THE INSTABILITY OF CIVILIZATION.
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.