The Group Mind Part 8

But it is not till we consider such a country as Austria-Hungary that we see the full importance of h.o.m.ogeneity of a people for the development of a national mind. There several races and subraces, one at least with a strong yellow strain, are grouped together under one flag; but they remain separated by language and by distribution and by tradition, and, therefore, are but little mixed and still less blended. Under such conditions a national mind cannot be formed. The elements of different racial stock threaten to fall apart at any moment[64].

Going further afield, contrast India with China, two regions geographically comparable in area and in density of population and in other ways. The population of China is the most racially h.o.m.ogeneous of all large populations in the world. Hence an extreme uniformity of culture and social environment, which still further accentuates the uniformity of mental type. Hence, in spite of the imperfection of means of communication, we find great political stability and a considerable degree of national feeling, likely to be followed before long by harmonious national thought and action on the part of this vast nation.

The one great distracting and disturbing factor in the life of China has been the intrusion of the Manchus, a people of somewhat different race and traditions.

On the other hand, India is peopled by many different stocks, and, although these are geographically much mixed, they are but very little blended, owing to the prevalence from early times of the caste system.

The light coloured intellectual Brahman lives side by side with small black folk, as different physically and mentally as the Englishman and the Hottentot; and there are also large numbers of other widely differing racial stocks, including some of yellow race. Hence an extreme diversity of social environment, save in the case of the Moslem converts, who, however, being scattered among the rest, do but increase the endless variety of custom, creed, and social environment. Hence the people of India have never been bound together in the slightest degree, save purely externally by the power of foreign conquerors, the Moguls and the British; and hence, even though nations have begun at various times to take form in various areas, as e.g. the Sikh nation, they have never achieved any high degree of permanence and stability and are restricted in area and numbers.

Now let us consider for a moment an apparent exception from the conclusion to which the foregoing argument seems to point-namely, that h.o.m.ogeneity of innate qualities is the prime condition of a developed and harmonious national life.

The most striking exception is afforded by the people of the United States of America, or the American nation. There we see a great area populated by immigrants from every part and race of Europe in times so recent that, although they are pretty well mixed, they are but little blended by crossing; a considerable part of the population still consisting of actual immigrants and their children. Here, then, there can be no question of any h.o.m.ogeneity as regards innate mental qualities. Nevertheless, the people is truly a nation and, perhaps, further advanced in the evolution of national consciousness, thought, and action than many other of the civilised peoples. This we must attribute to h.o.m.ogeneity of mental qualities which is in the main not innate but acquired, a uniformity of acquired qualities, especially of all those that are most important for national life.

Following Munsterberg's recent account of _The Psychology of the American People_ we may recognise as individual characteristics, almost universally diffused, a spirit of self-direction and selfconfidence, of independence and initiative of a degree unknown elsewhere, a marvellous optimism or hopefulness both in private and public affairs, a great seriousness tinged with religion, a humourousness, an interest in the welfare of society, a high degree of self-respect, and a pride and confidence in the present and still more in the future of the nation; an intense activity and a great desire for self-improvement; a truly democratic spirit which regards all men (or rather all _white_ men) as essentially or potentially equal, and a complete intolerance of caste.

Such high degree of acquired h.o.m.ogeneity of individual qualities seems to be due in about equal parts to uniformity of social and of physical environment, both of which make strongly in the same direction. The physical environment consists in a great and rich territory, still only partially developed, a fairly uniform climate, and a uniformity of the physical products of human labour resulting from the immense development of the means of communication. The importance of the physical uniformity we may realize on reflecting that the one great divergence of physical conditions, the sub-tropical climate of the southern States, gave rise to the one great and dangerous division of the people which for a time threatened the harmonious development of the national life; that is to say, the civil war was due to the divergence of the social system and economic interests of the southern States resulting from their sub-tropical climate.

The uniformity of social environment we must ascribe, firstly and chiefly, to the fortunate circ.u.mstance that the first immigrants were men of one well marked and highly superior type, men who possessed in the fullest measure the independence of character and the initiative of the fair northern race, and who firmly established the superior social environment of individualistic type that had been gradually evolved in England. Secondly, to the fact that the peopling of the whole country has taken place by diffusion from this strongly organised initial society; its inst.i.tutions and ideas, especially its language, its political freedom, its social seriousness, being carried everywhere.

Thirdly, to the fact that the country was just such as to give the greatest scope to, and so to develop, these innate tendencies of the earliest settlers and their successors. Fourthly, to the fact that the great diffusion of the population of mixed origin has only taken place since the means of communication have become very highly developed.

Consider, as one example of the effects of the ease of communication between all parts, the influence of the American Sunday newspapers.

These papers are read on an enormous scale all over the continent; and the bulk of the contents of those published in different places is identical, being prepared and printed in New York, or other great city, and then sent out to be blended with a little local matter in each centre of publication; thus every Sunday morning vast numbers are reading the same stuff. Lastly, it must be added, it is largely due to the fact that in the main the population has been recruited by those elements of different European peoples who shared in some degree the leading tendencies of the American character, independence, initiative, energy and hopefulness; for it is only such people who will tear themselves from their places in an old civilisation and face the unknown possibilities of a distant continent. In spite of an increasing proportion of emigrants of a rather unlike type from south-eastern Europe, there seems good ground for hope that these factors will continue to secure a sufficient uniformity of acquired qualities, until the diverse elements shall have been fused by intermarriage to a new and stable subrace, innately h.o.m.ogeneous.

The Americans are, then, no exception to the rule that the evolution of a national mind presupposes a certain considerable degree of h.o.m.ogeneity of mental qualities among the individuals of which the nation is composed. They merely show that, under peculiarly favourable physical and social conditions, a sufficient degree of such h.o.m.ogeneity may perhaps be secured in spite of considerable racial heterogeneity. But the favourable issue of the vast experiment is not yet completely a.s.sured.

There remains in the American people one great section of the population, namely the negroes and the men of partly negro descent, whose innate qualities, mental and physical, are so different from those of the rest of the population, that it seems to be incapable of absorption into the nation. This section remains within the nation as a foreign body which it can neither absorb nor extrude and which is a perpetual disturber and menace to the national life. The only hope of solving this difficult problem seems to lie in the possibility of territorial segregation of the coloured population in an area in which it might, with a.s.sistance from the American people, form an independent nation. At present it ill.u.s.trates in the most forcible manner the thesis of this chapter.

The geographical peculiarities of the country inhabited by a nation may greatly favour, or may make against, h.o.m.ogeneity, in so far as this depends on acquired interests and sentiments.

The division of the territory occupied by a nation by any physical barrier makes against h.o.m.ogeneity and therefore against national unity; whereas absence of internal barriers and the presence of well marked natural boundaries afford conditions the most favourable to h.o.m.ogeneity.

Almost all the great and stable nations have occupied well-defined natural territories. In Great Britain and j.a.pan the national spirit is perhaps more developed than elsewhere. How much does Great Britain or j.a.pan owe this to the insular character of its territory, which from early days has sharply marked off the people from all others, making of them a well-defined and closed group, within which free intermarriage has given h.o.m.ogeneity of innate qualities, and within which a national culture has grown up undisturbed; so that by mental and physical type, and by language, religion, tradition and sentiment, the people are sharply marked off from all others, and a.s.similated to one another!

A unitary well-defined territory of well marked and fairly uniform character tends to national unity, not only through making the community a relatively closed one, but also by aiding the imagination to grasp the idea of the nation and offering a common object to the affections and sentiments of the people.

Contrast in this respect the physical characters of England and Germany.

The boundaries of the latter are almost everywhere artificial and arbitrary and have fluctuated greatly. It would be impossible for a poet to write of Germany as Shakespeare wrote of England:-

This fortress built by Nature for herself Against infection and the hand of war; This happy breed of men, this little world, This precious stone set in the silver sea,

and all the rest of that splendid pa.s.sage. France, Spain, Italy, Greece, Denmark, Scandinavia, are all more fortunate than Germany or Austria in this respect; and the lack of such natural boundaries has been in the past, and threatens to be in the future, a source of weakness to the German nation. We may, I think, not improbably attribute, in part at least, to this circ.u.mstance a peculiarity often noticed in German emigrants-namely, that they rapidly become denationalised and a.s.similated by the peoples among whom they settle, and that an Americanised German, for example, has often less sympathetic feeling for Germany than a foreigner. For, owing largely to the lack of natural boundaries and the consequent fluctuations that have occurred, and the mingling and blending with other peoples, Germany is a less clear-cut conception than Great Britain or France; to be a German is something much less definite than to be an Englishman or a j.a.panese, or even a Frenchman or a Spaniard[65]. And the presence or lack of definite natural territorial boundaries operates in a similar way through many centuries, determining on the one hand historical continuity to a people as a whole, or on the other hand breaches of historical continuity.

The United States of America afford a fine example of the binding influence of a well-defined territory; for here the effect is clearly isolated from racial factors and from slowly acc.u.mulated tradition. The Monroe doctrine is the outward official expression of this effect. The private individual effect is a sense of part owners.h.i.+p of a splendid territory with a great future before it. And we are told, I believe truly, that this sense is very strong and very generally diffused even among immigrants; that it inspires an unselfish enthusiasm for the work of developing the immense resources of the country; that this is the idealistic motive of much of the intense activity which we are apt to ascribe to the love of the 'almighty dollar'; and that it is one of the main causes of the rapid a.s.similation of immigrants to the national type of mind.

The Chinese nation, again, owes its existence and its h.o.m.ogeneity of mental and physical type to geographical unity. Roughly, China consists of the basins of two immense rivers, not separated from one another by any great physical barrier, but forming a compact territory well marked off save in the north. It comprises no such partially separate areas as in Europe are const.i.tuted by Spain, or Italy, or Greece, or Scandinavia, or even France; almost all parts are well adapted for agriculture.

Hence, largely, the national unity and the national sentiment which have long existed, and possibly a latent capacity for national thought and action.

Perhaps the most striking instance of all is ancient Egypt. There, in the long strip of land rendered fertile by the waters of the Nile, a people of mixed origin was long shut up and isolated; there all men felt their immediate dependence on the same great powers, the great river which once a year overflows its banks, and the scorching sun which pa.s.ses every day across a cloudless sky. There all men looked out on the same unvarying and unvaried landscape, hoped and feared for the same causes, suffered the same pains, prayed for the same goods. There was formed one of the most stable and enduring of nations, whose uniform culture certainly bears the impress of the uniform monotonous physical environment[66].

The other way in which physical environment affects h.o.m.ogeneity is by determining similarity or difference of occupations and, through them, similarities or differences of practical interests and of acquired qualities. So long as such differences are determined in many small areas, the result is merely a greater differentiation of the parts, without danger to the unity of the whole nation. But, when the physical differences divide a whole people into two or more locally separate groups differing in occupation and interests and habits, they endanger the unity of the whole. There are to-day many countries in which the distribution of mineral wealth is exerting an influence of this sort, giving rise to the differentiation of an industrial area from agricultural areas and a consequent divergence of interests and of mental habits; notably South Africa, Spain, and Italy.

Great Britain is fortunate in this respect also. Its geological formation presents on a small scale all the princ.i.p.al strata from the oldest to the most recent, a fact which secures great diversity within a compact area, an area too compact to allow of divergences of population being produced by differences of geological formation; so that it enjoys the advantages of diversity without its drawbacks. Although a certain degree of differentiation between north and south may be noted, it is not sharp or great enough to be dangerous. But let us imagine that coal and iron had been confined to Scotland. Would there be now the same harmony between the two countries as actually obtains? The United States of America afford a good ill.u.s.tration of this principle, as I have already pointed out; the sub-tropical climate of the southern states gave rise to a differentiation of occupation, and consequently of ideas and interests and sentiments, which was almost fatal to the unity of the nation. A similar differentiation between the agricultural west and the industrial and commercial east seems to be the greatest danger to the future unity of the nation; and the same may be said of the Canadian people.

Ireland ill.u.s.trates well the effects of both kinds of physical influence. The Irish Channel has perpetuated that difference of race and consequent difference of religion, which, but for it, would probably have been wiped out by free intermarriage; while the lack of coal and iron in the greater part of the country has prevented the spread of industrialism, and has thus accentuated the difference between the Irish people and the English. And it is obvious that among the Protestants of Ulster the accessibility of coal and iron, maintaining a divergence of occupations and of interests which prevents racial and cultural blending, perpetuates the racial and traditional differences between them and the rest of the population.

CHAPTER VIII

FREEDOM OF COMMUNICATION AS A CONDITION OF NATIONAL LIFE

Let us consider now very briefly in relation to the life of a nation a second essential condition of all collective mental life-namely, that the individuals shall be in free communication with one another. This is obviously necessary to the formation of national mind and character. It is only through an immense development of the means of communication, especially the printing press, the railway and the telegraph, that the modern Nation-State has become possible, and has become the dominant type of political organism. So familiar are we with this type, that we are apt to identify the Nation and the State and to regard the large Nation-State as the normal type of State and of Nation, forgetting that its evolution was not possible before the modern period.

In the ancient world the City-State was the dominant type of political organism; and to Plato and Aristotle any other type seemed undesirable, if not impossible. For they recognised that collective deliberation and volition are essential to the true State. Aristotle, trying to imagine a vast city, remarks-"But a city, having such vast circuit, would contain a nation rather than a state, like Babylon." The translator there uses the word 'nation,' not in the modern sense, but rather as we use 'people' to denote a population of common stock not organised to form a nation. The limits of the political organism capable of a collective mental life were rightly held to be set by the number of citizens who could live so close together as to meet in one place to discuss all public affairs by word of mouth.

The great empires of antiquity were not nations; they had no collective mental life. Although the Roman Empire, in the course of its long and marvellous history, did succeed in generating in almost all its subject peoples a certain sentiment of pride in and attachment to the Empire, it cannot be said to have welded them into one nation; for, in spite of the splendid system of roads and of posting, communication between the parts was too difficult and slow to permit the reciprocal influences essential to collective life. As in all the ancient empires, the parts were held together only by a centralised despotic executive organisation; there was no possibility of collective deliberation and volition[67].

All through history there has obviously been some correlation between the size of political organisms and the degree of development of means of communication. At the present time those means have become so highly developed that the widest s.p.a.ces of land and sea no longer present any insuperable limits to the size of nations; and the natural tendency for the growth of the larger states at the expense of the smaller, by the absorption of the latter, seems to be increasingly strong. It seems not unlikely that almost the whole population of the world will shortly be included in five immense States-the Russian or Slav, the Central European, the British, the American, and the Yellow or East Asiatic State. The freedom of communication between the countries of Europe is now certainly sufficient to allow of their forming a single nation, if other conditions, such as diversities of racial type and of historical sentiments, would permit it.

Although, then, the platform and the orator and the a.s.sembly remain important influences in modern times, it is primarily the telegraph, wireless telegraphy, the printing press, and the steam engine, that have rendered possible the large modern nations; for these have facilitated the dissemination of news and the expression of feeling and opinion on a large scale, and the free circulation of persons[68].

Without this freedom of communication the various parts of the nation cannot become adequately conscious of one another; and the idea of the whole must remain very rudimentary in the minds of individuals; each part of the whole remains ignorant of many other parts, and there can be no vivid consciousness of a common welfare and a common purpose. But, more important still, there can be none of that ma.s.sive influence of the whole upon each of the units which is of the essence of collective mental life. Of these means of reciprocal influence the press is the most important; though, of course, its great influence is only rendered possible by the railway and the telegraph.

Hence we find that it is as regards the press that Great Britain and America differ most markedly from such states as Germany, and still more Russia. To an Englishman or American the meagre news-sheets which in Germany take the place of our daily and weekly press bring a shock of astonishment when he first discovers them; and that astonishment is not diminished when he finds that the best people hardly trouble to look at them occasionally[69].

It is interesting to note how the general election of January, 1910 ill.u.s.trated the importance of improved means of communication. It was found that the number of citizens voting at the polls was a far larger proportion of those on the register than at any previous election; and, in this respect, the election was a more complete expression of the will of the people than any preceding one. This seems to have been due to the use of the motor-car, at that time the latest great addition to our means of communication.

The modern improvements of means of communication tend strongly to diminish the importance of the geographical factors we considered in the foregoing chapter; for they practically abolish what in earlier ages were physical barriers to intercourse; they render capital and labour more mobile; and they make many forms of industry less dependent upon local physical conditions and, therefore, less strictly confined by geographical factors. As instances of important developments of this order in the recent past or near future, the reader may be reminded of the railway over the Andes between Chile and Argentina, the tunnels through the Alps, the Channel tunnel, the Siberian railway, the Suez and Panama ca.n.a.ls, the Cape to Cairo railway, and, above all, aerial transport. All these make for free intercourse between peoples.

Easy means of communication promote development in the direction of the organic unity of a nation in another way-namely, they promote specialisation of the functions of different regions; they thus render local groups incapable of living as relatively independent closed communities; for they make each local group more dependent upon others, each upon all and the whole upon each; hence they develop the common interest of each part in the good of the whole.

This influence already extends beyond national groups and it had been hoped that its further growth was about to render war between nations impossible[70]. To-day England is contemplating a task never before attempted, the fusing into one nation of the peoples of the mother-country and her distant colonies. Whether or no she will succeed depends upon whether the enormously increased facilities of communication can overcome the princ.i.p.al effects of physical barriers that we have noted-namely, lack of intermarriage and divergence of occupations, with the consequent divergence of mental type and interests. The task is infinitely more difficult than the establishment of such an Empire as the Roman; not because the distances are greater, but because the union must take the form of nationhood, because it must take the form of a collective mind and not that of a merely executive organisation. But, in the considerations which have shown us that members.h.i.+p in and devotion to a smaller group is by no means adverse to members.h.i.+p in and devotion to a larger group, we have ground for believing that the task is not impossible of achievement.

The slow rate of progress towards nationhood of such peoples as the Russian and the Chinese has been largely due to lack of means of free communication between the parts of these countries. On the introduction of improved communications, we may expect to see rapid progress of this kind; for many of the other essential conditions are already present in both countries.

The fact that in the Nation-State the communications between individuals and between the parts of the whole are in the main indirect, mediated by the press, the telegraph, and the printed word in general, rather than by voice and gesture and the other direct bodily expressions of thought and emotion, modifies the primary manifestations of group life in important ways which we must notice in a later chapter.

CHAPTER IX

THE PART OF LEADERS IN NATIONAL LIFE

We turn now to a third very important condition of the growth of the national mind, one which also has its a.n.a.logue in both the crowd and the army. A crowd always tends to follow some leader in thought, feeling, and action; and its actions are effective in proportion as it does so.

To follow and obey a leader is the simplest, most rudimentary fas.h.i.+on in which the crowd's action may become more effective, consistent, intelligent, controlled. Not any one can be such a leader; exceptional qualities are necessary. In every army the importance of leaders.h.i.+p is fully recognised. A hierarchy of leaders is the essence of its organisation. In the deliberately organised army, the appointment of leaders is the princ.i.p.al and almost the sole direct means taken by the State to organise the army. Everything is done to give to the leaders of each grade the greatest possible prestige, especially by multiplying and accentuating the distinctions between the grades. Though much can be accomplished in this way, unless the men chosen as leaders have in some degree the superior qualities required by their position in the hierarchy, the whole organisation will be of little value.

The same is true in much higher degree of nations. If a people is to become a nation, it must be capable of producing personalities of exceptional powers, who will play the part of leaders; and the special endowments of the national leader require to be more p.r.o.nounced and exceptional, of a higher order, than those required for the exercise of leaders.h.i.+p over a fortuitous crowd.