necessary. Mr. Kidd and Mr. Galton deduce their view about Greek
intellect, first, from the proportion of great men. Does, then, the
occurrence of a group of great men at a certain period prove a superior
organisation in the race? That leads to a very familiar problem: What
were the causes of what we may call the flowering times of arts and
sciences? We are all familiar with the phenomenon; with the sudden
display of astonishing excellence at Athens, at Florence, or in the
England of Elizabeth. It seems to be the rule that processes which may
have been going on quietly for centuries suddenly culminate; that
artistic, poetic, or philosophic excellence becomes unprecedentedly
common for a generation or two, and that the impulse then dies away as
rapidly. It is the kind of problem which is satisfactorily solved by the
authors of university prize essays, which somehow fail to convince the
world or to be republished by their writers. Are we, then, entitled to
argue from the great works an organic superiority in the race? Must we
suppose, for example, that Englishmen at the time of Shakespeare and
Bacon and Spenser and Raleigh were an abler race than their descendants,
because, when there was a very much smaller number of educated men, they
produced more first-rate authors than have been produced by generations
much more numerous and more generally cultivated? This seems to me at
least to be a very rash hypothesis; and some of the obvious remarks made
in our university essays seem to me to indicate considerations which,
though not conclusive, cannot be neglected. It is clear, for example,
that particular stages of intellectual progress are abnormally
stimulating; that, as the last step to a pass in the mountains suddenly
reveals vast prospects, while a hundred equally difficult steps before
made no appreciable change, so there are mental advances which, as at
the time of Bacon, seemed suddenly to disclose boundless prospects of
knowledge. It is the Pisgah sight of the promised land which causes a
burst of energy. Or, again, a certain social condition is obviously
required; philosophers and poets may exist potentially among barbarous
tribes, but they cannot get a chance to speak, and they have no
opportunity of communication with other thinkers. The intellect may be
impelled in various directions, some of which leave no trace of a
tangible kind. The amount of intellectual power implied in building up
the Roman Empire may have been as great as that implied in developing
Greek art; and in America, as we are often told, intellect turns to
dollar-making, instead of book-writing. So, conversely, the outburst of
power may indicate, not greater faculties, but special opportunities, or
special stimulus, applied to already existing faculties. Everybody who
has written an aesthetic treatise has pointed to all manner of conditions
which were in this sense favourable to the Greeks. How far such
conditions were sufficient I cannot even guess; but at least an
allowance must be made for them before we can argue from the
achievements to the intrinsic power of the race which achieved. I do not
see that it is even "proved" that the average Athenian was in the least
superior in this sense to the average Englishman. It would require a
lifetime of study to pronounce any opinion worth having. I fully confess
that, so far as a vague impression is worth anything, it is the most
obvious impression, after looking at the Elgin marbles, that the Greeks
were possessed of a finer organisation than ourselves. Still, I cannot
accept as certain the quasi-mathematical formula that the Greek is to
the Englishman as the Englishman to the negro.
This, however, suggests another and very difficult series of problems.
Mr. Kidd is arguing against intellectual superiority. He, of course,
does not argue that the general superiority of a race leads to its
disappearance; but that a one-sided superiority--an improvement of one
set of faculties at the expense of others--may have that result. This at
once suggests a whole series of psychological problems. The intellect
and the emotional nature are not two separate organs, each capable of
independent development. Every mental process involves both, and neither
faculty can be developed without reference to the other. Mr. Kidd
accepts the conclusion that certain primitive races were as clever as
ourselves, because their brains were as large. If the argument be sound,
it proves equally that their emotional nature was as well developed as
ours; for no one can doubt that the brain is the physical condition of
feeling as well as of thought. Even the most abstract thought, as he
elsewhere notices, implies certain moral qualities. Newton remarked that
he was superior to other men, not because his intellect was clearer,
but because he attended more persistently to his problems. The
statement, I think, involves a fallacy. Newton himself, no doubt, did
better the longer he kept a problem before him. He inferred,
unjustifiably, that of two different men, the one who could keep up his
attention longest would be the best. That does not follow. The
difference may indeed be moral as well as intellectual; and it is quite
true that a power of sustained attention is of the highest importance in
mathematics, and that that power supposes a moral quality; but,
conversely, the power of attention probably implies also the power of
clear intellectual vision. A muddle-headed man would find attention
useless. This is, of course, still clearer in the case where the mind is
exercised upon questions of human interest. The statesman and the
dramatist both depend upon their power of sympathy and the strength of
their emotions, as much as upon their logical capacity. To feel for
others I must imagine their position: if I imagine it, I can hardly
avoid feeling for them. "Altruism" is the product, in other words, of a
process both intellectual and moral.
Now, remembering this, we see the difficulty of pronouncing upon the
nature of the Greek organisation. Perhaps the commonest of all remarks
upon Greek work is the symmetry and harmony, the "all-roundness," if I
may say so, of the development implied. Poetry and philosophy, art and
science seem to be so blended in their work that we cannot tell which
faculty is predominant. What, then, is the inequality of development
which is essential to Mr. Kidd's argument? They were wanting, he seems
to answer, in "altruism". What does this mean? The astonishing power of
the Greeks was certainly as conspicuous in poetry and art as in anything
else; and that power surely implies development of the emotional as well
as of the intellectual nature. By a defect of "altruism," I take him to
mean that these emotions did not flow along the channel of general
philanthropy. They were wanting then, as I should put it, rather in
cosmopolitanism than in altruism. If altruism means care for something
outside yourself, where could we find better examples of altruism than
at Thermopylae or Marathon? Was it not due to Greek altruism in this form
(some historians would say) that Mr. Kidd is not now living under the
rule of a Persian Satrap? The altruism, no doubt, meant an intense and
patriotic devotion to a small State, or an interest in Greek as against
barbarian, and was compatible with much brutality to individuals and
acquiescence in slavery. But this does not indicate an absence of the
emotions themselves, but simply their confinement within narrow limits,
by the conditions under which they were placed. Slavery, for example, is
abominable; but I see no reason for supposing that the slave-holders in
America were worse men by innate constitution than their opponents. They
were corrupted by their position.
This, in any case, leads to another problem. Were the Greeks more or
less altruistic than other races? If you could show that altruistic
races had survived while the Greeks perished, there might be a
presumption that the want of altruism was the cause of their decay. But
this again does not seem to be the case. Hardly one of the ancient
races, indeed, has survived unvaried. The Romans were at least as brutal
as the Greeks, and, one would say, as far from "altruistic". Yet they
overpowered the Greeks. How, then, can it be inferred that the Greeks
perished because of defective altruism? The struggle for existence was
between races equally defective to all appearance in that quality; and
it must be a sophistry to signalise its absence in one as the cause of
its disappearance. There is, indeed, one race to which every one would
turn as the most prominent example of survival, namely, the Jews. The
Jews have enormous merits and great intellectual endowments; but can
anybody say that they were altruistic in the sense of being
cosmopolitan? Are they not conspicuous, beyond any race, for the
narrower forms of altruism, rejection of a cosmopolitan creed, even when
it arose among them, and exclusive devotion to the welfare of their own
people? I think that it would be perfectly easy to argue that the Greeks
died out just because of their cosmopolitan and therefore dispersive
tendencies, and that the Jews have held out from a judicious adherence
to narrower views of self-preservation. But personally I regard all such
"arguments" as really belonging to the extra-scientific regions of
rhetorical illustration.
This suggests one other point which requires consideration. Mr. Kidd
regards it as proved that progress has been due to the Christian
religion, which revealed the new moral doctrine. The Christian religion
introduced, it seems, that belief in the supernatural which is essential
to altruism. It seems to me to be inconsistent with his own principles,
that he should attribute progress to what is essentially, on his own
showing, an intellectual change: that is, to a change in belief and even
to a change which, in comparison with the old polytheism, was distinctly
sceptical and rationalistic. But one point is clear. The introduction
of Christianity may be interpreted more consistently in a totally
different way. The Greek who became a Christian was not provided with a
new set of emotions, but his emotions were directed into new channels.
He ceased to care for Athens, because Athens had ceased to be an
independent State; he began to be cosmopolitan when he was forced to be
part of a cosmopolitan empire. The important distinction was no longer
the distinction between Athenian and Spartan, but between the different
classes in the world-wide system. That is to say, the "altruism" which
came in with Christianity was not the product of a new dogma suddenly
dropped from heaven; but of the new social condition, which made it
inevitable that the forces which previously stimulated a local
patriotism should now exert themselves nearer a cosmopolitan
organisation. This is, of course, a commonplace; but, for that reason,
it should not be simply ignored. It suggests one other consequence of
Mr. Kidd's theory. It is proved, he says, that the progress of the
Western world is due to Christianity. His "proof," as I suppose, is that
the States which have sprung out of the old Empire of the West have been
Christian and have progressed. How, then, about the Empire of the East?
If the great Kingdoms of the West are the unique example of progress,
what is the unique example of decay? Surely, the regions where
Christian dogmatic theology was defended by Athanasius and Chrysostom.
If you wish to point out a region where the race has actually gone
backwards, you would refer to the Turkish Empire. Why, if Christianity
was the sole cause of progress in one quarter, was it comparable with
complete decay in the other? Does the Eastern theory about the
_filioque_ explain it? Or were the Mohammedans more "altruistic" than
the Christians? Or is it that it is absurd, especially upon Mr. Kidd's
own doctrine, to assign the dogmatic creed of a race as the sole cause
of its character and its success in the struggle for existence?
I do not lay any stress upon the argument, except in a negative sense. I
do not see, that is, how Mr. Kidd can make his theory fit the facts. But
I infer one other remark. It is impossible to divine the causes of the
rise and fall of empires, the success or decay of a race, from any of
these sweeping generalisations about ill-defined qualities. If we ask
why the Greeks died out, we should have to take into account another and
a totally different set of considerations: what I may call the accidents
of their position. We should have to consider all the arguments by which
historians have tried to explain the events; the facts of physical
geography, for example, which account for the division into small
separate States; the relations of the Greeks to the Eastern races on the
one side, and to the Romans on the other; and, briefly, to all the
material conditions, those different from the intrinsic character of the
race, by which the whole course of political development and of the
conflict between different peoples, is moulded and directed into
particular courses. I do not say, for I cannot guess, what would be the
result of such an inquiry; but I think it just as possible that it would
lead us to wonder at the persistence of the Greek States for so long a
period, as that it would lead us to wonder at their disappearance. Our
conclusion might be, that nothing but the astonishing intellectual
powers of the Greeks enabled them to play so great a part in the world's
history, not that their intellectual superiority was the cause of their
decay.
I consider, therefore, that the alleged fact is stated so vaguely that
we have no distinct problem set before us; that we don't know what is
the process to be explained; that the suggested intellectual superiority
is doubtful, at least in degree: that the excess of intellectual above
other development, which the superiority is supposed to have created, is
not proved, and, still less, that such excess was more conspicuous among
the Greeks than among their rivals; that, even if it existed, it is not
proved that it would have produced the effect ascribed to it; and,
finally, that the other causes which undoubtedly operated, are simply
overlooked. I confess, therefore, that the whole argument seems to me to
illustrate the danger of rashly applying certain scientific
formulae,--themselves, perhaps, still doubtful,--to new and exceedingly
complex questions. If Darwin had reasoned in this light-hearted way, no
one would have been moved by his conclusions.
But I must still add, what brings me back to my point, that even if the
proposition were proved, it would not establish the conclusion. It may
be, that races of abnormal intellectual development are at a
disadvantage in the struggle for existence. That does not prove that
"progress is not primarily intellectual". Buckle, who argued that
progress was due to intellectual causes exclusively, always assumed that
human nature was constant, or that the faculties did not change. Though
I do not accept his view, any more than Mr. Kidd's, I do not see that he
was inconsistent. I take the most obvious case to illustrate the point.
No one can doubt that one of the most important influences in modern
social evolution was the set of mechanical contrivances devised by
Arkwright and Watt and their contemporaries. Without them, the enormous
development of great cities, of a population of artisans, and of the
bringing together of all quarters of the globe, would have been
impossible. The inventions, again, were due to no moral purpose in the
inventors. They wanted to make money, and represented what is called (I
do not say justly) the most egoistic impulse of modern times. One
condition, then, of the great social change was essentially
intellectual. This does not mean that Watt was a cleverer man than
Archimedes. I don't know whether he was or not; but it does mean that
the mechanical sciences had improved; and, consequently, that Watt,
though not possessed of intrinsically greater powers, was, in this
direction, a more intellectual person. He had inherited the truths
discovered by Archimedes and many generations of successors. That
science should be efficient, it is not required that men should be
greater geniuses than their predecessors; but simply that they should
know more of the facts and laws of nature, and have, so to speak, better
intellectual tools. Mr. Kidd thinks that the inability of a savage to
count three does not prove him to be stupid, only to be without certain
rules discovered by the higher races. Yet, he will not deny that by the
help of arithmetic we can work out sums inconceivable to the savage; and
that our power affects our whole social position. Does not the existence
of a currency affect mankind; and if we could not count, could we make
use of it?
I therefore hold that in many cases the causes of progress are
"primarily intellectual". The mechanical discoveries of which I have
spoken have revolutionised the whole world. I agree, indeed, fully, that
the causes are not exclusively intellectual. A certain social
condition--the existence, to say nothing more, of peace and order over
wide regions--was as necessary as the intellectual condition to the
development of commerce and manufactures. This, of course, implies the
growth of corresponding sentiments, including, no doubt, what Mr. Kidd
means by altruism. But the change may, and, I fancy, generally does,
originate in intellectual movements. The new ideas shake the world.
Reason, says Mr. Kidd, is the great disintegrating and egoistic force. I
should say that reasoning is essentially altruistic: my discoveries are
mentally discoveries for you; I cannot keep a truth for my private
consumption, as I can keep a material product. But it is true, to use
eulogistic instead of dyslogistic language, that reason is the great
force of movement, and breaks up the old social conditions, not only by
getting rid of the ultra-rational, but by spreading the power of the
rational; and therefore it inevitably brings about a state of things in
which the old moral impulses have to run in new channels; a narrow
patriotism, to widen into a regard for the interests of other races; and
the class distinctions which repose upon no reasonable ground, to
disappear in favour of a wider humanity. When we are arguing about an
organism, it is surely a mistake to fix our minds upon one aspect of the
problem: to deny with Buckle the moral evolution, and with Mr. Kidd to
disparage the intellectual evolution.
Mr. Kidd's doctrine appears to me, though, of course, not to him, to be
eminently discouraging. If he worked it out logically, his argument, I
think, would come to this: that the progress of mankind has resulted
from the accidental, that is, inexplicable, appearance of a quality
called altruism, which gave to those who possessed it an advantage in
the struggle for existence. It would be far more consistent to say that
the religious dogma was determined by this new element, than that it was
the cause. Altruism, again, was only produced in effect on this
hypothesis by the slow results of a process necessarily lasting through
many generations; and our only hope must be in a slow organic change of
the primary characteristics of mankind. Now, it is, of course, true that
those characteristics, whatever they may be, impose definite limits
upon our progress. The raw material limits the product; and the new-born
baby is the raw material of society, as wool is of cloth: you cannot
convert it into tissue of gold. So much is undeniable. We, it is said,
have been developed out of an arboreal animal, and I have sometimes
regretted that we were not developed out of a flying animal. The course
of civilisation would have been very different if we had not been forced
to come into contact by crawling and swimming, instead of the much freer
methods of aerial travelling. However, as things were, the choice was
apparently between wings and hands; and if we could not have both,
perhaps hands were preferable, and may in time lead to flying machines.
The speculation, it may be, borders upon the fanciful. I mention it only
by way of illustrating the unevitable conditions imposed upon us by
"heredity". We have to be content with walking instead of flying; and
similarly we have to be content with having only the five senses of our
forefathers, and the various old-fashioned apparatuses for eating,
drinking, digesting, and so forth, which they unconsciously elaborated.
No material change can possibly be made in this system within any period
to which we can look forward. To regret these limitations is just as
idle as to regret that we cannot fly, or that we cannot extend our
voyages to the moon. They are part of the primary data of the problem
with which we have to deal; and to regret that that problem was not
differently contrived is to propose to set about reconstructing the
universe. But when we go on to ask how far this limits any possibilities
of achieving really desirable, because distinctly conceivable results, I
say that we have ample room for hopes large enough to animate our
loftiest desires. We inherit, it is true, certain faculties which
scarcely alter, or do not perceptibly alter, for the better. We do not
see or smell or hear better than the savage, and in some of these
faculties we are surpassed by the dog. We inherit also certain
intellectual powers, and, if they improve, the improvement is so slow as
to be perceptible only after many generations. But then this intellect
carries with it another power,--the power of inheriting thoughts,
beliefs, methods of reasoning and rules of conduct. And, therefore, to
the organic evolution is added the social evolution, which enables us to
accumulate our vast spiritual inheritance. The inheritance is
everything, or almost everything, that makes the distinctions between
the civilised races of to-day and the wandering savages who roamed the
fens and the forests which were supplanted by fields and towns. And
this, I think, makes room enough for all reasonable aspirations, though
it certainly does not open any prospect that we shall ever become gods
or angels.
Thus, for example, we look with sorrow, sometimes with something like
despair, upon the masses of the criminal or degraded population which
grovels at the base of modern society. If we were bound to say, the
crime and the stupidity are the necessary expression of the shape of the
skull and the organisation of the brain; if we had therefore to infer
that the only possible remedy is by so modifying the struggle for
existence that the inferior forms may be killed off and a better breed
of humanity take the place of the present; we should certainly feel that
we were confined within very narrow limits. I do not for a moment say,
that such considerations may not point to important practical
conclusions. I should be very glad to hear of any practical suggestions
for so applying these doctrines as to increase the probability that the
next generation may be stronger, healthier, and more intelligent than
the present. But I also assert that the most obvious facts also show
that there are enormous possibilities of progress without supposing any
such organic transformation. If all that makes the difference between
the England of to-day and the England of two or three centuries back is
the presence of the social factor, not of the organic change, it shows
in the most striking way the vast educability of mankind, even without
any ultimate change of human nature. We must all, I think, have been
impressed lately by one of the most singular phenomena which have ever
taken place in history. We have ourselves seen the transformation of the
Japanese--whom we so recently regarded as semi-barbarians--acquire
almost at a bound all the arts of Western civilisation, and able not
only to use with singular effect that most complex and delicate piece of
machinery which forms a modern warship, but to adopt systems of military
organisation and the strategy of a Moltke. That is not because the
Japanese have changed any one of their physical characteristics, for
they are the very same men who the other day were chiefly known to us as
performing the "happy despatch". They have changed simply because they
were able to assimilate European results. Now, if that be a perfectly
possible result, consistently with all the so-called laws of heredity,
the same laws cannot be inconsistent with changes of a similar character
within ourselves. You take a thorough ruffian,--a drinking, rowdy,
fighting brute, who has stamped his wife or his friend into a jelly.
You say that he is an illustration of slavism, or the reproduction of an
ancient type which once had its place among his ancestors. The fact may
be quite true; that he is, for example, acting-still in the spirit of
those ancient Vikings who have been idealised by our romantic writers;
but who, when they landed in an old British village, behaved pretty much
as the modern roughs or some of those noble blackguards who are
described in Mr. Rudyard Kipling's novels. But if you mean that he is
divided from civilised beings by an impassable gulf, and is doomed to be
a scoundrel by the shape of his skull, I venture to dispute the
assumption. The Viking in a generation or two became the Norman knight,
capable of the highest cultivation of his time; and even the rough,
according to Mr. Rudyard Kipling, is capable, under judicious
discipline, of developing some very fine qualities, chiefly, it is true,
in the shape of devotion to his colours. To wean him from some of his
weaknesses it is probably necessary to catch him rather younger. All,
however, that I desire to say, for the present, is this--as it seems to
me--very undeniable fact: that the difference between a civilised man
and a barbarian, between the highest types of modern life and the
apparently irreclaimable brutes who are exhibited in our police-courts,
is not dependent upon the mark of the beast irreclaimably fixed upon
them at their birth; but to certain later influences, which may or may
not be brought to bear upon them effectually. There is nothing, for
example, in the doctrine of heredity inconsistent with the belief that
if such influences could be properly directed, the standard, say, of
sobriety and prudence among the lowest classes might be improved, as
much as the standard of the same virtues has been improved in classes
above them. The consequences of such a change would, I suspect, be
incomparably greater than the consequences of whole systems of laws
regulating the hours of labour and whole armies of official inspectors.