It is one of the most impressive facts about the war, that while Germany is the very type of a perfected aggressive herd, England is perhaps the most complete example of a socialized herd. Corresponding with this biological difference is the striking difference in their history. Germany has modelled her soul upon the wolf’s, and has rushed through the possibilities of her archetype in fifty feverish years of development; already she is a finished product, her moral ideal is fulfilled and leaves her nothing to strive for except the imposition of it upon the world. England has taken as her model the bee, and still lags infinitely far behind the fulfilment of her ideal. In the unbroken security of her land, for near a thousand years, she has leisurely, perhaps lazily, and with infinite slowness, pursued her path towards a social integration of an {202} ever closer and deeper kind. She has stolidly, even stupidly, and always in a grossly practical spirit, held herself to the task of shaping a society in which free men could live and yet be citizens. She has had no theory of herself, no consciousness of her destiny, no will to power. She has had almost no national heroes, and has always been constitutionally frigid to her great men, grudging them the material for their experimentations on her people, indifferent to their expositions of her duty and her imperial destiny, granting them a chance to die for her with no more encouragement than an impatient sigh. She has allowed an empire to be won for her by her restless younger sons, has shown no gratification in their conquests, and so far from thrilling with the exultation of the conqueror, has always at the earliest moment set her new dominions at work upon the problem in which her wholly unromantic absorption has never relaxed. And after a thousand years she seems as far as ever from her goal. Her society is irregular, disorganized, inco-ordinate, split into classes at war with one another, weighted at one end with poverty, squalor, ignorance, and disease, weighted at the other end by ignorance, prejudice, and corpulent self-satisfaction. Nevertheless, her patience is no more shaken by what she is lectured upon as failure than was her composure by what she was assured was imperial success. She is no less bound by her fate than is Germany, and must continue her path until she reaches its infinitely remoter goal. Nations may model themselves on her expedients, and found the architecture of their liberty on the tabernacles she has set up by the wayside to rest in for a night—she will continue on her road unconscious of herself or her greatness, absent-mindedly polite to genius, pleasantly tickled by prophets with very loud voices, but apt to go to sleep under {203} sermons, too awkward to boast or bluster, too composed to seem strong, too dull to be flattered, too patient to be flurried, and withal inflexibly practical and indifferent to dreams.

No more perfect illustration of the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the two nations could be found than their attitude before the war. England the empiric, dimly conscious of trouble, was puzzled, restless, and uneasy in the face of a problem she was threatened with some day having to study; Germany, the theorist, cool, “objective,” conscious of herself, was convinced there was no problem at all.

In studying the mind of England in the spirit of the biological psychologist, it is necessary to keep in mind the society of the bee, just as in studying the German mind it was necessary to keep in mind the society of the wolf.

One of the most striking phenomena which observers of the bee have noticed is the absence of any obvious means of direction or government in the hive. The queen seems to be valued merely for her functions, which are in no way directive. Decisions of policy of the greatest moment appear, as far as we can detect, to arise spontaneously among the workers, and whether the future is to prove them right or wrong, are carried out without protest or disagreement. This capacity for unanimous decisions is obviously connected with the limited mental development of the individual, as is shown by the fact that in man it is very much more feeble. In spite of this, the unanimity of the hive is wonderfully effective and surprisingly successful. Speculators upon the physiology and psychology of bees have been forced—very tentatively of course—to imagine that creatures living in such intensely close communion are able to communicate to one another, and, as it were, to a common stock, such extremely {204} simple conceptions as they can be supposed to entertain, and produce, so to say, a communal mind which comes to have, at any rate in times of crisis, a quasi-independent existence. The conception is difficult to express in concrete terms, and even to grasp in more than an occasional intuitive flash. Whether we are to entertain such a conception or are to reject it, the fact remains that societies of a very closely communal habit are apt to give the appearance of being ruled by a kind of common mind—a veritable spirit of the hive—although no trace of any directive apparatus can be detected.

A close study of England gives the impression of some agency comparable with a “spirit of the hive” being at work within it. The impression is not perhaps to be taken as altogether fantastic, when we remember how her insular station and her long history have forced upon her a physical seclusion and unity resembling, though of course far less complete than, that of the hive. I am of course not unaware that disquisitions upon the national spirit are very familiar to us. These, however, are so loosely conceived, so much concerned with purely conventional personifications of quite imaginary qualities, that I cannot regard them as referring to the phenomenon I am trying to describe.

The conception in my mind is that of an old and isolated people, developing, by the slow mingling and attrition of their ideas, and needs, and impulses, a certain deeply lying unity which becomes a kind of “instinct” for national life, and gives to national policy, without the conscious knowledge of any individual citizen, without the direction of statesmen, and perhaps in spite of them all, a continuity of trend, and even an intelligence, by which events may be influenced in a profoundly important way.

The making of some such assumption, helped as it is by the analogy of the bee, seems to be {205} necessary when we consider at all objectively the history of England and her Empire. She has done so much without any leading, so much in spite of her ostensible leaders, so often a great policy or a successful stroke has been apparently accidental. So much of her work that seemed, while it was doing, to be local and narrow in conception and motive displays at a distance evidences of design on the great scale. Her contests with Philip of Spain, with Louis XIV, with Napoleon, and the foundation of her Colonial Empire, would seem to be the grandiose conceptions of some supreme genius did we not know how they were undertaken and in what spirit pursued.

It appears, then, that England has something with which to retort upon the conscious direction to which Germany owes so much of her strength. Among the number of embattled principles and counter principles which this war has brought into the field, we must include as not the least interesting the duel between conscious national direction on the one side and unconscious national will and knowledge on the other.

It is quite outside my province to touch upon the diplomatic events which led up to the war. They seem to me to be irrelevant to the biological type of analysis we are trying to pursue. There can be no doubt at all that the ordinary consciousness of the vast majority of citizens of this country was intensely averse from the idea of war. Those who were in general bellicose were for the moment decidedly out of influence. Can we suppose, however, that the deep, still spirit of the hive that whispers unrecognized in us all had failed to note that strange, gesticulating object across the North Sea? In its vast, simple memory would come up other objects that had gone on like that. It would remember a mailed fist that had been {206} flourished across the Bay of Biscay three hundred years ago, a little man in shining armour who had strutted threateningly on the other shore of the Channel, and the other little man who had stood there among his armies, and rattled his sabre in the scabbard. It had marked them all down in their time, and it remembered the old vocabulary. It would turn wearily and a little impatiently to this new portent over the North Sea. . . . Wise with the experience of a thousand years, it would know when to strike.

Such deeply buried combined national impulses as we are here glancing at are far removed from the influence of pacifist or jingo. Any attempt to define them must be a matter of guesswork and groping, in which the element of speculation is far in excess of the element of ascertained fact. It seems, however, that, as in the case of the bee, they concern chiefly actual decisions of crucial matters of policy. To put this suggestion in another form, we might say the spirit of the people makes the great wars, but it leaves the statesman to conduct them. It may make, therefore, a decision of incredible profundity, launch the people on the necessary course at the necessary moment, and then leave them to flounder through the difficulties of their journey as best they can. Herein is the contrast it presents with the German resource of conscious direction—superficial, apt to blunder in all the larger, deeper matters of human nature, but constant, alert, and ingenious in making immediate use of every available means and penetrating every department of activity.

During the conduct of war it is only in the simplest, broadest matters that the spirit of the people can bring its wisdom to bear. One of the most striking manifestations of it has, for example, been {207} the way in which it has shown a knowledge that the war would be long and hard. The bad news has been, in general, received without complaint, reproach, or agitation, the good news, such as it has been, with a resolute determination not to exult or rejoice. That so many months of a deadly war have produced no popular expression of exultation or dismay is a substantial evidence of moral power, and not the less impressive for being so plainly the work of the common man himself.

Such manifestations of the spirit of the people are rare, and meet with very little encouragement from those who have access to the public. It is astonishing how absent the gift of interpretation seems to be. A few, a very few, stand out as being able to catch those whispers of immemorial wisdom; many seem to be occupied in confusing them with a harsh and discordant clamour of speech.

If we are correct in our analogy of the bee and the wolf, England has one great moral advantage over Germany, namely, that there is in the structure of her society no inherent obstacle to perfect unity among her people. The utmost unity Germany can compass is that of the aggressive type, which brings with it a harsh, non-altruistic relation among individuals, and can yield its full moral value only during the maintenance of successful attack. England, on the other hand, having followed the socialized type of gre­gar­i­ous­ness, is free to integrate her society to an indefinite extent. The development of the altruistic relation among her individuals lies in her natural path. Her system of social segregation is not necessarily a rigid one, and if she can bring about an adequate acceleration of the perfectly natural consolidation towards which she is, and has slowly been, tending, she will {208} attain access to a store of moral power literally inexhaustible, and will reach a moral cohesion which no hardship can shake, and an endurance which no power on earth can overcome.

These are no figures of speech, but plain biological fact, capable of immediate practical application and yielding an immediate result. It must be admitted that she has made little progress towards this consummation since the beginning of the war. Leaders, including not only governing politicians but also those who in any way have access to public notice, tend to enjoin a merely conventional unity, which is almost functionless in the promotion of moral strength. It is not much more than an agreement to say we are united; it produces no true unity of spirit and no power in the individual to deny himself the indulgence of his egoistic impulses in action and in speech, and is therefore as irritating as it is useless. It is unfortunate that the education and circumstances of many public men deny them any opportunity of learning the very elementary principles which are necessary for the development of a nation’s moral resources. Occasionally one or another catches an intuitive glimpse of some fragment of the required knowledge, but never enough to enable him to develop any effective influence. For the most part their impulses are as likely to be destructive of the desired effect as favourable to it. In the past England’s wars have always been conducted in an atmosphere of disunion, of acrimony, and of criticism designed to embarrass the Government rather than, as it professes, to strengthen the country. It is a testimony to the moral sturdiness of the people, and to the power and subtlety of the spirit of the hive, that success has been possible in such conditions. When one remembers how England has flourished on domestic discord in {209} critical times, one is tempted to believe that she derives some mysterious power from such a state, and that the abolition of discord might not be for her the advantageous change it appears so evidently to be. Consideration, however, must show that this hypothesis is inadmissible, and that England has won through on these occasions in spite of the handicap discord has put upon her. In the present war, tough and hard as is her moral fibre, she will need every element of her power to avoid the weariness and enfeeblement that will otherwise come upon her before her task is done.

Throughout the months of warfare that have already passed no evidence has become public of any recognition that the moral power of a nation depends upon causes which can be identified, formulated, and controlled. It seems to be unknown that that domination of egoistic impulses by social impulses which we call a satisfactory morale is capable of direct cultivation as such, that by it the resources of the nation are made completely available to the nation’s leaders, that without it every demand upon the citizen is liable to be grudgingly met or altogether repudiated.

We are told by physicians that uninstructed patients are apt to insist upon the relief of their symptoms, and to care nothing for the cure of their diseases, that a man will demand a bottle of medicine to stop the pain of an ulcer in his stomach, but will refuse to allow the examination that would establish the nature of his disease. The statesman embarrassed by the manifestations of an imperfect morale seems to incline to a similar method. When he finds he cannot get soldiers at the necessary rate, he would invent a remedy for that particular symptom. When he has difficulties in getting one or another industrial class to suspend its charters in the interests of the State, he must have a new {210} and special nostrum for that. When he would relax the caution of the capitalist or restrain the wastefulness of the self-indulgent, again other remedies must be found. And so he passes from crisis to crisis, never knowing from moment to moment what trouble will break out next, harassed, it is to be supposed, by the doubt whether his stock of potions and pills will hold out, and how long their very moderate efficiency will continue.

None of these troubles is a disease in itself; all are evidences of an imperfect national morale, and any attempt to deal with them that does not reach their common cause will necessarily therefore be unsatisfactory and impermanent.

The sole basis of a satisfactory morale in a people of the social type that obtains in England is a true national unity, which is therefore the singular and complete remedy for all the civil difficulties incident upon a great and dangerous war.

It is impossible to form any guess whether England will keep to her traditional methods or will depart so far from them as to take a bold and comprehensive view of her present and her growing moral needs. A carefully conceived and daringly carried out organization of a real national unity would have no great difficulty in a country so rich in practical genius; it would make an end once for all of every internal difficulty of the State, and would convert the nation into an engine of war which nothing could resist.

The more probable and the characteristic event will be a mere continuation in the old way. It will exemplify our usual and often admirable enough contempt for theoretical considerations and dreams, our want of interest in knowledge and foresight, our willingness to take any risk rather than endure the horrid pains of thought. {211}

When we remember how costly is our traditional method, how long and painful it makes the way, how doubtful it even makes the goal, it is impossible for the most philosophic to restrain a sigh for the needless suffering it entails, and a thrill of alarm for the dangers it gives our path, the darkness around us and ahead, the unimaginable end.

To the student, the end of the chapter is a chance to turn from the study of detail and allow his mind to range through a larger atmosphere and over a longer sequence. Closing our small chapter, we also may look at large over the great expanse of the biological series in whose illimitable panorama the war that covers our nearer skies with its blood-red cloud is no bigger than a pin point. As we contemplate in imagination the first minute spot of living jelly that crept and hungered in the mud, we can see the interplay of its necessities and its powers already pushing it along the path at the end of which we stand. Inherent in the dot of magic substance that was no longer mere carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sulphur, and a little phosphorus, was the capacity to combine with its fellows and to profit by the fellowship, however loose. In the slow process of time combination brought freedom which, just like ours, was freedom to vary and, varying, to specialize. So in time great States of cells grew up, their individual citizen cells specialized to the finest pitch, perfect in communion with one another, co-ordinate in all their activities, incorporated with the State.

These new and splendid organizations, by the very fact of giving freedom to the individual cells, had lost it themselves. Still, they retained their capacity for combination, and where the need of {212} freedom was greatest they found it again in a new combination on a bigger scale. Thus again was obtained freedom to vary, to specialize, to react. Over the world fellowships of all grades and almost all types of creatures sprang up. Specialization, communion, co-ordination again appeared on the new plane. It was as if Nature, to protect her children against herself, was trying to crowd as much living matter into one unit as she could. She had failed with her giant lizards, with the mammoth and the mastodon. She would try a new method which should dispense with gross physical aggregations, but should minister to the same needs and afford the same powers. The body should be left free, the mind alone should be incorporated in the new unit. The non-material nexus proved as efficient as the physical one had been. The flock, the herd, the pack, the swarm, new creatures all, flourished and ranged the world. Their power depended on the capacity for inter­com­mun­i­ca­tion amongst their members and expanded until the limits of this were reached. As long as inter­com­mun­i­ca­tion was limited the full possibilities of the new experiment were concealed, but at length appeared a creature in whom this capacity could develop indefinitely. At once a power of a new magnitude was manifest. Puny as were his individuals, man’s capacity for communication soon made him master of the world. The very quality, however, which gave him success introduced a new complication of his fate. His brain power allowed him to speak and understand and so to communicate and combine more effectively than any other animal; his brain power gave him individuality and egoism, and the possibility of varied reaction which enabled him to obey the voice of instinct after the fashion of his own heart. All combination therefore was irregular, inco-ordinate, and only very slowly progressive. He has even at {213} times wandered into blind paths where the possibility of progressive combination is lost.

Nevertheless the needs and capacities that were at work in the primeval amœba are at work in him. In his very flesh and bones is the impulse towards closer and closer union in larger and larger fellowships. To-day he is fighting his way towards that goal, fighting for the perfect unit which Nature has so long foreshadowed, in which there shall be a complete communion of its members, unobstructed by egoism or hatred, by harshness or arrogance or the wolfish lust for blood. That perfect unit will be a new creature, recognizable as a single entity; to its million-minded power and knowledge no barrier will be insurmountable, no gulf impassable, no task too great.