CHAPTER III

_THE INFLUENCE OF THE SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT_

At the risk of needless repetition I again emphasise the fact that Ethnic Psychology, the group-mind, is a product of social relations, a result of aggregation, and cannot be fully explained by the processes of the individual mind. The resemblances between them are analogies, not homologies. They act and react, one on the other, with the force of independent psychic entities.

The general proposition to this effect I have laid down in the second chapter of Part I. Now I shall go more into detail and examine just what influences the ethnic mind brings to bear upon that of the individual to bring it into _rapport_ with itself, to make it conform to the mass, to expunge, in fact, all that is individual within it.

I have also briefly but sufficiently referred to the psychologic measures by which this is accomplished, such as imitation, opposition, and continuity, by which the anti-social instincts are curbed, but at the same time originality and independence are also often crushed.

It remains to point out the exact instruments which the group-mind employs in this process and to estimate their relative force.

These may be classified under five headings: Language, Law, Religion, Occupation, and Social Relations. This is in the order of the influence which they generally exert on the individual mind, which influence is to be understood as reciprocal, the individual working most potently on the ethnic mind in the same order of instruments. It is true, however, that the relative potency of each of them varies considerably with the condition of culture. Let us briefly examine their several characteristics.

_Language._—Of all bonds which unite men, none other is so strong as language. This, indeed, it is which first developed the human in man. I have shown that the one distinguishing trait which divides man from brute is his power of general conceptions under symbols. The word “language” provides the symbol. To form words is the necessary first step in reasoning; to attach to words precise meanings, perfect connotations, is the main effort of all subsequent reasonings. Words are the storehouse of all knowledge; they are the tools of the mind, by which all its constructions are framed.

Language is the involuntary product of the human intellect. The man speaks with like spontaneity as the dog barks or the bird sings; but the brute’s inarticulate cry expresses mere emotion, while the man’s articulate sounds convey thought.

Language is a proof of man’s original social nature. It is impossible to explain it as other than the action of a group. It is due directly to the need of others felt by each. The individual alone could never form a speech, and hence he could never clearly think; for thought, for clearness, needs not only creation but expression. We never fully understand or fully believe, until another understands us and believes with us.

Hence, language is the most perfect example of ethnic psychical action. It is the product of the group, to which each individual of the group contributes his share, and which is the common property of all, reflecting at once the traits of the group and the relations of the individual to it.

Nor is language a merely temporary criterion of group-character. Conspicuously not. Nothing clings so tenaciously to us as our mother tongue. Religions may fade and institutions decay, we may change our clime and culture, but the tongue persists. It is passed from generation to generation, exceeding count. No heirloom is so cherished, no tradition so hoary.

By the Aryan tongues of modern Europe antiquaries have restored the mode of life of that primitive horde who spoke the ancestral speech of all the Indo-European peoples, now stretching in an unbroken line from Farther India to San Francisco. Unnoticed but indelible, the ethnic life of that horde left its impressions on its speech like the footsteps on geologic strata from which the palæontologists reconstruct the strange forms of extinct species.

As the individual can convey his thoughts, his personality to the group, in the language of the group, he is confined and limited by that language. Hence the sovereign necessity in this investigation to study not merely the contents of a tongue, its verbal richness and resources, but that subtler side of it, its form or morphology. Indeed, the highest aim of linguistic science, of the _philosophy_ of language, is to estimate the influences of the various forms of speech not merely on the expression, but on the formation of ideas. We think in words and in grammatical relations, and both should be logical and accurate if our expressed results shall be so also.

Few but specialists are aware how widely the varieties of human speech differ in the power they exert of this formative character. Suppose that in English we could not speak of that “divine tool,” the hand, except as a bodily member belonging to some particular person, “my hand” or “John’s hand”; how it would crush all means of generalisation, shut in our minds to present and local cases! Yet this is the case in hundreds of American and some Asiatic dialects, not only with this but many classes of concepts. How are we to convey the simplest arithmetical relations to tribes who have no words for integers beyond 5? What is more hopeless, how can a member of such a tribe ever become an arithmetician of his own effort?

Thus an individual is a mental slave to the tongue he speaks. Virtually, it fixes the limits of his intellectual life. His most violent efforts cannot transcend them. Here the group, the ethnic mind exercises tyrannical sway over him.

So also do the contents of his tongue. I mean by this that incalculable potency broadly called literature, spoken or written,—the oratory, romance, poetry, philosophy, history, and science,—which is his daily mental food all the years of his conscious life. In this maelstrom of the opinions of others, his own individuality is generally submerged; he loses it in the struggle, and his own talk becomes but the echo of that of others of the group.

_Law._—Writers who imagine that Law is a product of Culture are singularly off the track. Nowhere are its prescriptions more definite, its violation more abhorred, or its penalties more inflexibly enforced than in the lowest depths of savagery. There the punishment is known and leniency unknown. When the Australian black has broken the unwritten law of his tribe, he has but two alternatives,—disappearance forever or death. After accepting the latter, or when seized in his flight, he quietly digs his own grave and, sitting in it, awaits the spears of his tribesmen.

So the “totemic” bond, the earliest form of permanent grouping in many families of mankind, whether based on religious or consanguine ties, invariably presents a compact and minute system of restrictions on individual liberty. They are, indeed, often carried to such an extent as to destroy all sense of personal responsibility or conscience, and to limit independence of action to the most trivial details of life. In them, through the recognised power of law, the group is everything, the individual nothing. Hence, they preserve but do not progress; for I cannot too often repeat the fundamental distinction between the group-mind and the individual mind: that the former is active and preservative, while the latter alone is creative and progressive.

By the general term “Law” I mean that restraint exercised by the group on the individual which in its last recourse is backed by physical force. It makes no difference whether the sentiment of the group is laid down by the High Chancellor in his ermine or by “Judge Lynch” in his shirt-sleeves; nor whether the group is the House of Lords or a gang of thieves, the underlying principle—that of the forcible constraint of the individual by the community—remains the same. To borrow Blackstone’s definition, it is the “rule of conduct” which the group chooses to establish for its own ends. Law, therefore, is essentially a part of the ethnic mind, not conceivable except as a group-product, and if at times, apparently, the expression of one mouth (autocracy), yet voluntarily accepted by the group.

The body of concrete laws developed in a community, whether under conditions of freedom or restraint, constitute its government. Under either condition, the government is rightly regarded as the most significant product of the ethnic mind as revealing, educating, and moulding ethnic or national character. For any permanently accepted government, though it may have been instituted by force, must be mainly in unison with the ethnic traits.

The law stretches its hand over all the activities of the individual, mental or physical, fostering some and repressing others, marking the limit to all. Personal actions, the acquisition of property, the expression of opinions, all are by common consent of every community absolutely subjected to the ethnic mind, the will of the group, and the physical power of the group stands ready to compel obedience to this will.

Distinctly the ethnic and not the individual will; for in laws we have frequent examples of the contrast between the two, when no individual approves a law which all approve. There is not an American writer who would be willing to have the expression of his thoughts gagged by government; and not one but approves of the law of libel.

In no relation of human life has the influence of law as a moulder of ethnic mental unity been more observable from earliest times than in that of Marriage.

It is my own opinion, based on a long study of the subject, that physical fidelity, _la fidélité du corps_, as Manon Lescaut expressed it, of either sex to the other never was, and is not now, what is termed a “natural” trait of human character. The native desire for sexual variety is equally strong in both sexes and has been so from the beginning.

Marriage laws, it should be borne in mind, have been everywhere and in all time framed by the males alone, and they all reveal the intention of the framers to preserve a right of property in the female, to limit her sexual freedom, while their own remains unrestricted.

Collateral interests, such as the extent of the food-supply, the rules of transmission of property, the purity of castes or classes, and the like, have frequently entered into the bearing of marriage laws; but the first and continued aim remains the prevention of feminine infidelity and the retention of masculine independence.

For this reason, the woman, even in the most advanced states to-day, is deprived of civic rights and kept in economic dependence; she is allowed no part in either the making or the execution of the laws, and her position is ranked with that of minors or adults of undeveloped minds.

Government, therefore, with few exceptions, differs from language in this, that it is the exclusive production of the male ethnic mind, and must be considered to express the masculine traits only.

The form of marriage intimately affects two questions of prime importance in ethnic psychology: that of purity or intermixture of blood, and that of the permanence of the group.

In an earlier chapter I have emphasised the results of close and of mixed breeding in man as one of the controlling factors of his advancement. It is obvious that the forms of marriage called endogamous, where the only recognised marriages are within the clan; monogamous, where there is but one wife; and “preferential” polygamous, where there are several wives, but the children of one only are recognised as legitimate, greatly favour close breeding.

General polygamous marriages, on the other hand, lead infallibly to intermixture of stocks and the enfeeblement of the higher in its mental capacity.

Not less do these laws affect the permanence of the group. This depends directly on the amount of property it has, and its ability to keep it.

In any form of communal marriage the property descends in common and belongs to the clan or consanguine group. There is no stimulus to the individual to augment it, as he gains nothing for himself. Hence, such marriages early fell into disuse.

General polygamous marriages are scarcely less fatal. Equal rights of inheritance between the offspring of several mothers lead to dissipation of the inheritance and to family feuds in the division. This is conspicuously true of inherited dignities and power. In history no polygamous nation has long survived the internecine feuds between the many heirs to the throne. The Sultan is safe only when all his brothers are murdered.

The marriage laws powerfully influence the ethnic mind in another direction, heavily fraught with weal or woe for its destiny; that is, in the respect for woman as a sex, in the honour shown her, in the sentiment of chivalry.

This is a true ethnic sentiment, quite apart from personal affection or romantic love. It reflects the position of woman in the group, not in the family, and reflects the feelings of the individual mind toward woman as a sex, as a part of the general group.

If we regard culture as the full development of the sentiment and emotions, as well as the intellectual faculties of a community, then I know no one criterion which will measure its degrees more accurately than the prevailing opinion about woman, her place and her dues.

Where the laws make her distinctly dependent and inferior, where, in marriage, she becomes more or less the property of her husband or the mere instrument of his passion, it is impossible that the general sense of the community can regard her with high esteem. This is the case in all polygamous nations.

The chivalry of the Middle Ages was the direct consequence of the inflexible monogamy commanded by the Church.

Closely related to these influences are those of celibacy and divorce as sanctioned by law.

By “Occupation” in ethnology is meant that aim to which the individual devotes most of his time, thoughts, and energies.

It does not necessarily mean to “work” or to gain a livelihood. In many cases it is mere amusement or a routine of social customs, or, like the beggar, sitting still and asking alms.

Whatever aim it acknowledges, the occupation is one of the most direct and potent agencies in the formation of character, individual and national; in Shakespeare’s phrase, “almost the nature is subdued to what it works in, like the dyer’s hand.”

Some ethnographers have selected the prevailing occupations as the best of all tests to distinguish the grades of man’s cultural advance. They have divided his progress into a hunting, a pastoral, an agricultural, and a commercial stage. Much may be said in favour of such a division. At any rate, it indicates the close connection between human life in the aggregate and individual avocation.

It is certain that the man or the group who have to devote their whole energies to obtain the necessities of existence must advance very slowly or not at all in the intellectual life. This partly explains the stationary culture of the Australian black and the native of our arid western plains.

But it does not follow, as some theorists would have us believe, that leisure, the non-necessity of work, in itself favours progress. The reverse is the case. The Polynesians, for whom nature’s harvests were ample, were as low as, often lower than, the Australian. Nothing favours progress but ordered industry directed toward a distant purpose.

The manner in which occupations, therefore, modify the ethnic mind varies with the character and aims of the occupations. The first distinction may be drawn in the degree in which they favour social intercourse, and thus promote the unity of the group. In this respect agriculture holds a low place. The unprogressive character of farming communities is notorious. The contrast of the adjectives rustic and urbane shows it to be an observation of ancient date. The cause lies chiefly in the isolation of the farmer, and the suspicion and jealousy with which he usually regards his nearest neighbours.

Another cause lies deeper and is of general value. Where there is but one prevailing occupation, where all men’s thoughts and energies are directed along the same lines to the same ends, there can be little social advance. For the best results to the group the movements of individual activities should be in intersecting, not in parallel lines. This is the main secret of the superiority of city life, in spite of its many drawbacks.

The respect, or lack of it, with which a community regards occupations is a marked trait of ethnic psychology, and reacts powerfully on the position and destiny of the nation.

In England, commerce, “trade,” is widely regarded as somewhat degrading. Yet were she to lose her trade she would promptly sink to a fourth-class power—an illustration of what I have before remarked, that a sentiment of the group-mind may not be that of the individuals of the group.

The vocation of arms is regarded in modern Europe with admiration, but in China with disrespect; the results of which have proved that the Chinese, if correct, are far ahead of their time.

The veneration of the priestly office has coloured the thoughts and written the fate of many a nation; and there is no lack of examples to-day where their oracles close the ethnic mind to the admission of verifiable knowledge and the results of science.

The disrespect for occupations beneficial to the group is an invariable proof of low intelligence in the ethnic mind. The result of such a sentiment is anti-social and weakens the power of the group as a unit, by promoting divisions and opposition among its members.

The extreme of this is seen in the system of castes, rigidly carried out, as in India, and resulting everywhere in national impotence and ethnic dissociation. The former system of feudal aristocracy in Europe was little better, and led to civil wars, the fruits of national disunity.

National unity, to be of the highest type, must be based on equal respect for every man’s employment, if that employment is of advantage to the community.

By confining the exercise of certain highly honoured occupations to so-called “privileged” classes, a heavy blow is dealt at the unity of the ethnic mind. Class jealousy and party antagonism are developed, followed by a corresponding weakening of the national force. Modern democracy fully recognises this danger, but has been unable to remove it under the guise of nepotism and succession in office.

It need hardly be added that where there exists a recognised distinction between owners and slaves, or between a “ruling” and a “subject” class, unity of group sentiment or thought is out of the question.

Yet, in modern life strenuous exertions are frequent to insist on a distinction of the occupations of men and women, based, not on capacity or opportunity, but on the fact of sex alone, the general effort being to confine women to “menial” or mechanical occupations only.

The philosophical ethnologist can see in this nothing but the near-sighted effort of the strong to oppress the weak, unaware of its sure recoil on themselves. In reducing the influence of woman, exerted through beneficial activities, the _ethnos_ directly diminishes the elements of its own advancement. Goethe never wrote a deeper truth than in his famous lines:

Das ewig weibliche, Zieht uns hinan.

And the ethnic psychologist has no sounder maxim than that uttered by Steinthal: “The position of woman is the cardinal point of all social relations.”

The ethnic psychologist has a wide field in the study of the influence of particular occupations on the minds of those engaged in them, and thereafter on the mind of the group. He will have to examine the assertion that some, though necessary, are in themselves deteriorating to the better elements of humanity. Can the slaughter of men in war be carried on without brutalising the sentiments? Can commerce be successfully conducted without deception? Can the advocate do his best for the guilty client without impairing his sentiment of truthfulness?

Further subjects of study must be the influence of occupations on home and family life. Many involve travel, enforced absences, or a migratory career, weakening such ties.

A marked tendency of modern occupations is toward increased specialisation. A man will spend his life, it has been said, in making the ninth part of a pin; and it has been asked, with accents of despair, what hope for the mental growth of such a case? Yet, in fact, the lawyer confined to his local code, or the medical specialist to the diseases of one organ, has the horizon of his daily labour as narrowly circumscribed.

The truth is that the individual is in the position of the primitive tribe. If he is forced to give all his waking hours to “getting a living,” it matters little what his employment is. One is as bad as another. And if by his work he wins leisure, all depends on the use of that leisure. Spinoza gained his bread by grinding optical glasses,—surely an uninspiring mechanical drudgery! But in odd times he wrote his _Ethics_, than which no nobler contribution to the highest realms of thought has ever been composed.