at that time by the utterance of {228} all ordinary organs of
expression—public speeches, leading articles and so forth—one
could scarcely have failed to reach the gloomiest conclusions. So
common were ill-will, acrimony, suspicion and intrigue, so often
was apparent self-possession mere languor, and apparent energy mere
querulousness, so strong, in fact, were all the ordinary evidences
of moral disintegration that an actual collapse might have seemed
almost within sight. As a matter of fact, from the very necessities
of her social type, in England the organs of public expression were
characteristically not representative of the national mood; probably
far less than were those of Germany representative of the German
mood. Thus it came about that the actual driving force—the will of
the common man, as inflexible as it was inarticulate—remained intact
behind all the ambiguous manifestations which went forth as the voice
of England. This is the psychological secret of the socialized type
of gregarious animal. As evolved in England to-day, this type cannot
attain to the conscious direction of its destiny, and cannot submit to
the fertilizing discipline of science; it cannot select its agents or
justly estimate their capacity, but it possesses the power of evolving
under pressure a common purpose of great stability. Such a common
purpose is necessarily simple, direct, and barely conscious; high-flown
imperialism and elaborate policies are altogether beyond its range, and
it can scarcely accomplish an intellectual process more complex than
the recognition of an enemy. The conviction that the hostility between
England and Germany was absolute and irreconcilable, and the war a
matter of national life and death, was just such a primitive judgment
as could be arrived at, and it gave rise to a common purpose as stable
as it was simple.[V] {229}
[V] There can be little doubt that national consciousness with
regard to the war was very much less developed in this country
than in Germany. The theory of his country’s purpose in the war
was far less a matter of interest and speculation to the average
Englishman than it was to the average German. The German was far
more fully aware of the relation the situation bore to general
politics and to history, and was much more preoccupied with the
defence of his country’s case by rational methods and accepted
principles, and he displayed from the first great faith in the
value of a propaganda which should appeal to reason. Clumsy and
futile as so much of this intellectual effort was ultimately seen
to be, it did show that the interest in national affairs was more
conscious and elaborate, and stood from the intellectual point of
view at a higher level than it did in England.
The relatively complex national consciousness that is necessary
to evolve a positive movement of national expansion or a definite
policy of colonization and aggrandisement seems to be hostile to the
development of a common purpose of the most powerful kind. Thus we
find moral vigour and stability attaining their greatest strength in a
nation that has no definite theory of its destiny, and that is content
to allow confusion of thought and vagueness of aim to be common and
even characteristic in its public life. In such a people national
consciousness is of the most elementary kind, and only the simplest
conceptions can be effectively apprehended by it. Negative judgments
are in general simpler than positive ones, and the simplest of all,
perhaps, is the identification of an enemy. The history of England
seems to show with remarkable constancy that the national consciousness
has been in its most effective action limited to those elementary
conceptions which have been simple and broad enough to manifest
themselves in a common purpose of great strength and tenacity. England
has, in fact, been made by her enemies. Rightly or wrongly, Philip
of Spain, Louis XIV, Napoleon, Germany, impressed themselves on the
elementary consciousness of England as enemies, and excited in response
a unity of purpose that was characteristically as immune from the
effects of discouragement, disaster and fatigue as it was independent
of reasoned political theory. {230}
Each of these enemies, in contrast with England, had the definite
consciousness of a more or less elaborate political aim, and some of
them embodied principles or methods in advance of those which obtained
in England in corresponding fields. Whatever loftiness of aim they
had availed them no more than their respect for principle and the
intellect, and they all came to regret the mostly inadvertent effect
of their pretensions in exciting the hostility of a people capable
of an essential moral cohesion. The power of England would seem to
have resided almost exclusively in this capacity for developing under
pressure a common purpose. The immense moral energy she has been able
to put forth in a crisis has enabled her to inspire such leaders as
she has needed for the moment, but she has been characteristically
infertile in the production of true leaders who could impose themselves
upon her efficiently. Thus among her great men, for one true leader,
such as Oliver Cromwell, who failed, there have been a score of
successful mouthpieces and instruments of her purpose, such as Pitt
and Wellington. The vigour of her great moments has always been the
product of moral unity induced by the pressure of a supposed enemy,
and therefore it has always tended to die down when the danger has
passed. As the greatness of her leaders has been less a product of
their own genius than that of the moral stimulus which has reached
them from the nation at large, when the stimulus has been withdrawn
with the cessation of danger, these men have almost invariably come
to appear in times of peace of a less dominating capacity than their
performance during the stress of war might have indicated. The great
wars of England have usually, then, been the affair of the common man;
he has supplied the impulse that has made and the moral vigour that
has conducted {231} them, he has created and inspired his leaders and
has endowed his representatives in the field and on the sea with their
stern and enduring pugnacity.
These conclusions have been confirmed by the way in which the war
progressed and came to an end. The war became more and more fully
a contest of moral forces until it ended in the unique event of a
surrender practically unconditional that was not preceded by a total
physical defeat. German morale proved throughout extremely sensitive to
any suspension of the aggressive posture, and showed the unsuitability
of its type in modern conditions by undergoing at the mere threat of
disaster a disintegration so absolute that it must remain a classical
and perfect example in the records of psychology. There can be no doubt
that had there been among her enemies the least understanding of her
moral type and state, her collapse could have been brought about with
comparative ease at a much earlier date. English morale, on the other
hand, seemed actually to be invigorated by defeat, and even remained
untouched by the more serious trials of uninspired and mediocre
direction, of ill-will, petty tyranny, and confusion.
* * * * *
The confrontation in war of two types of social structure differing
so radically and by such clearly defined characters as did Germany
and England was, as has been already suggested, a remarkable instance
of statecraft being forced into a region of very much greater
reality than that in which it usually operates. The historical scale
of events, with its narrow range, its reckoning by dynasties and
parliaments, its judgments in terms of tribal censure and approbation,
was found momentarily to march with the biological scale where
events are measured by the survival or extinction of species, where
time acquires a new meaning, and the individual man, {232} however
conspicuous historically, takes on the insect-like sameness of his
fellows. Here was an experiment set out in Nature’s laboratory, and
for the first time the issues were so narrowly focussed as to be
within the apprehension of the very subjects of the research. The
matter to be tested concerned the whole validity of gregariousness.
Two types were confronted. In one the social habit had taken a form
that limited the participation of the individual in the social unit;
a rigid segregation of the society made it impossible to admit the
moral equality of its members, and resulted in the activities of the
social instinct being available solely through leadership; it was a
led society where internal cohesion and integration were replaced by
what we may call external cohesion—a migratory society developing its
highest manifestations of the herd when it was being successfully led.
In the other type the social habit had tended, however slowly and
incompletely, towards the unlimited participation of the individual in
the social unit. The tendency of the society was towards integration
and internal cohesion; it was therefore unaggressive, refractory to
leadership, and apt to develop its highest herd manifestations when
threatened and attacked. The former enjoyed all the advantages of a
led society. It was tractable, and its leaders could impose upon it a
relative uniformity of outlook and a high standard of general training.
The latter had no advantage save the potentiality—and it was little
more—of unlimited internal cohesion. It was intractable to leadership,
and in consequence knowledge and training were limited and extremely
localized within it; it had no approach to unity of outlook, and its
interests were necessarily concentrated on its internal rather than its
external relations.
If the former type proved the stronger, any progressive evolution of
society in a direction that {233} promised the largest extension of
human powers would become very, improbable; the internal cohesion of
social units would have appeared to be subject to limits, and the most
hopeful prospective solution of human difficulties would have vanished.
Conceivably accidental factors might have decided the issue of the
experiment and left the principle still in doubt. As it happened, every
element of chance that intruded went against the type that ultimately
proved the stronger, and in the final decision the moral element was so
conspicuously more significant than the physical that the experiment
has yielded a result which seems to be singularly conclusive and
unexceptionable.[W]
[W] Anxiety has frequently been expressed since the armistice of
November, 1918, as to whether Germany has properly assimilated the
lesson of her defeat, and undergone the desired change of heart.
In the face of such doubts it is well to remember that there is
another conclusion about the assimilation of which there need
be no anxiety. It is at any rate clearly proved that Germany’s
enemies were able to beat her in spite of all the disadvantages
of exterior lines, divided counsels, divergent points of view
and inadequate preparation. The prestige of invulnerability need
never be allowed again to accumulate about a social group of the
aggressive migratory type, and to sit like an incubus upon a
terrorized world.
The result of the experiment has been decisive, and it is still a
possibility that the progressive integration of society will ultimately
yield a medium in which the utmost needs of the individual and of the
race will be reconciled and satisfied. Had the more primitive social
type—the migratory, aggressive society of leadership and the pack—had
this proved still the master of the less primitive socialized and
integrative type, the ultimate outlook for the race would have indeed
been black. This is by no means to deny that German civilization
had a vigour, a respect for knowledge, and even a benignity within
which comfortable life was possible. But it is to assert that it was
a regression, a choice of the easy path, a surrender to the tamer
platitudes of {234} the spirit that no aggressive vigour could
altogether mask. To live dangerously was supposed to be its ideal, but
dread was the very atmosphere it breathed. Its armies could be thrown
into hysterical convulsions by the thought of the _franc-tireur_, and
the flesh of its leaders made to creep by such naïve and transpontine
machinations as its enemies ambitiously called propaganda. The minds
that could make bugbears out of such material were little likely to
attempt or permit the life of arduous and desperate spiritual adventure
that was in the mind of the philosopher when he called on his disciples
to live dangerously.
This great experiment was conducted under the very eyes of humanity,
and the conditions were unique in this that they would have permitted
the effective intervention of the conscious human will. As it happened
the evolution of society had not reached a stage at which an informed
and scientific statecraft was possible. The experiment, therefore,
went through without any general view of the whole situation being
attained. Had such been possible, there can be no doubt at all that the
war could have been shortened enough to keep the world back from the
neighbourhood of spiritual and even material bankruptcy in which it
finds itself to-day. The armed confrontation of the two types, while it
has yielded a result that may well fill us with hope, took place at a
moment of human evolution when it was bound to be immensely expensive.
Material development had far exceeded social development, mankind, so
to say, had become clever without becoming wise, and the war had to be
fought as a purely destructive effort. Had it come at a later stage of
evolution, so great a mobilization of social power as the war caused
might have been taken advantage of to unify the nation to a completely
coherent structure which the cessation of {235} the external
stimulating pressure would have left firmly and nobly established.
AFTER THE WAR.
The psychological situation left by the conclusion of the war is likely
to attract an increasing amount of attention as time passes, and it may
be of interest to examine it in the light of the principles that we
have been making use of in dealing with the war.
It is a fact fundamental in psychology that the state of war furnishes
the most powerful of all stimuli to the social instinct. It sets in
motion a tide of common feeling by the power of which union and energy
of purpose and self-sacrifice for the good of the social unit become
possible to a degree unknown under any other circumstances. The war
furnished many instances of the almost miraculous efficacy of this
stimulus. Perhaps the most effective example of all, even by the side
of the steely fortitude of France and the adventurous desperation
of England, was the fact that the dying Austrian Empire could be
galvanized for four years into aggressive gestures lifelike beyond
simulation.
The effect of this great liberation of feeling was to supersede the
precarious equilibrium of society by a state very much more stable.
Before the war moral power had come to the individual chiefly from the
lesser herds in which he took part, and but little from the nation as
a whole. Society had the appearance of stability because the forces
at work were relatively small in proportion to the inertia of the
whole fabric. But the actual firmness of the structure was small,
and the individual led a life emotionally thin and tame because the
social feelings were localized and faint. With the outbreak of war the
national unit became the source of moral power, social feeling became
wide in its {236} basis and strong in intensity. To the individual
life became more intense and more significant, and in essence, in spite
of horror and pain, better worth living; the social fabric, moreover,
displayed a new stability and a capacity for resisting disturbances
that would have effectually upset its equilibrium in time of peace.
The art of government, in fact, became actually easier to practise,
though it had a superficial appearance of being more difficult from the
comparative rapidity with which the progress of events unmasked the
quack. Successful practitioners were, it will be remembered, always
ready to call attention to the unprecedented difficulty of their
labours, while shrewdly enough profiting by the fact that in the actual
tasks of government—the creation of interest, the development of unity
and the nourishing of impulse—their difficulties had wholly disappeared.
With the cessation of war this great stream of moral power began
rapidly to dry up at its source. Thinly continuing to trickle for
a time as it were from habit, it is already almost dry. There is
doubtless a tendency among responsible personages to persuade
themselves that it still flows with all the power that made the war a
veritable golden age of government. Such a persuasion is natural and
fully to be expected. It would be difficult for those who have directed
with whatever want of skill a power so great to avoid coming in time to
be a little confused between the direction of power and the production
of it, and to think that they still command the moral resources which
war gave so abundantly. Such a mistake is likely to prove one of the
elements of danger, though perhaps only a minor one, in the present
situation.
Western society, with perhaps even Western civilization, is in a
situation of great interest to the sociologist, and probably also of
some considerable {237} danger. There are certain chief elements of
danger which we may attempt to define.
First, with the end of the war the mental orientation of the individual
has undergone a great change. National feeling is no longer able to
supply him with moral vigour and interest. He must turn once more
to his class for what the nation as a whole has been so much more
efficiently supplying. Life has regained for him much of its old
tameness, the nation in which he has lived vividly during the war is
resuming its vagueness and becoming once more merely the state, remote
and quasi-hostile. But the war has shown him what interest and moral
vigour are in life, and he will not easily accept the absence of these;
he has acquired the appetite for them, he has, so to speak, tasted
blood. The tasteless social dietary of pre-war England is not likely to
satisfy his invigorated palate.
Secondly, the transition from war to peace is in an imperfectly
organized society a process necessarily dangerous because it involves
the change from a condition of relative moral stability to one of
relative moral instability. To get back to the precise state of
delicately balanced but essentially insecure equilibrium of society
before the war would seem, in fact, already shown to be impossible.
The war ran its course without any attempt being made to replace the
system of class segregation, through which the social instinct works
in our society, by any more satisfactory mechanism. Before the war
class segregation had reached a condition in which the individual
had ceased to be conscious of the national unit as possessing any
practical significance for himself while his class was the largest
unit he was capable of recognizing as a source of moral power and
an object of effort. There was no class which as such and {238} in
relation to other classes was capable of submitting to any restraint or
self-sacrifice in the interests of the nation as a whole. Of course,
in each case it was possible for a class by a very easy process of
rationalization to show that its interests were those of the nation at
large, but this was merely the effect of the moral blindness to which
class segregation inevitably leads. Since every one of us is classified
somehow, it is not easy to grasp how completely class segregation
obtains throughout our society, and how fully in times of peace it
replaces national unity. Those occupying the lower social strata may
be very fully aware of the intensity of class feeling and how complete
a substitute for national feeling it affords at the upper end of the
social scale, just as those in the upper strata may be very much alive
to the class bitterness of their inferiors; but it is difficult for
both to believe how complete are segregation and its consequences
throughout the whole social gamut.
It is to this state of society that the return from the relative unity
of war must be. The few conventional restraints upon the extremity of
class feeling that were in any kind of activity before the war have
been very greatly weakened. Change has become familiar, violence has
been glorified in theory and shown to be effective in practice, the
prestige of age has been undermined, and the sanctity of established
things defied.
It would, indeed, seem that to re-establish a society based solely on
class segregation, and relying upon the maintenance by it of a state of
equilibrium, will be a matter of some difficulty, and it will probably
be a mistake to depend altogether on fatigue, on the relaxation of
feeling, and on the celebration of victory as stabilizing forces.
Thirdly, there is no reason to suppose that the {239} tendencies of
society which made possible so huge a disaster as the war have been in
any way corrected by it. Great efforts are being made at present to
establish conditions which will prevent future wars. Such efforts are
entirely admirable, but it must be remembered that after all war is no
more than a symptom of social defects. If, therefore, war as a symptom
is merely suppressed, valuable as that will be in controlling the waste
and destruction of life and effort, indeed indispensable to any kind of
vigorous mental life, it may leave untouched potentialities of disaster
comparable even with war itself.
It was pointed out many years ago in the essays incorporated in this
book that human society tends to restrict influence and leadership to
minds of a certain type, and that these minds tend to have special
and characteristic defects. Thus human affairs are in general under
the direction of a class of thought that is not merely not the best
of which the mind is capable, but tends to certain characteristic
fallacies and to certain characteristic kinds of blindness and
incapacity. The class of mind to which power in society gravitates
I have ventured to describe as the stable type. Its characteristic
virtues and deficiencies have been described more than once in
this book, and we need do no more here than recall its vigour and
resistiveness, its accessibility to the voice of the herd and its
resistiveness to and even horror of the new in feeling and experience.
The predominance of this type has been rigorously maintained throughout
the war. This is why the war has been fought with a mere modicum of
help from the human intellect, and why the result must be regarded as
a triumph for the common man rather than for the ruling classes. The
war was won by the inflexible resolution of the common citizen and
the common soldier. No {240} country has shown itself to be directed
by the higher powers of the intellect, and nowhere has the continued
action of clear, temperate, vigorous, and comprehensive thought made
itself manifest, because even the utmost urgency of warfare failed
to dislodge the stable-minded type from its monopoly of prestige and
power. What the necessities of war could not do there is certainly
no magic in peace to bring about. Society, therefore, is setting out
upon what is generally regarded as a new era of hope without the
defect that made the war possible having in any degree been corrected.
Certain supposedly immutable principles such as democracy and national
self-determination are regarded by some as being mankind’s guarantees
against disaster. To the psychologist such principles represent
mere vague and fluctuating drifts of feeling, arising out of deep
instinctive needs, but not fully and powerfully embodying such; as
automatic safeguards of society their claims are altogether bogus, and
cannot be ranked as perceptibly higher than those of the ordinary run
of political nostrums and doctrinaire specifics. Society can never be
safe until the direction of it is entrusted only to those who possess
high capacity rigorously trained and acute sensitiveness to experience
and to feeling.