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 combined result of these three changes is a strong tendency to reverse the operation by which nature has secured the evolution of higher types of mind—namely, by breeding in the main from the higher types in each generation. We see a tendency for the population to be renewed in each generation preponderantly from the mentally inferior elements, those whose outlook hardly extends beyond the immediate future and who have not learnt to demand for themselves and their children favoured positions in the great game of life. The effects of these three changes operate in the following manner. The rate of reproduction, the birth rate, of nearly all civilised countries is falling rapidly (although the death rate also falls). This diminution of rate of reproduction is due to increase of celibacy, abstention from marriage, to increase of late marriage, and to voluntary restriction of the number of the family in marriage.

Now, it is shown statistically that this falling off of fertility chiefly affects the classes above the average of ability, the upper and middle classes and also the superior part of the artisan classes[133]. These classes have been formed and are maintained by the operation of social and economic competition; they have long been, and are still, perpetually recruited in each generation from the lower strata, by the rise into them of the abler members of the lower strata. Hence, economic selection, under our present social system, seems to be working strongly for the mental deterioration of the most highly civilised peoples; the social ladder, becoming more nearly perfect, perpetually drains the mass of a people of its best members, enabling them to rise to the upper strata where they tend to become infertile[134]. Galton and Prof. Karl Pearson have insisted most strongly upon these tendencies. But they have not escaped the notice of continental authors. M. Jacobi[135] has written a large volume packed with historical illustrations to prove inductively the law that aristocracies always die out, or are only maintained by constant recruiting from below, or in other words that aristocracies tend to become infertile. And the modern tendency which we have just now considered under the head of economic selection may be regarded as falling under the head of this law, a case of the extension of the law to democratic communities and the natural aristocracies of ability which are generated in them.

We may perhaps state the principal causes of this tendency in general terms as follows: the acquirement by any class of leisure, culture, and the habit of reflection (the malady of thought) partially emancipates that class from the empire of instinct, custom, and the religious sanctions of morality; and these are the great conservative agencies under the influence of which men not so emancipated continue to multiply according to the law of nature. These instincts, customs, and religious sanctions of morality, which lead men to multiply freely, have been acquired for the good of the race or of the society considered as an organism whose life is of indefinitely long duration; and in some respects they are opposed to the pleasure and welfare of the individual life. The habit of reason and reflection tends to lead men to act for their own immediate welfare, rather than for the future welfare of the race or of society, and to refuse to make those sacrifices of ease and to undertake those responsibilities and efforts which the care of a family imposes and which alone can secure the welfare of the future generations. It is in respect to these duties that the great antagonism between religion and reason appears in its most significant aspect.

The tendency for the upper classes to die out and to be replaced constantly from the lower social strata by the aid of the social ladder is no doubt stronger now than in foregoing ages. But it has always been operative; and this is widely recognised; while the comfortable inference has often been drawn that the process is not only inevitable but actually beneficial and desirable. It is said that the upper classes inevitably become effete, and that the lower constitute an inexhaustible reservoir of mental and moral excellences, from which they are and can be indefinitely renewed; and thus the population is always rising in the social scale, a state of affairs which makes for social happiness.

But, if we take a longer view, the prospect is not so comforting; it seems only too probable that this constant dying away of society at the top and the renewal of the upper strata from the lower, by the agency of the social ladder, must sooner or later result in a serious deterioration of the lower strata, at least in draining it of its best stocks. There is also a return or downward current of less strength, which returns to the lower strata the failures, the incompetents, and the degenerates of the upper. And these two currents must, it would seem, in the course of ages render it impossible for the lower strata to continue to supply the superior elements required to maintain the upper. If and when that stage is reached, national decay must set in.

In England, where the operation of the social ladder has been more effective and of longer duration than in any other country, there are indications that this stage is at hand. Our social ladder has provided and still provides a splendid array of talent, but already it has produced, as its complement, a large mass of very inefficient population. Foreign observers are constantly impressed with this; Mr Collier Price[136], for example, tells us that the million best of our population is the finest in the world; but that our lowest stratum is the most degraded and hopelessly inefficient.

Looking at the course of history widely, we may see, then, in the differentiation of social classes by the social ladder and in the tendency of the upper strata to fail to reproduce themselves, an explanation of the cyclic course of civilisation. This has been ascribed by some authors[137] to race-crossing, followed by blending, and ultimately by stagnation consequent upon complete blending and the flowering period which coincides with it. But we now have a more adequate explanation of the decay which follows upon the blooming period. It is not mere stagnation, resulting from the achievement of social harmony and the relaxation of efforts at social adaptation and achievement of all kinds. The decline is probably due as much, and perhaps in a much higher degree, to the exhaustion of the mass of the population, the completion of the draining process by which, throughout the whole period of the development of the cycle of civilisation, the best elements and strains have been drained off from the lower strata, brought to the top, and strained off.

It is interesting to speculate on the possible effect on this process of the fact that we are becoming more clearly conscious of these tendencies and subjecting them to scientific inquiry. Already the legislature has taken one small step of a eugenic nature and is soon to take another. The important thing is that we should recognise that men are not the helpless sport of blind forces, that mankind can control its own destiny in ever increasing degree as knowledge grows.

A word may be said in regard to sexual selection, which probably played a part in the evolution of the mental capacities of men. It would seem that, in the peoples among whom monogamy is the rule, it no longer operates to any appreciable degree. With the general excess of females, we could suppose that it still tended to race improvement only if the unmarried women were on the whole distinctly inferior to the married. But, if there is any difference, it is probably the other way; because the most able women are more and more attracted into independent careers. The further the so-called emancipation of women goes, the more will this be the case.