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.