The caste system is thus one which permits of great differentiation and specialisation of pursuits, without any weakening of the conservative forces of society. It is for that reason presumably that the social organisation of all early civilisations tended to this form. It was the most easily attained form which combined diversity with stability sufficiently to permit of the formation of a large society or nation; and it was one which made for military efficiency. It formed, therefore, a natural stage of social evolution.
In so far as the caste system still survives, it owes its survival to the continuance of the need of the State for military efficiency. And we see how its maintenance is still only rendered possible by its alliance with a State religion and its system of religious sanctions. In Russia, for example, the caste system was thus maintained by the alliance of the military power with the religious system. While we see how in modern Germany the attempt to maintain the caste system and the supremacy of the State over the rights and liberties of individuals is breaking down, as the religious sanctions are losing their hold upon the people. Social democracy, secularism, and the demand for liberty go hand in hand[148].
It is clear, then, that the caste system tends to produce a stable society and to prevent progress; and that, in proportion as it gives way to liberty and equality of all men, both legal and customary, and to the recognition of the rights of individuals as against the State, progress must be favoured.
In yet another way (perhaps more important than any other) the abolition of caste may favour development. In an earlier chapter I pointed out how every step in the development of the intellectual or the moral tradition of a people is initiated by some person of exceptional intellectual or moral power. I pointed out also how the existence of a hierarchy of social classes which are not exclusive castes, together with the operation of the social ladder by means of which individuals and families are enabled to climb up and down the social scale, tend to the segregation of ability in the classes of the upper part of the scale. They tend, in short, to produce classes capable of producing in each generation a relatively large number of persons of more than average capacities. Or, in other words, they lead to the concentration and mutual enrichment of the strains of exceptional capacity; they concentrate the best capacities of the people in a relatively small number of individuals of the favoured classes. And abilities so concentrated and raised in a certain proportion of individuals to a higher power will be more favourable in every way to the growth of the national mind than the same sum of abilities more evenly diffused throughout the population. At present it is impossible to say how far this segregation of abilities has gone, and what part it has played in forwarding the mental development of any nation. But that it has played some part, perhaps a very important one in some instances, can hardly be doubted[149].
In Europe the feudal system served to tide over the period of transition from the ancient social organisation founded on caste and the supremacy of the politico-religious State to the modern system, the transition from the system founded on status and regulated by custom to the system founded upon equality and liberty and regulated by contract. For the feudal system, although still more or less a caste system, was nevertheless founded to some extent on contract. The tenure of land involved a contract to perform services in return; and such contract was the essence of the feudal system.
But it was not until the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when the feudal system was finally broken up and the Reformation initiated the age of religious tolerance, that the modern system substantially replaced the ancient system, and the age of rapid progress set in.
In proportion as the change was achieved, the powers of all men were set free in an unfettered competition such as had never before been possible. Independence of thought and action, free discussion of all principles, and the recognition of the relativity of all truths, succeeded to unquestioning subservience to ancient formulas and customs. Each man became comparatively free to follow his natural bent, to develop his best powers to the utmost, and to secure by the exercise of those powers the maximum of social consideration and of well-being, unfettered by arbitrary restrictions, civil or ecclesiastical. I think we may fairly say that the modern pragmatic or humanistic movement in philosophy, in the midst of which we are living, represents the final stage of this emancipation of man from the bonds which he has created for himself.
We have seen, then, that the modern system of social organisation does not make for the racial progress of a whole people, but probably, up to the present time, for race-deterioration; nevertheless, it certainly makes for progress of the intellectual and moral traditions of peoples; and we can now see in what way it makes for progress. The improvement of racial qualities by natural selection of the innately superior individuals has been brought to an end; the mortal conflict of societies has also practically been abolished as a factor of race progress, as also of collective or social progress. These have been replaced by a new form of struggle for existence and of selection—namely, the rivalry and competition of ideas and of the institutions in which ideas become embodied, and the selection for survival of those ideas and institutions which are found, under the tests of practice and experience, most accordant with the truth and, therefore, best adapted to promote the welfare of societies and of their members[150].
And this process of survival of the fittest and elimination of the unfit among ideas and institutions takes place not only within nations, but has also international scope. The members of each nation no longer, as of old, regard all foreigners as their natural enemies, no longer despise their institutions and reject their ideas with scorn. They are ready to learn from others, to let the ideas current among other peoples enter into competition with native-born ideas; and so the number and variety of competing elements increases and the intensity of the competition waxes ever keener. Every idea that constitutes an important advance in our intellectual outlook or in our practical command over nature rapidly finds acceptance throughout the civilised world and displaces some less true idea, some less appropriate institution, some less effective mode of action.
Two great conditions, making for continued improvement of the moral and intellectual traditions, characterise, then, Western civilisation. First, within each nation there is going on the process of emancipation of all human faculties, so that they enter into the freest possible competition with one another on a footing of equality; this process, although now far advanced in all the leading nations, is still being carried further, and the whole trend of modern legislation is to confirm the change and hasten it to its completion[151]. Secondly, there is a circle of peoples whose ideas are thrown into the arena of rivalry, to suffer extinction or to gain universal acceptance. This circle also is constantly widening by the inclusion of peoples hitherto outside it; and each new admission, as of Japan in recent years, is a new stimulus to the further evolution of the collective mind of each nation concerned. Both these conditions depend upon improved social organisation.