The Psychology of Nations / A Contribution to the Philosophy of History

by G. E. Partridge

There is, of course, a literature of the war produced by the soldier in the field, in which there are expressed high ideals, abstract conceptions and firm principles. The French soldier has written about liberty, the German soldier has had considerable to say about a Kultur war. An American volunteer in the British army has written, "I find myself among the millions of others in the great allied armies fighting for all I believe right and civilized and humane against a power which is evil and which threatens the existence of all the right we prize and the freedom we enjoy" (24). But in general the consciousness of the soldier, from all the evidence we have, was concerned, as presumably was that of most of us, mainly with the most obvious qualities of opposing forces, their concrete actions, and the personal motives of rulers.

Leaving aside so far as one can one's own partisanship and mores (which is not a very easy task), what causes can we say, with a considerable degree of certainty, have actually been issues in the present war? To some extent what one thinks these causes are will remain matters of personal opinion and preference. Are there also principles which, when once observed, will be accepted as the fundamental "causes" of the war? There seem to be three at least which characterize wide differences in the ideals and the civilization of the opposing forces.

There is, first of all, an issue between the ideals of a relatively autocratic form of government and a relatively more democratic form of government. This was a cause of the intellectuals, but it was also a popular cause. Men in general like the form of government under which they live. From the standpoint of those who hold that a democratic form of government is right, the war seemed to be a conflict between a modern and progressive régime and an old and vicious one. So far as this autocratic principle aimed to suppress the rights of individuals, or to menace the liberties of small nations, so far as it was aggressively militaristic and had imperial ambitions, which could be achieved only by force, it stood clearly opposed to democracy. Democracy and autocracy were plainly at war with one another, and yet if we look closely we shall see that neither one can offer any actual demonstration of its validity as the most superior or the final form of government. In part they may appeal to the observable course of history for their justification, but the final source of judgment seems to rest in the mass of opinion in the world. Questions of form and taste are not wholly absent. But the believer in democracy and the believer in autocracy will both assert that deep differences in principle are involved. They will not admit that democracy and autocracy are superficial forms, and are questions of taste, and they will not agree with Munsterberg, who says that the two forms tend inevitably toward a compromise, by a process of alternation in which first one and-then the other is the dominant form in the world.

The war, in another aspect of it, has been a conflict between the idea of nationalism and that of internationalism. It is a conflict between an ideal of state, represented in the German philosophy of state by the principle of complete autonomy of the individual nation, and one which assumes that states, while retaining their rights of sovereignty are to be governed by laws which regulate their conduct as functioning members of a society of nations. The difference is that, relatively, between a state of anarchy among nations and a state of order. To some extent there has been a conflict between the idea of rights and the idea of duties of nations. This internationalism is not merely a sociological principle, something academic and scientific, as a theory of state or society; it is an ethical principle, which contains some recognition of justice as a subjective principle. It has some roots in theory, but it is also based upon the immediate recognition of the rights of peoples to their own individual lives. Its ideal is a world containing many nations, coördinated by natural processes and not a world in which a single nation or a few may hold the supreme place, except as this supremacy might come by a process of natural development.

The third conflict of the war was one which we may call a psychological conflict. It was a conflict between two ideas of life, one based upon a belief in the supremacy of reason, the other implying that the final test of values in life remains in the sphere of the feelings, or is a matter of appreciation. Germany, in her recent history, has stood conspicuously for the belief that human society may and indeed must be controlled and regulated by definite principles—principles that must be determined according to the methods of science. These principles take the place, in this philosophy of life, of certain typical human reactions that are believed to be demonstrably irrational. In its visible and most practical form the application of this principle is through organization.

This characterization of German life reveals something very much like a paradox in the principles of the war. We see a conflict in one direction between a certain mediævalism in government and social forms and a more modern and progressive type; we see also a conflict of a modernism of an extreme form, represented by a scientific civilization, united with this mediævalism, and in opposition to a conception of life which is in some respects more naïve and more primitive. The explanation of this paradox is that Germany offers an illustration of a phenomenon of development that has been seen before in history, of an excess of development and specialization in a direction that appears to be off the main line of progress, or at least is an anachronism. Germany has shown us the effects of rationalism, some would say a morbid and hypertrophied reason. This rationalism is certainly in part a product of systematic education and propaganda, a conscious exploitation of science, and it is in part temperamental. Such a result is always possible in a small state with a highly centralized form of government. It is a notorious fact that Germany's type of civilization can be spread neither by persuasion nor by force. If we may apply a biological analogy we may say that German Kultur in its modern form cannot survive. That this German civilization has been felt by the world at large to be abnormal and of the nature of a monstrosity we can hardly doubt, and that therefore to some extent there has been a sense, on the part of the enemies of Germany, of fighting to root out a dangerous and rank growth. Germany, seeing in her own civilization only the appearance of modernism, has been inclined to regard all other civilizations as decadent.

Germany, governed by the ideals of rationalism, has assumed that history can be made, wars conducted, life regulated in accordance with a program. On the other side we see a very general acceptance of a philosophy of life in which many evils of disorder and waste and the necessity of an experimental attitude toward life are accepted as necessary consequences of the life of freedom. We see implied in this philosophy of life a belief in a morality and a religion that are based upon feeling rather than upon objective evidences, and a way of judging conduct more or less naively and simply or according to methods of appreciation that are essentially æsthetic, using the term in a wide sense. This mode of life is accepted in the belief that order in due season will come out of relative disorder, by a natural process or by a gradually increasing organization and voluntary adjustment. If we accept the validity of this attitude in life we shall be inclined to regard rationalism as it is manifested to-day in German life as an evil. We may believe that in the end the cure for this rationalism will not be less reason but rather more, but we shall see also that it is possible for reason to outstrip and pervert life, and indeed involve life in an absurdity, simply because as a method of dealing with the whole of life it cannot be sufficiently comprehensive.

Are these and all such issues that we find in war, causes of war? Do nations fight for principles? Opinions certainly differ on this point. Some think of wars, we say, as essentially conflicts of principles; some interpret wars wholly in terms of political issues. We should say that the truth lies between these assertions or is the sum of their half-truths. Wars are not in their origin wars of principle. The political, the personal, the concrete aspects of the relations of nations are always in the foreground in causing wars. Wars become wars of principle after they have been begun for other reasons. Sanctions and motives appear after the fact. Fundamental differences of mores which include the raw material, so to speak, of principles and causes are factors in wars in so far as they create misunderstanding and antipathy, but in so far as these differences of nature and of principle do not enter into the sphere of politics and of national honor, they do not as such cause wars Those deep moods which accumulate in the minds of peoples and enter into the causes of war are not convictions about principles. They are more generic and natural. History does not seem to show us wars caused by pure principles. We sometimes say that the Civil War in our own country was fought over a principle, but that is something less than the truth. The fundamental question at issue was plainly that of the rights of certain states at a particular time to be independent and free.

Principles emerge in war, we say, and then they become secondary causes. And it is precisely this emergence of principles from fields of battle that perhaps constitutes the greatest contribution of wars to the civilization of the world. We need to reflect upon this deeply, since the whole philosophy of history is concerned in it. The virtues that nations discover in themselves in war they elaborate in peace. Nations at war become conscious of their spiritual possessions. Since their existence, they believe, is at stake, it is a part of their self-defense to justify their value in the world. They discover in themselves that which is most characteristic of them, and this becomes their principle. The principle of a nation is that which the national consciousness fixates itself upon as the title of the nation to continued existence. Nations do not go to war over their causes, or about their distinctive virtues and missions in the world. Rather it is their likenesses that precipitate wars,—their resemblances and identities in being the same in ambition, and having the same conceptions of national honor and the same motives for war and desiring the same objects. Nations in general do not go to war over principles because they are not motivated by principles in their historical course. The principles of nations are aspects of their inner development. The "causes" of nations at war, according to our view, are these inner qualities of which they have become conscious. Nations discover them in the stress of war, and it is quite natural also that in such times they should not always judge them fairly, and that they should often make for themselves a fictitious character.