Germany is the very type of a perfected aggressive herd, England is
perhaps the most complete example of a socialized herd. Corresponding
with this biological difference is the striking difference in their
history. Germany has modelled her soul upon the wolf’s, and has rushed
through the possibilities of her archetype in fifty feverish years of
development; already she is a finished product, her moral ideal is
fulfilled and leaves her nothing to strive for except the imposition of
it upon the world. England has taken as her model the bee, and still
lags infinitely far behind the fulfilment of her ideal. In the unbroken
security of her land, for near a thousand years, she has leisurely,
perhaps lazily, and with infinite slowness, pursued her path towards a
social integration of an {202} ever closer and deeper kind. She has
stolidly, even stupidly, and always in a grossly practical spirit, held
herself to the task of shaping a society in which free men could live
and yet be citizens. She has had no theory of herself, no consciousness
of her destiny, no will to power. She has had almost no national
heroes, and has always been constitutionally frigid to her great men,
grudging them the material for their experimentations on her people,
indifferent to their expositions of her duty and her imperial destiny,
granting them a chance to die for her with no more encouragement than
an impatient sigh. She has allowed an empire to be won for her by her
restless younger sons, has shown no gratification in their conquests,
and so far from thrilling with the exultation of the conqueror, has
always at the earliest moment set her new dominions at work upon the
problem in which her wholly unromantic absorption has never relaxed.
And after a thousand years she seems as far as ever from her goal. Her
society is irregular, disorganized, inco-ordinate, split into classes
at war with one another, weighted at one end with poverty, squalor,
ignorance, and disease, weighted at the other end by ignorance,
prejudice, and corpulent self-satisfaction. Nevertheless, her patience
is no more shaken by what she is lectured upon as failure than was her
composure by what she was assured was imperial success. She is no less
bound by her fate than is Germany, and must continue her path until
she reaches its infinitely remoter goal. Nations may model themselves
on her expedients, and found the architecture of their liberty on the
tabernacles she has set up by the wayside to rest in for a night—she
will continue on her road unconscious of herself or her greatness,
absent-mindedly polite to genius, pleasantly tickled by prophets with
very loud voices, but apt to go to sleep under {203} sermons, too
awkward to boast or bluster, too composed to seem strong, too dull
to be flattered, too patient to be flurried, and withal inflexibly
practical and indifferent to dreams.
* * * * *
No more perfect illustration of the characteristics of the two nations
could be found than their attitude before the war. England the empiric,
dimly conscious of trouble, was puzzled, restless, and uneasy in the
face of a problem she was threatened with some day having to study;
Germany, the theorist, cool, “objective,” conscious of herself, was
convinced there was no problem at all.
In studying the mind of England in the spirit of the biological
psychologist, it is necessary to keep in mind the society of the bee,
just as in studying the German mind it was necessary to keep in mind
the society of the wolf.
One of the most striking phenomena which observers of the bee have
noticed is the absence of any obvious means of direction or government
in the hive. The queen seems to be valued merely for her functions,
which are in no way directive. Decisions of policy of the greatest
moment appear, as far as we can detect, to arise spontaneously among
the workers, and whether the future is to prove them right or wrong,
are carried out without protest or disagreement. This capacity for
unanimous decisions is obviously connected with the limited mental
development of the individual, as is shown by the fact that in man it
is very much more feeble. In spite of this, the unanimity of the hive
is wonderfully effective and surprisingly successful. Speculators upon
the physiology and psychology of bees have been forced—very tentatively
of course—to imagine that creatures living in such intensely close
communion are able to communicate to one another, and, as it were, to a
common stock, such extremely {204} simple conceptions as they can be
supposed to entertain, and produce, so to say, a communal mind which
comes to have, at any rate in times of crisis, a quasi-independent
existence. The conception is difficult to express in concrete terms,
and even to grasp in more than an occasional intuitive flash. Whether
we are to entertain such a conception or are to reject it, the fact
remains that societies of a very closely communal habit are apt to give
the appearance of being ruled by a kind of common mind—a veritable
spirit of the hive—although no trace of any directive apparatus can be
detected.
A close study of England gives the impression of some agency comparable
with a “spirit of the hive” being at work within it. The impression
is not perhaps to be taken as altogether fantastic, when we remember
how her insular station and her long history have forced upon her a
physical seclusion and unity resembling, though of course far less
complete than, that of the hive. I am of course not unaware that
disquisitions upon the national spirit are very familiar to us. These,
however, are so loosely conceived, so much concerned with purely
conventional personifications of quite imaginary qualities, that I
cannot regard them as referring to the phenomenon I am trying to
describe.
The conception in my mind is that of an old and isolated people,
developing, by the slow mingling and attrition of their ideas, and
needs, and impulses, a certain deeply lying unity which becomes a
kind of “instinct” for national life, and gives to national policy,
without the conscious knowledge of any individual citizen, without the
direction of statesmen, and perhaps in spite of them all, a continuity
of trend, and even an intelligence, by which events may be influenced
in a profoundly important way.
The making of some such assumption, helped as it is by the analogy
of the bee, seems to be {205} necessary when we consider at all
objectively the history of England and her Empire. She has done so
much without any leading, so much in spite of her ostensible leaders,
so often a great policy or a successful stroke has been apparently
accidental. So much of her work that seemed, while it was doing, to
be local and narrow in conception and motive displays at a distance
evidences of design on the great scale. Her contests with Philip
of Spain, with Louis XIV, with Napoleon, and the foundation of her
Colonial Empire, would seem to be the grandiose conceptions of some
supreme genius did we not know how they were undertaken and in what
spirit pursued.
It appears, then, that England has something with which to retort upon
the conscious direction to which Germany owes so much of her strength.
Among the number of embattled principles and counter principles which
this war has brought into the field, we must include as not the least
interesting the duel between conscious national direction on the one
side and unconscious national will and knowledge on the other.
It is quite outside my province to touch upon the diplomatic events
which led up to the war. They seem to me to be irrelevant to the
biological type of analysis we are trying to pursue. There can be no
doubt at all that the ordinary consciousness of the vast majority of
citizens of this country was intensely averse from the idea of war.
Those who were in general bellicose were for the moment decidedly out
of influence. Can we suppose, however, that the deep, still spirit of
the hive that whispers unrecognized in us all had failed to note that
strange, gesticulating object across the North Sea? In its vast, simple
memory would come up other objects that had gone on like that. It would
remember a mailed fist that had been {206} flourished across the Bay
of Biscay three hundred years ago, a little man in shining armour who
had strutted threateningly on the other shore of the Channel, and the
other little man who had stood there among his armies, and rattled his
sabre in the scabbard. It had marked them all down in their time, and
it remembered the old vocabulary. It would turn wearily and a little
impatiently to this new portent over the North Sea. . . . Wise with the
experience of a thousand years, it would know when to strike.
* * * * *
Such deeply buried combined national impulses as we are here glancing
at are far removed from the influence of pacifist or jingo. Any attempt
to define them must be a matter of guesswork and groping, in which the
element of speculation is far in excess of the element of ascertained
fact. It seems, however, that, as in the case of the bee, they concern
chiefly actual decisions of crucial matters of policy. To put this
suggestion in another form, we might say the spirit of the people
makes the great wars, but it leaves the statesman to conduct them. It
may make, therefore, a decision of incredible profundity, launch the
people on the necessary course at the necessary moment, and then leave
them to flounder through the difficulties of their journey as best
they can. Herein is the contrast it presents with the German resource
of conscious direction—superficial, apt to blunder in all the larger,
deeper matters of human nature, but constant, alert, and ingenious in
making immediate use of every available means and penetrating every
department of activity.
During the conduct of war it is only in the simplest, broadest matters
that the spirit of the people can bring its wisdom to bear. One of the
most striking manifestations of it has, for example, been {207} the
way in which it has shown a knowledge that the war would be long and
hard. The bad news has been, in general, received without complaint,
reproach, or agitation, the good news, such as it has been, with a
resolute determination not to exult or rejoice. That so many months
of a deadly war have produced no _popular_ expression of exultation
or dismay is a substantial evidence of moral power, and not the less
impressive for being so plainly the work of the common man himself.
Such manifestations of the spirit of the people are rare, and meet with
very little encouragement from those who have access to the public.
It is astonishing how absent the gift of interpretation seems to be.
A few, a very few, stand out as being able to catch those whispers of
immemorial wisdom; many seem to be occupied in confusing them with a
harsh and discordant clamour of speech.
* * * * *
If we are correct in our analogy of the bee and the wolf, England
has one great moral advantage over Germany, namely, that there is in
the structure of her society no inherent obstacle to perfect unity
among her people. The utmost unity Germany can compass is that of the
aggressive type, which brings with it a harsh, non-altruistic relation
among individuals, and can yield its full moral value only during the
maintenance of successful attack. England, on the other hand, having
followed the socialized type of gregariousness, is free to integrate
her society to an indefinite extent. The development of the altruistic
relation among her individuals lies in her natural path. Her system of
social segregation is not necessarily a rigid one, and if she can bring
about an adequate acceleration of the perfectly natural consolidation
towards which she is, and has slowly been, tending, she will {208}
attain access to a store of moral power literally inexhaustible,
and will reach a moral cohesion which no hardship can shake, and an
endurance which no power on earth can overcome.
These are no figures of speech, but plain biological fact, capable
of immediate practical application and yielding an immediate result.
It must be admitted that she has made little progress towards this
consummation since the beginning of the war. Leaders, including not
only governing politicians but also those who in any way have access
to public notice, tend to enjoin a merely conventional unity, which is
almost functionless in the promotion of moral strength. It is not much
more than an agreement to say we are united; it produces no true unity
of spirit and no power in the individual to deny himself the indulgence
of his egoistic impulses in action and in speech, and is therefore as
irritating as it is useless. It is unfortunate that the education and
circumstances of many public men deny them any opportunity of learning
the very elementary principles which are necessary for the development
of a nation’s moral resources. Occasionally one or another catches an
intuitive glimpse of some fragment of the required knowledge, but never
enough to enable him to develop any effective influence. For the most
part their impulses are as likely to be destructive of the desired
effect as favourable to it. In the past England’s wars have always been
conducted in an atmosphere of disunion, of acrimony, and of criticism
designed to embarrass the Government rather than, as it professes, to
strengthen the country. It is a testimony to the moral sturdiness of
the people, and to the power and subtlety of the spirit of the hive,
that success has been possible in such conditions. When one remembers
how England has flourished on domestic discord in {209} critical
times, one is tempted to believe that she derives some mysterious
power from such a state, and that the abolition of discord might not
be for her the advantageous change it appears so evidently to be.
Consideration, however, must show that this hypothesis is inadmissible,
and that England has won through on these occasions in spite of the
handicap discord has put upon her. In the present war, tough and hard
as is her moral fibre, she will need every element of her power to
avoid the weariness and enfeeblement that will otherwise come upon her
before her task is done.
Throughout the months of warfare that have already passed no evidence
has become public of any recognition that the moral power of a
nation depends upon causes which can be identified, formulated, and
controlled. It seems to be unknown that that domination of egoistic
impulses by social impulses which we call a satisfactory morale is
capable of direct cultivation as such, that by it the resources of the
nation are made completely available to the nation’s leaders, that
without it every demand upon the citizen is liable to be grudgingly met
or altogether repudiated.
We are told by physicians that uninstructed patients are apt to insist
upon the relief of their symptoms, and to care nothing for the cure
of their diseases, that a man will demand a bottle of medicine to
stop the pain of an ulcer in his stomach, but will refuse to allow
the examination that would establish the nature of his disease. The
statesman embarrassed by the manifestations of an imperfect morale
seems to incline to a similar method. When he finds he cannot get
soldiers at the necessary rate, he would invent a remedy for that
particular symptom. When he has difficulties in getting one or another
industrial class to suspend its charters in the interests of the State,
he must have a new {210} and special nostrum for that. When he would
relax the caution of the capitalist or restrain the wastefulness of the
self-indulgent, again other remedies must be found. And so he passes
from crisis to crisis, never knowing from moment to moment what trouble
will break out next, harassed, it is to be supposed, by the doubt
whether his stock of potions and pills will hold out, and how long
their very moderate efficiency will continue.
None of these troubles is a disease in itself; all are evidences
of an imperfect national morale, and any attempt to deal with them
that does not reach their common cause will necessarily therefore be
unsatisfactory and impermanent.
The sole basis of a satisfactory morale in a people of the social type
that obtains in England is a true national unity, which is therefore
the singular and complete remedy for all the civil difficulties
incident upon a great and dangerous war.
* * * * *
It is impossible to form any guess whether England will keep to her
traditional methods or will depart so far from them as to take a bold
and comprehensive view of her present and her growing moral needs. A
carefully conceived and daringly carried out organization of a real
national unity would have no great difficulty in a country so rich in
practical genius; it would make an end once for all of every internal
difficulty of the State, and would convert the nation into an engine of
war which nothing could resist.
The more probable and the characteristic event will be a mere
continuation in the old way. It will exemplify our usual and often
admirable enough contempt for theoretical considerations and dreams,
our want of interest in knowledge and foresight, our willingness to
take any risk rather than endure the horrid pains of thought. {211}
When we remember how costly is our traditional method, how long and
painful it makes the way, how doubtful it even makes the goal, it is
impossible for the most philosophic to restrain a sigh for the needless
suffering it entails, and a thrill of alarm for the dangers it gives
our path, the darkness around us and ahead, the unimaginable end.
* * * * *
To the student, the end of the chapter is a chance to turn from the
study of detail and allow his mind to range through a larger atmosphere
and over a longer sequence. Closing our small chapter, we also may
look at large over the great expanse of the biological series in
whose illimitable panorama the war that covers our nearer skies with
its blood-red cloud is no bigger than a pin point. As we contemplate
in imagination the first minute spot of living jelly that crept and
hungered in the mud, we can see the interplay of its necessities and
its powers already pushing it along the path at the end of which we
stand. Inherent in the dot of magic substance that was no longer mere
carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sulphur, and a little phosphorus,
was the capacity to combine with its fellows and to profit by the
fellowship, however loose. In the slow process of time combination
brought freedom which, just like ours, was freedom to vary and,
varying, to specialize. So in time great States of cells grew up, their
individual citizen cells specialized to the finest pitch, perfect
in communion with one another, co-ordinate in all their activities,
incorporated with the State.
These new and splendid organizations, by the very fact of giving
freedom to the individual cells, had lost it themselves. Still, they
retained their capacity for combination, and where the need of {212}
freedom was greatest they found it again in a new combination on a
bigger scale. Thus again was obtained freedom to vary, to specialize,
to react. Over the world fellowships of all grades and almost all
types of creatures sprang up. Specialization, communion, co-ordination
again appeared on the new plane. It was as if Nature, to protect her
children against herself, was trying to crowd as much living matter
into one unit as she could. She had failed with her giant lizards,
with the mammoth and the mastodon. She would try a new method which
should dispense with gross physical aggregations, but should minister
to the same needs and afford the same powers. The body should be left
free, the mind alone should be incorporated in the new unit. The
non-material nexus proved as efficient as the physical one had been.
The flock, the herd, the pack, the swarm, new creatures all, flourished
and ranged the world. Their power depended on the capacity for
intercommunication amongst their members and expanded until the limits
of this were reached. As long as intercommunication was limited the
full possibilities of the new experiment were concealed, but at length
appeared a creature in whom this capacity could develop indefinitely.
At once a power of a new magnitude was manifest. Puny as were his
individuals, man’s capacity for communication soon made him master of
the world. The very quality, however, which gave him success introduced
a new complication of his fate. His brain power allowed him to speak
and understand and so to communicate and combine more effectively
than any other animal; his brain power gave him individuality and
egoism, and the possibility of varied reaction which enabled him to
obey the voice of instinct after the fashion of his own heart. All
combination therefore was irregular, inco-ordinate, and only very
slowly progressive. He has even at {213} times wandered into blind
paths where the possibility of progressive combination is lost.
Nevertheless the needs and capacities that were at work in the primeval
amœba are at work in him. In his very flesh and bones is the impulse
towards closer and closer union in larger and larger fellowships.
To-day he is fighting his way towards that goal, fighting for the
perfect unit which Nature has so long foreshadowed, in which there
shall be a complete communion of its members, unobstructed by egoism
or hatred, by harshness or arrogance or the wolfish lust for blood.
That perfect unit will be a new creature, recognizable as a single
entity; to its million-minded power and knowledge no barrier will be
insurmountable, no gulf impassable, no task too great.
{214} POSTSCRIPT OF 1919
PREJUDICE IN TIME OF WAR.
With the exception of the two preliminary essays, the foregoing
chapters were written in the autumn of 1915. As the chief purpose of
the book was to expound the conception that psychology is a science
practically useful in actual affairs, it was inevitable that a great
deal of the exemplary matter by which it was attempted to illustrate
the theoretical discussion should be related to the war of 1914–1918.
Rich, however, as this subject was in material with which to illustrate
a psychological inquiry, it presented also the great difficulty of
being surrounded and permeated by prejudices of the most deeply
impassioned kind, prejudices, moreover, in one direction or another
from which no inhabitant of one of the belligerent countries could
have the least expectation of being free. To yield to the temptation
offered by the psychological richness of war themes might thus be to
sacrifice the detachment of mind and coolness of judgment without which
scientific investigation is impossible. It had to be admitted, in fact,
that there were strong grounds for such epistemological pessimism, and
it will perhaps be useful in a broad way to define some of these here.
In normal times a modern nation is made up of a society in which no
regard is paid to moral unity, and in which therefore common feeling
is to {215} a great extent unorganized and inco-ordinate. In such
a society the individual citizen cannot derive from the nation as a
whole the full satisfaction of the needs special to him as a gregarious
animal. The national feeling he experiences when at home among his
fellows is too vague and remote to call forth the sense of moral vigour
and security that his nature demands. As has already been pointed
out[S] the necessary consequence is the segregation of society into
innumerable minor groups, each constituting in itself a small herd, and
dispensing to its members the moral energy that in a fully organized
society would come from the nation as a whole. Of such minor herds some
are much more distinct from the common body than others. Some engage a
part only of the life of their members, so that the individual citizen
may belong to a number of groups and derive such moral energy as he
possesses from a variety of sources. Thus in a fully segregated society
in time of peace the moral support of the citizen comes from his social
class and his immediate circle, his professional associations, his
church, his chapel, his trade union and his clubs, rather than directly
from the nation in which he is a unit. Indeed, so far from looking
to the nation at large for the fulfilment of its natural function of
providing “all hope, all sustainment, all reward,” he is apt to regard
it as embodied by the tax-gatherer, the policeman, and the bureaucrat,
at its best remote and indifferent, at its worst hostile and oppressive.
[S] Pp. 137, 138 _supra_.