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

by G. E. Partridge

The mood of the city is thus in a sense the essence of life, but it is also the source of disease and death in the national life. It is the price that is paid for civilization that the city tends to become the hardened artery of national life. The control of the city moods by educational forces we may believe is one of the most fundamental of all the problems of conscious evolution. It is the control at the fountain-head of the forces out of which internationalism is to be made that we undertake when we try to educate the life of the city, with reference to its good and its evil. The too rapid urbanizing of the life of nations, the production, in the cities, of powers too great and too rapidly growing to be controlled by the civilizing forces in a country is the great danger in modern life. So great indeed are the dangers in the accelerated growth of industrialism in all the great countries and the increased specialization in the industrial life, that something radical must be done, in our view, to counterbalance this movement, and especially to control and to raise to higher levels the psychic factors of city life.

Our educational work is serious. We are trying to save democracy from itself—from being destroyed by forces which accumulate in the cities. We must keep life from becoming sophisticated before its time. We must prevent enthusiasm from degenerating into mob spirit, and from becoming attached to wholly material interests. There must be found, in some way, means of causing counter-currents to set in against the tide that flows so strongly from country to city. Germany's fate should teach us the dangers of this city life, and show us how the forces that gather in the great cities can be turned in the direction either of fanatical nationalism or toward the lowest of all forms of internationalism, in which all form of government is thrown down. It must teach us also how to catch the note of new "dominants" that are concealed in the roar of city life, and to make these prevail.

The control of the formation of the city moods, and the direction and utilization of the great energies contained in them, now require, if ever anything were demanded of conscious creative effort, more power on the part of all our educational factors. The school appears now to be at the parting of the ways, we say, when it must either settle down to its routine and limited occupation of preparing children for life, or become a far greater power in the world than it has as yet been. We must decide whether the school is to control, or to be controlled by, the political and industrial forces of the day. We must see whether the school is going to reflect the culture and the moods of the environment, or whether the school shall exert a creative influence upon its surroundings.

It is plain that nothing less than a radical change in the school can now greatly alter its position, and release it from its bondage to politics and from the overwhelming influences of its environment, and prevent the leveling downward and the stereotyping process that is taking place in the school, both as regards its intellectual and moral product and the training and selection of teachers. Nothing less than a movement which shall break up some of the deepest and most firmly rooted habits and conventions of the school and throw the school back, so to speak, upon more generic and primitive motives than those that now control it will be sufficient. The school needs more than anything else a change of scene—a change of venue, if a legal term be allowed. The school everywhere, but especially the school of the city, is surrounded by influences that prejudice it to fixed habits of thought and keep it true to a type which has long since ceased to be necessary. The school is causing an in-breeding of the city spirit in all the great industrial countries.

No single change in any institution, in our view, could strike closer to the roots of our whole educational problem of the future than the bodily transfer of the city school far out into the open country. Such a move seems wholly practicable, economic from every point of view, even the financial, and it would place the school in a position in which profound changes in its whole plan and organization could hardly fail to follow almost automatically. With our present facilities for transportation, the daily exodus of children from the surroundings in which are being produced the elements of our civilization that are hardest to control would be entirely possible. The effects upon the whole of education, and upon all the future life of countries like our own could hardly fail to be profound. The fundamental moods of childhood would be changed, and everything contained in child life would be more amenable to control. Schools would become more variable and more experimental, and new selective influences would be exerted upon teachers presumably in the direction of raising the social and intellectual average of the profession. A much larger field would be opened up for all those methods of work in education that may be designated as æsthetic—that is, that contain qualities of freedom, activity and creativeness.

VI. Idea of World Organization

Some form of organization of nations having definite representation, constitution, and laws, and with a certain degree of centralization and embodiment in visible institutions and locations will exist, we may suppose, for all future time in the world. The existence, even in idea, of such organization presents to us inevitable educational problems. Instruction in a general way and universally in world politics, familiarizing all with the meaning of these laws and political bodies, is but a part, although a necessary part, of the work. Our democratic principle demands that more and more interest and participation in all forms of government be acquired by the people, that peoples and not merely governments shall be the units which are brought together, that there be more organizations of the people performing group functions. If the loyalty of nations to one another is to be secured, as seems necessary, by establishing practical relations among them, the education of the coming generations in these relations and organizations and in all practical affairs seems unavoidable. The people must have a proper appreciation of common interests as implying common work, and not be encouraged to believe that rights of representation are their chief concern. All must know the power of organization. All must see that the international structures of our own day, however complete in form, are but a beginning and basis of function, and that there must be put behind these forms all the energies of the people, young and old, made effective through organization for practical efforts.

It is through participation in activities that are international in scope that, in our opinion, the best education in the idea of internationalism will be obtained. This is the way to the good will without which political ideas will be likely to remain nationalistic in fact whatever political coördinations may exist among nations. It is as a practical idea that internationalism needs now to be impressed upon the minds of all. An international organization must be looked upon as something useful, which will remain only if it performs functions in which all are interested and in which all can in some way take part. It is a sense of living in the world rather than of belonging exclusively to one locality that must be taught. It is the idea of a world of nations in organic unity rather than a world of nations attached to one another by political bonds that we need to convey.

It is active participation in the business of a world that must be regarded as the necessary basis for education in the idea of internationalism. World government must be conceived in terms of world functions. But we must also provide for the most dramatic possible representation of everything contained in the idea of internationalism and represented in its laws and forms. The most vivid possible presentation must be made of everything that is done internationally, if we wish to keep alive the spirit which now prevails in the world. We must lose no opportunity to make current history impressive; we must bring out all its dramatic features in order to fixate once for all the idea of the organic unity of the race, and its necessary coördination in tangible forms. International law must be made intelligible to very young minds, and now that we are to have an international seat of congresses and courts the utmost must be made of its existence to give reality to the idea of internationalism.

Those who plan for the future of the international idea will do well to take into account these pedagogical aspects of it. It is quite as important to make the international idea pedagogically persuasive as to make it politically sound. Such an idea must have a place and an embodiment if it is to seize hold upon the popular mind. An international city seems indispensable, and the further the thought of it can be removed from that of existing countries the more readily will it aid the young mind in making the abstractions necessary to conceive the true interests of all nations or all humanity as distinct from the interests of one nation. In this we are making beginnings to be realized perhaps in a far distant future. We want no unnatural and sentimental internationalism, but there is every reason now for wishing to plant the seed of a higher and more organic life than at the present time exists in the world.