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

First, variability is the essential condition of all race progress by biological adaptation; for it is by the selection of variations, the survival and multiplication of types varying in certain directions in larger proportions than the average type, that all race progress and adaptation seems to have been achieved. Hence, increased variability, resulting from the blending of races, will render a people so formed capable of race progress and of more rapid adaptation; for example, in the peoples of Northern Europe it would have favoured the adaptation of the constitutions of the people to the severity of the climate and to those peculiar social conditions which, as we have seen reason to believe, have been the source of their unique combination of qualities.

Secondly, variability of mental qualities would be favourable to the coming of the age of discussion; for in such a people custom would rule with less force, its sway would be more apt to be questioned and disputed, than among a highly homogeneous people.

Thirdly, and this is probably the most important manner in which race blending has favoured the progress of nations, among the variations from the average type produced by race crossing would be men of exceptional capacities in various directions.

We have already noted that all progress of the intellectual and moral traditions eventually depends upon the activities of men of exceptional powers of various kinds, upon the great religious or ethical teacher, the inventor, the artist, the discoverer. A people may, like the Chinese, have a high average capacity of intellectual ability; but, if it cannot from time to time produce men of far more than average capacity along various lines, it will not progress very far spontaneously. Exceptional intellectual capacity is, however, a variation from the type, as the biologists say, just such as may be expected to result from race blending; there will be, among the variations in all directions, variations in the direction of exceptional capacity of various kinds. Hence a nation of blended variable stocks will, other things being the same, be far more likely to be capable of continued evolution than a homogeneous people of equal average mental capacity, among whom few men are capable of rising to any distinguished height.

This view of the effects of race blending is borne out empirically by the comparison of the peoples of the world. The European peoples have been the most progressive, and they, more than all others, have been formed by repeated blendings of allied stocks. Within Europe it is the peoples among whom this blending has been carried furthest who have proved most progressive—the French, the English, and the Italian; and, conversely, the least blended peoples have been the most backward, and have contributed least to the general progress of civilisation in Europe; for example the large, almost purely Slav, population which forms the bulk of the Russian nation.

We pass on to consider other conditions which have contributed to setting free and stimulating the spirit of inquiry. We have seen that physical environment played a predominant part in moulding the mental qualities of races in the prehistoric period. And we must recognise that, although with the beginning of settled national life it probably ceased to modify race-qualities to any considerable extent, it has yet been important in favouring the rapid evolution of the intellectual tradition of some peoples, and this in several ways. First, by its direct influence upon the minds of individuals. Buckle and others have pointed out that, while, in India and throughout a great part of Asia, the physical environment was unfavourable to intellectual progress, while its vast and terrible aspects fertilised the superstition of the people, and repressed the spirit of inquiry by rendering hopeless any attempt to cope with its terrific displays of force, in Europe and especially in South and Western Europe, the comparatively small scale on which the physical features are planned and the relative feebleness of the forces of nature encouraged men to adopt a bolder attitude towards them.

Buckle, contrasting Greece with India in this respect, showed how the physical features of both countries were reflected in their national cultures; how, while the Hindus cringed in fear before monstrous and cruel gods, the Greeks fashioned their gods in their own image, simply personifying each leading human attribute, and made of them a genial family of beings, differing from men and women in little but their immortality and their superior facilities for the enjoyment of life. In general the buoyancy and serenity of the Greek attitude towards life and nature reflected the beautiful, secure and diversified aspects of their physical environment. In such an atmosphere the spirit of inquiry would naturally flourish more freely than where man’s spirit was oppressed by the fear of terrible and uncontrollable forces and where he was made to feel too keenly the limitations of his mental and physical powers. Buckle summed up his review of these effects as follows:—“In the civilisations exterior to Europe, all nature conspired to increase the authority of the imaginative faculties and to weaken the authority of the reasoning ones. In Europe has operated a law the reverse of this, by virtue of which the tendency of natural phenomena is, on the whole, to limit the imagination, and embolden the understanding; thus inspiring man with confidence in his own resources, and facilitating the increase of his knowledge, by encouraging that bold, inquisitive and scientific spirit, which is constantly advancing and on which all future progress must depend.”

I think we must accept this view of the importance of the direct action of physical environment on the minds of individuals. To deny, as Hegel did, the important influence of physical environment upon the development of Greek culture, because the Turks have enjoyed a similar climate without producing a similar culture, is unreasonable. The progress of civilisation has always been the result of a multiplicity of causes and conditions; and we cannot deny all importance to any one, whether race or climate or social organisation or religion or any other, because in some particular instance it has failed to produce the progress of which in other instances it has been one of a number of co-operating causes.

The diversity and small scale of the physical features of South and Western Europe has favoured the progress of the intellectual tradition in another important way. The land is divided by natural barriers into a number of natural territories, the population of each of which has naturally tended to become one nation and to develop a national culture. In this way there arose a number of nations and States in close proximity with one another, yet each developing along its own lines. When the development of wealth and commerce brought these diversified cultures into friendly intercourse with one another, the exchange of ideas and the general imitation of the useful arts of one people by its neighbours must have made very strongly for progress; the culture of each of a group of neighbouring peoples no longer progressed only by the addition of the ideas and inventions of its own exceptional intellects, but each group had the opportunity of selecting and imitatively adopting whatever seemed to them best among the ideas, the arts and inventions of the neighbouring peoples.

It is generally admitted that this was one of the main conditions of the rapid development of the culture of the ancient Greeks, situated as they were within easy reach of several of the oldest civilisations, those of Egypt and of South-Eastern Asia; they were also within reach of a number of less civilised peoples, and therefore enjoyed opportunities for trade of a kind which, being peculiarly lucrative, has in all ages hastened the acquisition of wealth and capital and stimulated the development of commerce. All the most progressive European peoples have enjoyed similar advantages; and it has been maintained with some plausibility that the principal cause of the shifting of the centre of progressive civilisation from the Eastern Mediterranean to the west of Europe has been the improvement of the art of navigation and the discovery of the New World and of the sea route to Asia and the East Indies; for these gave the western countries the most advantageous positions for the conduct of a world wide commerce. No doubt the factor mentioned has been important in producing this change.