CHAPTER XI
THE WILL OF THE NATION[84]
Rousseau, in his famous treatise, Le Contrat Social, wrote “There is often a great difference between the will of all and the general will; the latter looks only to the common interest; the former looks to private interest, and is nothing but a sum of individual wills; but take away from these same wills the plus and minus that cancel one another and there remains, as the sum of the differences, the general will.” “Sovereignty is only the exercise of the general will.” That is to say, a certain number of men will the general good, while most men will only their private good; the latter neutralise one another, while the former co-operate to form an effective force.
Dr Bosanquet[85], criticising Rousseau’s doctrine, says that the general will is expressed by the working of the institutions of the community which embody its dominant ideas; that no one man really grasps the nature and relations of the whole society and its tendencies; that the general will is thus unconscious (by which he seems to mean that the nation is unconscious of itself and of its ends or purposes); and he goes on to say that the general will is the product of practical activities making for nearer smaller ends, and that its harmony depends on the fact that the activities of each individual are parts of a systematic whole.
Bosanquet’s theory amounts to a justification of the old individualist laissez faire doctrine—the doctrine that the good of the whole is best achieved by giving freest possible scope to the play and conflict of individual purposes and strivings—the philosophic radicalism of Bentham and Mill, which teaches that, if each man honestly and efficiently pursues his private ends, the welfare of the State somehow results. How this systematic whole which is the State arises he does not explain; and it seems to me that Bosanquet leaves unsolved that difficulty which, as we saw, led Schiller and others to postulate an external power guiding each people—the difficulty, if we assume that individual wills strive only after private egoistic ends, of explaining how the good of the whole is nevertheless achieved.
In all societies many general changes result, and in some nations no doubt the good of the whole is achieved in a measure by fortunate accident, in the way Bosanquet describes—namely, by the interplay of individual wills working for near individual ends. But, I think, it is improper to say that in such a case any general will exists. Such a nation, if it displays any collective activity, only does so in an impulsive blind way which is not true volition, but is comparable rather with instinctive action; for, as we have seen, self-consciousness is essential to volition; a truly volitional action is one which issues from the contemplation of some end represented in relation to the idea of the self and found to be desirable. And the changes of a society which result in the way Bosanquet claims as the expression of the general will are unforeseen and unwilled; they are no more the expression and effects of a general will than are the movements of a billiard ball struck simultaneously by two or more men each of whom aims at a different position.
Bosanquet maintains that the national will is unconscious of its ends; but that the life of a nation does express a general will, in virtue of the fact that the individuals, who will private and less general ends than the ends of the nation, live in a system of relations that constitutes them an organism; and that it is in virtue of this organic system of relations that the individual volitions work out to an unforeseen unpurposed resultant, which he calls the end willed by the general will. He makes of this organic unity the essential difference between a mere crowd and a society or nation—defining an organism or organic unity as a system of parts the capacities and functions of each of which are determined by the general nature and principle of the whole group.
That is an excellent definition of an organism; and we have recognised fully the importance of organisation in national life, consisting in specialisation of the parts such that each part is adapted to perform some one function that subserves the life of the whole, while itself dependent upon the proper functioning of all other parts.
We may admit too that, in proportion as this specialisation of functions is carried further, organic unity is promoted because the life of the whole becomes more intimately dependent on the life of each part, and each part more intimately and completely dependent on the life of the whole.
But unity of this sort is characteristic of all animal bodies; and, though the mind has this kind of organic unity, it acquires, in proportion as self-consciousness develops, over and above this kind of unity, a unity of an altogether new and unique kind; a unity which consists in the whole (or the self) being present to consciousness, whether clearly or obscurely, during almost every moment of thought, and pervading and playing some part in the determination of the course of thought and action.
Now, the national mind also has both the lower and the higher kinds of unity. In both cases—that is, in the development both of the individual and of the national mind—a certain degree of organic unity must be achieved, before self-consciousness can develop and begin to play its part; but in both cases, when once it has begun to operate, self-consciousness goes on greatly to increase the organic unity, to increase the specialisation of functions and the systematic interdependence of the parts.
Consider a single illustration of this parallelism of the individual with the national mind. Take the aesthetic faculty. In the individual mind there develops a certain capacity for finding pleasure in certain objects and impressions, such as young children and even the animals have; and then, with the growth of self-consciousness, the individual sets himself deliberately to cultivate this faculty, to specialise it along particular lines and to exercise it as something apart from his other mental functions; while, nevertheless, it becomes for him, in proportion as it is developed and specialised, more and more an essential part of his total experience. Just so there spontaneously develop in a people some rudimentary aesthetic practices and traditions and some class of persons, say the bards, who are more skilled than other men in ministering to the aesthetic demands of their fellows. Then, as national self-consciousness develops, the place and value of these functions in the system of national life becomes explicitly recognised, and they are deliberately fostered by the establishment of national institutions, schools of art, academies of letters and music, the award of public titles and honours and so forth; whereby the specialisation of these national functions is increased, their dependence on the life of the whole rendered more intimate, and, at the same time, the life of the whole rendered more dependent upon the life of these parts, because the richer aesthetic development of the parts reacts upon the whole, diffusing itself through and elevating the life of the whole.
Bosanquet recognises in national life only the lower kind of unity and not the unity of self-consciousness. He seems to reject the notion of national self-consciousness, on the ground that the life of a nation is so complex that it cannot be fully and adequately reflected in the consciousness of any individual; yet in this respect the difference between the national mind and the individual mind is one of degree only and not of kind. In the individual mind also, even the most highly developed and self-conscious, the capacities and dispositions and tendencies that make up the whole mind are never fully and adequately present to consciousness; the individual never knows himself exhaustively, though he may continually progress towards a more nearly complete self-knowledge. Just so the national mind may progress towards a more complete self-knowledge, and, though at the present time no nation has attained more than a very imperfect self-knowledge, yet the process is accelerating rapidly among the more advanced nations; and such increasing self-knowledge promises to become the dominating factor in the life of nations, as it is in the lives of all men, save the most primitive.
Suppose that all those conditions making for national unity which we have considered in the foregoing chapters were realised, but that nevertheless all men continued to be moved only by self-regarding motives, or by those which have reference to the welfare of themselves and their family circle or to any ends less comprehensive than the welfare of the whole nation. We could not then properly speak of the tendencies resulting from the interplay and the conflict of all these individual wills as expressions of the general will, as Bosanquet and others have done, even though the organic unity of the whole secured a harmonious resultant national activity, if such a thing were possible. But there is no reason to suppose that such a thing is possible.
I think we may say that it is only in so far as the idea of the people or nation as a whole is present to the consciousness of individuals and determines their actions that a nation in the proper sense of the word can exist or ever has existed. Without this factor any population inhabiting a given territory remains either a mere horde or a population of slaves under a despotism. Neither can be called a nation; wherever a nation has appeared in the history of the world, the consciousness of itself as a nation has been an essential condition of its existence and still more of its progress.
We may see this, even more clearly, in the case of the smaller aggregations of men, the smaller social units, the family, the clan, the tribe. The family is a family only so long as it is conscious of itself as a family, and only in virtue of that self-consciousness and of the part which this idea and the sentiments gathered about it play in determining the actions of each member. How carefully such family consciousness is sometimes fostered and how great a part it plays in social life is common knowledge. In the early stages of Greek and Roman history, the family consciousness was the dominant social force which long succeeded in overriding and preventing the development of any larger social consciousness. Just as the gens played this part in early Rome, so the clan has played a similar part elsewhere, for example in the highlands of Scotland. Such peoples form the strongest nations.
Just so with the tribe. It exists as a tribe only because, and in so far as, it is conscious of itself, and in so far as the idea of the tribe and devotion to its service determines the actions of individuals. The mere fact of the possession of a tribal name suffices to prove the existence of this self-consciousness. And, as a matter of fact, tribal self-consciousness is in many cases extremely strongly developed; the idea of the tribe, of its rights and powers, of its past and its future plays a great part among warlike savages; and an injury done to the tribe, or an insult offered to it, will often be kept in mind for many years, even for generations, and will be avenged when an opportunity occurs, even in spite of the certainty of death to many individuals and the risk of extermination of the whole tribe.
The federation of Iroquois tribes to form a rudimentary nation seems to have been due to a self-conscious collective purpose. And, when other tribes become fused to form nations, the same holds true. Consider the Hebrew nation, one of the earliest historical examples of a number of allied tribes becoming fused to a nation. Surely the idea of the nation as the chosen people of Jehovah played a vital part in its consolidation, implanted and fostered as it was by a succession of great teachers, the prophets. Their work was to implant this idea and this sentiment strongly in the minds of the people, to create and foster this traditional sentiment by the aid of supernatural sanctions. The national self-consciousness thus formed has continued to be not only one factor, but almost the only factor or condition, of the continued existence of the Jewish people as a people, or at any rate the one fundamental condition on which all the others are founded—their exclusive religion, their objection to intermarriage with outsiders, their hope of a future restoration of the fortunes of the nation, and so forth.
And the same is true of every real nation; its existence and its power are grounded in its consciousness of itself, the idea of the nation as a dominant factor in the minds of the individuals. The dominant sentiment which centres about that idea is very different in the various nations. It may be chiefly pride in the nation’s past history, as in Spain; or hope for its future, as in Japan; or the need of self-assertion in the present, as in pre-war Germany.
The political history of Europe in the nineteenth century is chiefly the history of the national actions that have sprung from increase of national self-consciousness resulting from the spread of education, from the improvement of means of communication within each people and from increase of intercourse between nations. The opening pages were the wars in which the French people, suddenly aroused to an intense national consciousness, successfully resisted and drove back all the other European powers. Of other leading events the formation of modern Italy and of modern Germany, of Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece, were results of the awakening of national self-consciousness[86].
The resistance of the Japanese to the Russians and their victory over them were in the fullest sense the immediate outcome of the idea of the Japanese nation in the minds of all its people, leading to a strong collective volition for the greater power, glory, and advancement of the nation. The recent unrest in China is recognised on all hands to be the expression of a dawning national self-consciousness. In Europe, Poland, Finland, Hungary, and Ireland exemplify its workings very clearly in recent years. The Magyars were not oppressed by the Austrians. They, economically and individually, had nothing material to gain by a separation from Austria; and in separating themselves they would have risked much, their lives, and their material welfare; yet the idea of the Magyar nation impelled them to it. The Poles of Germany were not rebellious because they were ill-treated and their affairs maladministered. If they could and would have cast out from their minds the idea of the Polish nation, they might have comfortably shared in the marvellously advancing material prosperity of Germany. But they were severely treated by the Germans, because they were moved by this idea and this sentiment; and the bad treatment it brought upon them did but render the idea more vividly, more universally, present to the consciousness of all, even of the little children at school, and, by inflaming the passions which have their root in the national sentiment, strengthened that sentiment.
But for the idea of the Boer nation and the dawning national sentiment, the late Boer war would never have occurred; and that sentiment was, as in the case of the Japanese in their late war, the principal source of the great energy displayed by the Boers and of such success as they achieved.
Even in India, the proposal to divide Bengal has suddenly discovered among the Bengalese, the most submissive part of the population, the part which has seemed most devoid of national spirit, the existence and the importance as a political factor of the idea of the Bengalese as a people and of sentiments centred upon that idea.
The rapid increase of national self-consciousness among the peoples of the world and the increasing part everywhere played by the sentiment for national existence are in short the dominant facts in the present period of world history; their influence overshadows all others.
Since, then, any nation exists only in virtue of the existence of the idea of the nation in the minds of the individuals of whom it is composed, and in virtue of the influence of this idea upon their actions, and since this idea plays so great a part in shaping the history of the world, it is absurd to maintain that the general will is but the blind resultant of the conflict of individual wills striving after private ends and unconscious of the ends or purposes of the nation. In opposition to such a view, we must maintain that a population seeking only individual ends cannot form or continue to be a nation, though all the other conditions we have noticed be present; that a nation is real and vigorous in proportion as its consciousness of its self is full and clear. In fact national progress and power and success depend in chief part upon the fulness and the extension, the depth and width of this self-consciousness—the accuracy and fulness with which each individual mind reflects the whole; and upon the strength of the sentiments which are centred upon it and which lead men to act for the good of the whole, to postpone private to public ends. And the same holds good of all the many forms of corporate life within the nation. Each individual’s sense of duty, in so far as it is a true sense of duty, and not a fictitious sense due merely to superstitious fear or to habit formed by suggestion and compulsion, is chiefly founded upon the consciousness of the society of which he forms a part, upon the group spirit that binds him to his fellows and makes him one with them. And the nations in which this national self-consciousness is strongest and most widely diffused will be the successful nations.
Reflect a little on these facts vouched for by General Sir Ian Hamilton. No soldier of the Japanese army, none even of the coolies, would accept anything in the shape of a tip even for honest services rendered, lest the purity of his motives should be sullied; and each man always went into action not merely prepared to die if necessary, but actually prepared and expecting to conquer and to die for the good and glory of his nation. He writes “Japanese officers have constantly to explain to their men that they must not consider the main object of the battle is to get killed[87].” And he goes on to show that they are not fanatics, are not inspired by any idea of the supernatural or by any hope of rewards after death, as is usually the case of the Moslem soldier who displays an equal recklessness of life. Surely, if in any nation the national consciousness could inspire and maintain all classes of its people in all relations of life to this high level of strenuous self-sacrifice for the welfare of the nation, that nation would soon predominate over all others, and be impregnably strong, no matter what defects of individual and national character it might display.
The idea of the nation is, then, a bond between its members over and above all those bonds of custom, of habit, of economic interdependence, of law and of self-interest, of sympathy, of imitation, of collective emotion and thought, which inevitably arise among a homogeneous people occupying any defined area; and it is the most powerful and essential of them all. As Fouillée put it, the essential characteristic of human society is that “it is an organism which realises itself in conceiving and in willing its own existence. Any collection of men becomes a society in the only true sense of the word, when all the men conceive more or less clearly the type of organic whole which they can form by uniting themselves and when they effectively unite themselves under the determining influence of this conception. Society is then an organism which exists because it has been thought and willed, it is an organism born of an idea[88].” In this sense Society has never yet been perfectly realized, but it is the ideal towards which social evolution tends.
National group self-consciousness plays, then, an all-important part in the life of nations, is in fact the actual, the most essential constitutive factor of every nation; and nationhood or the principal of nationality is the dominant note of world history in the present epoch; that is to say, the desire and aspiration to achieve nationhood, or to strengthen and advance the life of the nation, is the most powerful motive underlying the collective actions of almost all civilised and even of semi-civilised mankind; and the consequent rivalry between nations overshadows every other feature of modern world history, and is convulsing and threatening to destroy the whole of modern civilisation. It is surely well worthy of serious study. Yet, owing to the backward and neglected state of psychology, not only is this study neglected, but, as we have seen, some of our leading political philosophers have not yet even realized the essential nature of the problem; and many of the historians, economists and political writers are even further from a grasp of its nature. They have been forced by the prominence and urgency of the facts to recognise what they call the principle of nationality; and even now the majority of them are demanding that, in the European settlement and in the affairs of the world in general, the principle of nationality shall be given the leading place and the decisive voice. But they do not recognise that the understanding of this principle, this all-powerful political factor, is primarily and purely a psychological problem. We find them, in discussing the nature of nations and the conditions of nationality, perhaps mentioning the psychological view of nations as a curious aberration of a few academic cranks, from which they turn to discover the true secret of nationality in such considerations as geographical boundaries, race, language, history, and above all economic factors; they do not see that each and all of these conditions, real and important though they are and have been in shaping the history and determining the existence of nations, only play their parts indirectly by affecting men’s minds, their beliefs, opinions, and sentiments, especially by favouring or repressing the development in each people of the idea of the nation.
The all-dominant influence of the idea of the nation, I insist, is not a theory or a speculative suggestion, it is a literal and obvious fact. Let every other one of the favouring conditions of nationality, the geographical, historical, economic be realised by a population; yet, if that population has no collective self-consciousness, is not strongly actuated to collective volition by the group spirit, it will remain not a nation, but a mere aggregate of individuals, having more or less organic unity due to the differentiation and interdependence of its parts, but lacking that higher bond of unity which alone can ensure its stability and continuity, and which, especially, can alone enable it to withstand and survive the peaceful pressure or the warlike impact of true nations.
I am not at present defending nationality; I shall come back to the question of its value. I am now only concerned with the psychological problem of the nature and conditions of the development of national self-consciousness. I have been using the latter phrase and the phrase ‘the idea of the nation’ as a shorthand expression; but I must remind the reader that we have to beware of the intellectualist error of regarding ideas as moving powers; ideas as merely intellectual representations or conceptions have no motive power, they are in themselves indifferent. It is only in so far as the object conceived becomes the object of some sentiment that the conception of it moves us strongly to feeling and action. I must refer, therefore, to what I have written on the sentiments and the self-regarding sentiment[89]. Here I would insist on the strictness in this point of our analogy between the individual and the national mind. I have pointed out that the individual’s idea of himself only develops beyond a rudimentary stage in virtue of and in so far as this idea becomes the nucleus of a strong self-regarding sentiment which gives him an interest in himself, directs his attention upon his own personality and its relations, and impels him to strive to know himself. So that a developed individual self-consciousness never is and never can be a purely intellectual growth, but always involves a strong sentiment, a centering of emotional conative tendencies upon this object, the self. Exactly the same is true of nations.
Hence national self-consciousness can never develop except in the form of an idea of strong affective tone, that is to say a sentiment. Hence, whenever we speak of national self-consciousness or the idea of the nation as a powerful factor in its life, the sentiment is implied, and I have implied it when using these expressions hitherto. This national sentiment, which, if we use the word in its widest sense, may be called patriotism, is, like all the other group sentiments, developed by way of extension of the self-regarding sentiment of the individual to the group, and may be further complicated and strengthened by the inclusion of other tendencies. A point of especial importance is that this great group sentiment can hardly be developed otherwise than by way of extension of sentiments for smaller included groups, the family especially. For the idea of the nation is too difficult for the grasp of the child’s mind, and cannot, therefore, become the object of a sentiment until the intellectual powers are considerably developed. Hence the development of a family sentiment, or of one for some other small easily conceived group, is essential for the development in the child of those modes of mental action which are involved in all group feeling and action. For this reason the family is the surest, perhaps essential, foundation of national life; and national self-consciousness is strongest, where family life is strongest.
The development of the group spirit in general and of national self-consciousness in particular is favoured by, and indeed dependent upon, conditions similar to those which develop the self-consciousness of individuals. Here is another striking point of the analogy between the individual and the national mind. Passing over other conditions, let us notice one, the most important of all. The individual’s consciousness of self is developed chiefly by intercourse with other individuals—by imitation, by conflict, by compulsion, and by co-operation. Without such intercourse it must remain rudimentary. The individual’s conception of himself is perpetually extended by his increasing knowledge of other selves; and his knowledge of those other selves grows in the light of his knowledge of himself. There is perpetual reciprocal action. The same is true of peoples. A population living shut off, isolated from the rest of the world, within which no distinctions of tribe and race existed, would never become conscious of itself as one people and, therefore, would not become a nation. Some such conditions obtained for long ages among the pastoral hordes of the central Eurasian Steppes, which, so long as they remained there, have never formed a nation; and the same was true of the tribes of Arabia, until Mahomet impelled them by his religion of the sword to hurl themselves upon neighbouring peoples.
Of civilised peoples, China has had least intercourse with the outer world. The Chinese knew too little of other races to imitate them; they did not come into conflict or co-operation with others, save in a very partial manner at long intervals of time, or only with their Mongol conquerors, whom they despised as inferior to them in everything but warfare, and whom they abhorred. Hence, in spite of the homogeneity of the people, of the common culture, and of the vast influence of great teachers, national consciousness and the group spirit in all its forms remained at a low level. Hence, a great deficiency in those virtues which have their root in the social consciousness; a low standard of public duty, a lack of the sense of obligation to society. Hence, the corruptness and hollowness of all official transactions and political life. Want of honesty in public affairs is not the expression of an inherent defect of the Chinese character; for in commercial relations with Europeans the Chinaman has proved himself extremely trustworthy, much superior indeed in this respect to some other peoples. It is probable that, if China, like Europe, had long ago been divided into a number of nations, each of them, through action and reaction upon the rest, would have developed a much fuller national consciousness than exists at present and some considerable degree of public spirit and would consequently have advanced very much farther in the scale of social evolution, instead of standing still as the whole people has done for so long.
Everywhere we can see the illustrations of this law. Of all forms of intercourse, conflict and competition are the most effective in developing national consciousness and character, because they bring a common purpose to the minds of all individuals; and that is the condition of the highest degree and effectiveness of collective mental action and volition. It is under these conditions that the idea of the nation and the will to protect it and to forward its interests become predominant in the minds of individuals; and the more so the greater the public danger, the greater and the more obvious the need for the postponement of private ends to the general end.
Already there is beginning to develop a European self-consciousness and a European purpose, provoked by the demonstration of the hitherto latent power of Asia; and, if a federation of European peoples is ever to be realised, it will be the result of their further development through opposition to a great and threatening Asiatic power, a revived Moslem empire, or possibly a threatened American domination[90].
Although war has hitherto been the most important condition of the development of national consciousness, it is not the only one; and it remains to be seen whether industrial or other forms of rivalry can play a similar part. Probably, industrial rivalry cannot; the accumulation of wealth is too largely dependent upon the accidents of material conditions to become a legitimate source of national satisfaction; for, unlike the satisfaction arising from successful exertion of military power, it does not imply intrinsic superiorities. If the natural conditions of material prosperity could be equalised for all nations, then the acquisition of superior wealth, implying as it would superior capacities, might become a sufficiently satisfying end of national action; just as the equalisation of conditions among individuals in America has for the present rendered the accumulation of wealth a sufficient end, because such accumulation implies superior powers and is the mark of personal superiority.
Other forms of rivalry—rivalry in art, science, letters, in efficiency of social and political organisation, even in games and sports, all play some part; and it is possible that together they might suffice to constitute sufficient stimulus, even though the possibility of war should be for ever removed[91].
But national self-consciousness is not developed by conflict and rivalry only. It is refined and enriched by all other forms of intercourse. In studying other peoples, their organisation and their history, we become more clearly aware of the defects and the qualities and potentialities of our own nation. And in this way, refinement of national consciousness is now going on rapidly in the European peoples. The latest considerable advance is due to the observation of Japan; for this has clearly demonstrated the imperfection of many conceptions that were current among us and has brought a certain abatement of national complacency and a greater earnestness of national self-criticism, which is highly favourable to increase of national self-knowledge[92].
We might place nations in a scale of nationhood. The scale would correspond roughly to one in which they were arranged according to the degree to which the public good is the end, and the desire of it the motive, of men’s actions; this in turn would correspond to a scale in which they were arranged according to the degree of development and diffusion of the national consciousness, of the idea of the nation or society as a whole; and this again to one in which they were arranged according to the degree of intercourse they have had with other nations. At the bottom of the scale would stand the people of Thibet, the most isolated people of the world; near them the Chinese, who also have until recently been almost entirely excluded from international intercourse. Such peoples have a national consciousness and sentiment which is extremely vague and imperfect. They do not realise their weakness, their strength or their potentialities, but have an unenlightened pride without aspiration for a higher form of national life. A little above them would stand Russia, which has remained for so long outside the area of European international life. While at the top of the scale would be those nations which have borne their part in all the strain and stress and friction of European rivalry and intercourse.
These degrees of international intercourse have been very largely determined by geographical conditions; isolation, and consequent backwardness in national evolution, being in nearly every case due to remoteness of position. The most important factor of modern times making for more rapid social evolution is probably the practical destruction or overcoming of the barriers between peoples; for thus all peoples are brought into the international arena, and their national spirit is developed through international intercourse and rivalry.
It is this increasing contact and intercourse of peoples, brought about by the increased facilities of communication, which has quickened the growth of national self-consciousness throughout all the world and has made the principle of nationality or, more properly, the desire for nationhood and for national existence and development, for self-assertion and for international recognition, the all-important feature of modern times, overshadowing every other phenomenon that historians have to notice, or statesmen to reckon with.
The American nation is interesting in this connexion. If we ask—Why is their public life on a relatively low level, in spite of so many favouring conditions, including a healthy and strong public opinion?—the answer is that they have been until recently too much shut off from collective intercourse with other nations, too far removed from the region of conflict and rivalry. And judicious well-wishers of the American nation rejoice that it has recently entered more fully into the international arena, and has not continued to pursue the policy of isolation, which was long in favour; because, as is already manifest, this fuller intercourse and intenser rivalry with other nations must render fuller and more effective their national spirit, develop the national will and raise the national life to a higher plane, giving to individuals higher ends and motives than the mere accumulation of wealth, and removing that self-complacency as regards their national existence which hitherto has characterised them in common with the peoples of Thibet and China.