INSTITUTIONS AND THE INDIVIDUAL—CONTINUED.
INNOVATION AS A PERSONAL TENDENCY—INNOVATION AND CONSERVATISM AS
PUBLIC HABIT—SOLIDARITY—FRENCH AND ANGLO-SAXON SOLIDARITY—TRADITION
AND CONVENTION—NOT SO OPPOSITE AS THEY APPEAR—REAL DIFFERENCE, IN
THIS REGARD, BETWEEN MODERN AND MEDIÆVAL SOCIETY—TRADITIONALISM AND
CONVENTIONALISM IN MODERN LIFE.
The time-worn question of conservatism as against change has evidently
much in common with that of personality as against institutions.
Innovation, that is, is bound up with the assertion of fresh
personality against mechanism; and the arguments for and against it
are the same as I have already suggested. Wherever there is vigor and
constructive power in the individual there is likely to be discontent
with the establishment. The young notoriously tend to innovation, and
so do those of a bold and restless temperament at any age; the old, on
the contrary, the quiet, the timid, are conservative. And so with whole
peoples; in so far as they are enfeebled by climate or other causes
they become inert and incapable of constructive change.
What may not be quite so obvious, at least to those who have not read
M. Tarde’s work on the Laws of Imitation,[141] is that innovation
or the opposite may be a public habit, independently of differences
in age or vigor. The attitude toward change is subject to the same
sort of alteration as public opinion, or any other phase of the
public mind. That a nation has moved for centuries in the deepest
ruts of conservatism, like China or India, is no proof of a lack of
natural vigor, but may mean only that the social type has matured and
hardened in isolation, not encountering any influence pungent enough to
pierce its shell and start a cycle of change. Thus it is now apparent
that lack of incitement, not lack of capacity, was the cause of the
backwardness of Japan, and there is little doubt that the same is true
of China.
Energy and suggestion are equally indispensable to all human
achievement. In the absence of the latter the mind easily spends itself
in minor activities, and there is no reason why this should not be true
of a whole people and continue for centuries. Then, again, a spark
may set it on fire and produce in a few years pregnant changes in the
structure of society. The physical law of the persistence of energy in
uniform quantity is a most illusive one to apply to human life. There
is always a great deal more mental energy than is utilized, and the
amount that is really productive depends chiefly on the urgency of
suggestion. Indeed, the higher activities of the human mind are, in
general, more like a series of somewhat fortuitous explosions than like
the work of a uniform force.
There may also be a habit of change that is mere restlessness and
has no constructive significance. In the early history of America a
conspicuous character on the frontier was the man who had the habit
of moving on. He would settle for two or three years in one locality
and then, getting restless, sell out and go on to another. So at
present, those whom ambition and circumstance, in early manhood, have
driven rapidly from one thing to another, often continue into old
age the habit so acquired, making their families and friends most
uncomfortable. I have noticed that there are over-strenuous people who
have come to have an ideal of themselves as making an effort, and are
most uneasy when this is not the case. To “being latent feel themselves
no less” is quite impossible to them.
In our commercial and industrial life the somewhat feverish progress
has generated a habit, a whole system of habits, based on the
expectation of change. Enterprise and adaptability are cultivated at
the expense of whatever conflicts with them; each one, feeling that the
procession is moving on and that he must keep up with it, hurries along
at the expense, perhaps, of health, culture and sanity.
This unrest is due rather to transition than to democracy; the ancient
view that the latter is in its nature unstable being, as I have said,
quite discredited. Even De Tocqueville, about 1835, saw that the
political unrest of America was in minor affairs, and that a democratic
polity might conceivably “render society more stationary than it has
ever been in our western part of the world.”[142] Tarde has expounded
the matter at length and to much the same effect. A policy is stable
when it is suited to prevailing conditions; and every year makes it
more apparent that for peoples of European stock, at least, a polity
essentially democratic is the only one that can permanently meet this
test.
A social group in which there is a fundamental harmony of forces
resulting in effective coöperation may be said, I suppose, to be
_solidaire_, to adopt a French word much used in this connection. Thus
France with its comparatively homogeneous people has no doubt more
solidarity—notwithstanding its dissensions—than Austria; England more
than Russia, and Japan more than China.
But if one thinks closely about the question he will find it no easy
matter to say in just what solidarity consists. Not in mere likeness,
certainly, since the difference of individuals and parts is not only
consistent with but essential to a harmonious whole—as the harmony of
music is produced by differing but correlated sounds. We want what
Burke described as “that action and counteraction, which in the natural
and in the political world, from the reciprocal struggle of discordant
powers draws out the harmony of the universe.”[143]
So far as likeness is necessary it is apparently a likeness of
essential ideas and, still more, of sentiments, appropriate to the
activity in question. Thus a Japanese writer explains the patriotic
unity of his countrymen by their common devotion to the Mikado and the
imperial family.
“When a Japanese says ‘I love my country,’ a great or even the greater
part of his idea of his ‘country’ is taken up by the emperor and the
imperial family ... his forefathers and descendants are also taken
into account.” “In joy and in sorrow he believes that they (his own
ancestors) are with him. He serves them as if they were living. And
these ancestors whom he loves and reveres were all loyal to their
emperors in their days; so he feels _he_ must be loyal to _his_
emperor.
“Nothing is so real to him as what he feels; and he feels that with
him are united the past, the present and the future generations
of his countrymen.” “Thus fully conscious of the intense sympathy
of his compatriots, both dead and living, and swelled with lofty
anticipations of his glorious destiny, no danger can appall and no
toil can tire the real Japanese soldier.”[144]
In America unity of spirit is intense, and yet singularly headless and
formless. There is no capital city, no guiding upper class, no monarch,
no creed, scarcely even a dominating tradition. It seems to be a matter
of common allegiance to vague sentiments of freedom, kindliness and
hope. And this very circumstance, that the American spirit is so little
specialized and so much at one with the general spirit of human nature,
does more than anything else to make it influential, and potent in the
assimilation of strange elements.
The only adequate proof of a lack of solidarity is inefficiency in
total action. There may be intense strife of parties and classes which
has nothing really disintegrating in it; but when we see, as was
apparently the case in Russia not long ago, that the hour of conflict
with an external enemy does not unite internal forces but increases
their divergence, it is clear that something is wrong.
It is sometimes said that France has more solidarity than Great Britain
or the United States, the ground being that we have a less fluent unity
of the social mind, a more vigorous self-assertion of the individual.
But this is as dubious as to say that the contention of athletes
among themselves will prevent their uniting to form a strong team. Yet
there does seem to be an interesting difference in kind between the
sort of unity, of common discipline and sentiment, which exists among
the French and that of English or Americans—these latter, however
different, being far more like each other in this respect than either
to the French. The contrast seems to me so illuminating, as a study of
social types, that I will spend a few pages in attempting to expound it.
French thought—as to this I follow largely Mr. Brownell’s penetrating
study[145]—seems to be not only more centralized in place, that
is, more dominated by the capital, but also, leaving aside certain
notorious divisions, more uniform, more authoritative, more intolerant,
more obviously _solidaire_. There is less initiative, less aggressive
non-conformity. French sentiment emphasizes equality much more than
individual freedom and is somewhat intolerant of any marked departure
from the dominant types of thought. There is more jealousy of personal
power, especially in politics, and less of that eager yet self-poised
sympathy with triumphant personality which we find in England or
America. There is, in fact, more need to be jealous of a personal
ascendency, because, when it once gains sway, there is less to check
it. And with all this goes the French system of public education,
whose well-known uniformity, strictness of discipline and classical
conservatism is both cause and effect of the trend toward formal
solidarity.
There is also an intolerance of the un-French and an inability to
understand it even greater, perhaps, than the corresponding phenomenon
in other nations. The French are self-absorbed and care little for the
history of other peoples. Nor are they sympathetic with contemporaries.
“In Paris, certainly,” says Mr. Brownell, “the foreigner, hospitably as
he is invariably treated, is invariably treated as the foreigner that
he is.”[146]
The relative weakness of individuality in France is due, of course,
not to any lack of self-feeling, but to the fact that the Frenchman
identifies himself more with the social whole, and, merged in that,
does not take his more particular self so seriously. It is rather a
we-feeling than an I-feeling, and differentiates France more sharply
from other nations than it does the individual Frenchman from his
compatriots. “He does not admire France because she is his country.
His complacence with himself proceeds from the circumstance that he
is a Frenchman; which is distinctly what he is first, being a man
afterward.”[147] “One never hears the Frenchman boast of the character
and quality of his compatriots as Englishmen and ourselves do. He
is thinking about France, about her different _gloires_, about her
position at the head of civilization.”[148]
As there is less individuality in general, so there is a happy lack of
whimsical and offensive oddity, of sharp corners and bad taste. Mr.
Brownell finds nothing more significant than the absence in France of
prigs. “One infers at once in such a society a free and effortless
play of the faculties, a large, humorous and tolerant view of oneself
and others, leisure, calm, healthful and rational vivacity, a tranquil
confidence in one’s own perceptions and in the intelligence of one’s
neighbors.”[149]
With this partial irresponsibility, this tendency not to take one’s
private self too seriously, goes a lack of moral extremes of all kinds.
Their goodness is not so good, their vice not so vicious as ours. Both
are more derived from immediate intercourse. “What would be vice among
us remains in France social irregularity induced by sentiment.[150]”
These traits have an obvious connection with that more eager and facile
communicativeness that strikes us so in the French: they have as a rule
less introspection, live more immediately and congenially in a social
stream from which, accordingly, they are less disposed to differentiate
themselves.
France is, no doubt, as truly democratic in its way as the United
States; indeed, in no other country, perhaps, is the prevalent
sentiment of the people in a given group so _cratic_, so immediately
authoritative. Such formalism as prevails there is of a sort with
which the people themselves are in intelligent sympathy, not one
imposed from above like that of Russia, or even that of Germany. But
it is a democracy of a type quite other than ours, less differentiated
individually and more so, perhaps, by groups, more consolidated and
institutional. The source of this divergence lies partly in the
course of history and partly, no doubt, in race psychology. Rooted
dissensions, like that between the Republic and the Church, and the
need of keeping the people in readiness for sudden war, are among the
influences which make formal unity more necessary and tolerable in
France than in England.
The French kind of solidarity has both advantages and disadvantages as
compared with the Anglo-Saxon. It certainly facilitates the formation
of well-knit social groups; such, for instance, as the artistic
“schools” whose vigor has done so much toward giving France its lead
in æsthetic production. On the other hand, where the Anglo-Saxon type
of structure succeeds in combining greater vigor of individuality with
an equally effective unity of sentiment, it would seem to be, in so
far, superior to a type whose solidarity is secured at more expense
of variation. It is the self-dependence, the so-called individualism,
of the Teutonic peoples which has given them so decided a lead in the
industrial and political struggles of recent times.
Perhaps the most searching test of solidarity is that loyalty of the
individual to the whole which ensures that, however isolated, as a
soldier, a pioneer, a mechanic, a student, he will cherish that whole
in his heart and do his duty to it in contempt of terror or bribes.
And it is precisely in this that the Anglo-Saxon peoples are strong.
The Englishman, though alone in the wilds of Africa, is seldom other
than an Englishman, setting his conscience by English standards and
making them good in action. This moral whole, possessing the individual
and making every one a hero after his own private fashion, is the
solidarity we want.
Tradition comes down from the past, while convention arrives, sidewise
as it were, from our contemporaries; the fireside tales and maxims of
our grandparents illustrate the one, the fashions of the day the other.
Both indicate continuity of mind, but tradition has a long extension in
time and very little, perhaps, in place, while convention extends in
place but may endure only for a day.
This seems a clear distinction, and a great deal has been made of
it by some writers, who regard “custom imitation” and “fashion
imitation,”[151] to use the terms of Tarde, the brilliant French
sociologist, as among the primary traits that differentiate societies.
Thus mediæval society, it is said, was traditional: people lived
in somewhat isolated groups and were dominated by the ideas of
their ancestors, these being more accessible than those of their
contemporaries. On the other hand, modern society, with its telegraphs,
newspapers and migrations, is conventional. Thought is transmitted over
vast areas and countless multitudes; ancestral continuity is broken
up; people get the habit of looking sidewise rather than backward, and
there comes to be an instinctive preference of fashion over custom. In
the time of Dante, if you travelled over Europe you would find that
each town, each district, had its individual dress, dialect and local
custom, handed down from the fathers. There was much change with place,
little with time. If you did the same to-day, you would find the people
everywhere dressed very much alike, dialects passing out of use and men
eager to identify themselves with the common stir of contemporary life.
And you would also find that the dress, behavior and objects of current
interest, though much the same for whole nations and having a great
deal in common the world over, were somewhat transient in character,
changing much with time, little with place.
There is, truly, a momentous difference in this regard between modern
and mediæval life, but to call it a change from tradition to convention
does not, I think, indicate its real character. Indeed, tradition and
convention are by no means the separate and opposite things they may
appear to be when we look at them in their most contrasted phases.
It would be strange if there were any real separation between ideas
coming from the past and those coming from contemporaries, since they
exist in the same public mind. A traditional usage is also a convention
within the group where it prevails. One learns it from other people
and conforms to it by imitation and the desire not to be singular,
just as he does to any other convention. The quaint local costume that
still prevails in out-of-the-way corners of Europe is worn for the
same reasons, no doubt, that the equally peculiar dress-suit and silk
hat are worn by sophisticated people the world over; one convention is
simply more extended than the other. In old times the conforming group,
owing to the difficulty of intercourse, was small. People were eager to
be in the fashion, as they are now, but they knew nothing of fashions
beyond their own locality. Modern traditions are conventional on a
larger scale. The Monroe Doctrine, to take a dignified example, is a
tradition, regarded historically, but a convention as to the manner in
which it enters into contemporary opinion.
In a similar manner we may see that conventions must also be
traditions. The new fashions are adaptations of old ones, and there
are no really new ideas of any sort, only a gradual transformation of
those that have come down from the past.
In a large view, then, tradition and convention are merely aspects of
the transmission of thought and of the unity of social groups that
results from it. If our mind is fixed upon the historical phase of
the matter we see tradition, if upon the contemporary phase we see
convention. But the process is really one, and the opposition only
particular and apparent. All influences are contemporary in their
immediate origin, all are rooted in the past.
What is it, then, that makes the difference between an apparently
traditional society, such as that of mediæval Europe, and an apparently
conventional society, like that of our time? Simply that the conditions
are such as to make one of these phases more obvious than the other. In
a comparatively small and stable group, continuous in the same locality
and having little intercourse with the world outside, the fact that
ideas come from tradition is evident; they pass down from parents to
children as visibly as physical traits. Convention, however, or the
action of contemporary intercourse, is on so small a scale as to be
less apparent; the length and not the breadth of the movement attracts
the eye.
On the other hand, in the case of a wide-reaching group bound into
conscious unity by facile communication, people no longer look chiefly
to their fathers for ideas; the paternal influence has to compete with
many others, and is further weakened by the breaking up of family
associations which goes with ease of movement. Yet men are not less
dependent upon the past than before; it is only that tradition is so
intricate and so spread out over the face of things that its character
as tradition is hardly to be discovered. The obvious thing now is the
lateral movement; influences seem to come in sidewise and fashion rules
over custom. The difference is something like that between a multitude
of disconnected streamlets and a single wide river, in which the
general downward movement is obscured by numerous cross-currents and
eddies.
In truth, facile communication extends the scope of tradition as much
as it does that of fashion. All the known past becomes accessible
anywhere, and instead of the cult of immediate ancestors we have a
long-armed, selective appropriation of whatever traditional ideas suit
our tastes. For painting the whole world goes to Renaissance Italy, for
sculpture to ancient Greece, and so on. Convention has not gained as
against tradition, but both have been transformed.
In much the same way we may distinguish between traditionalism and
conventionalism; the one meaning a dominant type of thought evidently
handed down from the past, the other a type formed by contemporary
influence—but we should not expect the distinction to be any more
fundamental than before.
Traditionalism may be looked for wherever there are long-established
groups somewhat shut out from lateral influence, either by external
conditions or by the character of their own system of ideas—in isolated
rural communities, for example, in old and close-knit organizations
like the church, or in introverted nations such as China used to be.
Conventionalism applies to well-knit types not evidently traditional,
and describes a great part of modern life.
The fact that some phases of society are more dominated by settled
types, whether traditional or conventional, than others, indicates, of
course, a certain equilibrium of influences in them, and a comparative
absence of competing ideas. This, in turn, is favored by a variety of
causes. One is a lack of individuality and self-assertiveness on the
part of the people—as the French are said to conform to types more
readily than the English or Americans. Another requisite is the lapse
of sufficient time for the type to establish itself and mould men’s
actions into conformity; even fashion cannot be made in a minute.
A third is that there should be enough interest in the matter that
non-conformity may be noticed and disapproved; and yet not enough
interest to foster originality. We are most imitative when we notice
but do not greatly care. Still another favoring condition is the habit
of deference to some authority, which may impose the type by example.
Thus the educated classes of England are, perhaps, more conventional in
dress and manner than the corresponding classes in the United States.
If so, the explanation is probably not in any intrinsic difference
of individuality, but in conditions more or less favorable to the
ripening of types; such as the comparative newness and confusion of
American civilization, the absence of an acknowledged upper class to
set an authoritative example, and a certain lack of interest in the
externals of life which our restlessness seems to foster.[152] On the
other hand, it must be said that the insecurity of position and more
immediate dependence upon the opinion of one’s fellows, which exist
in America, have a tendency toward conventionalism, because they make
the individual more eager to appear well in the eyes of others. It is
a curious fact, which may illustrate this principle, that the House
of Commons, the more democratic branch of the British legislature, is
described as more conventional than the House of Lords. Probably if
standards were sufficiently developed in America there would be no more
difficulty in enforcing them than in England.
Perhaps we should hit nearest the truth if we said that American life
had conventions of its own, vaguer than the British and putting less
weight on forms and more on fellow-feeling, but not necessarily less
cogent.
FOOTNOTES:
[141] Gabriel Tarde, Les lois de l’imitation; English translation The
Laws of Imitation.
[142] Democracy in America, vol. ii, book iii, chap. 21.
[143] The Works of Edmund Burke (Boston, 1884), vol. iii, p. 277.
[144] Amenomori in the Atlantic Monthly, Oct., 1904.
[145] French Traits. P. G. Hamerton’s works, especially his French and
English, are also full of suggestion.
[146] French Traits, page 284.
[147] Page 295.
[148] Page 295.
[149] _Idem_, page 304.
[150] Page 64.
[151] _Imitation-coutume_ and _imitation-mode_.
[152] Americans should notice that what they are apt to call the
snobbishness of the English middle class—their anxiety to imitate those
whom they regard as social superiors—has its good result in producing
a discipline in which many of us are somewhat grossly lacking. It may
be better, in manners for instance, that people should adopt a standard
from questionable motives than that they should have no standard at
all. The trouble with us is the prevalence of a sprawling, gossiping
self-content that does not know or care whether such things as manners,
art and literature exist or not.