The Group Mind Part 7

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 a.s.serting one extreme view and pouring scornful epithets upon the other extreme view.

A princ.i.p.al 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 const.i.tution, 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 const.i.tution 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 acc.u.mulates 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, inst.i.tutions, 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 inst.i.tutions, 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 pa.s.s 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 a.n.a.logous to the part of the physical environment of an animal species, is the innate mental const.i.tution 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 inst.i.tutions 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 ill.u.s.trated, 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 G.o.d, 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 inst.i.tutions 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 ma.s.s 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, j.a.pan. 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 G.o.d; 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 ill.u.s.tration 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 a.s.sumption that linguistic groups are racial groups. Hence recently the term _h.o.m.o 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 _h.o.m.o Alpinus_; the other, chiefly in the south, by the name _h.o.m.o Mediterraneus_. Both are of dark or brunette complexion and the princ.i.p.al 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 ill.u.s.trate 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 a.s.similation 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 role.

The same facts are ill.u.s.trated 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 ma.s.s 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 inst.i.tution or other cultural element that has had a history of this kind will, then, cause a great development in the ma.s.s of individuals of just those innate or racial tendencies of which it is itself the slowly acc.u.mulated 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 h.o.m.ogeneous 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 h.o.m.ogeneous; that is to say, the various elements, the beliefs, customs, inst.i.tutions, 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 inst.i.tutions 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 cla.s.s 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 inst.i.tutions 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 inst.i.tutions, 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 circ.u.mscribed 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 inst.i.tutions, 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 inst.i.tutions. 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 a.s.sure 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 a.s.sert 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 const.i.tution, 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 inst.i.tutions; 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 a.s.similation of English inst.i.tutions 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 c.u.mulative 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 inst.i.tutions 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 a.s.sumptions 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 Palaeolithic men as compared with our own. Our superiority of civilisation is due to slow acc.u.mulation, each generation adding comparatively little to the ma.s.s of intellectual and moral tradition which it inherits and pa.s.ses on to later coming generations. In so far as differences of cultural level are a.s.sociated 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 princ.i.p.al mental differences of the various human stocks were, like their princ.i.p.al 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 const.i.tution 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 ill.u.s.trating the persistence of racial mental differences; and I can bear out his remarks from my own observations in that region.

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

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

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

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

Certainly none of the European nations are racially h.o.m.ogeneous.

Nevertheless, some of them approach h.o.m.ogeneity of innate qualities, or, rather, the degree of heterogeneity is much less in some than in others.

Consider the case of England. Before the Anglo-Saxon invasion the population consisted in all probability of a mixture of the northern fair race with a darker race, probably that of _H. Mediterraneus_, in some proportion that we cannot determine, with small islands of _H.

Alpinus_ or of stocks formed by an earlier blending of this with the Nordic race. The Anglo-Saxon invasion brought great numbers of the pure representatives of the Northern race of closely allied stocks; and these did not confine themselves to any one region, but, entering at many points of the south and east coasts, diffused themselves throughout almost all England, imposing themselves as masters upon those Britons whom they did not drive out. Ever since that time a crossing of the stocks has been going on freely, little hindered by differences of area, language, law, or custom. And, with the exception of small numbers of the Northern stock, Danes and Normans, the population has not received any considerable additions since the Saxon invasion.

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

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

The greater centralisation of France seems to have compensated for the less degree of innate uniformity, so that the French people is hardly, if at all, less truly a nation than our own.

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