Such peoples have failed to acquire the energy which leads men to delight in activity for its own sake, not merely because a hot moist climate inclines directly to indolence, but rather because the prime necessities of life are to be had almost without labour; the heat dispenses with the necessity for clothing and shelter, while the hot sun and the moisture provide an abundance of vegetable food in response to a minimum of labour. Hence, no man perishes through lack of energy to secure the prime necessities of life; and there has been no great weeding out of the indolent by severe conditions of life, such as alone can produce an innately energetic race, one that loves activity for its own sake. For the same reason these same peoples also exercise but little foresight, they are naturally improvident; the abundance of nature renders it possible to survive and propagate without any prudent provision for the future.
Contrast with these races the northerly races—in Asia the Japanese, whose energy and industry we all recognise, and the northern Mongols or Tartars, who have so often overrun and conquered with fire and sword the less energetic peoples of the south, or the Goorkhas or Pathans of the highlands of northern India. But more especially contrast with them the English people. M. Boutmy rightly asserts that “the taste for and the habit of effort must be regarded as the most essential attribute, the profound and spontaneous quality, of the race[112].” It is displayed in the English love of sport and adventure and travel, especially in such recreations as mountain climbing, which is pre-eminently an English sport; also throughout our social life, in the intensity of commercial and industrial activity, often carried on ardently by men far removed from any necessity of making money. In our political life, where a vast amount of effort is constantly expended in achieving comparatively small results, we always seem to prefer to achieve any reform by the methods which give scope to and demand the greatest amount of public activity and effort. It is shewn also in the immense amount of public service rendered without remuneration, for the mere love of activity and the exercise of power. It is very striking in English colonies in tropical lands, and has been no doubt an important factor in our success in tropical administration and in colonisation.
Boutmy is inclined to attribute to this love of activity, as a secondary effect, the dislike of the mass of Englishmen for generalisations and for theoretical construction; for, he says, these are the results naturally achieved by the reflective mind, whereas the English mind gets no time for reflection, its attention is perpetually drawn off from general principles by its tendency to pursue some immediate practical end. Hence, he says, abstraction is subordinated to practical ends and does not soar for its own sake. This truth is well illustrated by the fact that all our English philosophers, Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, Mill, Bentham, Spencer, etc., have been practical moralists, and have conducted their investigations always with an eye to concrete applications to the conduct of the State or of private life.
Boutmy regards this love of activity, together with foresight and self-control, as racial qualities engendered by the severity of the climate, working chiefly by way of natural selection. In the prehistoric period more especially, when man had little knowledge of means of protection from climate and hardship such as have been developed by civilised societies, those individuals who were deficient in these qualities must have succumbed to the rigours of the climate, leaving their more energetic fellows to propagate the race.
That there is truth in the view is shown by the fact that the degree to which the love of activity is developed seems to vary roughly with the severity of the climate even among the closely allied races of Europe. As we pass northward from the coast of the Mediterranean, we find the quality more and more strongly marked; and it is in accordance with this principle that the dominant power, the leadership in civilisation, has passed gradually northwards in the historic period. Civilisation first developed in the sub-tropical regions, in which the abundance of nature first gave men leisure to devote themselves to things of the mind, to contemplation and inquiry; while the northern races were still battling as savages against the inclemency of the climate, were still being ruthlessly weeded out by the rigorousness of the physical environment, and so were being adapted to it, that is to say, were being rendered capable of sustained and vigorous effort. But, as the means of subduing nature and of protecting himself against nature have been developed by man, the dominance has passed successively northwards to peoples whose innate energy and love of activity were more highly developed in proportion to the severity of the selection exerted upon many preceding generations.
The severe climate has not been the only cause of this evolution of an energetic active type. No doubt military selection played its part also. The Northern races of Europe, more particularly the Nordic, the fair-haired long-headed race, underwent a prolonged and severe process of such military group selection, before branches of it settled in our island; and, among the qualities which must have tended to success and survival in this process, energy and capacity for prolonged and frequent effort, especially bodily effort, must have been one of the chief. Still, even such group selection was probably a secondary result of the direct climatic selection; for it must have been the love of activity and enterprise that led these peoples perpetually to wander, and so to come into conflicts with one another, conflicts in which the more energetic would in the main survive and the less energetic succumb. In part also it must have been determined in the third and the most indirect manner in which physical environment shapes racial qualities—namely, by determining occupations and modes of life, and through these the forms of social organisation, both of which then react upon the racial qualities.
In illustration of this third mode of action of physical conditions, let us take a striking difference of mental quality between the French and the English peoples, and inquire how the difference has arisen; a difference which is recognised by every capable observer who has compared the two peoples and which has been of immense importance in shaping the history of the modern world. I mean the greater sociability of the French and the greater independence of the English, a greater self-reliance and capacity for individual initiative. The difference finds expression in every aspect of the national life of the two peoples. The sociability and sympathetic character of the French, on which they justly pride themselves[113], is the inverse aspect of their lack of the characteristic English qualities, independence and self-reliance. In political life the difference appears in the centralised organisation of the French nation, every detail of administration being controlled by the central power through a rigidly organised hierarchy of officials, in a way that leaves no scope for initiative and independence in local administrations. Connected with this is the almost universal desire of educated men to become state functionaries, parts of the official machinery of administration, and the consequent excessive growth of this class of persons.
The same quality of the French shows itself in the tendency to prefer the monarchical rule of any man who shows himself capable of ruling, a tendency which constantly besets the republican State with a well-recognised danger. These are not local and temporary manifestations, but have characterised the French nation throughout the whole period of its existence. In the feudal period which preceded its formation, there was considerable local independence; but the feudal system was due to the dominant influence of Frankish chiefs, of the same race as our Saxon forefathers, who overran most of France as a ruling caste, but did not contribute any large element to the population, and whose blood therefore has been largely swamped. It appears in the greater violence among the French people of collective mental processes, those of mobs, assemblies, factions, and groups of all kinds. Each individual is easily carried away by the mass; there are none to withstand the wave of contagion and, by so doing, to break and check its force.
In England on the other hand political activity has always been characterised by extreme jealousy of the central power, and by the tendency to achieve everything possible by local action and voluntary private effort. All reforms are initiated from the periphery, instead of from the centre as in France. Great institutions, the universities, schools, colleges, hospitals, railways, canals, docks, insurance companies, even water supplies and telephones and many other things which, it would seem, should naturally and properly be undertaken by the State, or other official public body, have been generally set on foot and worked by individuals or private associations of individuals. Even vast colonial empires—India, Rhodesia, Canada, Sarawak, Nigeria, North Borneo—have been in the main acquired through the enterprise and efforts of individuals or associations of individuals; the State only intervening when the main work has been accomplished.
In their religion, too, the English are markedly individualistic; our numerous dissenting bodies have mostly dispensed with the centralised official hierarchy which in Roman Catholic countries mediates between God and man, and have insisted upon a direct communion with God; and we have many little churches each of which governs itself in absolute independence of every other. In the family relations the same difference appears very strongly. The French family regards itself, and is regarded by law, as a community which holds its goods in common; each child has his legal claim upon his share, relies upon his family for support in his struggle with the world, and is encouraged by his parents to do so. In the English family, on the other hand, the father is a supreme despot, who disposes of his property as he wills. The children are not encouraged to look for further support, when once they become adult, but are taught that they must go out into the world to seek their fortunes unaided. At an early age, the English boy is usually thrust out of the family into the life of a school in which, by his own efforts, he must find and keep his position among his fellows; and he lives a life which, compared with that of the French boy, is one of freedom and independence. In the distribution of the people on the land we see the same difference of mental qualities revealed. The French peasants are for the most part congregated sociably in villages and small towns; the English farmer builds his homestead apart upon his own domain. And this determines one of the most striking differences in the aspect of the rural districts of both countries. In the towns also the same tendencies are clearly shown; in the separate little homes of the English and in the large houses of the French shared by several families.