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 wars between Sparta and Athens were the most destructive and tragic of all in this respect. We know that the numbers of Spartans of the aristocratic class, never very large, became fewer and fewer, in spite of efforts made to keep up the number by admitting to citizenship persons not of pure Spartan blood; and that Sparta was eventually destroyed simply for lack of men, men of the ruling class[122].

In Athens and other states the depleting agencies were more numerous. Frequent wars played the same part as in Sparta; and the number of free men was further diminished by the repeated founding of colonies, in which a relatively small number of persons of Greek blood became swallowed up in a large population of mixed and inferior origin. In some states, in Athens especially, the political conditions worked powerfully in the same direction. Prominent citizens were perpetually exiled or condemned to death, sometimes in considerable batches. It is said that at certain times two-thirds of the citizens of certain states were living in exile; and the exiles, going to the colonies or other foreign lands, were for the most part lost to the Greek people.

Then, with the blooming period of Greek intellect, came the loss of the ancient religious beliefs, beliefs which had strengthened the family and made each man anxious to have many sons that the rites might be duly performed for the repose of his shade. Coinciding with this was the great increase of luxury which made large families too expensive, save for the most wealthy; while at the same time the abundance of slave labour kept down the rate of remuneration of all handicrafts, and so condemned the class of free Greek artisans to a state bordering on poverty. Hence, the free citizens of pure blood, already largely reduced in numbers, ceased to multiply; and the number of the citizens was only sustained by the admission to citizenship of foreigners, freed slaves, and various elements of different and inferior racial origins.

Hence, at the time that the battle of Chersonese was fought and the Macedonians attained the supremacy, the Greek citizens were no longer the same racial aristocracy which had produced the finest flowers of Greek culture. But the work of substitution was still only partially accomplished. In the time of the Roman domination of Greece, the remnants of the true Greek aristocracy were removed by the slave trade. Tens of thousands of Greeks of all classes were brought together to the slave markets; while those men of talent who escaped that fate emigrated to Rome to seek their fortunes by teaching the Greek language and art and philosophy. Later still came the Goths, who sacked the towns and destroyed or drove out the inhabitants. Then followed successive invasions of Slavs from the north; and lastly, the domination of the Turk well-nigh completed the extinction of the old aristocracy.

The modern Greek people is descended largely from Slav invaders and largely from the numerous and prolific slave population of the great age of Greece, but hardly at all from the men who made the greatness of that age.

Though the change and deterioration of the racial mental qualities of the Greek people by racial substitution is the most striking example in history, it is by no means the only one[123].

The substitution in that case was largely by elements drawn from other regions and peoples. But a similar substitution and consequent change of innate mental qualities may go on slowly within any people which has been formed, as have almost all the present European nations, by an incomplete blending of two or more racial stocks; it may be effected by internal selection without any introduction of new elements from any other region. Before considering an example of the process, let us note certain facts which show that there may well have taken place, throughout the historic period, changes of the composition of peoples by internal substitution or changes of the mental constitution by internal selections—that is to say, by the more rapid multiplication of certain mental types and the relative infertility of other types. Consider first the striking fact that the populations of the various European countries seem for the most part to have remained almost stationary as regards numbers, or even in some cases to have diminished greatly in numbers, throughout the period between the Roman domination and the later part of the eighteenth century. The population of Spain is said to have declined from forty millions under the Roman rule to only six millions in the year 1700 A.D. The population of Great Britain is said to have increased from five millions to six millions only during the seventeenth century; and it is certain that in the main it had increased at an even slower rate, or not at all, in the preceding centuries since the Norman Conquest; whereas in the nineteenth century it increased from thirteen millions to nearly forty millions; that is to say, it trebled itself in the century; and even that rate of increase is considerably less than the possible maximal rate.

The same is roughly true for most of the European countries; their populations, throughout great stretches of the historic period, remained stationary or increased only very slowly. Now when, during any period, a population does not multiply at the maximal physiological rate, changes of its character may well be taking place; for, in proportion as the rate of increase falls below the maximal, there is a lack of fertility in the population or in some part of it; if this relative infertility affects equally all parts and classes of the population, it will produce no change of its composition; but if it is selective, if for any reason it affects one class, or persons of some one kind of temperament or mental type, more than others, then this class or this temperament or this form of ability tends rapidly to diminish and to disappear from among that people.

The causes of the relative infertility may be divided into two classes: (1) those which operate by killing persons before they have completed their middle life; (2) those which restrict fertility without killing. Both may be selective in their action. The former kind is alone operative in determining evolution in the animal world and probably also among the less civilised peoples; but, as civilisation advances, the causes of infertility of the other kind increase constantly in effectiveness, while the former operate with less and less intensity. It is through the causes which diminish fertility merely, rather than exterminate individuals, that changes of racial quality of nations are now being, and in the future will be, principally determined. Selection of this kind is usually distinguished from the various modes of natural selection which work by extermination, by the name ‘reproductive selection.’ Briefly, natural selection operates by means of selective death rate, reproductive selection by means of selective birth rate.