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.