Demolins’ account of the genesis of the spirit of independence and

enterprise of the Anglo-Saxons is still more interesting and seductive.

He supposes that their ancestors also came originally in very remote

times from the Eurasian steppes; but that is a disputable point and

forms no essential part of his argument. They settled in prehistoric

times around the coasts of the Baltic and the North Sea, especially in

Scandinavia. And the physical peculiarities of this region impressed

upon their descendants the qualities which have enabled them to play a

leading part in the destruction of the Roman power and in the

development of the civilisation of modern Europe, and which have

established them in almost every part of the world as a dominant race,

increasing in power and numbers at the expense of other peoples.

What, then, are these physical conditions?

Scandinavia is a mass of barren mountains coming down in almost all

parts abruptly to the sea. Its coast line is indented by innumerable

fiords and bordered by thousands of small islands; and the sea which

washes these coasts is warmed by the Gulf Stream. This sea, owing to its

warmth and to the existence of a great bank which lies near the surface

and runs parallel to the coast line, is extremely rich in fish. Hence,

the Nordic tribes who settled in Scandinavia inevitably became a

sea-faring folk, spreading slowly along the coasts in small boats,

supporting themselves in large part upon the fish which they caught in

the sea; for the land is barren, while the sea offers ideal conditions

for fishing in small boats. But, unlike the herds of pastoral peoples,

sea-fishing does not provide all the necessities of a simple life. It

must be combined with agriculture. Hence, the ancient Northmen became a

race of hardy seafarers who at the same time practised agriculture.

The character of the land which was available for the necessary but

supplementary agriculture was all important. It consisted, as it does

still, of small isolated strips of cultivatable soil at the feet of the

mountains where they plunge into the sea. On such land it was impossible

for the family to retain the form of a patriarchal community. The

fertile areas were too small to support such communities, and the

individualistic form of family was inevitably evolved. On each small

plot of cultivatable land a little farm was formed, a homestead in which

lived a family restricted to father, mother, and children. As the

children grew up, it was impossible to support them on the one small

farm or to divide it among them; one son alone was chosen as the

inheritor of the paternal farm; and each of the others had to seek a new

piece of land, build a new homestead, and acquire his own boat.

Thus, the family was forced to become the individualistic family; and

the home of each such family was necessarily isolated, widely separated

from that of every other, owing to the scattered distribution of the

little areas of fertile soil. Thus were formed the first homes in the

English sense of the word; the home in which the father rules supreme

over his own little household, brooking no interference from outside;

the home in which the children are brought up to look forward to

establishing, each child for himself, similar independent

individualistic homes. Such homes have been established by the Northmen

in every part of the world in which they have settled; and they are

peculiar to them and their descendants.

It is obvious that all the very limited domains of the Scandinavian

coasts must have been fully occupied in the way described in a

comparatively few generations after the process of settlement began.

This seems to have occurred about the fourth or fifth century A.D. Then

the younger sons, for whom there was no place at home and for whom there

remained no spots suitable for homesteads in their native land, were

sent out into the world to seek their fortunes. They banded themselves

together to man single boats, or formed fleets of boats; and, leaving

their parents and women-folk behind, set out to conquer for themselves

new homesteads. Large numbers, sailing to the southern shores of the

Baltic and up the Weser and the Elbe, settled on the plains of Saxony;

and from this new centre they again spread, as the Anglo-Saxons to

England, and as the Franks to Gaul. Others settled directly in northern

France and became the Normans. Others, the Varegs, penetrated the plains

of Russia and established themselves as princes over the Slav

population.

This was a migration such as had never before been seen; bands of armed

men, all young or in the prime of life, coming not as mere robbers, but

seeking to conquer for themselves and to settle upon whatever land

seemed to them most desirable. Everywhere they went they conquered and

either exterminated or drove out the indigenous population, as in the

south and east of England, or established themselves as an aristocracy,

a ruling military caste, as the Franks in the north-east of Gaul. And

everywhere they established firmly their individualistic social

organisation, especially the isolated homestead of the individualistic

family, characterised by the despotic power of the father and by great

regard for individual property and for the rights of the individual as

against all State institutions and public powers. In hostile countries

the homestead became a fortified place, or at least was furnished with a

fortified keep or castle; and in those regions, such as Gaul, in which

the indigenous population was not exterminated, the feudal system was

thus initiated. Everywhere they carried their spirit of independence,

enterprise, and initiation.

It was the swarming of the young broods of Northmen in search of new

homes that caused the Romans to describe these Northern lands as the

womb of peoples, and to regard them with wonder and something of fear.

These qualities and habits continued to be displayed in the highest

degree by the Normans after their first settlement in the north of

France. The younger sons kept up the good old fashion of going out into

the world to seek a fortune or rather a territory, which often was a

dukedom or a kingdom. Their most characteristic performance was the

conquest of the greater part of Italy. A little before William of

Normandy and his companions secured for themselves domains in this

country, Norman knights, engaging in enterprises that might well have

seemed absolutely foolhardy, had established themselves in Mediterranean

lands. Some two thousand Normans, arriving Viking fashion in their small

ships, conquered Sicily and the south of Italy and divided these lands

among themselves; and for a time they introduced order and a settled

mode of life among the peoples of those parts. The leading spirits

among them were ten sons of one Norman gentleman, Tancrède de

Hauteville, the father of twelve sons of whom two only remained at home,

while each of the others carved out for himself a domain in Italy. As

Demolins remarks, these families, retaining undiminished their

individualistic tendencies and spirit of independence, were veritable

factories of men for exportation.

The modern Frenchman, says Demolins, would regard as the height of folly

the enterprises of the old Northmen, who, mounted on their frail ships,

quitted each spring the coast of Scandinavia, launched out on the wild

sea, landed, a mere handful of men, on the coasts of Germany, Britain,

or Gaul, and there with their swords carved out domains and made new

homesteads. It was thus that the ancestors of Tancred had acquired the

manor of Hauteville, and it was thus that his sons conquered Italy and

Sicily.

It was in a very similar way that, in a later age, men of the same breed

carried to the new world the same individualistic institutions and the

same spirit of independence, and in doing so, laid the sure foundations

of the immense vigour and prosperity of the American people.

There is one almost more striking illustration of the great and lasting

effects upon character and institutions of the mode of life of the

Northmen determined by their physical environment. It is furnished by

the character and habits of the people who still dwell in the plains

between the mouths and lower parts of the Weser and the Elbe, a region

which was naturally one of the first to be conquered and occupied by the

Northmen. This territory is an infertile sandy plain, and at the time of

the coming of the Northmen had but scanty population; hence, instead of

becoming the military and ruling caste of a subject people, the Northmen

became themselves peasants and farmers. In doing so, they retained all

the characteristic features of the individualistic family and have

perpetuated them, together with the spirit of enterprise and

independence, undiminished to the present day.

In this region each farm is a freehold which has remained in the hands

of the same family for long periods, in many cases for hundreds of

years. Each farm has its isolated homestead inhabited by the head of the

family, his wife and young children, and one or two hired servants. Each

homestead is well nigh completely self-supporting and lives almost

independent of the outside world. In spite of the isolation, which might

have been expected to engender an extreme conservatism and backwardness

of culture, these farmers have continued to exhibit the old Northmen’s

spirit of enterprise and their power of voluntary combination in the

pursuit of individual ends. They were the first in Europe to establish a

society for the scientific study of agriculture, and they have thus

maintained themselves in the first rank as cultivators of the land,

quite without State assistance. In the same way and at an early date

they established schools for their children. They have continued to

produce large families and have retained the custom of handing over the

farm and homestead intact to one son, chosen for his ability to manage

it; while all the other sons keep up the old custom of going out into

the world to seek their fortunes, in the shape of new homesteads.

Most striking of all, they still do this in the old Norse fashion as

nearly as possible. In one district these farmers combined their efforts

some sixty years ago and built a ship which, since that time, has sailed

every year to South Africa, carrying there the surplus sons in search of

new domains for themselves. In that far country their spirit of

independence finds satisfaction in establishing new homesteads, new

families of the individualistic type, and in perpetuating their

traditions of enterprise and self-reliance.

It is because the modern Scandinavians are of the same stock, fashioned

for long ages by the same physical environment, that they have continued

to emigrate in large numbers to North America, where some of their

ancestral race landed centuries before Columbus was born, and where, in

the newly opened territories of Canada and the United States, they are

generally recognised as being among the best of the settlers.

Demolins does not enter into the question—How did the institutions and

mode of life of these or other peoples, determined by physical

environment, bring about adaptation of racial qualities to the

environment? He seems to assume in all cases use-inheritance. But if, as

seems possible or even probable, this is a false assumption, we may

still see clearly that, in the case of the Northmen at least, adaptation

may well have been effected by selection. The conditions of life of

these Northmen were such that in each generation the majority of men

could become fathers of families only after carrying through

successfully an enterprise in which a bold independence of spirit was

the prime condition of success.

Those who were deficient in the spirit of independence must have shrunk

from these wild expeditions in search of new homes to be won only by

the sword, or must in the main have failed to attain the end; remaining

at home, or returning there after failing in the enterprise to which

they proved unequal, to finish their days as bachelor uncles at the

paternal hearth. This process, carried on for many generations, would

lead to the evolution of just those qualities which are characteristic

of their descendants in all the many parts of the earth where they now

rule. Not only must such social selection have been operative during the

period of settlement of Scandinavia; but each great migration to a new

area must have sifted out the most independent and enterprising spirits

to be the founders and fathers of the new branch of the race[119]. Thus

the descendants of the pilgrim fathers were the product of three such

processes of severe selection; the migration from Scandinavia to

Northern Germany; that from Germany to England; and that from England to

America. No wonder that they proved themselves well able to cope with

the hardships and dangers of a new continent inhabited by savages only

less fiercely tempered than their own stock by many generations of

warfare! When we thus find the same institutions and the same mental

traits characterising, from the dawn of history to the present time, all

the widely separated branches of one racial stock and of this stock

alone, we realize how powerful over the destiny of nations is the

influence of racial character formed in the long prehistoric ages; we

see how futile it is to attempt to explain the mental traits of a people

by the history of their political institutions during a few recent

centuries; we understand that these institutions are the effects, not

the causes, of those mental qualities and that, even among the peoples

who have attained the highest degree of civilisation, racial qualities

remain of supreme importance.

THE CROSSING OF RACES

Before passing on to the consideration of evolutionary changes during

the historic period, a few words must be said about the crossing and

blending of races. Such blending has been, no doubt, one of the

principal causes of the great variety of human types at present existing

on the earth. It has been going on for long ages in almost all regions;

but especially in Europe and Africa. All existing stocks (with few

exceptions) are the products of race-blending. No one of the existing

European peoples is of unmixed stock; every one is the product of

successive mixtures and blendings of allied stocks; and the mixing and

blending still goes on; while in America (both north and south) the

greatest experiments in race-blending that the world has yet seen are

taking place before our eyes.

Authors differ widely as to the results of the crossing of human races

and subraces. Some assert that the effect of crossing of races is always

bad, that the cross-bred progeny is always inferior to the parent

stocks. They make no allowance for unfavourable conditions, especially

the lack of the strong moral traditions of old organised societies.

Others maintain the opposite opinion. Both opinions are probably correct

in a certain sense. I think the facts enable us to make with some

confidence the following generalisation. The crossing of the most widely

different stocks, stocks belonging to any two of the four main races of

man, produces an inferior race; but the crossing of stocks belonging to

the same principal race, and especially the crossing of closely allied

stocks, generally produces a blended subrace superior to the mean of the

two parental stocks, or at least not inferior.

This generalisation cannot yet be based on exact and firmly established

data, unfortunately; but it is in harmony with old established popular

beliefs, and with what we know of the crossing of animal breeds; and it

is borne out by a general inspection of many examples. For instance, the

blending of the white, negro, and American stocks, which has been going

on in South America for some centuries, seems to have resulted in a

subrace which up to the present time is inferior to the parent races; or

at any rate to the white race. So the mulattoes of North America and the

West Indies, although superior in some respects to the pure negroes,

seem deficient in vitality and fertility, and the race does not maintain

itself. The Eurasians of India are commonly said to be a comparatively

feeble people. The blend of the Caucasian with the yellow race is also

generally of a poor type. Examples abound in Java of people of mixed

Javanese and Dutch blood; and they are for the most part feeble

specimens of humanity. It is generally recognised that a recently

blended stock may produce a few individuals of exceptional vigour and

capacity and physical beauty. But setting these aside, the blended stock

seems to be inferior in two respects: (1) a general lack of vigour,

which expresses itself in lack of power of resistance to many diseases

and in relative infertility; so that the blended stock can hardly

maintain its numbers; (2) a lack of harmony of qualities, both mental

and physical. It may be that such lack of harmony is the ground of the

relative infertility of blended stocks. It expresses itself in the

inharmonious combination of physical features, characteristic of the

mongrel. The negro race has a beauty of its own, which is spoilt by

blending.

As regards mental constitution, although we cannot directly observe and

measure these disharmonies of composition, there seems good reason to

believe that they exist. The soul of the cross-bred is, it would seem,

apt to be the scene of perpetual conflict of inharmonious tendencies.

This has been the theme of many stories, and, though no doubt many of

them are overdrawn, there is no reason to doubt that they in the main

depict actual experience or are founded on close observation.

It is on the moral, rather than the intellectual, side of the mind that

the disharmony seems to make itself felt most strongly; and the moral

detachment of the cross-bred from the moral traditions of both the

parent stocks is possibly due in part to a certain lack of innate

compatibility with those traditions, as well as to social ostracism; the

cross-bred can assimilate neither tradition so easily and completely as

the pure-bred stocks.

It is possible, though this is a still more speculative view, that the

same is true of the intellectual constitution of the mind.

The superiority of subraces formed by the blending of allied stocks

seems to fall principally under two heads: (1) a general vigour of

constitution; (2) a greater variety and variability of innate mental

qualities. The greater variability of qualities of a subrace renders

that race more adaptable to changing conditions; for racial adaptability

depends upon the occurrence of abundant spontaneous variations. A large

variety of innate qualities renders a race capable of progressing

rapidly in civilisation; it renders it more capable both of producing

novel ideas and of appreciating and assimilating the ideas, discoveries,

and institutions of other peoples; and such imitative assimilation from

one people to another has been a main condition of the progress of

culture.

It is, of course, well recognised that the great centres of development

of culture have been the places where different peoples have come most

freely into contact, notably the centre of the old world where Asia,

Africa, and Europe meet together. This was the area in which the three

great races of Europe came first into contact and mingled freely. Some

authors attribute the fertilising influence upon culture wholly to the

blending or contact of cultures; but there is good reason to believe

that it is largely due also to race-blending.

We might compare in this respect the three great culture areas of the

old world—Europe, India and China. The Chinese afford an instance of one

relatively pure race occupying a very large area. In spite of its early

start and great mental capacities, its culture has stagnated. The stock

was perhaps too pure. India on the other hand seems to owe its peculiar

history largely to the fact that its population in almost all parts has

been made up from very widely different races—white, yellow and black;

the heterogeneity has been too great for stability and continued

progress. In Europe different branches and sub-branches of the white

race, that is of stocks not too widely different in constitution, have

undergone repeated crossing and recrossing.

It is worth while to point out that, if our generalisation is valid, it

follows that race-blending has been an important factor in the progress

of civilisation. And the generalisation has also an important bearing

upon one of the most urgent problems confronting the statesmen of the

world at the present time, and not only the statesmen but all the

citizens of the civilised states, especially the citizens of the British

Empire and of America. For it justifies abundantly the refusal of the

white inhabitants of various countries to admit immigrants of the yellow

or negro race to settle among them; and it justifies, and more than

justifies, the objection to intermarriage with those other races which

Englishmen have upheld wherever they have settled, and which most other

peoples have not upheld[120].

In all the currents of heated discussion as to the rights and wrongs of

the treatment of other races, this question of the kind of subrace which

will result from intermarriage is generally left in the background;

whereas its importance is far greater than that of all other

considerations taken together. Some, like Sir S. Olivier[121], are

content to approve race-blending on the ground that it improves the

inferior race. But the racial qualities of the leading peoples of the

world are too precious to be squandered in the process of improving in

some uncertain degree the quality of the overwhelming mass of humanity

of inferior stocks; the process would probably result in the total

destruction of all that humanity has striven and suffered for in its

nobler efforts.

It is an interesting question—When two races or subraces are crossed, do

they ever produce a homogeneous and true subrace, exhibiting a true and

stable blend of the qualities of the parental stocks? Or does the blend

always remain imperfect, with many individuals in whom the qualities of

one or other of the parental stocks predominate? The answer seems to be

that a stable subrace may be formed in this way, though usually not

until free intermarriage has gone on for many generations. According to

the most recent doctrine of heredity, the Mendelian, every human being

is a mosaic or patchwork of unit qualities, organs, or capacities, each

of which is inherited wholly from one of the parents and not at all from

the other. If this view is well founded, it follows that there can be no

true blending of these unit qualities. But still the mosaic may be so

finely grained and the unit qualities derived from the two parents so

closely interwoven, that each individual may present an intimate mixture

of the parental qualities, may represent for all practical purposes a

blending of the two stocks.

CHAPTER XVIII

RACIAL CHANGES DURING THE HISTORIC PERIOD

We have found reason to believe that national character, as expressed in

the collective mental life of any people, is only to be understood and

explained when we take into account the native or racial mental

qualities of the people; and we have seen reason to think that these

racial qualities were in the main formed in the prehistoric or

race-making period; we have noted some of the principal attempts to

throw light on the prehistoric moulding of races. But these racial

qualities, although very persistent, are not unalterable. We must,

therefore, consider whether, and in what ways, the racial mental

qualities of a people may have been changed during the nation-making or

historic period. What are the factors which determine such changes? What

is their influence on the destiny of nations?

The most diverse opinions are still held in regard to the question of

the extent and nature of changes of innate mental qualities of peoples

during the historic period, the period during which a people, or a

branch of a people, attains political unity and becomes a nation.

There is no doubt that the moulding power of physical environment tends

to become greatly diminished during this more settled period of the life

of a people, and that, in so far as changes take place, they are

determined principally by racial substitutions and by social selections

within a people, rather than by the mere struggle for survival of

individuals or of family groups against the inclemency of nature or

against other individuals and groups.

The former of these two modes of change, substitution, has undoubtedly

been effected on a large scale, producing in certain instances radical

changes in the racial quality of the populations of some countries; that

is to say, there has been more or less gradual substitution of one race

for another, while the nation as a geographical and political entity,

with its language and much of its laws, institutions, and customs, lives

on without complete breach of continuity, and the people, although by

blood radically changed, continues to regard itself as the same people,

accepting as its own the traditions of those predecessors whom they

mistakenly regard as their ancestors.

Perhaps the most striking and complete change of this sort in European

history was the change of racial character of the Greek people. It is

now pretty well established that the Greek population of the classical

age was an incomplete blend of two of the three great European stocks,

namely _Homo Europaeus_, the northern, fair, long-headed type of tall

stature, and of _H. Mediterraneus_, the short dark long-headed type of

the Mediterranean coast lands. The Pelasgians, who, as we now know, had

achieved a civilisation of a type that was widely spread through

southern Europe as long as three thousand years or more before our era,

seem to have been of this Mediterranean race.

Rather more than a thousand years before our era, the Pelasgian

population of Greece and the neighbouring regions began to be overrun

and conquered by tribes of the fair Northern race which came in

successive invasions, the Thracians, the Hellenes, the Achaeans, the

Ionians, and later the Dorians. Just as, at a later period, men of the

Northern race established themselves as a military aristocracy over the

Celtic peoples of western Europe, so these invading tribes established

themselves as a military aristocracy over the populations of

Mediterranean race; and, as in the former case, so here, they

intermarried largely with the people they conquered and formed an

imperfectly blended population, in the upper social strata of which the

fair type was predominant, in the lower strata the dark type.

From this happy blending of two races was formed the people which, under

the favourable geographical and social conditions of that time and

place, evolved the civilisation that culminated after six hundred years

in the Athenian culture of the time of Pericles. And then, after a very

short time, the whole of that splendid civilisation faded away, and the

Greek people sank to a position of slight importance from which it has

never again risen. After having displayed in several departments of the

intellectual life a power and originality such as have never been

approached by any other people, they became a people of very mediocre

capacities, devoid of power of origination and purely imitative.

That this profound change in the mental qualities of the population of

Greece was due to substitution of one racial stock by an inferior one is

beyond question. That a great change of racial type was effected is

sufficiently proved by the comparison of the physical type of the modern

with that of the ancient Greeks. The modern are predominantly dark and

round headed; the ancient were distinctly long headed, as shown by a

sufficient number of skull measurements; and they were, as regards the

dominant class at least, predominantly fair in colour. It has been

supposed that the many references to the fair hair and complexion of

heroes and gods were due to fair persons being very rare and hence an

object of special admiration; but there is no ground for this. The way

in which this racial substitution took place is also pretty clear; and

the rapid, almost sudden, decline of the intellectual productivity of

the Greek people coincided in time with the racial change.

The first and most important factor in the extermination of the best

blood of ancient Greece was military selection. Military group selection

in the prehistoric period had, no doubt, played a great part in bringing

about the evolution of the superior mental qualities of the European

peoples, especially of the fair northern race. So long as the peoples

consisted of more or less wandering tribes of pure race, which waged a

war of extermination upon one another, the peoples and tribes of

superior mental and moral endowments must in the main have survived,

while those of inferior endowments went under. But, so soon as the

Nordic tribes became settled as aristocracies ruling over the Pelasgian

populations, the effects of military selection tended to be reversed;

instead of making for racial improvement, they made for deterioration.

That racial deterioration occurs under these conditions seems to be an

almost general law; it has been exemplified among many different

peoples. The many small Greek states were almost perpetually at war with

one another; and the result of the warfare was not so much the wholesale

extermination of the people of any one state, as the killing off in

large numbers of the younger men of the ruling caste, the free citizens

of whom the armies were almost entirely composed.

The wars between Sparta and Athens were the most destructive and tragic

of all in this respect. We know that the numbers of Spartans of the

aristocratic class, never very large, became fewer and fewer, in spite

of efforts made to keep up the number by admitting to citizenship

persons not of pure Spartan blood; and that Sparta was eventually

destroyed simply for lack of men, men of the ruling class[122].

In Athens and other states the depleting agencies were more numerous.

Frequent wars played the same part as in Sparta; and the number of free

men was further diminished by the repeated founding of colonies, in

which a relatively small number of persons of Greek blood became

swallowed up in a large population of mixed and inferior origin. In some

states, in Athens especially, the political conditions worked powerfully

in the same direction. Prominent citizens were perpetually exiled or

condemned to death, sometimes in considerable batches. It is said that

at certain times two-thirds of the citizens of certain states were

living in exile; and the exiles, going to the colonies or other foreign

lands, were for the most part lost to the Greek people.

Then, with the blooming period of Greek intellect, came the loss of the

ancient religious beliefs, beliefs which had strengthened the family and

made each man anxious to have many sons that the rites might be duly

performed for the repose of his shade. Coinciding with this was the

great increase of luxury which made large families too expensive, save

for the most wealthy; while at the same time the abundance of slave

labour kept down the rate of remuneration of all handicrafts, and so

condemned the class of free Greek artisans to a state bordering on

poverty. Hence, the free citizens of pure blood, already largely reduced

in numbers, ceased to multiply; and the number of the citizens was only

sustained by the admission to citizenship of foreigners, freed slaves,

and various elements of different and inferior racial origins.

Hence, at the time that the battle of Chersonese was fought and the

Macedonians attained the supremacy, the Greek citizens were no longer

the same racial aristocracy which had produced the finest flowers of

Greek culture. But the work of substitution was still only partially

accomplished. In the time of the Roman domination of Greece, the

remnants of the true Greek aristocracy were removed by the slave trade.

Tens of thousands of Greeks of all classes were brought together to the

slave markets; while those men of talent who escaped that fate emigrated

to Rome to seek their fortunes by teaching the Greek language and art

and philosophy. Later still came the Goths, who sacked the towns and

destroyed or drove out the inhabitants. Then followed successive

invasions of Slavs from the north; and lastly, the domination of the

Turk well-nigh completed the extinction of the old aristocracy.

The modern Greek people is descended largely from Slav invaders and

largely from the numerous and prolific slave population of the great age

of Greece, but hardly at all from the men who made the greatness of that

age.

Though the change and deterioration of the racial mental qualities of

the Greek people by racial substitution is the most striking example in

history, it is by no means the only one[123].

The substitution in that case was largely by elements drawn from other

regions and peoples. But a similar substitution and consequent change of

innate mental qualities may go on slowly within any people which has

been formed, as have almost all the present European nations, by an

incomplete blending of two or more racial stocks; it may be effected by

internal selection without any introduction of new elements from any

other region. Before considering an example of the process, let us note

certain facts which show that there may well have taken place,

throughout the historic period, changes of the composition of peoples by

internal substitution or changes of the mental constitution by internal

selections—that is to say, by the more rapid multiplication of certain

mental types and the relative infertility of other types. Consider first

the striking fact that the populations of the various European countries

seem for the most part to have remained almost stationary as regards

numbers, or even in some cases to have diminished greatly in numbers,

throughout the period between the Roman domination and the later part of

the eighteenth century. The population of Spain is said to have declined

from forty millions under the Roman rule to only six millions in the

year 1700 A.D. The population of Great Britain is said to have increased

from five millions to six millions only during the seventeenth century;

and it is certain that in the main it had increased at an even slower

rate, or not at all, in the preceding centuries since the Norman

Conquest; whereas in the nineteenth century it increased from thirteen

millions to nearly forty millions; that is to say, it trebled itself in

the century; and even that rate of increase is considerably less than

the possible maximal rate.

The same is roughly true for most of the European countries; their

populations, throughout great stretches of the historic period, remained

stationary or increased only very slowly. Now when, during any period, a

population does not multiply at the maximal physiological rate, changes

of its character may well be taking place; for, in proportion as the

rate of increase falls below the maximal, there is a lack of fertility

in the population or in some part of it; if this relative infertility

affects equally all parts and classes of the population, it will produce

no change of its composition; but if it is selective, if for any reason

it affects one class, or persons of some one kind of temperament or

mental type, more than others, then this class or this temperament or

this form of ability tends rapidly to diminish and to disappear from

among that people.

The causes of the relative infertility may be divided into two classes:

(1) those which operate by killing persons before they have completed

their middle life; (2) those which restrict fertility without killing.

Both may be selective in their action. The former kind is alone

operative in determining evolution in the animal world and probably also

among the less civilised peoples; but, as civilisation advances, the

causes of infertility of the other kind increase constantly in

effectiveness, while the former operate with less and less intensity. It

is through the causes which diminish fertility merely, rather than

exterminate individuals, that changes of racial quality of nations are

now being, and in the future will be, principally determined. Selection

of this kind is usually distinguished from the various modes of natural

selection which work by extermination, by the name ‘reproductive

selection.’ Briefly, natural selection operates by means of selective

death rate, reproductive selection by means of selective birth rate.

No doubt, disease, especially in the form of plagues and epidemics, was

one of the principal causes of the slowness of increase of population

throughout the Middle Ages. And this was probably non-selective as

regards mental qualities, although it was strongly selective as regards

power of resistance to disease, and has left the European peoples more

resistant to most diseases than any other peoples, save perhaps the

Chinese[124].

But many other causes of selection were at work. Disease presumably has

not affected mental qualities by selection; although by direct action

and mental discouragement it may have tended to the decay of

civilisations; it has been argued, for example, that malaria played a

great part in the decay of classical antiquity, that it was introduced

some centuries B.C. and enfeebled the population of Greece and Italy.

More interesting, from our point of view of the influences affecting the

mental constitution of populations, is the effect of alcohol. Dr

Archdall Reid has argued very forcibly that resistance to the attraction

of alcohol is a mental peculiarity which a race only acquires through

long exposure to the influence of abundant alcohol; that populations are

resistant just in proportion to their past exposure to it—as is true in

the main of epidemic and endemic diseases—and that in both cases this is

due to selection.[125]

Much careful painstaking work by continental anthropologists seems to

have proved that a change of racial composition through internal

selection has been and still is going on in both the German and French

people. The facts have been worked out by O. Ammon[126], Hensen and De

Lapouge[127]. They show, chiefly by means of the comparison of the forms

of large numbers of skulls, that throughout the historic period the

French and German peoples have been becoming more and more round headed,

that the type of _Homo Alpinus_, the short dark round-headed race, has

been gaining upon the type of _Homo Europaeus_.

We have seen that the latter stock of the fair northern type constituted

the upper class among the Gauls of Caesar’s time; and the invasions of

Franks and Normans must have added considerably to their numbers; yet,

in spite of that, the mental and physical characters of this race are

said by these authors to be now very much rarer than formerly, owing to

the internal selections which have favoured the Alpine type. These took

the following forms. In the first place, in the early Middle Ages, it is

said, the Nordic type, being a military aristocracy, suffered, as in

ancient Greece, proportionally far greater losses in warfare than the

Alpine type. Secondly, the severe persecutions of Protestants in France

drove into exile, besides killing many others, large numbers who were

for the most part of the fair race, because, as we have seen, this race

does not easily remain content within the Roman Church. It is said, for

example, that, after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, so large a

number of Protestants passed into Prussia that the rise of Prussia as a

powerful State was the immediate consequence, with of course an

equivalent loss to France. De Lapouge considers this the greatest blow

that France has suffered in the historic period. Normandy alone, it is

reported, sent 200,000 Protestants to Prussia. But the most important

and curious factor has been, according to De Lapouge, what he calls the

selection by towns. He shows, by comparison of masses of anthropological

observations, that the Nordic type has been predominantly attracted to

the towns (which fact he attributes to their more restless enterprising

character) while the dark type has been more content to lead the quiet

agricultural life[128]. He points out that the town-life stimulates to a

new struggle for adaptation, from which differentiation of classes

results; the longheads maintain their numbers better and rise in the

social scale. Further, he shows that town-life makes against fertility,

owing to a number of psychological influences—the stimulation of

ambition and of the intellect, the luxurious habits, the weakening of

family life, the break with the past and its family traditions, the

uncertainty of the future, the weakening of religious sanctions; and he

gives reason to believe that in this way the towns have been, through

many generations, weeding out the elements of the fair race and

determining an ever increasing predominance of _Homo Alpinus_.

In order to understand the importance of these internal selections, it

is necessary to realise that their effects are cumulative in a high

degree, when the same influences continue to work through many

generations. Thus, if within any people there are two equally numerous

classes of persons of different mental constitution, _A_ and _B_, and if

these constitutions determine that the one group _A_ has a net birth

rate of three children per pair of adults, while the other _B_ has a

birth rate of four per pair of parents; then, in the third generation

after one century, the numbers of the two classes, other things being

the same for both, will be as ten to sixteen. After two centuries the

one class will be more than twice as numerous as the other; and after

three centuries the numbers of the class _A_ will constitute about

fifteen per cent, only of the whole population. Late marriage is also

very important. Suppose that of two classes, _A_ marries at 35, and _B_

at 25 years, and that each produces four children per marriage; then

(other things being the same) after three and a half centuries _B_

becomes four times as numerous as _A_. These two factors generally work

together.

But, apart from the change of racial composition of a heterogeneous

nation by internal selection of this sort, changes of the constitution

of even a racially homogeneous people may be produced through selection

affecting persons of particular mental tendencies. One of the most

striking instances of this is the elimination of the religious

tendencies from the constitution of a people by negative selection

through the action of the Roman Church[129]. For many centuries the

Roman Church has attracted to her service very large numbers of those

who were by nature most religiously minded, and it has imposed celibacy

upon them, it has forbidden them to transmit their natural piety to

descendants. In Protestant countries this process of negative selection

of the religious tendencies was continued for a much briefer period than

in the Catholic countries. It is maintained with much plausibility that

we may see the result in the fact that sincere and natural piety is far

commoner in the Protestant countries than in the Roman Catholic; that in

the two countries Italy and Spain, in which the influence of the Roman

Church has been greater than in any others, the people are now the least

religiously minded of any in Europe; that with them religion has become

purely formal and external, that the mass of the people, though

outwardly conforming, is absolutely irreligious; that in fact this form

of religion tends to exterminate itself in the long run by insisting

upon that form of reproductive selection[130].

Another striking instance of the incidence of negative selection upon

certain mental qualities of a people is afforded by the history of

Spain. In the sixteenth century Spain attained to a supreme position of

power and grandeur among the nations of the world, such as has been

rivalled by Rome alone in all history; and then very rapidly her power

decayed, and ever since she has remained one of the most backward of

European peoples, contributing little to European culture, to science,

art or philosophy, incapable of developing without the aid of foreigners

her rich industrial resources, impotent in war, entirely devoid of

enterprise and originality. To what is this great change due?

It is not due to any adverse change of climate, to devastation by war or

plague or famine, nor is it due to any change in geographical or

economic relations. Spain remains more happily situated as a centre of

commerce than any other country of the world. The mass of the people

remains vigorous, proud, and virile. It is the intellect of the nation

alone which has decayed, or rather it is the intellectual life of the

nation that has become utterly stagnant.

Buckle drew a vivid picture of the stagnation of the Spanish intellect

and sought the explanation of it in the great power wielded by the Roman

Catholic Church, which, he said, had successfully fostered the spirit of

protection and superstition, had discouraged every effort of the

intellect, and utterly repressed the spirit of inquiry, to the free

activity of which all progress of civilisation was, in his opinion, due.

Here, again, modern science shows that Buckle was led into error by his

ignorance of the importance of the biological factors, the racial

qualities and the changes produced in them by selection.

Galton and, still more fully, Fouillée have shown that the stagnation of

the intellect of the Spanish people and the consequent decay of the

power and glory of Spain have been chiefly due to the fact that the

people of Spain ceased to produce those men of exceptional mental

endowments, of intellectual energy and enterprise and independence of

character, on whom primarily depend the power and prosperity of any

nation and who are the most essential factors in the progress of the

civilisation of any people, who in short are essential for the growth

and endurance of national mind and character. And this was because

during some centuries intellectual power, enterprise, and energy were

steadily weeded out by a rigorous process of negative selection. In the

first place, the Church, having attained enormous power, became in two

ways a tremendous agency of negative selection. First, she made celibate

priests of a very large proportion of all those whose natural bent was

towards the things of the mind, multiplying monastic orders excessively.

Secondly, by means of the Inquisition she destroyed with fire and sword

or drove into exile through many generations all those who would not

conform to her narrow creed, who combined intellectual power with

independence and originality of spirit and a firm will. In addition she

drove out all the Jews and all of Moorish origin.

The second mode of negative selection, namely persecution exerted by the

Church, was no doubt the more important, but the former also must have

had a great effect. We are helped to realize the probable magnitude of

the effect by reflection on facts set out in an article by Bishop

Welldon[131]. He shows the great part played in English civilisation

since the reformation by the sons of the English Clergy; including as

they did a number of men of the highest achievements in all departments

of our national life. If all those sons of clergy who have shown

exceptional abilities, and all their descendants, had by the rule of

celibacy been prevented from coming into existence, how disastrous would

that have been for the English people, how much less successful and

vigorous would the nation have become!

A second powerful agency of negative selection was the immense colonial

empire which Spain so rapidly acquired, especially her American

conquests. The whole people was seized with the desire to enrich

themselves with the gold of the New World, and was fascinated by the

idea of imitating the romantic adventures of Cortes and Pizarro. Great

numbers of the bolder and most capable spirits set out for the New

World, and there either lost their lives or remained to mix their blood

with that of the native Indians or the imported negroes. In either case

their stock was lost to the mother country.

The third and culminating cause was the career of military aggression

pursued by Charles V; this completed the extermination of the

aristocracy of ability and finally plunged Spain into an intellectual

torpor which has persisted ever since and from which she can only be

raised up by a succession of men of first-rate intellect and character:

men such as she seems incapable of producing, because her people has

thus been drained of all its most valuable elements, because her eugenic

stocks have been exterminated.

The fall of Spain illustrates not only the operation of internal social

selection affecting certain mental qualities; it illustrates also once

more, even more clearly than the fall of Greece, the fact that the

civilisation of a people and its power and position in the world depend

altogether upon its intellectual aristocracy, and that the fall of a

people from a high place necessarily follows the failure to continue to

produce such an aristocracy.

In the civilised nations of the modern world, the most important kind of

selection at work at the present time is what is distinguished as

‘economic selection’ working in conjunction with the formation of the

social classes. It has no doubt operated at various times among other

civilised peoples, but never so strongly and universally as at present.

All the leading civilised nations have passed, in the eighteenth and

earlier part of the nineteenth centuries, through a period in which the

discoveries of science have enormously increased the productive powers

of man and man’s control over, and power of resistance to, the forces of

nature. The result has been that everywhere civilised populations have

multiplied at a great rate, in a way that has never before occurred. But

now this period seems to have definitely come to an end, and to have

been succeeded by a new period characterised by three features which

threaten to exert a most deleterious effect upon the innate mental

qualities of peoples.

(1) The world is becoming filled up; the untouched wealth of enormous

territories no longer lies open to the grasp of the bold and

enterprising. The coloured races are entering into the economic

competition in the way foreshadowed by the late C. H. Pearson[132]. The

high organisation of every form of economic activity renders the

competition for wealth everywhere extremely severe. And at the same time

men have come to regard as necessities of life what, but a few

generations ago, were the luxuries of the wealthy or unknown even to

them; that is to say, the standard of comfort has risen greatly. The

combined result of these changes is the increased difficulty of

maintaining a family in the upper strata of society.

(2) There has been a great development of humanitarian sentiment, one

result of which has been the breaking down of class-barriers and the

perfecting of the social ladder; at the same time it has produced such

changes of our laws and institutions as tend in an ever increasing

degree to lighten the economic burdens of the poor and to consummate by

social organisation the abolition of natural selection; that is to say,

these changes are putting a stop to the repression by natural laws of

the multiplication of the less fit, those least well endowed mentally

and physically. The recent great decline of infant mortality is one

evidence of this.

(3) The influence of religion and custom has weakened, and men are more

disposed to adopt the naturalistic point of view, to believe that this

life is not a mere preparation for an infinitely longer life elsewhere,

but that it is all they can certainly reckon upon and, therefore, is to

be made the most of; while at the same time they are oppressed by the

severity of the economic competition and by a sense of the lack of any

ultimate purpose, end, or sanction of human effort.

The combined result of these three changes is a strong tendency to

reverse the operation by which nature has secured the evolution of

higher types of mind—namely, by breeding in the main from the higher

types in each generation. We see a tendency for the population to be

renewed in each generation preponderantly from the mentally inferior

elements, those whose outlook hardly extends beyond the immediate

future and who have not learnt to demand for themselves and their

children favoured positions in the great game of life. The effects of

these three changes operate in the following manner. The rate of

reproduction, the birth rate, of nearly all civilised countries is

falling rapidly (although the death rate also falls). This diminution of

rate of reproduction is due to increase of celibacy, abstention from

marriage, to increase of late marriage, and to voluntary restriction of

the number of the family in marriage.

Now, it is shown statistically that this falling off of fertility

chiefly affects the classes above the average of ability, the upper and

middle classes and also the superior part of the artisan classes[133].

These classes have been formed and are maintained by the operation of

social and economic competition; they have long been, and are still,

perpetually recruited in each generation from the lower strata, by the

rise into them of the abler members of the lower strata. Hence, economic

selection, under our present social system, seems to be working strongly

for the mental deterioration of the most highly civilised peoples; the

social ladder, becoming more nearly perfect, perpetually drains the mass

of a people of its best members, enabling them to rise to the upper

strata where they tend to become infertile[134]. Galton and Prof. Karl

Pearson have insisted most strongly upon these tendencies. But they have

not escaped the notice of continental authors. M. Jacobi[135] has

written a large volume packed with historical illustrations to prove

inductively the law that aristocracies always die out, or are only

maintained by constant recruiting from below, or in other words that

aristocracies tend to become infertile. And the modern tendency which we

have just now considered under the head of economic selection may be

regarded as falling under the head of this law, a case of the extension

of the law to democratic communities and the natural aristocracies of

ability which are generated in them.

We may perhaps state the principal causes of this tendency in general

terms as follows: the acquirement by any class of leisure, culture, and

the habit of reflection (the malady of thought) partially emancipates

that class from the empire of instinct, custom, and the religious

sanctions of morality; and these are the great conservative agencies

under the influence of which men not so emancipated continue to multiply

according to the law of nature. These instincts, customs, and religious

sanctions of morality, which lead men to multiply freely, have been

acquired for the good of the race or of the society considered as an

organism whose life is of indefinitely long duration; and in some

respects they are opposed to the pleasure and welfare of the individual

life. The habit of reason and reflection tends to lead men to act for

their own immediate welfare, rather than for the future welfare of the

race or of society, and to refuse to make those sacrifices of ease and

to undertake those responsibilities and efforts which the care of a

family imposes and which alone can secure the welfare of the future

generations. It is in respect to these duties that the great antagonism

between religion and reason appears in its most significant aspect.

The tendency for the upper classes to die out and to be replaced

constantly from the lower social strata by the aid of the social ladder

is no doubt stronger now than in foregoing ages. But it has always been

operative; and this is widely recognised; while the comfortable

inference has often been drawn that the process is not only inevitable

but actually beneficial and desirable. It is said that the upper classes

inevitably become effete, and that the lower constitute an inexhaustible

reservoir of mental and moral excellences, from which they are and can

be indefinitely renewed; and thus the population is always rising in the

social scale, a state of affairs which makes for social happiness.

But, if we take a longer view, the prospect is not so comforting; it

seems only too probable that this constant dying away of society at the

top and the renewal of the upper strata from the lower, by the agency of

the social ladder, must sooner or later result in a serious

deterioration of the lower strata, at least in draining it of its best

stocks. There is also a return or downward current of less strength,

which returns to the lower strata the failures, the incompetents, and

the degenerates of the upper. And these two currents must, it would

seem, in the course of ages render it impossible for the lower strata to

continue to supply the superior elements required to maintain the upper.

If and when that stage is reached, national decay must set in.

In England, where the operation of the social ladder has been more

effective and of longer duration than in any other country, there are

indications that this stage is at hand. Our social ladder has provided

and still provides a splendid array of talent, but already it has

produced, as its complement, a large mass of very inefficient

population. Foreign observers are constantly impressed with this; Mr

Collier Price[136], for example, tells us that the million best of our

population is the finest in the world; but that our lowest stratum is

the most degraded and hopelessly inefficient.

Looking at the course of history widely, we may see, then, in the

differentiation of social classes by the social ladder and in the

tendency of the upper strata to fail to reproduce themselves, an

explanation of the cyclic course of civilisation. This has been ascribed

by some authors[137] to race-crossing, followed by blending, and

ultimately by stagnation consequent upon complete blending and the

flowering period which coincides with it. But we now have a more

adequate explanation of the decay which follows upon the blooming

period. It is not mere stagnation, resulting from the achievement of

social harmony and the relaxation of efforts at social adaptation and

achievement of all kinds. The decline is probably due as much, and

perhaps in a much higher degree, to the exhaustion of the mass of the

population, the completion of the draining process by which, throughout

the whole period of the development of the cycle of civilisation, the

best elements and strains have been drained off from the lower strata,

brought to the top, and strained off.

It is interesting to speculate on the possible effect on this process of

the fact that we are becoming more clearly conscious of these tendencies

and subjecting them to scientific inquiry. Already the legislature has

taken one small step of a eugenic nature and is soon to take another.

The important thing is that we should recognise that men are not the

helpless sport of blind forces, that mankind can control its own destiny

in ever increasing degree as knowledge grows.

A word may be said in regard to sexual selection, which probably played

a part in the evolution of the mental capacities of men. It would seem

that, in the peoples among whom monogamy is the rule, it no longer

operates to any appreciable degree. With the general excess of females,

we could suppose that it still tended to race improvement only if the

unmarried women were on the whole distinctly inferior to the married.

But, if there is any difference, it is probably the other way; because

the most able women are more and more attracted into independent

careers. The further the so-called emancipation of women goes, the more

will this be the case.

Civilisation, then, tends from the first to put an end to that

elimination of the less fit individuals by the severities of Nature

which we call natural selection; and, as soon as it has passed beyond

its earliest stages, it brings to an end also the mortal conflicts of

social groups and the consequent group selection, which was in all

probability a main factor of racial progress in the prehistoric period.

It abolishes also at an early stage the improving influence of sexual

selection, which was probably the third principal condition of the

development of the higher powers of mankind.

Civilisation replaces these modes of selection, which make for

improvement of the racial qualities of peoples, by a number of modes of

social selection, nearly all of which must have been, so far as we can

see, negative or reversed selections—that is, selections making for

deterioration of the mental qualities of the civilised peoples. In place

of natural selection, group selection, and sexual selection, we have had

at work, within each people in increasing degrees, various forms of

social selection—military selection, selection by the towns, selection

by the church, political selection with its exiles and its colonial

system, and lastly economic selection, which has become exceedingly

influential in recent years among ourselves. And all these, so far as

can be seen, have operated mainly, among some peoples and in some ages

very powerfully, to diminish the fertility of the best elements of the

population and so to produce actual retrogression of the average

intellectual capacity of peoples, and especially to deprive them of

eugenic stocks, the stocks which were most fertile in individuals of

exceptional capacity on whom the progress of civilisation and the

relative power of nations chiefly depend.

M. de Lapouge’s investigations of the matter have led him to a very

melancholy conclusion. He attaches especial importance to urban

selection, as he calls it, in weeding out the best stocks. He

writes—“There is no more agonising question than that of the exhaustion

of our intellectual reserves by the influence of city-life. The public

and our statesmen do not suspect it. But nevertheless it is the great

danger of modern societies and especially of France. Of all the

devastating influences which we have called social selections, selection

by the town makes most powerfully for deterioration of peoples. Our

towns are destroying all of the intelligent and energetic that have been

spared us by the long centuries of disastrous selections. France has

lost in the past almost all her dolicho-blond elements, and now are

disappearing those of mixed stock and the best of the short-headed type.

In all the continent of Europe the hour is at hand when there will

remain only the inert and used up débris of our dead nations, pitiable

remnants who will be the prey of unknown conquerors. Thus perished the

Hellenic world, thus will perish the whole of our civilisation, if man

does not make application of his knowledge of the principles of

heredity, that tremendous power which to-day is bringing death and

stagnation, but by the control of which science will enable us to secure

safety and national vigour[138].”

It is possible that this conclusion gives too dark a picture of the

tendencies of social selection in the civilised nations; but it does

seem probable that with the advance of civilisation the tendency to

reversed selection becomes strong[139]. We are at any rate compelled to

conclude that it is impossible to discover evidence of any influences

that can have made at all strongly for progressive evolution of

intellectual capacity during the historic period; whereas a number of

forms of selection seem to have worked against it and must at least have

counterbalanced any factors making for improvement, and that therefore

no advance has taken place in intellectual capacity but more probably

some deterioration has already occurred.

The conclusion thus reached deductively is well borne out by the small

amount of inductive evidence that is available. Such comparison as we

can make between the leading modern nations and the civilised nations of

antiquity tends rather to show that both as regards the average man, and

as regards the intellectual endowment of exceptional men and the

proportion of such men produced, the advantage lies with the ancient

peoples. And the comparison of skull capacity or size of brain decidedly

supports this conclusion. It has been found by a number of

anthropologists that the average skull capacity of men of the late Stone

Age in Europe was equal to, or greater than, that of modern Europeans.

And in the main, on the large average, intellectual capacity varies with

the size of the brain.

Our seeming intellectual superiority is a superiority of the traditional

store of intellectual gains, a superiority of knowledge and of the

instruments of the intellect, of language, and of the methods of mental

operation by which knowledge is obtained, especially the mathematical

and scientific methods in general[140]. Consider a single example

frequently quoted to show the intellectual inferiority of the modern

savage. It is said—Here is a poor savage who cannot count above ten

without the help of his fingers and toes or other tallies; and we

generally forget that we also should be incapable of counting above ten,

had not our ancestors slowly devised the system of enumeration or verbal

counting, and that, given such a system, the poor savage would be able

to count as well as any of us.

The reader may be prepared to accept this conclusion as regards the

intellectual capacities of mankind, and yet may be inclined to

say—Surely the civilised peoples have progressed as regards their moral

qualities throughout the historic period! Let us, therefore, consider

this point separately for a moment.

Is there reason to believe that there has been progress of the innate

moral disposition during the historic period? Here we are on still more

difficult ground than when we considered the question of the progress of

innate intellectual capacity.

The essence of the higher morality is the predominance of the altruistic

motives over the egoistic, in the deliberately reasoned control of

conduct. But morality in this sense is relatively rare in every age, and

the great mass of moral conduct of men in general is the issue of mental

processes of a simpler kind; it consists in doing what one believes to

be right, in acting according to what one believes to be one’s duty; no

matter how that belief may have been arrived at. The tendency to do what

one believes to be right, which for the vast majority of men has always

been simply the tendency to conform to the code of morals accepted by

his society, has an innate basis which may properly be called the social

or moral disposition. At present I am not concerned to define the

elements of our nature which make up the moral disposition[141]. The

morality of a people, objectively considered, is the outcome of the

interaction between their moral disposition, on the one hand, and the

moral environment of the individuals, on the other; and the latter

consists of two parts: (1) the traditional system of precepts, customs,

laws, in short the code: (2) the traditional system of sanctions by

which the code is upheld and enforced.

If we compare, in respect to this moral nature, the members of primitive

societies with those of highly civilised societies, applying simply the

criterion of conformity of conduct to the accepted code, we shall be

impelled to the conclusion that the former, the savages and barbarians,

have in general the moral nature much more highly developed than the

members of civilised societies; for they conform on the whole very much

more strictly to their moral codes. But such a conclusion would be

hardly fair to the civilised peoples; first, because their social

environment is more complex, so that the bearing of their moral code is

less simple and direct; it is less easily obeyed, because its teachings

are more generalised in form and do not provide clear irresistible

rulings for all or any large proportion of the much greater variety of

situations with which individuals find themselves confronted. Secondly,

because the code is a higher one and makes greater demands upon the

self-control of individuals. Thirdly, because not only is the code less

clear and direct, but also the sanctions of conduct, civil and

religious, are generally less obvious and immediate; and the

effectiveness of both code and sanctions is weakened by the

co-existence, within complex civilised societies, of more or less rival

codes and systems of sanctions, which inevitably weaken the authority of

one another; whereas the code and sanctions of the savage or barbarous

society reign absolutely and without rivalry, so that men are not led to

question their authority.

The conditions of moral conduct are, then, so different as to forbid any

attempt to compare the innate moral dispositions of primitive and

civilised peoples; and all we can do, in order to arrive at an opinion,

is to consider whether the conditions have been such as to favour the

evolution of the moral disposition, the innate basis of the social

tendencies, during the nation-making period.

There can, I think, be no doubt that the principal condition of the

evolution of the moral nature was group selection among primitive

societies constantly at war with one another. In conflicts of that kind

it must have been the solidarity of each group, resting upon the moral

dispositions of individuals, the tendency of each individual to conform

to the law and moral code of the society and to stand loyally by his

leaders and comrades, which, more than anything else, determined success

and survival in the struggle of the group for existence. At first, the

nature of the code must have been of relatively small importance; the

all important condition of survival of the group must have been the

strict obedience to it on the part of the members of the group.

This is not a deduction only from general principles. One may observe

the effect of tribal conflict, on comparing, in various parts of the

world, tribes that have long been subjected to its influence with

closely allied tribes that have long led a peaceful existence[142].

At a later stage, as the traditional codes of morality became

differentiated and more complex with the increasing complexity of

societies, the nature of these codes must have acquired an increasing

influence in determining group survival; but it must still have been

subordinate in importance to the degree of development of the moral

disposition; for a society with an inferior moral code, strictly

conformed to by its members, would in the long run have better chances

of survival than one with a higher code less strictly observed. Hence,

the higher more difficult codes could only be attained by those peoples

among whom the instinctive basis of social conduct had become highly

evolved by a long process of group selection.

But, on passing into the stage of settled societies of large extent,

that is to say, as peoples passed from the stage of tribal organisation

to that of national organisation, the evolution of the social

disposition through the mortal conflict of groups must have tended to

come to an end; because group selection became less active, the

conflicts between the larger and less numerous societies or groups

became rarer and also less fatal to the vanquished societies. In other

words, during the historic period failure in conflict has not usually

meant extermination; national cultures and the power and glory of

nations have come and gone, but the various peoples, the units of

conflict, have in the main survived their failures and persisted in

living. Group selection, the main condition of evolution of the social

disposition, has, therefore, been abolished; and of the various forms of

social selection operating within societies, the chief of which we have

briefly noticed, no one seems to have been of a nature to produce

further evolution of the social disposition; all of them must rather

have operated adversely to it. Military selection, selection by the

Church’s rule of celibacy, political selection—all these must have

fallen most heavily on the individuals in whom the social disposition

was strong, whose conduct was influenced largely by the sense of duty,

and less by the individual impulses and desires.

We may conclude, then, with some confidence that there has not been

further evolution of the innate moral disposition in the historic

period. This conclusion is greatly at variance with popular conceptions;

we are apt to pride ourselves upon our superior morality; to point to

our humanitarian laws and institutions, to our tenderness for the weak,

the poor, and the suffering; to our regard even for the welfare of

savage peoples, whom we no longer deliberately exterminate, and for

domestic animals; and to suppose that all this shows modern civilised

men to be innately superior in morality to their ancestors and to the

barbarous peoples. But our conclusion that the difference implies merely

an evolution of moral tradition, not of moral nature, will appear

probable if we reflect upon the fact that a widespread change of this

kind in respect to some department of conduct has sometimes been

produced within a very short space of time, even within the lifetime of

one generation. Take the attitude of Englishmen towards slavery and the

African slave trade. It is hardly more than half a century since large

numbers of Englishmen, or men of English origin, owned great gangs of

slaves or drew their wealth from slave labour; yet now most of us look

with horror upon slavery of every kind. Take the case of kindness to

domestic animals. It is a comparatively recent tradition; and, within

the memories of those who are not yet middle-aged, a great improvement

has taken place. Again, there are many persons who, while tender to

their domestic animals, are entirely brutal where wild animals are

concerned, since public opinion or traditional morality does not yet

bear so strongly upon our relations to them. Again, it is not long since

in our factories, our prisons, our schools, the most horrible tortures

were applied to our fellow citizens without provoking any protest; while

now we display perhaps an excessive tenderness and have passed law after

law to protect the feeble against the strong.

The mental development of peoples in the historic period has, therefore,

not consisted in, nor been caused by, nor in all probability has it

been accompanied by, any appreciable evolution of innate intellectual or

moral capacities beyond the degrees achieved in the race-making period,

before the modern nations began to take shape. There is no reason to

think that we are intellectually or morally superior by nature to our

savage ancestors. Such superiority of morals and intellectual power as

we enjoy has resulted from the improvement and extension of the

intellectual and moral traditions and the accompanying evolution of

social organisation.

A different conclusion was reached by the late Benjamin Kidd in his

_Social Evolution_, which has enjoyed a very wide circulation[143], and

it seems worth while therefore to examine very briefly the author’s

position. Mr Kidd saw clearly and argued convincingly that the innate

intellectual capacities have not improved during the historic period;

but he held that the innate moral tendencies have been greatly improved

during this period; or rather he distinguished between the innate moral

tendencies and the innate religious tendencies; and, while rejecting

Herbert Spencer’s view that the moral tendencies (as thus arbitrarily

distinguished from the religious tendencies) are slowly becoming

improved and strengthened in the civilised peoples, he held that the

innate religious tendencies are being greatly improved and strengthened;

and he regarded this as the underlying condition of all ‘social

evolution.’ In support of his view he cited an impressive array of facts

illustrating the general softening of manners and morals among the

civilised peoples, especially the legislative changes which have given

political power to the masses of the people. That these evidences of a

general softening of manners and a great extension of social sympathy

are very striking we must all agree; but Kidd advanced no serious

argument in favour of his contention that these changes have been due to

some change or improvement of the innate qualities of the peoples among

whom they have appeared. And he did not suggest any way in which this

alleged improvement or accentuation of the innate religious tendencies

may have been brought about. He attributed it wholly to the influence of

the Christian religion. Now, if Kidd had accepted the Lamarckian

principle of the transmission of acquired tendencies or effects of use

and habit, he might reasonably have attributed the alleged improvement

to such influence. But he sternly rejected that principle and proclaimed

himself a rigid exponent of the Neo-Darwinian school, which attributes

all racial changes to selection. He even assumed the truth of the

doctrine that, in the absence of selective processes making for its

improvement, every race must inevitably degenerate. It might, then, have

been expected that he would have attempted to show how Christianity can

be supposed to have favoured the improvement by selection of the innate

religious tendencies. Yet he made no attempt in this direction. He seems

to have been aware that his view encounters a great difficulty in the

fact that Christianity powerfully swayed the peoples of Europe for many

centuries during which little or no progress in civilisation was

effected, whereas rapid and accelerating progress of many kinds has

marked the last three centuries. He sought to meet this difficulty by

attributing the rapid progress of recent centuries to the influence of

the Protestant form of Christianity, alleging that it promotes the

evolution of the religious tendencies more powerfully than other forms.

Yet this view of the matter, even if it were acceptable, would leave the

Reformation itself quite unexplained. Kidd seems to hint that,

throughout the earlier centuries of the dominance of the Christian

religion in Europe, it was slowly effecting the alleged improvement of

the religious tendencies in the mass of the people, without these being

able to manifest themselves in social life, until they somehow broke

loose at the time of the Reformation and began for the first time to

operate on a great scale and with tremendous force. The view might have

some plausibility coming from the mouth of a disciple of Lamarck, but it

cannot be reconciled with Kidd’s strictly Neo-Darwinian principles.

There is, then, nothing in Kidd’s grandiloquent and loosely reasoned,

but always interesting pages, to justify any belief in the improvement

of the innate moral disposition during the historic period[144].

Before leaving this difficult question of the extent and nature of

changes in the innate qualities of peoples during the historic period, I

would define in the following way the position that seems to me to be

well founded. There have been no considerable changes of innate

qualities; and what changes have occurred have probably been of the

nature of retrogression, rather than of advance or improvement; and this

is true of both intellectual and moral qualities. The improvements of

civilised peoples are wholly improvements of the intellectual and moral

traditions. All the great and obvious changes of social life are in the

main changes of these traditions. Nevertheless, such differences of

innate qualities as exist between the different peoples are very

important, because of their cumulative influence upon their traditions.

And, especially, the innate superiorities of the leading peoples, though

relatively small, are of essential significance; and it is of the first

importance for the future prosperity of the great nations of the present

time that they should not suffer any deterioration of their innate

qualities; for they alone have attained just such a level of innate

excellence as renders possible the existence of civilisation and the

growth and continued progress of great nations. Especially is it

essential that they should continue to produce in large numbers those

persons of exceptional moral and intellectual endowments, whose

influence alone can maintain the vitality of the national traditions and

who alone can add anything of value to them.

CHAPTER XIX

THE PROGRESS OF NATIONS IN THEIR YOUTH

We have found reason to believe that during the historic period the

peoples of Europe have made no progress in innate qualities, moral or

intellectual; yet that period has been characterised by immense mental

development, a development essentially of the collective mind. The most

striking result of the formation of nations and the development of

civilisation has been this replacement of the progress of the individual

mind by the progress of the collective national mind. And the most

interesting and important problem of group psychology is—What are the

conditions of the progressive development of the collective mind?

I insist that this is distinctly and primarily a psychological problem.

The conclusion we have just reached, to the effect that it is not

produced by and does not imply a racial evolution, shows that it is not

to be regarded as a biological problem. It cannot be treated as a

problem of economics or of politics; these sciences only touch its

fringe at special points.

We have before us the significant fact that in some cases the collective

mind of a nation has remained stationary at a rudimentary stage of

development for long ages; while in other nations the collective mind

has developed at a constantly accelerating rate, becoming more highly

differentiated and specialised and at the same time more highly

integrated, has in fact developed in a way closely analogous to the

evolution of the individual mind. The collective mind, in thus

developing, reacts upon the development of individual minds, raising all

far above the level they could independently attain and some in each

generation to a very high level both intellectually and morally.

The merest outline of a discussion of this great problem is alone

possible. I can do no more than offer some suggestions toward the full

solution of it. Let us note, first, that continued progress, far from

being the rule, as is commonly assumed by popular writers, has been a

rare exception, as Sir H. Maine pointed out in _Ancient Law_. He

wrote—“In spite of overwhelming evidence, it is most difficult for a

citizen of Western Europe to bring thoroughly home to himself the truth

that the civilisation which surrounds him is a rare exception in the

history of the world.” “It is indisputable that much the greatest part

of mankind has never shown a particle of desire that its civil

institutions should be improved, since the moment when external

completeness was first given to their embodiment in some permanent

record. Except in a small section of the world, there has been nothing

like the gradual amelioration of a legal system.” And what is true of

systems of law is true of all the other elements of the intellectual and

moral tradition which constitute a civilisation or national culture.

Sir H. Maine added—“The difference between the stationary and

progressive societies is, however, one of the great secrets which

inquiry has yet to penetrate.” His own contribution, which he regarded

as a partial solution only, was that the difference depends in part upon

the period at which the customs of a people become codified in written

law. If, as the tribes of a people become settled and enter upon a

national existence, there is no written code of law and custom, customs,

he urged, which at their origin were socially advantageous tend to

become extended by analogy to other fields of practice and to assume an

excessive and senseless rigour; for example, the custom of cleanliness

becomes the exceedingly elaborate ritual of purification, which among

the Hindus limits and restrains social life at every point. Or a useful

distinction of classes becomes a rigid caste system, than which nothing

is more prejudicial to progress, intellectual or moral. The continuation

of the process of extension by analogy through long ages has resulted in

nearly all the uncivilised and less civilised peoples of the modern

world being bound down on every hand by a system of rigid and worse than

useless customs, which, restricting both thought and action, render

progress impossible. On the other hand, early codification of custom in

a system of written laws secures that thereafter custom shall not

develop in this blind unintelligent and socially prejudicial manner, but

shall be developed only by deliberate intention and the reasoned

fore-thought of the ruling powers of society; it will then develop in

the main, in spite of many mistakes, in a way which promotes the

efficiency of social life and the welfare of society.

Maine’s suggestion is in harmony with the fact that the progressive

peoples have not been those who invented or learnt the art of writing at

an early period. Writing and the written codification of customary law

could not be invented by any people until they had attained to a settled

life and a considerable degree of social organisation; and then, when

the invention was worked out sufficiently, the damage had been done,

socially advantageous customs had already degenerated into useless rites

and ceremonial observances; and writing served only to establish these

more firmly, to fix their yoke upon the necks of the people, as in the

case of the Hindus.

On the other hand, the progressive peoples have been those who remained

in a savage or barbarous condition until a relatively late period, and

who then acquired by imitation the arts of writing and of reducing

custom to written law, acquired them in a fully developed condition from

the peoples who had invented and developed these arts. They have,

therefore, enjoyed the advantages of written laws from the beginning of

their civilisation.

But, as Maine recognised, the acquisition of writing at the outset of

national life is by no means sufficient to account for the

progressiveness of the nations of South and Western Europe; we must seek

other causes and conditions of their mental progress.

We have already noted certain features of the racial constitution which

were probably essential to the continued progress of the European

peoples—namely, the high degree of evolution of the social disposition

through group selection in the long prehistoric or race-making period; a

group selection which probably was far more severe and prolonged than

the peoples of any other part of the world were subjected to; and which

in turn was due probably, as we have seen, to the great diversity of

physical surroundings and to the comparative severity of the climate of

Europe, especially of the northerly parts in which the most progressive

European race was formed; for these physical conditions generated in the

race an innate energy, a capacity for sustained effort.

Without the highly developed social disposition in the mass of their

members, primitive societies could not have survived those changes of

custom and institution which were essential features of their progress.

Without their innate energy, active rivalry and competition, which have

been chief factors in social progress, would not have been constant

features of the relations of these societies. Still the possession of a

highly evolved social disposition by the European peoples does not in

itself suffice to account for the continued mental evolution of the

leading nations. For not all the European peoples have progressed; and,

of those that have progressed, some have done so much more effectively

than others.

Let us first examine the question—In what has progress primarily

consisted? Has it been primarily a progress of the moral or of the

intellectual traditions? As I mentioned in an earlier chapter, we have

here one of the main points of dispute.

Buckle was the great advocate of the primacy of intellectual development

in the sense of increase of natural knowledge. The argument by which he

sought to establish the position runs as follows: Progress must have

been due to improvement either of moral or of intellectual principles.

But moral principles have been almost the same in all ages. “To do good

to others; to love your neighbour as yourself; to honour your

parents—these and a few others, are the sole essentials of morals; but

they have been known for thousands of years, and not one jot or tittle

has been added to them by all the sermons, homilies and text-books which

moralists and theologians have been able to produce.” On the other hand,

knowledge and intellectual principles have made immense strides; hence

all progress must have been primarily intellectual rather than moral.

Buckle did not deny that there has been some moral progress; rather he

insisted upon it as an essential feature of the progress of

civilisation; but it has, according to him, consisted only in the more

effective operation of unchanging principles, and this more effective

operation is secondary to, and due to, intellectual progress.

I think we must agree with Buckle that the increasing store of knowledge

and the increased command over nature that comes with it has been the

primary condition of the progress of nations. For, since the early

middle ages, the moral natures of men and the teaching of Christianity

have been the same in all essentials; yet for many centuries there was

practically no progress. Kidd himself admitted that progress only set in

rapidly about the time of the Reformation. And it is notorious that this

progress, including the Reformation itself, was due to the stimulation

of the intellect by a number of influences—by the renewed study of

classical art and literature, by the discovery of the New World, by the

increased intercourse of nations resulting from the improvement of the

art of navigation, by the accumulation of wealth and the formation of a

powerful middle class. It is clear also that religion, far from having

been the sufficient cause or instrument of progress, was largely

responsible for the stagnation of the middle ages, through sternly

repressing the sceptical spirit and leading off men’s minds from

inquiry into natural laws, to the discussion of many topics on which it

was impossible to achieve knowledge and which were necessarily barren of

results making for human progress. Nevertheless the Christian religion

has in the long run co-operated in forwarding the mental evolution of

the European peoples in an important manner which we must briefly

consider later—namely, through its effects upon social organisation.

Without raising the question of the natural or supernatural origin of

religion or of any particular religion, we may say that from the point

of view of national life, a religion is essentially a system of

supernatural sanctions for social conduct, for conduct conforming to the

moral code of the society, and especially for customs regulating the

family and the relations of the sexes, on which, more than on anything

else, social stability depends. It is, thus, the great conservative

agency; for it enforces the observance of custom by a system of rewards

and punishments; in the earlier stages of society, especially by

punishments. It is essentially intolerant of change of custom or belief;

and even the Christian religion has exemplified this principle in the

terrible persecutions and innumerable wars for which it has been

responsible.

The great function and tendency of any religion, once established among

a people, is to preserve intact the current moral code and to secure

conformity to it. Nevertheless, some religions are less prohibitive of

progress than others; and, when such a religion replaces a more

restrictive one, an important condition of progress is realised. But, in

so far as progress is then favoured, this is not due to the changed

operations of the religious emotions and sentiments; it is due to the

great religious teachers who have succeeded in breaking down the bonds

imposed by the more primitive religion, and so have given freer play to

the intellectual faculties; the improvements of religious systems have

been negative or permissive conditions of progress, rather than its

effective cause.

Progress has, then, always resulted primarily from the gains made by the

intellect and added to the intellectual tradition, that is to say, from

the progress of knowledge. Nevertheless, the free play of the intellect

is always a danger to society, for the reason that the customs and moral

code of a society, however imperfect and sanctioned by a religion

however narrow, are yet the bonds by which alone it can be held

together; to their influence has been largely due in every age the

subordination by the members of a society of their individual egoistic

ends to the welfare of the society as a whole.

The spirit of inquiry, which always leads men to question the authority

of these customs and moral codes and of their religious sanctions and

thus tends to weaken them, is, then, a socially disruptive force, at the

same time that it is the source of all progress. Hence, though the free

play of the intellect and of the spirit of inquiry may secure for a time

the rapid progress of civilisation, it cannot alone secure continued

progress. Continued progress has only resulted where there has been

maintained a happy balance between the conservative and the progressive

forces, between the authority of custom and the moral code on the one

hand and the free activity of the intellect on the other. Wherever the

progressive force has outrun the conservative, progress has been first

rapid and then has come abruptly to an end. Greece exemplified this

process in the clearest manner. It was the excessive seeking of

individuals for their own power and glory, unrestrained by the customs

and religious systems which their intellect had outgrown, that ruptured

the bonds of society, plunged the State into war and civil strife, and

eventually destroyed it by the extermination of the Greek aristocracy.

The same is true of the brilliant but brief periods of rapid progress

exhibited by the medieval Italian States. Intellect outran and

undermined morals, and progress was brought to an end.

Some observers have maintained that history will pass the same verdict

upon modern France, and that most of our leading nations of the present

day are seriously threatened by the same danger.

Any long continued progressive evolution of the mind of a people has

been, then, a rare exception in the history of the world; partly because

the free play of the spirit of inquiry and of the intellectual

faculties, which is the source of all progress, exerts a socially

disruptive tendency, so that progress is by its very nature dangerous to

the stability of any nation; but partly also because the free play of

the spirit of inquiry has been so rarely achieved or permitted, so that

even such progress as has led on to social disruption has been

exceptional.

A long period of intellectual and moral stagnation in the rigid bonds of

custom and religion has been the rule for nearly all the peoples of the

earth, so soon as they had attained to a settled mode of existence. The

primary question, then, to be answered in seeking to account for the

progress of nations, is—What conditions enabled the spirit of inquiry to

break the bonds of custom and religion and to extend man’s knowledge of

man and of the world in which he lives?

Bagehot, in considering more particularly the progress of political

institutions, put the problem in much the same way. He pointed out that

the first age of the life of nations is always an age dominated by

custom resting on unquestioned religious sanctions; an age in which

there is often a vast amount of discussion of detail, as, for example,

discussion of the details of military expeditions, but never discussion

of principles; and he maintained that an age marked by the discussion of

principles, involving the questioning of traditions, moral and

intellectual, initiates and characterises every period of progress.

There is much to be said for the view that the most important condition

of progress in its earlier stages was in most cases, perhaps in all, the

conquest of a more primitive people by one more advanced in culture or

of superior racial type, who remained to settle in the conquered

territory, and, not driving out or exterminating the conquered

inhabitants, established themselves as a governing class. History and

archaeology show that this occurred at least once in most of the areas

where nations have developed spontaneously to any considerable degree;

the earliest known instances being those of Egypt and Chaldea as long as

ten thousand years ago. The same thing occurred again in India, and

later still in Greece; and throughout early European history the process

was frequently repeated in various areas. Every one of the modern

peoples of Europe has been formed through such fusion by conquest of two

peoples, in some instances several times repeated; and, though none of

these modern European peoples originated their own civilisations, but

largely took over by imitation the civilisation ready made for them by

the more precocious peoples of Asia and by Greece and Rome, these

fusions and the resultant composite character of the European peoples no

doubt have tended greatly to promote progress. And it is easy to see how

in several ways such a fusion by conquest of two peoples must have

tended to set free the spirit of inquiry, that prime condition of

progress. Three of these seem to have been of chief importance.

The most obvious way in which progress has been promoted was that the

conquering invaders became a leisured aristocracy, having their material

needs supplied by the labour of the indigenous population, which became

a more or less servile class. All the ancient civilisations were thus

founded upon servile labour. We may be sure that, until such a social

system resulted from conquest, no people made much progress; because all

individuals were fully occupied in securing their means of subsistence,

either by warfare, by the tending of herds, or by agriculture. Each

people was self-supporting, and knew no or few needs beyond those which

their own labour was able to supply; and labour was individual, or was

co-operative only among small groups, such as the communal family

groups. It could, therefore, undertake no great works, whether of

building or engineering, such as large public buildings, irrigation, or

road making. Each family consumed what it produced, and consequently

there was no large accumulation of capital; for there were no motives

for storing up their primitive wealth, and generally no wealth of

durable and storable form.

But, as soon as a ruling class could dispose of the labour of a large

part of the population, making them work for a mere subsistence wage,

there was initiated that régime of capital and labour on which, up to

the present time, all civilisation has been founded. Wealth was

accumulated; great works, such as the pyramids, demanding enormous

expenditure of human life and work, could be undertaken; and a leisured

class was created, which, being freed from the necessity of bodily toil,

was able to turn its energy to speculative inquiry, to the enjoyment of

art and luxury, to directing and organising the labour of the multitude,

to inventing the tools that render labour more effective, to studying

natural phenomena such as the cycle of the seasons, a more accurate

knowledge of which added to the productivity of labour; for it was in

the service of wealth production, that in the main science arose,

especially mathematics and mechanical and astronomical science,

arithmetic and geometry through the need of a practical art of

measurement, astronomical science through the need of foreseeing the

seasons.

The desire to enjoy art and luxury is one which feeds itself and grows,

when once aroused; and it was these growing desires of the leisured and

wealthy classes which created trade, or at any rate first developed it

beyond the merest rudiments; and in doing so led to regular and friendly

intercourse between nations.

A second very important result of such fusion by conquest must have been

the breaking up to some extent of custom and the weakening of the

religious sanctions. Under the new régime, both the conquering and the

conquered peoples would find their old customs unsuited to their novel

social relations, and inadequate to regulate their changed occupations.

The old customs of both would inevitably be thrown into the melting pot;

at the same time the religious sanctions of both would be weakened by

the intimate contact of two systems, neither of which, in the presence

of a rival system, would henceforth be able to claim unquestioned

authority, until one had suppressed the other or a stable synthesis of

the two had been effected. So long as each individual never had

intercourse with any but those who accepted the national or tribal

religion, it was well-nigh impossible for anyone to question its

authority; but as soon as the devotees of two religions lived

intermixed, the question—Which religion was true? must inevitably have

arisen in some minds. The weight of custom and of religious sanctions,

which lies so heavily on a primitive society, restricting all

enterprise, forbidding inquiry and repressing the use of the

intellectual powers, would thus be lightened and scope be given for

experiment in thought and action. And either people, coming into more or

less intimate contact for the first time with a system of beliefs and

customs and institutions other than their own, must have been led to

compare, discuss, and reflect upon these things; the sceptical spirit

and the intellect must have been greatly stimulated. There must have

been a conflict of ideas and the initiation of an age of discussion. In

short such a fusion by conquest must have broken up what Bagehot calls

the ‘cake of custom’ as nothing else could, and so have rendered the

intellectual and moral traditions once more plastic and capable of

progress.

No doubt in many cases such disintegration of the old systems went too

far, and the society, before it could evolve anew a sufficiently strong

and adequate system of customs and sanctions, went to pieces. In modern

times many primitive societies have been broken up and destroyed in just

this way—namely, their customs and the religious sanctions of their

morality have been undermined and weakened by the contact of the more

complex systems of civilised men, and they have not been able to

assimilate the new system rapidly enough to enable it effectively to

replace their own shaken and decaying code.

A third way in which the fusion by conquest of two peoples must have

made for progress was by biological blending, the crossing by

intermarriage of the two stocks. We have seen that there is a

considerable amount of evidence to show that, when two stocks are very

widely different in mental and physical characters, the result of

crossing is likely to be bad, the crossed race is likely to be inferior

to, and less fit for the battle of life than, both parental stocks; the

characters of individuals will be apt to be made up of a number of

elements more or less inconsistent with one another; such a composite

character made up of inharmonious elements will be apt to be unstable

and constantly at war with itself. Character of this kind and the tragic

struggles to which it is liable to find itself committed has been well

described in fiction by a number of authors, especially in stories of

the Mulattoes of America. On the physical side it has been shown that

such cross-bred races tend to die out owing to lack of balance of the

physical constitution.

On the other hand, we saw that the crossing of two closely allied racial

stocks seems to have a tendency to produce a cross-bred race superior to

both parent stocks, and especially to produce a variable stock. It is, I

think, probable that the frequently repeated blending of allied stocks

in Europe has been the fundamental biological condition of the capacity

of the European peoples for progressive national life.

In the case of the conquest of one people by another differing very

markedly in racial qualities, there seem to be two alternatives equally

prejudicial to the continued progress of the nation so formed. On the

one hand, free intermarriage may take place, resulting in an inferior

cross-bred race incapable of high civilisation, as seems to have

occurred in most of the countries of South America, where it is with the

greatest difficulty that the outward forms of the high civilisation

which they have imitated from Europe are maintained. On the other hand,

where especially the outward physical characters are very different, the

conquering people may hold itself apart from the conquered, and maintain

itself as a ruling class, which prides itself on the purity of its blood

and which tends to harden into a caste. Such conquest without subsequent

blending gives rise to a civilisation which, being founded upon a rigid

caste system, is incapable of continued progress. This is what has

happened in India. The fair-skinned Aryan invaders despised the

dark-skinned indigenous peoples, whom they spoke of as being scarcely

human, and, in spite of a good deal of crossing, they have in theory and

in the case of the Brahmans at least to a considerable extent in

practice, maintained the purity of their blood, by means of the

development of the caste system.

Europe on the other hand was fortunate in that all the different

peoples, or most of the peoples, from which its nations have been formed

were of allied race; they were all, with few exceptions, of the white

race, sufficiently nearly allied not to produce inferior cross-races but

rather to produce some superior subraces. The conquered peoples have

been so similar to their conquerors in physical type that crossing could

take place without the cross-bred offspring bearing the indelible marks

of inferior or mixed parentage, such as a dark skin or a woolly head.

Hence, although caste systems were formed, they did not prove rigid;

free intermarriage took place, and it was not impossible for individuals

of the conquered race or of the mixed stock to rise into the superior

ruling class. The importance of this may be seen, on reflecting how the

merest trace of negro-blood in individuals of mixed origin in North

America is apt to show itself in the physical features and how, even in

that enlightened and Christian country, a trace so revealed suffices to

condemn a man, no matter how great his powers or refined his character,

to remain a member of the inferior caste.

But, apart from the possible improvement of the racial qualities of the

whole people, or of the average individuals in general, which may well

have occurred in Europe, the biological blending of allied races may

give important advantages to the resulting people in another way—namely,

by increasing its variability, the variability of its mental qualities.

If a people is extremely homogeneous in the racial sense, it may be

expected to display little variability, its members will be of

essentially similar mental qualities and of a uniform level of mental

capacity; and this will tend to make them a very stable, but a very

conservative unprogressive, nation. This seems to be true of China, and

to be in large part the source of its extreme stability and extreme

conservatism.

Where, on the other hand, a people is formed by the intimate blending by

intermarriage of two or more racial stocks, it is likely to be a

variable one; there will be large departures in many directions from the

average type of mental ability, and there will be individuals varying by

excess of development of various capacities as well as others varying by

defect of development.

And a people of variable and therefore widely diversified mental

capacities will, even though its average capacity is no greater than

that of a more homogeneous people, be more likely to make progress in

civilisation, and this for three reasons.

First, variability is the essential condition of all race progress by

biological adaptation; for it is by the selection of variations, the

survival and multiplication of types varying in certain directions in

larger proportions than the average type, that all race progress and

adaptation seems to have been achieved. Hence, increased variability,

resulting from the blending of races, will render a people so formed

capable of race progress and of more rapid adaptation; for example, in

the peoples of Northern Europe it would have favoured the adaptation of

the constitutions of the people to the severity of the climate and to

those peculiar social conditions which, as we have seen reason to

believe, have been the source of their unique combination of qualities.

Secondly, variability of mental qualities would be favourable to the

coming of the age of discussion; for in such a people custom would rule

with less force, its sway would be more apt to be questioned and

disputed, than among a highly homogeneous people.

Thirdly, and this is probably the most important manner in which race

blending has favoured the progress of nations, among the variations from

the average type produced by race crossing would be men of exceptional

capacities in various directions.

We have already noted that all progress of the intellectual and moral

traditions eventually depends upon the activities of men of exceptional

powers of various kinds, upon the great religious or ethical teacher,

the inventor, the artist, the discoverer. A people may, like the

Chinese, have a high average capacity of intellectual ability; but, if

it cannot from time to time produce men of far more than average

capacity along various lines, it will not progress very far

spontaneously. Exceptional intellectual capacity is, however, a

variation from the type, as the biologists say, just such as may be

expected to result from race blending; there will be, among the

variations in all directions, variations in the direction of exceptional

capacity of various kinds. Hence a nation of blended variable stocks

will, other things being the same, be far more likely to be capable of

continued evolution than a homogeneous people of equal average mental

capacity, among whom few men are capable of rising to any distinguished

height.

This view of the effects of race blending is borne out empirically by

the comparison of the peoples of the world. The European peoples have

been the most progressive, and they, more than all others, have been

formed by repeated blendings of allied stocks. Within Europe it is the

peoples among whom this blending has been carried furthest who have

proved most progressive—the French, the English, and the Italian; and,

conversely, the least blended peoples have been the most backward, and

have contributed least to the general progress of civilisation in

Europe; for example the large, almost purely Slav, population which

forms the bulk of the Russian nation.

We pass on to consider other conditions which have contributed to

setting free and stimulating the spirit of inquiry. We have seen that

physical environment played a predominant part in moulding the mental

qualities of races in the prehistoric period. And we must recognise

that, although with the beginning of settled national life it probably

ceased to modify race-qualities to any considerable extent, it has yet

been important in favouring the rapid evolution of the intellectual

tradition of some peoples, and this in several ways. First, by its

direct influence upon the minds of individuals. Buckle and others have

pointed out that, while, in India and throughout a great part of Asia,

the physical environment was unfavourable to intellectual progress,

while its vast and terrible aspects fertilised the superstition of the

people, and repressed the spirit of inquiry by rendering hopeless any

attempt to cope with its terrific displays of force, in Europe and

especially in South and Western Europe, the comparatively small scale on

which the physical features are planned and the relative feebleness of

the forces of nature encouraged men to adopt a bolder attitude towards

them.

Buckle, contrasting Greece with India in this respect, showed how the

physical features of both countries were reflected in their national

cultures; how, while the Hindus cringed in fear before monstrous and

cruel gods, the Greeks fashioned their gods in their own image, simply

personifying each leading human attribute, and made of them a genial

family of beings, differing from men and women in little but their

immortality and their superior facilities for the enjoyment of life. In

general the buoyancy and serenity of the Greek attitude towards life and

nature reflected the beautiful, secure and diversified aspects of their

physical environment. In such an atmosphere the spirit of inquiry would

naturally flourish more freely than where man’s spirit was oppressed by

the fear of terrible and uncontrollable forces and where he was made to

feel too keenly the limitations of his mental and physical powers.

Buckle summed up his review of these effects as follows:—“In the

civilisations exterior to Europe, all nature conspired to increase the

authority of the imaginative faculties and to weaken the authority of

the reasoning ones. In Europe has operated a law the reverse of this, by

virtue of which the tendency of natural phenomena is, on the whole, to

limit the imagination, and embolden the understanding; thus inspiring

man with confidence in his own resources, and facilitating the increase

of his knowledge, by encouraging that bold, inquisitive and scientific

spirit, which is constantly advancing and on which all future progress

must depend.”

I think we must accept this view of the importance of the direct action

of physical environment on the minds of individuals. To deny, as Hegel

did, the important influence of physical environment upon the

development of Greek culture, because the Turks have enjoyed a similar

climate without producing a similar culture, is unreasonable. The

progress of civilisation has always been the result of a multiplicity of

causes and conditions; and we cannot deny all importance to any one,

whether race or climate or social organisation or religion or any other,

because in some particular instance it has failed to produce the

progress of which in other instances it has been one of a number of

co-operating causes.

The diversity and small scale of the physical features of South and

Western Europe has favoured the progress of the intellectual tradition

in another important way. The land is divided by natural barriers into a

number of natural territories, the population of each of which has

naturally tended to become one nation and to develop a national culture.

In this way there arose a number of nations and States in close

proximity with one another, yet each developing along its own lines.

When the development of wealth and commerce brought these diversified

cultures into friendly intercourse with one another, the exchange of

ideas and the general imitation of the useful arts of one people by its

neighbours must have made very strongly for progress; the culture of

each of a group of neighbouring peoples no longer progressed only by the

addition of the ideas and inventions of its own exceptional intellects,

but each group had the opportunity of selecting and imitatively adopting

whatever seemed to them best among the ideas, the arts and inventions of

the neighbouring peoples.

It is generally admitted that this was one of the main conditions of the

rapid development of the culture of the ancient Greeks, situated as they

were within easy reach of several of the oldest civilisations, those of

Egypt and of South-Eastern Asia; they were also within reach of a number

of less civilised peoples, and therefore enjoyed opportunities for trade

of a kind which, being peculiarly lucrative, has in all ages hastened

the acquisition of wealth and capital and stimulated the development of

commerce. All the most progressive European peoples have enjoyed similar

advantages; and it has been maintained with some plausibility that the

principal cause of the shifting of the centre of progressive

civilisation from the Eastern Mediterranean to the west of Europe has

been the improvement of the art of navigation and the discovery of the

New World and of the sea route to Asia and the East Indies; for these

gave the western countries the most advantageous positions for the

conduct of a world wide commerce. No doubt the factor mentioned has been

important in producing this change.

But, when we consider the ancient European civilisations and compare

them with our own, we realize that, in spite of all the circumstances

which we have enumerated and briefly considered as factors stimulating

the spirit of inquiry and making for progress of their intellectual

tradition, and in spite of their brilliant and in some respects

unapproachable achievements, they were nevertheless radically incapable

of continued progress. Greek civilisation certainly progressed at a

marvellous rate for some centuries; yet there is every reason to believe

that it bore within itself the inevitable causes of its ultimate decay

or stagnation. And, when we consider Roman civilisation, we see that,

through all the long centuries of the greatness of Rome, it was

essentially unprogressive. There was no continued evolution of the

national mind and character. Save in respect to the single province of

law, Roman civilisation, when it entered upon the period of its decay,

had not appreciably progressed in any essential respects beyond the

stage reached more than a thousand years earlier. Rome was in fact less

truly a nation in its later than in its earlier age. It had

superficially imitated rather more of Greek culture and it had

incorporated a number of bizarre elements from the many peoples which

had been brought under the sway of the Roman sceptre; but neither in

religion, nor in philosophy, nor art, nor science, nor in any of the

practical modes of controlling the forces of nature, had it made any

substantial gains; and its social organisation tended more and more to

the type of a centralised irresponsible bureaucracy[145].

On the other hand, it cannot be denied that in the last thousand years

the nations of Western Europe have made immense progress; nor that this

progress has been accelerating from century to century in a way which

seemed to reach a climax in the wonderful century just closed; though

there appears good prospect of continued progress and perhaps of

continued acceleration throughout the century to come and perhaps for

many more.

What then is the cause of this great difference between the civilisation

of Western Europe and all preceding civilisations? The difference is, I

think, essentially due to difference of social organisation. As argued

in a previous chapter, social organisation was of less influence in the

earlier ages, but has assumed a constantly increasing importance

throughout the evolution of civilisation; and it is now predominant over

all other conditions. We must, then, first define this difference of

social organisation; secondly, we must show how it makes for progress;

and thirdly, conjecture how the social organisation of Western Europe,

so favourable to the continued development of nations, has been brought

about.

The great difference which divides the social organisation of the modern

progressive peoples from that of all the ancient European civilisations

is that, under it, the individual enjoys greater liberty and more

securely founded rights as against the community, and as against all

other individuals. This change is summed up in Sir H. Maine’s dictum

that “the movement of progressive societies has hitherto been a movement

from status to contract.”

All the ancient civilised societies, Greece and Rome no less than all

the others, rested upon the fundamental assumption of the absolute

supremacy of the State, the assumption that the individual existed only

for the State and that the welfare of the State was the supreme end to

which all individual rights and liberties must be subordinated

absolutely, was the end to the securing of which all custom, and all

law, all social and family relations and institutions and religion

itself were but the means. And the State was a politico-religious

organisation, membership of which implied the blood-relationship of its

citizens and a common participation in the state-religion; while the

State gods were conceived as being themselves ancestors, or in some

other way kinsmen, of the citizens[146]. This bond of blood or kinship

between the members of the State and its gods went back to the earliest

times. It is the rule of almost all savage peoples; and the religious

rites of many include some rite symbolising or renewing this blood bond,

such as smearing the blood of the kinsmen on the altars of the gods, or

drinking the blood of some animal which is held to be the symbolic

representative of the god. And the supreme end of the State itself was

the increase of its own power and stability, through the exercise of

military power and through military conquest.

All human beings outside the State, outside this

moral-politico-religious-bond, were regarded as _prima facie_ enemies of

the State, without rights of any sort, without even the slightest claim

to humane treatment. Hence, in war the slaughter of the conquered was

the rule; and the practice of making slaves of prisoners of war and of

conquered peoples only arose through its profitableness, and was

regarded as a great concession to the victims, whose natural fate was

sudden death. Under this system, which inevitably became to some extent

a caste system, with a caste of freemen or citizens ruling over slaves,

each individual was born to a certain status as a member of a particular

family. His position and duties and rights in the family were rigidly

prescribed by custom, and the law took account only of the relations of

the family to the State.

CHAPTER XX

THE PROGRESS OF NATIONS IN THEIR MATURITY