extraordinary triumphs which a single energetic will has frequently
achieved there. A military adventurer, or the chief of a petty tribe,
suddenly rises to greatness, becomes the head of an army which attacks
all its neighbours, and pursues a career of unbroken conquest till he
has founded a mighty empire. Perhaps he raises vast revenues, constructs
magnificent works, establishes justice, creates a system of
administration which secures order and peace during his lifetime. Men
like Thothmes III, Cyrus, and Darius son of Hystaspes, Khosroes
Anushirwan, Saladin, Tamerlane, Baber, Akbar the Great, Hyder Ali are in
their several ways only the most striking instances of the tremendous
effect which a man of exceptional force and activity produces among
Oriental peoples[2]. One asks why this happens chiefly in the East. Is
there a greater difference in Asiatic than in European peoples between
the few most highly-gifted men and the great mass of humanity, so that
where the ordinary characters are weak one strong character prevails
swiftly and easily? Or is the cause rather to be sought in the fact that
in the East there are no permanent institutions of government to be
overthrown? That which is strong and permanent there—viz. the customs,
religious and legal, of the people—a ruler does not (except in a fit of
insanity) venture to touch, while the thrones of neighbouring potentates
go down at a stroke before him. In mediaeval and modern Europe, the
weakness of the ordinary man was and is entrenched behind a fabric of
government and law, which the strongest individual will cannot
overthrow; and it is only when this fabric has been shattered by a
revolution, as happened in France at the end of the eighteenth century,
that the adventurer of genius and volition has a chance of rivalling the
heroes of the East.
-----
Footnote 2:
Some of these succeeded to thrones already established, but their
careers illustrate none the less the results effected by brilliant
gifts appearing in the midst of a comparatively inert people.
-----
Thus the comparative stability of governments in mediaeval and modern
Europe does not disprove the view which finds in the force of individual
will, and the tendency of average men to yield to it, a potent factor in
compelling obedience. For in the European countries the resistance
offered to the ambition of such a will is effective, not so much because
ordinary men are themselves more independent and more capable of
opposition as because their superior intelligence has built up
well-compacted systems of polity to which obedience has by long habit
become attached. Traditions of deference and loyalty have grown up
around these systems, so that they enable individuals to stand firmly
together, and constitute a solid bulwark against any personality less
forceful than that of a Julius Caesar or a Buonaparte.
To this explanation one may perhaps add another. In the East the monarch
is as a rule raised so far above his subjects that they are all
practically on a level, as compared with him; and those who are for the
moment powerful are powerful in virtue of his favour, which has elevated
and may at any moment abase them. This has long been the case in
Musulman States, and was to a large extent true even in the Byzantine
Empire. It is in some degree true in Russia now. Where there is no
land-holding or clan-leading aristocracy, nor any richly endowed
hierarchy, there may be nothing to diminish the impression of
overwhelming power which the sovereign’s position produces. Hence there
may be no order of men to set the example of an independence of feeling
and attitude which springs from their position as the leaders of their
dependents and as entitled to be consulted by the Crown. Such an order
of men existed in the feudal aristocracy of the Middle Ages, who have
done much to create a type of character in the States of modern Europe.
To them has now succeeded, in some modern countries, a so-called
aristocracy of wealth, which, vain as it may be of its opportunities for
influencing others, is much less stable than was the land-holding class
of old days, and much less high-spirited. Meanwhile the general
levelling down and up which has created what we call modern democracy
has, in reducing the number of those whom rank and tradition had made
‘natural leaders,’ increased the opportunities of strong-willed and
unscrupulous men, restless and reckless, versed in popular arts, and
adroitly using that most powerful of all agents for propagating
uniformity of opinion which we call the newspaper press, powerful
because it drives the individual to believe that if he differs from the
mass he must be wrong. Such a man may have a career in a huge democracy
which he could not have had a century ago, because the forces that
resist are fewer and feebler to-day than they were then, and the
multitude is more easily fascinated by audacity or force of will, apart
from moral excellence, apart from intellectual distinction, than is an
aristocratic society.
It may help to explain the theory I am trying to present if we pause for
a moment to examine the influences under which the habit of obedience is
first formed in the individual man and in the nascent community. For the
individual, it begins in the Family; and it grows up there only to a
small extent by the action of Force and Fear. The average child, even in
the days of a discipline harsher than that which now obtains, did not as
a rule act under coercion, but began from the dawn of consciousness to
comply with the wish of the parent or the nurse, partly from the sense
of dependence, partly from affection, partly because it saw that other
children did the like. Force might sometimes be resorted to; but force
was in most cases a secondary and subsidiary agency. Nor did force
succeed so well as softer methods. Everybody knows that the children who
have been most often punished are not the most obedient, nor is this
merely because, being naturally self-willed, they have needed more
correction. After those little squalls of aimless passion which belong
to a certain period in the child’s life have passed away, the boy
usually moves as a matter of course at his parents’ bidding until the
age is reached when circumstances oblige him to act for himself, or when
the sense of independence is stimulated by perceiving that others of his
own age will despise him if he remains too submissive. The child whose
constant impulse is to disobey is as likely to turn out ineffective as
the child who obeys too readily; for perversity is as frequently due to
want of affection, sympathy, and common sense as to exceptional force of
will.
Thus most people enter adult life having already formed the habit of
obeying in many things where Force and Fear do not come in at all, but
in which the most obvious motive is the readiness to be relieved of
trouble and responsibility by following the directions of some one else,
presumably superior. They have also formed during boyhood the habit of
adopting the opinions of those around them. An acute observer has said
that the chief fault of the English public school is that it makes this
habit far too strong. Custom—that is to say, whatever is established and
obeyed—has great power over them. No conservatism surpasses that of the
schoolboy.
It would not be safe to try to find a general explanation of the growth
of political communities in the phenomena of domestic life, though it
was a favourite doctrine of a past generation that the germ or the type
of the State was to be found in the Family. There are some races among
whom the Family and its organization seem to have played no great part.
But it is clear that in primitive societies three forces, other than
Fear, have been extremely powerful—the reverence for ancient lineage,
the instinctive deference to any person of marked gifts (with the
disposition to deem those gifts supernatural), and the associative
tendency which unites the members of a group or tribe so closely
together that the practice of joint action supersedes individual choice.
These forces have imprinted the habit of obedience so deeply upon early
communities that it became a tradition, moulding the minds of succeeding
generations. Physical force had plenty of scope in the strife of clans
or cities, or (somewhat later) of factions, with one another; but in
building up the clan or the city it was hardly needed, for motives more
uniform and steady in their efficiency were at work. To pursue this
topic would lead us into a field too wide for this occasion; yet it is
well to note two facts which stand out in the early history of those
communities in which Force and Fear might seem to have had most to do
with the formation of governments, and of the habit of obedience to
authority. One is the passionate and persistent attachment to a
particular reigning family, apart from their personal gifts, apart from
their power to serve the community or to terrify it. The Franks in Gaul
during the seventh and eighth centuries were as fierce and turbulent a
race as the world has ever seen. Their history is a long record of
incessant and ferocious strife. From the beginning of the seventh
century the Merwing kings, descendants of Clovis, became, with scarcely
an exception, feeble and helpless. Their power passed to their vizirs,
the Mayors of the Palace, who from about A.D. 638 onwards were kings _de
facto_. But the Franks continued to revere the blood of Clovis, and
when, in 656, a rash Mayor of the Palace had deposed a Merwing and
placed his own son on the throne, they rose at once against the insult
offered to the ancient line; and its scions were revered as titular
heads of the nation for a century longer, till Pippin the Short, having
induced the Pope to pronounce the deposition of the last Merwing and to
sanction the transfer of the crown to himself, sent that prince into a
monastery. This instance is the more remarkable because the Franks,
being Christians in doctrine if not in practice, can hardly have
continued to hold the divine origin of their dynasty.
The other fact to be dwelt upon is this, that where religion comes into
the matter we discover an associative tendency of immense strength,
which binds men into a community, and wins obedience for those who,
whether as priests or as kings, embody the unity of the community, who
represent its collective relation to the Unseen Powers, who approach
them with its collective service of prayers or sacrifice. Altars have
probably done even more than hearths to stimulate patriotism, especially
among those who, like the Romans, had a sort of domestic altar for every
hearth, and kept up a worship of family and clan spirits beside the
worship of the national gods. It may be said that the power of religion
in welding men together and inducing them to obey kings or magistrates
or laws is due to the element of Fear in religion. Such an element has
no doubt been at work, but its influence is more seen in the requirement
of sacrifices to the deities themselves than in enforcing obedience to
the authorities and institutions of the State. What commends these
latter to reverence is rather the belief that their divine appointment
gives them a claim on the affection of the citizens, and makes it a part
of piety as well as of patriotism to support them. In the Old Testament,
for instance, the love of Jehovah, and the sense of gratitude to Him for
his favours to His people, are motives invoked as no less potent than
the dread of His wrath. There has always been a tendency, since
Christianity lost its first freshness and power, to insist upon the more
material motives, upon those which appear palpable and ponderable, such
as the fear of future punishment, rather than on those of a more refined
and ethereal quality. But it was not by appealing to these lower motives
that Christianity originally made its way in the Roman Empire. The
element of Fear, though not wholly absent from the New Testament, plays
a very subordinate part there, and became larger in mediaeval and modern
times. Yet it may be doubted whether, in growing stronger, it increased
the efficiency of Christianity as an engine of moral reform. ‘Perfect
love casteth out fear.’ It was the gospel of love, and not the fear of
hell, that conquered the world, and made men and women willing to suffer
death for their faith. The martyrs in the persecutions under Decius and
Diocletian, and the Armenian martyrs of 1895, who were counted by
thousands, overcame the terror of impending torture and death, not from
any thought of penalties in a world to come, but from the sense of
honour and devotion which forbade them to deny the God whom they and
their parents or forefathers had worshipped.
Returning to the general question of the disposition of the average man
to follow rather than to make a path for himself, it may be remarked
that the abstract love of liberty, the desire to secure self-government
for its own sake, apart from the benefits to be reaped from it, has been
a comparatively feeble passion, even in nations far advanced in
political development. It is not easy to establish this proposition by
instances, because wherever arbitrary power is exercised, there are
pretty certain to be tangible grievances as well as a denial of liberty,
and where a monarch, or an oligarchy, attempts to deprive a people of
the freedom they have enjoyed, they conclude, and with good reason, that
oppression is sure to follow. But when the sources of insurrections are
examined, it will be almost always found that the great bulk of the
insurgents were moved either by the hatred of foreign domination, or by
religious passion, or by actual wrongs suffered. Those who in drawing
the sword appeal to the love of liberty and liberty only are usually a
group of persons who, like the last republicans of Rome, are either
exceptional in their sense of dignity and their attachment to tradition,
or deem the predominance of a despot injurious to their own position in
the State. So we may safely say that rebellions and revolutions are
primarily made, not for the sake of freedom, but in order to get rid of
some evil which touches men in a more tender place than their pride.
They rise against oppression when it reaches a certain point, such as
the spoiling of their goods by the tax-gatherer, the invasion of their
homes by the minions of tyranny, the enforcement of an odious form of
worship, or perhaps some shocking deed of cruelty or lust. Once they
have risen, the more ardent spirits involve the sacred name of liberty
and fight under its banner. But so long as the government is fairly easy
and tolerant, the mere denial of a share in the control of public
affairs is not acutely resented, and a great deal of paternally
regulative despotism is acquiesced in.
In A.D. 1863, when Bismarck was flouting the Prussian Parliament,
Englishmen were surprised at the coolness with which the Prussian people
bore the violations of their not too liberal constitution. The
explanation was that the country was well governed, and the struggle for
political power did not move peasants and tradesmen otherwise contented
with their lot. The English were a people singularly attached to their
ancient political and civil rights, yet Charles the First might probably
have destroyed the liberties of England, and would almost certainly have
destroyed those of Scotland, if he had left religion alone. One of the
few cases that can be cited where a great movement sprang from the pure
love of independence is the migration of the chieftains of Western
Norway to Iceland in the ninth century, rather than admit the
overlordship of King Harold the Fairhaired. But even here it is to be
remembered that Harold sought to levy tribute: and the Norsemen were of
all the races we know those in whom the pride of personality and the
spirit of independence glowed with the hottest flame.
There are even times when peoples that have enjoyed a disordered freedom
tire of it, and are ready to welcome, for the sake of order, any saviour
of society who appears, an Octavianus Augustus or even a Louis Napoleon.
The greatest peril to self-government is at all times to be found in the
want of zeal and energy among the citizens. This is a peril which exists
in democracies as well as in despotisms. Submission is less frequently
due to overwhelming force than to the apathy of those who find
acquiescence easier than resistance.
Two questions arising out of the view that has been here presented
regarding the main sources of Obedience remain to be considered.
One of these, that which bears upon the theory of jurisprudence as a
science, being somewhat technical, had better not be suffered to
interrupt the course of the general argument. I have therefore relegated
it to a note at the end of this essay.
III. THE FUTURE OF POLITICAL OBEDIENCE.
The other question which deserves to be examined is a much wider one. We
have inquired what have been the grounds of Obedience in the past, and
how it has worked in consolidating political society. We have seen that
political society has depended upon the natural inequality in the
strength of individual wills and in the activity of individual
intellects, so that the weaker have tended to follow and shelter
themselves behind the stronger, not so much because the stronger have
compelled them to do so as because they have themselves wished to do so.
But the conditions of human life and society have of late years greatly
changed, and are still continuing to change, in the direction of
securing wider scope for independence of thought and action. Society has
become orderly, and physical violence plays a smaller and a steadily
decreasing part. The multitude, in most of the civilized and progressive
countries, can, if and when it pleases, exercise political supremacy
through its voting power. There is very much less distinction of ranks
than formerly, so that even those who dislike social equality are
obliged to profess their love for it. And the opportunities of obtaining
knowledge have become infinitely more accessible than they were even a
century ago. Changes so great as these must surely—though of course they
cannot alter the fundamental facts of human nature—modify the working of
the tendencies and habits which man shows in political society. How far,
then, are they likely to modify the tendency to Obedience, and in what
way? In other words, What will be the relation of Obedience to democracy
and to social equality?
It used to be believed, perhaps it is still generally believed, that
with the advance of knowledge, the development of intelligence, and the
accumulation of human experience, Obedience must necessarily decline,
and that therewith governmental control will decay or be deemed
superfluous, the good sense of mankind coming in to do for themselves
what authority has hitherto done for them. The familiar phrase ‘Anarchy
_plus_ a street constable’ was employed to describe the ideal of a
government restricted to the fewest possible functions, as that ideal
was cherished by the lovers of liberty and the apostles of
_laissez-faire_. There is even a school counting among its members,
besides a few assassins, many peaceful and tender-hearted theorists, men
of high personal excellence, which maintains that all the troubles of
the world spring from the effort of one man, or a group of men, or the
general mass of a people, to regulate the relations and guide the
conduct of individuals. To this school all forms of government are
pretty nearly equally bad, and a Czar, though a more conspicuous mark
for denunciation, is scarcely worse than is a Parliament.
The answer to this view, which is attractive, not merely because it is
paradoxical, but because it is a protest against some really bad
tendencies of human society, and whose ideal, however unattainable,
offers larger prospects of pleasure than does that of the
ultra-regulators, seems to be that Obedience is an instinct of human
nature too strong and permanent to be got rid of, and that the
extinction of the State machinery which rules by this instinct, and when
necessary enforces its own authority by the strong arm, would not really
secure freedom to the weak though it might facilitate oppression by the
strong. To assume that human nature will change as soon as provisions
for State compulsion have been withdrawn is to misread human nature as
we have hitherto known it. Organizations there will be and must be, even
if existing governments come to an end: and every organization implies
obedience, not only because large enterprises cannot otherwise be
worked, but also because the direction, necessarily committed to a few,
forms in those few the habit of ruling and disposes others to accept
their control. The decline of respect for the State, or even the growth
of a habit of disobedience to State authorities, so far from implying a
decline in the motives and forces which produce obedience generally, may
indicate nothing more than that people have begun to obey some other
authorities, and so illustrate our proposition that the obedience
rendered to authorities commanding physical force is not always nor
necessarily the promptest and the heartiest. New forms of social
grouping and organization are always springing up, and in these, if they
are to strive for and attain their aims, discipline is essential,
because it is only thus that success in a struggle can be won. To keep
men tightly knit together power must be lodged in few hands, and the
rank and file must take their orders from their officers. Such
submission, due at starting partly no doubt to reason, which suggests
motives of interest, but largely also to deference and to sympathy, with
fear presently added, soon crystallizes into a habit. Any one who will
watch any considerable modern movement or series of movements outside
the State sphere will perceive how naturally and inevitably guidance
falls into a few hands, and how largely success depends on the
discipline which those who guide maintain among those who follow; that
is to say, on the uniformity and readiness of obedience, and on the
strength of the associative habit which makes them all act heartily
together. Whether it be a political party, or an ecclesiastical
movement, or a combination of employers or of workmen, the same
tendencies appear, and victory is achieved by the same methods.
I will name in passing three very recent instances, drawn from the
country in which it might be supposed that subordination was least
likely to be found, because the principles of democracy and equality
have had in it the longest and the fullest vogue. One is to be found in
the Boss system in American politics. Such party chieftains as Mr.
Croker in New York City, Mr. Cox in Cincinnati, and the well-known
masters of the Republican party in the great States of Pennsylvania and
New York, wield a power far more absolute, far more unquestioned, than
the laws of the United States permit to any official. One must go to
Russia to find anything comparable to the despotic control they exert
over fellow citizens who are supposed to enjoy the widest freedom the
world has known. A second is supplied by the American trade unions, in
which a few leaders are permitted by the mass of their fellow workmen to
organize combinations and to direct strikes as practical dictators. A
trade union is a militant body, and the conditions of war make the
leader all-powerful. The third is to be found in the American Trusts or
great commercial corporations, aggregations of capital which embrace
vast industries and departments of trade employing many thousands of
work-people, and which are controlled by a very small number of capable
men. Modern commerce, like war, suggests the concentration of virtually
irresponsible power in a few hands.
Whether we examine the moral constitution of man or the phenomena of
society in its various stages, we shall be led to conclude that the
theoretic democratic ideal of men as each of them possessing and
exerting an independent reason, conscience, and will, is an ideal too
remote from human nature as we know it, and from communities as they now
exist, to be within the horizon of the next few centuries, perhaps of
all the centuries that may elapse before we are covered by the
ice-fields again descending from the Pole or are ultimately engulfed in
the sun.