The Group Mind Part 6

PART II

THE NATIONAL MIND AND CHARACTER

CHAPTER VI

INTRODUCTORY

WHAT IS A NATION?

Having studied the most general principles of the collective mental life, as exemplified in the two extreme forms of the unorganised crowd and the highly organised army, having briefly noted the princ.i.p.al cla.s.ses 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 cla.s.sify populations as falling definitely within or outside the cla.s.s.

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 inst.i.tutions 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 const.i.tute 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 a.n.a.lysed by formulae, 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 pa.s.sionately 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 a.s.sertion 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 pa.s.sionately 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 ill.u.s.trates 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 const.i.tutes 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 ill.u.s.trates 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, pa.s.sionately 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 pa.s.sionate 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 a.n.a.lysis 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 Fouillee 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 a.s.sumptions and slipshod reasoning. It was an elaborate attempt "to lay the intellect to rest on a pillow of obscure ideas."

The task of scientific a.n.a.lysis and research was avoided by bringing in, as the main explanatory principles or causal agencies, vaguely conceived ent.i.ties regarded as presiding over the development of peoples-such ent.i.ties 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 G.o.ds of various nations were popular conceptions of this order; the G.o.ds 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 cla.s.s the "good old German G.o.d" 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 fict.i.tious 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 ma.s.s 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 ma.s.s 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 role in history a.s.signed 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 princ.i.p.al 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 a.s.sertion, 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 pa.s.s 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 a.s.sumptions 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 cla.s.ses 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 Fouillee 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 inst.i.tutions. 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 princ.i.p.al 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 h.o.m.ogeneity of the group, some similarity of mental const.i.tution of the individuals composing it, is the prime condition. The h.o.m.ogeneity 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 h.o.m.ogeneity, 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 inst.i.tutions, 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 inst.i.tutions, especially educational inst.i.tutions, adapted to promote the intellectual and moral development of each generation of a people, can be established among it, then the influence of such inst.i.tutions will so vastly predominate over that of innate qualities that these become a negligible quant.i.ty. From this it would follow that we should expect to see any two or more populations endowed with similar inst.i.tutions 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 a.s.sociation 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 const.i.tution 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?