modern nations of Western Europe have shown a much greater capacity for
progress than all the earlier civilised peoples, not excepting those of
ancient Greece and Rome. I urged that this difference between the
ancient and the modern European civilisations seemed to be chiefly due
to a difference of social organisation. I pointed out how the older
nations were essentially caste nations, resting on a basis of slavery,
and how all individual rights were entirely subordinated to the welfare
of the State, a politico-religious organisation held together by the
bond of kinship; how, within that organisation, the rights of each
person were strictly defined throughout his life by the status to which
he was born; and how all persons outside this organisation were regarded
as natural enemies, towards whom no obligations of any kind were felt.
We have now to notice that the form of social organisation towards which
all the leading modern nations have been tending, and which some of them
have now pretty well achieved, is one in which the last vestiges of the
caste system and the rigid bonds of customary status are rapidly being
abolished. In this new organisation social classes persist, but they are
no longer castes; all members of the nation are regarded as being by
nature free and equal; a career is open to every talent, and any man may
rise to any position by the exertion of his abilities. His position is
one of extreme liberty as compared with that of any member of the
ancient nations. He has definite rights as against the State. The State
claims only a minimum of rights over him, the right to prevent him
interfering with the rights of his fellow-citizens, the right to make
him pay for his share of the privileges conveyed by its activities. And
these rights it claims in virtue of contract between each citizen and
all the rest. For each citizen is free to throw off his allegiance to
the State and to leave it at will, and his continuance as a citizen of
the State implies his acceptance of the contract.
Even in religion, personal liberty has at last been achieved; religion
is no longer a State-religion, the gods are no longer the national gods,
and each man may accept any religion or none. This is the most striking
instance of the immense distance, as regards the liberty of the
individual, that divides the modern from the ancient nations. For with
the latter, the function of religion was to preserve the security of the
State; and to question it in any way was to threaten the State, a
principle fully acted upon by Athens in the time of her highest
enlightenment and glory.
The change is very striking also as regards the attitude of the citizens
of one State towards those of any other and towards even the members of
savage and barbarous communities. We no longer regard ourselves as
devoid of all obligation towards such persons. Rather we tend to treat
them as having equal rights with ourselves, the few specifically
national rights excepted, and as having equal claims with our fellow
citizens upon our considerate feeling and conduct towards them.
The relations of individuals are, then, tending to be regulated, on the
one hand, by contractual justice; on the other hand, by the moral
obligation felt by each individual, an obligation not enforced by any
exercise of the power of the State, but supported only by public
opinion. The end we set before ourselves is no longer the welfare of the
State, to be attained at any cost to individual liberty; it is rather an
ideal of justice for every person, to which the welfare of the State
must be, if necessary, subordinated. In short, instead of maintaining
universal intolerance, we have made great strides towards universal
tolerance.
All this represents a profound change of social organisation, a great
advance in social evolution. That it is intimately bound up with the
progressiveness of a people is shown by the fact that the degree to
which the change has proceeded among the various nations runs parallel
with their progress in all the essentials of civilisation. The change
seems, indeed, to be one of the principal conditions of the progress of
the nations of Western Europe and, we may add, of the American nation,
by which it has been carried further than by any other. How, then, does
it make for progress? We may answer this question by considering how the
social system which has given place to this new kind of social
organisation—namely, the caste system—renders progress difficult or
impossible.
Where the caste system is highly developed and rigidly maintained, as
among the Hindus of India, its conservative unprogressive tendency is
obvious enough. Each man is born a member of some one of many castes,
and he can never hope to pass from one caste to another and higher
caste. That fact alone removes at once the two greatest spurs to effort,
the two most powerful motives that urge on the members of our modern
societies to the fullest development and exercise of all their
faculties; namely, the desire to rise in the social scale and to place
one’s children at a more advantageous starting point in the battle of
life, and the fear of falling back in the social scale, of sinking to a
lower level, with the consequent sacrifice of all the social
consideration and other advantages which one’s position at any given
social level brings with it. Under the Hindu caste system, the poor
Brahmin who has no possessions, perhaps not even a rag to cover his
nakedness, is sure of the social consideration which his birth gives
him, both for himself and his children. He can look disdainfully upon
the rich man and the prince of lower caste; and public opinion approves
and supports him. This perhaps is the most important way in which the
caste system prevents progress. But there are others almost equally
serious.
The occupations open to the members of each caste are rigidly limited.
The members of one caste must be priests only, of another soldiers only,
of another scavengers, of another potters, and so on. Now, if it were
true that, when dexterities or mental powers generally are specially
developed by use, the improvements of faculty resulting from this long
practice and use were transmitted in any degree from generation to
generation, we should expect the caste system to result, after many
generations, in so many distinct breeds of men of highly specialised and
perfected powers of the kinds used in the pursuit of each of the caste
occupations. And this might make for progress. Each man would be
employed in the occupation for which he was best suited. But, as we have
seen, it is probable that use-inheritance does not occur; and there
seems to be no evidence that differentiation and hereditary
specialisation of faculties of this sort result from the caste
system[147]. In each caste men continue to be born of the most diverse
powers suited for the most diverse occupations; and one effect of the
caste system is that the best powers of any man will in the great
majority of cases be prevented from finding their most effective outlet.
That involves a great waste of faculty, which makes strongly for
stagnation. We shall realize the importance of this influence, if we
reflect on the great achievements, in the most diverse fields, of men
who under our modern system have risen from some humble station and
occupation, to which under the caste system they would have been rigidly
confined.
Again, within each caste custom rules the lives of the members with much
greater force than it can exert in a large and complex society in the
absence of the caste system. For each caste has its own tradition and
customary code, which is necessarily narrow because of the uniformity of
the conditions of life of those who obey it; hence tradition and custom
have a narrow and well-defined field of operation; and the narrower the
field of its application, the more rigidly will custom control action.
The caste system is thus one which permits of great differentiation and
specialisation of pursuits, without any weakening of the conservative
forces of society. It is for that reason presumably that the social
organisation of all early civilisations tended to this form. It was the
most easily attained form which combined diversity with stability
sufficiently to permit of the formation of a large society or nation;
and it was one which made for military efficiency. It formed, therefore,
a natural stage of social evolution.
In so far as the caste system still survives, it owes its survival to
the continuance of the need of the State for military efficiency. And we
see how its maintenance is still only rendered possible by its alliance
with a State religion and its system of religious sanctions. In Russia,
for example, the caste system was thus maintained by the alliance of the
military power with the religious system. While we see how in modern
Germany the attempt to maintain the caste system and the supremacy of
the State over the rights and liberties of individuals is breaking down,
as the religious sanctions are losing their hold upon the people. Social
democracy, secularism, and the demand for liberty go hand in hand[148].
It is clear, then, that the caste system tends to produce a stable
society and to prevent progress; and that, in proportion as it gives way
to liberty and equality of all men, both legal and customary, and to the
recognition of the rights of individuals as against the State, progress
must be favoured.
In yet another way (perhaps more important than any other) the abolition
of caste may favour development. In an earlier chapter I pointed out how
every step in the development of the intellectual or the moral tradition
of a people is initiated by some person of exceptional intellectual or
moral power. I pointed out also how the existence of a hierarchy of
social classes which are not exclusive castes, together with the
operation of the social ladder by means of which individuals and
families are enabled to climb up and down the social scale, tend to the
segregation of ability in the classes of the upper part of the scale.
They tend, in short, to produce classes capable of producing in each
generation a relatively large number of persons of more than average
capacities. Or, in other words, they lead to the concentration and
mutual enrichment of the strains of exceptional capacity; they
concentrate the best capacities of the people in a relatively small
number of individuals of the favoured classes. And abilities so
concentrated and raised in a certain proportion of individuals to a
higher power will be more favourable in every way to the growth of the
national mind than the same sum of abilities more evenly diffused
throughout the population. At present it is impossible to say how far
this segregation of abilities has gone, and what part it has played in
forwarding the mental development of any nation. But that it has played
some part, perhaps a very important one in some instances, can hardly be
doubted[149].
In Europe the feudal system served to tide over the period of transition
from the ancient social organisation founded on caste and the supremacy
of the politico-religious State to the modern system, the transition
from the system founded on status and regulated by custom to the system
founded upon equality and liberty and regulated by contract. For the
feudal system, although still more or less a caste system, was
nevertheless founded to some extent on contract. The tenure of land
involved a contract to perform services in return; and such contract was
the essence of the feudal system.
But it was not until the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when the
feudal system was finally broken up and the Reformation initiated the
age of religious tolerance, that the modern system substantially
replaced the ancient system, and the age of rapid progress set in.
In proportion as the change was achieved, the powers of all men were set
free in an unfettered competition such as had never before been
possible. Independence of thought and action, free discussion of all
principles, and the recognition of the relativity of all truths,
succeeded to unquestioning subservience to ancient formulas and
customs. Each man became comparatively free to follow his natural bent,
to develop his best powers to the utmost, and to secure by the exercise
of those powers the maximum of social consideration and of well-being,
unfettered by arbitrary restrictions, civil or ecclesiastical. I think
we may fairly say that the modern pragmatic or humanistic movement in
philosophy, in the midst of which we are living, represents the final
stage of this emancipation of man from the bonds which he has created
for himself.
We have seen, then, that the modern system of social organisation does
not make for the racial progress of a whole people, but probably, up to
the present time, for race-deterioration; nevertheless, it certainly
makes for progress of the intellectual and moral traditions of peoples;
and we can now see in what way it makes for progress. The improvement of
racial qualities by natural selection of the innately superior
individuals has been brought to an end; the mortal conflict of societies
has also practically been abolished as a factor of race progress, as
also of collective or social progress. These have been replaced by a new
form of struggle for existence and of selection—namely, the rivalry and
competition of ideas and of the institutions in which ideas become
embodied, and the selection for survival of those ideas and institutions
which are found, under the tests of practice and experience, most
accordant with the truth and, therefore, best adapted to promote the
welfare of societies and of their members[150].
And this process of survival of the fittest and elimination of the unfit
among ideas and institutions takes place not only within nations, but
has also international scope. The members of each nation no longer, as
of old, regard all foreigners as their natural enemies, no longer
despise their institutions and reject their ideas with scorn. They are
ready to learn from others, to let the ideas current among other peoples
enter into competition with native-born ideas; and so the number and
variety of competing elements increases and the intensity of the
competition waxes ever keener. Every idea that constitutes an important
advance in our intellectual outlook or in our practical command over
nature rapidly finds acceptance throughout the civilised world and
displaces some less true idea, some less appropriate institution, some
less effective mode of action.
Two great conditions, making for continued improvement of the moral and
intellectual traditions, characterise, then, Western civilisation.
First, within each nation there is going on the process of emancipation
of all human faculties, so that they enter into the freest possible
competition with one another on a footing of equality; this process,
although now far advanced in all the leading nations, is still being
carried further, and the whole trend of modern legislation is to confirm
the change and hasten it to its completion[151]. Secondly, there is a
circle of peoples whose ideas are thrown into the arena of rivalry, to
suffer extinction or to gain universal acceptance. This circle also is
constantly widening by the inclusion of peoples hitherto outside it; and
each new admission, as of Japan in recent years, is a new stimulus to
the further evolution of the collective mind of each nation concerned.
Both these conditions depend upon improved social organisation.
How then has this great change of social organisation been effected? To
put this question is to approach an immense subject, the history of
liberty and toleration. I can only make one or two brief remarks. It has
been suggested by many authors, notably by Kidd in his volume on
_Western Civilisation_, that we owe this great change to the Christian
religion. It is pointed out that the Christian religion, unlike most
earlier religions, was from the first not a national or State religion
but a universal religion, and that its adoption has weakened the tyranny
of the State by breaking up its alliance with religion. Further, it is a
religion which, by its doctrine of the immortality of the souls of all
men, has tended to give dignity and value to each individual life, quite
independently of personal status. Again, by its teaching of universal
charity, it has to some extent softened and moralised the relations of
men and of societies. But, that the replacement of a national religion
by a universal religion which teaches the equality of all believers does
not suffice to secure continued collective evolution is shown by the
instances of Bhuddism and Mohammedanism. Both of these are of this
character, yet both have failed to render continuously progressive the
societies that have accepted them.
That the spread of the Christian religion does not in itself suffice to
account for the evolution from the ancient to the modern type of social
organisation is shown also by the fact that it had held undisputed sway
among the peoples of Western Europe for more than a thousand years
before social evolution made any considerable advance. Throughout that
period, religion constantly called in the civil and military power of
the State to enforce the acceptance of its dogmas. And that its
teachings did not suffice to produce religious or civil tolerance is
shown by the fierce and incessant persecutions of heretics and the many
religious wars that fill the history of medieval Europe.
The religious tolerance and liberty of the modern era are rather
features of a wider phenomenon, the general increase of tolerance and
liberty, and they must be ascribed to the same causes as this wider
fact. They imply a great evolution of the moral tradition, the most
important and striking feature of which is the expansion of the sphere
in which the sympathetic feelings find application. There is no reason
to suppose that the feelings and emotions underlying the sympathetic and
considerate treatment of others have changed in character in the
historic period. For long ages men have felt such sympathy and given
considerate and just treatment to those who have been nearest to them;
at first to the members of their own immediate family; later to the
fellow-members of their own small society; and then, as societies
expanded into complex caste societies, to the members of their own
caste; later, as castes were broken down, to all their fellow citizens;
and still later in some degree to all men.
It is this progressive extension of the sphere of imaginative sympathy
which, more than anything else, has broken down all the social barriers
that confined the energies of men and has set free their various
faculties in that competition of ever increasing severity which is the
principal cause underlying the modern progress of peoples. It is this
which has destroyed nearly all the old bonds that fettered and limited
men’s activities in religion, in science, in politics, in art, in
commerce, in manufacture, and has brought men in all these spheres into
that intense, because free and equal, competition, which produces an
ever accelerating progress. It is this which has produced the almost
universal acceptance of the entirely and most characteristically modern
principle of ‘one man one vote,’ a principle so hard to justify on any
ground of expediency, from any considerations of the stability and
welfare of the State. It is this also which has led to so greatly
increased intercourse between peoples.
It is sometimes contended that the realisation of the principles of
equality and justice for all men has been secured only by the strife of
the social classes, by the success of the lower classes in forcing a
series of concessions from the ruling classes. This is a very imperfect
and partial view of the process. If the ruling classes had consistently
sought to maintain their power and exclusive privileges, and to maintain
all the rest of society in a state of servitude or serfdom, there is
little doubt that they could have done so. But their position has been
weakened from within by the extension of their sympathies. Consider the
great series of legislative changes which, during the nineteenth
century, transformed the social organisation of this country, especially
the factory laws, the franchise extension laws, and the laws for the
abolition of slavery. These were for the most part of the nature of a
voluntary abdication of power on the part of the classes in possession.
Consider the topics which chiefly engross the attention of our
legislators and are the centre of political and social discussion. They
are the providing of a better and freer education for the children of
the working classes, who of themselves would probably never have thought
of such a thing; the providing of free meals for school children; the
providing of work and food for the unemployed; temperance laws, land
settlement, and emigration, the eight-hours day, housing of the working
classes, free trade and cheap food, old age pensions; all measures for
raising the standard of life of the labouring classes and securing them
against the tyranny of capital.
In respect of our relations to the lower peoples the same proposition
holds good. It would be easy for the European nations to exterminate the
black people of Africa, and to possess themselves of all their
lands[152]. But public opinion will not now allow this; it insists upon
our moral obligation towards such peoples, that we are bound to try to
help them to survive and to raise themselves to our level of culture.
The extension of the sphere of application of imaginative sympathy has
then been a factor of prime importance in producing the social evolution
which underlies modern progress.
The factors that have brought about this extension have been many and
complex, and it is perhaps a hopeless task to attempt to enumerate them
and to apportion to each its share of influence. Undoubtedly, it has
been produced largely by the influence of a relatively small number of
enlightened leaders of opinion, such men as Wilberforce, Stuart Mill,
Shaftesbury, John Locke, Rousseau, and Voltaire—men whose original
intellectual powers enabled them to criticise and reject the settled
principles of their time. It was a work of liberation from custom and
traditional prejudice effected by the spirit of inquiry, which
questioned the validity of the old narrow conceptions of the relations
of men and peoples, the old narrow prejudices of caste and nation, and
discovered their fallacies to the world; discovered, for example, that
men of a religious persuasion slightly different from one’s own are not
necessarily wicked, nor those of a different nationality necessarily
despicable and possessed of no ideas worthy of admiration and adoption.
But the ground was prepared for the reception of the teachings of such
men by the conflicts of men who desired nothing of tolerance and
equality and liberty. This is best illustrated by the history of
religious toleration. As I said before, religion is essentially
conservative and intolerant of heresies. The first effect on religion of
that revival and liberation of the spirit of inquiry which we call the
Renascence, was to produce not religious toleration, but rather a bitter
conflict of mutually intolerant sects. And religious toleration was
eventually achieved largely by the realisation of the necessity of
compromise among these warring and constantly multiplying sects; it was
found impossible to weed out heresy by persecution. Yet who can doubt
that the Church, if it believed that it saw its way to secure the
universal acceptance of its doctrines by means of persecution, would
long hesitate to return to its ancient practices? The coming of
religious toleration was due to the application of the spirit of inquiry
to religious systems; these inquiries produced irreconcilable sects,
whose strife prepared the way for compromise and toleration.
The strife of parties and sects was itself part of a still wider
process; and this process must be recognised as the most important
single condition of that widening of the sphere of imaginative sympathy
which has been the root cause of the improvement of social organisation,
of the general increase of liberty, and thus of the progress of the
modern nations. This wider process is the general increase of human
intercourse, both within nations and between them. Only so long as men
know little of one another, can they continue to regard one another with
entire hostility or cold indifference. The knowledge and understanding
brought by personal intercourse is necessary to sympathy; but as soon
as, and in proportion as, such knowledge is acquired, the innate social
tendencies common to all men are brought into play. As soon as man
understands that his fellow man suffers the same pains and joys as
himself, longs for the same goods, fears the same evils, throbs with the
same emotions and desires, then he shares with him in some degree these
feelings, in virtue of that fundamental law of all social beings, the
law of primitive sympathy; then also pity and sympathetic sorrow and
tender regard are awakened in his breast; then his fellow man is no
longer the object of his cold or hostile glances, as a certain rival and
probable enemy, but is seen to be a fellow toiler and sufferer whom he
is willing to succour, a fellow creature whose joys and sorrows alike he
cannot but share in some degree.
Increasing freedom of intercourse throughout the civilised world, and
beyond its boundaries also, has been the most characteristic feature of
the age of progress, and in it we may recognise the most fundamental
condition of that progress. Science and mechanical invention have been
the means by which this greater freedom of intercourse has been brought
about. First and most important perhaps was the invention of printing,
the consequent spread of the habit of reading, and the wide diffusion of
the written word. Second only to this was the improvement of the art of
navigation, which brought the remotest peoples of the world within the
ken of Europe and greatly promoted the intercourse of the European
peoples, as well as the circulation of persons and news within each
nation; for the development of commerce over seas implies a
corresponding development of commerce within the national boundaries.
Then came the use of steam in locomotion on sea and land, the press and
the telegraph; and, with the advent of these, intercourse within and
without became really free and abundant; mutual knowledge and
understanding between men and nations grew rapidly, and the age of
progress was assured.
The progressive character of the modern nations has been due, then, to
the actions and reactions between the spirit of inquiry and the
improvement of forms of social organisation; each step in the one
respect has reacted upon the other, stimulating further change in the
same direction. And the medium through which they have chiefly thus
worked upon one another has been the increase of intercourse between men
and nations. The spirit of inquiry has urged men on to explore their
fellow men and to study foreign nations, and it has provided the means
for so doing; the greater mutual knowledge and sympathy thus brought
into being have in turn brought greater liberty to the spirit of
inquiry, freeing it from the rigid bonds of custom and conservative
tradition and enabling it to render human intercourse yet more free and
abundant.
In this way we reconcile and synthesize the rival theories of the causes
of progress, the view that sees in the spirit of inquiry the sole agent
of progress and that which attributes it wholly to the improvement of
morals and of social organisation. The great commandment, “Thou shalt
love thy neighbour as thyself,” pointed the way of all progress; but
great and beautiful as it was, it could not immediately avail to break
the bonds of the human spirit, the bonds of ignorance and fear; only
gradually through increase of knowledge could man learn that all men are
his neighbours, and that not only the foreigner just beyond the
frontier, but also the naked savage, chipping his stone axe or weaving
his rude basket for the reception of his neighbour’s head, is a man of
like passions with himself, with equal claims upon justice and freedom
and all that makes the humanity of man.
It only remains to point out the part in human life of a new factor of
progress which promises to eclipse all others in importance. The main
theme of my earlier work[153] was that only through increase of
knowledge of others is each man’s knowledge of himself slowly built up
and enriched, until it renders him capable of enlightened
self-direction. So the main theme of this book is the development of the
group mind, the increase of its self-knowledge and of its power of
self-direction through increase of knowledge of other human societies.
The age of progress through which the world has recently passed was an
age of progress due to increase of human intercourse and consequent
increasing understanding by each nation of other nations and peoples.
This better knowledge of other peoples is now reacting upon the
self-knowledge of each nation, rapidly enriching it. Each of the great
nations is beginning to understand itself, and to take thought for the
morrow in the light of this self-knowledge; and this increase of
national self-knowledge, this enrichment of national self-consciousness,
is the great new factor which alone can secure the further progress of
mankind. We saw in an earlier chapter that a nation is essentially the
realization of an idea, the idea of a nation, that only in so far as the
idea of the nation exists and operates in the minds of the members of
the nation, controlling their conduct and directing it to actions having
reference to the nation as a whole, does a nation come into and continue
in existence. The self-consciousness of nations is therefore not a new
factor in their life. But their self-consciousness is now becoming
reflective and immensely richer in content; so much so that it promises
to operate virtually as a new factor of tremendous efficiency.
We may illustrate the influence of this new factor by reverting again to
the analogy between the mind of the individual and the mind of the
nation which we developed at some length in an earlier chapter. In the
developing individual, as in the evolving animal series, the development
of self-consciousness is the condition of the development of true
volition. Before self-consciousness and a self-regarding sentiment are
developed, conduct is determined by feelings and impulses or by ideas
and the desires they arouse, either some one desire rising alone to
consciousness and issuing at once in action, or through a conflict of
impulses and desires, some one of which eventually predominates over the
others and determines action; but action issuing from such a conflict of
impulses and desires is not true volition. Action is truly volitional
only when the ideal of the self in relation to the idea of the end to be
achieved by each of the conflicting tendencies determines the issue of
the conflict.
In the mental life of nations, all those conflicts of ideas, of parties,
of principles and of systems, in which each strives to predominate over
and displace others, and by natural selection of which (the death of the
many less fit, the survival of the few better or more fit) the progress
of recent centuries has been chiefly due; all these conflicts have been
more or less blind conflicts, in which the idea of the whole nation, in
relation to the end to be achieved by each of the conflicting
tendencies, has generally played but a small part and a part that often
has not made strongly for progress. National actions were in the main
impulsive and instinctive actions, like those of young children or the
higher animals. And for this reason—that nations had too little true
self-knowledge, and had not developed a true and rich ideal of national
life—the self-consciousness of nations was too poor in content to serve
as the guide of actions making for progress.
In the individual man, it is the growing richness and accuracy of
self-knowledge which alone enables him to direct his actions effectively
to secure his own welfare and to improve his character and powers. Just
so in nations the rapid growth of their self-knowledge and the
enrichment of their ideals of national life which characterise the
present time must render their self-consciousness a far more efficient
guide of all national deliberation and action.
The self-knowledge of the individual grows chiefly, as we have seen,
through intercourse with his fellows; his idea of himself develops in
fulness and accuracy in the light of his knowledge of other selves, and
this knowledge in turn develops in the light of his increasing knowledge
of himself. Just so the self-knowledge of nations is now growing rapidly
through the intercourse of each nation with others, an intercourse far
freer, more multiplex, than ever before in the history of the world; a
result largely of the improved means of communication which we owe to
science and the spirit of inquiry.
Perhaps the most striking illustration of the operation of this new
factor is the rapid spread in recent years of parliamentary
institutions. The parliamentary system of national organisation was
worked out in these islands by long centuries of more or less blind
conflict of ideas and parties and institutions; and now other nations in
rapid succession have observed and admired the system and have
deliberately and self-consciously adopted it; and still the process goes
on, as recently in Russia.
Japan offers a striking illustration of the way in which the new factor
operates. An intelligent people in which the national sentiment was
strong, but in which national self-knowledge was rudimentary because of
the isolation of the nation, was suddenly brought into contact with
other peoples; through observation of them, it learnt its own
deficiencies and set about deliberately to remedy them in the light of
its new knowledge; and in doing so has reorganised itself from top to
bottom.
In England also national self-knowledge is beginning rapidly to increase
in accuracy and extent. We have begun to compare ourselves at all points
with other nations, and are no longer content with the good old creed,
that everything British is best. We are learning in this way our
weaknesses; and the knowledge is becoming a main cause of accelerated
progress. The best illustration is, perhaps, the present stir over
educational questions, which is directly due to the increase of national
self-knowledge resulting from the observation of other nations.
But in the future our national self-consciousness will be enriched and
fitted for the guidance of the national will in a still more effective
manner than by the knowledge of our weaknesses being forced upon us by
the nations who are our rivals in the world. In many directions—by the
historians, the biologists, the anthropologists, the statisticians—data
are being gathered for a science of society whose sure indications will
enable us deliberately to guide the further evolution of the nation
towards the highest ideal of a nation that we can conceive. In this way,
it may be hoped, the modern nations will be able to avoid that danger
which has destroyed the great nations of the past, and which has been
the dark cloud shadowing the brilliance of the age of progress that
resulted from increasing human intercourse and mutual understanding. In
this way the free play of the spirit of inquiry, which in all earlier
ages has been highly dangerous to the stability of nations and which,
while it was the sole cause of progress, nevertheless destroyed many of
the nations whom it impelled upon that path, will make for a greatly
accelerated progress; and, at the same time, it will enable us to
secure, by deliberate voluntary control, the bases of society, which in
all previous ages have rested solely upon custom, instinct, and the
religious sanctions.
Not by any voluntary surrender of the reason, not by any subjugation of
the intellect to the dominion of obscure transcendental ideas, such as
is preached by Benjamin Kidd, Chatterton-Hill[154] and others who have
realized the disintegrating effects of intellect on earlier societies,
but by a more strenuous use of our intellectual faculties, and by a
growth of knowledge, especially a knowledge of the laws of human
societies, will the stability and further evolution of nations be
maintained.
The nations whose progress will rest upon this basis will be in a
position very different from that of the older societies to which the
emancipation of the intellect was fatal. They fell for lack of knowledge
of natural laws, as soon as the progress of intellectual inquiry had
weakened their instinctive and customary bases. The modern nations may
reasonably hope that they are within sight of knowledge which will
enable them to avoid these dangers and to continue their progress during
an indefinitely long period. They may even hope to progress, not only in
respect of the intellectual and moral tradition, but also in respect of
racial qualities; for a better knowledge of the factors at work and of
the laws of heredity will enable them to put an end to the influences
now making for race deterioration and to replace them by others of the
opposite tendency.
Such national progress will be truly teleological; it will be a progress
whose direction will be determined by the desire of an ideal end present
to the consciousness of all and striven after by the collective
deliberation and volition of the nation.
Thus the group spirit, rising above the level of a narrow patriotism
that regards with hostility all its rivals, recognising that only
through the further development of the collective life of nations can
man rise to higher levels than he has yet known, becomes the supreme
agent of human progress.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] _History of European Thought in the 19th Century._
[2] _Political Thought in England from Bacon to Halifax_, Home
University Library, p. 49.
[3] Essay on “The Nature of Democracy” in _Popular
Government_, London 1885.
[4] _Psychology, the Study of Behaviour_, Home University
Library, London, 1912.
[5] _Community_, by R. M. Maciver, London, 1917.
[6] _In Body and Mind_, London, 1911.
[7] _Op. cit._ p. 76.
[8] _Op. cit._ p. 77.
[9] _Op. cit._ p. 90.
[10] E. Barker, _Political Thought in England from Herbert
Spencer to the present day_, Home University Library, London,
1915.
[11] _Op. cit._ p. 11.
[12] _Op. cit._ pp. 62-64.
[13] _Op. cit._ p. 74. I consider Mr Barker’s brief statement
of the nature of the group mind entirely acceptable, and it
has given me great pleasure to find myself in such close
harmony with it. It will perhaps give further weight to the
fact of our agreement, if I add that the whole of this book,
including the rest of this introductory chapter, was written
before I took up Mr Barker’s brilliant little volume.
[14] _Op. cit._ p. 175.
[15] This principle of primitive sympathy or simple direct
induction or contagion of emotion was formulated in Chapter IV
of my _Social Psychology_.
[16] It was my good fortune to witness the almost
instantaneous spread of anger through a crowd of five thousand
warlike savages in the heart of Borneo. Representatives of all
the tribes of a large district of Sarawak had been brought
together by the resident magistrate for the purpose of
strengthening friendly relations and cementing peace between
the various tribes. All went smoothly, and the chiefs
surrounded by their followers were gathered together in a
large hall, rudely constructed of timber, to make public
protestations of friendship. An air of peace and good-will
pervaded the assembly, until a small piece of wood fell from
the roof upon the head of one of the leading chiefs, making a
slight wound from which the blood trickled. Only the immediate
neighbours of this chief observed the accident or could
perceive its effect; nevertheless in the space of a few
seconds a wave of angry emotion swept over the whole assembly,
and a general and bloody fight would have at once commenced,
but that the Resident had insisted upon all weapons being left
in the boats on the river 200 yards away. The great majority
of the crowd rushed headlong to fetch their weapons from their
boats, while the few who remained on the ground danced in fury
or rushed to and fro gesticulating wildly. Happily the boats
were widely scattered along the banks of the river, so that it
was possible for the Resident, by means of persuasion,
threats, and a show of armed force, to prevent the hostile
parties coming together again with their weapons in hand.
[17] _The Souls of Black Folk_, by W. E. B. Du Bois, London,
1905.
[18] _The Crowd_, p. 11.
[19] In a recent work (_What is Instinct?_ by Bingham Newland)
the author, who shows an intimate knowledge of the life of
wild animals, seems to postulate some such direct telepathic
_rapport_ between animals of the same species.
[20] See _The Dissociation of a Personality_, by Dr Morton
Prince; _Double Personality_, by A. Binet; _The Psychology of
Suggestion_, by Boris Sidis; _L’automatism psychologique_, by
Pierre Janet; and the descriptions and discussions of William
James in his _Principles of Psychology_.
[21] _Philosophy of the Unconscious._
[22] _Die Psychophysik._
[23] _Psychologie des idées forces._
[24] _Les Sociétés animales_, Paris, 1877.
[25] _Bau und Leben des Socialen Körpers._
[26] _Medicinische Psychologie._
[27] I have argued that the great increase of knowledge of the
functions and structure of the nervous system attained by
recent research does but provide for the argument a surer
basis of empirical data; and I have contended that some at
least of the cases of disintegration of personality are more
easily reconcilable with this view, than with the contrary
doctrine which regards the individual consciousness as the
collective consciousness of the brain-cells. See my _Body and
Mind_, a book I found myself compelled to write in order to
arrive at a reasoned judgment on this difficult problem, which
obtrudes itself at the outset of the study of group life.
[28] _Social Psychology_, Chapter IX.
[29] See especially A. Stoll’s _Suggestion und Hypnotismus in
der Völkerpsychologie_, where the events of the French
revolution have been treated in some detail from this point of
view.
[30] Hon. Maurice Baring in an article in the _Morning Post_
of April 21, 1906.
[31] _Social Psychology_, Chapter IX.
[32] _Op. cit._ Chapter VII.
[33] One great difference between the professional army, such
as that of England, and the citizen armies of Europe, consists
in the fact that the special sentiment for the army is
stronger in the former; the more general patriotic sentiment,
in the rank and file of the latter; though in the regular
officers of the continental army the sentiment for the army
itself is no doubt usually the stronger.
[34] Cp. _The Pagan Tribes of Borneo_, by Ch. Hose and W.
McDougall, London, 1912.
[35] _From Religion to Philosophy_, p. 77.
[36] _Op. cit._ p. 82.
[37] Cf. _The Pagan Tribes of Borneo_, by Ch. Hose and W.
McDougall, London, 1912.
[38] Mr Cornford’s book might in fact be entitled with greater
propriety _From Philosophy to Religion_.
[39] 1 Oct. 1914.
[40] _Les Fonctions mentales dans les Sociétés inférieures_,
Alcan, Paris, 1910.
[41] At this point I would refer the reader to the discussion
of the self-regarding sentiment (Chapter VII) in my _Social
Psychology_.
[42] For a brief history of the nation-state the reader may be
referred to Prof. Ramsay Muir’s _Nationalism and
Internationalism_, London, 1917. He rightly describes
‘nationalism’ as one of the most powerful factors in modern
history. It is, I think, obviously true that we may go further
and say that it is _the_ most powerful factor in modern
history.
[43] _Op. cit._ p. 38.
[44] _Op. cit._ p. 54.
[45] _Op. cit._ p. 51.
[46] Chapter II. On the question of the definition of the
terms ‘mind’ and ‘character’ I would refer the reader to my
_Psychology, The Study of Behaviour_, Home University Library.
[47] Prof. Hans Driesch’s conception of ‘super-individual
entelechy’ seems to be of this order, arrived at by the same
line of reasoning. See _Science and Philosophy of the
Organism_, Gifford Lectures, 1907.
[48] _Psychological Laws of the Evolution of Peoples._
[49] As examples of the best work as yet accomplished in this
immense and fascinating field, I would refer the reader to the
books of M. Alfred Fouillée one of the most clear-sighted,
judicious, and readable of modern philosophers, especially his
_Psychologie des peuples européens_, his _Psychologie du
peuple français_, and his _Science Sociale Contemporaine_.
[50] _Psychologie du peuple français_, p. 4. Paris 1903.
[51] _Social Psychology_, p. 330.
[52] _Les inégalités des races humaines._
[53] This fantastic doctrine has found its fullest expression
in Chamberlain’s work _The Foundations of the Nineteenth
Century_.
[54] Other prominent exponents of this view are Mr J. M.
Robertson in his book _The Germans_ and in his _Introduction
to English Politics_, and M. J. Finot in his _Race Prejudice_.
[55] I here use this word in the large, loose and convenient
sense in which it is used by M. Tarde in his _Lois de
l’imitation_. I have examined the nature of imitative
processes more closely in my _Social Psychology_.
[56] Meredith Townsend regards this as one of the leading
qualities of the peoples of India. See _Europe and Asia,
London, 1901_.
[57] Cp. Ripley’s _Races of Europe_ and Prof. H. J. Fleure’s
_Human Geography in Western Europe_, London, 1919.
[58] Cf. _The Black Republic_, by Sir Spencer St John and
_Where Black rules White_, by H. Hesketh Prichard.
[59] M. le Bon and more than one Indian civil servant in
conversation.
[60] By G. Lowes Dickinson, _Hibbert Journal_, Jan. 1911.
[61] In the _Fortnightly Review_, Jan. 1910, and in his
_Social Environment and Moral Progress_, London, 1913.
[62] _Physics and Politics._
[63] Cp. Ripley, _op. cit._ and Fleure, _op. cit._
[64] This was written in 1910, and now in 1919 the dissolution
which was so obviously impending is an accomplished fact.
[65] The great myth of the racial unity and superiority of the
German people, which we have noticed above, has been
cultivated and propagated, with elaborate disregard for fact
by the German State and its henchmen in the universities and
elsewhere, in a deliberate effort to remedy by art the lack of
natural boundaries and of true national homogeneity.
[66] In his _Works of Man_ Mr March Philips shews clearly the
influence of the Egyptian landscape upon the arts of sculpture
and architecture.
[67] Cf. Sir S. Dill’s _The Roman Empire from Nero to
Augustus_, London, 1905.
[68] Since these lines were written a new mode of rapid
locomotion, namely the aerial, which has resulted from the
invention and rapid development of the internal combustion
engine, threatens to eclipse all others in its effects upon
the organisation of the world.
[69] This state of affairs has no doubt been considerably
altered during the great war; the political education of
Germany, a painful but salutary process, is progressing
rapidly.
[70] Cf. N. Angell, _The Great Illusion_.
[71] Incipient nations have appeared where the Bantu stock has
produced occasionally great warrior chiefs such as Chaka and
Cetewayo.
[72] _Psychological Laws of the Evolution of Peoples._
[73] I do not propose to examine in this book the much
discussed question—Are the leaders of a nation to be regarded
as produced by the nation according to the general laws of
biology and psychology, or as given to them by some
supernatural process? This question belongs to a branch of
Social Psychology which is not included in the volume.
[74] _Psychologie du peuple français_, p. 13.
[75] Ramsay Muir, _op. cit._ and J. Holland Rose, _The
Development of the European Nations_. London, 1905.
[76] J. Holland Rose, _op. cit._
[77] I suggest that international emulation in this sphere may
prove to be an effective, probably the only effective,
substitute for war.
[78] _Bau und Leben des socialen Körpers._
[79] _Decadence._
[80] Cf. A. Smith’s _Village Life in China_. The author
insists on the lack of public spirit, of the idea of action
_pro bono publico_.
[81] 1906.
[82] In his _Theory of the State_.
[83] By Schaffle, _op. cit._, and all the school of German
‘idealism’.
[84] The substance of this chapter was contained in a paper
entitled ‘The Will of the People,’ read before the
Sociological Society and published in the _Sociological
Review_, 1912.
[85] _Philosophical Theory of the State_ and Article in
_International Journal of Ethics_, 1907.
[86] Cf. H. Rose, _The Development of the European Nations_
and Ramsay Muir, _Nationalism and Internationalism_.
[87] _The Russo-Japanese War_, Vol. II, p. 25.
[88] _La Science Sociale contemporaine_, p. 115.
[89] _Social Psychology_, Chapters V-IX. Dr Bosanquet’s
failure (as it seems to me) to achieve a satisfactory account
of the social will is the inevitable consequence of the
inadequacy of his conception of individual volition. This is
set out in his _Psychology of the Moral Self_, where he shews
himself to be an uncompromising adherent of the
intellectualist tradition. He totally ignores the existence
and organisation of the conative side of the mind. His notion
of volition is based upon the now discredited theory of
ideo-motor action.
[90] This was written before the war with Germany.
[91] Emulation in the administration of backward peoples
offers perhaps the greatest possibilities as ‘a moral
equivalent for war.’
[92] Cp. Principal L. P. Jacks on the Japanese in his _Alchemy
of Thought_.
[93] W. L. George, _English Review_, May, 1915, “The Price of
Nationality.” “Anger, indeed, is the soul of what is called
the national will. To call it a will is perhaps too much, it
is an instinct and mainly an instinct to hate.... Love of
country is mainly hatred of other countries.”
[94] Cf. Gilbert Murray, _Collection of Addresses on The War
given at Bedford College_, 1915.
[95] Incidentally he holds up my _Social Psychology_ as a
dreadful example of such an attempt and a woeful evidence of
the parlous state of present-day culture in England. Such
dislike of any attempt to understand that which we hold sacred
is intelligible enough in the vulgar, for whom all analysis is
destructive of the values they unreasoningly cherish. But it
may be hoped that men of letters who set out to defend
patriotism will learn to rise above this attitude, just as the
more enlightened leaders of religion are learning to welcome
psychological inquiry in their domain.
[96] In these respects the Church alone can enter into serious
rivalry as an object of loyalty.
[97] As Dean Inge has remarked—“If they love not those whom
they have seen, how shall they love those whom they have not
seen?”
[98] Cp. Fielding Hall, _The Soul of a People_.
[99] This, as President Lowell clearly shows in his _Public
Opinion and Popular Government_, is carried to an extreme in
America and lies at the root of many administrative evils.
[100] President Lowell (_op. cit._) has clearly shown other
benefits resulting from the party system; he shows especially
how the party is needed to prepare a program and select
candidates, if the popular vote is to give expression to the
dominant opinion of the people.
[101] Cp. his _Civilisation and Progress_.
[102] On the nature and development of the moral sentiments in
the individual mind, see my _Social Psychology_, Chapter VIII.
[103] _Op. cit._ p. 210.
[104] In this connexion I would refer the reader to _The New
State_ by M. P. Follett (London, 1918), an interesting book in
which the true nature and function of collective deliberation
is forcibly expounded.
[105] Cf. W. R. Patterson, _The Nemesis of Nations_, London,
1906.
[106] _Social Evolution_, _Principle of Western Civilisation_,
and _The Science of Power_.
[107] _Essai d’une Psychologie politique du Peuple Anglais_,
Paris, 1903.
[108] _Op. cit._ p. 20.
[109] _History of Civilisation_, p. 137.
[110] In this connexion it must be remembered that in Hindu
society the man of proved and acknowledged holiness is
permitted and encouraged to procreate a large number of
children.
[111] _Europe and Asia._
[112] _Op. cit._
[113] Guizot asserted that, even when new ideas and
institutions have originated elsewhere, it has usually been
only by their adoption in France that they have been spread
through Europe (_A History of Civilization in Europe_).
[114] I cite these passages after M. Boutmy, _op. cit._ p.
168.
[115] The most frank, perhaps somewhat exaggerated, expression
of the difference is _The Superiority of the Anglo-Saxon_, by
Ed. Demolins.
[116] _History of Civilisation in England_, Vol. II, p. 114.
[117] _Comment la route crée le type social_, Paris, Didot et
Cie.
[118] _Histoire de la Formation particulariste_, Paris.
[119] The reality of selective effect of migration is shown by
the stature of American immigrants; those from Scotland are
said to be two inches taller than the average Scotchman; and
De Lapouge shows (_Les Sélections Sociales_, Paris, 1896, p.
367) that a superiority of stature almost as marked, may be
inferred for the French and German immigrants of America from
the statistics of the armies of the Civil War.
[120] A. Reibmayer (_Inzucht u. Vermischung beim Menschen_,
Leipzig, 1897) insists upon the importance of isolation and
consequent inbreeding for the formation of superior strains
and subraces. He points out that the geographical barriers of
Europe have favoured in this way the production of distinctive
national types. Like Stewart Chamberlain, Flinders Petrie, and
others, he regards the dark ages of Europe as a period of
chaos directly due to the overcoming of these geographical
barriers and the consequent prevalence of crossbreeding on a
large scale.
[121] _White Capital and coloured Labour._
[122] Aristotle says “want of men was the ruin of Sparta.”
Fathers of three sons were exempted from military service, and
of four sons from all State burdens.
[123] Several writers have pointed out the importance of these
facts and at least one professional historian has insisted
strongly upon them, namely O. Seeck in his _Geschichte des
Untergangs der antiken Welt_, Berlin, 1910, vol. 1.
[124] On this topic cp. Dr Archdall Reid’s _The Present
Evolution of Man_ and his _Principles of Heredity_, in which
books the effects of selection by disease and by alcohol are
vividly set out.
[125] _Op. cit._
[126] O. Ammon, _Gesellschaftsordnung und ihre natürlichen
Grundlagen_, Jena, 1900.
[127] De Lapouge, _Les Sélections Sociales_; cf. also W.
Alexis, _Abhandlungen zur Theorie der Bevölkerungs-und
Moralstatistik_, Jena, 1903, and W. Schallmayer’s _Vererbung
und Auslese in ihrer soziologischen und politischen
Bedeutung_, Jena, 1910.
[128] Ammon’s Law.
[129] Pointed out by Francis Galton and Fouillée.
[130] On the other hand it tends (partly no doubt by
deliberate design) to spread itself by insisting upon the duty
of procreation. This effect is said to be very considerable in
French Canada and only to be partially counteracted by a very
high rate of infantile mortality.
[131] _The Nineteenth Century_ for April, 1906.
[132] In _National Life and Character_, a pessimistic though
intellectually stimulating book.
[133] _Provident Societies_, by Sidney Webb, and _The London
Population_, by D. Heron.
[134] It must be recognised also that in Great Britain
emigration has, during the last three centuries, tended in all
probability in the same direction as the various forms of
social selection—namely, to the deterioration of the home
population; for in all ages it is the bold and enterprising
persons who seek new homes in far countries, leaving the
weakly, the timid, the dull, and the defective behind in the
mother country. Even the convicts that we exported at one time
to our colonies were probably persons of more than average
capacity, though some of them may have been innately defective
in moral disposition.
[135] _Études sur la sélection chez l’homme._ Paris, 1904.
[136] _England and the English._
[137] Notably by Prof. Flinders Petrie in his _Revolutions of
Civilisation_.
[138] _Op. cit._ p. 407.
[139] De Laponge does not stand alone in this opinion. Many
biologists and leaders of thought have expressed it hardly
less strongly, though not all of them have attached so much
importance to the influence of the towns. It has been
expressed in general terms by Dr and Mrs Whetham (in the
_Hibbert Journal_ for Oct. 1911), by Dean Inge in a number of
forcible articles, by Mr W. Bateson in his ‘Herbert Spencer
Lecture’ for 1912, and by other writers in a number of
articles in the _Eugenics Review_ and other journals.
[140] This conclusion may perhaps be said to be now generally
accepted by those who have given any thought to the matter. A.
R. Wallace argued strongly in this sense; the late Benjamin
Kidd set out the evidence impressively in his _Social
Evolution_, Chapter IX; and it is implied by all the many
writers who, as we have noted, agree in regarding the
processes of selection in the civilised nations as in the main
reversed or detrimental.
[141] I refer the reader to my _Social Psychology_.
[142] In this connection I may again refer to _The Pagan
Tribes of Borneo_, by C. Hose and W. McDougall.
[143] It has been translated into nine languages and was
reprinted ten times in the first year after its publication.
[144] Shortly before his death Mr Kidd published (in the year
1918) his _Science of Power_. In this book he showed a
complete change of face on the question of the importance of
innate qualities. He denied all importance to changes of
innate qualities, whether for better or worse, because, as he
maintained, “the social heredity transmitted through social
culture is infinitely more important to a people than any
heredity inborn in the individuals thereof” (p. 273); and he
made in this book a violent and scornful attack upon the late
Francis Galton and upon all who follow him in believing that
the decay or improvement of the racial qualities of a people
are of importance for its prosperity and development, and who,
therefore, approve of Galton’s effort to found a science of
Eugenics. Kidd did not anywhere in his last book acknowledge
that he had made this very great change of principle, which
completely undermines the whole argument of his _Social
Evolution_, but complacently suggested that, as Newton and
Darwin are regarded as the fathers of modern physical and
biological science respectively, so in the future Kidd will be
regarded as having founded anew in his _Social Evolution_ the
science of society. On reading the _Science of Power_ after
having written this chapter, I was amazed at this assumption
on behalf of a book whose most fundamental doctrine the author
had himself renounced, and I turned again to the earlier work
to verify my brief summary of its argument. I confess that it
is not easy to make sure of what the author was driving at.
But I find that Kidd, in discussing the influence of religious
systems, wrote (on p. 307) “Natural selection seems, in short,
to be steadily evolving in the race that type of character
upon which these forces act most readily and efficiently; that
is to say, it is evolving religious character in the first
instance, and intellectual character only as a secondary
product in association with it.” On the following page I
find—“The race would, in fact, appear to be growing more and
more religious,” and “a preponderating element in the type of
character which the evolutionary forces at work in human
society are slowly developing, would appear to be the sense of
reverence.” And there are many other passages which, in spite
of the habitual lack of precision of Kidd’s language, can only
be interpreted to mean that the improvement of moral or
religious character, on which he so strongly insists as a
feature of recent centuries, involves and depends upon
improvement of innate qualities in the mass of the people.
[145] Otto Seeck (_op. cit._ vol. 1. p. 270) writes—“The
equipment of the legionaries remained unchanged from Augustus
to Diocletian: no improvements of tactics, no new munitions of
war were brought into use during more than three hundred
years. The Roman saw his enemies becoming ever more terrible,
his own army ever less efficient; for now this, now that,
Province was laid waste and all were threatened. It was,
therefore, to the most urgent interest of every citizen that
this state of affairs should be remedied; the most cultured
circles were familiar with the needs of the army, for all the
higher officers came from the class of Senators and nobles.
Nevertheless, there appeared not a single invention, which
might have assured to the Roman soldiers their erstwhile
superiority! Books indeed were written upon tactics, strategy
and fortification, but their authors almost without exception
were content to expound in a formal manner what their more
capable forefathers had taught; in this literature the
expression of any new idea was carefully avoided.... As in the
military sphere, so also was it in all others. Neither in
agriculture, nor in handicrafts, nor in the practice of
statecraft, did a new idea of any importance appear since the
first century after Christ. Literature and art also moved only
in sterile imitation, which became always more
poverty-stricken and technically feebler.”
[146] Cf. _La Cité Antique_ of F. de Coulanges.
[147] A fact which provides another argument against
use-inheritance.
[148] This was written before the Great War but needs, I
think, no modification.
[149] Francis Galton and his disciples have produced much
evidence to show that the educated class of Englishmen
includes a very much larger proportion of strains of high
ability than the rest of the people, it having been formed by
the long continued operation of the social ladder. There is no
reason to doubt the truth of this conclusion.
[150] Prof. S. Alexander, in his _Moral Order and Progress_,
was perhaps the first to draw attention to this form of the
struggle for existence.
[151] This last sentence perhaps is only partially true. A
rigid system of State Socialism would involve a retrogression
in this respect.
[152] As the Spaniards well-nigh exterminated in the name of
the Church the civilisation and the nations of Mexico and
Peru.
[153] _Introduction to Social Psychology_.
[154] _Heredity and Selection in Sociology_, London, 1907;
an interesting work similar in tendency to Kidd’s _Social
Evolution_.
INDEX
Abdication of classes, 295
Abstract psychology, 2
ADAM SMITH, 4
Aesthetic faculty, 157
Africa and lack of leaders, 136
American homogeneity, 124
AMMON, O., 252
Analogy of national with individual mind, 147
Ancestor worship, 183
Ancient States, 285
ANGELL, N., 133
Anglo-Saxon origins, 238
Animal societies, 33, 66
Arab nation and Mahomet, 136
ARISTOTLE, 3, 192, 248
Army, as organised group, 51;
organisation, 81
Asiatics and authority, 114
Athens depleted, 248
BAGEHOT, W., 201
BALFOUR, A. J., on decadence, 146
BARING, M., on Russians, 46
BARKER, E., 16, 18
BATESON, W., 262
BEATTIE CROZIER, 193
Bengal, 161
BENTHAM, 4
BINET, 32
BINGHAM NEWLAND, 29
Birthrate, 253
Blending of races, 241, 278
Boer armies, 58
BOSANQUET, on general will, 155
BOUTMY, 215, 221, 228
Brains, size of, 137
BUCKLE, 206, 217, 227, 255, 282
Bulgaria and war, 143
BURKE, ED., 181
BUTLER, 5
Caste, 183, 271, 288
Celts, 235
CHAMBERLAIN, H. S., 108, 244
Chinese stability, 141
Christianity and morals, 267;
and progress, 274
Church, as a group, 95
Civilisation, and natural selection, 261;
defined, 204
Clans, 159
_Claqueurs_, 29
Classification of groups, 89
Climate and race qualities, 214
Collective consciousness, 31 _et seq._, 71;
mind, 12;
psychology, 21;
will, 48, 53, 173
Communications, freedom of, 132
COMTE, 5
Concreteness in psychology, 2
Conflict and progress, 296
Conquest and progress, 276
Contact of cultures, 283
Contagion of emotion, 27
Continuity, national, 145
CORNFORD, 70
Crowd, anger in Borneo, 26;
emotions, 39;
intelligence, 40;
suggestibility, 40
Crowds, 22 _et seq._
DARWIN, 5
DE LAPOUGE, 241, 252, 253, 261
Deliberative organisation, 187, 191
DEMOLINS, ED, 226, 233
DICKINSON, G. L., 119
Differentiation of races, 201, 208
DILL, Sir S., 132
Dissociation of personality, 32
DRIESCH, H., 103
DU BOIS, 27
DURKHEIM, on race, 109
Edict of Nantes, 252
Egyptian culture and nature, 128
Energy and climate, 221;
of races, 272
England and Germany contrasted, 146
Ephemeral groups, 88
Equality, ideal of, 184
ESPINAS, 33
Eurasians, 83
European progress, 287;
races, 114
Evolution of man, 209
Factors of national development, 206
Family as essential group, 82, 165;
consciousness, 159
Fear in India, 218
FECHNER, 32
Feudal system, 291
FLEURE, J. H., 115
FOUILLÉE, 19, 101, 105, 139, 162, 255
French conquests, 184;
sociability, 223
Fusions of civilisation, 276;
by conquest, 277
GALTON, F., 255, 291
Gauls, 231
General will, 53
Genetic view in psychology, 4
Genius and national life, 137
Geography and progress, 283
GEORGE, W. L., 178
German idealism, 15;
responsibility, 15;
organisation, 152
GIDDINGS, 5
GOBINEAU, 108
Gods, national, 102
GOOCH, 3
Good of whole and of all, 172
Greek people substituted, 247
GREEN, T. H., 15
Group action, types of, 57
Group mind, conditions of, 48;
defined, 9, 18
Group psychology, the task of, 7
Group spirit, 62 _et seq._, 302;
its merits, 79
GUIZOT, 223
HAMILTON, Sir I., on Japanese, 162
HARTMANN, V., 33, 103
Hayti, 117
Hebrew nation, 159
HEGEL, 16
HERON, D., 258
Hierarchy of groups, 80;
of sentiments, 81
HILL, CHATTERTON, 301
Historians and psychology, 99
HOBBES, 3
HOLLAND ROSE, 143
Homogeneity of group, 23;
of nations, 121
HOSE, CH., 72
House of Commons, 189
Idea of nation, 162, 173
Ideals, national, 183
Imaginative sympathy, 295
Impulse, national, 192
Independence, English, 224
India, and China contrasted, 124, 244;
and Western culture, 118
Individual, and group psychology, 6;
and social interests, 15, 152
Individualistic family, 237
Induction of emotion, 25
Infertility of peoples, 251
INGE, Dean, 262
Innate qualities, 110;
and culture, 112
Inquiry, spirit of, 275, 301
Intellect, disruptive effects of, 275
Intense emotion of crowds, 24, 29
Intercourse of peoples, 167
International rivalry, 144, 167
Irish qualities, 236
Isolation of China, 165
JACKS, L. P., 167
JACOBI, 258
JAMES, WM., 32
JANET, P., 32
Japanese patriotism, 162
Jesuit system of education, 83
Justice, contractual, 288
KIDD, B., 206, 267;
on GALTON, 268
KITCHENER, Lord, 64
Leaders and national life, 135
Leadership in armies, 60
LE BON, 20, 28, 136
LE PLAY, school of, 231
LEVY BRÜHL, 74
Liberty, and progress, 287;
ideal of, 184
Limits of State, 188
LOCKE, 3
Locomotion, modes of, 132
LOTZE, 36
LOWELL, President, 187, 197
Lynching, 47
MACIVER, R. M., 9 _et seq._
MAINE, Sir H., 5, 229, 270
MAITLAND, 18
MARIE, 20
MARX, K., 104
MATTEUZZI, 104
MERZ, TH., 2
MILL, J. S., on race, 108
Modern and primitive man, 120
Mongrel races, 140, 243, 279
MONTESQUIEU, 104
Moral tradition changing, 246
Morality, traditional, 264;
primitive, 264
MUIR, RAMSEY, 96
MUNSTERBERG, on Americans, 124
MURRAY, G., 178
My country, right or wrong, 174
Nation, definition of, 97 _et seq._
National action, types of, 170;
genius, 139
Nationalism, 94, 164
Nationality a psychological problem, 143
Natural boundaries, 127
Negro race and leaders, 136
Negroes and American nation, 126
Neighbour, who is our? 298
Newspapers in national life, 133
Normans, 238
North Sea outrage, 192
Northmen, 238
OLIVIER, Sir S., 244
Organic and higher unity, 157
Organisation, types of, 150;
from above, 153;
informal and formal, 197
Organism, contractual, 173
Outcastes, 85
PAINE, 25
Paradox of group life, 20
Parliamentary traditions, 191
Patriarchal system, 234
Patriotism, 54, 164, 177;
disparaged, 181
PEARSON C. H., 257
PEARSON, KARL, 258
Pelasgians, 247
PETRIE, FLINDERS, 244, 260
Philippines, Americans in, 118
Philosophy of history, 105
Physical environment and race qualities, 202, 213
PLATO, 17, 83
Political philosophy, German, 152
Populations, increase of, 250
Practical interests and psychology, 3
Prestige, 64
PRICE, COLLIER, 260
PRICHARD, H. H., 117
Primitive Societies, 64;
sympathy, 25
PRINCE, MORTON, 10, 32
Progress, ideal of, 185;
of nations, 273
Protestanism, distribution of, 115
Public opinion, 192, 197
Punans of Borneo, 72
Race qualities shape institutions, 116;
endurance of, 121;
crossing, 241
Racial differences, 111
REID, ARCHDALL, 252
Relations of sciences, 1
Religion and Reason, 259
Religious excitement, 27
RENAN, 4
Representative institutions, 198
Responsibility, communal, 68;
national, 144
RIPLEY, 115
Ritual, 92
Rivalry, national, 167
Roman Church and celibacy, 254;
civilization, 284
ROUSSEAU, 3, 53, 155
Russian armies, 59
Satisfactions of group life, 78
Scandinavian conditions, 237
SCHAEFFLE, 35
SEECK, O., 250, 270
Selection by environment, 209;
by towns, 253;
reversed, 257;
sexual, 260;
group, 264, 272
Self-consciousness in crowds, 44;
of nations, 158, 160, 299
Sentiment, national, 164
SIDIS, 32
SIGHELE, 20
Social evolution, 211, 288;
organisation, 204, 211
_Social Psychology_, 1, 3
Sociology and psychology, 8
Solidarity of human race, 185
Spain depleted, 254
Sparta depleted, 248
SPENCER, H., 7
State and nation, 175
States, limits of size, 131
Status to contract, 285
ST. JOHN, Sir S., 117
STOLL, 46
Subraces, 120
Suggestibility and emotion, 41
Superiority, intellectual, 263;
of public opinion, 194;
racial and cultural, 120
Sympathetic action, national, 188
TANCRED DE HAUTEVILLE, 239
Telepathy, 28
Tolerance, 294
TOLSTOI and anarchism, 152
TOURVILLE, H. DE, 231, 233
TOWNSEND, MEREDITH, 221
Tradition in political life, 191
Tribal conflict, 245;
consciousness, 159
Two party system, 190
Unity of nation, 157
Utilitarianism, 3
Value of nationality, 177
Variability of blended races, 140;
and progress, 280
Variation, spontaneous, 209
VOLNEY on colonists, 226
Voluntary groups, 77
_Vue d’ensemble_ in psychology, 2
WALLACE, A. R., on our ancestors, 120
War and national unity, 142
WEBB, SIDNEY, 258
WELLDON, Bishop, on sons of clergy, 255
WHETHAM, 262
Will of the people, 156
WINGFIELD, STRATFORD, 179
Womb of peoples, 238
World communications, 133
Written Codes, influence of, 271
* * * * *
THE CAMBRIDGE PSYCHOLOGICAL LIBRARY
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