The Group Mind: A Sketch of the Principles of Collective Psychology / With Some Attempt to Apply Them to the Interpretation of National Life and Character

by William McDougall

The politicians and historians, on the other hand, who are so generally demanding that the European settlement after the war must accept nationality as its fundamental principle, are commonly content to note the strength and the wide distribution of the patriotic sentiment, without enquiring into its origin, nature, or value.

Let us examine the arguments against patriotism and then see what reason can advance in its defence. For, though a rational defence of patriotism will have little direct effect in making patriots, we may be sure that, if such defence cannot be maintained, patriotism will have to fight a losing battle.

In disparaging patriotism by describing it as the work of an instinct, the gregarious or the pugnacious or other instinct, or of several instincts, its critics are guilty of two psychological errors and a popular fallacy. The last is the fallacy that the worth of any thing is to be judged by the course from which it springs. Even if patriotism were nothing more than the direct expression of the gregarious instinct which we possess in common with many of the higher animals, that would not in itself condemn it. But this description of it, as a product of instinct as opposed to the principles we attain by reason, involves that false disjunction and opposition of reason to instinct which is traditional and which the intellectualist philosophers commonly adopt, when they condescend to recognise in any way the presence of instinctive tendencies in human nature.

The other psychological error is the failure to recognize that patriotism although, like all other great mental forces, it is rooted in instinct, is not itself an instinct or the direct expression of any instinct or group of instincts, but is rather an extremely complicated sentiment, which has a long and complex history in each individual mind in which it manifests itself; that it is, therefore, capable of infinite variety and of an indefinite degree of intellectualisation and refinement; that the cult of patriotism is, therefore, a field for educational effort of the highest order, and that in this field moral and intellectual education may achieve their noblest and most far-reaching effects.

The psychological justification of patriotism has already been indicated, but may be concisely stated here. The moral value of the group spirit was considered in an earlier chapter; we saw how it, and it alone, raises the conduct of the mass of men above the plane of simple egoism or family selfishness. The sentiment of devotion or loyalty to any group has this virtue in some degree; but loyalty to the nation is capable of exalting character and conduct in a higher degree than any other form of the group spirit. For the nation alone has continuity of existence in the highest degree; a long past which gives a large perspective of past history, involving the history of long series of self-sacrificing efforts and many heroic actions; and the prospect of an indefinitely prolonged future, with the possibility of continued progress and development of every kind, and therefore some security for the perpetuation of the results achieved by individual efforts[96].

Further, the nation alone, is a self-contained and complete organism; other groups within it do but minister to the life of the whole; their value is relative to that of the whole; the continuance of results achieved on their behalf is dependent upon the continued welfare of the whole (for example, the welfare of any class or profession—a fact too easily overlooked by those in whom class spirit grows strong). Hence, the nation, as an object of sentiment, includes all smaller groups within it; and, when the nation is regarded from an enlightened point of view, the sentiment for it naturally comes to include in one great system all minor group sentiments and to be strengthened by their incorporation.

It is important to notice also that, just as the minor group sentiments are not incompatible with, but rather may strengthen, the national sentiment, when subordinated to and incorporated in it, so the national sentiment is not incompatible with still more widely inclusive group sentiments—for example, that for a European system of nations, for the ‘League of Nations’ or for Western Civilisation in general. And, while loyalty to humanity as a whole is a noble ideal, it is one which can only be realized through a further step of that process of extension of the object of the group sentiment, of which extension patriotism itself is the culmination at present for the great mass of civilised mankind. The attempt to achieve it by any other road is bound to fail because psychologically unsound[97].

Let us note in passing that neglect of this truth gives rise to two of the extreme forms of political doctrine or ideal, current at the present day; first, the ideal of the brotherhood of man in a nationless world; secondly, the extreme form of democratic individualism which assumes that the good of society is best promoted by the freest possible pursuit by individuals of their private ends, which believes that each man must have an equal voice in the government of his country, because that is the only way in which his interests and those of his class can be protected and forwarded; a doctrine which regards public life as a mere strife of private and class interests. Both ideals fly in the face of psychological facts; and, though they are in appearance extreme opposites, they are apt to be found associated in the same minds.

At the other end of the scale, we have the philosophical conservatism of such a thinker as Edmund Burke, which is keenly aware of the organic unity of society and looks constantly to the good of the whole, deriving from that consideration its leading motives and principles, and which trusts principally to the growth of the group spirit for the holding of the balance between conflicting interests and for the promotion of the public welfare.