The foregoing considerations are enough, perhaps, to make one wonder whether, after all, Western civilization may not be about to follow its unnumbered predecessors into decay and dissolution. There can be no doubt that such a suspicion is oppressing many thoughtful minds at the present time. It is not likely to be dispelled by the contemplation of history or by the nature of recent events. Indeed, the view can be maintained very plausibly that all civilizations must tend ultimately to break down, that they reach sooner or later a period when their original vigour is worn out, and then collapse through internal disruption or outside pressure. It is even believed by some that Western civilization already shows the evidences of decline which in its predecessors have been the forerunners of destruction. When we remember that our very short period of recorded history includes the dissolution of civilizations so elaborate as those of the Chaldeans, the Assyrians, the Egyptians, and of the Incas, that a social structure so complex as that but lately disclosed in Crete could leave no trace in human {242} memory but a faint and dubious whisper of tradition, and that the dawn of history finds civilization already old, we can scarcely resist the conclusion that social life has, more often than one can bear to contemplate, swung laboriously up to a meaningless apogee and then lapsed again into darkness. We know enough of man to be aware that each of these unnumbered upward movements must have been infinitely painful, must have been at least as fruitful of torture, oppression, and anguish as the ones of which we know the history, and yet each was no more than the swing of a pendulum and a mere fruitless oscillation landing man once more at his starting point, impoverished and broken, with perhaps more often than not no transmissible vestige of his greatness.

If we limit our view to the historical scale of time and the exclusively human outlook, we seem almost forced to accept the dreadful hypothesis that in the very structure and substance of all human constructive social efforts there is embodied a principle of death, that there is no progressive impulse but must become fatigued, that the intellect can provide no permanent defence against a vigorous barbarism, that social complexity is necessarily weaker than social simplicity, and that fineness of moral fibre must in the long run succumb to the primitive and coarse.

Let us consider, however, what comments may be made on this hypothesis in view of the biological conceptions of man which have been put forward in this book. At the same time an opportunity is afforded to put in a more continuous form the view of society that has necessarily been touched on so far in an interrupted and incidental way.

Whatever may be one’s view as to the larger pretensions that are put forward as to the significance and destiny of man, there can be no doubt {243} that it is indispensable to recognize the full implications of his status as an animal completely indigenous in the zoological series. The whole of his physical and mental structure is congruous with that of other living beings, and is constantly giving evidence of the complicated network of relationships by which he is bound to them.

The accumulation of knowledge is steadily amplifying the range over which this congruity with the natural order can be demonstrated, and is showing more and more fully that practical understanding and foresight of man’s behaviour are attained in proportion as this hypothesis of the complete “naturalness” of man is adhered to.

The endowment of instinct that man possesses is in every detail cognate with that of other animals, provides no element that is not fully represented elsewhere, and above all—however little the individual man may be inclined to admit it—is in no degree less vigorous and intense or less important in relation to feeling and activity than it is in related animals. This supremely important side of mental life, then, will be capable of continuous illustration and illumination by biological methods. It is on the intellectual side of mental life that man’s congruity with other animals is least obvious at first sight. The departure from type, however, is probably a matter of degree only, and not of quality. Put in the most general terms, the work of the intellect is to cause delay between stimulus and response, and under circumstances to modify the direction of the latter. We may suppose all stimulation to necessitate response, and that such response must ultimately occur with undiminished total energy. The intellect, however, is capable of delaying such response, and within limits of directing its path so that it may superficially show no relation to the stimulus of which it is the discharge. If we extend {244} the word stimulation to include the impulses arising from instinct, and grant that the delaying and deflecting influence of the intellect may be indefinitely enlarged, we have an animal in which instinct is as vigorous as in any of its primitive ancestors, but which is superficially scarcely an instinctive animal at all. Such is the case of man. His instinctive impulses are so greatly masked by the variety of response that his intellect opens to him that he has been commonly regarded until quite recent times as a practically non-instinctive creature, capable of determining by reason his conduct and even his desires. Such a conception made it almost impossible to gain any help in human psychology from the study of other animals, and scarcely less difficult to evolve a psychology which would be of the least use in foreseeing and controlling the behaviour of man.

No understanding of the causes of stability and instability in human society is possible until the undiminished vigour of instinct in man is fully recognized.

The significance of this rich instinctive endowment lies in the fact that mental health depends upon instinct finding a balanced but vigorous expression in functional activity. The response to instinct may be infinitely varied, and may even, under certain circumstances, be not more than symbolic without harm to the individual as a social unit, but there are limits beyond which the restriction of it to indirect and symbolic modes of expression cannot be carried without serious effects on personality. The individual in whom direct instinctive expression is unduly limited acquires a spiritual meagreness which makes him the worst possible social material.

All recorded history shows that society developing under the conditions that have obtained up {245} to the present time—developing, that is to say, spontaneously under the random influences of an uncontrolled environment of the individual—does not permit to the average man that balanced instinctive expression which is indispensable for the formation of a rich, vigorous, and functionally active personality. It has been one of my chief efforts in this book to show that the social instinct, while in itself the very foundation of society, takes, when its action is undirected and uncontrolled, a principal part in restricting the completeness and efficacy of the social impulse. This instinct is doubly responsible for the defects which have always inhered in society through the personal impoverishment of its individual constituents. In the first place, it is the great agent by which the egoistic instincts are driven into dwarfed, distorted, and symbolic modes of expression without any regard for the objective social necessity of such oppressive regulation. In the second place, it is an instinct which, while it embodies one of the deepest and potentially most invigorating passions of the soul, tends automatically to fall out of vigorous and constant activity with the expansion of societies. It is the common character of large societies to suffer heavily from the restrictive effect on personality of the social instinct, and at the same time to suffer in the highest degree from the debilitation of the common social impulse. Only in the smallest groups, such as perhaps was early republican Rome, can the common impulse inform and invigorate the whole society. As the group expands and ceases to feel the constant pressure of an environment it no longer has to fear, the common impulse droops, and the society becomes segregated into classes, each of which a lesser herd within the main body and under the reciprocated pressure of its fellows, now yields to its members the social feeling which the main body {246} can no longer provide. The passage of the small, vigorous, homogeneous and fiercely patriotic group into the large, lax, segregated and ultimately decadent group is a commonplace of history. In highly segregated peoples the restrictive effect of the social instinct upon personality has usually been to some extent relaxed, and a relatively rich personal development has been possible. Such an amplification has always, however, been limited to privileged classes, has always been accompanied by a weakening of the national bond, and a tendency of the privileged class to the sincere conviction that its interests are identical with those of the nation. No nation has ever succeeded in liberating the personality of its citizens from the restrictive action of the social instinct and at the same time in maintaining national homogeneity and common impulse. In a small community inter­com­mun­i­ca­tion among its individual members is free enough to keep common feeling intense and vigorous. As the community increases in size the general inter­com­mun­i­ca­tion becomes attenuated, and with this common feeling is cor­res­pon­ding­ly weakened. If there were no other mechanism capable of inducing common action than the faint social stimulus coming from the nation at large, a segregated society would be incapable of national enterprise. There is, however, another mechanism which we may call leadership, using the word in a certain special sense. All social groups are more or less capable of being led, and it is manifest that the leadership of individuals, or perhaps more usually of classes, has been a dominant influence in the expansion and enterprise of all civilizations of which we have any knowledge. It is only in the small communities that we can detect evidence of a true common impulse shared alike by all the members acting as the cause of expansion. In larger groups, {247} autocracies and dynasties, Pharaohs and Nebuchadnezzars have imposed the impulse of expansion upon the people, and by virtue of human susceptibility to leadership have secured a virtual, though only a secondary, common purpose.

Now leadership, potent as it undoubtedly is in calling forth the energy of the social instinct, is essentially a limited and therefore an exhaustible force. It depends for continued vigour upon successful enterprise. While it is succeeding there are only wide limits to the moral power it can set free and command, but in the face of misfortune and disaster its limitations become obvious, and its power inevitably declines. On the other hand, the moral power yielded by a true community of feeling, and not imposed by leadership, is enormously more resistant and even indestructible by failure and defeat. History gives many examples of the encounters of communities of these two types—the led society and the homogeneous society—and in spite of the invariably greater size and physical power of the former, frequently records the astoundingly successful resistance its greater moral vigour has given to the latter. This is perhaps why Carthage beat in vain against little Rome, and certainly why Austria failed to subdue Switzerland.

All large societies that have had their day and have fallen from their zenith by internal dissolution or outward attack have been given their impulse to expansion by leadership and have depended on it for their moral power. If society is to continue to depend for its enterprise and expansion upon leadership, and can find no more satisfactory source of moral power, it is, to say the least, highly probable that civilizations will continue to rise and fall in a dreadful sameness of alternating aspiration and despair until perhaps some lucky accident of {248} confusion finds for humanity in extinction the rest it could never win for itself in life.

There is, however, reason to suppose that susceptibility to leadership is a characteristic of relatively primitive social types, and tends to diminish with increasing social complexity. I have already called attention to and attempted to define the apparently specific psychological differences between Germany and England before and during the war. These differences I attributed to variations in the type of reaction to herd instinct shown by the two peoples. The aggressive social type represented by Germany and analogous with that characteristic of the predaceous social animals I regarded as being relatively primitive and simple. The socialized type represented by England and presenting analogies with that characteristic of many social insects I regarded as being, though imperfect as are all the human examples available for study up to the present time, more complex and less primitive, and representing at any rate a tendency towards a satisfactory solution of the problems with which man as a gregarious animal is surrounded. Now, it is a very obvious fact that the susceptibility to leadership shown by Germany and by England before the war was remarkably different. The common citizen of Germany was strikingly open to and dependent upon discipline and leadership, and seemed to have a positive satisfaction in leaving to his masters the management of his social problems and accepting with alacrity the solutions that were imposed upon him. The nation consequently presented a close knit uniformity of purpose, a singleness of national consciousness and effort that gave it an aspect of moral power of the most formidable kind. In England a very different state of affairs prevailed. The common citizen was apt to meet with indifference or resentment all efforts to change the social {249} structure, and it had long been a political axiom that “reform” should always await an irresistible demand for it. Instances will be within every one’s memory of politicians who met with crushing rebuffs through regarding the supposed desirability of a reform as a justification for imposing it. This almost sullen indifference to great projects and ideals, this unwillingness to take thought in the interests of the nation and the empire in spite of the apostolic zeal of the most eloquent political prophets, was generally regarded as evidence of a weakness and slackness in the body politic that could not but threaten disaster. And yet in the trials of the war the moral stability of England showed itself to be superior to that of Germany, which, in those rough waters, it jostled as mercilessly and as effectually as did the brass pot the earthen crock in the fable.

During the war itself the submission to leadership that England showed was characteristic of the socialized type. It was to a great extent spontaneous, voluntary, and undisciplined, and gave repeated evidence that the passage of inspiration was essentially from the common people to its leaders rather than from the leaders to the common people. When the current of inspiration sets persistently in this direction, as it unquestionably did in England, it is very plain that the primitive type of leadership that has led so many civilizations to disaster is no longer in unmodified action.

Germany has provided the most complete example of a culture of leadership that has ever been recorded, and has gone through the phases of her evolution with a precision which should make her case an illustration classical for all history. With a people showing strongly the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the aggressive social type, and a social structure deeply and rigidly segregated, the nation was ideally {250} susceptible to discipline and leadership, and a leading class was available which possessed an almost superhuman prestige. The opportunity given to leadership was exploited with great energy and thoroughness and with an intelligence that by its intensity almost made up for being nowhere really profound. With all these advantages and the full uses of the huge resources science has made available to intelligently concerted effort, an extremely formidable power was created. The peoples of the socialized type towards whom from the first its hostility was scarcely veiled were under obvious disadvantages in rivalry with it. Their social type made it impossible for them to combine and organize themselves against what was to them no more than a vaguely hypothetical danger. Against peaceful conquest by Germany in the industrial sphere England was therefore practically helpless, and to it would probably in time have succumbed. Paradox as it may seem, there can be no doubt that it was in war only that England could contend with Germany on equal terms. Paradoxically again, it was war for which England was reluctant and Germany was eager.

War brought Germany into contact with the, to her, inexplicable ferocity of peoples of the socialized type under attack, and it was by this disappointment that the first blow to her morale was struck. The wastage of modern warfare must very soon have begun to impair the isolation and prestige of the officer class through increasingly free importation from without the pale. With this necessarily began to be sapped the absolute and rigid segregation on which leadership of the type we are considering so largely depends. At the same time, the general tendency of the increasing pressure of war is to wear down class segregation over the whole social field. This tendency which intensified {251} and invigorated the morale of her enemies would work steadily against the leadership morale of Germany. These factors must no doubt be added to the moral need for aggression, the exhaustion consequent upon forced offensives, and the specific intolerance of failure and retreat that combined to bring down the strongest example of the predaceous led society that history records.