THE MIND OF A NATION
We have prepared ourselves for the study of the national mind by our
preliminary examination of the two extreme types of collective mental
life, that of the quite unorganised group, the simple crowd, on the one
hand, that of a very highly organised group, the army, on the other
hand. We have seen that in the former type the collective actions imply
a collective mental life much inferior, both intellectually and morally,
to that of the average component individuals; and that in the other type
they imply a collective mental life and capacities much superior to
those of the average individual.
The mind of any nation occupies some intermediate position in the scale
of which these are the extreme types; and it differs from both in being
immensely more complex, and also in that the influence of the past
dominates and determines to a much greater extent the mental life of the
present.
The study we have already made of collective mental life will enable us
to understand what we mean, or ought to mean, when we speak of national
character. There are two senses in which this phrase is used, and they
are often confused. On the one hand, the phrase may be used to denote
the character of individuals who are taken to be typical representatives
or average specimens of their nations. On the other hand, it may be
taken to mean the character of the nation as a collective whole or mind.
These two things are by no means the same; they are rather very
different. We saw that this was true in the case of the crowd and also
of the army; and it is true in a still higher degree of the nation than
of any other social aggregate, just because the influence of its past
over its present is greater than in any of the others. It is in the
second and preferable sense that Fouillée uses this expression. He
writes—“The national character is not the simple sum of the individual
characters. In the bosom of a strongly organised nation, there are
necessarily produced reciprocal actions between the individuals which
issue in a general manner of feeling, thinking and willing very
different from that of the individuals existing in isolation, or even
from the sum or resultant of all the mental actions of isolated
individuals. The national character is not simply the average type
which one would obtain if one could imitate for minds the procedure
adopted by Galton in the case of faces and so obtain a collective or
generic image. The face which the process of compound photography
produces exerts no action and is not a cause; while the national spirit
does exert an effect which is different from all effects of individual
minds; it is capable of exerting a sort of pressure and a constraint
upon the individuals themselves; it is not only an effect, but is also
in turn a cause; it is not only fashioned by individuals, it fashions
them in turn. The average type of the Frenchman existing to-day, for
example, does not adequately represent the French national character,
because each people has a history, and ancient traditions, and is
composed, as it is said, of the dead even more than of the living. The
French national character resumes the physical and social actions that
have been taking place through centuries, independently of the present
generation, and imposes itself upon this generation through all the
national ideas, the national sentiments and national institutions. It is
the weight of the entire history to which the individual is subjected in
his relations with his fellow citizens. Just, then, as the nation, as a
certain social group, has an existence different from (though not
separable from) the existence of the individuals, so the national
character implies that particular combination of mental forces of which
the national life is the external manifestation[50].” That is a precise
and admirable statement of what we are to understand by national mind
and character.
We must now consider in turn the principal conditions of the existence
of highly developed national mind and character, and first those which,
as we have seen, are essential to all collective mental life.
A certain degree of mental homogeneity of the group, some similarity of
mental constitution of the individuals composing it, is the prime
condition. The homogeneity essential to a nation may be one of two
kinds, native or acquired; both of these are usually combined, but one
of them predominates in some nations, the other in others.
In considering racial or native homogeneity, we touch upon one aspect of
a much disputed question, the influence of race on national character
and history, in regard to which the greatest diversity of opinion has
prevailed and still prevails. A correct estimate of this influence is of
fundamental importance. I have stated elsewhere the view I take[51],
but we must consider the question more fully here. On the one hand are
those who would explain all differences of national character and
action, all success and failure of nations, as arising from racial
composition. This view is the basis of much of the ill-founded national
pessimism which, before the Great War, was widely prevalent among the
peoples who speak the Romance or Latin languages and who are falsely
called by these pessimists the Latin races. It was also the foundation
of that overweening national pride which has corrupted the German people
and led them to disgrace and disaster; for, following Gobineau[52] and a
host of his disciples, among whom H. S. Chamberlain is perhaps the most
notorious, they had come to believe, against the most obvious and
abundant evidence, that they were the purest representatives of a race
from whose blood all great men and all good things have come, a race
fitted by native superiority to rule all the peoples of the earth[53].
On the other hand, popular humanitarianism would regard all men and all
races as alike and equal in respect of native endowment; and we have
seen so distinguished a sociologist as Durkheim denying any importance
or influence to racial composition of a people. Many others put aside
all explanations based on racial differences as cheap and meretricious
means of avoiding difficulties. J. S. Mill, for example, wrote “Of all
vulgar modes of escaping from the consideration of the effect of social
and moral influences on the human mind, the most vulgar is that of
attributing the diversities of conduct and character to inherent natural
differences”; and Buckle, in his great work on the _History of
Civilisation_, quoted this remark with cordial approval[54].
Both these extreme views are false; the truth lies somewhere in the
midst between them. At the time when Mill and Buckle wrote, biology and
anthropology had not shown, as now they have, the enormous power of
heredity in determining individual character and the great persistence
of innate qualities through numberless generations. Buckle especially
overrated the power of physical environment, and Mill the power of
education and of social environment, to change the innate qualities of a
people; and it was this overestimation that led them, and leads others
still, to underestimate the importance of racial composition. There are
involved in this dispute two theses which are often confused together.
When people speak of the influence of ‘race’ on national character and
institutions, they may, and sometimes do, mean by ‘race’ the sum of
innate inborn qualities or tendencies of the people at any given point
of history. On the other hand, by influence of race they may mean the
influence of the prehistoric races which have entered into the social
composition of the nation—that is, those races from which its population
is descended. Some authors mean to deny importance to race in both these
senses; Buckle and Mill and Durkheim meant, I think, to deny it in both,
because they believed that human nature is very plastic and easily
moulded as regards its innate qualities by its environment; they
believed that, if only a system of institutions, especially educational
institutions, adapted to promote the intellectual and moral development
of each generation of a people, can be established among it, then the
influence of such institutions will so vastly predominate over that of
innate qualities that these become a negligible quantity. From this it
would follow that we should expect to see any two or more populations
endowed with similar institutions form nations of similar character
which will continue to develop along similar lines, except in so far as
minor unessential differences of physical environment produce
differences of modes of occupation, dress, food and so forth.
This view of the insignificance of innate qualities was in harmony with,
and was determined by, the dominant psychological doctrine of the time;
the view which came down from Locke, according to which the mind of the
new-born individual is a _tabula rasa_, entirely similar in all men,
without specific tendencies and peculiarities of any importance, on
which individual experience impresses itself, moulding all its
development according to the principle of the association of ideas.
This doctrine, explicitly or implicitly adopted, has played a great part
in determining British policy in its relations with British dependencies
and their populations, notably India. It is a striking example of the
way in which theory affects practice, and of the danger of our profound
indifference to theory; we are influenced by it though we pretend to
ignore it. It is well to make ourselves clear as to what theories we
hold, even if we do not allow our practice to be governed by them
exclusively.
There are commonly confused together, under the head of the influence
of race on national character, three problems which must be
disentangled.
(1) Are there differences of innate mental constitution between the
various branches of mankind?
(2) If there are such differences, are these important for national
life? Do they in any considerable degree determine national character?
Or are they capable of being swamped and submerged and altogether
over-ridden by the moulding influences brought to bear by environment on
each generation?
(3) If such innate differences exist, what degree of permanence do they
possess? Do they persist through thousands of years, in spite of vast
changes of physical or cultural conditions? Or may they undergo
considerable modification or complete transformation in the course of a
few generations?
These are questions of fundamental importance. And they admit of no
positive clean-cut answers at the present time. They offer vast fields
for research, and only when prolonged research shall have been directed
to them shall we be able to answer them positively.
In the past, since their importance could not be altogether overlooked,
it has been usual to dispose of them by dogmatically asserting one
extreme view and pouring scornful epithets upon the other extreme view.
A principal task for science in its present stage is to define the
questions clearly. It is not possible, perhaps, to keep them quite
separate; for, if there are considerable differences of innate mental
constitution, then their importance for national character must depend
greatly upon their degree of permanence; and, again, there is the great
difficulty of distinguishing between innate and acquired mental
qualities in any individual and still more in groups.
Nevertheless, we may safely say that both extreme views in regard to
race, the positive and the negative, are gross exaggerations, plausible
only while we ignore one part of the evidence; the truth lies in between
somewhere.
There can, I think, be no reasonable doubt that there are great
differences between races, and that these may be, and in many cases have
been, persistent through thousands of generations.
The recognition that the mind of the human infant is not a _tabula
rasa_, but that its innate constitution comprises a number of instincts,
specifically directed tendencies to thought, feeling, and action,
prepares us to accept this view and gives us some basis for the
definition of these differences. Whether all differences can be defined
in such terms is a further problem. That they cannot be wholly defined
in this way seems to be obvious, when we consider how quite specialised
idiosyncrasies are transmitted in families through several generations,
often with a leap across one generation, peculiarities of taste and
feeling, of aesthetic endowment and temperament, abilities such as the
musical, mathematical and artistic.
When we compare widely different peoples such as the Negro, the White,
and the Yellow, the fact of profound differences cannot be overlooked.
These differences cannot be ascribed to the action of environment upon
each generation. Perhaps the only differences of this kind which at
present are accurately measurable are those of the size and form of the
brain. The negro brain is decidedly smaller than that of the white and
yellow races. And there are small but distinct differences of sensory
endowment which are highly significant. For, if there are racial
differences in these most fundamental and racially oldest endowments, we
may expect still greater differences in the later evolved powers of the
mind; although these are much more difficult to detect and define.
Still, the negro race wherever found does present certain specific
mental peculiarities roughly definable, especially the happy-go-lucky
disposition, the unrestrained emotional violence and responsiveness,
whether its representatives are found in tropic Africa, in the jungles
of Papua, or in the highly civilised conditions of American cities.
The Semitic stock again is one which, though widely scattered, seems to
present certain constant peculiarities. And among closely allied
branches of the white race of similar culture, we can hardly refuse to
recognise innate differences. Differences of temperament are, perhaps,
the clearest and the most generally recognised, even between peoples of
allied stock and similar civilisation. Who can question that Irishmen in
general are very different from Englishmen in temperament, that they are
less phlegmatic, more easily moved to joy, or sorrow, or enthusiasm,
more easily touched by poetry, have a more varied and lively emotional
experience? That this is an innate racial difference seems clear; for it
can be accounted for in no other way, and it obtains in some degree
between all communities of similar racial stocks, in spite of
similarities or differences of history and of present conditions. For
example, similar differences, roughly definable as the difference
between the so-called Celtic temperament and the Anglo-Saxon, seem
evidently to obtain between the Breton and the Norman, who represent in
the main the same two stocks.
And, even in intellectual quality, there appear to be not only
differences of degree, but also differences of kind, inexplicable save
as racial differences. The logical deductive tendencies of the French
intellect and the empirical inductive tendency of the English, seem to
be rooted in race; though here of course tradition accumulates and
accentuates such differences from generation to generation.
But the best evidence of persistent innate differences is afforded by
differences and similarities expressed in national life which cannot be
accounted for in any other way. The innate differences and peculiarities
of individuals are largely obscured by these national characteristics.
And the more highly organised the collective life of any people, the
more clearly will it express their racial qualities.
The social environment in a developed nation is in harmony with the
individual innate tendencies, because in the main it is the natural
outcome and expression of those tendencies. For, throughout the history
of such a nation, the elements of its social environment—its customs,
beliefs, institutions, language, its culture in general—have been slowly
evolved under the steady pressure of the individual innate tendencies,
which in each succeeding generation are the same. A part of this culture
is of native origin; a part, in every European nation probably by far
the larger part, is of foreign origin, and has been acquired by the
acceptance of ideas and beliefs from without its borders, by the copying
of institutions, customs, arts, from foreign models. In both cases the
idea or custom or other cultural element only becomes embodied in the
national culture through widespread or general imitation[55].
In the case of elements of native origin, it is by imitation of the
individuals of original powers of thought or feeling that the element
becomes embodied in the national culture; in the case of foreign
elements, by imitation of foreign models, acceptance of foreign ideas,
through literature and personal contacts. In both cases, such general
imitation will only take place when the culture-element in question is
more or less congenial to the innate qualities of the bulk of
individuals. All other novel elements will be ignored, or will fail to
propagate themselves successfully; if they obtain a first footing, they
will fail to pass beyond the stage of fashion into that of custom. And,
when once accepted, the cultural element will usually undergo
modification in the direction of more complete harmony with the innate
tendencies; its less congenial features will be allowed to die out, its
more congenial will be accentuated from generation to generation.
The social environment of any civilised people is, then, very largely
the result of a long continued process of selection, comparable with the
natural selection by which, according to the Darwinian theory, animal
species are evolved; a constant favouring of certain elements, a
constant rejection of others. We may in fact regard each distinctive
type of civilisation as a species, evolved largely by selection; and the
selective agency, which corresponds to and plays a part analogous to the
part of the physical environment of an animal species, is the innate
mental constitution of the people. The sum of innate qualities is the
environment of the culture-species, and it effects a selection among all
culture variations, determining the survival and further evolution of
some, the extermination of others. And, just as animal species
(especially men) modify their physical environment in course of time,
and also devise means of sheltering themselves from its selective
influence, so each national life, each species of civilisation, modifies
very gradually the innate qualities of the people and builds up
institutions which, the more firmly they are established and the more
fully they are elaborated, override and prevent the more completely the
direct influence of innate qualities on national life.
These principles are illustrated, perhaps, most clearly by the spread
and modification of religious systems among peoples of different races.
Take the case of the Moslem religion, which has gained acceptance among
one-sixth of the population of the world in historic and in fact recent
times, and is still spreading. The leading feature of this system is its
acceptance of all that is and happens as being the will of God, the act
of an entirely arbitrary, inscrutable, and absolutely powerful
individual, before which men must simply bow without question or
criticism; it is characterised by its simplicity and its fatalism. There
seems good reason to believe that the tendency to unquestioning
obedience to authority is a strong innate tendency of most Asiatics
(except perhaps the Chinese and their relatives), far stronger than in
most individuals of European peoples; for we see it expressed in many
ways in their institutions and history, both of those who are and those
who are not Moslems[56]; and Asiatic fatalism has, in fact, become
proverbial. With the causes or origin of this innate quality we are not
now concerned; but, accepting it as a fact, we may note that it is among
Asiatics that Mohammedanism has secured the great mass of its converts;
and that in India, in spite of many minor features that are opposed to
the spirit of Hindooism, it continues to spread largely; while
Christianity makes but little progress. Buddhism on the other hand has
almost faded away, after an initial success in the country of its
origin, but has continued to gain adherents and has become the dominant
religion among the yellow peoples further east, in Burma, China, Thibet,
Japan. The Moslem religion, having been thus accepted in virtue of the
fact that its dominant tendency is in harmony with the strong innate
tendency to unquestioning submission to a supreme will, then accentuates
this tendency in all its converts, moulding their political relations to
the same type, so that all recognise one earthly regent of God; and it
has led to the almost complete suppression of any spark of the spirit of
inquiry and scepticism that might otherwise display itself among these
peoples.
Another good illustration of the fact is afforded by the distribution of
the two great divisions of the Christian religion in Western Europe.
Among all the disputes and uncertainties of the ethnographers about the
races of Europe, one fact stands out clearly—namely, that we can
distinguish a race of northerly distribution and origin, characterised
physically by fair colour of hair and skin and eyes, by tall stature and
dolichocephaly (i.e. long shape of head) and mentally by great
independence of character, individual initiative, and tenacity of will.
Many names have been used to denote this type, but the usefulness of
most of them has been spoilt through their application to denote
linguistic groups (e.g. Indo-Germanic, Aryan), and by the false
assumption that linguistic groups are racial groups. Hence recently the
term _Homo Europaeus_, first applied by Linnaeus to this type, has come
into favour; and perhaps it is the best term to use, since this type
seems to be exclusively European. It is also called the Nordic type.
The rest of the population of Europe, with the exception of some peoples
in the extreme north and east of partly mongoloid or yellow racial
origin, seems to be chiefly derived from two stocks. Of these, the one
type, which occupies chiefly the central regions, is most commonly
denoted by the name _Homo Alpinus_; the other, chiefly in the south, by
the name _Homo Mediterraneus_. Both are of dark or brunette complexion
and the principal physical difference between them is that the former,
_H. Alpinus_, has a short broad head (i.e. is brachycephalic) and also
is of short stature; while the latter, _H. Mediterraneus_, is
long-headed like the northern type and is perhaps taller than _H.
Alpinus_. Mentally both these differ from the northern or European type
in having less independence and initiative, a greater tendency to rely
upon and seek guidance from authority[57]. Now we find that the
distribution of the Protestant variety of Christianity coincides very
nearly with the regions in which the fair type predominates; while in
all other regions the Roman Catholic or Greek orthodox churches hold
undisputed sway. North and South Germany illustrate the point. And
Motley’s account of the Netherlands shows how closely the line between
Protestant Holland and Roman Catholic Belgium coincides with the line of
racial division. We may note also that ‘Celts’ of Ireland and Scotland
early proved the superior strength of their religious tendencies by
sending missionaries to England.
It would be absurd to hold that this coincidence is fortuitous. It is
clearly due to the assimilation of the form of the religious and
ecclesiastical system to the innate tendencies of the people. The
northern peoples have given the system a turn compatible with the
independence of spirit which is their leading racial quality; and among
ourselves the tendency is apt to be pushed to an anarchical extreme in
the rise of numerous small peculiar sects; this we must connect with the
fact that the English represent in greatest purity the most independent
branch of the Northern race.
The peoples among whom the other racial elements predominate have
developed and maintained a religion of authority. And it is clear how,
this differentiation having been achieved, either form of religion
favours and accentuates in the peoples among whom it has become
established the innate tendencies that have shaped it. The religion of
authority tends, both by its general teachings and by the deliberate
efforts of its official representatives, to suppress the spirit of
independent thought and inquiry and action; the Protestant religion,
relatively at least, favours the development of the independent
tendencies of individuals. This is not to say that any individual is a
Mohammedan or a Protestant, because he belongs to this or that race;
that would be a parody of my statement. The form of each man’s religious
belief is, in the vast majority of cases, determined for him by the fact
of his growing up within a community in which that form of belief
prevails. My thesis is that in the main the racial qualities of each
community have played a great part in determining which form of belief
it shall accept. If the reader will reflect how, at the time of the
Reformation, various communities hung for a time in the balance, he will
see that the innate differences we have noted may well have played the
determining rôle.
The same facts are illustrated by the political life of the European
peoples. Only those among whom the northern race is predominant have
developed individualistic forms of political and social organisation.
Among the rest there appears clearly the tendency to rely upon the
supreme authority of the state and to look to it for all initiative and
guidance, a tendency to centralised and paternal administration; and
this is the same, whether the external form of the political
organisation be a monarchy or a republic. Thus France, in becoming a
republic, did not overthrow the centralised system perfected by Henry
IV, Louis XIV, Richelieu and Napoleon; for that system was congenial to
the innate qualities of the mass of the people. It is clear that the
centralised and therefore rigid system of government tends to
accentuate, among the people subjected to it, their tendency to rely on
authority and to repress individual initiative; while the other form,
such as obtains in this country and still more in the United States of
America, tends to the development of the initiative and independence of
individuals, giving them free scope and throwing them upon their own
resources. Among any people, an institution or other cultural element
that has had a history of this kind will, then, cause a great
development in the mass of individuals of just those innate or racial
tendencies of which it is itself the slowly accumulated result or
product.
If a nation is composed from stocks not too diverse, or if the original
stocks have fused by intercrossing and have produced a fairly
homogeneous people; and if this nation has enjoyed a long period of
natural evolution undisturbed by violent influences from outside,
conquests or invasions or immigrations on a great scale; then the social
environment will have been brought in the main into harmony with the
innate qualities of the people, and it will mould the individuals of
each generation very strongly, accentuating and confirming those innate
tendencies. This for two reasons. First, the social environment will be
strongly organised and homogeneous; that is to say, the various
elements, the beliefs, customs, institutions, and arts that go to
compose it, will be in harmony with one another and of strongly marked
character; and they will be almost universally accepted by that people
as above criticism. Secondly, the institutions and customs have not to
fight against the innate tendencies of the people in the formation of
the adult minds, but co-operate harmoniously with them.
Now, when authors dispute over the question of the influence of race in
determining the nation, they usually fail to distinguish clearly between
the direct effects and the indirect effects of racial qualities.
Those who, like Mill, attribute to the social environment unlimited
power of moulding individuals and who regard the influence of race as
insignificant, are misled by the contemplation of such nations as we
have been considering, the class of which our own is the most notable
example, nations in which a strongly organised social environment makes
in the direction of the innate tendencies. They overlook the fact that
in any such nation the social environment, the body of institutions and
traditions, is in the main the outcome and expression of these innate
tendencies; they fail to see that the racial tendencies exert their
strongest influence on national thought and action by means of the
institutions, customs, and traditions on the growth of which they have
exerted a constant directive pressure throughout many generations. In
order to realise fully the influence of race, we must consider peoples
whose culture and much else that enters into their social environment
has been impressed upon them from without. We then see how little the
social environment can accomplish in the moulding of a people, when it
is not congenial to and in harmony with the racial tendencies.
The modern world contains certain instructive instances, of which Hayti
is perhaps the most striking. There a circumscribed population of negro
race has had a political and social and religious organisation and the
elements of higher culture impressed upon it by Europeans, in the belief
that it would be possible to construct a social environment which would
mould the people. France, at a time of revolutionary enthusiasm for
liberty, equality, and fraternity, withdrew from the island and granted
the people self-government. The consequence has been a rapid relapse
into barbarism and savagery of the worst kinds[58].
It was the ignoring of the importance of race and the overestimation of
the moulding influence of culture and institutions, eloquently voiced
by Lord Macaulay, that led England eighty years ago to set out on the
task of endowing the millions of India with British culture and
institutions. The task has been pursued in a half-hearted manner only;
but already we see some of the incongruity of the results of these
efforts; and the best observers assure us that, were the task
accomplished and the reins of a representative government left in native
hands, it would be but a few years before the whole country would be
reduced to a chaotic anarchic condition no better than that in which we
found it. Others go further and assert with some plausibility that
Western culture is positively injurious to the intellect and moral
nature of Indians[59].
In the Philippines the Americans seem to have applied similar mistaken
ideas in a reckless fashion in the first years of their administration;
with the result that, according to some accounts, they were in a fair
way to plunge those islands into poverty and debt and chronic rebellion,
while failing to secure affection, trust, or respect for themselves.
We must conclude, then, that innate mental constitution, and therefore
race, is of fundamental importance in determining national character,
not so much directly as indirectly; for it gives a constant bias to the
evolution of the social environment, and, through it, moulds the
individuals of each generation. It will help to make clear the influence
of innate qualities, if, by an effort of imagination, we suppose every
English child to have been exchanged at birth for an infant of some
other nation (say the French) during some fifty years. At the end of
that period the English nation would be composed of individuals of
purely French origin or blood; it would have the innate qualities of the
present French nation; and the French nation would be, in the same
sense, English. What would be the effect? Presumably things would go on
much as before for a time. There would be no sudden transformation of
our language, our laws, our religious or political institutions; and
those who make little of the influence of race might point to this
result as a convincing demonstration of the truth of their view. But
gradually, we must suppose, certain changes would appear; in the course
of perhaps a century there would be an appreciable assimilation of
English institutions to those of France at the present day, for example,
the Roman Catholic religion would gain in strength at the cost of the
Protestant.
This view has been challenged and described as an extreme view[60]. But
it is not. Both extreme opposite views continue to be maintained just
because the importance of the indirect cumulative effect of innate
qualities on culture is ignored. The innate qualities are of great
importance, but only in the course of centuries can they exert their
full effect on culture.
If then innate qualities have this importance, in what degree are they
permanent? Here again two extreme views remain opposed to one another.
Even as regards physical qualities this is still the case; and the
problem is much more difficult and at the same time infinitely more
important as regards mental qualities. One reason for the belittling of
innate qualities by Mill and Buckle, and for their overweening
confidence in the power of institutions and environment, was the opinion
generally prevailing in their time that, in so far as racial
peculiarities exist, they can be modified and transformed in a few
generations by physical and social environment.
But, when, under the influence of Welshman’s theories, the majority of
biologists came to the conclusion that acquired qualities are not
transmitted, the position of the ‘race theorisers’ was immensely
strengthened. For selection, natural or social or artificial, remained
as the only recognised cause of change of racial qualities; and, since
it is clear that the development of civilisation tends to bring to an
end the operation of natural selection, owing to the more efficient
shielding of the weaker by the stronger members of societies, and since
no other form of selection seems to have operated forcibly to change
race qualities, it was inferred that race qualities endure throughout
long ages with very little change.
Another revolution of opinion has had a similar effect. One of the old
assumptions which seemed to justify the belief in rapid modifiability of
race qualities was that the difference of culture between ourselves and
our savage ancestors corresponds to, and is the expression of, an almost
equally great difference of innate capacities, intellectual and moral.
But this was in the main a misunderstanding. One well established fact
suffices to show its improbability—namely, the larger size of the brains
of Palæolithic men as compared with our own. Our superiority of
civilisation is due to slow accumulation, each generation adding
comparatively little to the mass of intellectual and moral tradition
which it inherits and passes on to later coming generations. In so far
as differences of cultural level are associated with differences of
level of innate intellectual and moral qualities, cultural superiority
must be regarded as the effect, rather than the cause, of innate mental
superiority. There are strong grounds for holding that, in so far as
Europeans are innately superior to negroes, that superiority was
achieved not by means of, and in the process of, the development of,
civilisation; but rather before civilisation began; and that the
principal mental differences of the various human stocks were, like
their principal physical differences, produced in the course of the
immensely long ages of human life that preceded the dawn of
civilisation, or at any rate of history, ages compared with which the
historic period is but a very brief span.
This view—namely, that there has been no great change, and certainly no
great increase, of the mental powers of men during the historic
period—was forcibly maintained by Dr A. R. Wallace[61]. Wallace pointed
to the pyramids of Egypt and other great achievements of earlier
civilisations, such as writing, as evidence of the highly developed
intellectual powers of men thousands of years before the Christian era.
He concluded that the men of the early stone age were probably our
equals, intellectually and morally, in respect to innate qualities.
If, then, so little change of man’s mental constitution has been
produced in the course of many thousand years, even though the growth of
civilisation has so profoundly modified his mode of life and the nature
of his pursuits, that is good evidence of the great persistency of
racial mental qualities. But we have more direct evidence of their
persistence. As Wallace points out, the negro and the yellow races are
scattered over many parts of the earth, and, though these regions
present great diversities of physical environment, men of either of the
two races everywhere present the same mental peculiarities or strong
similarities, for example, the Papuan and African and American negroes.
And the characteristic differences between the two races are not
diminished even where, as in the islands of the far East, they have been
subjected to the same physical environment and modes of life for long
periods of time. In the eastern Archipelago, Papuans and Malayans
occupying the same or adjoining islands are cited by Wallace as
illustrating the persistence of racial mental differences; and I can
bear out his remarks from my own observations in that region.
But we must beware of excess in the direction of the unalterability of
race. The dogma of the non-transmissibility of acquired qualities is by
no means established; it seems not improbable that mental acquisitions
are so transmitted in some degree, though with only very slight effect
in each generation. Even now, when the difficulties of the principle of
transmission of acquired qualities are generally understood, almost all
those who deal with the problem of the genesis of mental and physical
peculiarities of races find themselves driven to postulate the principle
in order to explain the facts. And this in itself constitutes evidence
of a certain value in support of the validity of the principle.
Again, we must beware of assuming that there are no selective processes
operating among us. Although natural selection may be almost
inoperative, there may well be at work other forms of selection, social
selections; and these are specially powerful amongst populations of
blended stocks.
Summing up on the durability of racial peculiarities, we may say that
racial qualities are extremely persistent; but that, nevertheless, they
are subject to slow modifications when the conditions of life are
greatly changed, as by emigration, or by changes of climate, or by
social revolutions, and especially among populations of mixed origin.
To return now to the question of mental homogeneity of a population as a
condition of national character and collective mental life. Purity of
race is the most obvious condition of such homogeneity; but few, if any,
nations that have attained any high level of civilisation have been
racially homogeneous; probably for the simple reason that the
civilisation of such a nation would crystallise at an early stage into
rigid forms which would render further progress impossible. This has
been the fate of most civilisations of the past; as Walter Bagehot put
it, their cake of custom has so hardened as to become brittle, incapable
of partial modification and growth, so that, like a crystal, it must
either resist completely every modifying influence or be shattered
irretrievably[62].
Certainly none of the European nations are racially homogeneous.
Nevertheless, some of them approach homogeneity of innate qualities, or,
rather, the degree of heterogeneity is much less in some than in others.
Consider the case of England. Before the Anglo-Saxon invasion the
population consisted in all probability of a mixture of the northern
fair race with a darker race, probably that of _H. Mediterraneus_, in
some proportion that we cannot determine, with small islands of _H.
Alpinus_ or of stocks formed by an earlier blending of this with the
Nordic race. The Anglo-Saxon invasion brought great numbers of the pure
representatives of the Northern race of closely allied stocks; and these
did not confine themselves to any one region, but, entering at many
points of the south and east coasts, diffused themselves throughout
almost all England, imposing themselves as masters upon those Britons
whom they did not drive out. Ever since that time a crossing of the
stocks has been going on freely, little hindered by differences of area,
language, law, or custom. And, with the exception of small numbers of
the Northern stock, Danes and Normans, the population has not received
any considerable additions since the Saxon invasion.
Now it has been shown by a simple calculation that, given three
generations to the century, each one of us might claim ten million
ancestors in the year 1000 A.D.; while in the fifth century, when this
process of intermarriage began, the number would be enormous, some
thousands of millions; that is, if consanguine marriages had never taken
place. These figures make it clear that, in any mixed population in
which intermarriage takes place freely, the two or more stocks must,
after a comparatively brief period of time, become thoroughly blended,
on one condition—namely, that the cross between the pure stocks is a
stable stock, fertile _inter se_ and with both the parent stocks. There
seems to be no doubt that this was the case with the British and the
Anglo-Saxon stocks, and that the English form now a stable new subrace,
or secondary race, in which the qualities of the northern race
predominate. The subrace may be regarded as innately homogeneous in
fairly high degree; not so homogeneous as a people of unmixed racial
origin, or one formed by a blending of more remote date, but more so
than most of the European nations. This is the sense in which we must
understand the word race, in discussing the influence of race upon
national character.
In most of the European countries the original mixture of races has been
greater and the degree of blending less intimate. Thus France has the
three stocks, _H. Europaeus_, _Alpinus_, _Mediterraneus_, all largely
represented; but they have remained in some degree geographically
separated in three belts running east and west[63]. Hence there are
greater innate mental differences between Frenchmen than between
Englishmen. Nevertheless the strength of the Roman civilisation of Gaul
sufficed to abolish differences of language and institutions and to
assimilate the later coming Northmen, Franks and Normans; while the
centralised system of administration, established in accordance with the
innate tendencies of the major part of the population, has completed the
work of a long series of national wars, and has produced a firmly united
nation, bound by common traditions and moulded by common institutions.
The greater centralisation of France seems to have compensated for the
less degree of innate uniformity, so that the French people is hardly,
if at all, less truly a nation than our own.
In our own nation one racial cleft still remains. The Irish have never
undergone that intimate mixture and blending with the Anglo-Saxon stock
which has produced the English subrace; and so they remain an element
which seriously disturbs the harmony of the national mind. And the same
is perhaps true in a less degree of the Welsh people. On the other hand,
the Scottish people, although they enjoyed their independent system of
government for much longer periods than the Irish and Welsh and have a
system of laws and customs differing in many respects from the English,
and indeed may be said to have achieved a considerable degree of
independent nationhood, have nevertheless become thoroughly incorporated
in the British nation; for in the main mass of the Scotch the same
Northern race is the greatly predominant element.
But it is not till we consider such a country as Austria-Hungary that we
see the full importance of homogeneity of a people for the development
of a national mind. There several races and subraces, one at least with
a strong yellow strain, are grouped together under one flag; but they
remain separated by language and by distribution and by tradition, and,
therefore, are but little mixed and still less blended. Under such
conditions a national mind cannot be formed. The elements of different
racial stock threaten to fall apart at any moment[64].
Going further afield, contrast India with China, two regions
geographically comparable in area and in density of population and in
other ways. The population of China is the most racially homogeneous of
all large populations in the world. Hence an extreme uniformity of
culture and social environment, which still further accentuates the
uniformity of mental type. Hence, in spite of the imperfection of means
of communication, we find great political stability and a considerable
degree of national feeling, likely to be followed before long by
harmonious national thought and action on the part of this vast nation.
The one great distracting and disturbing factor in the life of China has
been the intrusion of the Manchus, a people of somewhat different race
and traditions.
On the other hand, India is peopled by many different stocks, and,
although these are geographically much mixed, they are but very little
blended, owing to the prevalence from early times of the caste system.
The light coloured intellectual Brahman lives side by side with small
black folk, as different physically and mentally as the Englishman and
the Hottentot; and there are also large numbers of other widely
differing racial stocks, including some of yellow race. Hence an extreme
diversity of social environment, save in the case of the Moslem
converts, who, however, being scattered among the rest, do but increase
the endless variety of custom, creed, and social environment. Hence the
people of India have never been bound together in the slightest degree,
save purely externally by the power of foreign conquerors, the Moguls
and the British; and hence, even though nations have begun at various
times to take form in various areas, as e.g. the Sikh nation, they have
never achieved any high degree of permanence and stability and are
restricted in area and numbers.
Now let us consider for a moment an apparent exception from the
conclusion to which the foregoing argument seems to point—namely, that
homogeneity of innate qualities is the prime condition of a developed
and harmonious national life.
The most striking exception is afforded by the people of the United
States of America, or the American nation. There we see a great area
populated by immigrants from every part and race of Europe in times so
recent that, although they are pretty well mixed, they are but little
blended by crossing; a considerable part of the population still
consisting of actual immigrants and their children. Here, then, there
can be no question of any homogeneity as regards innate mental
qualities. Nevertheless, the people is truly a nation and, perhaps,
further advanced in the evolution of national consciousness, thought,
and action than many other of the civilised peoples. This we must
attribute to homogeneity of mental qualities which is in the main not
innate but acquired, a uniformity of acquired qualities, especially of
all those that are most important for national life.
Following Münsterberg’s recent account of _The Psychology of the
American People_ we may recognise as individual characteristics, almost
universally diffused, a spirit of self-direction and selfconfidence, of
independence and initiative of a degree unknown elsewhere, a marvellous
optimism or hopefulness both in private and public affairs, a great
seriousness tinged with religion, a humourousness, an interest in the
welfare of society, a high degree of self-respect, and a pride and
confidence in the present and still more in the future of the nation; an
intense activity and a great desire for self-improvement; a truly
democratic spirit which regards all men (or rather all _white_ men) as
essentially or potentially equal, and a complete intolerance of caste.
Such high degree of acquired homogeneity of individual qualities seems
to be due in about equal parts to uniformity of social and of physical
environment, both of which make strongly in the same direction. The
physical environment consists in a great and rich territory, still only
partially developed, a fairly uniform climate, and a uniformity of the
physical products of human labour resulting from the immense development
of the means of communication. The importance of the physical uniformity
we may realize on reflecting that the one great divergence of physical
conditions, the sub-tropical climate of the southern States, gave rise
to the one great and dangerous division of the people which for a time
threatened the harmonious development of the national life; that is to
say, the civil war was due to the divergence of the social system and
economic interests of the southern States resulting from their
sub-tropical climate.
The uniformity of social environment we must ascribe, firstly and
chiefly, to the fortunate circumstance that the first immigrants were
men of one well marked and highly superior type, men who possessed in
the fullest measure the independence of character and the initiative of
the fair northern race, and who firmly established the superior social
environment of individualistic type that had been gradually evolved in
England. Secondly, to the fact that the peopling of the whole country
has taken place by diffusion from this strongly organised initial
society; its institutions and ideas, especially its language, its
political freedom, its social seriousness, being carried everywhere.
Thirdly, to the fact that the country was just such as to give the
greatest scope to, and so to develop, these innate tendencies of the
earliest settlers and their successors. Fourthly, to the fact that the
great diffusion of the population of mixed origin has only taken place
since the means of communication have become very highly developed.
Consider, as one example of the effects of the ease of communication
between all parts, the influence of the American Sunday newspapers.
These papers are read on an enormous scale all over the continent; and
the bulk of the contents of those published in different places is
identical, being prepared and printed in New York, or other great city,
and then sent out to be blended with a little local matter in each
centre of publication; thus every Sunday morning vast numbers are
reading the same stuff. Lastly, it must be added, it is largely due to
the fact that in the main the population has been recruited by those
elements of different European peoples who shared in some degree the
leading tendencies of the American character, independence, initiative,
energy and hopefulness; for it is only such people who will tear
themselves from their places in an old civilisation and face the unknown
possibilities of a distant continent. In spite of an increasing
proportion of emigrants of a rather unlike type from south-eastern
Europe, there seems good ground for hope that these factors will
continue to secure a sufficient uniformity of acquired qualities, until
the diverse elements shall have been fused by intermarriage to a new and
stable subrace, innately homogeneous.
The Americans are, then, no exception to the rule that the evolution of
a national mind presupposes a certain considerable degree of homogeneity
of mental qualities among the individuals of which the nation is
composed. They merely show that, under peculiarly favourable physical
and social conditions, a sufficient degree of such homogeneity may
perhaps be secured in spite of considerable racial heterogeneity. But
the favourable issue of the vast experiment is not yet completely
assured.
There remains in the American people one great section of the
population, namely the negroes and the men of partly negro descent,
whose innate qualities, mental and physical, are so different from those
of the rest of the population, that it seems to be incapable of
absorption into the nation. This section remains within the nation as a
foreign body which it can neither absorb nor extrude and which is a
perpetual disturber and menace to the national life. The only hope of
solving this difficult problem seems to lie in the possibility of
territorial segregation of the coloured population in an area in which
it might, with assistance from the American people, form an independent
nation. At present it illustrates in the most forcible manner the thesis
of this chapter.
The geographical peculiarities of the country inhabited by a nation may
greatly favour, or may make against, homogeneity, in so far as this
depends on acquired interests and sentiments.
The division of the territory occupied by a nation by any physical
barrier makes against homogeneity and therefore against national unity;
whereas absence of internal barriers and the presence of well marked
natural boundaries afford conditions the most favourable to homogeneity.
Almost all the great and stable nations have occupied well-defined
natural territories. In Great Britain and Japan the national spirit is
perhaps more developed than elsewhere. How much does Great Britain or
Japan owe this to the insular character of its territory, which from
early days has sharply marked off the people from all others, making of
them a well-defined and closed group, within which free intermarriage
has given homogeneity of innate qualities, and within which a national
culture has grown up undisturbed; so that by mental and physical type,
and by language, religion, tradition and sentiment, the people are
sharply marked off from all others, and assimilated to one another!
A unitary well-defined territory of well marked and fairly uniform
character tends to national unity, not only through making the community
a relatively closed one, but also by aiding the imagination to grasp the
idea of the nation and offering a common object to the affections and
sentiments of the people.
Contrast in this respect the physical characters of England and Germany.
The boundaries of the latter are almost everywhere artificial and
arbitrary and have fluctuated greatly. It would be impossible for a poet
to write of Germany as Shakespeare wrote of England:—
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war;
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
and all the rest of that splendid passage. France, Spain, Italy, Greece,
Denmark, Scandinavia, are all more fortunate than Germany or Austria in
this respect; and the lack of such natural boundaries has been in the
past, and threatens to be in the future, a source of weakness to the
German nation. We may, I think, not improbably attribute, in part at
least, to this circumstance a peculiarity often noticed in German
emigrants—namely, that they rapidly become denationalised and
assimilated by the peoples among whom they settle, and that an
Americanised German, for example, has often less sympathetic feeling for
Germany than a foreigner. For, owing largely to the lack of natural
boundaries and the consequent fluctuations that have occurred, and the
mingling and blending with other peoples, Germany is a less clear-cut
conception than Great Britain or France; to be a German is something
much less definite than to be an Englishman or a Japanese, or even a
Frenchman or a Spaniard[65]. And the presence or lack of definite
natural territorial boundaries operates in a similar way through many
centuries, determining on the one hand historical continuity to a people
as a whole, or on the other hand breaches of historical continuity.
The United States of America afford a fine example of the binding
influence of a well-defined territory; for here the effect is clearly
isolated from racial factors and from slowly accumulated tradition. The
Monroe doctrine is the outward official expression of this effect. The
private individual effect is a sense of part ownership of a splendid
territory with a great future before it. And we are told, I believe
truly, that this sense is very strong and very generally diffused even
among immigrants; that it inspires an unselfish enthusiasm for the work
of developing the immense resources of the country; that this is the
idealistic motive of much of the intense activity which we are apt to
ascribe to the love of the ‘almighty dollar’; and that it is one of the
main causes of the rapid assimilation of immigrants to the national type
of mind.
The Chinese nation, again, owes its existence and its homogeneity of
mental and physical type to geographical unity. Roughly, China consists
of the basins of two immense rivers, not separated from one another by
any great physical barrier, but forming a compact territory well marked
off save in the north. It comprises no such partially separate areas as
in Europe are constituted by Spain, or Italy, or Greece, or Scandinavia,
or even France; almost all parts are well adapted for agriculture.
Hence, largely, the national unity and the national sentiment which have
long existed, and possibly a latent capacity for national thought and
action.
Perhaps the most striking instance of all is ancient Egypt. There, in
the long strip of land rendered fertile by the waters of the Nile, a
people of mixed origin was long shut up and isolated; there all men felt
their immediate dependence on the same great powers, the great river
which once a year overflows its banks, and the scorching sun which
passes every day across a cloudless sky. There all men looked out on
the same unvarying and unvaried landscape, hoped and feared for the same
causes, suffered the same pains, prayed for the same goods. There was
formed one of the most stable and enduring of nations, whose uniform
culture certainly bears the impress of the uniform monotonous physical
environment[66].
The other way in which physical environment affects homogeneity is by
determining similarity or difference of occupations and, through them,
similarities or differences of practical interests and of acquired
qualities. So long as such differences are determined in many small
areas, the result is merely a greater differentiation of the parts,
without danger to the unity of the whole nation. But, when the physical
differences divide a whole people into two or more locally separate
groups differing in occupation and interests and habits, they endanger
the unity of the whole. There are to-day many countries in which the
distribution of mineral wealth is exerting an influence of this sort,
giving rise to the differentiation of an industrial area from
agricultural areas and a consequent divergence of interests and of
mental habits; notably South Africa, Spain, and Italy.
Great Britain is fortunate in this respect also. Its geological
formation presents on a small scale all the principal strata from the
oldest to the most recent, a fact which secures great diversity within a
compact area, an area too compact to allow of divergences of population
being produced by differences of geological formation; so that it enjoys
the advantages of diversity without its drawbacks. Although a certain
degree of differentiation between north and south may be noted, it is
not sharp or great enough to be dangerous. But let us imagine that coal
and iron had been confined to Scotland. Would there be now the same
harmony between the two countries as actually obtains? The United States
of America afford a good illustration of this principle, as I have
already pointed out; the sub-tropical climate of the southern states
gave rise to a differentiation of occupation, and consequently of ideas
and interests and sentiments, which was almost fatal to the unity of the
nation. A similar differentiation between the agricultural west and the
industrial and commercial east seems to be the greatest danger to the
future unity of the nation; and the same may be said of the Canadian
people.
Ireland illustrates well the effects of both kinds of physical
influence. The Irish Channel has perpetuated that difference of race
and consequent difference of religion, which, but for it, would
probably have been wiped out by free intermarriage; while the lack of
coal and iron in the greater part of the country has prevented the
spread of industrialism, and has thus accentuated the difference between
the Irish people and the English. And it is obvious that among the
Protestants of Ulster the accessibility of coal and iron, maintaining a
divergence of occupations and of interests which prevents racial and
cultural blending, perpetuates the racial and traditional differences
between them and the rest of the population.