In the last essay I endeavoured to show that in the early age of
man--the 'fighting age' I called it--there was a considerable, though
not certain, tendency towards progress. The best nations conquered the
worst; by the possession of one advantage or another the best
competitor overcame the inferior competitor. So long as there was
continual fighting there was a likelihood of improvement in martial
virtues, and in early times many virtues are really 'martial'--that is,
tend to success in war--which in later times we do not think of so
calling, because the original usefulness is hid by their later
usefulness. We judge of them by the present effects, not by their
first. The love of law, for example, is a virtue which no one now would
call martial, yet in early times it disciplined nations, and the
disciplined nations won. The gift of 'conservative innovation'--the
gift of MATCHING new institutions to old--is not nowadays a warlike
virtue, yet the Romans owed much of their success to it. Alone among
ancient nations they had the deference to usage which, combines
nations, and the partial permission of selected change which improves
nations; and therefore they succeeded. Just so in most cases, all
through the earliest times, martial merit is a token of real merit: the
nation that wins is the nation that ought to win. The simple virtues of
such ages mostly make a man a soldier if they make him anything. No
doubt the brute force of number may be too potent even then (as so
often it is afterwards): civilisation may be thrown back by the
conquest of many very rude men over a few less rude men. But the first
elements of civilisation are great military advantages, and, roughly,
it is a rule of the first times that you can infer merit from conquest,
and that progress is promoted by the competitive examination of
constant war.
This principle explains at once why the 'protected' regions of the
world--the interior of continents like Africa, outlying islands like
Australia or New Zealand--are of necessity backward. They are still in
the preparatory school; they have not been taken on class by class, as
No. II., being a little better, routed effaced No. I.; and as No. III.,
being a little better still, routed and effaced No. II. And it explains
why Western Europe was early in advance of other countries, because
there the contest of races was exceedingly severe. Unlike most regions,
it was a tempting part of the world, and yet not a corrupting part;
those who did not possess it wanted it, and those who had it, not being
enervated, could struggle hard to keep it. The conflict of nations is
at first a main force in the improvement of nations.
But what ARE nations? What are these groups which are so familiar to
us, and yet, if we stop to think, so strange; which are as old as
history; which Herodotus found in almost as great numbers and with
quite as marked distinctions as we see them now? What breaks the human
race up into fragments so unlike one another, and yet each in its
interior so monotonous? The question is most puzzling, though the fact
is so familiar, and I would not venture to say that I can answer it
completely, though I can advance some considerations which, as it seems
to me, go a certain way towards answering it. Perhaps these same
considerations throw some light, too, on the further and still more
interesting question why some few nations progress, and why the greater
part do not.
Of course at first all such distinctions of nation and nation were
explained by original diversity of race. They ARE dissimilar, it was
said, because they were created dissimilar. But in most cases this easy
supposition will not do its work. You cannot (consistently with plain
facts) imagine enough original races to make it tenable. Some
half-dozen or more great families of men may or may not have been
descended from separate first stocks, but sub-varieties have certainly
not so descended. You may argue, rightly or wrongly, that all Aryan
nations are of a single or peculiar origin, just as it was long
believed that all Greek-speaking nations were of one such stock. But
you will not be listened to if you say that there were one Adam and Eve
for Sparta, and another Adam and Eve for Athens. All Greeks are
evidently of one origin, but within the limits of the Greek family, as
of all other families, there is some contrast-making force which causes
city to be unlike city, and tribe unlike tribe.
Certainly, too, nations did not originate by simple natural selection,
as wild varieties of animals (I do not speak now of species) no doubt
arise in nature. Natural selection means the preservation of those
individuals which struggle best with the forces that oppose their race.
But you could not show that the natural obstacles opposing human life
much differed between Sparta and Athens, or indeed between Rome and
Athens; and yet Spartans, Athenians, and Romans differ essentially. Old
writers fancied (and it was a very natural idea) that the direct effect
of climate, or rather of land, sea, and air, and the sum total of
physical conditions varied man from man, and changed race to race. But
experience refutes this. The English immigrant lives in the same
climate as the Australian or Tasmanian, but he has not become like
those races; nor will a thousand years, in most respects, make him like
them. The Papuan and the Malay, as Mr. Wallace finds, live now, and
have lived for ages, side by side in the same tropical regions, with
every sort of diversity. Even in animals his researches show, as by an
object-lesson, that the direct efficacy of physical conditions is
overrated. 'Borneo,' he says 'closely resembles New Guinea, not only in
its vast size and freedom from volcanoes, but in its variety of
geological structure, its uniformity of climate, and the general aspect
of the forest vegetation that clothes its surface. The Moluccas are the
counterpart of the Philippines in their volcanic structure, their
extreme fertility, their luxuriant forests, and their frequent
earthquakes; and Bali, with the east end of Java, has a climate almost
as arid as that of Timor. Yet between these corresponding groups of
islands, constructed, as it were, after the same pattern, subjected to
the same climate, and bathed by the same oceans, there exists the
greatest possible contrast, when we compare their animal productions.
Nowhere does the ancient doctrine--that differences or similarities in
the various forms of life that inhabit different countries are due to
corresponding physical differences or similarities in the countries
themselves--meet with so direct and palpable a contradiction. Borneo
and New Guinea, as alike physically as two distinct countries can be,
are zoologically as wide as the poles asunder; while Australia, with
its dry winds, its open plains, its stony deserts and its temperate
climate, yet produces birds and quadrupeds which are closely related to
those inhabiting the hot, damp, luxuriant forests which everywhere
clothe the plains and mountains of New Guinea.' That is, we have like
living things in the most dissimilar situations, and unlike living
things in the most similar ones. And though some of Mr. Wallace's
speculations on ethnology may be doubtful, no one doubts that in the
archipelago he has studied so well, as often elsewhere in the world,
though rarely with such marked emphasis, we find like men in contrasted
places, and unlike men in resembling places. Climate is clearly not THE
force which makes nations, for it does not always make them, and they
are often made without it.
The problem of 'nation-making'--that is, the explanation of the origin
of nations such as we now see them, and such as in historical times
they have always been--cannot, as it seems to me, be solved without
separating it into two: one, the making of broadly-marked races, such
as the negro, or the red man, or the European; and the second, that of
making the minor distinctions, such as the distinction between Spartan
and Athenian, or between Scotchman and Englishman. Nations, as we see
them, are (if my arguments prove true) the produce of two great forces:
one the race-making force which, whatever it was, acted in antiquity,
and has now wholly, or almost, given over acting; and the other the
nation-making force, properly so called, which is acting now as much as
it ever acted, and creating as much as it ever created.
The strongest light on the great causes which have formed and are
forming nations is thrown by the smaller causes which are altering
nations. The way in which nations change, generation after generation,
is exceedingly curious, and the change occasionally happens when it is
very hard to account for. Something seems to steal over society, say of
the Regency time as compared with that of the present Queen. If we read
of life at Windsor (at the cottage now pulled down), or of Bond Street
as it was in the days of the Loungers (an extinct race), or of St.
James's Street as it was when Mr. Fox and his party tried to make
'political capital' out of the dissipation of an heir apparent, we seem
to be reading not of the places we know so well, but of very distant
and unlike localities. Or let anyone think how little is the external
change in England between the age of Elizabeth and the age of Anne
compared with the national change. How few were the alterations in
physical condition, how few (if any) the scientific inventions
affecting human life which the later period possessed, but the earlier
did not! How hard it is to say what has caused the change in the
people! And yet how total is the contrast, at least at first sight! In
passing from Bacon to Addison, from Shakespeare to Pope, we seem to
pass into a new world.
In the first of these essays I spoke of the mode in which the literary
change happens, and I recur to it because, literature being narrower
and more definite than life, a change in the less serves as a model and
illustration of the change in the greater. Some writer, as was
explained, not necessarily a very excellent writer or a remembered one,
hit on something which suited the public taste: he went on writing, and
others imitated him, and they so accustomed their readers to that style
that they would bear nothing else. Those readers who did not like it
were driven to the works of other ages and other countries,--had to
despise the 'trash of the day,' as they would call it. The age of Anne
patronised Steele, the beginner of the essay, and Addison its
perfecter, and it neglected writings in a wholly discordant key. I have
heard that the founder of the 'Times' was asked how all the articles in
the 'Times' came to seem to be written by one man, and that he
replied--'Oh, there is always some one best contributor, and all the
rest copy.' And this is doubtless the true account of the manner in
which a certain trade mark, a curious and indefinable unity, settles on
every newspaper. Perhaps it would be possible to name the men who a few
years since created the 'Saturday Review' style, now imitated by
another and a younger race. But when the style of a periodical is once
formed, the continuance of it is preserved by a much more despotic
impulse than the tendency to imitation,--by the self-interest of the
editor, who acts as trustee, if I may say so, for the subscribers. The
regular buyers of a periodical want to read what they have been used to
read--the same sort of thought, the same sort of words. The editor sees
that they get that sort. He selects the suitable, the conforming
articles, and he rejects the non-conforming. What the editor does in
the case of a periodical, the readers do in the case of literature in
general. They patronise one thing and reject the rest.
Of course there was always some reason (if we only could find it) which
gave the prominence in each age to some particular winning literature.
There always is some reason why the fashion of female dress is what it
is. But just as in the case of dress we know that now-a-days the
determining cause is very much of an accident, so in the case of
literary fashion, the origin is a good deal of an accident. What the
milliners of Paris, or the demi-monde of Paris, enjoin our English
ladies, is (I suppose) a good deal chance; but as soon as it is
decreed, those whom it suits and those whom it does not all wear it.
The imitative propensity at once insures uniformity; and 'that horrid
thing we wore last year' (as the phrase may go) is soon nowhere to be
seen. Just so a literary fashion spreads, though I am far from saying
with equal primitive unreasonableness--a literary taste always begins
on some decent reason, but once started, it is propagated as a fashion
in dress is propagated; even those who do not like it read it because
it is there, and because nothing else is easily to be found.
The same patronage of favoured forms, and persecution of disliked
forms, are the main causes too, I believe, which change national
character. Some one attractive type catches the eye, so to speak, of
the nation, or a part of the nation, as servants catch the gait of
their masters, or as mobile girls come home speaking the special words
and acting the little gestures of each family whom they may have been
visiting. I do not know if many of my readers happen to have read
Father Newman's celebrated sermon, 'Personal Influence the Means of
Propagating the Truth;' if not, I strongly recommend them to do so.
They will there see the opinion of a great practical leader of men, of
one who has led very many where they little thought of going, as to the
mode in which they are to be led; and what he says, put shortly and
simply, and taken out of his delicate language, is but this--that men
are guided by TYPE, not by argument; that some winning instance must be
set up before them, or the sermon will be vain, and the doctrine will
not spread. I do not want to illustrate this matter from religious
history, for I should be led far from my purpose, and after all I can
but teach the commonplace that it is the life of teachers which is
CATCHING, not their tenets. And again, in political matters, how
quickly a leading statesman can change the tone of the community! We
are most of us earnest with Mr. Gladstone; we were most of NOT so
earnest in the time of Lord Palmerston. The change is what every one
feels, though no one can define it. Each predominant mind calls out a
corresponding sentiment in the country: most feel it a little. Those
who feel it much express it much; those who feel it excessively express
it excessively; those who dissent are silent, or unheard.
After such great matters as religion and politics, it may seem trifling
to illustrate the subject from little boys. But it is not trifling. The
bane of philosophy is pomposity: people will not see that small things
are the miniatures of greater, and it seems a loss of abstract dignity
to freshen their minds by object lessons from what they know. But every
boarding-school changes as a nation changes. Most of us may remember
thinking, 'How odd it is that this "half" should be so unlike last
"half:" now we never go out of bounds, last half we were always going:
now we play rounders, then we played prisoner's base;' and so through
all the easy life of that time. In fact, some ruling spirits, some one
or two ascendant boys, had left, one or two others had come; and so all
was changed. The models were changed, and the copies changed; a
different thing was praised, and a different thing bullied. A curious
case of the same tendency was noticed to me only lately. A friend of
mine--a Liberal Conservative--addressed a meeting of working men at
Leeds, and was much pleased at finding his characteristic, and perhaps
refined points, both apprehended and applauded. 'But then,' as he
narrated, 'up rose a blatant Radical who said the very opposite things,
and the working men cheered him too, and quite equally.' He was puzzled
to account for so rapid a change. But the mass of the meeting was no
doubt nearly neutral, and, if set going, quite ready to applaud any
good words without much thinking. The ringleaders changed. The radical
tailor started the radical cheer; the more moderate shoemaker started
the moderate cheer; and the great bulk followed suit. Only a few in
each case were silent, and an absolute contrast was in ten minutes
presented by the same elements.
The truth is that the propensity of man to imitate what is before him
is one of the strongest parts of his nature. And one sign of it is the
great pain which we feel when our imitation has been unsuccessful.
There is a cynical doctrine that most men would rather be accused of
wickedness than of gaucherie. And this is but another way of saying
that the bad copying of predominant manners is felt to be more of a
disgrace than common consideration would account for its being, since
gaucherie in all but extravagant cases is not an offence against
religion or morals, but is simply bad imitation. We must not think that
this imitation is voluntary, or even conscious. On the contrary, it has
its seat mainly in very obscure parts of the mind, whose notions, so
far from having been consciously produced, are hardly felt to exist; so
far from being conceived beforehand, are not even felt at the time. The
main seat of the imitative part of our nature is our belief, and the
causes predisposing us to believe this, or disinclining us to believe
that, are among the obscurest parts of our nature. But as to the
imitative nature of credulity there can be no doubt. In 'Eothen' there
is a capital description of how every sort of European resident in the
East, even the shrewd merchant and 'the post-captain,' with his bright,
wakeful eyes of commerce, comes soon to believe in witchcraft, and to
assure you, in confidence, that there 'really is something in it.' He
has never seen anything convincing himself, but he has seen those who
have seen those who have seen those who have seen. In fact, he has
lived in an atmosphere of infectious belief, and he has inhaled it.
Scarcely any one can help yielding to the current infatuations of his
sect or party. For a short time--say some fortnight--he is resolute; he
argues and objects; but, day by day, the poison thrives, and reason
wanes. What he hears from his friends, what he reads in the party
organ, produces its effect. The plain, palpable conclusion which every
one around him believes, has an influence yet greater and more subtle;
that conclusion seems so solid and unmistakable; his own good arguments
get daily more and more like a dream. Soon the gravest sage shares the
folly of the party with which he acts, and the sect with which he
worships.
In true metaphysics I believe that, contrary to common opinion,
unbelief far oftener needs a reason and requires an effort than belief.
Naturally, and if man were made according to the pattern of the
logicians, he would say, 'When I see a valid argument I will believe,
and till I see such argument I will not believe.' But, in fact, every
idea vividly before us soon appears to us to be true, unless we keep up
our perceptions of the arguments which prove it untrue, and voluntarily
coerce our minds to remember its falsehood. 'All clear ideas are true,'
was for ages a philosophical maxim, and though no maxim can be more
unsound, none can be more exactly conformable to ordinary human nature.
The child resolutely accepts every idea which passes through its brain
as true; it has no distinct conception of an idea which is strong,
bright, and permanent, but which is false too. The mere presentation of
an idea, unless we are careful about it, or unless there is within some
unusual resistance, makes us believe it; and this is why the belief of
others adds to our belief so quickly, for no ideas seem so very clear
as those inculcated on us from every side.
The grave part of mankind are quite as liable to these imitated beliefs
as the frivolous part. The belief of the money-market, which is mainly
composed of grave people, is as imitative as any belief. You will find
one day everyone enterprising, enthusiastic, vigorous, eager to buy,
and eager to order: in a week or so you will find almost the whole
society depressed, anxious, and wanting to sell. If you examine the
reasons for the activity, or for the inactivity, or for the change, you
will hardly be able to trace them at all, and as far as you can trace
them, they are of little force. In fact, these opinions were not formed
by reason, but by mimicry. Something happened that looked a little
good, on which eager sanguine men talked loudly, and common people
caught their tone. A little while afterwards, and when people were
tired of talking this, something also happened looking a little bad, on
which the dismal, anxious people began, and all the rest followed their
words. And in both cases an avowed dissentient is set down as
'crotchety.' 'If you want,' said Swift, 'to gain the reputation of a
sensible man, you should be of the opinion of the person with whom for
the time being you are conversing.' There is much quiet intellectual
persecution among 'reasonable' men; a cautious person hesitates before
he tells them anything new, for if he gets a name for such things he
will be called 'flighty,' and in times of decision he will not be
attended to.
In this way the infection of imitation catches men in their most inward
and intellectual part--their creed. But it also invades men--by the
most bodily part of the mind--so to speak--the link between soul and
body--the manner. No one needs to have this explained; we all know how
a kind of subtle influence makes us imitate or try to imitate the
manner of those around us. To conform to the fashion of Rome--whatever
the fashion may be, and whatever Rome we may for the time be at--is
among the most obvious needs of human nature. But what is not so
obvious, though as certain, is that the influence of the imitation goes
deep as well as extends wide. 'The matter,' as Wordsworth says, 'of
style very much comes out of the manner.' If you will endeavour to
write an imitation of the thoughts of Swift in a copy of the style of
Addison, you will find that not only is it hard to write Addison's
style, from its intrinsic excellence, but also that the more you
approach to it the more you lose the thought of Swift. The eager
passion of the meaning beats upon the mild drapery of the words. So you
could not express the plain thoughts of an Englishman in the grand
manner of a Spaniard. Insensibly, and as by a sort of magic, the kind
of manner which a man catches eats into him, and makes him in the end
what at first he only seems.
This is the principal mode in which the greatest minds of an age
produce their effect. They set the tone which others take, and the
fashion which others use. There is an odd idea that those who take what
is called a 'scientific view' of history need rate lightly the
influence of individual character. It would be as reasonable to say
that those who take a scientific view of nature need think little of
the influence of the sun. On the scientific view a great man is a great
new cause (compounded or not out of other causes, for I do not here, or
elsewhere in these papers, raise the question of free-will), but,
anyhow, new in all its effects, and all its results. Great models for
good and evil sometimes appear among men, who follow them either to
improvement or degradation.
I am, I know, very long and tedious in setting out this; but I want to
bring home to others what every new observation of society brings more
and more freshly to myself--that this unconscious imitation and
encouragement of appreciated character, and this equally unconscious
shrinking from and persecution of disliked character, is the main force
which moulds and fashions men in society as we now see it. Soon I shall
try to show that the more acknowledged causes, such as change of
climate, alteration of political institutions, progress of science, act
principally through this cause; that they change the object of
imitation and the object of avoidance, and so work their effect. But
first I must speak of the origin of nations--of nation-making as one
may call it--the proper subject of this paper.
The process of nation-making is one of which we have obvious examples
in the most recent times, and which is going on now. The most simple
example is the foundation of the first State of America, say New
England, which has such a marked and such a deep national character. A
great number of persons agreeing in fundamental disposition, agreeing
in religion, agreeing in politics, form a separate settlement; they
exaggerate their own disposition, teach their own creed, set up their
favourite government; they discourage all other dispositions, persecute
other beliefs, forbid other forms or habits of government. Of course a
nation so made will have a separate stamp and mark. The original
settlers began of one type; they sedulously imitated it; and (though
other causes have intervened and disturbed it) the necessary operation
of the principles of inheritance has transmitted many original traits
still unaltered, and has left an entire New England character--in no
respect unaffected by its first character.
This case is well known, but it is not so that the same process, in a
weaker shape, is going on in America now. Congeniality of sentiment is
a reason of selection, and a bond of cohesion in the 'West' at present.
Competent observers say that townships grow up there by each place
taking its own religion, its own manners, and its own ways. Those who
have these morals and that religion go to that place, and stay there;
and those who have not these morals and that religion either settle
elsewhere at first, or soon pass on. The days of colonisation by sudden
'swarms' of like creed is almost over, but a less visible process of
attraction by similar faith over similar is still in vigour, and very
likely to continue.
And in cases where this principle does not operate all new settlements,
being formed of 'emigrants,' are sure to be composed of rather restless
people, mainly. The stay-at-home people are not to be found there, and
these are the quiet, easy people. A new settlement voluntarily formed
(for of old times, when people were expelled by terror, I am not
speaking) is sure to have in it much more than the ordinary proportion
of active men, and much less than the ordinary proportion of inactive;
and this accounts for a large part, though not perhaps all, of the
difference between the English in England, and the English in Australia.
The causes which formed New England in recent times cannot be conceived
as acting much upon mankind in their infancy. Society is not then
formed upon a 'voluntary system' but upon an involuntary. A man in
early ages is born to a certain obedience, and cannot extricate himself
from an inherited government. Society then is made up, not of
individuals, but of families; creeds then descend by inheritance in
those families. Lord Melbourne once incurred the ridicule of
philosophers by saying he should adhere to the English Church BECAUSE
it was the religion of his fathers. The philosophers, of course, said
that a man's fathers' believing anything was no reason for his
believing it unless it was true. But Lord Melbourne was only uttering
out of season, and in a modern time, one of the most firm and accepted
maxims of old times. A secession on religious grounds of isolated
Romans to sail beyond sea would have seemed to the ancient Romans an
impossibility. In still ruder ages the religion of savages is a thing
too feeble to create a schism or to found a community. We are dealing
with people capable of history when we speak of great ideas, not with
prehistoric flint-men or the present savages. But though under very
different forms, the same essential causes--the imitation of preferred
characters and the elimination of detested characters--were at work in
the oldest times, and are at work among rude men now. Strong as the
propensity to imitation is among civilised men, we must conceive it as
an impulse of which their minds have been partially denuded. Like the
far-seeing sight, the infallible hearing, the magical scent of the
savage, it is a half-lost power. It was strongest in ancient times, and
IS strongest in uncivilised regions.
This extreme propensity to imitation is one great reason of the amazing
sameness which every observer notices in savage nations. When you have
seen one Euegian, you have seen all Fuegians--one Tasmanian, all
Tasmanians. The higher savages, as the New Zealanders, are less
uniform; they have more of the varied and compact structure of
civilised nations, because in other respects they are more civilised.
They have greater mental capacity--larger stores of inward thought. But
much of the same monotonous nature clings to them too. A savage tribe
resembles a herd of gregarious beasts; where the leader goes they go
too; they copy blindly his habits, and thus soon become that which he
already is. For not only the tendency, but also the power to imitate,
is stronger in savages than civilised men. Savages copy quicker, and
they copy better. Children, in the same way, are born mimics; they
cannot help imitating what comes before them. There is nothing in their
minds to resist the propensity to copy. Every educated man has a large
inward supply of ideas to which he can retire, and in which he can
escape from or alleviate unpleasant outward objects. But a savage or a
child has no resource. The external movements before it are its very
life; it lives by what it sees and hears. Uneducated people in
civilised nations have vestiges of the same condition. If you send a
housemaid and a philosopher to a foreign country of which neither knows
the language, the chances are that the housemaid will catch it before
the philosopher. He has something else to do; he can live in his own
thoughts. But unless she can imitate the utterances, she is lost; she
has no life till she can join in the chatter of the kitchen. The
propensity to mimicry, and the power of mimicry, are mostly strongest
in those who have least abstract minds. The most wonderful examples of
imitation in the world are perhaps the imitations of civilised men by
savages in the use of martial weapons. They learn the knack, as
sportsmen call it, with inconceivable rapidity. A North American
Indian--an Australian even--can shoot as well as any white man. Here
the motive is at its maximum, as well as the innate power. Every savage
cares more for the power of killing than for any other power.
The persecuting tendency of all savages, and, indeed, of all ignorant
people, is even more striking than their imitative tendency. No
barbarian can bear to see one of his nation deviate from the old
barbarous customs and usages of their tribe. Very commonly all the
tribe would expect a punishment from the gods if any one of them
refrained from what was old, or began what was new. In modern times and
in cultivated countries we regard each person as responsible only for
his own actions, and do not believe, or think of believing, that the
misconduct of others can bring guilt on them. Guilt to us is an
individual taint consequent on choice and cleaving to the chooser. But
in early ages the act of one member of the tribe is conceived to make
all the tribe impious, to offend its peculiar god, to expose all the
tribe to penalties from heaven. There is no 'limited liability' in the
political notions of that time. The early tribe or nation is a
religious partnership, on which a rash member by a sudden impiety may
bring utter ruin. If the state is conceived thus, toleration becomes
wicked. A permitted deviation from the transmitted ordinances becomes
simple folly. It is a sacrifice of the happiness of the greatest
number. It is allowing one individual, for a moment's pleasure or a
stupid whim, to bring terrible and irretrievable calamity upon all. No
one will ever understand even Athenian history, who forgets this idea
of the old world, though Athens was, in comparison with others, a
rational and sceptical place, ready for new views, and free from old
prejudices. When the street statues of Hermes were mutilated, all the
Athenians were frightened and furious; they thought that they should
ALL be ruined because some one had mutilated a god's image, and so
offended him. Almost every detail of life in the classical times--the
times when real history opens--was invested with a religious sanction;
a sacred ritual regulated human action; whether it was called 'law' or
not, much of it was older than the word 'law;' it was part of an
ancient usage conceived as emanating from a superhuman authority, and
not to be transgressed without risk of punishment by more than mortal
power. There was such a solidarite then between citizens, that each
might be led to persecute the other for fear of harm to himself.
It may be said that these two tendencies of the early world--that to
persecution and that to imitation--must conflict; that the imitative
impulse would lead men to copy what is new, and that persecution by
traditional habit would prevent their copying it. But in practice the
two tendencies co-operate. There is a strong tendency to copy the most
common thing, and that common thing is the old habit. Daily imitation
is far oftenest a conservative force, for the most frequent models are
ancient. Of course, however, something new is necessary for every man
and for every nation. We may wish, if we please, that to-morrow shall
be like to-day, but it will not be like it. New forces will impinge
upon us; new wind, new rain, and the light of another sun; and we must
alter to meet them. But the persecuting habit and the imitative combine
to insure that the new thing shall be in the old fashion; it must be an
alteration, but it shall contain as little of variety as possible. The
imitative impulse tends to this, because men most easily imitate what
their minds are best prepared for,--what is like the old, yet with the
inevitable minimum of alteration; what throws them least out of the old
path, and puzzles least their minds. The doctrine of development means
this,--that in unavoidable changes men like the new doctrine which is
most of a 'preservative addition' to their old doctrines. The imitative
and the persecuting tendencies make all change in early nations a kind
of selective conservatism, for the most part keeping what is old, but
annexing some new but like practice--an additional turret in the old
style.
It is this process of adding suitable things and rejecting discordant
things which has raised those scenes of strange manners which in every
part of the world puzzle the civilised men who come upon them first.
Like the old head-dress of mountain villages, they make the traveller
think not so much whether they are good or whether they are bad, as
wonder how any one could have come to think of them; to regard them as
'monstrosities,' which only some wild abnormal intellect could have hit
upon. And wild and abnormal indeed would be that intellect if it were a
single one at all. But in fact such manners are the growth of ages,
like Roman law or the British constitution. No one man--no one
generation--could have thought of them,--only a series of generations
trained in the habits of the last and wanting something akin to such
habits, could have devised them. Savages PET their favourite habits, so
to say, and preserve them as they do their favourite animals; ages are
required, but at last a national character is formed by the confluence
of congenial attractions and accordant detestations.
Another cause helps. In early states of civilisation there is a great
mortality of infant life, and this is a kind of selection in
itself--the child most fit to be a good Spartan is most likely to
survive a Spartan childhood. The habits of the tribe are enforced on
the child; if he is able to catch and copy them he lives; if he cannot
he dies. The imitation which assimilates early nations continues
through life, but it begins with suitable forms and acts on picked
specimens. I suppose, too, that there is a kind of parental selection
operating in the same way and probably tending to keep alive the same
individuals. Those children which gratified their fathers and mothers
most would be most tenderly treated by them, and have the best chance
to live, and as a rough rule their favourites would be the children of
most 'promise,' that is to say, those who seemed most likely to be a
credit to the tribe according to the leading tribal manners and the
existing tribal tastes. The most gratifying child would be the best
looked after, and the most gratifying would be the best specimen of the
standard then and there raised up.
Even so, I think there will be a disinclination to attribute so marked,
fixed, almost physical a thing as national character to causes so
evanescent as the imitation of appreciated habit and the persecution of
detested habit. But, after all, national character is but a name for a
collection of habits more or less universal. And this imitation and
this persecution in long generations have vast physical effects. The
mind of the parent (as we speak) passes somehow to the body of the
child. The transmitted 'something' is more affected by habits than, it
is by anything else. In time an ingrained type is sure to be formed,
and sure to be passed on if only the causes I have specified be fully
in action and without impediment.
As I have said, I am not explaining the origin of races, but of
nations, or, if you like, of tribes. I fully admit that no imitation of
predominant manner, or prohibitions of detested manners, will of
themselves account for the broadest contrasts of human nature. Such
means would no more make a Negro out of a Brahmin, or a Red-man out of
an Englishman, than washing would change the spots of a leopard or the
colour of an Ethiopian. Some more potent causes must co-operate, or we
should not have these enormous diversities. The minor causes I deal
with made Greek to differ from Greek, but they did not make the Greek
race. We cannot precisely mark the limit, but a limit there clearly is.
If we look at the earliest monuments of the human race, we find these
race-characters as decided as the race-characters now. The earliest
paintings or sculptures we anywhere have, give us the present contrasts
of dissimilar types as strongly as present observation. Within
historical memory no such differences have been created as those
between Negro and Greek, between Papuan and Red Indian, between
Esquimaux and Goth. We start with cardinal diversities; we trace only
minor modifications, and we only see minor modifications. And it is
very hard to see how any number of such modifications could change man
as he is in one race-type to man as he is in some other. Of this there
are but two explanations; ONE, that these great types were originally
separate creations, as they stand--that the Negro was made so, and the
Greek made so. But this easy hypothesis of special creation has been
tried so often, and has broken down so very often, that in no case,
probably, do any great number of careful inquirers very firmly believe
it. They may accept it provisionally, as the best hypothesis at
present, but they feel about it as they cannot help feeling as to an
army which has always been beaten; however strong it seems, they think
it will be beaten again. What the other explanation is exactly I cannot
pretend to say. Possibly as yet the data for a confident opinion are
not before us. But by far the most plausible suggestion is that of Mr.
Wallace, that these race-marks are living records of a time when the
intellect of man was not as able as it is now to adapt his life and
habits to change of region; that consequently early mortality in the
first wanderers was beyond conception great; that only those (so to
say) haphazard individuals throve who were born with a protected
nature--that is, a nature suited to the climate and the country, fitted
to use its advantages, shielded from its natural diseases. According to
Mr. Wallace, the Negro is the remnant of the one variety of man who
without more adaptiveness than then existed could live in Interior
Africa. Immigrants died off till they produced him or something like
him, and so of the Esquimaux or the American.
Any protective habit also struck out in such a time would have a far
greater effect than it could afterwards. A gregarious tribe, whose
leader was in some imitable respects adapted to the struggle for life,
and which copied its leader, would have an enormous advantage in the
struggle for life. It would be sure to win and live, for it would be
coherent and adapted, whereas, in comparison, competing tribes would be
incoherent and unadapted. And I suppose that in early times, when those
bodies did not already contain the records and the traces of endless
generations, any new habit would more easily fix its mark on the
heritable element, and would be transmitted more easily and more
certainly. In such an age, man being softer and more pliable, deeper
race-marks would be more easily inscribed and would be more likely to
continue legible.
But I have no pretence to speak on such matters; this paper, as I have
so often explained, deals with nation-making and not with race-making.
I assume a world of marked varieties of man, and only want to show how
less marked contrasts would probably and naturally arise in each. Given
large homogeneous populations, some Negro, some Mongolian, some Aryan,
I have tried to prove how small contrasting groups would certainly
spring up within each--some to last and some to perish. These are the
eddies in each race-stream which vary its surface, and are sure to last
till some new force changes the current. These minor varieties, too,
would be infinitely compounded, not only with those of the same race,
but with those of others. Since the beginning of man, stream has been a
thousand times poured into stream--quick into sluggish, dark into
pale--and eddies and waters have taken new shapes and new colours,
affected by what went before, but not resembling it. And then on the
fresh mass, the old forces of composition and elimination again begin
to act, and create over the new surface another world. 'Motley was the
wear' of the world when Herodotus first looked on it and described it
to us, and thus, as it seems to me, were its varying colours produced.
If it be thought that I have made out that these forces of imitation
and elimination be the main ones, or even at all powerful ones, in the
formation of national character, it will follow that the effect of
ordinary agencies upon that character will be more easy to understand
than it often seems and is put down in books. We get a notion that a
change of government or a change of climate acts equally on the mass of
a nation, and so are we puzzled--at least, I have been puzzled--to
conceive how it acts. But such changes do not at first act equally on
all people in the nation, On many, for a very long time, they do not
act at all. But they bring out new qualities, and advertise the effects
of new habits. A change of climate, say from a depressing to an
invigorating one, so acts. Everybody feels it a little, but the most
active feel it exceedingly. They labour and prosper, and their
prosperity invites imitation. Just so with the contrary change, from an
animating to a relaxing place,--the naturally lazy look so happy as
they do nothing, that the naturally active are corrupted. The effect of
any considerable change on a nation is thus an intensifying and
accumulating effect. With its maximum power it acts on some prepared
and congenial individuals; in them it is seen to produce attractive
results, and then the habits creating those results are copied far and
wide. And, as I believe, it is in this simple but not quite obvious
way, that the process of progress and of degradation may generally be
seen to run.