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

A good example of the operation of an ideal in a modern nation is that of the ideal of a great colonial empire in the French nation. No doubt, hopes of economic advantages may have played some part in this case; but the growth of the immense oversea empire of modern France, as well as of the great extra-European conquests which France has made in the past but has ceased to control, seems to have been due in the main to the operation of this ideal in the national mind. France has no surplus population, and no Frenchman desires to leave his beautiful France; everyone regards himself as cruelly exiled if compelled to live for a time in any of the oversea possessions; and most of these, notably the Indo-Chinese Empire are very expensive, costing the nation far more in administrative expenses than any profits derived from them, and involving constant risks of international complications and war, as in Morocco in recent years. Nevertheless, the ideal still holds sway and, under its driving power, the oversea territories of France, especially in Africa, have grown enormously. And this ideal has inevitably incorporated itself in the organisation of the nation, in a colonial office and a foreign legion, and all the administrative machinery necessarily set up for securing the ends prescribed by the ideal.

In modern times the most striking illustration of the power of ideas on national life is afforded by the influence of the ideals of liberty and equality. It was the effective teaching of these ideals of liberty and equality, primarily by Rousseau, to a people prepared by circumstances to receive them, which produced the French Revolution; and all through the nineteenth century they have continued to determine great changes of political and social organisation in many countries of Europe and in America.

In England the idea of liberty has long been current and long ago had become incorporated and expressed in the national organisation; but its application received a vast extension when in 1834 England insisted on the liberation of all British-owned slaves and paid twenty million sterling in compensation. That the idea still lives on among us, with this extended application, seems to have been proved by the results of recent elections which were influenced largely by the force of the no-slavery cry in relation to coloured labour. It is an excellent example of an established collective ideal against which reason is of no avail.

The ideal of liberty never entered the minds of the most advanced peoples of antiquity; their most enlightened political thinkers could not imagine a State which was not founded upon slavery. Yet it has become collectively accepted by all the leading nations, and the ordinary man has so entirely accepted it that he cannot be brought to reason about it. Facts and arguments tending to show that the greater part of the population of the world might be happier without liberty and under some form of slavery cannot touch or enter his mind at all.

The ideal of political equality is of still later growth, and is in a sense derivative from that of liberty; it was in the main accepted as a means to liberty, but has become an end in itself. It is moulding national organisation everywhere; through its influence parliamentary government and universal suffrage are becoming the almost universal rule, and, through leading to their adoption, this ideal is in a fair way to wreck certain of the less firmly organised nations, and possibly our own also.

But the ideal which, beyond all others, characterises the present age of almost all the nations of the world is the ideal of progress. Hardly anyone has any clear notion what he means by progress, or could explicate the idea; but the sentiment is very strong, though the idea is very vague. This idea also was unknown to the leading thinkers of antiquity and is of recent growth; yet it is so almost universally accepted, and it so permeates the mental atmosphere in every direction, that it is hard for us to realise how new a thing in the history of the world is the existence, and still more the effective dominance, of the idea. It is perhaps in America that its rule is most absolute; there the severest condemnation that can be passed by the average man upon any people or institution is to say that it is fifty years behind the time. The popular enthusiasm for flying-machines, which threatens to make life almost unlivable, is one of the striking illustrations of the force of this ideal.

More recent still, and perhaps equally important, is the idea of the solidarity of the human race and of the responsibility of each nation towards the rest, especially towards the weaker and more backward peoples. We no longer cheerfully and openly exterminate an inferior people; and, when we do so, it is with some expressions of regret and even of indignation.

But this moral idea is still in process of finding acceptance and illustrates well that process. It has been taught by a few superior minds and none dares openly repudiate it; hence, it gains ground and is now commonly accepted, verbally at least, and is just beginning to affect national action.

The four ideas, liberty, equality, progress, and human solidarity or universal responsibility, seem to be the leading ideas of the present era, the ideas which, in conjunction with national sentiments, are more than any other, fashioning the future of the world.