leave the choice of those who practise it to accident, to heredity, or
to the possession of the wholly irrelevant gifts that take the fancy
of the crowd. The result of such methods of selection is not even a
mere random choice from the whole population, but shows a steady drift
towards the establishment in power of a type in certain ways almost
characteristically unfitted for the tasks of government. The fact that
man has always shirked the heavy intellectual and moral {241} labour
of founding a scientific and truly expert statecraft may contain a
germ of hope for the future, in that it shows where effort may be
usefully expended. But it cannot but justify uneasiness as to the
immediate future of society. The essential factor in society is the
subordination of the individual will to social needs. Our statecraft is
still ignorant of how this can be made a fair and honest bargain to the
individual and to the state, and recent events have convinced a very
large proportion of mankind that accepted methods of establishing this
social cohesion have proved to them at any rate the worst of bargains.
THE INSTABILITY OF CIVILIZATION.
The foregoing considerations are enough, perhaps, to make one wonder
whether, after all, Western civilization may not be about to follow
its unnumbered predecessors into decay and dissolution. There can be
no doubt that such a suspicion is oppressing many thoughtful minds at
the present time. It is not likely to be dispelled by the contemplation
of history or by the nature of recent events. Indeed, the view can be
maintained very plausibly that all civilizations must tend ultimately
to break down, that they reach sooner or later a period when their
original vigour is worn out, and then collapse through internal
disruption or outside pressure. It is even believed by some that
Western civilization already shows the evidences of decline which in
its predecessors have been the forerunners of destruction. When we
remember that our very short period of recorded history includes the
dissolution of civilizations so elaborate as those of the Chaldeans,
the Assyrians, the Egyptians, and of the Incas, that a social structure
so complex as that but lately disclosed in Crete could leave no trace
in human {242} memory but a faint and dubious whisper of tradition,
and that the dawn of history finds civilization already old, we can
scarcely resist the conclusion that social life has, more often than
one can bear to contemplate, swung laboriously up to a meaningless
apogee and then lapsed again into darkness. We know enough of man to
be aware that each of these unnumbered upward movements must have been
infinitely painful, must have been at least as fruitful of torture,
oppression, and anguish as the ones of which we know the history, and
yet each was no more than the swing of a pendulum and a mere fruitless
oscillation landing man once more at his starting point, impoverished
and broken, with perhaps more often than not no transmissible vestige
of his greatness.
If we limit our view to the historical scale of time and the
exclusively human outlook, we seem almost forced to accept the dreadful
hypothesis that in the very structure and substance of all human
constructive social efforts there is embodied a principle of death,
that there is no progressive impulse but must become fatigued, that
the intellect can provide no permanent defence against a vigorous
barbarism, that social complexity is necessarily weaker than social
simplicity, and that fineness of moral fibre must in the long run
succumb to the primitive and coarse.
Let us consider, however, what comments may be made on this hypothesis
in view of the biological conceptions of man which have been put
forward in this book. At the same time an opportunity is afforded to
put in a more continuous form the view of society that has necessarily
been touched on so far in an interrupted and incidental way.
Whatever may be one’s view as to the larger pretensions that are
put forward as to the significance and destiny of man, there can
be no doubt {243} that it is indispensable to recognize the full
implications of his status as an animal completely indigenous in the
zoological series. The whole of his physical and mental structure is
congruous with that of other living beings, and is constantly giving
evidence of the complicated network of relationships by which he is
bound to them.
The accumulation of knowledge is steadily amplifying the range over
which this congruity with the natural order can be demonstrated, and is
showing more and more fully that practical understanding and foresight
of man’s behaviour are attained in proportion as this hypothesis of the
complete “naturalness” of man is adhered to.
The endowment of instinct that man possesses is in every detail cognate
with that of other animals, provides no element that is not fully
represented elsewhere, and above all—however little the individual
man may be inclined to admit it—is in no degree less vigorous and
intense or less important in relation to feeling and activity than it
is in related animals. This supremely important side of mental life,
then, will be capable of continuous illustration and illumination by
biological methods. It is on the intellectual side of mental life that
man’s congruity with other animals is least obvious at first sight.
The departure from type, however, is probably a matter of degree only,
and not of quality. Put in the most general terms, the work of the
intellect is to cause delay between stimulus and response, and under
circumstances to modify the direction of the latter. We may suppose
all stimulation to necessitate response, and that such response must
ultimately occur with undiminished total energy. The intellect,
however, is capable of delaying such response, and within limits of
directing its path so that it may superficially show no relation to
the stimulus of which it is the discharge. If we extend {244} the
word stimulation to include the impulses arising from instinct, and
grant that the delaying and deflecting influence of the intellect
may be indefinitely enlarged, we have an animal in which instinct
is as vigorous as in any of its primitive ancestors, but which is
superficially scarcely an instinctive animal at all. Such is the case
of man. His instinctive impulses are so greatly masked by the variety
of response that his intellect opens to him that he has been commonly
regarded until quite recent times as a practically non-instinctive
creature, capable of determining by reason his conduct and even his
desires. Such a conception made it almost impossible to gain any help
in human psychology from the study of other animals, and scarcely less
difficult to evolve a psychology which would be of the least use in
foreseeing and controlling the behaviour of man.
No understanding of the causes of stability and instability in human
society is possible until the undiminished vigour of instinct in man is
fully recognized.
The significance of this rich instinctive endowment lies in the fact
that mental health depends upon instinct finding a balanced but
vigorous expression in functional activity. The response to instinct
may be infinitely varied, and may even, under certain circumstances, be
not more than symbolic without harm to the individual as a social unit,
but there are limits beyond which the restriction of it to indirect and
symbolic modes of expression cannot be carried without serious effects
on personality. The individual in whom direct instinctive expression
is unduly limited acquires a spiritual meagreness which makes him the
worst possible social material.
All recorded history shows that society developing under the conditions
that have obtained up {245} to the present time—developing, that is
to say, spontaneously under the random influences of an uncontrolled
environment of the individual—does not permit to the average man
that balanced instinctive expression which is indispensable for the
formation of a rich, vigorous, and functionally active personality.
It has been one of my chief efforts in this book to show that the
social instinct, while in itself the very foundation of society,
takes, when its action is undirected and uncontrolled, a principal
part in restricting the completeness and efficacy of the social
impulse. This instinct is doubly responsible for the defects which
have always inhered in society through the personal impoverishment
of its individual constituents. In the first place, it is the great
agent by which the egoistic instincts are driven into dwarfed,
distorted, and symbolic modes of expression without any regard for
the objective social necessity of such oppressive regulation. In the
second place, it is an instinct which, while it embodies one of the
deepest and potentially most invigorating passions of the soul, tends
automatically to fall out of vigorous and constant activity with the
expansion of societies. It is the common character of large societies
to suffer heavily from the restrictive effect on personality of the
social instinct, and at the same time to suffer in the highest degree
from the debilitation of the common social impulse. Only in the
smallest groups, such as perhaps was early republican Rome, can the
common impulse inform and invigorate the whole society. As the group
expands and ceases to feel the constant pressure of an environment
it no longer has to fear, the common impulse droops, and the society
becomes segregated into classes, each of which a lesser herd within
the main body and under the reciprocated pressure of its fellows, now
yields to its members the social feeling which the main body {246} can
no longer provide. The passage of the small, vigorous, homogeneous
and fiercely patriotic group into the large, lax, segregated and
ultimately decadent group is a commonplace of history. In highly
segregated peoples the restrictive effect of the social instinct upon
personality has usually been to some extent relaxed, and a relatively
rich personal development has been possible. Such an amplification has
always, however, been limited to privileged classes, has always been
accompanied by a weakening of the national bond, and a tendency of
the privileged class to the sincere conviction that its interests are
identical with those of the nation. No nation has ever succeeded in
liberating the personality of its citizens from the restrictive action
of the social instinct and at the same time in maintaining national
homogeneity and common impulse. In a small community intercommunication
among its individual members is free enough to keep common feeling
intense and vigorous. As the community increases in size the general
intercommunication becomes attenuated, and with this common feeling is
correspondingly weakened. If there were no other mechanism capable of
inducing common action than the faint social stimulus coming from the
nation at large, a segregated society would be incapable of national
enterprise. There is, however, another mechanism which we may call
leadership, using the word in a certain special sense. All social
groups are more or less capable of being led, and it is manifest that
the leadership of individuals, or perhaps more usually of classes,
has been a dominant influence in the expansion and enterprise of all
civilizations of which we have any knowledge. It is only in the small
communities that we can detect evidence of a true common impulse shared
alike by all the members acting as the cause of expansion. In larger
groups, {247} autocracies and dynasties, Pharaohs and Nebuchadnezzars
have imposed the impulse of expansion upon the people, and by virtue of
human susceptibility to leadership have secured a virtual, though only
a secondary, common purpose.
Now leadership, potent as it undoubtedly is in calling forth the
energy of the social instinct, is essentially a limited and therefore
an exhaustible force. It depends for continued vigour upon successful
enterprise. While it is succeeding there are only wide limits to the
moral power it can set free and command, but in the face of misfortune
and disaster its limitations become obvious, and its power inevitably
declines. On the other hand, the moral power yielded by a true
community of feeling, and not imposed by leadership, is enormously more
resistant and even indestructible by failure and defeat. History gives
many examples of the encounters of communities of these two types—the
led society and the homogeneous society—and in spite of the invariably
greater size and physical power of the former, frequently records the
astoundingly successful resistance its greater moral vigour has given
to the latter. This is perhaps why Carthage beat in vain against little
Rome, and certainly why Austria failed to subdue Switzerland.
All large societies that have had their day and have fallen from their
zenith by internal dissolution or outward attack have been given their
impulse to expansion by leadership and have depended on it for their
moral power. If society is to continue to depend for its enterprise
and expansion upon leadership, and can find no more satisfactory
source of moral power, it is, to say the least, highly probable that
civilizations will continue to rise and fall in a dreadful sameness of
alternating aspiration and despair until perhaps some lucky accident
of {248} confusion finds for humanity in extinction the rest it could
never win for itself in life.
There is, however, reason to suppose that susceptibility to leadership
is a characteristic of relatively primitive social types, and tends
to diminish with increasing social complexity. I have already
called attention to and attempted to define the apparently specific
psychological differences between Germany and England before and
during the war. These differences I attributed to variations in the
type of reaction to herd instinct shown by the two peoples. The
aggressive social type represented by Germany and analogous with that
characteristic of the predaceous social animals I regarded as being
relatively primitive and simple. The socialized type represented by
England and presenting analogies with that characteristic of many
social insects I regarded as being, though imperfect as are all the
human examples available for study up to the present time, more
complex and less primitive, and representing at any rate a tendency
towards a satisfactory solution of the problems with which man as a
gregarious animal is surrounded. Now, it is a very obvious fact that
the susceptibility to leadership shown by Germany and by England
before the war was remarkably different. The common citizen of Germany
was strikingly open to and dependent upon discipline and leadership,
and seemed to have a positive satisfaction in leaving to his masters
the management of his social problems and accepting with alacrity
the solutions that were imposed upon him. The nation consequently
presented a close knit uniformity of purpose, a singleness of national
consciousness and effort that gave it an aspect of moral power of the
most formidable kind. In England a very different state of affairs
prevailed. The common citizen was apt to meet with indifference or
resentment all efforts to change the social {249} structure, and it
had long been a political axiom that “reform” should always await
an irresistible demand for it. Instances will be within every one’s
memory of politicians who met with crushing rebuffs through regarding
the supposed desirability of a reform as a justification for imposing
it. This almost sullen indifference to great projects and ideals,
this unwillingness to take thought in the interests of the nation
and the empire in spite of the apostolic zeal of the most eloquent
political prophets, was generally regarded as evidence of a weakness
and slackness in the body politic that could not but threaten disaster.
And yet in the trials of the war the moral stability of England showed
itself to be superior to that of Germany, which, in those rough waters,
it jostled as mercilessly and as effectually as did the brass pot the
earthen crock in the fable.
During the war itself the submission to leadership that England showed
was characteristic of the socialized type. It was to a great extent
spontaneous, voluntary, and undisciplined, and gave repeated evidence
that the passage of inspiration was essentially from the common people
to its leaders rather than from the leaders to the common people. When
the current of inspiration sets persistently in this direction, as it
unquestionably did in England, it is very plain that the primitive type
of leadership that has led so many civilizations to disaster is no
longer in unmodified action.
Germany has provided the most complete example of a culture of
leadership that has ever been recorded, and has gone through the
phases of her evolution with a precision which should make her case
an illustration classical for all history. With a people showing
strongly the characteristics of the aggressive social type, and a
social structure deeply and rigidly segregated, the nation was ideally
{250} susceptible to discipline and leadership, and a leading class
was available which possessed an almost superhuman prestige. The
opportunity given to leadership was exploited with great energy and
thoroughness and with an intelligence that by its intensity almost
made up for being nowhere really profound. With all these advantages
and the full uses of the huge resources science has made available
to intelligently concerted effort, an extremely formidable power was
created. The peoples of the socialized type towards whom from the first
its hostility was scarcely veiled were under obvious disadvantages
in rivalry with it. Their social type made it impossible for them to
combine and organize themselves against what was to them no more than
a vaguely hypothetical danger. Against peaceful conquest by Germany
in the industrial sphere England was therefore practically helpless,
and to it would probably in time have succumbed. Paradox as it may
seem, there can be no doubt that it was in war only that England could
contend with Germany on equal terms. Paradoxically again, it was war
for which England was reluctant and Germany was eager.
War brought Germany into contact with the, to her, inexplicable
ferocity of peoples of the socialized type under attack, and it was
by this disappointment that the first blow to her morale was struck.
The wastage of modern warfare must very soon have begun to impair the
isolation and prestige of the officer class through increasingly free
importation from without the pale. With this necessarily began to be
sapped the absolute and rigid segregation on which leadership of the
type we are considering so largely depends. At the same time, the
general tendency of the increasing pressure of war is to wear down
class segregation over the whole social field. This tendency which
intensified {251} and invigorated the morale of her enemies would work
steadily against the leadership morale of Germany. These factors must
no doubt be added to the moral need for aggression, the exhaustion
consequent upon forced offensives, and the specific intolerance of
failure and retreat that combined to bring down the strongest example
of the predaceous led society that history records.
SOME CHARACTERS OF A RATIONAL STATECRAFT.
If the foregoing discussion has been sound, we may attribute the
impermanence of all civilizations of which we have knowledge to the
failure of society to preserve with increasing magnitude of its
communities a true homogeneity and a progressive integration of its
elements. We have seen that there is a type of society—distinguished
here as the socialized type—in which a trace of this integrative
tendency can be detected at work. Under the threat of war this tendency
is accelerated in its action, and can attain a moderate, though very
far indeed from a complete, degree of development. In the absence of
such a powerful stimulus to homogeneity, however, segregation reasserts
itself, and the society, necessarily deprived by its type of the
advantages of leadership, becomes confused, disunited, and threatened
with disruption. It seems probable, indeed, that the integrative
tendency unaided and uncontrolled is too weak to surmount the obstacles
with which it has to contend, and to anticipate disruption by welding
the elements of society into a common life and common purpose. It has
already been repeatedly suggested that these difficulties, due as they
are to the human power of various reaction, can be met only by the
interposition of the intellect as an active factor in the problem of
the direction of society. In other words, the progressive evolution of
society has reached a point where the {252} construction and use of a
scientific statecraft will become an indispensable factor in further
development and the only means of arresting the dreary oscillations
between progress and relapse which have been so ominous a feature
in human history. We are perhaps in a position to-day to suggest
tentatively some of the principles on which such a statecraft might be
built.
It would have to be based on a full recognition of the biological
status of man, and to work out the tendencies which as an animal he
is pursuing and must pursue. If we have evidence of the only course
evolution can follow satisfactorily, then it is clear that any social
and legislative effort not in line with that course must be entirely
wasted. Moreover, since we are proceeding on the hypothesis that
direct conscious effort is now a necessary factor in the process,
we must clear our minds of the optimistic determinism which regards
man as a special pet of nature and the pessimistic determinism which
would reduce him to a mere spectator of his destiny. The trained and
conscious mind must come to be regarded as a definite factor in man’s
environment, capable of occupying there a larger and larger area.
Such a statecraft would recognize how fully man is an instinctive
being and how his mental vigour and stability depend entirely upon
instinctive expression being adequate. The tyrannous power of the
social instinct in repressing and distorting instinctive expression
would have to be controlled and directed with the purpose of enlarging
the personal and social effectiveness of the individual to the maximum
extent; the social instinct would no longer be left to operate on the
individual under the random direction of custom and habit, of fashion
and social whim, or for the satisfaction of the jealousy of age. {253}
Perhaps most important of all, a scientific statecraft would understand
that the social instinct itself is as deep and powerful as any, and
hungrily demands intense and positive gratification and expression.
The social instinct drives the individual to seek union with some
community of his fellows. The whole national body is in the present
state of society the smallest unit in which the individual can find
complete and permanent satisfaction. As long as the average man’s sense
of possession in the state is kept so low as it is at present, as long
as the sense of moral inequality between himself and his fellows is
so vigorously maintained, so long will he continue to make his class
rather than his nation the object of social passion, and so long will
society continue to breed within itself a principle of death.