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 conditions of moral conduct are, then, so different as to forbid any attempt to compare the innate moral dispositions of primitive and civilised peoples; and all we can do, in order to arrive at an opinion, is to consider whether the conditions have been such as to favour the evolution of the moral disposition, the innate basis of the social tendencies, during the nation-making period.

There can, I think, be no doubt that the principal condition of the evolution of the moral nature was group selection among primitive societies constantly at war with one another. In conflicts of that kind it must have been the solidarity of each group, resting upon the moral dispositions of individuals, the tendency of each individual to conform to the law and moral code of the society and to stand loyally by his leaders and comrades, which, more than anything else, determined success and survival in the struggle of the group for existence. At first, the nature of the code must have been of relatively small importance; the all important condition of survival of the group must have been the strict obedience to it on the part of the members of the group.

This is not a deduction only from general principles. One may observe the effect of tribal conflict, on comparing, in various parts of the world, tribes that have long been subjected to its influence with closely allied tribes that have long led a peaceful existence[142].

At a later stage, as the traditional codes of morality became differentiated and more complex with the increasing complexity of societies, the nature of these codes must have acquired an increasing influence in determining group survival; but it must still have been subordinate in importance to the degree of development of the moral disposition; for a society with an inferior moral code, strictly conformed to by its members, would in the long run have better chances of survival than one with a higher code less strictly observed. Hence, the higher more difficult codes could only be attained by those peoples among whom the instinctive basis of social conduct had become highly evolved by a long process of group selection.

But, on passing into the stage of settled societies of large extent, that is to say, as peoples passed from the stage of tribal organisation to that of national organisation, the evolution of the social disposition through the mortal conflict of groups must have tended to come to an end; because group selection became less active, the conflicts between the larger and less numerous societies or groups became rarer and also less fatal to the vanquished societies. In other words, during the historic period failure in conflict has not usually meant extermination; national cultures and the power and glory of nations have come and gone, but the various peoples, the units of conflict, have in the main survived their failures and persisted in living. Group selection, the main condition of evolution of the social disposition, has, therefore, been abolished; and of the various forms of social selection operating within societies, the chief of which we have briefly noticed, no one seems to have been of a nature to produce further evolution of the social disposition; all of them must rather have operated adversely to it. Military selection, selection by the Church’s rule of celibacy, political selection—all these must have fallen most heavily on the individuals in whom the social disposition was strong, whose conduct was influenced largely by the sense of duty, and less by the individual impulses and desires.

We may conclude, then, with some confidence that there has not been further evolution of the innate moral disposition in the historic period. This conclusion is greatly at variance with popular conceptions; we are apt to pride ourselves upon our superior morality; to point to our humanitarian laws and institutions, to our tenderness for the weak, the poor, and the suffering; to our regard even for the welfare of savage peoples, whom we no longer deliberately exterminate, and for domestic animals; and to suppose that all this shows modern civilised men to be innately superior in morality to their ancestors and to the barbarous peoples. But our conclusion that the difference implies merely an evolution of moral tradition, not of moral nature, will appear probable if we reflect upon the fact that a widespread change of this kind in respect to some department of conduct has sometimes been produced within a very short space of time, even within the lifetime of one generation. Take the attitude of Englishmen towards slavery and the African slave trade. It is hardly more than half a century since large numbers of Englishmen, or men of English origin, owned great gangs of slaves or drew their wealth from slave labour; yet now most of us look with horror upon slavery of every kind. Take the case of kindness to domestic animals. It is a comparatively recent tradition; and, within the memories of those who are not yet middle-aged, a great improvement has taken place. Again, there are many persons who, while tender to their domestic animals, are entirely brutal where wild animals are concerned, since public opinion or traditional morality does not yet bear so strongly upon our relations to them. Again, it is not long since in our factories, our prisons, our schools, the most horrible tortures were applied to our fellow citizens without provoking any protest; while now we display perhaps an excessive tenderness and have passed law after law to protect the feeble against the strong.

The mental development of peoples in the historic period has, therefore, not consisted in, nor been caused by, nor in all probability has it been accompanied by, any appreciable evolution of innate intellectual or moral capacities beyond the degrees achieved in the race-making period, before the modern nations began to take shape. There is no reason to think that we are intellectually or morally superior by nature to our savage ancestors. Such superiority of morals and intellectual power as we enjoy has resulted from the improvement and extension of the intellectual and moral traditions and the accompanying evolution of social organisation.

A different conclusion was reached by the late Benjamin Kidd in his Social Evolution, which has enjoyed a very wide circulation[143], and it seems worth while therefore to examine very briefly the author’s position. Mr Kidd saw clearly and argued convincingly that the innate intellectual capacities have not improved during the historic period; but he held that the innate moral tendencies have been greatly improved during this period; or rather he distinguished between the innate moral tendencies and the innate religious tendencies; and, while rejecting Herbert Spencer’s view that the moral tendencies (as thus arbitrarily distinguished from the religious tendencies) are slowly becoming improved and strengthened in the civilised peoples, he held that the innate religious tendencies are being greatly improved and strengthened; and he regarded this as the underlying condition of all ‘social evolution.’ In support of his view he cited an impressive array of facts illustrating the general softening of manners and morals among the civilised peoples, especially the legislative changes which have given political power to the masses of the people. That these evidences of a general softening of manners and a great extension of social sympathy are very striking we must all agree; but Kidd advanced no serious argument in favour of his contention that these changes have been due to some change or improvement of the innate qualities of the peoples among whom they have appeared. And he did not suggest any way in which this alleged improvement or accentuation of the innate religious tendencies may have been brought about. He attributed it wholly to the influence of the Christian religion. Now, if Kidd had accepted the Lamarckian principle of the transmission of acquired tendencies or effects of use and habit, he might reasonably have attributed the alleged improvement to such influence. But he sternly rejected that principle and proclaimed himself a rigid exponent of the Neo-Darwinian school, which attributes all racial changes to selection. He even assumed the truth of the doctrine that, in the absence of selective processes making for its improvement, every race must inevitably degenerate. It might, then, have been expected that he would have attempted to show how Christianity can be supposed to have favoured the improvement by selection of the innate religious tendencies. Yet he made no attempt in this direction. He seems to have been aware that his view encounters a great difficulty in the fact that Christianity powerfully swayed the peoples of Europe for many centuries during which little or no progress in civilisation was effected, whereas rapid and accelerating progress of many kinds has marked the last three centuries. He sought to meet this difficulty by attributing the rapid progress of recent centuries to the influence of the Protestant form of Christianity, alleging that it promotes the evolution of the religious tendencies more powerfully than other forms. Yet this view of the matter, even if it were acceptable, would leave the Reformation itself quite unexplained. Kidd seems to hint that, throughout the earlier centuries of the dominance of the Christian religion in Europe, it was slowly effecting the alleged improvement of the religious tendencies in the mass of the people, without these being able to manifest themselves in social life, until they somehow broke loose at the time of the Reformation and began for the first time to operate on a great scale and with tremendous force. The view might have some plausibility coming from the mouth of a disciple of Lamarck, but it cannot be reconciled with Kidd’s strictly Neo-Darwinian principles. There is, then, nothing in Kidd’s grandiloquent and loosely reasoned, but always interesting pages, to justify any belief in the improvement of the innate moral disposition during the historic period[144].

Before leaving this difficult question of the extent and nature of changes in the innate qualities of peoples during the historic period, I would define in the following way the position that seems to me to be well founded. There have been no considerable changes of innate qualities; and what changes have occurred have probably been of the nature of retrogression, rather than of advance or improvement; and this is true of both intellectual and moral qualities. The improvements of civilised peoples are wholly improvements of the intellectual and moral traditions. All the great and obvious changes of social life are in the main changes of these traditions. Nevertheless, such differences of innate qualities as exist between the different peoples are very important, because of their cumulative influence upon their traditions. And, especially, the innate superiorities of the leading peoples, though relatively small, are of essential significance; and it is of the first importance for the future prosperity of the great nations of the present time that they should not suffer any deterioration of their innate qualities; for they alone have attained just such a level of innate excellence as renders possible the existence of civilisation and the growth and continued progress of great nations. Especially is it essential that they should continue to produce in large numbers those persons of exceptional moral and intellectual endowments, whose influence alone can maintain the vitality of the national traditions and who alone can add anything of value to them.