Part 13

In making an attempt to estimate the relative moral resources of England and Germany at the present time it is necessary to consider them as biological entities or major units of the human species in the sense of that term we have already repeatedly used. We shall have to examine the evolutionary tendencies which each of these units has shown, and if possible to decide how far they have followed the lines of development which psychological theory indicates to be those of healthy and progressive development for a gregarious animal.

I have already tried to show that the acquirement of the social habit by man—though in fact there is reason to believe that the social habit preceded and made possible his distinctively human characters—has committed him to an evolutionary process which is far from being completed yet, but which {158} nevertheless must be carried out to its consummation if he is to escape increasingly severe disadvantages inherent in that biological type. In other words, the gregarious habit in an animal of large individual mental capacity is capable of becoming, and indeed must become a handicap rather than a bounty unless the society of the species undergoes a continuously progressive co-ordination which will enable it to attract and absorb the energy and activities of its individual members. We have seen that in a species such as man, owing to the freedom from the direct action of natural selection within the major unit, the individual’s capacity for varied reaction to his environment has undergone an enormous development, while at the same time the capacity for intercommunication—upon which the co-ordination of the major unit into a potent and frictionless mechanism depends—has lagged far behind. The term “intercommunication” is here used in the very widest sense to indicate the ties that bind the individual to his fellows and them to him. It is not a very satisfactory word; but as might be expected in attempting to express a series of functions so complex and so unfamiliar to generalization, it is not easy to find an exact expression ready made. Another phrase applicable to a slightly different aspect of the same function is “herd accessibility,” which has the advantage of suggesting by its first constituent the limitation, primitively at any rate, an essential part of the capacities it is desired to denote. The conception of herd accessibility includes the specific sensitiveness of the individual to the existence, presence, thought, and feelings of his fellow-members of the major unit; the power he possesses of reacting in an altruistic and social mode to stimuli which would necessarily evoke a merely egoistic response from a non-social animal—that is to say, the power to deflect and modify egoistic {159} impulses into a social form without emotional loss or dissatisfaction; the capacity to derive from the impulses of the herd a moral power in excess of any similar energy he may be able to develop from purely egoistic sources.

Intercommunication, the development of which of course depends upon herd-accessibility, enables the herd to act as a single creature whose power is greatly in excess of the sum of the powers of its individual members.

Intercommunication in the biological sense has, however, never been systematically cultivated by man, but has been allowed to develop haphazard and subject to all the hostile influences which must infest a society in which unregulated competition and selection are allowed to prevail. The extravagance of human life and labour, the indifference to suffering, the harshness and the infinite class segregation of human society are the result. The use of what I have called conscious direction is apparently the only means whereby this chaos can be converted into organized structure.

Outside the gregarious unit, the forms of organic life at any given time seem to be to some considerable extent determined by the fact that the pressure of environmental conditions and of competition tends to eliminate selectively the types which are comparatively unsuited to the conditions in which they find themselves. However much or little this process of natural selection has decided the course which the general evolutionary process has taken, there can be no doubt that it is a condition of animal life, and has an active influence. The suggestion may be hazarded that under circumstances natural selection tends rather to restrict variation instead of encouraging it as it has sometimes been supposed to do. When the external pressure is very severe it might be supposed that anything like free variation {160} would be a serious disadvantage to a species, and if it persisted might result in actual extermination. It is conceivable, therefore, that natural selection is capable of favouring stable and non-progressive types at the expense of the variable and possibly “progressive,” if such a term can be applied to species advancing towards extinction. Such a possible fixative action of natural selection is suggested by the fact that the appearance of mechanisms whereby the individual is protected from the direct action of natural selection seems to have led to an outburst of variation. In the multicellular animal the individual cells passing from under the direct pressure of natural selection become variable, and so capable of a very great specialization. In the gregarious unit the same thing happens, the individual member gaining freedom to vary and to become specialized without the risk that would have accompanied such an endowment in the solitary state.

Within the gregarious unit, then, natural selection in the strict sense is in abeyance, and the consequent freedom has allowed of a rich variety among the individual members. This variety provides the material from which an elaborate and satisfactory society might be constructed if there were any constant and discriminating influence acting upon it. Unfortunately, the forces at work in human society to-day are not of this kind, but are irregular in direction and fluctuating in strength, so that the material richness which would have been so valuable, had it been subject to a systematic and co-ordinate selection, has merely contributed to the confusion of the product. The actual mechanism by which society, while it has grown in strength and complexity, has also grown in confusion and disorder, is that peculiarity of the gregarious mind which automatically brings into the monopoly of power the mental type which I have called the {161} stable and common opinion calls normal. This type supplies our most trusted politicians and officials, our bishops and headmasters, our successful lawyers and doctors, and all their trusty deputies, assistants, retainers, and faithful servants. Mental stability is their leading characteristic, they “know where they stand” as we say, they have a confidence in the reality of their aims and their position, an inaccessibility to new and strange phenomena, a belief in the established and customary, a capacity for ignoring what they regard as the unpleasant, the undesirable, and the improper, and a conviction that on the whole a sound moral order is perceptible in the universe and manifested in the progress of civilization. Such characteristics are not in the least inconsistent with the highest intellectual capacity, great energy and perseverance as well as kindliness, generosity, and patience, but they are in no way redeemed in social value by them.

In the year 1915 it is, unfortunately, in no way necessary to enumerate evidences of the confusion, the cruelty, the waste, and the weaknesses with which human society, under the guidance of minds of this type, has been brought to abound. Civilization through all its secular development under their rule has never acquired an organic unity of structure; its defects have received no rational treatment, but have been concealed, ignored, and denied; instead of being drastically rebuilt, it has been kept presentable by patches and buttresses, by paint, and putty, and whitewash. The building was already insecure, and now the storm has burst upon it, threatens incontinently to collapse.

The fact that European civilization, approaching what appeared to be the very meridian of its strength, could culminate in a disaster so frightful as the present war is proof that its development was radically unsound. This is by no means to say that {162} the war could have been avoided by those immediately concerned. That is almost certainly not the case. The war was the consequence of inherent defects in the evolution of civilized life; it was the consequence of human progress being left to chance, and to the interaction of the heterogeneous influences which necessarily arise within a gregarious unit whose individual members have a large power of varied reaction. In such an atmosphere minds essentially resistive alone can flourish and attain to power, and they are by their very qualities incapable of grasping the necessities of government or translating them into action.

The method of leaving the development of society to the confused welter of forces which prevail within it is now at last reduced to absurdity by the unmistakable teaching of events, and the conscious direction of man’s destiny is plainly indicated by Nature as the only mechanism by which the social life of so complex an animal can be guaranteed against disaster and brought to yield its full possibilities.

A gregarious unit informed by conscious direction represents a biological mechanism of a wholly new type, a stage of advance in the evolutionary process capable of consolidating the supremacy of man and carrying to its full extent the development of his social instincts.

Such a directing intelligence or group of intelligences would take into account before all things the biological character of man, would understand that his condition is necessarily progressive along the lines of his natural endowments or downward to destruction. It would abandon the static view of society as something merely to be maintained, and adopt a more dynamic conception of statesmanship as something active, progressive, and experimental, reaching out towards new powers for human activity and new conquests for the human will. {163} It would discover what natural inclinations in man must be indulged, and would make them respectable, what inclinations in him must be controlled for the advantage of the species, and make them insignificant. It would cultivate intercommunication and altruism on the one hand, and bravery, boldness, pride, and enterprise on the other. It would develop national unity to a communion of interest and sympathy far closer than anything yet dreamed of as possible, and by doing so would endow the national unit with a self-control, fortitude, and moral power which would make it so obviously unconquerable that war would cease to be a possibility. To a people magnanimous, self-possessed, and open-eyed, unanimous in sentiment and aware of its strength, the conquest of fellow-nations would present its full futility. They would need for the acceptable exercise of their powers some more difficult, more daring, and newer task, something that stretches the human will and the human intellect to the limit of their capacity; the mere occupation and re-occupation of the stale and blood-drenched earth would be to them barbarians’ work; time and space would be their quarry, destiny and the human soul the lands they would invade; they would sail their ships into the gulfs of the ether and lay tribute upon the sun and stars.

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It is one of the features of the present crisis that gives to it its biological significance, that one of the antagonists—Germany—has discovered the necessity and value of conscious direction of the social unit. This is in itself an epoch-making event. Like many other human discoveries of similar importance, it has been incomplete, and it has not been accompanied by the corresponding knowledge of man and his natural history which alone could have given it full fertility and permanent value. {164}

It seems to have been in no way a revelation of genius, and, indeed, the absence of any great profundity and scope of speculation is rather remarkable in the minds of the numerous German political philosophers. The idea would appear rather to have been developed out of the circumstances of the country, and to have been almost a habit before it became a conception. At any rate, its appearance was greatly favoured by the political conditions and history of the region in which it arose. If this had not been the case, it is scarcely conceivable that the principle could have been accepted so readily by the people, and in a form which was not without its asperities and its hardships for them, or that it could have been discovered without the necessary biological corollaries which are indispensable to the successful application of it.

Germany in some ways resembles a son who has been educated at home, and has taken up the responsibilities of the adult, and become bound by them without ever tasting the free intercourse of the school and university. She has never tasted the heady liquor of political liberty, she has had no revolution, and the blood of no political martyrs calls to her disturbingly from the ground. To such innocent and premature gravity the reasonable claims of what, after all, had to her the appearance of no more than an anxiously paternal Government could not fail to appeal.

Explain it how we may, there can be no doubt that to the German peoples the theoretical aspects of life have long had a very special appeal. Generalizations about national characteristics are notoriously fallacious, but it seems that with a certain reserve one may fairly say that there is a definite contrast in this particular between the Germans and, let us say, the English.

To minds of a theoretical bias the appeal of a {165} closely regulative type of Government, with all the advantages of organization which it possesses, must be very strong, and there is reason to believe that this fact has had influence in reconciling the people to the imposition upon it of the will of the Government.

Between a docile and intelligent people and a strong, autocratic, and intelligent Government the possibilities of conscious national direction could scarcely fail to become increasingly obvious and to be increasingly developed. A further and enormously potent factor in the progress of the idea was an immense accession of national feeling, derived from three almost bewilderingly successful wars, accomplished at surprisingly small cost, and culminating in a grandiose and no less successful scheme of unification. Before rulers and people an imperial destiny of unlimited scope, and allowing of unbounded dreams, now inevitably opened itself up. Alone, amongst the peoples of Europe, Germany saw herself a nation with a career. No longer disunited and denationalized, she had come into her inheritance. The circumstances of her rebirth were so splendid, the moral exaltation of her new unity was so great that she could scarcely but suppose that her state was the beginning of a career of further and unimagined glories and triumphs. There were not lacking enthusiastic and prophetic voices to tell her she was right.

The decade that followed the foundation of the Empire was, perhaps, more pregnant with destiny than that which preceded it, for it saw the final determination of the path which Germany was to follow. She had made the immense stride in the biological scale of submitting herself to conscious direction; would she also follow the path which alone leads to a perfect concentration of national life and a permanent moral stability? {166}

To a nation with a purpose and a consciously realized destiny some principle of national unity is indispensable. Some strand of feeling which all can share, and in sharing which all can come into communion with one another, will be the framework on which is built up the structure of national energy and effort.

The reactions in which the social instinct manifests itself are not all equally developed in the different social species. It is true that there is a certain group of characteristics common to all social animals; but it is also found that in one example there is a special development of one aspect of the instinct, while another example will show a characteristic development of a different aspect. Taking a broad survey of all gregarious types, we are able to distinguish three fairly distinct trends of evolution. We have the aggressive gregariousness of the wolf and dog, the protective gregariousness of the sheep and the ox, and, differing from both these, we have the more complex social structure of the bee and the ant, which we may call socialized gregariousness. The last-named is characterized by the complete absorption of the individual in the major unit, and the fact that the function of the social habit seems no longer to be the simple one of mere attack or defence, but rather the establishment of a State which shall be, as a matter of course, strong in defence and attack, but a great deal more than this as well. The hive is no mere herd or pack, but an elaborate mechanism for making use by co-ordinate and unified action of the utmost powers of the individual members. It is something which appears to be a complete substitute for individual existence, and as we have already said, seems like a new creature rather than a congeries united for some comparatively few and simple purposes. The hive and the ant’s nest stand to the flock and the {167} pack as the fully organized multicellular animal stands to the primitive zooglœa which is its forerunner. The wolf is united for attack, the sheep is united for defence, but the bee is united for all the activities and feelings of its life.

Socialized gregariousness is the goal of man’s development. A transcendental union with his fellows is the destiny of the human individual, and it is the attainment of this towards which the constantly growing altruism of man is directed. Poets and prophets have, at times, dimly seen this inevitable trend of Nature, biology detects unmistakable evidence of it, and explains the slowness of advance, which has been the despair of those others, by the variety and power of man’s mind, and consoles us for the delay these qualities still cause by the knowledge that they are guarantees of the exactitude and completeness that the ultimate union will attain.

When a nation takes to itself the idea of conscious direction, as by a fortunate combination of circumstances Germany has been induced to do, it is plain that some choice of a principle of national unity will be its first and most important task. It is plain, also, from the considerations we have just laid down, that such a principle of national unity must necessarily be a manifestation of the social instinct, and that the choice is necessarily limited to one of three types of social habit which alone Nature has fitted gregarious animals to follow. No nation has ever made a conscious choice amongst these three types, but circumstances have led to the adoption of one or another of them often enough for history to furnish many suggestive instances.

The more or less purely aggressive or protective form has been adopted for the most part by primitive peoples. The history of the natives of North America and Australia furnishes examples of {168} almost pure types of both. The aggressive type was illustrated very fully by the peoples who profited by the disintegration of the Roman Empire. These northern barbarians showed in the most perfect form the lupine type of society in action. The ideals and feelings exemplified by their sagas are comprehensible only when one understands the biological significance of them. It was a society of wolves marvellously indomitable in aggression but fitted for no other activity in any corresponding degree, and always liable to absorption by the peoples they had conquered. They were physically brave beyond belief, and made a religion of violence and brutality. To fight was for them man’s supreme activity. They were restless travellers and explorers, less out of curiosity than in search of prey, and they irresistibly overran Europe in the missionary zeal of the sword and torch, each man asking nothing of Fate but, after a career of unlimited outrage and destruction, to die gloriously fighting. It is impossible not to recognize the psychological identity of these ideals with those which we might suppose a highly developed breed of wolves to entertain.

With all its startling energy, and all its magnificent enterprise, the lupine type of society has not proved capable of prolonged survival. Probably its inherent weakness is the very limited scope of interest it provides for active and progressive minds, and the fact that it tends to engender a steadily accumulating hostility in weaker but more mentally progressive peoples to which it has no correspondingly steady resistiveness to oppose.

The history of the world has shown a gradual elimination of the lupine type. It has recurred sporadically at intervals, but has always been suppressed. Modern civilization has shown a constantly increasing manifestation of the socialized type of gregariousness in spite of the complexities {169} and disorders which the slowness of its development towards completeness has involved. It may be regarded now as the standard type which has been established by countless experiments, as that which alone can satisfy and absorb the moral as well as the intellectual desires of modern man.

From the point of view of the statesman desiring to enforce an immediate and energetic national unity, combined with an ideal of the State as destined to expand into a larger and larger sphere, the socialized type of gregarious evolution is extremely unsatisfactory. Its course towards the production of a truly organized State is slow, and perplexed by a multitudinous confusion of voices and ideals; its necessary development of altruism gives the society it produces an aspect of sentimentality and flabbiness; its tendency slowly to evolve towards the moral equality of its members gives the State an appearance of structural insecurity.

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If Germany was to be capable of a consistent aggressive external policy as a primary aim, the peculiarity of her circumstances rendered her unable to seek national inspiration by any development of the socialized type of instinctive response, because that method can produce the necessary moral power only through a true unity of its members, such as implies a moral, if not a material, equality among them. That the type is capable of yielding a passion of aggressive nationalism is shown by the early enterprise and conquests of the first French Republic. But that outburst of power was attained only because it was based on a true, though doubtless imperfect, moral equality. Such a method was necessarily forbidden to the German Empire by the intense rigidity of its social segregation, with its absolute differentiation between the aristocracy and the common people. In such a society there could {170} be no thought of permitting the faintest hint of even moral equality.

This is the reason, therefore, why the rulers of Germany, of course in complete ignorance of how significant was their choice, were compelled to abandon the ideals of standard civilization, to relapse upon the ideals of a more primitive type of gregariousness, and to throw back their people into the anachronism of a lupine society. In this connection it is interesting to notice how persistently the political philosophers of Germany have sought their chief inspiration in the remote past, and in times when the wolf society and the wolf ideals were widespread and successful.