The Group Mind Part 20

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 cla.s.ses 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 cla.s.ses of the upper part of the scale.

They tend, in short, to produce cla.s.ses 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 cla.s.ses. 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 compet.i.tion 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 emanc.i.p.ation 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 compet.i.tion of ideas and of the inst.i.tutions in which ideas become embodied, and the selection for survival of those ideas and inst.i.tutions 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 inst.i.tutions 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 inst.i.tutions and reject their ideas with scorn. They are ready to learn from others, to let the ideas current among other peoples enter into compet.i.tion with native-born ideas; and so the number and variety of competing elements increases and the intensity of the compet.i.tion waxes ever keener. Every idea that const.i.tutes 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 inst.i.tution, 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 emanc.i.p.ation of all human faculties, so that they enter into the freest possible compet.i.tion 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. .h.i.therto outside it; and each new admission, as of j.a.pan 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 compet.i.tion of ever increasing severity which is the princ.i.p.al 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, compet.i.tion, 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 cla.s.ses, by the success of the lower cla.s.ses in forcing a series of concessions from the ruling cla.s.ses. This is a very imperfect and partial view of the process. If the ruling cla.s.ses 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 cla.s.ses 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 cla.s.ses, 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 cla.s.ses, free trade and cheap food, old age pensions; all measures for raising the standard of life of the labouring cla.s.ses 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 ill.u.s.trated 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 a.s.sured.

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 pa.s.sions with himself, with equal claims upon justice and freedom and all that makes the humanity of man.

It only remains to point out the part in human life of a new factor of progress which promises to eclipse all others in importance. The main theme of my earlier work[153] was that only through increase of knowledge of others is each man's knowledge of himself slowly built up and enriched, until it renders him capable of enlightened self-direction. So the main theme of this book is the development of the group mind, the increase of its self-knowledge and of its power of self-direction through increase of knowledge of other human societies.

The age of progress through which the world has recently pa.s.sed was an age of progress due to increase of human intercourse and consequent increasing understanding by each nation of other nations and peoples.

This better knowledge of other peoples is now reacting upon the self-knowledge of each nation, rapidly enriching it. Each of the great nations is beginning to understand itself, and to take thought for the morrow in the light of this self-knowledge; and this increase of national self-knowledge, this enrichment of national self-consciousness, is the great new factor which alone can secure the further progress of mankind. We saw in an earlier chapter that a nation is essentially the realization of an idea, the idea of a nation, that only in so far as the idea of the nation exists and operates in the minds of the members of the nation, controlling their conduct and directing it to actions having reference to the nation as a whole, does a nation come into and continue in existence. The self-consciousness of nations is therefore not a new factor in their life. But their self-consciousness is now becoming reflective and immensely richer in content; so much so that it promises to operate virtually as a new factor of tremendous efficiency.

We may ill.u.s.trate the influence of this new factor by reverting again to the a.n.a.logy between the mind of the individual and the mind of the nation which we developed at some length in an earlier chapter. In the developing individual, as in the evolving animal series, the development of self-consciousness is the condition of the development of true volition. Before self-consciousness and a self-regarding sentiment are developed, conduct is determined by feelings and impulses or by ideas and the desires they arouse, either some one desire rising alone to consciousness and issuing at once in action, or through a conflict of impulses and desires, some one of which eventually predominates over the others and determines action; but action issuing from such a conflict of impulses and desires is not true volition. Action is truly volitional only when the ideal of the self in relation to the idea of the end to be achieved by each of the conflicting tendencies determines the issue of the conflict.

In the mental life of nations, all those conflicts of ideas, of parties, of principles and of systems, in which each strives to predominate over and displace others, and by natural selection of which (the death of the many less fit, the survival of the few better or more fit) the progress of recent centuries has been chiefly due; all these conflicts have been more or less blind conflicts, in which the idea of the whole nation, in relation to the end to be achieved by each of the conflicting tendencies, has generally played but a small part and a part that often has not made strongly for progress. National actions were in the main impulsive and instinctive actions, like those of young children or the higher animals. And for this reason-that nations had too little true self-knowledge, and had not developed a true and rich ideal of national life-the self-consciousness of nations was too poor in content to serve as the guide of actions making for progress.

In the individual man, it is the growing richness and accuracy of self-knowledge which alone enables him to direct his actions effectively to secure his own welfare and to improve his character and powers. Just so in nations the rapid growth of their self-knowledge and the enrichment of their ideals of national life which characterise the present time must render their self-consciousness a far more efficient guide of all national deliberation and action.

The self-knowledge of the individual grows chiefly, as we have seen, through intercourse with his fellows; his idea of himself develops in fulness and accuracy in the light of his knowledge of other selves, and this knowledge in turn develops in the light of his increasing knowledge of himself. Just so the self-knowledge of nations is now growing rapidly through the intercourse of each nation with others, an intercourse far freer, more multiplex, than ever before in the history of the world; a result largely of the improved means of communication which we owe to science and the spirit of inquiry.

Perhaps the most striking ill.u.s.tration of the operation of this new factor is the rapid spread in recent years of parliamentary inst.i.tutions. The parliamentary system of national organisation was worked out in these islands by long centuries of more or less blind conflict of ideas and parties and inst.i.tutions; and now other nations in rapid succession have observed and admired the system and have deliberately and self-consciously adopted it; and still the process goes on, as recently in Russia.

j.a.pan offers a striking ill.u.s.tration of the way in which the new factor operates. An intelligent people in which the national sentiment was strong, but in which national self-knowledge was rudimentary because of the isolation of the nation, was suddenly brought into contact with other peoples; through observation of them, it learnt its own deficiencies and set about deliberately to remedy them in the light of its new knowledge; and in doing so has reorganised itself from top to bottom.

In England also national self-knowledge is beginning rapidly to increase in accuracy and extent. We have begun to compare ourselves at all points with other nations, and are no longer content with the good old creed, that everything British is best. We are learning in this way our weaknesses; and the knowledge is becoming a main cause of accelerated progress. The best ill.u.s.tration is, perhaps, the present stir over educational questions, which is directly due to the increase of national self-knowledge resulting from the observation of other nations.

But in the future our national self-consciousness will be enriched and fitted for the guidance of the national will in a still more effective manner than by the knowledge of our weaknesses being forced upon us by the nations who are our rivals in the world. In many directions-by the historians, the biologists, the anthropologists, the statisticians-data are being gathered for a science of society whose sure indications will enable us deliberately to guide the further evolution of the nation towards the highest ideal of a nation that we can conceive. In this way, it may be hoped, the modern nations will be able to avoid that danger which has destroyed the great nations of the past, and which has been the dark cloud shadowing the brilliance of the age of progress that resulted from increasing human intercourse and mutual understanding. In this way the free play of the spirit of inquiry, which in all earlier ages has been highly dangerous to the stability of nations and which, while it was the sole cause of progress, nevertheless destroyed many of the nations whom it impelled upon that path, will make for a greatly accelerated progress; and, at the same time, it will enable us to secure, by deliberate voluntary control, the bases of society, which in all previous ages have rested solely upon custom, instinct, and the religious sanctions.

Not by any voluntary surrender of the reason, not by any subjugation of the intellect to the dominion of obscure transcendental ideas, such as is preached by Benjamin Kidd, Chatterton-Hill[154] and others who have realized the disintegrating effects of intellect on earlier societies, but by a more strenuous use of our intellectual faculties, and by a growth of knowledge, especially a knowledge of the laws of human societies, will the stability and further evolution of nations be maintained.

The nations whose progress will rest upon this basis will be in a position very different from that of the older societies to which the emanc.i.p.ation of the intellect was fatal. They fell for lack of knowledge of natural laws, as soon as the progress of intellectual inquiry had weakened their instinctive and customary bases. The modern nations may reasonably hope that they are within sight of knowledge which will enable them to avoid these dangers and to continue their progress during an indefinitely long period. They may even hope to progress, not only in respect of the intellectual and moral tradition, but also in respect of racial qualities; for a better knowledge of the factors at work and of the laws of heredity will enable them to put an end to the influences now making for race deterioration and to replace them by others of the opposite tendency.

Such national progress will be truly teleological; it will be a progress whose direction will be determined by the desire of an ideal end present to the consciousness of all and striven after by the collective deliberation and volition of the nation.

Thus the group spirit, rising above the level of a narrow patriotism that regards with hostility all its rivals, recognising that only through the further development of the collective life of nations can man rise to higher levels than he has yet known, becomes the supreme agent of human progress.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] _History of European Thought in the 19th Century._

[2] _Political Thought in England from Bacon to Halifax_, Home University Library, p. 49.

[3] Essay on "The Nature of Democracy" in _Popular Government_, London 1885.

[4] _Psychology, the Study of Behaviour_, Home University Library, London, 1912.

[5] _Community_, by R. M. Maciver, London, 1917.

[6] _In Body and Mind_, London, 1911.

[7] _Op. cit._ p. 76.

[8] _Op. cit._ p. 77.

[9] _Op. cit._ p. 90.