CHAPTER XIX
THE PROGRESS OF NATIONS IN THEIR YOUTH
We have found reason to believe that during the historic period the peoples of Europe have made no progress in innate qualities, moral or intellectual; yet that period has been characterised by immense mental development, a development essentially of the collective mind. The most striking result of the formation of nations and the development of civilisation has been this replacement of the progress of the individual mind by the progress of the collective national mind. And the most interesting and important problem of group psychology is—What are the conditions of the progressive development of the collective mind?
I insist that this is distinctly and primarily a psychological problem. The conclusion we have just reached, to the effect that it is not produced by and does not imply a racial evolution, shows that it is not to be regarded as a biological problem. It cannot be treated as a problem of economics or of politics; these sciences only touch its fringe at special points.
We have before us the significant fact that in some cases the collective mind of a nation has remained stationary at a rudimentary stage of development for long ages; while in other nations the collective mind has developed at a constantly accelerating rate, becoming more highly differentiated and specialised and at the same time more highly integrated, has in fact developed in a way closely analogous to the evolution of the individual mind. The collective mind, in thus developing, reacts upon the development of individual minds, raising all far above the level they could independently attain and some in each generation to a very high level both intellectually and morally.
The merest outline of a discussion of this great problem is alone possible. I can do no more than offer some suggestions toward the full solution of it. Let us note, first, that continued progress, far from being the rule, as is commonly assumed by popular writers, has been a rare exception, as Sir H. Maine pointed out in Ancient Law. He wrote—“In spite of overwhelming evidence, it is most difficult for a citizen of Western Europe to bring thoroughly home to himself the truth that the civilisation which surrounds him is a rare exception in the history of the world.” “It is indisputable that much the greatest part of mankind has never shown a particle of desire that its civil institutions should be improved, since the moment when external completeness was first given to their embodiment in some permanent record. Except in a small section of the world, there has been nothing like the gradual amelioration of a legal system.” And what is true of systems of law is true of all the other elements of the intellectual and moral tradition which constitute a civilisation or national culture.
Sir H. Maine added—“The difference between the stationary and progressive societies is, however, one of the great secrets which inquiry has yet to penetrate.” His own contribution, which he regarded as a partial solution only, was that the difference depends in part upon the period at which the customs of a people become codified in written law. If, as the tribes of a people become settled and enter upon a national existence, there is no written code of law and custom, customs, he urged, which at their origin were socially advantageous tend to become extended by analogy to other fields of practice and to assume an excessive and senseless rigour; for example, the custom of cleanliness becomes the exceedingly elaborate ritual of purification, which among the Hindus limits and restrains social life at every point. Or a useful distinction of classes becomes a rigid caste system, than which nothing is more prejudicial to progress, intellectual or moral. The continuation of the process of extension by analogy through long ages has resulted in nearly all the uncivilised and less civilised peoples of the modern world being bound down on every hand by a system of rigid and worse than useless customs, which, restricting both thought and action, render progress impossible. On the other hand, early codification of custom in a system of written laws secures that thereafter custom shall not develop in this blind unintelligent and socially prejudicial manner, but shall be developed only by deliberate intention and the reasoned fore-thought of the ruling powers of society; it will then develop in the main, in spite of many mistakes, in a way which promotes the efficiency of social life and the welfare of society.
Maine’s suggestion is in harmony with the fact that the progressive peoples have not been those who invented or learnt the art of writing at an early period. Writing and the written codification of customary law could not be invented by any people until they had attained to a settled life and a considerable degree of social organisation; and then, when the invention was worked out sufficiently, the damage had been done, socially advantageous customs had already degenerated into useless rites and ceremonial observances; and writing served only to establish these more firmly, to fix their yoke upon the necks of the people, as in the case of the Hindus.