’ He attributed
the former partly to the influence of the Roman Catholic Church in
France with its centralised authoritative system, partly to the long
prevalence of the feudal system of social organisation, under which
every man was made to feel his personal dependence upon the despotic
power of an independent noble and was accustomed to look to him for all
initiative and guidance—was trained to obey a despot, whose absolute
jurisdiction and whose title to his lands and rights was unchallenged.
The system, he said, culminated in the despotism of Louis XIV, by the
subjection of the previously independent nobles to the king, and was
revived in a different form, immediately after the great revolution, by
Napoleon.

The dominance of the spirit of independence among the English people he
would explain also from the character of their political institutions
during recent centuries. After recounting the political history of
England from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, and after showing
how the people during that period repeatedly succeeded in asserting its
liberties against the encroachments of the kings, he wrote—“In England
the course of affairs, which I have endeavoured to trace since the
sixteenth century, had diffused among the people a knowledge of their
own resources and a skill and independence in the use of them, imperfect
indeed, but still far superior to that possessed by any other of the
great European countries,” But he was not wholly satisfied with this
explanation; he added—“Besides this, other circumstances, which will be
hereafter related, had, as early as the eleventh century, begun to
affect our national character and had assisted in imparting to it that
sturdy boldness, and at the same time, those habits of foresight, and of
cautious reserve, to which the English mind owes its leading
peculiarities.”

When we turn to his account of the primary cause of English
independence[116], we find that it was, in his view, that the feudal
system was established by William the Conqueror in a form different from
that obtaining on the continent. The nobles received their lands
directly from the king as grants, and all land owners were made to
acknowledge their direct obligation to him. The nobles were in
consequence too weak to set up their own power against that of the
king, and therefore they called the people to their aid in resisting the
power of the king; hence, the people early acquired rights and
privileges and the habit of organised resistance to the central
authority. “The English aristocracy, being thus forced by their own
weakness, to rely on the people, it naturally followed that the people
imbibed that tone of independence and that lofty bearing, of which our
civil and political institutions are the consequence, rather than the
cause. It is to this, and not to any fanciful peculiarity of race, that
we owe the sturdy and enterprising spirit for which the inhabitants of
this island have long been remarkable.”

“The practice of subinfeudation, became in France almost universal.” The
great lords subgranted parts of their lands to lesser lords, and these
again to others, and so on—“thus forming a long chain of dependence,
and, as it were, organising submission into a system.” In this country,
on the other hand, the practice was actively checked. “The result was
that by the fourteenth century the liberties of Englishmen were
secured,” and the spirit of independence had become a part of the
national character; that is to say, Buckle maintained that three
centuries of a different form of the feudal system sufficed to produce
this profound difference between the French and English peoples.

Boutmy also fully recognises the important difference between the innate
qualities of the French and English; and he also would explain it as the
effect of political institutions since the middle ages, but on lines
somewhat different from Buckle’s—namely, that England was early ruled by
a king invested with great power, and inclined to all the excesses of
arbitrary rule. Hence the first need of the people was to fortify
themselves against his power. All the law of England carries the imprint
of this fear and this defiance. The parliament has been set up against
the crown, the judges against parliament, and the jury against the power
of the judges; and so, ever since the conquest, individuals have been
accustomed to think, and to assert, that their persons, their purse, and
their homes are inviolable; and that the State is an enemy whose
encroachments must be resisted. This way of thinking has by long usage
become instinctive, increasing from generation to generation; until the
horror of servitude has become rooted in the Englishman’s temperament,
and the desire of independence has become a native and primary passion.

Both Buckle and Boutmy agree, then, that the English love of liberty is
due to England having been conquered and ruled by a powerful king, and
that in France the opposite effect is to be attributed to the same
cause—namely, the influence of despotic rulers. Surely this is to
reverse cause and effect. If the English people had not already
possessed the sturdy spirit of independence when they were conquered by
the Norman, his strong centralised rule would only have rendered them
still less independent and would have fostered the spirit of protection,
as Buckle calls it. If the national characters had been reversed in this
respect, how easy it would have been to show that the dependence of the
English character was due to the strong rule of a foreign despot,
William of Normandy, while the French independence was due to the
existence in feudal times of many centres of independent power, the
nobles, each capable of resisting the central authority! It was just
because this spirit was theirs already that the English people resisted
their kings and were able to secure their liberties by setting up
institutions congenial to their nature, institutions and customs which
have fostered in each individual and each generation the spirit of
independence inherited as a racial quality, and which possibly, though
by no means certainly, have further intensified the racial peculiarity.

Another cause for the difference of institutions is assigned by Sir
Henry Maine. He pointed to the great influence of Roman law upon French
institutions; he showed how the French lawyers, brought up in the school
of Roman law and holding the Roman Empire as the ideal of a political
organisation, threw all their weight upon the side of the monarchy, and
in favour of centralised administration. More, perhaps, is due to this
influence than to the causes assigned by Buckle and Boutmy; but no one
of these alleged causes, nor all of them combined, can be accepted as
adequate to explain the origin of the difference of national characters.
These authors fail also to make clear how the political institutions can
have modified character. Boutmy frankly assumes use-inheritance, which,
as I have said, is, in the present state of science, an unwarrantable
assumption.

That these qualities of the French and English peoples are innate racial
qualities, evolved during the race-making or prehistoric period, is
proved not only by the inadequacy of any assignable causes operating
during the historic period, but also by the fact that similar qualities
are described by the earliest historians as characterising the
ancestors, or the principal ancestral stocks, of the two peoples, when
they first appear in history. It is proved also by the fact that other
branches of the Nordic race have displayed similar qualities, more
especially the Dutch, and also the Normans, who, though they have long
formed part of the French State in the political sense, and have
suffered most of the political influences assigned as causes of the
spirit of protection, not only displayed the spirit of independence in
the highest degree ten centuries ago, but are admitted to be still
distinguished from the bulk of the French people by the greater
individualism of their character, just as they are still markedly
different in physical traits. They offer one of the best examples of
fixity of the physical characters of a race. No one can travel in
Normandy without being struck by the very marked and distinctive
physical type, which, according to all accounts, is that of the Norman
who came over to England with the Conqueror; and there is every reason
to believe that the mental qualities of the race have been equally fixed
and enduring.

Julius Caesar, Tacitus, and other early historians have described for us
the leading qualities of the Gauls on the one hand and of the Teutons on
the other. Fouillée in his _Psychology of the French People_ has brought
together the evidence of these early historians on the point; it shows
that the Gauls and the Teutons were distinguished very strongly by the
same differences which obtain between the French and English peoples at
the present time, especially the difference in respect of independence
and initiative, the origin of which we are seeking to explain. The Gauls
were eminently sociable people, sympathetic, emotional, demonstrative,
vivacious, very given to oratory and discussion, vain and moved by the
desire of glory, capable of great gallantry, but not of persevering
effort in face of difficulties, easily elated, easily cast down. And,
what from our point of view is especially important, they were readily
led by the chiefs, to whom they were attached by the bonds of personal
loyalty; and they were constantly banding themselves together in large
groups, under such leaders as attained popularity by their superior
qualities; and, again, they were dominated by the priestly caste, the
Druids. The Gauls even had those family institutions which characterise
the modern French and which have been held to be the expression of their
recently acquired qualities and traditions; namely, the family had the
character of a community in which the wife had equal rights with the
husband, and the children were regarded also as members of the community
having their equal claims upon the family property. And society was
bound together by a system of patrons and clients, a system of personal
dependence.

On the other hand, the Teutonic people, as described by the same ancient
authorities, displayed a decided individualism in virtue of which their
social organisation was more rudimentary. The father was supreme in the
family, and his power and property descended to his eldest son. They
were a more phlegmatic people, but of great energy and persistence.
Unlike the Gauls, they were dominated by no priestly caste. The
religious rites were conducted by the elder men.

The Gauls were a mixed people of whom the minority, constituting the
nobility, were of the tall, fair, long-headed Nordic race, while the
majority, the mass of the common people, were of the short, dark,
round-headed race. And these, as the numerous observations of the
anthropologists show, constitute to-day the bulk of the population,
except in Normandy and the extreme north-east of France.

The Teutons or Germans of Caesar and Tacitus, on the other hand, were of
the fair Nordic race; and the Anglo-Saxons who overran Britain, together
with the Danes and Normans, who, with the Saxons, formed the principal
ancestral stock of the English, were of this same Nordic race, or
Northmen, as we may call them.

Now, it might seem useless to attempt to arrive at any conclusions as to
the influences that shaped these races in prehistoric times. But an
attempt has been made by one of the schools of French sociologists,
which, in spite of its speculative character, seems to be worthy of
attention. This is the school of ‘La Science Sociale,’ founded seventy
years ago by Fredericq le Play and more recently led by Ed. Demolins and
H. de Tourville. Aided by a number of ardent disciples, they have made a
special study of the influence of physical environment in determining
occupations and social organisation, and in moulding indirectly through
these the mental qualities of peoples. That is their great principle.
They rightly, I think, insist upon the relatively small importance of
political institutions in moulding a people, regarding them as secondary
results of the factors which, determining the private activities of men
and women at every moment of their lives from the cradle to the grave,
exert a far greater and more intimate influence upon their minds. In two
fascinating volumes[117] Demolins has summed up the principal results of
this school and attempted to trace the conditions that have determined
the differentiation of all the principal races of the earth; and de
Tourville has applied the same principles and traced their effects in
European history[118].

It is a curious fact that the work of the Le Play school is almost
entirely ignored by the other French sociologists and anthropologists.
It is seldom referred to by them, and outside France also it has not
received the attention it deserves. Much of it is of the nature of
brilliant speculation, and is regarded no doubt as unsound by many more
sober minds. Yet, when we attempt to understand the evolution of man in
the prehistoric period, brilliant speculation becomes a necessary
supplement to the work of measuring skulls and digging up ruins, to
which some less ingenious workers confine themselves. And, of all the
conclusions of the Le Play school, their account of the origin of the
distinctive characters of the Northmen is one of the most striking and
satisfactory; while their account of the origins of the Gauls and of
their peculiar social organisation and well marked mental traits is also
among their best work.



CHAPTER XVII

THE RACE-MAKING PERIOD (_continued_)


THE INFLUENCE OF OCCUPATIONS AND OF RACE-CROSSING

In the foregoing chapter we noticed certain well-marked and generally
recognised differences of national character presented by the French and
the English peoples—namely, the greater independence of the English, the
greater sociability of the French people; and we noted how these
differences of national character show themselves throughout the
institutions of the two nations, and how they have played a great part
in determining the difference of their histories; especially, we saw,
how they are of prime importance, when we seek to account for the
greater expansion of the English people throughout the world.

We then noticed several attempts that have been made, by Buckle, Boutmy,
Maine and others, to account for these differences as results of
differences of political institutions during the last thousand years. We
found that all these attempts fail, and that the differences of
political institutions, which these authors have regarded as the causes
of the differences of national character, are really the expressions of
a fundamental racial difference; that, in short, these authors have
inverted the true causal relation. I then drew attention to the work of
the school of Le Play and especially to its fundamental
principle—namely, that, while peoples are in a state of primitive or
lowly culture, their geographical or physical environment determines
their occupations and, through their occupations, their social
organisations, especially their domestic organisation; and that
particular modes of occupation and of social organisation of a primitive
people, persisting through many generations, mould the innate qualities
and form the racial character.

I said that two brilliant workers of the school—namely, Demolins and de
Tourville—had applied this principle to account for those differences
between the national characters of the French and English peoples which
we were considering. I have now to reproduce their account in as
condensed a form as possible.

Demolins claims to show that the short dark round-headed people, who
formed the bulk of the Gauls and also of the population of modern
France, came, in prehistoric times, from the Eurasian steppe region,
reaching France by way of the valley of the Danube, a long narrow
lowland region confined on the north by the Carpathians and mountains of
Bohemia, on the south by the Balkans and Swiss Alps. He supposes that,
for long ages, they had lived as pastoral nomads on the steppes. By
examining the nomads who still lead the pastoral life on the steppes, he
shows the kind of social organisation to which this pastoral life
inevitably gives rise and under which they lived; and he traces the
effects which such occupation and such social organisation produce on
the mental qualities of a people.

The system is the patriarchal system _par excellence_. It is something
very different from the Roman system characterised by the _patria
potestas_, which the writings of Sir H. Maine have perhaps tended to
confuse with the true patriarchal system. The patriarchal system of the
pastoral nomads is essentially a communal system, under which all the
brothers, sons, and grandsons of the patriarch form, with their
families, a community which holds all the property, consisting of flocks
and herds, in common; each member having his claim to his share of the
produce, each doing his share of the common labour, and each having a
voice in the regulation of the affairs of the family. Such a system
represses individualism; there is no individual property, there are no
individual rights, duties, or responsibilities; no scope for individual
initiative; the individual is swallowed up in the community; superior
energy or enterprise bring no superior rewards, but rather tend to
social disorganisation and to the detriment of the individual who
displays them. Further, the work of looking after the herds of cattle is
easy and delightful, calling for no sustained exertion; and the herds
provide every necessary article of food, clothing, and shelter. Beyond
the family group there exists no political organisation; for the group
is self-supporting and independent, it has no need of relations with
other groups, and each group lives far apart from others, wandering in
some ill-defined region of the immense plain.

The peculiarities of this social organisation and of this mode of life
are clearly created by the physical environment, by the boundless grassy
plains, which enable each family group to maintain a large troup of
cattle, chiefly horses. At the same time, these conditions render
necessary the co-operation of all the members of the family in the
common work of tending the cattle; while the necessity of continually
moving on to fresh pasture prevents the growth of any fixed forms of
property and of any more elaborate social organisation.

It is an extremely stable and persistent mode of life and of social
organisation. So long as the geographical conditions remain unchanged,
it is difficult to see how any change would take place in it, how any
progress towards civilisation could begin. And, as a matter of fact, the
people who have remained in these regions continue to lead just the same
patriarchal, pastoral, nomadic life. Long ages of this mode of life may
well put upon a people the stamp of sociability and communism and kill
out individualism and individual initiative! Demolins points out in a
very interesting way how these effects of the patriarchal system of the
pastoral nomads are displayed most clearly still by the population of
southern Russia, who, of all the settled European peoples descended from
such pastoral nomads, have suffered fewest disturbing influences; how
still the individual is subordinated to the community, to the _mir_, by
which all private life and industrial activity is directed and which is
the owner of the principal property, namely the land; and how, in
consequence, the people remain devoid of all individual initiative and
enterprise.

The Celts arriving in Gaul retained these qualities and something of the
patriarchal organisation, although they were no longer simply pastoral
nomads; for, in the course of their migrations, they had been forced to
take up agriculture and the rearing of other domestic animals,
especially the pig, through lack of sufficient open steppe land. While
in this disorganised condition in Gaul, they were overrun by tribes of
the Nordic race, who established themselves as a conquering nobility,
superimposing upon the rudimentary political organisation of the Celts a
loose military organisation of clans; each clan was led by a popular
warrior who attached to himself by his personal qualities as large as
possible a number of clients or clansmen, acquiring rights over their
land and property, in return for the patronage and protection he offered
them. These nobles with their blood relatives were the tall fair-haired
Gauls described by Caesar. The Celts lent themselves readily to this
system based on personal loyalty and leadership, owing to their lack of
independence of character engendered by long ages of the patriarchal
communal régime. And the new social organisation fostered and developed
still more through many generations the spirit of dependence, the
tendency to look for authoritative guidance and control to some
recognised centre of power.

Under the two circumstances, the long régime of patriarchal communism
and the subsequent prevalence for many generations of the clan system,
we may see, according to Demolins, the causes of those deep-seated
tendencies of the French nation (summed up by Buckle in the phrase the
spirit of protection) which throughout their history have played so
large a part in shaping the destinies of the people, and which are still
the source of grave anxiety to many patriotic Frenchmen.

It is interesting to note that among the Celtic populations of the
British Isles the same features have been clearly displayed. We see
among them the clan-system with its dual ownership of the soil, which
has been perpetuated in Ireland to the present day and has received more
formal and legal recognition from the British government in its recent
legislation. We see the strong clannish spirit and relative lack of
independence. These qualities are clearly shown by the Celtic Irish,
even when they have been compelled by necessity to emigrate to America.
There they are not found to be pioneers on the frontiers of
civilisation, but rather remain herded together in clannish communities
in the cities of the eastern states, where they create such powerful
unofficial associations as ‘Tammany Hall.’

Demolins’ account of the genesis of the spirit of independence and
enterprise of the Anglo-Saxons is still more interesting and seductive.
He supposes that their ancestors also came originally in very remote
times from the Eurasian steppes; but that is a disputable point and
forms no essential part of his argument. They settled in prehistoric
times around the coasts of the Baltic and the North Sea, especially in
Scandinavia. And the physical peculiarities of this region impressed
upon their descendants the qualities which have enabled them to play a
leading part in the destruction of the Roman power and in the
development of the civilisation of modern Europe, and which have
established them in almost every part of the world as a dominant race,
increasing in power and numbers at the expense of other peoples.

What, then, are these physical conditions?

Scandinavia is a mass of barren mountains coming down in almost all
parts abruptly to the sea. Its coast line is indented by innumerable
fiords and bordered by thousands of small islands; and the sea which
washes these coasts is warmed by the Gulf Stream. This sea, owing to its
warmth and to the existence of a great bank which lies near the surface
and runs parallel to the coast line, is extremely rich in fish. Hence,
the Nordic tribes who settled in Scandinavia inevitably became a
sea-faring folk, spreading slowly along the coasts in small boats,
supporting themselves in large part upon the fish which they caught in
the sea; for the land is barren, while the sea offers ideal conditions
for fishing in small boats. But, unlike the herds of pastoral peoples,
sea-fishing does not provide all the necessities of a simple life. It
must be combined with agriculture. Hence, the ancient Northmen became a
race of hardy seafarers who at the same time practised agriculture.

The character of the land which was available for the necessary but
supplementary agriculture was all important. It consisted, as it does
still, of small isolated strips of cultivatable soil at the feet of the
mountains where they plunge into the sea. On such land it was impossible
for the family to retain the form of a patriarchal community. The
fertile areas were too small to support such communities, and the
individualistic form of family was inevitably evolved. On each small
plot of cultivatable land a little farm was formed, a homestead in which
lived a family restricted to father, mother, and children. As the
children grew up, it was impossible to support them on the one small
farm or to divide it among them; one son alone was chosen as the
inheritor of the paternal farm; and each of the others had to seek a new
piece of land, build a new homestead, and acquire his own boat.

Thus, the family was forced to become the individualistic family; and
the home of each such family was necessarily isolated, widely separated
from that of every other, owing to the scattered distribution of the
little areas of fertile soil. Thus were formed the first homes in the
English sense of the word; the home in which the father rules supreme
over his own little household, brooking no interference from outside;
the home in which the children are brought up to look forward to
establishing, each child for himself, similar independent
individualistic homes. Such homes have been established by the Northmen
in every part of the world in which they have settled; and they are
peculiar to them and their descendants.

It is obvious that all the very limited domains of the Scandinavian
coasts must have been fully occupied in the way described in a
comparatively few generations after the process of settlement began.
This seems to have occurred about the fourth or fifth century A.D. Then
the younger sons, for whom there was no place at home and for whom there
remained no spots suitable for homesteads in their native land, were
sent out into the world to seek their fortunes. They banded themselves
together to man single boats, or formed fleets of boats; and, leaving
their parents and women-folk behind, set out to conquer for themselves
new homesteads. Large numbers, sailing to the southern shores of the
Baltic and up the Weser and the Elbe, settled on the plains of Saxony;
and from this new centre they again spread, as the Anglo-Saxons to
England, and as the Franks to Gaul. Others settled directly in northern
France and became the Normans. Others, the Varegs, penetrated the plains
of Russia and established themselves as princes over the Slav
population.

This was a migration such as had never before been seen; bands of armed
men, all young or in the prime of life, coming not as mere robbers, but
seeking to conquer for themselves and to settle upon whatever land
seemed to them most desirable. Everywhere they went they conquered and
either exterminated or drove out the indigenous population, as in the
south and east of England, or established themselves as an aristocracy,
a ruling military caste, as the Franks in the north-east of Gaul. And
everywhere they established firmly their individualistic social
organisation, especially the isolated homestead of the individualistic
family, characterised by the despotic power of the father and by great
regard for individual property and for the rights of the individual as
against all State institutions and public powers. In hostile countries
the homestead became a fortified place, or at least was furnished with a
fortified keep or castle; and in those regions, such as Gaul, in which
the indigenous population was not exterminated, the feudal system was
thus initiated. Everywhere they carried their spirit of independence,
enterprise, and initiation.

It was the swarming of the young broods of Northmen in search of new
homes that caused the Romans to describe these Northern lands as the
womb of peoples, and to regard them with wonder and something of fear.

These qualities and habits continued to be displayed in the highest
degree by the Normans after their first settlement in the north of
France. The younger sons kept up the good old fashion of going out into
the world to seek a fortune or rather a territory, which often was a
dukedom or a kingdom. Their most characteristic performance was the
conquest of the greater part of Italy. A little before William of
Normandy and his companions secured for themselves domains in this
country, Norman knights, engaging in enterprises that might well have
seemed absolutely foolhardy, had established themselves in Mediterranean
lands. Some two thousand Normans, arriving Viking fashion in their small
ships, conquered Sicily and the south of Italy and divided these lands
among themselves; and for a time they introduced order and a settled
mode of life among the peoples of those parts. The leading spirits
among them were ten sons of one Norman gentleman, Tancrède de
Hauteville, the father of twelve sons of whom two only remained at home,
while each of the others carved out for himself a domain in Italy. As
Demolins remarks, these families, retaining undiminished their
individualistic tendencies and spirit of independence, were veritable
factories of men for exportation.

The modern Frenchman, says Demolins, would regard as the height of folly
the enterprises of the old Northmen, who, mounted on their frail ships,
quitted each spring the coast of Scandinavia, launched out on the wild
sea, landed, a mere handful of men, on the coasts of Germany, Britain,
or Gaul, and there with their swords carved out domains and made new
homesteads. It was thus that the ancestors of Tancred had acquired the
manor of Hauteville, and it was thus that his sons conquered Italy and
Sicily.

It was in a very similar way that, in a later age, men of the same breed
carried to the new world the same individualistic institutions and the
same spirit of independence, and in doing so, laid the sure foundations
of the immense vigour and prosperity of the American people.

There is one almost more striking illustration of the great and lasting
effects upon character and institutions of the mode of life of the
Northmen determined by their physical environment. It is furnished by
the character and habits of the people who still dwell in the plains
between the mouths and lower parts of the Weser and the Elbe, a region
which was naturally one of the first to be conquered and occupied by the
Northmen. This territory is an infertile sandy plain, and at the time of
the coming of the Northmen had but scanty population; hence, instead of
becoming the military and ruling caste of a subject people, the Northmen
became themselves peasants and farmers. In doing so, they retained all
the characteristic features of the individualistic family and have
perpetuated them, together with the spirit of enterprise and
independence, undiminished to the present day.

In this region each farm is a freehold which has remained in the hands
of the same family for long periods, in many cases for hundreds of
years. Each farm has its isolated homestead inhabited by the head of the
family, his wife and young children, and one or two hired servants. Each
homestead is well nigh completely self-supporting and lives almost
independent of the outside world. In spite of the isolation, which might
have been expected to engender an extreme conservatism and backwardness
of culture, these farmers have continued to exhibit the old Northmen’s
spirit of enterprise and their power of voluntary combination in the
pursuit of individual ends. They were the first in Europe to establish a
society for the scientific study of agriculture, and they have thus
maintained themselves in the first rank as cultivators of the land,
quite without State assistance. In the same way and at an early date
they established schools for their children. They have continued to
produce large families and have retained the custom of handing over the
farm and homestead intact to one son, chosen for his ability to manage
it; while all the other sons keep up the old custom of going out into
the world to seek their fortunes, in the shape of new homesteads.

Most striking of all, they still do this in the old Norse fashion as
nearly as possible. In one district these farmers combined their efforts
some sixty years ago and built a ship which, since that time, has sailed
every year to South Africa, carrying there the surplus sons in search of
new domains for themselves. In that far country their spirit of
independence finds satisfaction in establishing new homesteads, new
families of the individualistic type, and in perpetuating their
traditions of enterprise and self-reliance.

It is because the modern Scandinavians are of the same stock, fashioned
for long ages by the same physical environment, that they have continued
to emigrate in large numbers to North America, where some of their
ancestral race landed centuries before Columbus was born, and where, in
the newly opened territories of Canada and the United States, they are
generally recognised as being among the best of the settlers.

Demolins does not enter into the question—How did the institutions and
mode of life of these or other peoples, determined by physical
environment, bring about adaptation of racial qualities to the
environment? He seems to assume in all cases use-inheritance. But if, as
seems possible or even probable, this is a false assumption, we may
still see clearly that, in the case of the Northmen at least, adaptation
may well have been effected by selection. The conditions of life of
these Northmen were such that in each generation the majority of men
could become fathers of families only after carrying through
successfully an enterprise in which a bold independence of spirit was
the prime condition of success.

Those who were deficient in the spirit of independence must have shrunk
from these wild expeditions in search of new homes to be won only by
the sword, or must in the main have failed to attain the end; remaining
at home, or returning there after failing in the enterprise to which
they proved unequal, to finish their days as bachelor uncles at the
paternal hearth. This process, carried on for many generations, would
lead to the evolution of just those qualities which are characteristic
of their descendants in all the many parts of the earth where they now
rule. Not only must such social selection have been operative during the
period of settlement of Scandinavia; but each great migration to a new
area must have sifted out the most independent and enterprising spirits
to be the founders and fathers of the new branch of the race[119]. Thus
the descendants of the pilgrim fathers were the product of three such
processes of severe selection; the migration from Scandinavia to
Northern Germany; that from Germany to England; and that from England to
America. No wonder that they proved themselves well able to cope with
the hardships and dangers of a new continent inhabited by savages only
less fiercely tempered than their own stock by many generations of
warfare! When we thus find the same institutions and the same mental
traits characterising, from the dawn of history to the present time, all
the widely separated branches of one racial stock and of this stock
alone, we realize how powerful over the destiny of nations is the
influence of racial character formed in the long prehistoric ages; we
see how futile it is to attempt to explain the mental traits of a people
by the history of their political institutions during a few recent
centuries; we understand that these institutions are the effects, not
the causes, of those mental qualities and that, even among the peoples
who have attained the highest degree of civilisation, racial qualities
remain of supreme importance.


THE CROSSING OF RACES

Before passing on to the consideration of evolutionary changes during
the historic period, a few words must be said about the crossing and
blending of races. Such blending has been, no doubt, one of the
principal causes of the great variety of human types at present existing
on the earth. It has been going on for long ages in almost all regions;
but especially in Europe and Africa. All existing stocks (with few
exceptions) are the products of race-blending. No one of the existing
European peoples is of unmixed stock; every one is the product of
successive mixtures and blendings of allied stocks; and the mixing and
blending still goes on; while in America (both north and south) the
greatest experiments in race-blending that the world has yet seen are
taking place before our eyes.

Authors differ widely as to the results of the crossing of human races
and subraces. Some assert that the effect of crossing of races is always
bad, that the cross-bred progeny is always inferior to the parent
stocks. They make no allowance for unfavourable conditions, especially
the lack of the strong moral traditions of old organised societies.
Others maintain the opposite opinion. Both opinions are probably correct
in a certain sense. I think the facts enable us to make with some
confidence the following generalisation. The crossing of the most widely
different stocks, stocks belonging to any two of the four main races of
man, produces an inferior race; but the crossing of stocks belonging to
the same principal race, and especially the crossing of closely allied
stocks, generally produces a blended subrace superior to the mean of the
two parental stocks, or at least not inferior.

This generalisation cannot yet be based on exact and firmly established
data, unfortunately; but it is in harmony with old established popular
beliefs, and with what we know of the crossing of animal breeds; and it
is borne out by a general inspection of many examples. For instance, the
blending of the white, negro, and American stocks, which has been going
on in South America for some centuries, seems to have resulted in a
subrace which up to the present time is inferior to the parent races; or
at any rate to the white race. So the mulattoes of North America and the
West Indies, although superior in some respects to the pure negroes,
seem deficient in vitality and fertility, and the race does not maintain
itself. The Eurasians of India are commonly said to be a comparatively
feeble people. The blend of the Caucasian with the yellow race is also
generally of a poor type. Examples abound in Java of people of mixed
Javanese and Dutch blood; and they are for the most part feeble
specimens of humanity. It is generally recognised that a recently
blended stock may produce a few individuals of exceptional vigour and
capacity and physical beauty. But setting these aside, the blended stock
seems to be inferior in two respects: (1) a general lack of vigour,
which expresses itself in lack of power of resistance to many diseases
and in relative infertility; so that the blended stock can hardly
maintain its numbers; (2) a lack of harmony of qualities, both mental
and physical. It may be that such lack of harmony is the ground of the
relative infertility of blended stocks. It expresses itself in the
inharmonious combination of physical features, characteristic of the
mongrel. The negro race has a beauty of its own, which is spoilt by
blending.

As regards mental constitution, although we cannot directly observe and
measure these disharmonies of composition, there seems good reason to
believe that they exist. The soul of the cross-bred is, it would seem,
apt to be the scene of perpetual conflict of inharmonious tendencies.
This has been the theme of many stories, and, though no doubt many of
them are overdrawn, there is no reason to doubt that they in the main
depict actual experience or are founded on close observation.

It is on the moral, rather than the intellectual, side of the mind that
the disharmony seems to make itself felt most strongly; and the moral
detachment of the cross-bred from the moral traditions of both the
parent stocks is possibly due in part to a certain lack of innate
compatibility with those traditions, as well as to social ostracism; the
cross-bred can assimilate neither tradition so easily and completely as
the pure-bred stocks.

It is possible, though this is a still more speculative view, that the
same is true of the intellectual constitution of the mind.

The superiority of subraces formed by the blending of allied stocks
seems to fall principally under two heads: (1) a general vigour of
constitution; (2) a greater variety and variability of innate mental
qualities. The greater variability of qualities of a subrace renders
that race more adaptable to changing conditions; for racial adaptability
depends upon the occurrence of abundant spontaneous variations. A large
variety of innate qualities renders a race capable of progressing
rapidly in civilisation; it renders it more capable both of producing
novel ideas and of appreciating and assimilating the ideas, discoveries,
and institutions of other peoples; and such imitative assimilation from
one people to another has been a main condition of the progress of
culture.

It is, of course, well recognised that the great centres of development
of culture have been the places where different peoples have come most
freely into contact, notably the centre of the old world where Asia,
Africa, and Europe meet together. This was the area in which the three
great races of Europe came first into contact and mingled freely. Some
authors attribute the fertilising influence upon culture wholly to the
blending or contact of cultures; but there is good reason to believe
that it is largely due also to race-blending.

We might compare in this respect the three great culture areas of the
old world—Europe, India and China. The Chinese afford an instance of one
relatively pure race occupying a very large area. In spite of its early
start and great mental capacities, its culture has stagnated. The stock
was perhaps too pure. India on the other hand seems to owe its peculiar
history largely to the fact that its population in almost all parts has
been made up from very widely different races—white, yellow and black;
the heterogeneity has been too great for stability and continued
progress. In Europe different branches and sub-branches of the white
race, that is of stocks not too widely different in constitution, have
undergone repeated crossing and recrossing.

It is worth while to point out that, if our generalisation is valid, it
follows that race-blending has been an important factor in the progress
of civilisation. And the generalisation has also an important bearing
upon one of the most urgent problems confronting the statesmen of the
world at the present time, and not only the statesmen but all the
citizens of the civilised states, especially the citizens of the British
Empire and of America. For it justifies abundantly the refusal of the
white inhabitants of various countries to admit immigrants of the yellow
or negro race to settle among them; and it justifies, and more than
justifies, the objection to intermarriage with those other races which
Englishmen have upheld wherever they have settled, and which most other
peoples have not upheld[120].

In all the currents of heated discussion as to the rights and wrongs of
the treatment of other races, this question of the kind of subrace which
will result from intermarriage is generally left in the background;
whereas its importance is far greater than that of all other
considerations taken together. Some, like Sir S. Olivier[121], are
content to approve race-blending on the ground that it improves the
inferior race. But the racial qualities of the leading peoples of the
world are too precious to be squandered in the process of improving in
some uncertain degree the quality of the overwhelming mass of humanity
of inferior stocks; the process would probably result in the total
destruction of all that humanity has striven and suffered for in its
nobler efforts.

It is an interesting question—When two races or subraces are crossed, do
they ever produce a homogeneous and true subrace, exhibiting a true and
stable blend of the qualities of the parental stocks? Or does the blend
always remain imperfect, with many individuals in whom the qualities of
one or other of the parental stocks predominate? The answer seems to be
that a stable subrace may be formed in this way, though usually not
until free intermarriage has gone on for many generations. According to
the most recent doctrine of heredity, the Mendelian, every human being
is a mosaic or patchwork of unit qualities, organs, or capacities, each
of which is inherited wholly from one of the parents and not at all from
the other. If this view is well founded, it follows that there can be no
true blending of these unit qualities. But still the mosaic may be so
finely grained and the unit qualities derived from the two parents so
closely interwoven, that each individual may present an intimate mixture
of the parental qualities, may represent for all practical purposes a
blending of the two stocks.



CHAPTER XVIII

RACIAL CHANGES DURING THE HISTORIC PERIOD


We have found reason to believe that national character, as expressed in
the collective mental life of any people, is only to be understood and
explained when we take into account the native or racial mental
qualities of the people; and we have seen reason to think that these
racial qualities were in the main formed in the prehistoric or
race-making period; we have noted some of the principal attempts to
throw light on the prehistoric moulding of races. But these racial
qualities, although very persistent, are not unalterable. We must,
therefore, consider whether, and in what ways, the racial mental
qualities of a people may have been changed during the nation-making or
historic period. What are the factors which determine such changes? What
is their influence on the destiny of nations?

The most diverse opinions are still held in regard to the question of
the extent and nature of changes of innate mental qualities of peoples
during the historic period, the period during which a people, or a
branch of a people, attains political unity and becomes a nation.

There is no doubt that the moulding power of physical environment tends
to become greatly diminished during this more settled period of the life
of a people, and that, in so far as changes take place, they are
determined principally by racial substitutions and by social selections
within a people, rather than by the mere struggle for survival of
individuals or of family groups against the inclemency of nature or
against other individuals and groups.

The former of these two modes of change, substitution, has undoubtedly
been effected on a large scale, producing in certain instances radical
changes in the racial quality of the populations of some countries; that
is to say, there has been more or less gradual substitution of one race
for another, while the nation as a geographical and political entity,
with its language and much of its laws, institutions, and customs, lives
on without complete breach of continuity, and the people, although by
blood radically changed, continues to regard itself as the same people,
accepting as its own the traditions of those predecessors whom they
mistakenly regard as their ancestors.

Perhaps the most striking and complete change of this sort in European
history was the change of racial character of the Greek people. It is
now pretty well established that the Greek population of the classical
age was an incomplete blend of two of the three great European stocks,
namely _Homo Europaeus_, the northern, fair, long-headed type of tall
stature, and of _H. Mediterraneus_, the short dark long-headed type of
the Mediterranean coast lands. The Pelasgians, who, as we now know, had
achieved a civilisation of a type that was widely spread through
southern Europe as long as three thousand years or more before our era,
seem to have been of this Mediterranean race.

Rather more than a thousand years before our era, the Pelasgian
population of Greece and the neighbouring regions began to be overrun
and conquered by tribes of the fair Northern race which came in
successive invasions, the Thracians, the Hellenes, the Achaeans, the
Ionians, and later the Dorians. Just as, at a later period, men of the
Northern race established themselves as a military aristocracy over the
Celtic peoples of western Europe, so these invading tribes established
themselves as a military aristocracy over the populations of
Mediterranean race; and, as in the former case, so here, they
intermarried largely with the people they conquered and formed an
imperfectly blended population, in the upper social strata of which the
fair type was predominant, in the lower strata the dark type.

From this happy blending of two races was formed the people which, under
the favourable geographical and social conditions of that time and
place, evolved the civilisation that culminated after six hundred years
in the Athenian culture of the time of Pericles. And then, after a very
short time, the whole of that splendid civilisation faded away, and the
Greek people sank to a position of slight importance from which it has
never again risen. After having displayed in several departments of the
intellectual life a power and originality such as have never been
approached by any other people, they became a people of very mediocre
capacities, devoid of power of origination and purely imitative.

That this profound change in the mental qualities of the population of
Greece was due to substitution of one racial stock by an inferior one is
beyond question. That a great change of racial type was effected is
sufficiently proved by the comparison of the physical type of the modern
with that of the ancient Greeks. The modern are predominantly dark and
round headed; the ancient were distinctly long headed, as shown by a
sufficient number of skull measurements; and they were, as regards the
dominant class at least, predominantly fair in colour. It has been
supposed that the many references to the fair hair and complexion of
heroes and gods were due to fair persons being very rare and hence an
object of special admiration; but there is no ground for this. The way
in which this racial substitution took place is also pretty clear; and
the rapid, almost sudden, decline of the intellectual productivity of
the Greek people coincided in time with the racial change.

The first and most important factor in the extermination of the best
blood of ancient Greece was military selection. Military group selection
in the prehistoric period had, no doubt, played a great part in bringing
about the evolution of the superior mental qualities of the European
peoples, especially of the fair northern race. So long as the peoples
consisted of more or less wandering tribes of pure race, which waged a
war of extermination upon one another, the peoples and tribes of
superior mental and moral endowments must in the main have survived,
while those of inferior endowments went under. But, so soon as the
Nordic tribes became settled as aristocracies ruling over the Pelasgian
populations, the effects of military selection tended to be reversed;
instead of making for racial improvement, they made for deterioration.
That racial deterioration occurs under these conditions seems to be an
almost general law; it has been exemplified among many different
peoples. The many small Greek states were almost perpetually at war with
one another; and the result of the warfare was not so much the wholesale
extermination of the people of any one state, as the killing off in
large numbers of the younger men of the ruling caste, the free citizens
of whom the armies were almost entirely composed.

The wars between Sparta and Athens were the most destructive and tragic
of all in this respect. We know that the numbers of Spartans of the
aristocratic class, never very large, became fewer and fewer, in spite
of efforts made to keep up the number by admitting to citizenship
persons not of pure Spartan blood; and that Sparta was eventually
destroyed simply for lack of men, men of the ruling class[122].

In Athens and other states the depleting agencies were more numerous.
Frequent wars played the same part as in Sparta; and the number of free
men was further diminished by the repeated founding of colonies, in
which a relatively small number of persons of Greek blood became
swallowed up in a large population of mixed and inferior origin. In some
states, in Athens especially, the political conditions worked powerfully
in the same direction. Prominent citizens were perpetually exiled or
condemned to death, sometimes in considerable batches. It is said that
at certain times two-thirds of the citizens of certain states were
living in exile; and the exiles, going to the colonies or other foreign
lands, were for the most part lost to the Greek people.

Then, with the blooming period of Greek intellect, came the loss of the
ancient religious beliefs, beliefs which had strengthened the family and
made each man anxious to have many sons that the rites might be duly
performed for the repose of his shade. Coinciding with this was the
great increase of luxury which made large families too expensive, save
for the most wealthy; while at the same time the abundance of slave
labour kept down the rate of remuneration of all handicrafts, and so
condemned the class of free Greek artisans to a state bordering on
poverty. Hence, the free citizens of pure blood, already largely reduced
in numbers, ceased to multiply; and the number of the citizens was only
sustained by the admission to citizenship of foreigners, freed slaves,
and various elements of different and inferior racial origins.

Hence, at the time that the battle of Chersonese was fought and the
Macedonians attained the supremacy, the Greek citizens were no longer
the same racial aristocracy which had produced the finest flowers of
Greek culture. But the work of substitution was still only partially
accomplished. In the time of the Roman domination of Greece, the
remnants of the true Greek aristocracy were removed by the slave trade.
Tens of thousands of Greeks of all classes were brought together to the
slave markets; while those men of talent who escaped that fate emigrated
to Rome to seek their fortunes by teaching the Greek language and art
and philosophy. Later still came the Goths, who sacked the towns and
destroyed or drove out the inhabitants. Then followed successive
invasions of Slavs from the north; and lastly, the domination of the
Turk well-nigh completed the extinction of the old aristocracy.

The modern Greek people is descended largely from Slav invaders and
largely from the numerous and prolific slave population of the great age
of Greece, but hardly at all from the men who made the greatness of that
age.

Though the change and deterioration of the racial mental qualities of
the Greek people by racial substitution is the most striking example in
history, it is by no means the only one[123].

The substitution in that case was largely by elements drawn from other
regions and peoples. But a similar substitution and consequent change of
innate mental qualities may go on slowly within any people which has
been formed, as have almost all the present European nations, by an
incomplete blending of two or more racial stocks; it may be effected by
internal selection without any introduction of new elements from any
other region. Before considering an example of the process, let us note
certain facts which show that there may well have taken place,
throughout the historic period, changes of the composition of peoples by
internal substitution or changes of the mental constitution by internal
selections—that is to say, by the more rapid multiplication of certain
mental types and the relative infertility of other types. Consider first
the striking fact that the populations of the various European countries
seem for the most part to have remained almost stationary as regards
numbers, or even in some cases to have diminished greatly in numbers,
throughout the period between the Roman domination and the later part of
the eighteenth century. The population of Spain is said to have declined
from forty millions under the Roman rule to only six millions in the
year 1700 A.D. The population of Great Britain is said to have increased
from five millions to six millions only during the seventeenth century;
and it is certain that in the main it had increased at an even slower
rate, or not at all, in the preceding centuries since the Norman
Conquest; whereas in the nineteenth century it increased from thirteen
millions to nearly forty millions; that is to say, it trebled itself in
the century; and even that rate of increase is considerably less than
the possible maximal rate.

The same is roughly true for most of the European countries; their
populations, throughout great stretches of the historic period, remained
stationary or increased only very slowly. Now when, during any period, a
population does not multiply at the maximal physiological rate, changes
of its character may well be taking place; for, in proportion as the
rate of increase falls below the maximal, there is a lack of fertility
in the population or in some part of it; if this relative infertility
affects equally all parts and classes of the population, it will produce
no change of its composition; but if it is selective, if for any reason
it affects one class, or persons of some one kind of temperament or
mental type, more than others, then this class or this temperament or
this form of ability tends rapidly to diminish and to disappear from
among that people.

The causes of the relative infertility may be divided into two classes:
(1) those which operate by killing persons before they have completed
their middle life; (2) those which restrict fertility without killing.
Both may be selective in their action. The former kind is alone
operative in determining evolution in the animal world and probably also
among the less civilised peoples; but, as civilisation advances, the
causes of infertility of the other kind increase constantly in
effectiveness, while the former operate with less and less intensity. It
is through the causes which diminish fertility merely, rather than
exterminate individuals, that changes of racial quality of nations are
now being, and in the future will be, principally determined. Selection
of this kind is usually distinguished from the various modes of natural
selection which work by extermination, by the name ‘reproductive
selection.’ Briefly, natural selection operates by means of selective
death rate, reproductive selection by means of selective birth rate.

No doubt, disease, especially in the form of plagues and epidemics, was
one of the principal causes of the slowness of increase of population
throughout the Middle Ages. And this was probably non-selective as
regards mental qualities, although it was strongly selective as regards
power of resistance to disease, and has left the European peoples more
resistant to most diseases than any other peoples, save perhaps the
Chinese[124].

But many other causes of selection were at work. Disease presumably has
not affected mental qualities by selection; although by direct action
and mental discouragement it may have tended to the decay of
civilisations; it has been argued, for example, that malaria played a
great part in the decay of classical antiquity, that it was introduced
some centuries B.C. and enfeebled the population of Greece and Italy.

More interesting, from our point of view of the influences affecting the
mental constitution of populations, is the effect of alcohol. Dr
Archdall Reid has argued very forcibly that resistance to the attraction
of alcohol is a mental peculiarity which a race only acquires through
long exposure to the influence of abundant alcohol; that populations are
resistant just in proportion to their past exposure to it—as is true in
the main of epidemic and endemic diseases—and that in both cases this is
due to selection.[125]

Much careful painstaking work by continental anthropologists seems to
have proved that a change of racial composition through internal
selection has been and still is going on in both the German and French
people. The facts have been worked out by O. Ammon[126], Hensen and De
Lapouge[127]. They show, chiefly by means of the comparison of the forms
of large numbers of skulls, that throughout the historic period the
French and German peoples have been becoming more and more round headed,
that the type of _Homo Alpinus_, the short dark round-headed race, has
been gaining upon the type of _Homo Europaeus_.

We have seen that the latter stock of the fair northern type constituted
the upper class among the Gauls of Caesar’s time; and the invasions of
Franks and Normans must have added considerably to their numbers; yet,
in spite of that, the mental and physical characters of this race are
said by these authors to be now very much rarer than formerly, owing to
the internal selections which have favoured the Alpine type. These took
the following forms. In the first place, in the early Middle Ages, it is
said, the Nordic type, being a military aristocracy, suffered, as in
ancient Greece, proportionally far greater losses in warfare than the
Alpine type. Secondly, the severe persecutions of Protestants in France
drove into exile, besides killing many others, large numbers who were
for the most part of the fair race, because, as we have seen, this race
does not easily remain content within the Roman Church. It is said, for
example, that, after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, so large a
number of Protestants passed into Prussia that the rise of Prussia as a
powerful State was the immediate consequence, with of course an
equivalent loss to France. De Lapouge considers this the greatest blow
that France has suffered in the historic period. Normandy alone, it is
reported, sent 200,000 Protestants to Prussia. But the most important
and curious factor has been, according to De Lapouge, what he calls the
selection by towns. He shows, by comparison of masses of anthropological
observations, that the Nordic type has been predominantly attracted to
the towns (which fact he attributes to their more restless enterprising
character) while the dark type has been more content to lead the quiet
agricultural life[128]. He points out that the town-life stimulates to a
new struggle for adaptation, from which differentiation of classes
results; the longheads maintain their numbers better and rise in the
social scale. Further, he shows that town-life makes against fertility,
owing to a number of psychological influences—the stimulation of
ambition and of the intellect, the luxurious habits, the weakening of
family life, the break with the past and its family traditions, the
uncertainty of the future, the weakening of religious sanctions; and he
gives reason to believe that in this way the towns have been, through
many generations, weeding out the elements of the fair race and
determining an ever increasing predominance of _Homo Alpinus_.

In order to understand the importance of these internal selections, it
is necessary to realise that their effects are cumulative in a high
degree, when the same influences continue to work through many
generations. Thus, if within any people there are two equally numerous
classes of persons of different mental constitution, _A_ and _B_, and if
these constitutions determine that the one group _A_ has a net birth
rate of three children per pair of adults, while the other _B_ has a
birth rate of four per pair of parents; then, in the third generation
after one century, the numbers of the two classes, other things being
the same for both, will be as ten to sixteen. After two centuries the
one class will be more than twice as numerous as the other; and after
three centuries the numbers of the class _A_ will constitute about
fifteen per cent, only of the whole population. Late marriage is also
very important. Suppose that of two classes, _A_ marries at 35, and _B_
at 25 years, and that each produces four children per marriage; then
(other things being the same) after three and a half centuries _B_
becomes four times as numerous as _A_. These two factors generally work
together.

But, apart from the change of racial composition of a heterogeneous
nation by internal selection of this sort, changes of the constitution
of even a racially homogeneous people may be produced through selection
affecting persons of particular mental tendencies. One of the most
striking instances of this is the elimination of the religious
tendencies from the constitution of a people by negative selection
through the action of the Roman Church[129]. For many centuries the
Roman Church has attracted to her service very large numbers of those
who were by nature most religiously minded, and it has imposed celibacy
upon them, it has forbidden them to transmit their natural piety to
descendants. In Protestant countries this process of negative selection
of the religious tendencies was continued for a much briefer period than
in the Catholic countries. It is maintained with much plausibility that
we may see the result in the fact that sincere and natural piety is far
commoner in the Protestant countries than in the Roman Catholic; that in
the two countries Italy and Spain, in which the influence of the Roman
Church has been greater than in any others, the people are now the least
religiously minded of any in Europe; that with them religion has become
purely formal and external, that the mass of the people, though
outwardly conforming, is absolutely irreligious; that in fact this form
of religion tends to exterminate itself in the long run by insisting
upon that form of reproductive selection[130].

Another striking instance of the incidence of negative selection upon
certain mental qualities of a people is afforded by the history of
Spain. In the sixteenth century Spain attained to a supreme position of
power and grandeur among the nations of the world, such as has been
rivalled by Rome alone in all history; and then very rapidly her power
decayed, and ever since she has remained one of the most backward of
European peoples, contributing little to European culture, to science,
art or philosophy, incapable of developing without the aid of foreigners
her rich industrial resources, impotent in war, entirely devoid of
enterprise and originality. To what is this great change due?

It is not due to any adverse change of climate, to devastation by war or
plague or famine, nor is it due to any change in geographical or
economic relations. Spain remains more happily situated as a centre of
commerce than any other country of the world. The mass of the people
remains vigorous, proud, and virile. It is the intellect of the nation
alone which has decayed, or rather it is the intellectual life of the
nation that has become utterly stagnant.

Buckle drew a vivid picture of the stagnation of the Spanish intellect
and sought the explanation of it in the great power wielded by the Roman
Catholic Church, which, he said, had successfully fostered the spirit of
protection and superstition, had discouraged every effort of the
intellect, and utterly repressed the spirit of inquiry, to the free
activity of which all progress of civilisation was, in his opinion, due.
Here, again, modern science shows that Buckle was led into error by his
ignorance of the importance of the biological factors, the racial
qualities and the changes produced in them by selection.

Galton and, still more fully, Fouillée have shown that the stagnation of
the intellect of the Spanish people and the consequent decay of the
power and glory of Spain have been chiefly due to the fact that the
people of Spain ceased to produce those men of exceptional mental
endowments, of intellectual energy and enterprise and independence of
character, on whom primarily depend the power and prosperity of any
nation and who are the most essential factors in the progress of the
civilisation of any people, who in short are essential for the growth
and endurance of national mind and character. And this was because
during some centuries intellectual power, enterprise, and energy were
steadily weeded out by a rigorous process of negative selection. In the
first place, the Church, having attained enormous power, became in two
ways a tremendous agency of negative selection. First, she made celibate
priests of a very large proportion of all those whose natural bent was
towards the things of the mind, multiplying monastic orders excessively.
Secondly, by means of the Inquisition she destroyed with fire and sword
or drove into exile through many generations all those who would not
conform to her narrow creed, who combined intellectual power with
independence and originality of spirit and a firm will. In addition she
drove out all the Jews and all of Moorish origin.

The second mode of negative selection, namely persecution exerted by the
Church, was no doubt the more important, but the former also must have
had a great effect. We are helped to realize the probable magnitude of
the effect by reflection on facts set out in an article by Bishop
Welldon[131]. He shows the great part played in English civilisation
since the reformation by the sons of the English Clergy; including as
they did a number of men of the highest achievements in all departments
of our national life. If all those sons of clergy who have shown
exceptional abilities, and all their descendants, had by the rule of
celibacy been prevented from coming into existence, how disastrous would
that have been for the English people, how much less successful and
vigorous would the nation have become!

A second powerful agency of negative selection was the immense colonial
empire which Spain so rapidly acquired, especially her American
conquests. The whole people was seized with the desire to enrich
themselves with the gold of the New World, and was fascinated by the
idea of imitating the romantic adventures of Cortes and Pizarro. Great
numbers of the bolder and most capable spirits set out for the New
World, and there either lost their lives or remained to mix their blood
with that of the native Indians or the imported negroes. In either case
their stock was lost to the mother country.

The third and culminating cause was the career of military aggression
pursued by Charles V; this completed the extermination of the
aristocracy of ability and finally plunged Spain into an intellectual
torpor which has persisted ever since and from which she can only be
raised up by a succession of men of first-rate intellect and character:
men such as she seems incapable of producing, because her people has
thus been drained of all its most valuable elements, because her eugenic
stocks have been exterminated.

The fall of Spain illustrates not only the operation of internal social
selection affecting certain mental qualities; it illustrates also once
more, even more clearly than the fall of Greece, the fact that the
civilisation of a people and its power and position in the world depend
altogether upon its intellectual aristocracy, and that the fall of a
people from a high place necessarily follows the failure to continue to
produce such an aristocracy.

In the civilised nations of the modern world, the most important kind of
selection at work at the present time is what is distinguished as
‘economic selection’ working in conjunction with the formation of the
social classes. It has no doubt operated at various times among other
civilised peoples, but never so strongly and universally as at present.

All the leading civilised nations have passed, in the eighteenth and
earlier part of the nineteenth centuries, through a period in which the
discoveries of science have enormously increased the productive powers
of man and man’s control over, and power of resistance to, the forces of
nature. The result has been that everywhere civilised populations have
multiplied at a great rate, in a way that has never before occurred. But
now this period seems to have definitely come to an end, and to have
been succeeded by a new period characterised by three features which
threaten to exert a most deleterious effect upon the innate mental
qualities of peoples.

(1) The world is becoming filled up; the untouched wealth of enormous
territories no longer lies open to the grasp of the bold and
enterprising. The coloured races are entering into the economic
competition in the way foreshadowed by the late C. H. Pearson[132]. The
high organisation of every form of economic activity renders the
competition for wealth everywhere extremely severe. And at the same time
men have come to regard as necessities of life what, but a few
generations ago, were the luxuries of the wealthy or unknown even to
them; that is to say, the standard of comfort has risen greatly. The
combined result of these changes is the increased difficulty of
maintaining a family in the upper strata of society.

(2) There has been a great development of humanitarian sentiment, one
result of which has been the breaking down of class-barriers and the
perfecting of the social ladder; at the same time it has produced such
changes of our laws and institutions as tend in an ever increasing
degree to lighten the economic burdens of the poor and to consummate by
social organisation the abolition of natural selection; that is to say,
these changes are putting a stop to the repression by natural laws of
the multiplication of the less fit, those least well endowed mentally
and physically. The recent great decline of infant mortality is one
evidence of this.

(3) The influence of religion and custom has weakened, and men are more
disposed to adopt the naturalistic point of view, to believe that this
life is not a mere preparation for an infinitely longer life elsewhere,
but that it is all they can certainly reckon upon and, therefore, is to
be made the most of; while at the same time they are oppressed by the
severity of the economic competition and by a sense of the lack of any
ultimate purpose, end, or sanction of human effort.

The combined result of these three changes is a strong tendency to
reverse the operation by which nature has secured the evolution of
higher types of mind—namely, by breeding in the main from the higher
types in each generation. We see a tendency for the population to be
renewed in each generation preponderantly from the mentally inferior
elements, those whose outlook hardly extends beyond the immediate
future and who have not learnt to demand for themselves and their
children favoured positions in the great game of life. The effects of
these three changes operate in the following manner. The rate of
reproduction, the birth rate, of nearly all civilised countries is
falling rapidly (although the death rate also falls). This diminution of
rate of reproduction is due to increase of celibacy, abstention from
marriage, to increase of late marriage, and to voluntary restriction of
the number of the family in marriage.

Now, it is shown statistically that this falling off of fertility
chiefly affects the classes above the average of ability, the upper and
middle classes and also the superior part of the artisan classes[133].
These classes have been formed and are maintained by the operation of
social and economic competition; they have long been, and are still,
perpetually recruited in each generation from the lower strata, by the
rise into them of the abler members of the lower strata. Hence, economic
selection, under our present social system, seems to be working strongly
for the mental deterioration of the most highly civilised peoples; the
social ladder, becoming more nearly perfect, perpetually drains the mass
of a people of its best members, enabling them to rise to the upper
strata where they tend to become infertile[134]. Galton and Prof. Karl
Pearson have insisted most strongly upon these tendencies. But they have
not escaped the notice of continental authors. M. Jacobi[135] has
written a large volume packed with historical illustrations to prove
inductively the law that aristocracies always die out, or are only
maintained by constant recruiting from below, or in other words that
aristocracies tend to become infertile. And the modern tendency which we
have just now considered under the head of economic selection may be
regarded as falling under the head of this law, a case of the extension
of the law to democratic communities and the natural aristocracies of
ability which are generated in them.

We may perhaps state the principal causes of this tendency in general
terms as follows: the acquirement by any class of leisure, culture, and
the habit of reflection (the malady of thought) partially emancipates
that class from the empire of instinct, custom, and the religious
sanctions of morality; and these are the great conservative agencies
under the influence of which men not so emancipated continue to multiply
according to the law of nature. These instincts, customs, and religious
sanctions of morality, which lead men to multiply freely, have been
acquired for the good of the race or of the society considered as an
organism whose life is of indefinitely long duration; and in some
respects they are opposed to the pleasure and welfare of the individual
life. The habit of reason and reflection tends to lead men to act for
their own immediate welfare, rather than for the future welfare of the
race or of society, and to refuse to make those sacrifices of ease and
to undertake those responsibilities and efforts which the care of a
family imposes and which alone can secure the welfare of the future
generations. It is in respect to these duties that the great antagonism
between religion and reason appears in its most significant aspect.

The tendency for the upper classes to die out and to be replaced
constantly from the lower social strata by the aid of the social ladder
is no doubt stronger now than in foregoing ages. But it has always been
operative; and this is widely recognised; while the comfortable
inference has often been drawn that the process is not only inevitable
but actually beneficial and desirable. It is said that the upper classes
inevitably become effete, and that the lower constitute an inexhaustible
reservoir of mental and moral excellences, from which they are and can
be indefinitely renewed; and thus the population is always rising in the
social scale, a state of affairs which makes for social happiness.

But, if we take a longer view, the prospect is not so comforting; it
seems only too probable that this constant dying away of society at the
top and the renewal of the upper strata from the lower, by the agency of
the social ladder, must sooner or later result in a serious
deterioration of the lower strata, at least in draining it of its best
stocks. There is also a return or downward current of less strength,
which returns to the lower strata the failures, the incompetents, and
the degenerates of the upper. And these two currents must, it would
seem, in the course of ages render it impossible for the lower strata to
continue to supply the superior elements required to maintain the upper.
If and when that stage is reached, national decay must set in.

In England, where the operation of the social ladder has been more
effective and of longer duration than in any other country, there are
indications that this stage is at hand. Our social ladder has provided
and still provides a splendid array of talent, but already it has
produced, as its complement, a large mass of very inefficient
population. Foreign observers are constantly impressed with this; Mr
Collier Price[136], for example, tells us that the million best of our
population is the finest in the world; but that our lowest stratum is
the most degraded and hopelessly inefficient.

Looking at the course of history widely, we may see, then, in the
differentiation of social classes by the social ladder and in the
tendency of the upper strata to fail to reproduce themselves, an
explanation of the cyclic course of civilisation. This has been ascribed
by some authors[137] to race-crossing, followed by blending, and
ultimately by stagnation consequent upon complete blending and the
flowering period which coincides with it. But we now have a more
adequate explanation of the decay which follows upon the blooming
period. It is not mere stagnation, resulting from the achievement of
social harmony and the relaxation of efforts at social adaptation and
achievement of all kinds. The decline is probably due as much, and
perhaps in a much higher degree, to the exhaustion of the mass of the
population, the completion of the draining process by which, throughout
the whole period of the development of the cycle of civilisation, the
best elements and strains have been drained off from the lower strata,
brought to the top, and strained off.

It is interesting to speculate on the possible effect on this process of
the fact that we are becoming more clearly conscious of these tendencies
and subjecting them to scientific inquiry. Already the legislature has
taken one small step of a eugenic nature and is soon to take another.
The important thing is that we should recognise that men are not the
helpless sport of blind forces, that mankind can control its own destiny
in ever increasing degree as knowledge grows.

A word may be said in regard to sexual selection, which probably played
a part in the evolution of the mental capacities of men. It would seem
that, in the peoples among whom monogamy is the rule, it no longer
operates to any appreciable degree. With the general excess of females,
we could suppose that it still tended to race improvement only if the
unmarried women were on the whole distinctly inferior to the married.
But, if there is any difference, it is probably the other way; because
the most able women are more and more attracted into independent
careers. The further the so-called emancipation of women goes, the more
will this be the case.

Civilisation, then, tends from the first to put an end to that
elimination of the less fit individuals by the severities of Nature
which we call natural selection; and, as soon as it has passed beyond
its earliest stages, it brings to an end also the mortal conflicts of
social groups and the consequent group selection, which was in all
probability a main factor of racial progress in the prehistoric period.
It abolishes also at an early stage the improving influence of sexual
selection, which was probably the third principal condition of the
development of the higher powers of mankind.

Civilisation replaces these modes of selection, which make for
improvement of the racial qualities of peoples, by a number of modes of
social selection, nearly all of which must have been, so far as we can
see, negative or reversed selections—that is, selections making for
deterioration of the mental qualities of the civilised peoples. In place
of natural selection, group selection, and sexual selection, we have had
at work, within each people in increasing degrees, various forms of
social selection—military selection, selection by the towns, selection
by the church, political selection with its exiles and its colonial
system, and lastly economic selection, which has become exceedingly
influential in recent years among ourselves. And all these, so far as
can be seen, have operated mainly, among some peoples and in some ages
very powerfully, to diminish the fertility of the best elements of the
population and so to produce actual retrogression of the average
intellectual capacity of peoples, and especially to deprive them of
eugenic stocks, the stocks which were most fertile in individuals of
exceptional capacity on whom the progress of civilisation and the
relative power of nations chiefly depend.

M. de Lapouge’s investigations of the matter have led him to a very
melancholy conclusion. He attaches especial importance to urban
selection, as he calls it, in weeding out the best stocks. He
writes—“There is no more agonising question than that of the exhaustion
of our intellectual reserves by the influence of city-life. The public
and our statesmen do not suspect it. But nevertheless it is the great
danger of modern societies and especially of France. Of all the
devastating influences which we have called social selections, selection
by the town makes most powerfully for deterioration of peoples. Our
towns are destroying all of the intelligent and energetic that have been
spared us by the long centuries of disastrous selections. France has
lost in the past almost all her dolicho-blond elements, and now are
disappearing those of mixed stock and the best of the short-headed type.
In all the continent of Europe the hour is at hand when there will
remain only the inert and used up débris of our dead nations, pitiable
remnants who will be the prey of unknown conquerors. Thus perished the
Hellenic world, thus will perish the whole of our civilisation, if man
does not make application of his knowledge of the principles of
heredity, that tremendous power which to-day is bringing death and
stagnation, but by the control of which science will enable us to secure
safety and national vigour[138].”

It is possible that this conclusion gives too dark a picture of the
tendencies of social selection in the civilised nations; but it does
seem probable that with the advance of civilisation the tendency to
reversed selection becomes strong[139]. We are at any rate compelled to
conclude that it is impossible to discover evidence of any influences
that can have made at all strongly for progressive evolution of
intellectual capacity during the historic period; whereas a number of
forms of selection seem to have worked against it and must at least have
counterbalanced any factors making for improvement, and that therefore
no advance has taken place in intellectual capacity but more probably
some deterioration has already occurred.

The conclusion thus reached deductively is well borne out by the small
amount of inductive evidence that is available. Such comparison as we
can make between the leading modern nations and the civilised nations of
antiquity tends rather to show that both as regards the average man, and
as regards the intellectual endowment of exceptional men and the
proportion of such men produced, the advantage lies with the ancient
peoples. And the comparison of skull capacity or size of brain decidedly
supports this conclusion. It has been found by a number of
anthropologists that the average skull capacity of men of the late Stone
Age in Europe was equal to, or greater than, that of modern Europeans.
And in the main, on the large average, intellectual capacity varies with
the size of the brain.

Our seeming intellectual superiority is a superiority of the traditional
store of intellectual gains, a superiority of knowledge and of the
instruments of the intellect, of language, and of the methods of mental
operation by which knowledge is obtained, especially the mathematical
and scientific methods in general[140]. Consider a single example
frequently quoted to show the intellectual inferiority of the modern
savage. It is said—Here is a poor savage who cannot count above ten
without the help of his fingers and toes or other tallies; and we
generally forget that we also should be incapable of counting above ten,
had not our ancestors slowly devised the system of enumeration or verbal
counting, and that, given such a system, the poor savage would be able
to count as well as any of us.

The reader may be prepared to accept this conclusion as regards the
intellectual capacities of mankind, and yet may be inclined to
say—Surely the civilised peoples have progressed as regards their moral
qualities throughout the historic period! Let us, therefore, consider
this point separately for a moment.

Is there reason to believe that there has been progress of the innate
moral disposition during the historic period? Here we are on still more
difficult ground than when we considered the question of the progress of
innate intellectual capacity.

The essence of the higher morality is the predominance of the altruistic
motives over the egoistic, in the deliberately reasoned control of
conduct. But morality in this sense is relatively rare in every age, and
the great mass of moral conduct of men in general is the issue of mental
processes of a simpler kind; it consists in doing what one believes to
be right, in acting according to what one believes to be one’s duty; no
matter how that belief may have been arrived at. The tendency to do what
one believes to be right, which for the vast majority of men has always
been simply the tendency to conform to the code of morals accepted by
his society, has an innate basis which may properly be called the social
or moral disposition. At present I am not concerned to define the
elements of our nature which make up the moral disposition[141]. The
morality of a people, objectively considered, is the outcome of the
interaction between their moral disposition, on the one hand, and the
moral environment of the individuals, on the other; and the latter
consists of two parts: (1) the traditional system of precepts, customs,
laws, in short the code: (2) the traditional system of sanctions by
which the code is upheld and enforced.

If we compare, in respect to this moral nature, the members of primitive
societies with those of highly civilised societies, applying simply the
criterion of conformity of conduct to the accepted code, we shall be
impelled to the conclusion that the former, the savages and barbarians,
have in general the moral nature much more highly developed than the
members of civilised societies; for they conform on the whole very much
more strictly to their moral codes. But such a conclusion would be
hardly fair to the civilised peoples; first, because their social
environment is more complex, so that the bearing of their moral code is
less simple and direct; it is less easily obeyed, because its teachings
are more generalised in form and do not provide clear irresistible
rulings for all or any large proportion of the much greater variety of
situations with which individuals find themselves confronted. Secondly,
because the code is a higher one and makes greater demands upon the
self-control of individuals. Thirdly, because not only is the code less
clear and direct, but also the sanctions of conduct, civil and
religious, are generally less obvious and immediate; and the
effectiveness of both code and sanctions is weakened by the
co-existence, within complex civilised societies, of more or less rival
codes and systems of sanctions, which inevitably weaken the authority of
one another; whereas the code and sanctions of the savage or barbarous
society reign absolutely and without rivalry, so that men are not led to
question their authority.

The conditions of moral conduct are, then, so different as to forbid any
attempt to compare the innate moral dispositions of primitive and
civilised peoples; and all we can do, in order to arrive at an opinion,
is to consider whether the conditions have been such as to favour the
evolution of the moral disposition, the innate basis of the social
tendencies, during the nation-making period.

There can, I think, be no doubt that the principal condition of the
evolution of the moral nature was group selection among primitive
societies constantly at war with one another. In conflicts of that kind
it must have been the solidarity of each group, resting upon the moral
dispositions of individuals, the tendency of each individual to conform
to the law and moral code of the society and to stand loyally by his
leaders and comrades, which, more than anything else, determined success
and survival in the struggle of the group for existence. At first, the
nature of the code must have been of relatively small importance; the
all important condition of survival of the group must have been the
strict obedience to it on the part of the members of the group.

This is not a deduction only from general principles. One may observe
the effect of tribal conflict, on comparing, in various parts of the
world, tribes that have long been subjected to its influence with
closely allied tribes that have long led a peaceful existence[142].

At a later stage, as the traditional codes of morality became
differentiated and more complex with the increasing complexity of
societies, the nature of these codes must have acquired an increasing
influence in determining group survival; but it must still have been
subordinate in importance to the degree of development of the moral
disposition; for a society with an inferior moral code, strictly
conformed to by its members, would in the long run have better chances
of survival than one with a higher code less strictly observed. Hence,
the higher more difficult codes could only be attained by those peoples
among whom the instinctive basis of social conduct had become highly
evolved by a long process of group selection.

But, on passing into the stage of settled societies of large extent,
that is to say, as peoples passed from the stage of tribal organisation
to that of national organisation, the evolution of the social
disposition through the mortal conflict of groups must have tended to
come to an end; because group selection became less active, the
conflicts between the larger and less numerous societies or groups
became rarer and also less fatal to the vanquished societies. In other
words, during the historic period failure in conflict has not usually
meant extermination; national cultures and the power and glory of
nations have come and gone, but the various peoples, the units of
conflict, have in the main survived their failures and persisted in
living. Group selection, the main condition of evolution of the social
disposition, has, therefore, been abolished; and of the various forms of
social selection operating within societies, the chief of which we have
briefly noticed, no one seems to have been of a nature to produce
further evolution of the social disposition; all of them must rather
have operated adversely to it. Military selection, selection by the
Church’s rule of celibacy, political selection—all these must have
fallen most heavily on the individuals in whom the social disposition
was strong, whose conduct was influenced largely by the sense of duty,
and less by the individual impulses and desires.

We may conclude, then, with some confidence that there has not been
further evolution of the innate moral disposition in the historic
period. This conclusion is greatly at variance with popular conceptions;
we are apt to pride ourselves upon our superior morality; to point to
our humanitarian laws and institutions, to our tenderness for the weak,
the poor, and the suffering; to our regard even for the welfare of
savage peoples, whom we no longer deliberately exterminate, and for
domestic animals; and to suppose that all this shows modern civilised
men to be innately superior in morality to their ancestors and to the
barbarous peoples. But our conclusion that the difference implies merely
an evolution of moral tradition, not of moral nature, will appear
probable if we reflect upon the fact that a widespread change of this
kind in respect to some department of conduct has sometimes been
produced within a very short space of time, even within the lifetime of
one generation. Take the attitude of Englishmen towards slavery and the
African slave trade. It is hardly more than half a century since large
numbers of Englishmen, or men of English origin, owned great gangs of
slaves or drew their wealth from slave labour; yet now most of us look
with horror upon slavery of every kind. Take the case of kindness to
domestic animals. It is a comparatively recent tradition; and, within
the memories of those who are not yet middle-aged, a great improvement
has taken place. Again, there are many persons who, while tender to
their domestic animals, are entirely brutal where wild animals are
concerned, since public opinion or traditional morality does not yet
bear so strongly upon our relations to them. Again, it is not long since
in our factories, our prisons, our schools, the most horrible tortures
were applied to our fellow citizens without provoking any protest; while
now we display perhaps an excessive tenderness and have passed law after
law to protect the feeble against the strong.

The mental development of peoples in the historic period has, therefore,
not consisted in, nor been caused by, nor in all probability has it
been accompanied by, any appreciable evolution of innate intellectual or
moral capacities beyond the degrees achieved in the race-making period,
before the modern nations began to take shape. There is no reason to
think that we are intellectually or morally superior by nature to our
savage ancestors. Such superiority of morals and intellectual power as
we enjoy has resulted from the improvement and extension of the
intellectual and moral traditions and the accompanying evolution of
social organisation.

A different conclusion was reached by the late Benjamin Kidd in his
_Social Evolution_, which has enjoyed a very wide circulation[143], and
it seems worth while therefore to examine very briefly the author’s
position. Mr Kidd saw clearly and argued convincingly that the innate
intellectual capacities have not improved during the historic period;
but he held that the innate moral tendencies have been greatly improved
during this period; or rather he distinguished between the innate moral
tendencies and the innate religious tendencies; and, while rejecting
Herbert Spencer’s view that the moral tendencies (as thus arbitrarily
distinguished from the religious tendencies) are slowly becoming
improved and strengthened in the civilised peoples, he held that the
innate religious tendencies are being greatly improved and strengthened;
and he regarded this as the underlying condition of all ‘social
evolution.’ In support of his view he cited an impressive array of facts
illustrating the general softening of manners and morals among the
civilised peoples, especially the legislative changes which have given
political power to the masses of the people. That these evidences of a
general softening of manners and a great extension of social sympathy
are very striking we must all agree; but Kidd advanced no serious
argument in favour of his contention that these changes have been due to
some change or improvement of the innate qualities of the peoples among
whom they have appeared. And he did not suggest any way in which this
alleged improvement or accentuation of the innate religious tendencies
may have been brought about. He attributed it wholly to the influence of
the Christian religion. Now, if Kidd had accepted the Lamarckian
principle of the transmission of acquired tendencies or effects of use
and habit, he might reasonably have attributed the alleged improvement
to such influence. But he sternly rejected that principle and proclaimed
himself a rigid exponent of the Neo-Darwinian school, which attributes
all racial changes to selection. He even assumed the truth of the
doctrine that, in the absence of selective processes making for its
improvement, every race must inevitably degenerate. It might, then, have
been expected that he would have attempted to show how Christianity can
be supposed to have favoured the improvement by selection of the innate
religious tendencies. Yet he made no attempt in this direction. He seems
to have been aware that his view encounters a great difficulty in the
fact that Christianity powerfully swayed the peoples of Europe for many
centuries during which little or no progress in civilisation was
effected, whereas rapid and accelerating progress of many kinds has
marked the last three centuries. He sought to meet this difficulty by
attributing the rapid progress of recent centuries to the influence of
the Protestant form of Christianity, alleging that it promotes the
evolution of the religious tendencies more powerfully than other forms.
Yet this view of the matter, even if it were acceptable, would leave the
Reformation itself quite unexplained. Kidd seems to hint that,
throughout the earlier centuries of the dominance of the Christian
religion in Europe, it was slowly effecting the alleged improvement of
the religious tendencies in the mass of the people, without these being
able to manifest themselves in social life, until they somehow broke
loose at the time of the Reformation and began for the first time to
operate on a great scale and with tremendous force. The view might have
some plausibility coming from the mouth of a disciple of Lamarck, but it
cannot be reconciled with Kidd’s strictly Neo-Darwinian principles.
There is, then, nothing in Kidd’s grandiloquent and loosely reasoned,
but always interesting pages, to justify any belief in the improvement
of the innate moral disposition during the historic period[144].

Before leaving this difficult question of the extent and nature of
changes in the innate qualities of peoples during the historic period, I
would define in the following way the position that seems to me to be
well founded. There have been no considerable changes of innate
qualities; and what changes have occurred have probably been of the
nature of retrogression, rather than of advance or improvement; and this
is true of both intellectual and moral qualities. The improvements of
civilised peoples are wholly improvements of the intellectual and moral
traditions. All the great and obvious changes of social life are in the
main changes of these traditions. Nevertheless, such differences of
innate qualities as exist between the different peoples are very
important, because of their cumulative influence upon their traditions.
And, especially, the innate superiorities of the leading peoples, though
relatively small, are of essential significance; and it is of the first
importance for the future prosperity of the great nations of the present
time that they should not suffer any deterioration of their innate
qualities; for they alone have attained just such a level of innate
excellence as renders possible the existence of civilisation and the
growth and continued progress of great nations. Especially is it
essential that they should continue to produce in large numbers those
persons of exceptional moral and intellectual endowments, whose
influence alone can maintain the vitality of the national traditions and
who alone can add anything of value to them.



CHAPTER XIX

THE PROGRESS OF NATIONS IN THEIR YOUTH


We have found reason to believe that during the historic period the
peoples of Europe have made no progress in innate qualities, moral or
intellectual; yet that period has been characterised by immense mental
development, a development essentially of the collective mind. The most
striking result of the formation of nations and the development of
civilisation has been this replacement of the progress of the individual
mind by the progress of the collective national mind. And the most
interesting and important problem of group psychology is—What are the
conditions of the progressive development of the collective mind?

I insist that this is distinctly and primarily a psychological problem.
The conclusion we have just reached, to the effect that it is not
produced by and does not imply a racial evolution, shows that it is not
to be regarded as a biological problem. It cannot be treated as a
problem of economics or of politics; these sciences only touch its
fringe at special points.

We have before us the significant fact that in some cases the collective
mind of a nation has remained stationary at a rudimentary stage of
development for long ages; while in other nations the collective mind
has developed at a constantly accelerating rate, becoming more highly
differentiated and specialised and at the same time more highly
integrated, has in fact developed in a way closely analogous to the
evolution of the individual mind. The collective mind, in thus
developing, reacts upon the development of individual minds, raising all
far above the level they could independently attain and some in each
generation to a very high level both intellectually and morally.

The merest outline of a discussion of this great problem is alone
possible. I can do no more than offer some suggestions toward the full
solution of it. Let us note, first, that continued progress, far from
being the rule, as is commonly assumed by popular writers, has been a
rare exception, as Sir H. Maine pointed out in _Ancient Law_. He
wrote—“In spite of overwhelming evidence, it is most difficult for a
citizen of Western Europe to bring thoroughly home to himself the truth
that the civilisation which surrounds him is a rare exception in the
history of the world.” “It is indisputable that much the greatest part
of mankind has never shown a particle of desire that its civil
institutions should be improved, since the moment when external
completeness was first given to their embodiment in some permanent
record. Except in a small section of the world, there has been nothing
like the gradual amelioration of a legal system.” And what is true of
systems of law is true of all the other elements of the intellectual and
moral tradition which constitute a civilisation or national culture.

Sir H. Maine added—“The difference between the stationary and
progressive societies is, however, one of the great secrets which
inquiry has yet to penetrate.” His own contribution, which he regarded
as a partial solution only, was that the difference depends in part upon
the period at which the customs of a people become codified in written
law. If, as the tribes of a people become settled and enter upon a
national existence, there is no written code of law and custom, customs,
he urged, which at their origin were socially advantageous tend to
become extended by analogy to other fields of practice and to assume an
excessive and senseless rigour; for example, the custom of cleanliness
becomes the exceedingly elaborate ritual of purification, which among
the Hindus limits and restrains social life at every point. Or a useful
distinction of classes becomes a rigid caste system, than which nothing
is more prejudicial to progress, intellectual or moral. The continuation
of the process of extension by analogy through long ages has resulted in
nearly all the uncivilised and less civilised peoples of the modern
world being bound down on every hand by a system of rigid and worse than
useless customs, which, restricting both thought and action, render
progress impossible. On the other hand, early codification of custom in
a system of written laws secures that thereafter custom shall not
develop in this blind unintelligent and socially prejudicial manner, but
shall be developed only by deliberate intention and the reasoned
fore-thought of the ruling powers of society; it will then develop in
the main, in spite of many mistakes, in a way which promotes the
efficiency of social life and the welfare of society.

Maine’s suggestion is in harmony with the fact that the progressive
peoples have not been those who invented or learnt the art of writing at
an early period. Writing and the written codification of customary law
could not be invented by any people until they had attained to a settled
life and a considerable degree of social organisation; and then, when
the invention was worked out sufficiently, the damage had been done,
socially advantageous customs had already degenerated into useless rites
and ceremonial observances; and writing served only to establish these
more firmly, to fix their yoke upon the necks of the people, as in the
case of the Hindus.

On the other hand, the progressive peoples have been those who remained
in a savage or barbarous condition until a relatively late period, and
who then acquired by imitation the arts of writing and of reducing
custom to written law, acquired them in a fully developed condition from
the peoples who had invented and developed these arts. They have,
therefore, enjoyed the advantages of written laws from the beginning of
their civilisation.

But, as Maine recognised, the acquisition of writing at the outset of
national life is by no means sufficient to account for the
progressiveness of the nations of South and Western Europe; we must seek
other causes and conditions of their mental progress.

We have already noted certain features of the racial constitution which
were probably essential to the continued progress of the European
peoples—namely, the high degree of evolution of the social disposition
through group selection in the long prehistoric or race-making period; a
group selection which probably was far more severe and prolonged than
the peoples of any other part of the world were subjected to; and which
in turn was due probably, as we have seen, to the great diversity of
physical surroundings and to the comparative severity of the climate of
Europe, especially of the northerly parts in which the most progressive
European race was formed; for these physical conditions generated in the
race an innate energy, a capacity for sustained effort.

Without the highly developed social disposition in the mass of their
members, primitive societies could not have survived those changes of
custom and institution which were essential features of their progress.
Without their innate energy, active rivalry and competition, which have
been chief factors in social progress, would not have been constant
features of the relations of these societies. Still the possession of a
highly evolved social disposition by the European peoples does not in
itself suffice to account for the continued mental evolution of the
leading nations. For not all the European peoples have progressed; and,
of those that have progressed, some have done so much more effectively
than others.

Let us first examine the question—In what has progress primarily
consisted? Has it been primarily a progress of the moral or of the
intellectual traditions? As I mentioned in an earlier chapter, we have
here one of the main points of dispute.

Buckle was the great advocate of the primacy of intellectual development
in the sense of increase of natural knowledge. The argument by which he
sought to establish the position runs as follows: Progress must have
been due to improvement either of moral or of intellectual principles.
But moral principles have been almost the same in all ages. “To do good
to others; to love your neighbour as yourself; to honour your
parents—these and a few others, are the sole essentials of morals; but
they have been known for thousands of years, and not one jot or tittle
has been added to them by all the sermons, homilies and text-books which
moralists and theologians have been able to produce.” On the other hand,
knowledge and intellectual principles have made immense strides; hence
all progress must have been primarily intellectual rather than moral.
Buckle did not deny that there has been some moral progress; rather he
insisted upon it as an essential feature of the progress of
civilisation; but it has, according to him, consisted only in the more
effective operation of unchanging principles, and this more effective
operation is secondary to, and due to, intellectual progress.

I think we must agree with Buckle that the increasing store of knowledge
and the increased command over nature that comes with it has been the
primary condition of the progress of nations. For, since the early
middle ages, the moral natures of men and the teaching of Christianity
have been the same in all essentials; yet for many centuries there was
practically no progress. Kidd himself admitted that progress only set in
rapidly about the time of the Reformation. And it is notorious that this
progress, including the Reformation itself, was due to the stimulation
of the intellect by a number of influences—by the renewed study of
classical art and literature, by the discovery of the New World, by the
increased intercourse of nations resulting from the improvement of the
art of navigation, by the accumulation of wealth and the formation of a
powerful middle class. It is clear also that religion, far from having
been the sufficient cause or instrument of progress, was largely
responsible for the stagnation of the middle ages, through sternly
repressing the sceptical spirit and leading off men’s minds from
inquiry into natural laws, to the discussion of many topics on which it
was impossible to achieve knowledge and which were necessarily barren of
results making for human progress. Nevertheless the Christian religion
has in the long run co-operated in forwarding the mental evolution of
the European peoples in an important manner which we must briefly
consider later—namely, through its effects upon social organisation.

Without raising the question of the natural or supernatural origin of
religion or of any particular religion, we may say that from the point
of view of national life, a religion is essentially a system of
supernatural sanctions for social conduct, for conduct conforming to the
moral code of the society, and especially for customs regulating the
family and the relations of the sexes, on which, more than on anything
else, social stability depends. It is, thus, the great conservative
agency; for it enforces the observance of custom by a system of rewards
and punishments; in the earlier stages of society, especially by
punishments. It is essentially intolerant of change of custom or belief;
and even the Christian religion has exemplified this principle in the
terrible persecutions and innumerable wars for which it has been
responsible.

The great function and tendency of any religion, once established among
a people, is to preserve intact the current moral code and to secure
conformity to it. Nevertheless, some religions are less prohibitive of
progress than others; and, when such a religion replaces a more
restrictive one, an important condition of progress is realised. But, in
so far as progress is then favoured, this is not due to the changed
operations of the religious emotions and sentiments; it is due to the
great religious teachers who have succeeded in breaking down the bonds
imposed by the more primitive religion, and so have given freer play to
the intellectual faculties; the improvements of religious systems have
been negative or permissive conditions of progress, rather than its
effective cause.

Progress has, then, always resulted primarily from the gains made by the
intellect and added to the intellectual tradition, that is to say, from
the progress of knowledge. Nevertheless, the free play of the intellect
is always a danger to society, for the reason that the customs and moral
code of a society, however imperfect and sanctioned by a religion
however narrow, are yet the bonds by which alone it can be held
together; to their influence has been largely due in every age the
subordination by the members of a society of their individual egoistic
ends to the welfare of the society as a whole.

The spirit of inquiry, which always leads men to question the authority
of these customs and moral codes and of their religious sanctions and
thus tends to weaken them, is, then, a socially disruptive force, at the
same time that it is the source of all progress. Hence, though the free
play of the intellect and of the spirit of inquiry may secure for a time
the rapid progress of civilisation, it cannot alone secure continued
progress. Continued progress has only resulted where there has been
maintained a happy balance between the conservative and the progressive
forces, between the authority of custom and the moral code on the one
hand and the free activity of the intellect on the other. Wherever the
progressive force has outrun the conservative, progress has been first
rapid and then has come abruptly to an end. Greece exemplified this
process in the clearest manner. It was the excessive seeking of
individuals for their own power and glory, unrestrained by the customs
and religious systems which their intellect had outgrown, that ruptured
the bonds of society, plunged the State into war and civil strife, and
eventually destroyed it by the extermination of the Greek aristocracy.
The same is true of the brilliant but brief periods of rapid progress
exhibited by the medieval Italian States. Intellect outran and
undermined morals, and progress was brought to an end.

Some observers have maintained that history will pass the same verdict
upon modern France, and that most of our leading nations of the present
day are seriously threatened by the same danger.

Any long continued progressive evolution of the mind of a people has
been, then, a rare exception in the history of the world; partly because
the free play of the spirit of inquiry and of the intellectual
faculties, which is the source of all progress, exerts a socially
disruptive tendency, so that progress is by its very nature dangerous to
the stability of any nation; but partly also because the free play of
the spirit of inquiry has been so rarely achieved or permitted, so that
even such progress as has led on to social disruption has been
exceptional.

A long period of intellectual and moral stagnation in the rigid bonds of
custom and religion has been the rule for nearly all the peoples of the
earth, so soon as they had attained to a settled mode of existence. The
primary question, then, to be answered in seeking to account for the
progress of nations, is—What conditions enabled the spirit of inquiry to
break the bonds of custom and religion and to extend man’s knowledge of
man and of the world in which he lives?

Bagehot, in considering more particularly the progress of political
institutions, put the problem in much the same way. He pointed out that
the first age of the life of nations is always an age dominated by
custom resting on unquestioned religious sanctions; an age in which
there is often a vast amount of discussion of detail, as, for example,
discussion of the details of military expeditions, but never discussion
of principles; and he maintained that an age marked by the discussion of
principles, involving the questioning of traditions, moral and
intellectual, initiates and characterises every period of progress.

There is much to be said for the view that the most important condition
of progress in its earlier stages was in most cases, perhaps in all, the
conquest of a more primitive people by one more advanced in culture or
of superior racial type, who remained to settle in the conquered
territory, and, not driving out or exterminating the conquered
inhabitants, established themselves as a governing class. History and
archaeology show that this occurred at least once in most of the areas
where nations have developed spontaneously to any considerable degree;
the earliest known instances being those of Egypt and Chaldea as long as
ten thousand years ago. The same thing occurred again in India, and
later still in Greece; and throughout early European history the process
was frequently repeated in various areas. Every one of the modern
peoples of Europe has been formed through such fusion by conquest of two
peoples, in some instances several times repeated; and, though none of
these modern European peoples originated their own civilisations, but
largely took over by imitation the civilisation ready made for them by
the more precocious peoples of Asia and by Greece and Rome, these
fusions and the resultant composite character of the European peoples no
doubt have tended greatly to promote progress. And it is easy to see how
in several ways such a fusion by conquest of two peoples must have
tended to set free the spirit of inquiry, that prime condition of
progress. Three of these seem to have been of chief importance.

The most obvious way in which progress has been promoted was that the
conquering invaders became a leisured aristocracy, having their material
needs supplied by the labour of the indigenous population, which became
a more or less servile class. All the ancient civilisations were thus
founded upon servile labour. We may be sure that, until such a social
system resulted from conquest, no people made much progress; because all
individuals were fully occupied in securing their means of subsistence,
either by warfare, by the tending of herds, or by agriculture. Each
people was self-supporting, and knew no or few needs beyond those which
their own labour was able to supply; and labour was individual, or was
co-operative only among small groups, such as the communal family
groups. It could, therefore, undertake no great works, whether of
building or engineering, such as large public buildings, irrigation, or
road making. Each family consumed what it produced, and consequently
there was no large accumulation of capital; for there were no motives
for storing up their primitive wealth, and generally no wealth of
durable and storable form.

But, as soon as a ruling class could dispose of the labour of a large
part of the population, making them work for a mere subsistence wage,
there was initiated that régime of capital and labour on which, up to
the present time, all civilisation has been founded. Wealth was
accumulated; great works, such as the pyramids, demanding enormous
expenditure of human life and work, could be undertaken; and a leisured
class was created, which, being freed from the necessity of bodily toil,
was able to turn its energy to speculative inquiry, to the enjoyment of
art and luxury, to directing and organising the labour of the multitude,
to inventing the tools that render labour more effective, to studying
natural phenomena such as the cycle of the seasons, a more accurate
knowledge of which added to the productivity of labour; for it was in
the service of wealth production, that in the main science arose,
especially mathematics and mechanical and astronomical science,
arithmetic and geometry through the need of a practical art of
measurement, astronomical science through the need of foreseeing the
seasons.

The desire to enjoy art and luxury is one which feeds itself and grows,
when once aroused; and it was these growing desires of the leisured and
wealthy classes which created trade, or at any rate first developed it
beyond the merest rudiments; and in doing so led to regular and friendly
intercourse between nations.

A second very important result of such fusion by conquest must have been
the breaking up to some extent of custom and the weakening of the
religious sanctions. Under the new régime, both the conquering and the
conquered peoples would find their old customs unsuited to their novel
social relations, and inadequate to regulate their changed occupations.
The old customs of both would inevitably be thrown into the melting pot;
at the same time the religious sanctions of both would be weakened by
the intimate contact of two systems, neither of which, in the presence
of a rival system, would henceforth be able to claim unquestioned
authority, until one had suppressed the other or a stable synthesis of
the two had been effected. So long as each individual never had
intercourse with any but those who accepted the national or tribal
religion, it was well-nigh impossible for anyone to question its
authority; but as soon as the devotees of two religions lived
intermixed, the question—Which religion was true? must inevitably have
arisen in some minds. The weight of custom and of religious sanctions,
which lies so heavily on a primitive society, restricting all
enterprise, forbidding inquiry and repressing the use of the
intellectual powers, would thus be lightened and scope be given for
experiment in thought and action. And either people, coming into more or
less intimate contact for the first time with a system of beliefs and
customs and institutions other than their own, must have been led to
compare, discuss, and reflect upon these things; the sceptical spirit
and the intellect must have been greatly stimulated. There must have
been a conflict of ideas and the initiation of an age of discussion. In
short such a fusion by conquest must have broken up what Bagehot calls
the ‘cake of custom’ as nothing else could, and so have rendered the
intellectual and moral traditions once more plastic and capable of
progress.

No doubt in many cases such disintegration of the old systems went too
far, and the society, before it could evolve anew a sufficiently strong
and adequate system of customs and sanctions, went to pieces. In modern
times many primitive societies have been broken up and destroyed in just
this way—namely, their customs and the religious sanctions of their
morality have been undermined and weakened by the contact of the more
complex systems of civilised men, and they have not been able to
assimilate the new system rapidly enough to enable it effectively to
replace their own shaken and decaying code.

A third way in which the fusion by conquest of two peoples must have
made for progress was by biological blending, the crossing by
intermarriage of the two stocks. We have seen that there is a
considerable amount of evidence to show that, when two stocks are very
widely different in mental and physical characters, the result of
crossing is likely to be bad, the crossed race is likely to be inferior
to, and less fit for the battle of life than, both parental stocks; the
characters of individuals will be apt to be made up of a number of
elements more or less inconsistent with one another; such a composite
character made up of inharmonious elements will be apt to be unstable
and constantly at war with itself. Character of this kind and the tragic
struggles to which it is liable to find itself committed has been well
described in fiction by a number of authors, especially in stories of
the Mulattoes of America. On the physical side it has been shown that
such cross-bred races tend to die out owing to lack of balance of the
physical constitution.

On the other hand, we saw that the crossing of two closely allied racial
stocks seems to have a tendency to produce a cross-bred race superior to
both parent stocks, and especially to produce a variable stock. It is, I
think, probable that the frequently repeated blending of allied stocks
in Europe has been the fundamental biological condition of the capacity
of the European peoples for progressive national life.

In the case of the conquest of one people by another differing very
markedly in racial qualities, there seem to be two alternatives equally
prejudicial to the continued progress of the nation so formed. On the
one hand, free intermarriage may take place, resulting in an inferior
cross-bred race incapable of high civilisation, as seems to have
occurred in most of the countries of South America, where it is with the
greatest difficulty that the outward forms of the high civilisation
which they have imitated from Europe are maintained. On the other hand,
where especially the outward physical characters are very different, the
conquering people may hold itself apart from the conquered, and maintain
itself as a ruling class, which prides itself on the purity of its blood
and which tends to harden into a caste. Such conquest without subsequent
blending gives rise to a civilisation which, being founded upon a rigid
caste system, is incapable of continued progress. This is what has
happened in India. The fair-skinned Aryan invaders despised the
dark-skinned indigenous peoples, whom they spoke of as being scarcely
human, and, in spite of a good deal of crossing, they have in theory and
in the case of the Brahmans at least to a considerable extent in
practice, maintained the purity of their blood, by means of the
development of the caste system.

Europe on the other hand was fortunate in that all the different
peoples, or most of the peoples, from which its nations have been formed
were of allied race; they were all, with few exceptions, of the white
race, sufficiently nearly allied not to produce inferior cross-races but
rather to produce some superior subraces. The conquered peoples have
been so similar to their conquerors in physical type that crossing could
take place without the cross-bred offspring bearing the indelible marks
of inferior or mixed parentage, such as a dark skin or a woolly head.
Hence, although caste systems were formed, they did not prove rigid;
free intermarriage took place, and it was not impossible for individuals
of the conquered race or of the mixed stock to rise into the superior
ruling class. The importance of this may be seen, on reflecting how the
merest trace of negro-blood in individuals of mixed origin in North
America is apt to show itself in the physical features and how, even in
that enlightened and Christian country, a trace so revealed suffices to
condemn a man, no matter how great his powers or refined his character,
to remain a member of the inferior caste.

But, apart from the possible improvement of the racial qualities of the
whole people, or of the average individuals in general, which may well
have occurred in Europe, the biological blending of allied races may
give important advantages to the resulting people in another way—namely,
by increasing its variability, the variability of its mental qualities.
If a people is extremely homogeneous in the racial sense, it may be
expected to display little variability, its members will be of
essentially similar mental qualities and of a uniform level of mental
capacity; and this will tend to make them a very stable, but a very
conservative unprogressive, nation. This seems to be true of China, and
to be in large part the source of its extreme stability and extreme
conservatism.

Where, on the other hand, a people is formed by the intimate blending by
intermarriage of two or more racial stocks, it is likely to be a
variable one; there will be large departures in many directions from the
average type of mental ability, and there will be individuals varying by
excess of development of various capacities as well as others varying by
defect of development.

And a people of variable and therefore widely diversified mental
capacities will, even though its average capacity is no greater than
that of a more homogeneous people, be more likely to make progress in
civilisation, and this for three reasons.

First, variability is the essential condition of all race progress by
biological adaptation; for it is by the selection of variations, the
survival and multiplication of types varying in certain directions in
larger proportions than the average type, that all race progress and
adaptation seems to have been achieved. Hence, increased variability,
resulting from the blending of races, will render a people so formed
capable of race progress and of more rapid adaptation; for example, in
the peoples of Northern Europe it would have favoured the adaptation of
the constitutions of the people to the severity of the climate and to
those peculiar social conditions which, as we have seen reason to
believe, have been the source of their unique combination of qualities.

Secondly, variability of mental qualities would be favourable to the
coming of the age of discussion; for in such a people custom would rule
with less force, its sway would be more apt to be questioned and
disputed, than among a highly homogeneous people.

Thirdly, and this is probably the most important manner in which race
blending has favoured the progress of nations, among the variations from
the average type produced by race crossing would be men of exceptional
capacities in various directions.

We have already noted that all progress of the intellectual and moral
traditions eventually depends upon the activities of men of exceptional
powers of various kinds, upon the great religious or ethical teacher,
the inventor, the artist, the discoverer. A people may, like the
Chinese, have a high average capacity of intellectual ability; but, if
it cannot from time to time produce men of far more than average
capacity along various lines, it will not progress very far
spontaneously. Exceptional intellectual capacity is, however, a
variation from the type, as the biologists say, just such as may be
expected to result from race blending; there will be, among the
variations in all directions, variations in the direction of exceptional
capacity of various kinds. Hence a nation of blended variable stocks
will, other things being the same, be far more likely to be capable of
continued evolution than a homogeneous people of equal average mental
capacity, among whom few men are capable of rising to any distinguished
height.

This view of the effects of race blending is borne out empirically by
the comparison of the peoples of the world. The European peoples have
been the most progressive, and they, more than all others, have been
formed by repeated blendings of allied stocks. Within Europe it is the
peoples among whom this blending has been carried furthest who have
proved most progressive—the French, the English, and the Italian; and,
conversely, the least blended peoples have been the most backward, and
have contributed least to the general progress of civilisation in
Europe; for example the large, almost purely Slav, population which
forms the bulk of the Russian nation.

We pass on to consider other conditions which have contributed to
setting free and stimulating the spirit of inquiry. We have seen that
physical environment played a predominant part in moulding the mental
qualities of races in the prehistoric period. And we must recognise
that, although with the beginning of settled national life it probably
ceased to modify race-qualities to any considerable extent, it has yet
been important in favouring the rapid evolution of the intellectual
tradition of some peoples, and this in several ways. First, by its
direct influence upon the minds of individuals. Buckle and others have
pointed out that, while, in India and throughout a great part of Asia,
the physical environment was unfavourable to intellectual progress,
while its vast and terrible aspects fertilised the superstition of the
people, and repressed the spirit of inquiry by rendering hopeless any
attempt to cope with its terrific displays of force, in Europe and
especially in South and Western Europe, the comparatively small scale on
which the physical features are planned and the relative feebleness of
the forces of nature encouraged men to adopt a bolder attitude towards
them.

Buckle, contrasting Greece with India in this respect, showed how the
physical features of both countries were reflected in their national
cultures; how, while the Hindus cringed in fear before monstrous and
cruel gods, the Greeks fashioned their gods in their own image, simply
personifying each leading human attribute, and made of them a genial
family of beings, differing from men and women in little but their
immortality and their superior facilities for the enjoyment of life. In
general the buoyancy and serenity of the Greek attitude towards life and
nature reflected the beautiful, secure and diversified aspects of their
physical environment. In such an atmosphere the spirit of inquiry would
naturally flourish more freely than where man’s spirit was oppressed by
the fear of terrible and uncontrollable forces and where he was made to
feel too keenly the limitations of his mental and physical powers.
Buckle summed up his review of these effects as follows:—“In the
civilisations exterior to Europe, all nature conspired to increase the
authority of the imaginative faculties and to weaken the authority of
the reasoning ones. In Europe has operated a law the reverse of this, by
virtue of which the tendency of natural phenomena is, on the whole, to
limit the imagination, and embolden the understanding; thus inspiring
man with confidence in his own resources, and facilitating the increase
of his knowledge, by encouraging that bold, inquisitive and scientific
spirit, which is constantly advancing and on which all future progress
must depend.”

I think we must accept this view of the importance of the direct action
of physical environment on the minds of individuals. To deny, as Hegel
did, the important influence of physical environment upon the
development of Greek culture, because the Turks have enjoyed a similar
climate without producing a similar culture, is unreasonable. The
progress of civilisation has always been the result of a multiplicity of
causes and conditions; and we cannot deny all importance to any one,
whether race or climate or social organisation or religion or any other,
because in some particular instance it has failed to produce the
progress of which in other instances it has been one of a number of
co-operating causes.

The diversity and small scale of the physical features of South and
Western Europe has favoured the progress of the intellectual tradition
in another important way. The land is divided by natural barriers into a
number of natural territories, the population of each of which has
naturally tended to become one nation and to develop a national culture.
In this way there arose a number of nations and States in close
proximity with one another, yet each developing along its own lines.
When the development of wealth and commerce brought these diversified
cultures into friendly intercourse with one another, the exchange of
ideas and the general imitation of the useful arts of one people by its
neighbours must have made very strongly for progress; the culture of
each of a group of neighbouring peoples no longer progressed only by the
addition of the ideas and inventions of its own exceptional intellects,
but each group had the opportunity of selecting and imitatively adopting
whatever seemed to them best among the ideas, the arts and inventions of
the neighbouring peoples.

It is generally admitted that this was one of the main conditions of the
rapid development of the culture of the ancient Greeks, situated as they
were within easy reach of several of the oldest civilisations, those of
Egypt and of South-Eastern Asia; they were also within reach of a number
of less civilised peoples, and therefore enjoyed opportunities for trade
of a kind which, being peculiarly lucrative, has in all ages hastened
the acquisition of wealth and capital and stimulated the development of
commerce. All the most progressive European peoples have enjoyed similar
advantages; and it has been maintained with some plausibility that the
principal cause of the shifting of the centre of progressive
civilisation from the Eastern Mediterranean to the west of Europe has
been the improvement of the art of navigation and the discovery of the
New World and of the sea route to Asia and the East Indies; for these
gave the western countries the most advantageous positions for the
conduct of a world wide commerce. No doubt the factor mentioned has been
important in producing this change.

But, when we consider the ancient European civilisations and compare
them with our own, we realize that, in spite of all the circumstances
which we have enumerated and briefly considered as factors stimulating
the spirit of inquiry and making for progress of their intellectual
tradition, and in spite of their brilliant and in some respects
unapproachable achievements, they were nevertheless radically incapable
of continued progress. Greek civilisation certainly progressed at a
marvellous rate for some centuries; yet there is every reason to believe
that it bore within itself the inevitable causes of its ultimate decay
or stagnation. And, when we consider Roman civilisation, we see that,
through all the long centuries of the greatness of Rome, it was
essentially unprogressive. There was no continued evolution of the
national mind and character. Save in respect to the single province of
law, Roman civilisation, when it entered upon the period of its decay,
had not appreciably progressed in any essential respects beyond the
stage reached more than a thousand years earlier. Rome was in fact less
truly a nation in its later than in its earlier age. It had
superficially imitated rather more of Greek culture and it had
incorporated a number of bizarre elements from the many peoples which
had been brought under the sway of the Roman sceptre; but neither in
religion, nor in philosophy, nor art, nor science, nor in any of the
practical modes of controlling the forces of nature, had it made any
substantial gains; and its social organisation tended more and more to
the type of a centralised irresponsible bureaucracy[145].

On the other hand, it cannot be denied that in the last thousand years
the nations of Western Europe have made immense progress; nor that this
progress has been accelerating from century to century in a way which
seemed to reach a climax in the wonderful century just closed; though
there appears good prospect of continued progress and perhaps of
continued acceleration throughout the century to come and perhaps for
many more.

What then is the cause of this great difference between the civilisation
of Western Europe and all preceding civilisations? The difference is, I
think, essentially due to difference of social organisation. As argued
in a previous chapter, social organisation was of less influence in the
earlier ages, but has assumed a constantly increasing importance
throughout the evolution of civilisation; and it is now predominant over
all other conditions. We must, then, first define this difference of
social organisation; secondly, we must show how it makes for progress;
and thirdly, conjecture how the social organisation of Western Europe,
so favourable to the continued development of nations, has been brought
about.

The great difference which divides the social organisation of the modern
progressive peoples from that of all the ancient European civilisations
is that, under it, the individual enjoys greater liberty and more
securely founded rights as against the community, and as against all
other individuals. This change is summed up in Sir H. Maine’s dictum
that “the movement of progressive societies has hitherto been a movement
from status to contract.”

All the ancient civilised societies, Greece and Rome no less than all
the others, rested upon the fundamental assumption of the absolute
supremacy of the State, the assumption that the individual existed only
for the State and that the welfare of the State was the supreme end to
which all individual rights and liberties must be subordinated
absolutely, was the end to the securing of which all custom, and all
law, all social and family relations and institutions and religion
itself were but the means. And the State was a politico-religious
organisation, membership of which implied the blood-relationship of its
citizens and a common participation in the state-religion; while the
State gods were conceived as being themselves ancestors, or in some
other way kinsmen, of the citizens[146]. This bond of blood or kinship
between the members of the State and its gods went back to the earliest
times. It is the rule of almost all savage peoples; and the religious
rites of many include some rite symbolising or renewing this blood bond,
such as smearing the blood of the kinsmen on the altars of the gods, or
drinking the blood of some animal which is held to be the symbolic
representative of the god. And the supreme end of the State itself was
the increase of its own power and stability, through the exercise of
military power and through military conquest.

All human beings outside the State, outside this
moral-politico-religious-bond, were regarded as _prima facie_ enemies of
the State, without rights of any sort, without even the slightest claim
to humane treatment. Hence, in war the slaughter of the conquered was
the rule; and the practice of making slaves of prisoners of war and of
conquered peoples only arose through its profitableness, and was
regarded as a great concession to the victims, whose natural fate was
sudden death. Under this system, which inevitably became to some extent
a caste system, with a caste of freemen or citizens ruling over slaves,
each individual was born to a certain status as a member of a particular
family. His position and duties and rights in the family were rigidly
prescribed by custom, and the law took account only of the relations of
the family to the State.



CHAPTER XX

THE PROGRESS OF NATIONS IN THEIR MATURITY


In the foregoing chapter we have noted the great fact that the leading
modern nations of Western Europe have shown a much greater capacity for
progress than all the earlier civilised peoples, not excepting those of
ancient Greece and Rome. I urged that this difference between the
ancient and the modern European civilisations seemed to be chiefly due
to a difference of social organisation. I pointed out how the older
nations were essentially caste nations, resting on a basis of slavery,
and how all individual rights were entirely subordinated to the welfare
of the State, a politico-religious organisation held together by the
bond of kinship; how, within that organisation, the rights of each
person were strictly defined throughout his life by the status to which
he was born; and how all persons outside this organisation were regarded
as natural enemies, towards whom no obligations of any kind were felt.
We have now to notice that the form of social organisation towards which
all the leading modern nations have been tending, and which some of them
have now pretty well achieved, is one in which the last vestiges of the
caste system and the rigid bonds of customary status are rapidly being
abolished. In this new organisation social classes persist, but they are
no longer castes; all members of the nation are regarded as being by
nature free and equal; a career is open to every talent, and any man may
rise to any position by the exertion of his abilities. His position is
one of extreme liberty as compared with that of any member of the
ancient nations. He has definite rights as against the State. The State
claims only a minimum of rights over him, the right to prevent him
interfering with the rights of his fellow-citizens, the right to make
him pay for his share of the privileges conveyed by its activities. And
these rights it claims in virtue of contract between each citizen and
all the rest. For each citizen is free to throw off his allegiance to
the State and to leave it at will, and his continuance as a citizen of
the State implies his acceptance of the contract.

Even in religion, personal liberty has at last been achieved; religion
is no longer a State-religion, the gods are no longer the national gods,
and each man may accept any religion or none. This is the most striking
instance of the immense distance, as regards the liberty of the
individual, that divides the modern from the ancient nations. For with
the latter, the function of religion was to preserve the security of the
State; and to question it in any way was to threaten the State, a
principle fully acted upon by Athens in the time of her highest
enlightenment and glory.

The change is very striking also as regards the attitude of the citizens
of one State towards those of any other and towards even the members of
savage and barbarous communities. We no longer regard ourselves as
devoid of all obligation towards such persons. Rather we tend to treat
them as having equal rights with ourselves, the few specifically
national rights excepted, and as having equal claims with our fellow
citizens upon our considerate feeling and conduct towards them.

The relations of individuals are, then, tending to be regulated, on the
one hand, by contractual justice; on the other hand, by the moral
obligation felt by each individual, an obligation not enforced by any
exercise of the power of the State, but supported only by public
opinion. The end we set before ourselves is no longer the welfare of the
State, to be attained at any cost to individual liberty; it is rather an
ideal of justice for every person, to which the welfare of the State
must be, if necessary, subordinated. In short, instead of maintaining
universal intolerance, we have made great strides towards universal
tolerance.

All this represents a profound change of social organisation, a great
advance in social evolution. That it is intimately bound up with the
progressiveness of a people is shown by the fact that the degree to
which the change has proceeded among the various nations runs parallel
with their progress in all the essentials of civilisation. The change
seems, indeed, to be one of the principal conditions of the progress of
the nations of Western Europe and, we may add, of the American nation,
by which it has been carried further than by any other. How, then, does
it make for progress? We may answer this question by considering how the
social system which has given place to this new kind of social
organisation—namely, the caste system—renders progress difficult or
impossible.

Where the caste system is highly developed and rigidly maintained, as
among the Hindus of India, its conservative unprogressive tendency is
obvious enough. Each man is born a member of some one of many castes,
and he can never hope to pass from one caste to another and higher
caste. That fact alone removes at once the two greatest spurs to effort,
the two most powerful motives that urge on the members of our modern
societies to the fullest development and exercise of all their
faculties; namely, the desire to rise in the social scale and to place
one’s children at a more advantageous starting point in the battle of
life, and the fear of falling back in the social scale, of sinking to a
lower level, with the consequent sacrifice of all the social
consideration and other advantages which one’s position at any given
social level brings with it. Under the Hindu caste system, the poor
Brahmin who has no possessions, perhaps not even a rag to cover his
nakedness, is sure of the social consideration which his birth gives
him, both for himself and his children. He can look disdainfully upon
the rich man and the prince of lower caste; and public opinion approves
and supports him. This perhaps is the most important way in which the
caste system prevents progress. But there are others almost equally
serious.

The occupations open to the members of each caste are rigidly limited.
The members of one caste must be priests only, of another soldiers only,
of another scavengers, of another potters, and so on. Now, if it were
true that, when dexterities or mental powers generally are specially
developed by use, the improvements of faculty resulting from this long
practice and use were transmitted in any degree from generation to
generation, we should expect the caste system to result, after many
generations, in so many distinct breeds of men of highly specialised and
perfected powers of the kinds used in the pursuit of each of the caste
occupations. And this might make for progress. Each man would be
employed in the occupation for which he was best suited. But, as we have
seen, it is probable that use-inheritance does not occur; and there
seems to be no evidence that differentiation and hereditary
specialisation of faculties of this sort result from the caste
system[147]. In each caste men continue to be born of the most diverse
powers suited for the most diverse occupations; and one effect of the
caste system is that the best powers of any man will in the great
majority of cases be prevented from finding their most effective outlet.
That involves a great waste of faculty, which makes strongly for
stagnation. We shall realize the importance of this influence, if we
reflect on the great achievements, in the most diverse fields, of men
who under our modern system have risen from some humble station and
occupation, to which under the caste system they would have been rigidly
confined.

Again, within each caste custom rules the lives of the members with much
greater force than it can exert in a large and complex society in the
absence of the caste system. For each caste has its own tradition and
customary code, which is necessarily narrow because of the uniformity of
the conditions of life of those who obey it; hence tradition and custom
have a narrow and well-defined field of operation; and the narrower the
field of its application, the more rigidly will custom control action.

The caste system is thus one which permits of great differentiation and
specialisation of pursuits, without any weakening of the conservative
forces of society. It is for that reason presumably that the social
organisation of all early civilisations tended to this form. It was the
most easily attained form which combined diversity with stability
sufficiently to permit of the formation of a large society or nation;
and it was one which made for military efficiency. It formed, therefore,
a natural stage of social evolution.

In so far as the caste system still survives, it owes its survival to
the continuance of the need of the State for military efficiency. And we
see how its maintenance is still only rendered possible by its alliance
with a State religion and its system of religious sanctions. In Russia,
for example, the caste system was thus maintained by the alliance of the
military power with the religious system. While we see how in modern
Germany the attempt to maintain the caste system and the supremacy of
the State over the rights and liberties of individuals is breaking down,
as the religious sanctions are losing their hold upon the people. Social
democracy, secularism, and the demand for liberty go hand in hand[148].

It is clear, then, that the caste system tends to produce a stable
society and to prevent progress; and that, in proportion as it gives way
to liberty and equality of all men, both legal and customary, and to the
recognition of the rights of individuals as against the State, progress
must be favoured.

In yet another way (perhaps more important than any other) the abolition
of caste may favour development. In an earlier chapter I pointed out how
every step in the development of the intellectual or the moral tradition
of a people is initiated by some person of exceptional intellectual or
moral power. I pointed out also how the existence of a hierarchy of
social classes which are not exclusive castes, together with the
operation of the social ladder by means of which individuals and
families are enabled to climb up and down the social scale, tend to the
segregation of ability in the classes of the upper part of the scale.
They tend, in short, to produce classes capable of producing in each
generation a relatively large number of persons of more than average
capacities. Or, in other words, they lead to the concentration and
mutual enrichment of the strains of exceptional capacity; they
concentrate the best capacities of the people in a relatively small
number of individuals of the favoured classes. And abilities so
concentrated and raised in a certain proportion of individuals to a
higher power will be more favourable in every way to the growth of the
national mind than the same sum of abilities more evenly diffused
throughout the population. At present it is impossible to say how far
this segregation of abilities has gone, and what part it has played in
forwarding the mental development of any nation. But that it has played
some part, perhaps a very important one in some instances, can hardly be
doubted[149].

In Europe the feudal system served to tide over the period of transition
from the ancient social organisation founded on caste and the supremacy
of the politico-religious State to the modern system, the transition
from the system founded on status and regulated by custom to the system
founded upon equality and liberty and regulated by contract. For the
feudal system, although still more or less a caste system, was
nevertheless founded to some extent on contract. The tenure of land
involved a contract to perform services in return; and such contract was
the essence of the feudal system.

But it was not until the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when the
feudal system was finally broken up and the Reformation initiated the
age of religious tolerance, that the modern system substantially
replaced the ancient system, and the age of rapid progress set in.

In proportion as the change was achieved, the powers of all men were set
free in an unfettered competition such as had never before been
possible. Independence of thought and action, free discussion of all
principles, and the recognition of the relativity of all truths,
succeeded to unquestioning subservience to ancient formulas and
customs. Each man became comparatively free to follow his natural bent,
to develop his best powers to the utmost, and to secure by the exercise
of those powers the maximum of social consideration and of well-being,
unfettered by arbitrary restrictions, civil or ecclesiastical. I think
we may fairly say that the modern pragmatic or humanistic movement in
philosophy, in the midst of which we are living, represents the final
stage of this emancipation of man from the bonds which he has created
for himself.

We have seen, then, that the modern system of social organisation does
not make for the racial progress of a whole people, but probably, up to
the present time, for race-deterioration; nevertheless, it certainly
makes for progress of the intellectual and moral traditions of peoples;
and we can now see in what way it makes for progress. The improvement of
racial qualities by natural selection of the innately superior
individuals has been brought to an end; the mortal conflict of societies
has also practically been abolished as a factor of race progress, as
also of collective or social progress. These have been replaced by a new
form of struggle for existence and of selection—namely, the rivalry and
competition of ideas and of the institutions in which ideas become
embodied, and the selection for survival of those ideas and institutions
which are found, under the tests of practice and experience, most
accordant with the truth and, therefore, best adapted to promote the
welfare of societies and of their members[150].

And this process of survival of the fittest and elimination of the unfit
among ideas and institutions takes place not only within nations, but
has also international scope. The members of each nation no longer, as
of old, regard all foreigners as their natural enemies, no longer
despise their institutions and reject their ideas with scorn. They are
ready to learn from others, to let the ideas current among other peoples
enter into competition with native-born ideas; and so the number and
variety of competing elements increases and the intensity of the
competition waxes ever keener. Every idea that constitutes an important
advance in our intellectual outlook or in our practical command over
nature rapidly finds acceptance throughout the civilised world and
displaces some less true idea, some less appropriate institution, some
less effective mode of action.

Two great conditions, making for continued improvement of the moral and
intellectual traditions, characterise, then, Western civilisation.
First, within each nation there is going on the process of emancipation
of all human faculties, so that they enter into the freest possible
competition with one another on a footing of equality; this process,
although now far advanced in all the leading nations, is still being
carried further, and the whole trend of modern legislation is to confirm
the change and hasten it to its completion[151]. Secondly, there is a
circle of peoples whose ideas are thrown into the arena of rivalry, to
suffer extinction or to gain universal acceptance. This circle also is
constantly widening by the inclusion of peoples hitherto outside it; and
each new admission, as of Japan in recent years, is a new stimulus to
the further evolution of the collective mind of each nation concerned.
Both these conditions depend upon improved social organisation.

How then has this great change of social organisation been effected? To
put this question is to approach an immense subject, the history of
liberty and toleration. I can only make one or two brief remarks. It has
been suggested by many authors, notably by Kidd in his volume on
_Western Civilisation_, that we owe this great change to the Christian
religion. It is pointed out that the Christian religion, unlike most
earlier religions, was from the first not a national or State religion
but a universal religion, and that its adoption has weakened the tyranny
of the State by breaking up its alliance with religion. Further, it is a
religion which, by its doctrine of the immortality of the souls of all
men, has tended to give dignity and value to each individual life, quite
independently of personal status. Again, by its teaching of universal
charity, it has to some extent softened and moralised the relations of
men and of societies. But, that the replacement of a national religion
by a universal religion which teaches the equality of all believers does
not suffice to secure continued collective evolution is shown by the
instances of Bhuddism and Mohammedanism. Both of these are of this
character, yet both have failed to render continuously progressive the
societies that have accepted them.

That the spread of the Christian religion does not in itself suffice to
account for the evolution from the ancient to the modern type of social
organisation is shown also by the fact that it had held undisputed sway
among the peoples of Western Europe for more than a thousand years
before social evolution made any considerable advance. Throughout that
period, religion constantly called in the civil and military power of
the State to enforce the acceptance of its dogmas. And that its
teachings did not suffice to produce religious or civil tolerance is
shown by the fierce and incessant persecutions of heretics and the many
religious wars that fill the history of medieval Europe.

The religious tolerance and liberty of the modern era are rather
features of a wider phenomenon, the general increase of tolerance and
liberty, and they must be ascribed to the same causes as this wider
fact. They imply a great evolution of the moral tradition, the most
important and striking feature of which is the expansion of the sphere
in which the sympathetic feelings find application. There is no reason
to suppose that the feelings and emotions underlying the sympathetic and
considerate treatment of others have changed in character in the
historic period. For long ages men have felt such sympathy and given
considerate and just treatment to those who have been nearest to them;
at first to the members of their own immediate family; later to the
fellow-members of their own small society; and then, as societies
expanded into complex caste societies, to the members of their own
caste; later, as castes were broken down, to all their fellow citizens;
and still later in some degree to all men.

It is this progressive extension of the sphere of imaginative sympathy
which, more than anything else, has broken down all the social barriers
that confined the energies of men and has set free their various
faculties in that competition of ever increasing severity which is the
principal cause underlying the modern progress of peoples. It is this
which has destroyed nearly all the old bonds that fettered and limited
men’s activities in religion, in science, in politics, in art, in
commerce, in manufacture, and has brought men in all these spheres into
that intense, because free and equal, competition, which produces an
ever accelerating progress. It is this which has produced the almost
universal acceptance of the entirely and most characteristically modern
principle of ‘one man one vote,’ a principle so hard to justify on any
ground of expediency, from any considerations of the stability and
welfare of the State. It is this also which has led to so greatly
increased intercourse between peoples.

It is sometimes contended that the realisation of the principles of
equality and justice for all men has been secured only by the strife of
the social classes, by the success of the lower classes in forcing a
series of concessions from the ruling classes. This is a very imperfect
and partial view of the process. If the ruling classes had consistently
sought to maintain their power and exclusive privileges, and to maintain
all the rest of society in a state of servitude or serfdom, there is
little doubt that they could have done so. But their position has been
weakened from within by the extension of their sympathies. Consider the
great series of legislative changes which, during the nineteenth
century, transformed the social organisation of this country, especially
the factory laws, the franchise extension laws, and the laws for the
abolition of slavery. These were for the most part of the nature of a
voluntary abdication of power on the part of the classes in possession.
Consider the topics which chiefly engross the attention of our
legislators and are the centre of political and social discussion. They
are the providing of a better and freer education for the children of
the working classes, who of themselves would probably never have thought
of such a thing; the providing of free meals for school children; the
providing of work and food for the unemployed; temperance laws, land
settlement, and emigration, the eight-hours day, housing of the working
classes, free trade and cheap food, old age pensions; all measures for
raising the standard of life of the labouring classes and securing them
against the tyranny of capital.

In respect of our relations to the lower peoples the same proposition
holds good. It would be easy for the European nations to exterminate the
black people of Africa, and to possess themselves of all their
lands[152]. But public opinion will not now allow this; it insists upon
our moral obligation towards such peoples, that we are bound to try to
help them to survive and to raise themselves to our level of culture.

The extension of the sphere of application of imaginative sympathy has
then been a factor of prime importance in producing the social evolution
which underlies modern progress.

The factors that have brought about this extension have been many and
complex, and it is perhaps a hopeless task to attempt to enumerate them
and to apportion to each its share of influence. Undoubtedly, it has
been produced largely by the influence of a relatively small number of
enlightened leaders of opinion, such men as Wilberforce, Stuart Mill,
Shaftesbury, John Locke, Rousseau, and Voltaire—men whose original
intellectual powers enabled them to criticise and reject the settled
principles of their time. It was a work of liberation from custom and
traditional prejudice effected by the spirit of inquiry, which
questioned the validity of the old narrow conceptions of the relations
of men and peoples, the old narrow prejudices of caste and nation, and
discovered their fallacies to the world; discovered, for example, that
men of a religious persuasion slightly different from one’s own are not
necessarily wicked, nor those of a different nationality necessarily
despicable and possessed of no ideas worthy of admiration and adoption.

But the ground was prepared for the reception of the teachings of such
men by the conflicts of men who desired nothing of tolerance and
equality and liberty. This is best illustrated by the history of
religious toleration. As I said before, religion is essentially
conservative and intolerant of heresies. The first effect on religion of
that revival and liberation of the spirit of inquiry which we call the
Renascence, was to produce not religious toleration, but rather a bitter
conflict of mutually intolerant sects. And religious toleration was
eventually achieved largely by the realisation of the necessity of
compromise among these warring and constantly multiplying sects; it was
found impossible to weed out heresy by persecution. Yet who can doubt
that the Church, if it believed that it saw its way to secure the
universal acceptance of its doctrines by means of persecution, would
long hesitate to return to its ancient practices? The coming of
religious toleration was due to the application of the spirit of inquiry
to religious systems; these inquiries produced irreconcilable sects,
whose strife prepared the way for compromise and toleration.

The strife of parties and sects was itself part of a still wider
process; and this process must be recognised as the most important
single condition of that widening of the sphere of imaginative sympathy
which has been the root cause of the improvement of social organisation,
of the general increase of liberty, and thus of the progress of the
modern nations. This wider process is the general increase of human
intercourse, both within nations and between them. Only so long as men
know little of one another, can they continue to regard one another with
entire hostility or cold indifference. The knowledge and understanding
brought by personal intercourse is necessary to sympathy; but as soon
as, and in proportion as, such knowledge is acquired, the innate social
tendencies common to all men are brought into play. As soon as man
understands that his fellow man suffers the same pains and joys as
himself, longs for the same goods, fears the same evils, throbs with the
same emotions and desires, then he shares with him in some degree these
feelings, in virtue of that fundamental law of all social beings, the
law of primitive sympathy; then also pity and sympathetic sorrow and
tender regard are awakened in his breast; then his fellow man is no
longer the object of his cold or hostile glances, as a certain rival and
probable enemy, but is seen to be a fellow toiler and sufferer whom he
is willing to succour, a fellow creature whose joys and sorrows alike he
cannot but share in some degree.

Increasing freedom of intercourse throughout the civilised world, and
beyond its boundaries also, has been the most characteristic feature of
the age of progress, and in it we may recognise the most fundamental
condition of that progress. Science and mechanical invention have been
the means by which this greater freedom of intercourse has been brought
about. First and most important perhaps was the invention of printing,
the consequent spread of the habit of reading, and the wide diffusion of
the written word. Second only to this was the improvement of the art of
navigation, which brought the remotest peoples of the world within the
ken of Europe and greatly promoted the intercourse of the European
peoples, as well as the circulation of persons and news within each
nation; for the development of commerce over seas implies a
corresponding development of commerce within the national boundaries.
Then came the use of steam in locomotion on sea and land, the press and
the telegraph; and, with the advent of these, intercourse within and
without became really free and abundant; mutual knowledge and
understanding between men and nations grew rapidly, and the age of
progress was assured.

The progressive character of the modern nations has been due, then, to
the actions and reactions between the spirit of inquiry and the
improvement of forms of social organisation; each step in the one
respect has reacted upon the other, stimulating further change in the
same direction. And the medium through which they have chiefly thus
worked upon one another has been the increase of intercourse between men
and nations. The spirit of inquiry has urged men on to explore their
fellow men and to study foreign nations, and it has provided the means
for so doing; the greater mutual knowledge and sympathy thus brought
into being have in turn brought greater liberty to the spirit of
inquiry, freeing it from the rigid bonds of custom and conservative
tradition and enabling it to render human intercourse yet more free and
abundant.

In this way we reconcile and synthesize the rival theories of the causes
of progress, the view that sees in the spirit of inquiry the sole agent
of progress and that which attributes it wholly to the improvement of
morals and of social organisation. The great commandment, “Thou shalt
love thy neighbour as thyself,” pointed the way of all progress; but
great and beautiful as it was, it could not immediately avail to break
the bonds of the human spirit, the bonds of ignorance and fear; only
gradually through increase of knowledge could man learn that all men are
his neighbours, and that not only the foreigner just beyond the
frontier, but also the naked savage, chipping his stone axe or weaving
his rude basket for the reception of his neighbour’s head, is a man of
like passions with himself, with equal claims upon justice and freedom
and all that makes the humanity of man.

It only remains to point out the part in human life of a new factor of
progress which promises to eclipse all others in importance. The main
theme of my earlier work[153] was that only through increase of
knowledge of others is each man’s knowledge of himself slowly built up
and enriched, until it renders him capable of enlightened
self-direction. So the main theme of this book is the development of the
group mind, the increase of its self-knowledge and of its power of
self-direction through increase of knowledge of other human societies.

The age of progress through which the world has recently passed was an
age of progress due to increase of human intercourse and consequent
increasing understanding by each nation of other nations and peoples.
This better knowledge of other peoples is now reacting upon the
self-knowledge of each nation, rapidly enriching it. Each of the great
nations is beginning to understand itself, and to take thought for the
morrow in the light of this self-knowledge; and this increase of
national self-knowledge, this enrichment of national self-consciousness,
is the great new factor which alone can secure the further progress of
mankind. We saw in an earlier chapter that a nation is essentially the
realization of an idea, the idea of a nation, that only in so far as the
idea of the nation exists and operates in the minds of the members of
the nation, controlling their conduct and directing it to actions having
reference to the nation as a whole, does a nation come into and continue
in existence. The self-consciousness of nations is therefore not a new
factor in their life. But their self-consciousness is now becoming
reflective and immensely richer in content; so much so that it promises
to operate virtually as a new factor of tremendous efficiency.

We may illustrate the influence of this new factor by reverting again to
the analogy between the mind of the individual and the mind of the
nation which we developed at some length in an earlier chapter. In the
developing individual, as in the evolving animal series, the development
of self-consciousness is the condition of the development of true
volition. Before self-consciousness and a self-regarding sentiment are
developed, conduct is determined by feelings and impulses or by ideas
and the desires they arouse, either some one desire rising alone to
consciousness and issuing at once in action, or through a conflict of
impulses and desires, some one of which eventually predominates over the
others and determines action; but action issuing from such a conflict of
impulses and desires is not true volition. Action is truly volitional
only when the ideal of the self in relation to the idea of the end to be
achieved by each of the conflicting tendencies determines the issue of
the conflict.

In the mental life of nations, all those conflicts of ideas, of parties,
of principles and of systems, in which each strives to predominate over
and displace others, and by natural selection of which (the death of the
many less fit, the survival of the few better or more fit) the progress
of recent centuries has been chiefly due; all these conflicts have been
more or less blind conflicts, in which the idea of the whole nation, in
relation to the end to be achieved by each of the conflicting
tendencies, has generally played but a small part and a part that often
has not made strongly for progress. National actions were in the main
impulsive and instinctive actions, like those of young children or the
higher animals. And for this reason—that nations had too little true
self-knowledge, and had not developed a true and rich ideal of national
life—the self-consciousness of nations was too poor in content to serve
as the guide of actions making for progress.

In the individual man, it is the growing richness and accuracy of
self-knowledge which alone enables him to direct his actions effectively
to secure his own welfare and to improve his character and powers. Just
so in nations the rapid growth of their self-knowledge and the
enrichment of their ideals of national life which characterise the
present time must render their self-consciousness a far more efficient
guide of all national deliberation and action.

The self-knowledge of the individual grows chiefly, as we have seen,
through intercourse with his fellows; his idea of himself develops in
fulness and accuracy in the light of his knowledge of other selves, and
this knowledge in turn develops in the light of his increasing knowledge
of himself. Just so the self-knowledge of nations is now growing rapidly
through the intercourse of each nation with others, an intercourse far
freer, more multiplex, than ever before in the history of the world; a
result largely of the improved means of communication which we owe to
science and the spirit of inquiry.

Perhaps the most striking illustration of the operation of this new
factor is the rapid spread in recent years of parliamentary
institutions. The parliamentary system of national organisation was
worked out in these islands by long centuries of more or less blind
conflict of ideas and parties and institutions; and now other nations in
rapid succession have observed and admired the system and have
deliberately and self-consciously adopted it; and still the process goes
on, as recently in Russia.

Japan offers a striking illustration of the way in which the new factor
operates. An intelligent people in which the national sentiment was
strong, but in which national self-knowledge was rudimentary because of
the isolation of the nation, was suddenly brought into contact with
other peoples; through observation of them, it learnt its own
deficiencies and set about deliberately to remedy them in the light of
its new knowledge; and in doing so has reorganised itself from top to
bottom.

In England also national self-knowledge is beginning rapidly to increase
in accuracy and extent. We have begun to compare ourselves at all points
with other nations, and are no longer content with the good old creed,
that everything British is best. We are learning in this way our
weaknesses; and the knowledge is becoming a main cause of accelerated
progress. The best illustration is, perhaps, the present stir over
educational questions, which is directly due to the increase of national
self-knowledge resulting from the observation of other nations.

But in the future our national self-consciousness will be enriched and
fitted for the guidance of the national will in a still more effective
manner than by the knowledge of our weaknesses being forced upon us by
the nations who are our rivals in the world. In many directions—by the
historians, the biologists, the anthropologists, the statisticians—data
are being gathered for a science of society whose sure indications will
enable us deliberately to guide the further evolution of the nation
towards the highest ideal of a nation that we can conceive. In this way,
it may be hoped, the modern nations will be able to avoid that danger
which has destroyed the great nations of the past, and which has been
the dark cloud shadowing the brilliance of the age of progress that
resulted from increasing human intercourse and mutual understanding. In
this way the free play of the spirit of inquiry, which in all earlier
ages has been highly dangerous to the stability of nations and which,
while it was the sole cause of progress, nevertheless destroyed many of
the nations whom it impelled upon that path, will make for a greatly
accelerated progress; and, at the same time, it will enable us to
secure, by deliberate voluntary control, the bases of society, which in
all previous ages have rested solely upon custom, instinct, and the
religious sanctions.

Not by any voluntary surrender of the reason, not by any subjugation of
the intellect to the dominion of obscure transcendental ideas, such as
is preached by Benjamin Kidd, Chatterton-Hill[154] and others who have
realized the disintegrating effects of intellect on earlier societies,
but by a more strenuous use of our intellectual faculties, and by a
growth of knowledge, especially a knowledge of the laws of human
societies, will the stability and further evolution of nations be
maintained.

The nations whose progress will rest upon this basis will be in a
position very different from that of the older societies to which the
emancipation of the intellect was fatal. They fell for lack of knowledge
of natural laws, as soon as the progress of intellectual inquiry had
weakened their instinctive and customary bases. The modern nations may
reasonably hope that they are within sight of knowledge which will
enable them to avoid these dangers and to continue their progress during
an indefinitely long period. They may even hope to progress, not only in
respect of the intellectual and moral tradition, but also in respect of
racial qualities; for a better knowledge of the factors at work and of
the laws of heredity will enable them to put an end to the influences
now making for race deterioration and to replace them by others of the
opposite tendency.

Such national progress will be truly teleological; it will be a progress
whose direction will be determined by the desire of an ideal end present
to the consciousness of all and striven after by the collective
deliberation and volition of the nation.

Thus the group spirit, rising above the level of a narrow patriotism
that regards with hostility all its rivals, recognising that only
through the further development of the collective life of nations can
man rise to higher levels than he has yet known, becomes the supreme
agent of human progress.


FOOTNOTES:

   [1] _History of European Thought in the 19th Century._

   [2] _Political Thought in England from Bacon to Halifax_, Home
   University Library, p. 49.

   [3] Essay on “The Nature of Democracy” in _Popular
   Government_, London 1885.

   [4] _Psychology, the Study of Behaviour_, Home University
   Library, London, 1912.

   [5] _Community_, by R. M. Maciver, London, 1917.

   [6] _In Body and Mind_, London, 1911.

   [7] _Op. cit._ p. 76.

   [8] _Op. cit._ p. 77.

   [9] _Op. cit._ p. 90.

   [10] E. Barker, _Political Thought in England from Herbert
   Spencer to the present day_, Home University Library, London,
   1915.

   [11] _Op. cit._ p. 11.

   [12] _Op. cit._ pp. 62-64.

   [13] _Op. cit._ p. 74. I consider Mr Barker’s brief statement
   of the nature of the group mind entirely acceptable, and it
   has given me great pleasure to find myself in such close
   harmony with it. It will perhaps give further weight to the
   fact of our agreement, if I add that the whole of this book,
   including the rest of this introductory chapter, was written
   before I took up Mr Barker’s brilliant little volume.

   [14] _Op. cit._ p. 175.

   [15] This principle of primitive sympathy or simple direct
   induction or contagion of emotion was formulated in Chapter IV
   of my _Social Psychology_.

   [16] It was my good fortune to witness the almost
   instantaneous spread of anger through a crowd of five thousand
   warlike savages in the heart of Borneo. Representatives of all
   the tribes of a large district of Sarawak had been brought
   together by the resident magistrate for the purpose of
   strengthening friendly relations and cementing peace between
   the various tribes. All went smoothly, and the chiefs
   surrounded by their followers were gathered together in a
   large hall, rudely constructed of timber, to make public
   protestations of friendship. An air of peace and good-will
   pervaded the assembly, until a small piece of wood fell from
   the roof upon the head of one of the leading chiefs, making a
   slight wound from which the blood trickled. Only the immediate
   neighbours of this chief observed the accident or could
   perceive its effect; nevertheless in the space of a few
   seconds a wave of angry emotion swept over the whole assembly,
   and a general and bloody fight would have at once commenced,
   but that the Resident had insisted upon all weapons being left
   in the boats on the river 200 yards away. The great majority
   of the crowd rushed headlong to fetch their weapons from their
   boats, while the few who remained on the ground danced in fury
   or rushed to and fro gesticulating wildly. Happily the boats
   were widely scattered along the banks of the river, so that it
   was possible for the Resident, by means of persuasion,
   threats, and a show of armed force, to prevent the hostile
   parties coming together again with their weapons in hand.

   [17] _The Souls of Black Folk_, by W. E. B. Du Bois, London,
   1905.

   [18] _The Crowd_, p. 11.

   [19] In a recent work (_What is Instinct?_ by Bingham Newland)
   the author, who shows an intimate knowledge of the life of
   wild animals, seems to postulate some such direct telepathic
   _rapport_ between animals of the same species.

   [20] See _The Dissociation of a Personality_, by Dr Morton
   Prince; _Double Personality_, by A. Binet; _The Psychology of
   Suggestion_, by Boris Sidis; _L’automatism psychologique_, by
   Pierre Janet; and the descriptions and discussions of William
   James in his _Principles of Psychology_.

   [21] _Philosophy of the Unconscious._

   [22] _Die Psychophysik._

   [23] _Psychologie des idées forces._

   [24] _Les Sociétés animales_, Paris, 1877.

   [25] _Bau und Leben des Socialen Körpers._

   [26] _Medicinische Psychologie._

   [27] I have argued that the great increase of knowledge of the
   functions and structure of the nervous system attained by
   recent research does but provide for the argument a surer
   basis of empirical data; and I have contended that some at
   least of the cases of disintegration of personality are more
   easily reconcilable with this view, than with the contrary
   doctrine which regards the individual consciousness as the
   collective consciousness of the brain-cells. See my _Body and
   Mind_, a book I found myself compelled to write in order to
   arrive at a reasoned judgment on this difficult problem, which
   obtrudes itself at the outset of the study of group life.

   [28] _Social Psychology_, Chapter IX.

   [29] See especially A. Stoll’s _Suggestion und Hypnotismus in
   der Völkerpsychologie_, where the events of the French
   revolution have been treated in some detail from this point of
   view.

   [30] Hon. Maurice Baring in an article in the _Morning Post_
   of April 21, 1906.

   [31] _Social Psychology_, Chapter IX.

   [32] _Op. cit._ Chapter VII.

   [33] One great difference between the professional army, such
   as that of England, and the citizen armies of Europe, consists
   in the fact that the special sentiment for the army is
   stronger in the former; the more general patriotic sentiment,
   in the rank and file of the latter; though in the regular
   officers of the continental army the sentiment for the army
   itself is no doubt usually the stronger.

   [34] Cp. _The Pagan Tribes of Borneo_, by Ch. Hose and W.
   McDougall, London, 1912.

   [35] _From Religion to Philosophy_, p. 77.

   [36] _Op. cit._ p. 82.

   [37] Cf. _The Pagan Tribes of Borneo_, by Ch. Hose and W.
   McDougall, London, 1912.

   [38] Mr Cornford’s book might in fact be entitled with greater
   propriety _From Philosophy to Religion_.

   [39] 1 Oct. 1914.

   [40] _Les Fonctions mentales dans les Sociétés inférieures_,
   Alcan, Paris, 1910.

   [41] At this point I would refer the reader to the discussion
   of the self-regarding sentiment (Chapter VII) in my _Social
   Psychology_.

   [42] For a brief history of the nation-state the reader may be
   referred to Prof. Ramsay Muir’s _Nationalism and
   Internationalism_, London, 1917. He rightly describes
   ‘nationalism’ as one of the most powerful factors in modern
   history. It is, I think, obviously true that we may go further
   and say that it is _the_ most powerful factor in modern
   history.

   [43] _Op. cit._ p. 38.

   [44] _Op. cit._ p. 54.

   [45] _Op. cit._ p. 51.

   [46] Chapter II. On the question of the definition of the
   terms ‘mind’ and ‘character’ I would refer the reader to my
   _Psychology, The Study of Behaviour_, Home University Library.

   [47] Prof. Hans Driesch’s conception of ‘super-individual
   entelechy’ seems to be of this order, arrived at by the same
   line of reasoning. See _Science and Philosophy of the
   Organism_, Gifford Lectures, 1907.

   [48] _Psychological Laws of the Evolution of Peoples._

   [49] As examples of the best work as yet accomplished in this
   immense and fascinating field, I would refer the reader to the
   books of M. Alfred Fouillée one of the most clear-sighted,
   judicious, and readable of modern philosophers, especially his
   _Psychologie des peuples européens_, his _Psychologie du
   peuple français_, and his _Science Sociale Contemporaine_.

   [50] _Psychologie du peuple français_, p. 4. Paris 1903.

   [51] _Social Psychology_, p. 330.

   [52] _Les inégalités des races humaines._

   [53] This fantastic doctrine has found its fullest expression
   in Chamberlain’s work _The Foundations of the Nineteenth
   Century_.

   [54] Other prominent exponents of this view are Mr J. M.
   Robertson in his book _The Germans_ and in his _Introduction
   to English Politics_, and M. J. Finot in his _Race Prejudice_.

   [55] I here use this word in the large, loose and convenient
   sense in which it is used by M. Tarde in his _Lois de
   l’imitation_. I have examined the nature of imitative
   processes more closely in my _Social Psychology_.

   [56] Meredith Townsend regards this as one of the leading
   qualities of the peoples of India. See _Europe and Asia,
   London, 1901_.

   [57] Cp. Ripley’s _Races of Europe_ and Prof. H. J. Fleure’s
   _Human Geography in Western Europe_, London, 1919.

   [58] Cf. _The Black Republic_, by Sir Spencer St John and
   _Where Black rules White_, by H. Hesketh Prichard.

   [59] M. le Bon and more than one Indian civil servant in
   conversation.

   [60] By G. Lowes Dickinson, _Hibbert Journal_, Jan. 1911.

   [61] In the _Fortnightly Review_, Jan. 1910, and in his
   _Social Environment and Moral Progress_, London, 1913.

   [62] _Physics and Politics._

   [63] Cp. Ripley, _op. cit._ and Fleure, _op. cit._

   [64] This was written in 1910, and now in 1919 the dissolution
   which was so obviously impending is an accomplished fact.

   [65] The great myth of the racial unity and superiority of the
   German people, which we have noticed above, has been
   cultivated and propagated, with elaborate disregard for fact
   by the German State and its henchmen in the universities and
   elsewhere, in a deliberate effort to remedy by art the lack of
   natural boundaries and of true national homogeneity.

   [66] In his _Works of Man_ Mr March Philips shews clearly the
   influence of the Egyptian landscape upon the arts of sculpture
   and architecture.

   [67] Cf. Sir S. Dill’s _The Roman Empire from Nero to
   Augustus_, London, 1905.

   [68] Since these lines were written a new mode of rapid
   locomotion, namely the aerial, which has resulted from the
   invention and rapid development of the internal combustion
   engine, threatens to eclipse all others in its effects upon
   the organisation of the world.

   [69] This state of affairs has no doubt been considerably
   altered during the great war; the political education of
   Germany, a painful but salutary process, is progressing
   rapidly.

   [70] Cf. N. Angell, _The Great Illusion_.

   [71] Incipient nations have appeared where the Bantu stock has
   produced occasionally great warrior chiefs such as Chaka and
   Cetewayo.

   [72] _Psychological Laws of the Evolution of Peoples._

   [73] I do not propose to examine in this book the much
   discussed question—Are the leaders of a nation to be regarded
   as produced by the nation according to the general laws of
   biology and psychology, or as given to them by some
   supernatural process? This question belongs to a branch of
   Social Psychology which is not included in the volume.

   [74] _Psychologie du peuple français_, p. 13.

   [75] Ramsay Muir, _op. cit._ and J. Holland Rose, _The
   Development of the European Nations_. London, 1905.

   [76] J. Holland Rose, _op. cit._

   [77] I suggest that international emulation in this sphere may
   prove to be an effective, probably the only effective,
   substitute for war.

   [78] _Bau und Leben des socialen Körpers._

   [79] _Decadence._

   [80] Cf. A. Smith’s _Village Life in China_. The author
   insists on the lack of public spirit, of the idea of action
   _pro bono publico_.

   [81] 1906.

   [82] In his _Theory of the State_.

   [83] By Schaffle, _op. cit._, and all the school of German
   ‘idealism’.

   [84] The substance of this chapter was contained in a paper
   entitled ‘The Will of the People,’ read before the
   Sociological Society and published in the _Sociological
   Review_, 1912.

   [85] _Philosophical Theory of the State_ and Article in
   _International Journal of Ethics_, 1907.

   [86] Cf. H. Rose, _The Development of the European Nations_
   and Ramsay Muir, _Nationalism and Internationalism_.

   [87] _The Russo-Japanese War_, Vol. II, p. 25.

   [88] _La Science Sociale contemporaine_, p. 115.

   [89] _Social Psychology_, Chapters V-IX. Dr Bosanquet’s
   failure (as it seems to me) to achieve a satisfactory account
   of the social will is the inevitable consequence of the
   inadequacy of his conception of individual volition. This is
   set out in his _Psychology of the Moral Self_, where he shews
   himself to be an uncompromising adherent of the
   intellectualist tradition. He totally ignores the existence
   and organisation of the conative side of the mind. His notion
   of volition is based upon the now discredited theory of
   ideo-motor action.

   [90] This was written before the war with Germany.

   [91] Emulation in the administration of backward peoples
   offers perhaps the greatest possibilities as ‘a moral
   equivalent for war.’

   [92] Cp. Principal L. P. Jacks on the Japanese in his _Alchemy
   of Thought_.

   [93] W. L. George, _English Review_, May, 1915, “The Price of
   Nationality.” “Anger, indeed, is the soul of what is called
   the national will. To call it a will is perhaps too much, it
   is an instinct and mainly an instinct to hate.... Love of
   country is mainly hatred of other countries.”

   [94] Cf. Gilbert Murray, _Collection of Addresses on The War
   given at Bedford College_, 1915.

   [95] Incidentally he holds up my _Social Psychology_ as a
   dreadful example of such an attempt and a woeful evidence of
   the parlous state of present-day culture in England. Such
   dislike of any attempt to understand that which we hold sacred
   is intelligible enough in the vulgar, for whom all analysis is
   destructive of the values they unreasoningly cherish. But it
   may be hoped that men of letters who set out to defend
   patriotism will learn to rise above this attitude, just as the
   more enlightened leaders of religion are learning to welcome
   psychological inquiry in their domain.

   [96] In these respects the Church alone can enter into serious
   rivalry as an object of loyalty.

   [97] As Dean Inge has remarked—“If they love not those whom
   they have seen, how shall they love those whom they have not
   seen?”

   [98] Cp. Fielding Hall, _The Soul of a People_.

   [99] This, as President Lowell clearly shows in his _Public
   Opinion and Popular Government_, is carried to an extreme in
   America and lies at the root of many administrative evils.

   [100] President Lowell (_op. cit._) has clearly shown other
   benefits resulting from the party system; he shows especially
   how the party is needed to prepare a program and select
   candidates, if the popular vote is to give expression to the
   dominant opinion of the people.

   [101] Cp. his _Civilisation and Progress_.

   [102] On the nature and development of the moral sentiments in
   the individual mind, see my _Social Psychology_, Chapter VIII.

   [103] _Op. cit._ p. 210.

   [104] In this connexion I would refer the reader to _The New
   State_ by M. P. Follett (London, 1918), an interesting book in
   which the true nature and function of collective deliberation
   is forcibly expounded.

   [105] Cf. W. R. Patterson, _The Nemesis of Nations_, London,
   1906.

   [106] _Social Evolution_, _Principle of Western Civilisation_,
   and _The Science of Power_.

   [107] _Essai d’une Psychologie politique du Peuple Anglais_,
   Paris, 1903.

   [108] _Op. cit._ p. 20.

   [109] _History of Civilisation_, p. 137.

   [110] In this connexion it must be remembered that in Hindu
   society the man of proved and acknowledged holiness is
   permitted and encouraged to procreate a large number of
   children.

   [111] _Europe and Asia._

   [112] _Op. cit._

   [113] Guizot asserted that, even when new ideas and
   institutions have originated elsewhere, it has usually been
   only by their adoption in France that they have been spread
   through Europe (_A History of Civilization in Europe_).

   [114] I cite these passages after M. Boutmy, _op. cit._ p.
   168.

   [115] The most frank, perhaps somewhat exaggerated, expression
   of the difference is _The Superiority of the Anglo-Saxon_, by
   Ed. Demolins.

   [116] _History of Civilisation in England_, Vol. II, p. 114.

   [117] _Comment la route crée le type social_, Paris, Didot et
   Cie.

   [118] _Histoire de la Formation particulariste_, Paris.

   [119] The reality of selective effect of migration is shown by
   the stature of American immigrants; those from Scotland are
   said to be two inches taller than the average Scotchman; and
   De Lapouge shows (_Les Sélections Sociales_, Paris, 1896, p.
   367) that a superiority of stature almost as marked, may be
   inferred for the French and German immigrants of America from
   the statistics of the armies of the Civil War.

   [120] A. Reibmayer (_Inzucht u. Vermischung beim Menschen_,
   Leipzig, 1897) insists upon the importance of isolation and
   consequent inbreeding for the formation of superior strains
   and subraces. He points out that the geographical barriers of
   Europe have favoured in this way the production of distinctive
   national types. Like Stewart Chamberlain, Flinders Petrie, and
   others, he regards the dark ages of Europe as a period of
   chaos directly due to the overcoming of these geographical
   barriers and the consequent prevalence of crossbreeding on a
   large scale.

   [121] _White Capital and coloured Labour._

   [122] Aristotle says “want of men was the ruin of Sparta.”
   Fathers of three sons were exempted from military service, and
   of four sons from all State burdens.

   [123] Several writers have pointed out the importance of these
   facts and at least one professional historian has insisted
   strongly upon them, namely O. Seeck in his _Geschichte des
   Untergangs der antiken Welt_, Berlin, 1910, vol. 1.

   [124] On this topic cp. Dr Archdall Reid’s _The Present
   Evolution of Man_ and his _Principles of Heredity_, in which
   books the effects of selection by disease and by alcohol are
   vividly set out.

   [125] _Op. cit._

   [126] O. Ammon, _Gesellschaftsordnung und ihre natürlichen
   Grundlagen_, Jena, 1900.

   [127] De Lapouge, _Les Sélections Sociales_; cf. also W.
   Alexis, _Abhandlungen zur Theorie der Bevölkerungs-und
   Moralstatistik_, Jena, 1903, and W. Schallmayer’s _Vererbung
   und Auslese in ihrer soziologischen und politischen
   Bedeutung_, Jena, 1910.

   [128] Ammon’s Law.

   [129] Pointed out by Francis Galton and Fouillée.

   [130] On the other hand it tends (partly no doubt by
   deliberate design) to spread itself by insisting upon the duty
   of procreation. This effect is said to be very considerable in
   French Canada and only to be partially counteracted by a very
   high rate of infantile mortality.

   [131] _The Nineteenth Century_ for April, 1906.

   [132] In _National Life and Character_, a pessimistic though
   intellectually stimulating book.

   [133] _Provident Societies_, by Sidney Webb, and _The London
   Population_, by D. Heron.

   [134] It must be recognised also that in Great Britain
   emigration has, during the last three centuries, tended in all
   probability in the same direction as the various forms of
   social selection—namely, to the deterioration of the home
   population; for in all ages it is the bold and enterprising
   persons who seek new homes in far countries, leaving the
   weakly, the timid, the dull, and the defective behind in the
   mother country. Even the convicts that we exported at one time
   to our colonies were probably persons of more than average
   capacity, though some of them may have been innately defective
   in moral disposition.

   [135] _Études sur la sélection chez l’homme._ Paris, 1904.

   [136] _England and the English._

   [137] Notably by Prof. Flinders Petrie in his _Revolutions of
   Civilisation_.

   [138] _Op. cit._ p. 407.

   [139] De Laponge does not stand alone in this opinion. Many
   biologists and leaders of thought have expressed it hardly
   less strongly, though not all of them have attached so much
   importance to the influence of the towns. It has been
   expressed in general terms by Dr and Mrs Whetham (in the
   _Hibbert Journal_ for Oct. 1911), by Dean Inge in a number of
   forcible articles, by Mr W. Bateson in his ‘Herbert Spencer
   Lecture’ for 1912, and by other writers in a number of
   articles in the _Eugenics Review_ and other journals.

   [140] This conclusion may perhaps be said to be now generally
   accepted by those who have given any thought to the matter. A.
   R. Wallace argued strongly in this sense; the late Benjamin
   Kidd set out the evidence impressively in his _Social
   Evolution_, Chapter IX; and it is implied by all the many
   writers who, as we have noted, agree in regarding the
   processes of selection in the civilised nations as in the main
   reversed or detrimental.

   [141] I refer the reader to my _Social Psychology_.

   [142] In this connection I may again refer to _The Pagan
   Tribes of Borneo_, by C. Hose and W. McDougall.

   [143] It has been translated into nine languages and was
   reprinted ten times in the first year after its publication.

   [144] Shortly before his death Mr Kidd published (in the year
   1918) his _Science of Power_. In this book he showed a
   complete change of face on the question of the importance of
   innate qualities. He denied all importance to changes of
   innate qualities, whether for better or worse, because, as he
   maintained, “the social heredity transmitted through social
   culture is infinitely more important to a people than any
   heredity inborn in the individuals thereof” (p. 273); and he
   made in this book a violent and scornful attack upon the late
   Francis Galton and upon all who follow him in believing that
   the decay or improvement of the racial qualities of a people
   are of importance for its prosperity and development, and who,
   therefore, approve of Galton’s effort to found a science of
   Eugenics. Kidd did not anywhere in his last book acknowledge
   that he had made this very great change of principle, which
   completely undermines the whole argument of his _Social
   Evolution_, but complacently suggested that, as Newton and
   Darwin are regarded as the fathers of modern physical and
   biological science respectively, so in the future Kidd will be
   regarded as having founded anew in his _Social Evolution_ the
   science of society. On reading the _Science of Power_ after
   having written this chapter, I was amazed at this assumption
   on behalf of a book whose most fundamental doctrine the author
   had himself renounced, and I turned again to the earlier work
   to verify my brief summary of its argument. I confess that it
   is not easy to make sure of what the author was driving at.
   But I find that Kidd, in discussing the influence of religious
   systems, wrote (on p. 307) “Natural selection seems, in short,
   to be steadily evolving in the race that type of character
   upon which these forces act most readily and efficiently; that
   is to say, it is evolving religious character in the first
   instance, and intellectual character only as a secondary
   product in association with it.” On the following page I
   find—“The race would, in fact, appear to be growing more and
   more religious,” and “a preponderating element in the type of
   character which the evolutionary forces at work in human
   society are slowly developing, would appear to be the sense of
   reverence.” And there are many other passages which, in spite
   of the habitual lack of precision of Kidd’s language, can only
   be interpreted to mean that the improvement of moral or
   religious character, on which he so strongly insists as a
   feature of recent centuries, involves and depends upon
   improvement of innate qualities in the mass of the people.

   [145] Otto Seeck (_op. cit._ vol. 1. p. 270) writes—“The
   equipment of the legionaries remained unchanged from Augustus
   to Diocletian: no improvements of tactics, no new munitions of
   war were brought into use during more than three hundred
   years. The Roman saw his enemies becoming ever more terrible,
   his own army ever less efficient; for now this, now that,
   Province was laid waste and all were threatened. It was,
   therefore, to the most urgent interest of every citizen that
   this state of affairs should be remedied; the most cultured
   circles were familiar with the needs of the army, for all the
   higher officers came from the class of Senators and nobles.
   Nevertheless, there appeared not a single invention, which
   might have assured to the Roman soldiers their erstwhile
   superiority! Books indeed were written upon tactics, strategy
   and fortification, but their authors almost without exception
   were content to expound in a formal manner what their more
   capable forefathers had taught; in this literature the
   expression of any new idea was carefully avoided.... As in the
   military sphere, so also was it in all others. Neither in
   agriculture, nor in handicrafts, nor in the practice of
   statecraft, did a new idea of any importance appear since the
   first century after Christ. Literature and art also moved only
   in sterile imitation, which became always more
   poverty-stricken and technically feebler.”

   [146] Cf. _La Cité Antique_ of F. de Coulanges.

   [147] A fact which provides another argument against
   use-inheritance.

   [148] This was written before the Great War but needs, I
   think, no modification.

   [149] Francis Galton and his disciples have produced much
   evidence to show that the educated class of Englishmen
   includes a very much larger proportion of strains of high
   ability than the rest of the people, it having been formed by
   the long continued operation of the social ladder. There is no
   reason to doubt the truth of this conclusion.

   [150] Prof. S. Alexander, in his _Moral Order and Progress_,
   was perhaps the first to draw attention to this form of the
   struggle for existence.

   [151] This last sentence perhaps is only partially true. A
   rigid system of State Socialism would involve a retrogression
   in this respect.

   [152] As the Spaniards well-nigh exterminated in the name of
   the Church the civilisation and the nations of Mexico and
   Peru.

   [153] _Introduction to Social Psychology_.

   [154] _Heredity and Selection in Sociology_, London, 1907;
   an interesting work similar in tendency to Kidd’s _Social
   Evolution_.



INDEX


   Abdication of classes, 295

   Abstract psychology, 2

   ADAM SMITH, 4

   Aesthetic faculty, 157

   Africa and lack of leaders, 136

   American homogeneity, 124

   AMMON, O., 252

   Analogy of national with individual mind, 147

   Ancestor worship, 183

   Ancient States, 285

   ANGELL, N., 133

   Anglo-Saxon origins, 238

   Animal societies, 33, 66

   Arab nation and Mahomet, 136

   ARISTOTLE, 3, 192, 248

   Army, as organised group, 51;
     organisation, 81

   Asiatics and authority, 114

   Athens depleted, 248


   BAGEHOT, W., 201

   BALFOUR, A. J., on decadence, 146

   BARING, M., on Russians, 46

   BARKER, E., 16, 18

   BATESON, W., 262

   BEATTIE CROZIER, 193

   Bengal, 161

   BENTHAM, 4

   BINET, 32

   BINGHAM NEWLAND, 29

   Birthrate, 253

   Blending of races, 241, 278

   Boer armies, 58

   BOSANQUET, on general will, 155

   BOUTMY, 215, 221, 228

   Brains, size of, 137

   BUCKLE, 206, 217, 227, 255, 282

   Bulgaria and war, 143

   BURKE, ED., 181

   BUTLER, 5


   Caste, 183, 271, 288

   Celts, 235

   CHAMBERLAIN, H. S., 108, 244

   Chinese stability, 141

   Christianity and morals, 267;
     and progress, 274

   Church, as a group, 95

   Civilisation, and natural selection, 261;
     defined, 204

   Clans, 159

   _Claqueurs_, 29

   Classification of groups, 89

   Climate and race qualities, 214

   Collective consciousness, 31 _et seq._, 71;
     mind, 12;
     psychology, 21;
     will, 48, 53, 173

   Communications, freedom of, 132

   COMTE, 5

   Concreteness in psychology, 2

   Conflict and progress, 296

   Conquest and progress, 276

   Contact of cultures, 283

   Contagion of emotion, 27

   Continuity, national, 145

   CORNFORD, 70

   Crowd, anger in Borneo, 26;
     emotions, 39;
     intelligence, 40;
     suggestibility, 40

   Crowds, 22 _et seq._


   DARWIN, 5

   DE LAPOUGE, 241, 252, 253, 261

   Deliberative organisation, 187, 191

   DEMOLINS, ED, 226, 233

   DICKINSON, G. L., 119

   Differentiation of races, 201, 208

   DILL, Sir S., 132

   Dissociation of personality, 32

   DRIESCH, H., 103

   DU BOIS, 27

   DURKHEIM, on race, 109


   Edict of Nantes, 252

   Egyptian culture and nature, 128

   Energy and climate, 221;
     of races, 272

   England and Germany contrasted, 146

   Ephemeral groups, 88

   Equality, ideal of, 184

   ESPINAS, 33

   Eurasians, 83

   European progress, 287;
     races, 114

   Evolution of man, 209


   Factors of national development, 206

   Family as essential group, 82, 165;
     consciousness, 159

   Fear in India, 218

   FECHNER, 32

   Feudal system, 291

   FLEURE, J. H., 115

   FOUILLÉE, 19, 101, 105, 139, 162, 255

   French conquests, 184;
     sociability, 223

   Fusions of civilisation, 276;
     by conquest, 277


   GALTON, F., 255, 291

   Gauls, 231

   General will, 53

   Genetic view in psychology, 4

   Genius and national life, 137

   Geography and progress, 283

   GEORGE, W. L., 178

   German idealism, 15;
     responsibility, 15;
     organisation, 152

   GIDDINGS, 5

   GOBINEAU, 108

   Gods, national, 102

   GOOCH, 3

   Good of whole and of all, 172

   Greek people substituted, 247

   GREEN, T. H., 15

   Group action, types of, 57

   Group mind, conditions of, 48;
     defined, 9, 18

   Group psychology, the task of, 7

   Group spirit, 62 _et seq._, 302;
     its merits, 79

   GUIZOT, 223


   HAMILTON, Sir I., on Japanese, 162

   HARTMANN, V., 33, 103

   Hayti, 117

   Hebrew nation, 159

   HEGEL, 16

   HERON, D., 258

   Hierarchy of groups, 80;
     of sentiments, 81

   HILL, CHATTERTON, 301

   Historians and psychology, 99

   HOBBES, 3

   HOLLAND ROSE, 143

   Homogeneity of group, 23;
     of nations, 121

   HOSE, CH., 72

   House of Commons, 189


   Idea of nation, 162, 173

   Ideals, national, 183

   Imaginative sympathy, 295

   Impulse, national, 192

   Independence, English, 224

   India, and China contrasted, 124, 244;
     and Western culture, 118

   Individual, and group psychology, 6;
     and social interests, 15, 152

   Individualistic family, 237

   Induction of emotion, 25

   Infertility of peoples, 251

   INGE, Dean, 262

   Innate qualities, 110;
     and culture, 112

   Inquiry, spirit of, 275, 301

   Intellect, disruptive effects of, 275

   Intense emotion of crowds, 24, 29

   Intercourse of peoples, 167

   International rivalry, 144, 167

   Irish qualities, 236

   Isolation of China, 165


   JACKS, L. P., 167

   JACOBI, 258

   JAMES, WM., 32

   JANET, P., 32

   Japanese patriotism, 162

   Jesuit system of education, 83

   Justice, contractual, 288


   KIDD, B., 206, 267;
     on GALTON, 268

   KITCHENER, Lord, 64


   Leaders and national life, 135

   Leadership in armies, 60

   LE BON, 20, 28, 136

   LE PLAY, school of, 231

   LEVY BRÜHL, 74

   Liberty, and progress, 287;
     ideal of, 184

   Limits of State, 188

   LOCKE, 3

   Locomotion, modes of, 132

   LOTZE, 36

   LOWELL, President, 187, 197

   Lynching, 47


   MACIVER, R. M., 9 _et seq._

   MAINE, Sir H., 5, 229, 270

   MAITLAND, 18

   MARIE, 20

   MARX, K., 104

   MATTEUZZI, 104

   MERZ, TH., 2

   MILL, J. S., on race, 108

   Modern and primitive man, 120

   Mongrel races, 140, 243, 279

   MONTESQUIEU, 104

   Moral tradition changing, 246

   Morality, traditional, 264;
     primitive, 264

   MUIR, RAMSEY, 96

   MUNSTERBERG, on Americans, 124

   MURRAY, G., 178

   My country, right or wrong, 174


   Nation, definition of, 97 _et seq._

   National action, types of, 170;
     genius, 139

   Nationalism, 94, 164

   Nationality a psychological problem, 143

   Natural boundaries, 127

   Negro race and leaders, 136

   Negroes and American nation, 126

   Neighbour, who is our? 298

   Newspapers in national life, 133

   Normans, 238

   North Sea outrage, 192

   Northmen, 238


   OLIVIER, Sir S., 244

   Organic and higher unity, 157

   Organisation, types of, 150;
     from above, 153;
     informal and formal, 197

   Organism, contractual, 173

   Outcastes, 85


   PAINE, 25

   Paradox of group life, 20

   Parliamentary traditions, 191

   Patriarchal system, 234

   Patriotism, 54, 164, 177;
     disparaged, 181

   PEARSON C. H., 257

   PEARSON, KARL, 258

   Pelasgians, 247

   PETRIE, FLINDERS, 244, 260

   Philippines, Americans in, 118

   Philosophy of history, 105

   Physical environment and race qualities, 202, 213

   PLATO, 17, 83

   Political philosophy, German, 152

   Populations, increase of, 250

   Practical interests and psychology, 3

   Prestige, 64

   PRICE, COLLIER, 260

   PRICHARD, H. H., 117

   Primitive Societies, 64;
     sympathy, 25

   PRINCE, MORTON, 10, 32

   Progress, ideal of, 185;
     of nations, 273

   Protestanism, distribution of, 115

   Public opinion, 192, 197

   Punans of Borneo, 72


   Race qualities shape institutions, 116;
     endurance of, 121;
     crossing, 241

   Racial differences, 111

   REID, ARCHDALL, 252

   Relations of sciences, 1

   Religion and Reason, 259

   Religious excitement, 27

   RENAN, 4

   Representative institutions, 198

   Responsibility, communal, 68;
     national, 144

   RIPLEY, 115

   Ritual, 92

   Rivalry, national, 167

   Roman Church and celibacy, 254;
     civilization, 284

   ROUSSEAU, 3, 53, 155

   Russian armies, 59


   Satisfactions of group life, 78

   Scandinavian conditions, 237

   SCHAEFFLE, 35

   SEECK, O., 250, 270

   Selection by environment, 209;
     by towns, 253;
     reversed, 257;
     sexual, 260;
     group, 264, 272

   Self-consciousness in crowds, 44;
     of nations, 158, 160, 299

   Sentiment, national, 164

   SIDIS, 32

   SIGHELE, 20

   Social evolution, 211, 288;
     organisation, 204, 211

   _Social Psychology_, 1, 3

   Sociology and psychology, 8

   Solidarity of human race, 185

   Spain depleted, 254

   Sparta depleted, 248

   SPENCER, H., 7

   State and nation, 175

   States, limits of size, 131

   Status to contract, 285

   ST. JOHN, Sir S., 117

   STOLL, 46

   Subraces, 120

   Suggestibility and emotion, 41

   Superiority, intellectual, 263;
     of public opinion, 194;
     racial and cultural, 120

   Sympathetic action, national, 188


   TANCRED DE HAUTEVILLE, 239

   Telepathy, 28

   Tolerance, 294

   TOLSTOI and anarchism, 152

   TOURVILLE, H. DE, 231, 233

   TOWNSEND, MEREDITH, 221

   Tradition in political life, 191

   Tribal conflict, 245;
     consciousness, 159

   Two party system, 190


   Unity of nation, 157

   Utilitarianism, 3


   Value of nationality, 177

   Variability of blended races, 140;
     and progress, 280

   Variation, spontaneous, 209

   VOLNEY on colonists, 226

   Voluntary groups, 77

   _Vue d’ensemble_ in psychology, 2


   WALLACE, A. R., on our ancestors, 120

   War and national unity, 142

   WEBB, SIDNEY, 258

   WELLDON, Bishop, on sons of clergy, 255

   WHETHAM, 262

   Will of the people, 156

   WINGFIELD, STRATFORD, 179

   Womb of peoples, 238

   World communications, 133

   Written Codes, influence of, 271

       *       *       *       *       *

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