But even yet we have not realised the full benefit of those early
polities and those early laws. They not only 'bound up' men in groups,
not only impressed on men a certain set of common usages, but often, at
least in an indirect way, suggested, if I may use the expression,
national character.
We cannot yet explain--I am sure, at least, I cannot attempt to
explain--all the singular phenomena of national character: how
completely and perfectly they seem to be at first framed; how slowly,
how gradually they can alone be altered, if they can be altered at all.
But there is one analogous fact which may help us to see, at least
dimly, how such phenomena are caused. There is a character of ages, as
well as of nations; and as we have full histories of many such periods,
we can examine exactly when and how the mental peculiarity of each
began, and also exactly when and how that mental peculiarity passed
away. We have an idea of Queen Anne's time, for example, or of Queen
Elizabeth's time, or George II.'s time; or again of the age of Louis
XIV., or Louis XV., or the French Revolution; an idea more or less
accurate in proportion as we study, but probably even in the minds who
know these ages best and most minutely, more special, more simple, more
unique than the truth was. We throw aside too much, in making up our
images of eras, that which is common to all eras. The English character
was much the same in many great respects in Chaucer's time as it was in
Elizabeth's time or Anne's time, or as it is now; But some qualities
were added to this common element in one era and some in another; some
qualities seemed to overshadow and eclipse it in one era, and others in
another. We overlook and half forget the constant while we see and
watch the variable. But--for that is the present point--why is there
this variable? Everyone must, I think, have been puzzled about it.
Suddenly, in a quiet time--say, in Queen Anne's time--arises a special
literature, a marked variety of human expression, pervading what is
then written and peculiar to it: surely this is singular.
The true explanation is, I think, something like this. One considerable
writer gets a sort of start because what he writes is somewhat
more--only a little more very often, as I believe--congenial to the
minds around him than any other sort. This writer is very often not the
one whom posterity remembers--not the one who carries the style of the
age farthest towards its ideal type, and gives it its charm and its
perfection. It was not Addison who began the essay-writing of Queen
Anne's time, but Steele; it was the vigorous forward man who struck out
the rough notion, though it was the wise and meditative man who
improved upon it and elaborated it, and whom posterity reads. Some
strong writer, or group of writers, thus seize on the public mind, and
a curious process soon assimilates other writers in appearance to them.
To some extent, no doubt, this assimilation is effected by a process
most intelligible, and not at all curious--the process of conscious
imitation; A sees that B's style of writing answers, and he imitates
it. But definitely aimed mimicry like this is always rare; original men
who like their own thoughts do not willingly clothe them in words they
feel they borrow. No man, indeed, can think to much purpose when he is
studying to write a style not his own. After all, very few men are at
all equal to the steady labour, the stupid and mistaken labour mostly,
of making a style. Most men catch the words that are in the air, and
the rhythm which comes to them they do not know from whence; an
unconscious imitation determines their words, and makes them say what
of themselves they would never have thought of saying. Everyone who has
written in more than one newspaper knows how invariably his style
catches the tone of each paper while he is writing for it, and changes
to the tone of another when in turn he begins to write for that. He
probably would rather write the traditional style to which the readers
of the journal are used, but he does not set himself to copy it; he
would have to force himself in order NOT to write it if that was what
he wanted. Exactly in this way, just as a writer for a journal without
a distinctly framed purpose gives the readers of the journal the sort
of words and the sort of thoughts they are used to--so, on a larger
scale, the writers of an age, without thinking of it, give to the
readers of the age the sort of words and the sort of thoughts--the
special literature, in fact--which those readers like and prize. And
not only does the writer, without thinking, choose the sort of style
and meaning which are most in vogue, but the writer is himself chosen.
A writer does not begin to write in the traditional rhythm of an age
unless he feels, or fancies he feels, a sort of aptitude for writing
it, any more than a writer tries to write in a journal in which the
style is uncongenial or impossible to him. Indeed if he mistakes he is
soon weeded out; the editor rejects, the age will not read his
compositions. How painfully this traditional style cramps great writers
whom it happens not to suit, is curiously seen in Wordsworth, who was
bold enough to break through it, and, at the risk of contemporary
neglect, to frame a style of his own. But he did so knowingly, and he
did so with an effort. 'It is supposed,' he says, 'that by the act of
writing in verse an author makes a formal engagement that he will
gratify certain known habits of association; that he not only then
apprizes the reader that certain classes of ideas and expressions will
be found in his book, but that others will be carefully eschewed. The
exponent or symbol held forth by metrical language must, in different
ages of literature, have excited very different expectations; for
example, in the age of Catullus, Terence, or Lucretius, and that of
Statius or Claudian; and in our own country, in the age of Shakespeare
and Beaumont and Metcher, and that of Donne and Cowley, or Pope.' And
then, in a kind of vexed way, Wordsworth goes on to explain that he
himself can't and won't do what is expected from him, but that he will
write his own words, and only his own words. A strict, I was going to
say a Puritan, genius will act thus, but most men of genius are
susceptible and versatile, and fall into the style of their age. One
very unapt at the assimilating process, but on that account the more
curious about it, says:--
How we
Track a livelong day, great heaven, and watch our shadows!
What our shadows seem, forsooth, we will ourselves be.
Do I look like that? You think me that: then I AM that.
What writers are expected to write, they write; or else they do not
write at all; but, like the writer of these lines, stop discouraged,
live disheartened, and die leaving fragments which their friends
treasure, but which a rushing world never heeds. The Nonconformist
writers are neglected, the Conformist writers are encouraged, until
perhaps on a sudden the fashion shifts. And as with the writers, so in
a less degree with readers. Many men--most men--get to like or think
they like that which is ever before them, and which those around them
like, and which received opinion says they ought to like; or if their
minds are too marked and oddly made to get into the mould, they give up
reading altogether, or read old books and foreign books, formed under
another code and appealing to a different taste. The principle of
'elimination,' the 'use and disuse' of organs which naturalists speak
of, works here. What is used strengthens; what is disused weakens: 'to
those who have, more is given;' and so a sort of style settles upon an
age, and imprinting itself more than anything else in men's memories
becomes all that is thought of about it.
I believe that what we call national character arose in very much the
same way. At first a sort of 'chance predominance' made a model, and
then invincible attraction, the necessity which rules all but the
strongest men to imitate what is before their eyes, and to be what they
are expected to be, moulded men by that model. This is, I think, the
very process by which new national characters are being made in our own
time. In America and in Australia a new modification of what we call
Anglo-Saxonism is growing. A sort of type of character arose from the
difficulties of colonial life--the difficulty of struggling with the
wilderness; and this type has given its shape to the mass of characters
because the mass of characters have unconsciously imitated it. Many of
the American characteristics are plainly useful in such a life, and
consequent on such a life. The eager restlessness, the highly-strung
nervous organisation are useful in continual struggle, and also are
promoted by it. These traits seem to be arising in Australia, too, and
wherever else the English race is placed in like circumstances. But
even in these useful particulars the innate tendency of the human mind
to become like what is around it, has effected much: a sluggish
Englishman will often catch the eager American look in a few years; an
Irishman or even a German will catch it, too, even in all English
particulars. And as to a hundred minor points--in so many that go to
mark the typical Yankee--usefulness has had no share either in their
origin or their propagation. The accident of some predominant person
possessing them set the fashion, and it has been imitated to this day.
Anybody who inquires will find even in England, and even in these days
of assimilation, parish peculiarities which arose, no doubt, from some
old accident, and have been heedfully preserved by customary copying. A
national character is but the successful parish character; just as the
national speech is but the successful parish dialect, the dialect, that
is, of the district which came to be more--in many cases but a little
more--influential than other districts, and so set its yoke on books
and on society. I could enlarge much on this, for I believe this
unconscious imitation to be the principal force in the making of
national characters; but I have already said more about it than I need.
Everybody who weighs even half these arguments will admit that it is a
great force in the matter, a principal agency to be acknowledged and
watched; and for my present purpose I want no more. I have only to show
the efficacy of the tight early polity (so to speak) and the strict
early law on the creation of corporate characters. These settled the
predominant type, set up a sort of model, made a sort of idol; this was
worshipped, copied, and observed, from all manner of mingled feelings,
but most of all because it was the 'thing to do,' the then accepted
form of human action. When once the predominant type was determined,
the copying propensity of man did the rest. The tradition ascribing
Spartan legislation to Lycurgus was literally untrue, but its spirit
was quite true. In the origin of states strong and eager individuals
got hold of small knots of men, and made for them a fashion which they
were attached to and kept.
It is only after duly apprehending the silent manner in which national
characters thus form themselves, that we can rightly appreciate the
dislike which old Governments had to trade. There must have been
something peculiar about it, for the best philosophers, Plato and
Aristotle, shared it. They regarded commerce as the source of
corruption as naturally as a modern economist considers it the spring
of industry, and all the old Governments acted in this respect upon the
philosophers' maxims. 'Well,' said Dr. Arnold, speaking ironically and
in the spirit of modern times--'Well, indeed, might the policy of the
old priest-nobles of Egypt and India endeavour to divert their people
from becoming familiar with the sea, and represent the occupation of a
seaman as incompatible with the purity of the highest castes. The sea
deserved to be hated by the old aristocracies, inasmuch as it has been
the mightiest instrument in the civilisation of mankind.' But the old
oligarchies had their own work, as we now know. They were imposing a
fashioning yoke; they were making the human nature which after times
employ. They were at their labours, we have entered into these labours.
And to the unconscious imitation which was their principal tool, no
impediment was so formidable as foreign intercourse. Men imitate what
is before their eyes, if it is before their eyes alone, but they do not
imitate it if it is only one among many present things--one competitor
among others, all of which are equal and some of which seem better.
'Whoever speaks two languages is a rascal,' says the saying, and it
rightly represents the feeling of primitive communities when the sudden
impact of new thoughts and new examples breaks down the compact
despotism of the single consecrated code, and leaves pliant and
impressible man--such as he then is--to follow his unpleasant will
without distinct guidance by hereditary morality and hereditary
religion. The old oligarchies wanted to keep their type perfect, and
for that end they were right not to allow foreigners to touch it.
'Distinctions of race,' says Arnold himself elsewhere in a remarkable
essay--for it was his last on Greek history, his farewell words on a
long favourite subject--'were not of that odious and fantastic
character which they have been in modern times; they implied real
differences of the most important kind, religious and moral.' And after
exemplifying this at length he goes on, 'It is not then to be wondered
at that Thucydides, when speaking of a city founded jointly by Ionians
and Dorians, should have thought it right to add "that the prevailing
institutions of the two were Ionian," for according as they were
derived from one or the other the prevailing type would be different.
And therefore the mixture of persons of different race in the same
commonwealth, unless one race had a complete ascendancy, tended to
confuse all the relations of human life, and all men's notions of right
and wrong; or by compelling men to tolerate in so near a relation as
that of fellow-citizens differences upon the main points of human life,
led to a general carelessness and scepticism, and encouraged the notion
that right and wrong had no real existence, but were mere creatures of
human opinion.' But if this be so, the oligarchies were right. Commerce
brings this mingling of ideas, this breaking down of old creeds, and
brings it inevitably. It is now-a-days its greatest good that it does
so; the change is what we call 'enlargement of mind'. But in early
times Providence 'set apart the nations;' and it is not till the frame
of their morals is set by long ages of transmitted discipline, that
such enlargement can be borne. The ages of isolation had their use, for
they trained men for ages when they were not to be isolated.