INTRODUCTORY
WHAT IS A NATION?
Having studied the most general principles of the collective mental
life, as exemplified in the two extreme forms of the unorganised crowd
and the highly organised army, having briefly noted the principal
classes of groups that enjoy a collective mental life, and having
examined the nature and function of the group spirit in the organisation
of the group mind, we may now take up the study of the most interesting,
most complex and most important kind of group mind, namely the mind of a
nation-state[42].
Many attempts have been made to define more exactly the popular notion
of a nation. The word has sometimes been applied to large groups of
primitive folk that show evidence of close racial affinity and
similarity of customs, such as the Iroquois tribes of North America, or
the Hun invaders of medieval Europe. In popular usage the word is more
commonly restricted to the great nation-states of modern times. It must
be recognised that, since human societies of present and past times
present every conceivable variety of composition and structure, it is
impracticable to lay down any strict definition and to classify
populations as falling definitely within or outside the class.
But, though we may not hope to lay down a definition which shall clearly
mark off the nation from all other human groups, we may usefully define
the nation-state or nation in the most highly developed form that it has
yet attained, and recognise that various peoples partake of the nature
of, or approach the type of, the nation in so far as they exhibit
something of its essential character.
It is perhaps hardly necessary to point out that it is only in the
nation-state, or nation in the fullest sense of the word, that the state
becomes identical with the nation, and that this identification has only
been achieved in modern history by the growth among a few peoples of
representative institutions and the democratic spirit.
In the work mentioned above Prof. Ramsay Muir writes—“What do we mean by
a Nation? It is obviously not the same thing as a race, and not the same
thing as a state. It may be provisionally defined as a body of people
who feel themselves to be naturally linked together by certain
affinities which are so strong and real for them that they can live
happily together, are dissatisfied when disunited, and cannot tolerate
subjection to peoples who do not share these ties[43].” The provisional
definition has the merit of recognising that nationhood is essentially a
mental condition and must be defined in psychological terms. The author
goes on to inquire—“What are the ties of affinity which are necessary to
constitute a nation?” He then considers the following conditions: (1)
“occupation of a defined geographical area,” (2) “unity of race,” (3)
“unity of language,” (4) “unity of religion,” (5) “common subjection,
during a long stretch of time, to a firm and systematic government,” (6)
“community of economic interest, with the similarity of occupations and
outlook which it brings,” (7) “the possession of a common tradition, a
memory of sufferings endured and victories won in common, expressed in
song and legend, in the dear names of great personalities that seem to
embody in themselves the character and ideals of the nation, in the
names also of sacred places wherein the national memory is enshrined.”
Of the last he says that it is “the most potent of all nation-moulding
factors, the one indispensable factor”; thus showing his sense of the
essentially psychological nature of nationhood. But of all the other six
‘factors’ enumerated, he shows that they are unessential. After reaching
this negative conclusion, that nationhood cannot be defined by any one
of these marks or factors, he writes: “Nationality, then, is an elusive
idea, difficult to define. It cannot be tested or analysed by formulæ,
such as German professors love. Least of all must it be interpreted by
the brutal and childish doctrine of racialism. Its essence is a
sentiment, and in the last resort we can only say that a nation is a
nation because its members passionately and unanimously believe it to be
so. But they can only believe it to be so if there exist among them real
and strong affinities; if they are not divided by any artificially
maintained separation between the mixed races from which they are
sprung; if they share a common basis of fundamental moral ideas, such as
are most easily implanted by common religious beliefs; if they can glory
in a common inheritance of tradition; and their nationality will be all
the stronger if to these sources of unity they add a common language and
literature and a common body of law. If these ties, or the majority of
them, are lacking, the assertion of nationality cannot be made good.
For, even if it be for the moment shared by the whole people, as soon as
they begin to try to enjoy the freedom and unity which they claim in the
name of nationality, they will fall asunder, and their freedom will be
their ruin.” In the last sentence the author clearly shows that the
conclusion at which he seemed to have arrived, namely that “a nation is
a nation because its members passionately and unanimously believe it to
be so,” is untenable. At the present time there are populations claiming
the rights of nationality just upon this fallacious ground; a fact which
illustrates the importance of achieving some satisfactory definition of
nationhood. Indeed at the present moment, when Europe is being remoulded
by the Paris Conference, the need for clear notions and some working
definition of nationhood has acquired a most urgent importance. For, as
our author remarks, “we say, loosely, that every nation has a _right_ to
freedom and unity,” and the principle of “self-determination of nations”
has become almost universally accepted as a kind of moral axiom of
political justice; and this axiom is being applied to determine the
political boundaries of the world now and for all time. Yet how can we
hope to make a proper use of this principle, if we cannot define a
nation, if a modern historian, who has devoted himself to the study of
nationality, finds himself compelled in the year 1917 to give up the
attempt to define the meaning of the term nation? For that is the issue
of Prof. Ramsay Muir’s interesting discussion. “We have not attained,”
he confesses, “in this discussion any very clear definition of
nationality, or any very satisfactory test of the validity of the claims
put forward for national freedom. We are not to base the doctrine of
nationality upon abstract rights. We must recognise that there is no
single infallible test of what constitutes a nation, unless it be the
peoples’ own conviction of their nationhood, and even this may be
mistaken or based upon inadequate grounds[44].” And the dire
consequences of this failure are made clear on the following page—“There
seems no escape from the conclusion that nationhood must mainly
determine itself by conflict. That conclusion appears to be the moral of
the history of the national idea in Europe.” Which is as much as to say
that, when any population declares itself to be a nation and claims the
rights of nationhood, the Statesmen of the Paris Conference are to
reply—“We do not know whether your claim is well-founded; for the
historians and political philosophers cannot tell us the meaning of the
word ‘nation.’ Go to and fight, and, if you survive, we shall recognise
the ‘fait accompli’ and hail you a Nation.”
I have dwelt at some length on this perplexity of the historian,
grappling with the task of defining nationhood, because it illustrates
so well a fact on which I wish to insist—namely, that it is not
sufficient for the historian and the political philosopher to be willing
to recognise the mental factors in the phenomena with which he deals. It
is necessary to recognise that these factors are of overwhelming
importance, and that they cannot be satisfactorily dealt with by aid of
the obscure and confused psychological concepts of popular thought and
speech. We must recognise these political problems for what they truly
are—namely, psychological through and through, and only to be attacked
with some hope of success if we call to our aid all that psychological
science can give us. This conclusion cannot fail to be unpalatable to
very many workers in this field; for it implies that equipment for such
work demands some additional years of preparatory study. But, it may
fairly be asked, if the medical man must devote six years to the
intensive study of the human body, before he is permitted to practise
upon it, and even then without any scientific knowledge of the human
mind, should not he who would practise upon the body politic, in which
not merely the bodies but the minds of men interact in the most subtle
and complex fashion, prepare himself for his exalted task by an even
more extended course of study?
Prof. Ramsay Muir has the merit of recognising the essentially
psychological nature of his problem; for his provisional definition
(cited above) is wholly psychological, and he tells us that the essence
of nationality is a sentiment; but he reveals the inadequacy of his
psychological equipment by telling us in the same paragraph that its
essence is a belief, the belief that they are a nation, passionately and
unanimously held by the members of some group. If we look again at the
list of seven proposed marks of nationhood, we shall see that they are
rather of the nature of conditions favourable to the growth of
nationhood; and, as we shall find, this list may be considerably
enlarged. He comes nearest to the truth perhaps when he says “its
essence is a sentiment.” But he does not attempt to tell us what is the
nature of this sentiment, nor even what is its object.
We may imagine a group of people of considerable magnitude, say the
Mormons, or the Doukhobors, the Swedenborgians, or the Christian
Scientists, withdrawing themselves to some defined territory, in order
to form themselves into a nation; then, although each of the seven
conditions enumerated by Prof. Ramsay Muir might be realised, and even
though the community possessed the two conditions described by him as
the essence of nationality—namely, a strong sentiment (presumably one of
loyalty to the group) and a passionate belief in its nationality—it
would, in the absence of other essential conditions, lamentably fall
short of being a nation and would suffer the fate indicated; namely “as
soon as they begin to try to enjoy the freedom and unity which they
claim in the name of nationality, they will fall asunder, and their
freedom will be their ruin[45].”
What, then, is the essential condition for lack of which any such people
would fall short of nationhood? What is the factor which has escaped the
analysis of Prof. Ramsay Muir? The answer must be—organisation; not
material organisation, but such mental organisation as will render the
group capable of effective group life, of collective deliberation and
collective volition. The answer to the riddle of the definition of
nationhood is to be found in the conception of the group mind. A nation,
we must say, is a people or population enjoying some degree of political
independence and possessed of a national mind and character, and
therefore capable of national deliberation and national volition. In
this and the succeeding chapters we have to examine the nature of such
national mind and character, to give fuller meaning to these vague
popular terms, and to study the way in which various conditions of
national life contribute to their development.
Nationhood is, then, essentially a psychological conception. To
investigate the nature of national mind and character and to examine the
conditions that render possible the formation of the national mind and
tend to consolidate national character, these are the crowning tasks of
psychology.
Let me remind the reader at this point of the general sense of the words
mind and character. The two words really cover the same content; when we
speak of the individual mind or character, we mean the organised system
of mental or psychical forces which expresses itself in the behaviour
and the consciousness of the individual man. Any such organised system
has two aspects or sides which, though intimately related, maybe
considered abstractly as distinct—namely, the intellectual or cognitive
aspect and the volitional, conative, or affective aspect. When we use
the word ‘mind’ in speaking of any such system, we give prominence to
its intellectual side; when we say ‘character’ we draw attention to its
conative or affective side. The group mind of a nation is a mind in the
sense that, like the mind of the individual, it is an organised system
of mental or psychical forces; and, like the individual mind, it also
has its intellectual and its affective sides or aspects. And this
remains true whether or no there be any truth in that notion of the
‘collective consciousness’ as a synthesis of minor consciousnesses which
we have provisionally rejected[46]; that is to say, we accept
unreservedly the notion of the collective mind, while suspending
judgment upon the notion of ‘collective consciousness,’ until we shall
find that this hypothesis is, or is not, required for the interpretation
of the facts.
It will be observed that we are getting far away from the old-fashioned
conception of psychology which limited its province to the introspective
description of the contents of the individual’s consciousness. The wider
conception of the science gives it new tasks and new branches, of which
the study of the national mind is one. Like the main trunk of psychology
and most of its branches, this branch has to become an empirical science
which shall take the place of what has long been regarded as a branch of
speculative philosophy and pursued by the deductive _a priori_ methods
of philosophy. In this case the branch of philosophy in question has
generally been called the Philosophy of History. It has been well said
by Fouillée that the Philosophy of History of the past is related to the
psychological social science, that is now beginning to take shape, as
alchemy was related to chemistry, or astrology to astronomy. That is to
say, it was a realm of obscure and fanciful ideas, of sweeping and
ill-based assumptions and slipshod reasoning. It was an elaborate
attempt “to lay the intellect to rest on a pillow of obscure ideas.”
The task of scientific analysis and research was avoided by bringing in,
as the main explanatory principles or causal agencies, vaguely conceived
entities regarded as presiding over the development of peoples—such
entities as Providence, or the Destiny of nations, the _Genius_ of a
people, or the Instinct of a nation, the Unconscious Soul of a people,
or the Spirit of the Age; and, when the problem was to account for some
great secular change, for example, some change of national character,
nothing was commoner than to appeal to _Time_ itself, and thus to make
of this most empty of all abstractions a directive agency and an all
powerful cause of change. The strictly national gods of various nations
were popular conceptions of this order; the gods who directly intervened
in battles and enabled their chosen peoples to smite their enemies hip
and thigh so that not one was left alive. Of this class the “good old
German god” of the late German emperor was, it may be hoped, the last
example.
In a less crude form similar hypotheses of direct supernatural
intervention have been seriously maintained in modern times. Thus the
poet Schiller argued as follows—“The individuals of whom a nation is
composed are dominated by egoism, each seeking only his own good, yet
their actions somehow secure the good of the whole; hence we must
believe that the history of a people unrolls itself beneath the glance
of a wisdom that looks on from afar, that knows how to control the
ill-regulated caprices of liberty by the laws of a directing necessity
and to make the particular ends pursued by individuals subservient to
the unconscious realisation of a general plan.”
In estimating the claims to consideration of a doctrine of this sort, we
must put aside its deleterious moral effects, the fact that its
acceptance would necessarily tend to weaken our sense of responsibility,
to paralyse altruistic effort, and to justify purely egoistic conduct.
We have to consider only its truth or probability in the light of
history. When we do that, it appears merely as a fictitious solution of
the larger problems of social science, a solution which may relieve us
of the necessity of intellectual effort, but which brings no
enlightenment and is supported by no serious argument. The one argument
advanced is a libel on human nature; for it denies the reality and
efficacy of the disinterested social efforts of the leaders of humanity,
to which its progress has been in the main due; and it ignores the great
mass of human activity due to the group spirit with its fusion of
egoistic and altruistic motives. Further, it ignores the fact that the
history of the world is not merely the history of the rise of nations,
but rather of the perpetual rise and _fall_ of nations. When we are told
that a power of this sort has constantly intervened in the course of
history, and that the rise of peoples has been due to its guidance, we
may fairly ask—Why has it repeatedly withdrawn its support, just when
civilisation has achieved such a degree of development as might have
rendered possible the flowering of all the finer capacities of human
nature and the alleviation of the hard lot of the great mass of men? If
the contemplation of the course of history compelled us to believe that
such a power intervenes, we should certainly have to regard it as a
malign power that delights in mocking human efforts by first encouraging
and then bringing them to naught.
Very similar is the rôle in history assigned by von Hartmann to his
‘Unconscious.’ “It carries away the peoples that it dominates,” says von
Hartmann, “with a demoniac power towards unknown ends; it teaches them
the way that they must take; though they often believe themselves to be
marching towards a goal very different from that to which they are being
conducted.”
Others maintain that the great men of a nation, who are the principal
agents in moulding its destiny, are in some mystical sense the products
and expressions of the ‘unconscious soul’ of the people, that they are
the means by which its ideas are realised, through which they become
effective; and they usually make the assertion, altogether unwarranted
by history, that the moment of great need in the life of a people always
produces a great man or hero to lead the people through the crisis. That
is, or may appear to be, true of those peoples that have survived to
pass into history. But what of those peoples that have gone down,
leaving no trace of all their strivings, beyond some mounds of rubble,
some few material monuments, or some strange marks on brick or stone or
rock?
All such assumptions are the very negation of science. We have no right
to appeal to such obscure and mystical powers, until by prolonged effort
we shall have exhausted the possibilities of understanding and
explanation in terms of known forces and conditions[47].
On the other hand, a number of writers have sought to interpret the
course of history and the rise and fall of nations in a more scientific
manner; but most of these have studied some one aspect of national life,
and have professed to find in that one aspect the key which shall
unlock all doors and solve all problems. Thus some, adopting the notion
of a variety of human races, each endowed with a certain peculiar and
unalterable combination of qualities, seek to explain all history by the
aid of biological laws, especially the Darwinian principles, as a
struggle for survival between individuals and between races. Others,
like Karl Marx and Guizot, see in economic conditions and the struggles
between the social classes within each nation, the all important
factors. Others again, like Montesquieu and to some extent Buckle and
more recently Matteuzzi, have seen in the influences of physical
environment the key to the understanding of differences of national
character and history; while others profess to have found it in
differences of religious system, or of the forms of government and
systems of laws. Others again, like le Bon[48], in a few dominant ideas
which, they say, being possessed by any nation (or possessing a nation)
determine its character and civilisation. All these are exaggerations of
partial truths; and in opposition to all of them it must be laid down
that the understanding of the _mind_ of a nation is an indispensable
foundation for the interpretation of its history.
Just as there are two kinds of psychology of individuals, so there are
two kinds of psychology of peoples. There is the individual psychology
which is primarily descriptive, which is the biography of persons, and
whose aim is to impart an accurate conception of the general tendencies
of a person and of the course of his development. And there is the
psychology whose aim is to explain in general terms the conduct of
individual men in general by the aid of conceptions and laws of general
validity. The former, of course, was developed much earlier than the
latter, which is in the main of quite modern growth. As this explanatory
psychology develops, its principles begin to find application in the
sphere of biographical or individual psychology, raising it also to the
explanatory plane.
Just so there are two parallel kinds of psychology of peoples. There is
the descriptive psychology of the tendencies of particular peoples, the
biography of nations and peoples, which is what commonly is meant by
‘history’; and there is the psychology which seeks to explain in general
terms how these tendencies arise, which seeks the general laws of which
these diverse national tendencies are the outcome.
This last is the modern science which is beginning to take shape and to
undertake the task so inadequately dealt with by the so-called
Philosophy of History. It is essentially a branch, and by far the most
important part, of Group Psychology[49]. Now individual psychology tends
more and more to be a genetic psychology; because we do not feel that we
really understand the individual mind, until we know how it has come to
be what it is, until we know something of its development and racial
evolution. Just so the explanatory psychology of peoples must be a
genetic psychology. Here it differs from individual psychology in that
the distinction between individual development and racial evolution
disappears. For the national mind is a continuous growth; it is not
embodied in a temporal succession of individuals, but in a single
continuously evolving organism.
Nevertheless, we may with advantage consider separately (1) the nature
of the general conditions necessary to the existence and operation of a
national mind; (2) the processes of evolution by which such minds are
formed and their peculiarities acquired. I propose to take up the former
problem in the following chapter.