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

by G. E. Partridge

Such thought as this has behind it some of the most powerful minds, as we know. It is Tolstoi's philosophy, and it is the argument of such men as Novicow. The professional economist and the student of history add their protests. They say that military peoples fade away, while the peaceful live and prosper, that "the country whose military power is irresistible is doomed." These are the words of Roberts. Some try to demonstrate that nothing is gained economically by war; that all the work of war is destructive, to every one engaged in it. It is argued that the nation that is suited to live will prevail without wars; and that without this inner superiority, war will avail nothing. War is bad business, in the opinion of these economic thinkers. War is like setting the dog on the customer at the door, the practical man in England complained at the beginning of the present war. As to war being associated with intelligence and with virtue in nations, or as to its ever producing either intellectual or moral qualities, many would flatly deny that war ever has such a result. The opposite would seem nearer the truth to them. Military nations are unintelligent nations, and militarism is always brutalizing.

Such pacifism and the dream of universal peace are no new ideas in the world. Like the philosophy of war pacifism has a long history. There have been pacifists everywhere and presumably at all times, since pacifism is quite as much a temperament as it is an idea or a philosophy. Cramb tells us that all recent centuries have had their doctrines of pacifism, each century having its own characteristic variety. In the time of the Marlborough wars, there appeared the book of Abbé de St. Pierre denouncing all wars. In the middle of the nineteenth century there is the doctrine of the Manchester school, maintaining that the peace of Europe must be secured not by religion, but by the coöperation of the industrial forces of the continent. Finally, says Cramb, we see the characteristic thought of the twentieth century in the position that war is bad because it is contrary to social well-being and is economically profitless, alike to the victor and the vanquished. This is the pacifism of the socialist who holds that the ties of common labor and economic state are fundamental, and divisions into nationality are secondary and unimportant; and that militarism belongs to the pernicious state of society which perpetuates capitalism and privilege and to government as a function of the favored classes.

This is certainly not the place to try to put order into this conflicting mass of opinion about war and peace by working out the principles of a philosophy of good and evil, since this would mean to attack one of the most fundamental of all problems of philosophy. It seems to be plain, however, that neither upon biological grounds nor by ethical principles, nor by finding any consensus in the desires and opinions of thinkers can we reach any hard and fast conclusions about the good and evil of war. It is rather by a broad interpretation of the world and of history and the nature of national consciousness, by some genetic view of national life, that we are most likely to see our way toward a practical view of the present good and evil of war. War is a phase of the whole process of social development of nations. We think of nations as living and growing, and of a world which is gradually maturing. War obtains a natural explanation on sociological and psychological principles, not as a disease, but as a natural consequence and condition of the formation of nations, or of any type of horde or group. In the course of the development of nations we see psychological factors coming more and more to the front. Desires which are more or less consciously avowed become the motives of history. It is in the play of these desires: their fixation, their generalization, and transformation, the manner in which they become attached to specific objects, that we seek the explanation of wars and of the especial psychology of nations. Nations have lived secluded and guarded lives, because of the nature of the desires which were most fundamental in their lives, and the objects upon which these desires have become directed. Now nations show some signs of emerging from their seclusion, of abandoning their ambitions of empire, and leading a more complex and more practical life.

In this progress we see the possibility of the final disappearance of war. But we have no right to pervert either history or education in the effort to eliminate war, or even to pass judgments upon war prematurely or upon the basis of personal preferences, or the moods of any moment. The whole world might, conceivably, be brought together and be made to declare solemnly that there should be no more war. Nations would thereby voluntarily relinquish their aggressive thoughts, put aside the love they have for the heroic and take justice and peace as their watchwords. And all this would seem ideal. But if the elimination of war should mean that we have no longer anything for which men are willing to die, if merely to escape from war we voluntarily sacrifice good that more than counterbalances the evil we overcome, we should say that peace had been bought at too high a price. Terrible as war is, it cannot be judged by itself alone. We have a right to look forward to a time when there shall be no more war, just as everywhere it seems to be instinctive for us to try to gain good without its attendant trouble and evil. In the meantime the world had best busy itself, mainly, in our view, with creating those things that are best, rather than in destroying those things that are worst. Nations, like individuals, must lead bravely hazardous lives, without too much thought of dangers. Peace as a sole program for the making of history appears to be too narrow, and especially too unproductive. Internationalism that is merely a combination of peoples to prevent war is not very inspiring, especially since it is doubtful whether it even leads to peace. A broad historical view that will enable us just now to make good come out of the evil of war will be a better organ of conscious evolution than a philosophy of peace can possibly be.

Such views as these give us at least some clews to the educational and pedagogical problems of war and peace. We can distinguish between an education which deals specifically with such problems, endeavoring to treat them sharply and with finality, making clear moral decisions, and an education which by enriching the mind and by educating all the selective faculties leads to an appreciation of all great practical and moral questions as aspects of the whole of history and of life.

Let us see what the specific teaching of peace may and may not include. First of all we cannot, for educational purposes, judge everything in the lives of nations by moral principles. The ideal of universal brotherhood and coöperation, of sacrifice and altruism, cannot be realized in the present stage of history. On the other hand, the stern picture of justice is one that fits into the present mood of the world. Justice is the natural link between individualism and altruism. A world determined upon seeing justice done, a world which, without setting absolute values upon peace and war, does distinguish between just and unjust wars, between the demands and the needs of peoples, leans toward the moral life. It has little to say about duties as yet, or comparatively little, but it has a strong conception of rights. A deep enough interest in justice, by its own momentum, introduces duties into the practical life. In time the world will perhaps not be satisfied with seeing and recognizing justice, and ensuring it in great crises; it will make justice as a matter of course.

This idea of justice seems, on the whole, to be the best basis for the teaching now of international morality. The teaching of pacifism, enlarging upon the biological waste of war, trying to present the realism of war in its worst light in order to overcome the warlike spirit and to assist the doctrines of internationalism to take effect upon the mind seems to be the wrong way of teaching peace. We seem to be obligated to teach war as it is. We cannot conceal its heroic side for fear of perpetuating war, and we must not conceal the brutality of war for fear of destroying morale and the fighting spirit. And it is to be much doubted whether it is ever necessary to teach history unfairly and one-sidedly in times either of war or of peace. We depend upon larger effects and deeper judgments than can be produced by selecting and distorting the facts. Nothing is meaner in national life than dishonest history.

Education in the ideal of peace, which we may hope to be the state of the world in the future, will be an adjustment of the mind to new and practical modes of life rather than the establishing of a principle. The educated attitude of mind which will best safeguard the peace of the world must include an intelligent knowledge of all the agencies proposed to aid in establishing this state of harmony toward which we look forward. We must all know about arbitration, leagues of nations, courts of honor, understand diplomacy better and the arguments for disarmament, understand the economic and the industrial situation, the possibilities of coöperation, reduction of the rights and privileges of classes, democratic movements. The inculcation of such knowledge is an education for peace. There is little that is abstruse in any of these ideas, and the very young child is not too young to know something of these wider aspects of the social life. All these may be presented in a concrete form as a part of the work of conveying a knowledge of current history.

We may think of various cures for war, and various efforts that might be made educationally to prevent war. Peace might effectually be cultivated by an educational propaganda. But after all it is not such cures of war as this that we are most concerned about in the work of education. We might even tend to establish in this way a peace which would be detrimental to the higher interests of civilization. A true educational philosophy, at any rate, is not to be dislodged from its purpose of keeping education constructive rather than inhibitory. This institution of education must not be too much influenced by the temporary moods of the day, by the present gloomy evidences of the devastation of war. We must teach and prepare for an abundant life in which there is glory and wide opportunity, and in which the motives of power may be satisfied. Then peace can take care of itself. But this abundant life must be a life of activity, not of mere patriotism and subjective glorification and nationalistic interest. Vanity, the low order of enthusiasms, the glory of display, can no longer have a place in this national life.

There appears to be a pedagogical lesson in the contrast between the heroic and the moral view of teaching war and peace illustrated by the German philosophy of war and the ideal of the Boy Scout organization. Deducting something for literary exaggeration, we may say that education cannot afford to neglect either of these attitudes, but must indeed in some way combine them. The exaggeration consists on one side in praising the specific act of war; but on the other side there is plainly lacking something of the dramatic appeal which any ideal life for the young must have. War is an evil, but the spirit that makes war is by no means an evil. The philosophy of war proves its failure by ignoring the moral ideal altogether, or regarding morality as something solely national, but the other, it may be, puts the moral ideal in a pedagogically impossible position. Both the content and the form must be taken into account in any educational plan that hopes to exert power or to be influential in any important way now, and it is the form which, more than anything else, is still lacking in our whole procedure of education.