{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_4350/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_4350","id":"gutenberg_4350","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4350","summary":null,"tags":["Category: History - Other","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Politics","Category: Science - Biology","Evolution","Nationalism","Political science"],"text":"Produced by Steve Harris, Charles Franks and the Online\nDistributed Proofreading Team. HTML version by Al Haines.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nPHYSICS AND POLITICS\n\n\nOR THOUGHTS ON THE APPLICATION OF THE PRINCIPLES OF 'NATURAL SELECTION'\nAND 'INHERITANCE' TO POLITICAL SOCIETY\n\nBY WALTER BAGEHOT\n\n\nNEW AND CHEAPER EDITION (also published in the International Scientific\nSeries, crown 8vo. 5s.)\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS.\n\n   I.  THE PRELIMINARY AGE\n  II.  THE USE OF CONFLICT\n III.  NATION-MAKING\n  IV.  NATION-MAKING\n   V.  THE AGE OF DISCUSSION\n  VI.  VERIFIABLE PROGRESS POLITICALLY CONSIDERED\n\n\n\n\nNO. I.\n\nTHE PRELIMINARY AGE.\n\nOne peculiarity of this age is the sudden acquisition of much physical\nknowledge. There is scarcely a department of science or art which is\nthe same, or at all the same, as it was fifty years ago. A new world of\ninventions--of railways and of telegraphs--has grown up around us which\nwe cannot help seeing; a new world of ideas is in the air and affects\nus, though we do not see it. A full estimate of these effects would\nrequire a great book, and I am sure I could not write it; but I think I\nmay usefully, in a few papers, show how, upon one or two great points,\nthe new ideas are modifying two old sciences--politics and political\neconomy. Even upon these points my ideas must be incomplete, for the\nsubject is novel; but, at any rate, I may suggest some conclusions, and\nso show what is requisite even if I do not supply it.\n\nIf we wanted to describe one of the most marked results, perhaps the\nmost marked result, of late thought, we should say that by it\neverything is made 'an antiquity.' When, in former times; our ancestors\nthought of an antiquarian, they described him as occupied with coins,\nand medals, and Druids' stones; these were then the characteristic\nrecords of the decipherable past, and it was with these that\ndecipherers busied themselves. But now there are other relics; indeed,\nall matter is become such. Science tries to find in each bit of earth\nthe record of the causes which made it precisely what it is; those\nforces have left their trace, she knows, as much as the tact and hand\nof the artist left their mark on a classical gem. It would be tedious\n(and it is not in my way) to reckon up the ingenious questionings by\nwhich geology has made part of the earth, at least, tell part of its\ntale; and the answers would have been meaningless if physiology and\nconchology and a hundred similar sciences had not brought their aid.\nSuch subsidiary sciences are to the decipherer of the present day what\nold languages were to the antiquary of other days; they construe for\nhim the words which he discovers, they give a richness and a truth-like\ncomplexity to the picture which he paints, even in cases where the\nparticular detail they tell is not much. But what here concerns me is\nthat man himself has, to the eye of science, become 'an antiquity.' She\ntries to read, is beginning to read, knows she ought to read, in the\nframe of each man the result of a whole history of all his life, of\nwhat he is and what makes him so,--of all his fore-fathers, of what\nthey were and of what made them so. Each nerve has a sort of memory of\nits past life, is trained or not trained, dulled or quickened, as the\ncase may be; each feature is shaped and characterised, or left loose\nand meaningless, as may happen; each hand is marked with its trade and\nlife, subdued to what it works in;--IF WE COULD BUT SEE IT.\n\nIt may be answered that in this there is nothing new; that we always\nknew how much a man's past modified a man's future; that we all knew\nhow much, a man is apt to be like his ancestors; that the existence of\nnational character is the greatest commonplace in the world; that when\na philosopher cannot account for anything in any other manner, he\nboldly ascribes it to an occult quality in some race. But what physical\nscience does is, not to discover the hereditary element, but to render\nit distinct,--to give us an accurate conception of what we may expect,\nand a good account of the evidence by which we are led to expect it.\nLet us see what that science teaches on the subject; and, as far as may\nbe, I will give it in the words of those who have made it a\nprofessional study, both that I may be more sure to state it rightly\nand vividly, and because--as I am about to apply these principles to\nsubjects which are my own pursuit--I would rather have it quite clear\nthat I have not made my premises to suit my own conclusions.\n\n1st, then, as respects the individual, we learn as follows: 'Even while\nthe cerebral hemispheres are entire, and in full possession of their\npowers, the brain gives rise to actions which are as completely reflex\nas those of the spinal cord.\n\n'When the eyelids wink at a flash of light, or a threatened blow, a\nreflex action takes place, in which the afferent nerves are the optic,\nthe efferent, the facial. When a bad smell causes a grimace, there is a\nreflex action through the same motor nerve, while the olfactory nerves\nconstitute the afferent channels. In these cases, therefore, reflex\naction must be effected through the brain, all the nerves involved\nbeing cerebral. 'When the whole body starts at a loud noise, the\nafferent auditory nerve gives rise to an impulse which passes to the\nmedulla oblongata, and thence affects the great majority of the motor\nnerves of the body. 'It may be said that these are mere mechanical\nactions, and have nothing to do with the acts which we associate with\nintelligence. But let us consider what takes place in such an act as\nreading aloud. In this case, the whole attention of the mind is, or\nought to be, bent upon the subject-matter of the book; while a\nmultitude of most delicate muscular actions are going on, of which the\nreader is not in the slightest degree aware. Thus the book is held in\nthe hand, at the right distance from the eyes; the eyes are moved, from\nside to side, over the lines, and up and down the pages. Further, the\nmost delicately adjusted and rapid movements of the muscles of the\nlips, tongue, and throat, of laryngeal and respiratory muscles, are\ninvolved in the production of speech. Perhaps the reader is standing up\nand accompanying the lecture with appropriate gestures. And yet every\none of these muscular acts may be performed with utter unconsciousness,\non his part, of anything but the sense of the words in the book. In\nother words, they are reflex acts.\n\n'The reflex actions proper to the spinal cord itself are NATURAL, and\nare involved in the structure of the cord and the properties of its\nconstituents. By the help of the brain we may acquire an affinity of\nARTIFICIAL reflex actions. That is to say, an action may require all\nour attention and all our volition for its first, or second, or third\nperformance, but by frequent repetition it becomes, in a manner, part\nour organisation, and is performed without volition, or even\nconsciousness.\n\n'As everyone knows, it takes a soldier a very long time to learn his\ndrill--to put himself, for instance, into the attitude of 'attention'\nat the instant the word of command is heard. But, after a time, the\nsound of the word gives rise to the act, whether the soldier be\nthinking of it or not. There is a story, which is credible enough,\nthough it may not be true, of a practical joker, who, seeing a\ndischarged veteran carrying home his dinner, suddenly called out\n'Attention!' whereupon the man instantly brought his hands down, and\nlost his mutton and potatoes in the gutter. The drill had been gone\nthrough, and its effects had become embodied in the man's nervous\nstructure.\n\n'The possibility of all education (of which military drill is only one\nparticular form) is based upon, the existence of this power which the\nnervous system possesses, of organising conscious actions into more or\nless unconscious, or reflex, operations. It may be laid down as a rule,\nthat if any two mental states be called up together, or in succession,\nwith due frequency and vividness, the subsequent production of the one\nof them will suffice to call up the other, and that whether we desire\nit or not.'[1]\n\n\n\n[1] Huxley's Elementary Physiology, pp. 284-286.\n\n\n\nThe body of the accomplished man has thus become by training different\nfrom what it once was, and different from that of the rude man; it is\ncharged with stored virtue and acquired faculty which come away from it\nunconsciously.\n\nAgain, as to race, another authority teaches:--'Man's life truly\nrepresents a progressive development of the nervous system, none the\nless so because it takes place out of the womb instead of in it. The\nregular transmutation of motions which are at first voluntary into\nsecondary automatic motions, as Hartley calls them, is due to a\ngradually effected organisation; and we may rest assured of this, that\nco-ordinate activity always testifies to stored-up power, either innate\nor acquired.\n\n'The way in which an acquired faculty of the parent animal is sometimes\ndistinctly transmitted to the progeny as a heritage, instinct, or\ninnate endowment, furnishes a striking confirmation of the foregoing\nobservations. Power that has been laboriously acquired and stored up as\nstatical in one generation manifestly in such case becomes the inborn\nfaculty of the next; and the development takes place in accordance with\nthat law of increasing speciality and complexity of adaptation to\nexternal nature which is traceable through the animal kingdom; or, in\nother words, that law, of progress from the general to the special in\ndevelopment which the appearance of nerve force amongst natural forces\nand the complexity of the nervous system of man both illustrate. As the\nvital force gathers up, as it were, into itself inferior forces, and\nmight be said to be a development of them, or, as in the appearance of\nnerve force, simpler and more general forces are gathered up and\nconcentrated in a more special and complex mode of energy; so again a\nfurther specialisation takes place in the development of the nervous\nsystem, whether watched through generations or through individual life.\nIt is not by limiting our observations to the life of the individual,\nhowever, who is but a link in the chain of organic beings connecting\nthe past with the future, that we shall come at the full truth; the\npresent individual is the inevitable consequence of his antecedents in\nthe past, and in the examination of these alone do we arrive at the\nadequate explanation of him. It behoves us, then, having found any\nfaculty to be innate, not to rest content there, but steadily to follow\nbackwards the line of causation, and thus to display, if possible, its\nmanner of origin. This is the more necessary with the lower animals,\nwhere so much is innate.'[2]\n\n\n\n[2] Maudsley on the Physiology and Pathology of the Mind, p. 73.\n\n\n\nThe special laws of inheritance are indeed as yet unknown. All which is\nclear, and all which is to my purpose is, that there is a tendency, a\nprobability, greater or less according to circumstances, but always\nconsiderable, that the descendants of cultivated parents will have, by\nborn nervous organisation, a greater aptitude for cultivation than the\ndescendants of such as are not cultivated; and that this tendency\naugments, in some enhanced ratio, for many generations.\n\nI do not think any who do not acquire--and it takes a hard effort to\nacquire--this notion of a transmitted nerve element will ever\nunderstand 'the connective tissue' of civilisation. We have here the\ncontinuous force which binds age to age, which enables each to begin\nwith some improvement on the last, if the last did itself improve;\nwhich makes each civilisation not a set of detached dots, but a line of\ncolour, surely enhancing shade by shade. There is, by this doctrine, a\nphysical cause of improvement from generation to generation: and no\nimagination which has apprehended it can forget it; but unless you\nappreciate that cause in its subtle materialism, unless you see it, as\nit were, playing upon the nerves of men, and, age after age, making\nnicer music from finer chords, you cannot comprehend the principle of\ninheritance either in its mystery or its power.\n\nThese principles are quite independent of any theory as to the nature\nof matter, or the nature of mind. They are as true upon the theory that\nmind acts on matter--though separate and altogether different from\nit--as upon the theory of Bishop Berkeley that there is no matter, but\nonly mind; or upon the contrary theory--that there is no mind, but only\nmatter; or upon the yet subtler theory now often held--that both mind\nand matter are different modifications of some one tertium quid, some\nhidden thing or force. All these theories admit--indeed they are but\nvarious theories to account for--the fact that what we call matter has\nconsequences in what we call mind, and that what we call mind produces\nresults in what we call matter; and the doctrines I quote assume only\nthat. Our mind in some strange way acts on our nerves, and our nerves\nin some equally strange way store up the consequences, and somehow the\nresult, as a rule and commonly enough, goes down to our descendants;\nthese primitive facts all theories admit, and all of them labour to\nexplain.\n\nNor have these plain principles any relation to the old difficulties of\nnecessity and freewill. Every Freewillist holds that the special force\nof free volition is applied to the pre-existing forces of our corporeal\nstructure; he does not consider it as an agency acting in vacuo, but as\nan agency acting upon other agencies. Every Freewillist holds that,\nupon the whole, if you strengthen the motive in a given direction,\nmankind tend more to act in that direction. Better motives--better\nimpulses, rather--come from a good body: worse motives or worse\nimpulses come from a bad body. A Freewillist may admit as much as a\nNecessarian that such improved conditions tend to improve human action,\nand that deteriorated conditions tend to deprave human action. No\nFreewillist ever expects as much from St. Giles's as he expects from\nBelgravia: he admits an hereditary nervous system as a datum for the\nwill, though he holds the will to be an extraordinary incoming\n'something.' No doubt the modern doctrine of the 'Conservation of\nForce,' if applied to decision, is inconsistent with free will; if you\nhold that force 'is never lost or gained,' you cannot hold that there\nis a real gain--a sort of new creation of it in free volition. But I\nhave nothing to do here with the universal 'Conservation of Force.' The\nconception of the nervous organs as stores of will-made power does not\nraise or need so vast a discussion.\n\nStill less are these principles to be confounded with Mr. Buckle's idea\nthat material forces have been the main-springs of progress, and moral\ncauses secondary, and, in comparison, not to be thought of. On the\ncontrary, moral causes are the first here. It is the action of the will\nthat causes the unconscious habit; it is the continual effort of the\nbeginning that creates the hoarded energy of the end; it is the silent\ntoil of the first generation that becomes the transmitted aptitude of\nthe next. Here physical causes do not create the moral, but moral\ncreate the physical; here the beginning is by the higher energy, the\nconservation and propagation only by the lower. But we thus perceive\nhow a science of history is possible, as Mr. Buckle said,--a science to\nteach the laws of tendencies--created by the mind, and transmitted by\nthe body--which act upon and incline the will of man from age to age.\n\n\nII.\n\nBut how do these principles change the philosophy of our politics? I\nthink in many ways; and first, in one particularly. Political economy\nis the most systematised and most accurate part of political\nphilosophy; and yet, by the help of what has been laid down, I think we\nmay travel back to a sort of 'pre-economic age,' when the very\nassumptions of political economy did not exist, when its precepts would\nhave been ruinous, and when the very contrary precepts were requisite\nand wise.\n\nFor this purpose I do not need to deal with the dim ages which\nethnology just reveals to us--with the stone age, and the flint\nimplements, and the refuse-heaps. The time to which I would go back is\nonly that just before the dawn of history--coeval with the dawn,\nperhaps, it would be right to say--for the first historians saw such a\nstate of society, though they saw other and more advanced states too: a\nperiod of which we have distinct descriptions from eye-witnesses, and\nof which the traces and consequences abound in the oldest law. 'The\neffect,' says Sir Henry Maine, the greatest of our living jurists--the\nonly one, perhaps, whose writings are in keeping with our best\nphilosophy--'of the evidence derived from comparative jurisprudence is\nto establish that view of the primeval condition of the human race\nwhich is known as the Patriarchal Theory. There is no doubt, of course,\nthat this theory was originally based on the Scriptural history of the\nHebrew patriarchs in Lower Asia; but, as has been explained already,\nits connection with Scripture rather militated than otherwise against\nits reception as a complete theory, since the majority of the inquirers\nwho till recently addressed themselves with most earnestness to the\ncolligation of social phenomena, were either influenced by the\nstrongest prejudice against Hebrew antiquities or by the strongest\ndesire to construct their system without the assistance of religious\nrecords. Even now there is perhaps a disposition to undervalue these\naccounts, or rather to decline generalising from them, as forming part\nof the traditions of a Semitic people. It is to be noted, however, that\nthe legal testimony comes nearly exclusively from the institutions of\nsocieties belonging to the Indo-European stock, the Romans, Hindoos,\nand Sclavonians supplying the greater part of it; and indeed the\ndifficulty, at the present stage of the inquiry, is to know where to\nstop, to say of what races of men it is NOT allowable to lay down that\nthe society in which they are united was originally organised on the\npatriarchal model. The chief lineaments of such a society, as collected\nfrom the early chapters in Genesis, I need not attempt to depict with\nany minuteness, both because they are familiar to most of us from our\nearliest childhood, and because, from the interest once attaching to\nthe controversy which takes its name from the debate between Locke and\nFilmer, they fill a whole chapter, though not a very profitable one, in\nEnglish literature. The points which lie on the surface of the history\nare these:--The eldest male parent--the eldest ascendant--is absolutely\nsupreme in his household. His dominion extends to life and death, and\nis as unqualified over his children and their houses as over his\nslaves; indeed the relations of sonship and serfdom appear to differ in\nlittle beyond the higher capacity which the child in blood possesses of\nbecoming one day the head of a family himself. The flocks and herds of\nthe children are the flocks and herds of the father, and the\npossessions of the parent, which he holds in a representative rather\nthan in a proprietary character, are equally divided at his death among\nhis descendants in the first degree, the eldest son sometimes receiving\na double share under the name of birthright, but more generally endowed\nwith no hereditary advantage beyond an honorary precedence. A less\nobvious inference from the Scriptural accounts is that they seem to\nplant us on the traces of the breach which is first effected in the\nempire of the parent. The families of Jacob and Esau separate and form\ntwo nations; but the families of Jacob's children hold together and\nbecome a people. This looks like the immature germ of a state or\ncommonwealth, and of an order of rights superior to the claims of\nfamily relation.\n\n'If I were attempting for the more special purposes of the jurist to\nexpress compendiously the characteristics, of the situation in which\nmankind disclose themselves at the dawn of their history, I should be\nsatisfied to quote a few verses from the \"Odyssee\" of Homer:--\n\n  \"'_Toisin d' out' agorai boulephoroi oute themistes,\n               themisteuei de hekastos\n  paidon ed alochon, out' allelon alegousin._'\"\n\n'\"They have neither assemblies for consultation nor THEMISTES, but\neveryone exercises jurisdiction over his wives and his children, and\nthey pay no regard to one another.\"' And this description of the\nbeginnings of history is confirmed by what may be called the last\nlesson of prehistoric ethnology. Perhaps it is the most valuable, as it\nis clearly the most sure result of that science, that it has dispelled\nthe dreams of other days as to a primitive high civilisation. History\ncatches man as he emerges, from the patriarchal state: ethnology shows\nhow he lived, grew, and improved in that state. The conclusive\narguments against the imagined original civilisation are indeed plain\nto everyone. Nothing is more intelligible than a moral deterioration of\nmankind--nothing than an aesthetic degradation--nothing than a\npolitical degradation. But you cannot imagine mankind giving up the\nplain utensils of personal comfort, if they once knew them; still less\ncan you imagine them giving up good weapons--say bows and arrows--if\nthey once knew them. Yet if there were a primitive civilisation these\nthings MUST have been forgotten, for tribes can be found in every\ndegree of ignorance, and every grade of knowledge as to pottery, as to\nthe metals, as to the means of comfort, as to the instruments of war.\nAnd what is more, these savages have not failed from stupidity; they\nare, in various degrees of originality, inventive about these matters.\nYou cannot trace the roots of an old perfect system variously maimed\nand variously dying; you cannot find it, as you find the trace of the\nLatin language in the mediaeval dialects. On the contrary, you find it\nbeginning--as new scientific discoveries and inventions now begin--here\na little and there a little, the same thing half-done in various\nhalf-ways, and so as no one who knew the best way would ever have\nbegun. An idea used to prevail that bows and arrows were the 'primitive\nweapons'--the weapons of universal savages; but modern science has made\na table,[3] and some savages have them and some have not, and some have\nsubstitutes of one sort and some have substitutes of another--several\nof these substitutes being like the 'boomerang,' so much more difficult\nto hit on or to use than the bow, as well as so much less effectual.\nAnd not only may the miscellaneous races of the world be justly\ndescribed as being upon various edges of industrial civilisation,\napproaching it by various sides, and falling short of it in various\nparticulars, but the moment they see the real thing they know how to\nuse it as well, or better, than civilised man. The South American uses\nthe horse which the European brought better than the European. Many\nraces use the rifle--the especial and very complicated weapon of\ncivilised man--better, upon an average, than he can use it. The savage\nwith simple tools--tools he appreciates--is like a child, quick to\nlearn, not like an old man, who has once forgotten and who cannot\nacquire again. Again, if there had been an excellent aboriginal\ncivilisation in Australia and America, where, botanists and zoologists,\nask, are its vestiges? If these savages did care to cultivate wheat,\nwhere is the wild wheat gone which their abandoned culture must have\nleft? if they did give up using good domestic animals, what has become\nof the wild ones which would, according to all natural laws, have\nsprung up out of them? This much is certain, that the domestic animals\nof Europe have, since what may be called the discovery of the WORLD\nduring the last hundred years, run up and down it. The English rat--not\nthe pleasantest of our domestic creatures--has gone everywhere; to\nAustralia, to New Zealand, to America: nothing but a complicated\nrat-miracle could ever root him out. Nor could a common force expel the\nhorse from South America since the Spaniards took him thither; if we\ndid not know the contrary we should suppose him a principal aboriginal\nanimal. Where then, so to say, are the rats and horses of the primitive\ncivilisation? Not only can we not find them, but zoological science\ntells us that they never existed, for the 'feebly pronounced,' the\nineffectual, marsupials of Australia and New Zealand could never have\nsurvived a competition with better creatures, such as that by which\nthey are now perishing. We catch then a first glimpse of patriarchal\nman, not with any industrial relics of a primitive civilisation, but\nwith some gradually learnt knowledge of the simpler arts, with some\ntamed animals and some little knowledge of the course of nature as far\nas it tells upon the seasons and affects the condition of simple\ntribes. This is what, according to ethnology, we should expect the\nfirst historic man to be, and this is what we in fact find him. But\nwhat was his mind; how are we to describe that?\n\n\n\n[3] See the very careful table and admirable discussion in Sir John\nLubbock's Pre-Historic Times.\n\n\n\nI believe the general description in which Sir John Lubbock sums up his\nestimate of the savage mind suits the patriarchal mind. 'Savages,' he\nsays, 'unite the character of childhood with the passions and strength\nof men.' And if we open the first record of the pagan world--the poems\nof Homer--how much do we find that suits this description better than\nany other. Civilisation has indeed already gone forward ages beyond the\ntime at which any such description is complete. Man, in Homer, is as\ngood at oratory, Mr. Gladstone seems to say, as he has ever been, and,\nmuch as that means, other and better things might be added to it. But\nafter all, how much of the 'splendid savage' there is in Achilles, and\nhow much of the 'spoiled child sulking in his tent.' Impressibility and\nexcitability are the main characteristics of the oldest Greek history,\nand if we turn to the east, the 'simple and violent' world, as Mr.\nKinglake calls it, of the first times meets us every moment.\n\nAnd this is precisely what we should expect. An 'inherited drill,'\nscience says, 'makes modern nations what they are; their born structure\nbears the trace of the laws of their fathers;' but the ancient nations\ncame into no such inheritance; they were the descendants of people who\ndid what was right in their own eyes; they were born to no tutored\nhabits, no preservative bonds, and therefore they were at the mercy of\nevery impulse and blown by every passion.\n\nThe condition of the primitive man, if we conceive of him rightly, is,\nin several respects, different from any we know. We unconsciously\nassume around us the existence of a great miscellaneous social machine\nworking to our hands, and not only supplying our wants, but even\ntelling and deciding when those wants shall come. No one can now\nwithout difficulty conceive how people got on before there were clocks\nand watches; as Sir G. Lewis said, 'it takes a vigorous effort of the\nimagination' to realise a period when it was a serious difficulty to\nknow the hour of day. And much more is it difficult to fancy the\nunstable minds of such men as neither knew nature, which is the\nclock-work of material civilisation, nor possessed a polity, which is a\nkind of clock-work to moral civilisation. They never could have known\nwhat to expect; the whole habit of steady but varied anticipation,\nwhich makes our minds what they are, must have been wholly foreign to\ntheirs.\n\nAgain, I at least cannot call up to myself the loose conceptions (as\nthey must have been) of morals which then existed. If we set aside all\nthe element derived from law and polity which runs through our current\nmoral notions, I hardly know what we shall have left. The residuum was\nsomehow, and in some vague way, intelligible to the ante-political man,\nbut it must have been uncertain, wavering, and unfit to be depended\nupon. In the best cases it existed much as the vague feeling of beauty\nnow exists in minds sensitive but untaught; a still small voice of\nuncertain meaning; an unknown something modifying everything else, and\nhigher than anything else, yet in form so indistinct that when you\nlooked for it, it was gone--or if this be thought the delicate fiction\nof a later fancy, then morality was at least to be found in the wild\nspasms of 'wild justice,' half punishment, half outrage,--but anyhow,\nbeing unfixed by steady law, it was intermittent, vague, and hard for\nus to imagine. Everybody who has studied mathematics knows how many\nshadowy difficulties he seemed to have before he understood the\nproblem, and how impossible it was when once the demonstration had\nflashed upon him, ever to comprehend those indistinct difficulties\nagain, or to call up the mental confusion, that admitted them. So in\nthese days, when we cannot by any effort drive out of our minds the\nnotion of law, we cannot imagine the mind of one who had never known\nit, and who could not by any effort have conceived it.\n\nAgain, the primitive man could not have imagined what we mean by a\nnation. We on the other hand cannot imagine those to whom it is a\ndifficulty; 'we know what it is when you do not ask us,' but we cannot\nvery quickly explain or define it. But so much as this is plain, a\nnation means a LIKE body of men, because of that likeness capable of\nacting together, and because of that likeness inclined to obey similar\nrules; and even this Homer's Cyclops--used only to sparse human\nbeings--could not have conceived.\n\nTo sum up--LAW--rigid, definite, concise law--is the primary want of\nearly mankind; that which they need above anything else, that which is\nrequisite before they can gain anything else. But it is their greatest\ndifficulty, as well as their first requisite; the thing most out of\ntheir reach, as well as that most beneficial to them if they reach it.\nIn later ages many races have gained much of this discipline quickly,\nthough painfully; a loose set of scattered clans has been often and\noften forced to substantial settlement by a rigid conqueror; the Romans\ndid half the work for above half Europe. But where could the first ages\nfind Romans or a conqueror? Men conquer by the power of government, and\nit was exactly government which then was not. The first ascent of\ncivilisation was at a steep gradient, though when now we look down upon\nit, it seems almost nothing.\n\n\nIII.\n\nHow the step from polity to no polity was made distinct, history does\nnot record,--on this point Sir Henry Maine has drawn a most interesting\nconclusion from his peculiar studies:--\n\n'It would be,' he tells us, 'a very simple explanation of the origin of\nsociety if we could base a general conclusion on the hint furnished us\nby the scriptural example already adverted to, and could suppose that\ncommunities began to exist wherever a family held together instead of\nseparating at the death of its patriarchal chieftain. In most of the\nGreek states and in Rome there long remained the vestiges of an\nascending series of groups out of which the state was at first\nconstituted. The family, house, and tribe of the Romans may be taken as\na type of them, and they are so described to us that we can scarcely\nhelp conceiving them as a system of concentric circles which have\ngradually expanded from the same point. The elementary group is the\nfamily, connected by common subjection to the highest male ascendant.\nThe aggregation of families forms the gens, or house. The aggregation\nof houses makes the tribe. The aggregation of tribes constitutes the\ncommonwealth. Are we at liberty to follow these indications, and to lay\ndown that the commonwealth is a collection of persons united by common\ndescent from the progenitor of an original family? Of this we may at\nleast be certain, that all ancient societies regarded themselves as\nhaving proceeded from one original stock, and even laboured under an\nincapacity for comprehending any reason except this for their holding\ntogether in political union. The history of political ideas begins, in\nfact, with the assumption that kinship in blood is the sole possible\nground of community in political functions; nor is there any of those\nsubversions of feeling, which we term emphatically revolutions, so\nstartling and so complete as the change which is accomplished when some\nother principle--such as that, for instance, of LOCAL\nCONTIGUITY--establishes itself for the first time as the basis of\ncommon political action.'\n\nIf this theory were true, the origin of politics would not seem a great\nchange, or, in early days, be really a great change. The primacy of the\nelder brother, in tribes casually cohesive, would be slight; it would\nbe the beginning of much, but it would be nothing in itself; it would\nbe--to take an illustration from the opposite end of the political\nseries--it would be like the headship of a weak parliamentary leader\nover adherents who may divide from him in a moment; it was the germ of\nsovereignty,--it was hardly yet sovereignty itself.\n\nI do not myself believe that the suggestion of Sir Henry Maine--for he\ndoes not, it will be seen, offer it as a confident theory--is an\nadequate account of the true origin of politics. I shall in a\nsubsequent essay show that there are, as it seems to me, abundant\nevidences of a time still older than that which he speaks of. But the\ntheory of Sir Henry Maine serves my present purpose well. It describes,\nand truly describes, a kind of life antecedent to our present politics,\nand the conclusion I have drawn from it will be strengthened, not\nweakened, when we come to examine and deal with an age yet older, and a\nsocial bond far more rudimentary.\n\nBut when once polities were began, there is no difficulty in explaining\nwhy they lasted. Whatever may be said against the principle of 'natural\nselection' in other departments, there is no doubt of its predominance\nin early human history. The strongest killed out the weakest, as they\ncould. And I need not pause to prove that any form of politics more\nefficient than none; that an aggregate of families owning even a\nslippery allegiance to a single head, would be sure to have the better\nof a set of families acknowledging no obedience to anyone, but\nscattering loose about the world and fighting where they stood. Homer's\nCyclops would be powerless against the feeblest band; so far from its\nbeing singular that we find no other record of that state of man, so\nunstable and sure to perish was it that we should rather wonder at even\na single vestige lasting down to the age when for picturesqueness it\nbecame valuable in poetry.\n\nBut, though the origin of polity is dubious, we are upon the terra\nfirma of actual records when we speak of the preservation of polities.\nPerhaps every young Englishman who comes now-a-days to Aristotle or\nPlato is struck with their conservatism: fresh from the liberal\ndoctrines of the present age, he wonders at finding in those recognised\nteachers so much contrary teaching. They both--unlike as they are--hold\nwith Xenophon--so unlike both--that man is the 'hardest of all animals\nto govern.' Of Plato it might indeed be plausibly said that the\nadherents of an intuitive philosophy, being 'the tories of\nspeculation,' have commonly been prone to conservatism in government;\nbut Aristotle, the founder of the experience philosophy, ought,\naccording to that doctrine, to have been a liberal, if anyone ever was\na liberal. In fact, both of these men lived when men had not 'had time\nto forget' the difficulties of government. We have forgotten them\naltogether. We reckon, as the basis of our culture, upon an amount of\norder, of tacit obedience, of prescriptive governability, which these\nphilosophers hoped to get as a principal result of their culture. We\ntake without thought as a datum, what they hunted as a quaesilum.\n\nIn early times the quantity of government is much more important than\nits quality. What you want is a comprehensive rule binding men\ntogether, making them do much the same things, telling them what to\nexpect of each other--fashioning them alike, and keeping them so. What\nthis rule is does not matter so much. A good rule is better than a bad\none, but any rule is better than none; while, for reasons which a\njurist will appreciate, none can be very good. But to gain that rule,\nwhat may be called the impressive elements of a polity are incomparably\nmore important than its useful elements. How to get the obedience of\nmen is the hard problem; what you do with that obedience is less\ncritical.\n\nTo gain that obedience, the primary condition is the identity--not the\nunion, but the sameness--of what we now call Church and State. Dr.\nArnold, fresh from the study of Greek thought and Roman history, used\nto preach that this identity was the great cure for the misguided\nmodern world. But he spoke to ears filled with other sounds and minds\nfilled with other thoughts, and they hardly knew his meaning, much less\nheeded it. But though the teaching was wrong for the modern age to\nwhich it was applied, it was excellent for the old world from which it\nwas learnt. What is there requisite is a single government--call it\nChurch or State, as you like--regulating the whole of human life. No\ndivision of power is then endurable without danger--probably without\ndestruction; the priest must not teach one thing and the king another;\nking must be priest, and prophet king: the two must say the same,\nbecause they are the same. The idea of difference between spiritual\npenalties and legal penalties must never be awakened. Indeed, early\nGreek thought or early Roman thought would never have comprehended it.\nThere was a kind of rough public opinion and there were rough, very\nrough, hands which acted on it. We now talk of political penalties and\necclesiastical prohibition, and the social censure, but they were all\none then. Nothing is very like those old communities now, but perhaps a\n'trade's union' is as near as most things; to work cheap is thought to\nbe a 'wicked' thing, and so some Broadhead puts it down.\n\nThe object of such organisations is to create what may be called a cake\nof custom. All the actions of life are to be submitted to a single rule\nfor a single object; that gradually created the 'hereditary drill'\nwhich science teaches to be essential, and which the early instinct of\nmen saw to be essential too. That this regime forbids free thought is\nnot an evil; or rather, though an evil, it is the necessary basis for\nthe greatest good; it is necessary for making the mould of\ncivilisation, and hardening the soft fibre of early man.\n\nThe first recorded history of the Aryan race shows everywhere a king, a\ncouncil, and, as the necessity of early conflicts required, the king in\nmuch prominence and with much power. That there could be in such ages\nanything like an oriental despotism, or a Caesarean despotism, was\nimpossible; the outside extra-political army which maintains them could\nnot exist when the tribe was the nation, and when all the men in the\ntribe were warriors. Hence, in the time of Homer, in the first times of\nRome, in the first times of ancient Germany, the king is the most\nvisible part of the polity, because for momentary welfare he is the\nmost useful. The close oligarchy, the patriciate, which alone could\nknow the fixed law, alone could apply the fixed law, which was\nrecognised as the authorised custodian of the fixed law, had then sole\ncommand over the primary social want. It alone knew the code of drill;\nit alone was obeyed; it alone could drill. Mr. Grote has admirably\ndescribed the rise of the primitive oligarchies upon the face of the\nfirst monarchy, but perhaps because he so much loves historic Athens,\nhe has not sympathised with pre-historic Athens. He has not shown us\nthe need of a fixed life when all else was unfixed life.\n\nIt would be schoolboyish to explain at length how well the two great\nrepublics, the two winning republics of the ancient world, embody these\nconclusions. Rome and Sparta were drilling aristocracies, and succeeded\nbecause they were such. Athens was indeed of another and higher order;\nat least to us instructed moderns who know her and have been taught by\nher. But to the 'Philistines' of those days Athens was of a lower\norder. She was beaten; she lost the great visible game which is all\nthat short-sighted contemporaries know. She was the great 'free\nfailure' of the ancient world. She began, she announced, the good\nthings that were to come; but she was too weak to display and enjoy\nthem; she was trodden down by those of coarser make and better trained\nframe.\n\nHow much these principles are confirmed by Jewish history is obvious.\nThere was doubtless much else in Jewish history--whole elements with\nwhich I am not here concerned. But so much is plain. The Jews were in\nthe beginning the most unstable of nations; they were submitted to\ntheir law, and they came out the most stable of nations. Their polity\nwas indeed defective in unity. After they asked for a king the\nspiritual and the secular powers (as we should speak) were never at\npeace, and never agreed. And the ten tribes who lapsed from their law,\nmelted away into the neighbouring nations. Jeroboam has been called the\n'first Liberal;' and, religion apart, there is a meaning in the phrase.\nHe began to break up the binding polity which was what men wanted in\nthat age, though eager and inventive minds always dislike it. But the\nJews who adhered to their law became the Jews of the day, a nation of a\nfirm set if ever there was one.\n\nIt is connected with this fixity that jurists tell us that the title\n'contract' is hardly to be discovered in the oldest law. In modern\ndays, in civilised days, men's choice determines nearly all they do.\nBut in early times that choice determined scarcely anything. The\nguiding rule was the law of STATUS. Everybody was born to a place in\nthe community: in that place he had to stay: in that place he found\ncertain duties which he had to fulfil, and which were all he needed to\nthink of. The net of custom caught men in distinct spots, and kept each\nwhere he stood.\n\nWhat are called in European politics the principles of 1789, are\ntherefore inconsistent with the early world; they are fitted only to\nthe new world in which society has gone through its early task; when\nthe inherited organisation is already confirmed and fixed; when the\nsoft minds and strong passions of youthful nations are fixed and guided\nby hard transmitted instincts. Till then not equality before the law is\nnecessary but inequality, for what is most wanted is an elevated elite\nwho know the law: not a good government seeking the happiness of its\nsubjects, but a dignified and overawing government getting its subjects\nto obey: not a good law, but a comprehensive law binding all life to\none routine. Later are the ages of freedom; first are the ages of\nservitude. In 1789, when the great men of the Constituent Assembly\nlooked on the long past, they hardly saw anything in it which could be\npraised, or admired, or imitated: all seemed a blunder--a complex error\nto be got rid of as soon as might be. But that error had made\nthemselves. On their very physical organisation the hereditary mark of\nold times was fixed; their brains were hardened and their nerves were\nsteadied by the transmitted results of tedious usages. The ages of\nmonotony had their use, for they trained men for ages when they need\nnot be monotonous.\n\n\nIV.\n\nBut even yet we have not realised the full benefit of those early\npolities and those early laws. They not only 'bound up' men in groups,\nnot only impressed on men a certain set of common usages, but often, at\nleast in an indirect way, suggested, if I may use the expression,\nnational character.\n\nWe cannot yet explain--I am sure, at least, I cannot attempt to\nexplain--all the singular phenomena of national character: how\ncompletely and perfectly they seem to be at first framed; how slowly,\nhow gradually they can alone be altered, if they can be altered at all.\nBut there is one analogous fact which may help us to see, at least\ndimly, how such phenomena are caused. There is a character of ages, as\nwell as of nations; and as we have full histories of many such periods,\nwe can examine exactly when and how the mental peculiarity of each\nbegan, and also exactly when and how that mental peculiarity passed\naway. We have an idea of Queen Anne's time, for example, or of Queen\nElizabeth's time, or George II.'s time; or again of the age of Louis\nXIV., or Louis XV., or the French Revolution; an idea more or less\naccurate in proportion as we study, but probably even in the minds who\nknow these ages best and most minutely, more special, more simple, more\nunique than the truth was. We throw aside too much, in making up our\nimages of eras, that which is common to all eras. The English character\nwas much the same in many great respects in Chaucer's time as it was in\nElizabeth's time or Anne's time, or as it is now; But some qualities\nwere added to this common element in one era and some in another; some\nqualities seemed to overshadow and eclipse it in one era, and others in\nanother. We overlook and half forget the constant while we see and\nwatch the variable. But--for that is the present point--why is there\nthis variable? Everyone must, I think, have been puzzled about it.\nSuddenly, in a quiet time--say, in Queen Anne's time--arises a special\nliterature, a marked variety of human expression, pervading what is\nthen written and peculiar to it: surely this is singular.\n\nThe true explanation is, I think, something like this. One considerable\nwriter gets a sort of start because what he writes is somewhat\nmore--only a little more very often, as I believe--congenial to the\nminds around him than any other sort. This writer is very often not the\none whom posterity remembers--not the one who carries the style of the\nage farthest towards its ideal type, and gives it its charm and its\nperfection. It was not Addison who began the essay-writing of Queen\nAnne's time, but Steele; it was the vigorous forward man who struck out\nthe rough notion, though it was the wise and meditative man who\nimproved upon it and elaborated it, and whom posterity reads. Some\nstrong writer, or group of writers, thus seize on the public mind, and\na curious process soon assimilates other writers in appearance to them.\nTo some extent, no doubt, this assimilation is effected by a process\nmost intelligible, and not at all curious--the process of conscious\nimitation; A sees that B's style of writing answers, and he imitates\nit. But definitely aimed mimicry like this is always rare; original men\nwho like their own thoughts do not willingly clothe them in words they\nfeel they borrow. No man, indeed, can think to much purpose when he is\nstudying to write a style not his own. After all, very few men are at\nall equal to the steady labour, the stupid and mistaken labour mostly,\nof making a style. Most men catch the words that are in the air, and\nthe rhythm which comes to them they do not know from whence; an\nunconscious imitation determines their words, and makes them say what\nof themselves they would never have thought of saying. Everyone who has\nwritten in more than one newspaper knows how invariably his style\ncatches the tone of each paper while he is writing for it, and changes\nto the tone of another when in turn he begins to write for that. He\nprobably would rather write the traditional style to which the readers\nof the journal are used, but he does not set himself to copy it; he\nwould have to force himself in order NOT to write it if that was what\nhe wanted. Exactly in this way, just as a writer for a journal without\na distinctly framed purpose gives the readers of the journal the sort\nof words and the sort of thoughts they are used to--so, on a larger\nscale, the writers of an age, without thinking of it, give to the\nreaders of the age the sort of words and the sort of thoughts--the\nspecial literature, in fact--which those readers like and prize. And\nnot only does the writer, without thinking, choose the sort of style\nand meaning which are most in vogue, but the writer is himself chosen.\nA writer does not begin to write in the traditional rhythm of an age\nunless he feels, or fancies he feels, a sort of aptitude for writing\nit, any more than a writer tries to write in a journal in which the\nstyle is uncongenial or impossible to him. Indeed if he mistakes he is\nsoon weeded out; the editor rejects, the age will not read his\ncompositions. How painfully this traditional style cramps great writers\nwhom it happens not to suit, is curiously seen in Wordsworth, who was\nbold enough to break through it, and, at the risk of contemporary\nneglect, to frame a style of his own. But he did so knowingly, and he\ndid so with an effort. 'It is supposed,' he says, 'that by the act of\nwriting in verse an author makes a formal engagement that he will\ngratify certain known habits of association; that he not only then\napprizes the reader that certain classes of ideas and expressions will\nbe found in his book, but that others will be carefully eschewed. The\nexponent or symbol held forth by metrical language must, in different\nages of literature, have excited very different expectations; for\nexample, in the age of Catullus, Terence, or Lucretius, and that of\nStatius or Claudian; and in our own country, in the age of Shakespeare\nand Beaumont and Metcher, and that of Donne and Cowley, or Pope.' And\nthen, in a kind of vexed way, Wordsworth goes on to explain that he\nhimself can't and won't do what is expected from him, but that he will\nwrite his own words, and only his own words. A strict, I was going to\nsay a Puritan, genius will act thus, but most men of genius are\nsusceptible and versatile, and fall into the style of their age. One\nvery unapt at the assimilating process, but on that account the more\ncurious about it, says:--\n\n  How we\n  Track a livelong day, great heaven, and watch our shadows!\n  What our shadows seem, forsooth, we will ourselves be.\n  Do I look like that? You think me that: then I AM that.\n\nWhat writers are expected to write, they write; or else they do not\nwrite at all; but, like the writer of these lines, stop discouraged,\nlive disheartened, and die leaving fragments which their friends\ntreasure, but which a rushing world never heeds. The Nonconformist\nwriters are neglected, the Conformist writers are encouraged, until\nperhaps on a sudden the fashion shifts. And as with the writers, so in\na less degree with readers. Many men--most men--get to like or think\nthey like that which is ever before them, and which those around them\nlike, and which received opinion says they ought to like; or if their\nminds are too marked and oddly made to get into the mould, they give up\nreading altogether, or read old books and foreign books, formed under\nanother code and appealing to a different taste. The principle of\n'elimination,' the 'use and disuse' of organs which naturalists speak\nof, works here. What is used strengthens; what is disused weakens: 'to\nthose who have, more is given;' and so a sort of style settles upon an\nage, and imprinting itself more than anything else in men's memories\nbecomes all that is thought of about it.\n\nI believe that what we call national character arose in very much the\nsame way. At first a sort of 'chance predominance' made a model, and\nthen invincible attraction, the necessity which rules all but the\nstrongest men to imitate what is before their eyes, and to be what they\nare expected to be, moulded men by that model. This is, I think, the\nvery process by which new national characters are being made in our own\ntime. In America and in Australia a new modification of what we call\nAnglo-Saxonism is growing. A sort of type of character arose from the\ndifficulties of colonial life--the difficulty of struggling with the\nwilderness; and this type has given its shape to the mass of characters\nbecause the mass of characters have unconsciously imitated it. Many of\nthe American characteristics are plainly useful in such a life, and\nconsequent on such a life. The eager restlessness, the highly-strung\nnervous organisation are useful in continual struggle, and also are\npromoted by it. These traits seem to be arising in Australia, too, and\nwherever else the English race is placed in like circumstances. But\neven in these useful particulars the innate tendency of the human mind\nto become like what is around it, has effected much: a sluggish\nEnglishman will often catch the eager American look in a few years; an\nIrishman or even a German will catch it, too, even in all English\nparticulars. And as to a hundred minor points--in so many that go to\nmark the typical Yankee--usefulness has had no share either in their\norigin or their propagation. The accident of some predominant person\npossessing them set the fashion, and it has been imitated to this day.\nAnybody who inquires will find even in England, and even in these days\nof assimilation, parish peculiarities which arose, no doubt, from some\nold accident, and have been heedfully preserved by customary copying. A\nnational character is but the successful parish character; just as the\nnational speech is but the successful parish dialect, the dialect, that\nis, of the district which came to be more--in many cases but a little\nmore--influential than other districts, and so set its yoke on books\nand on society. I could enlarge much on this, for I believe this\nunconscious imitation to be the principal force in the making of\nnational characters; but I have already said more about it than I need.\nEverybody who weighs even half these arguments will admit that it is a\ngreat force in the matter, a principal agency to be acknowledged and\nwatched; and for my present purpose I want no more. I have only to show\nthe efficacy of the tight early polity (so to speak) and the strict\nearly law on the creation of corporate characters. These settled the\npredominant type, set up a sort of model, made a sort of idol; this was\nworshipped, copied, and observed, from all manner of mingled feelings,\nbut most of all because it was the 'thing to do,' the then accepted\nform of human action. When once the predominant type was determined,\nthe copying propensity of man did the rest. The tradition ascribing\nSpartan legislation to Lycurgus was literally untrue, but its spirit\nwas quite true. In the origin of states strong and eager individuals\ngot hold of small knots of men, and made for them a fashion which they\nwere attached to and kept.\n\nIt is only after duly apprehending the silent manner in which national\ncharacters thus form themselves, that we can rightly appreciate the\ndislike which old Governments had to trade. There must have been\nsomething peculiar about it, for the best philosophers, Plato and\nAristotle, shared it. They regarded commerce as the source of\ncorruption as naturally as a modern economist considers it the spring\nof industry, and all the old Governments acted in this respect upon the\nphilosophers' maxims. 'Well,' said Dr. Arnold, speaking ironically and\nin the spirit of modern times--'Well, indeed, might the policy of the\nold priest-nobles of Egypt and India endeavour to divert their people\nfrom becoming familiar with the sea, and represent the occupation of a\nseaman as incompatible with the purity of the highest castes. The sea\ndeserved to be hated by the old aristocracies, inasmuch as it has been\nthe mightiest instrument in the civilisation of mankind.' But the old\noligarchies had their own work, as we now know. They were imposing a\nfashioning yoke; they were making the human nature which after times\nemploy. They were at their labours, we have entered into these labours.\nAnd to the unconscious imitation which was their principal tool, no\nimpediment was so formidable as foreign intercourse. Men imitate what\nis before their eyes, if it is before their eyes alone, but they do not\nimitate it if it is only one among many present things--one competitor\namong others, all of which are equal and some of which seem better.\n'Whoever speaks two languages is a rascal,' says the saying, and it\nrightly represents the feeling of primitive communities when the sudden\nimpact of new thoughts and new examples breaks down the compact\ndespotism of the single consecrated code, and leaves pliant and\nimpressible man--such as he then is--to follow his unpleasant will\nwithout distinct guidance by hereditary morality and hereditary\nreligion. The old oligarchies wanted to keep their type perfect, and\nfor that end they were right not to allow foreigners to touch it.\n'Distinctions of race,' says Arnold himself elsewhere in a remarkable\nessay--for it was his last on Greek history, his farewell words on a\nlong favourite subject--'were not of that odious and fantastic\ncharacter which they have been in modern times; they implied real\ndifferences of the most important kind, religious and moral.' And after\nexemplifying this at length he goes on, 'It is not then to be wondered\nat that Thucydides, when speaking of a city founded jointly by Ionians\nand Dorians, should have thought it right to add \"that the prevailing\ninstitutions of the two were Ionian,\" for according as they were\nderived from one or the other the prevailing type would be different.\nAnd therefore the mixture of persons of different race in the same\ncommonwealth, unless one race had a complete ascendancy, tended to\nconfuse all the relations of human life, and all men's notions of right\nand wrong; or by compelling men to tolerate in so near a relation as\nthat of fellow-citizens differences upon the main points of human life,\nled to a general carelessness and scepticism, and encouraged the notion\nthat right and wrong had no real existence, but were mere creatures of\nhuman opinion.' But if this be so, the oligarchies were right. Commerce\nbrings this mingling of ideas, this breaking down of old creeds, and\nbrings it inevitably. It is now-a-days its greatest good that it does\nso; the change is what we call 'enlargement of mind'. But in early\ntimes Providence 'set apart the nations;' and it is not till the frame\nof their morals is set by long ages of transmitted discipline, that\nsuch enlargement can be borne. The ages of isolation had their use, for\nthey trained men for ages when they were not to be isolated.\n\n\n\nNO. II\n\nTHE USE OF CONFLICT.\n\n'The difference between progression and stationary inaction,' says one\nof our greatest living writers, 'is one of the great secrets which\nscience has yet to penetrate.' I am sure I do not pretend that I can\ncompletely penetrate it; but it undoubtedly seems to me that the\nproblem is on the verge of solution, and that scientific successes in\nkindred fields by analogy suggest some principles--which wholly remove\nmany of its difficulties, and indicate the sort of way in which those\nwhich remain may hereafter be removed too.\n\nBut what is the problem? Common English, I might perhaps say common\ncivilised thought, ignores it. Our habitual instructors, our ordinary\nconversation, our inevitable and ineradicable prejudices tend to make\nus think that 'Progress' is the normal fact in human society, the fact\nwhich we should expect to see, the fact which we should be surprised if\nwe did not see. But history refutes this. The ancients had no\nconception of progress; they did not so much as reject the idea; they\ndid not even entertain the idea. Oriental nations are just the same\nnow. Since history began they have always been what they are. Savages,\nagain, do not improve; they hardly seem to have the basis on which to\nbuild, much less the material to put up anything worth having. Only a\nfew nations, and those of European origin, advance; and yet these\nthink--seem irresistibly compelled to think--such advance to be\ninevitable, natural, and eternal. Why then is this great contrast?\nBefore we can answer, we must investigate more accurately. No doubt\nhistory shows that most nations are stationary now; but it affords\nreason to think that all nations once advanced. Their progress was\narrested at various points; but nowhere, probably not even in the hill\ntribes of India, not even in the Andaman Islanders, not even in the\nsavages of Terra del Fuego, do we find men who have not got some way.\nThey have made their little progress in a hundred different ways; they\nhave framed with infinite assiduity a hundred curious habits; they\nhave, so to say, screwed themselves into the uncomfortable corners of a\ncomplex life, which is odd and dreary, but yet is possible. And the\ncorners are never the same in any two parts of the world. Our record\nbegins with a thousand unchanging edifices, but it shows traces of\nprevious building. In historic times there has been little progress; in\nprehistoric times there must have been much. In solving, or trying to\nsolve, the question, we must take notice of this remarkable difference,\nand explain it, too, or else we may be sure our principles are utterly\nincomplete, and perhaps altogether unsound. But what then is that\nsolution, or what are the principles which tend towards it? Three laws,\nor approximate laws, may, I think, be laid down, with only one of which\nI can deal in this paper, but all three of which it will be best to\nstate, that it may be seen what I am aiming at.\n\nFirst. In every particular state of the world, those nations which are\nstrongest tend to prevail over the others; and in certain marked\npeculiarities the strongest tend to be the best. Secondly. Within every\nparticular nation the type or types of character then and there most\nattractive tend to prevail; and, the most attractive, though with\nexceptions, is what we call the best character. Thirdly. Neither of\nthese competitions is in most historic conditions intensified by\nextrinsic forces, but in some conditions, such as those now prevailing\nin the most influential part of the world, both are so intensified.\n\nThese are the sort of doctrines with which, under the name of 'natural\nselection' in physical science, we have become familiar; and as every\ngreat scientific conception tends to advance its boundaries and to be\nof use in solving problems not thought of when it was started, so here,\nwhat was put forward for mere animal history may, with a change of\nform, but an identical essence, be applied to human history. At first\nsome objection was raised to the principle of 'natural selection' in\nphysical science upon religious grounds; it was to be expected that so\nactive an idea and so large a shifting of thought would seem to imperil\nmuch which men valued. But in this, as in other cases, the objection\nis, I think, passing away; the new principle is more and more seen to\nbe fatal to mere outworks of religion, not to religion itself. At all\nevents, to the sort of application here made of it, which only amounts\nto searching out and following up an analogy suggested by it, there is\nplainly no objection. Everyone now admits that human history is guided\nby certain laws, and all that is here aimed at is to indicate, in a\nmore or less distinct way, an infinitesimally small portion of such\nlaws. The discussion of these three principles cannot be kept quite\napart except by pedantry; but it is almost exclusively with the\nfirst--that of the competition between nation and nation, or tribe and\ntribe (for I must use these words in their largest sense, and so as to\ninclude every cohering aggregate of human beings)--that I can deal now;\nand even as to that I can but set down a few principal considerations.\nThe progress of the military art is the most conspicuous, I was about\nto say the most SHOWY, fact in human history. Ancient civilisation may\nbe compared with modern in many respects, and plausible arguments\nconstructed to show that it is better; but you cannot compare the two\nin military power. Napoleon could indisputably have conquered\nAlexander; our Indian army would not think much of the Retreat of the\nTen Thousand. And I suppose the improvement has been continuous: I have\nnot the slightest pretence to special knowledge; but, looking at the\nmere surface of the facts, it seems likely that the aggregate battle\narray, so to say, of mankind, the fighting force of the human race, has\nconstantly and invariably grown. It is true that the ancient\ncivilisation long resisted the 'barbarians,' and was then destroyed by\nthe barbarians. But the barbarians had improved. 'By degrees,' says a\nmost accomplished writer,[4] 'barbarian mercenaries came to form the\nlargest, or at least the most effective, part of the Roman armies. The\nbody-guard of Augustus had been so composed; the praetorians were\ngenerally selected from the bravest frontier troops, most of them\nGermans.' 'Thus,' he continues, 'in many ways was the old antagonism\nbroken down, Romans admitting barbarians to rank and office; barbarians\ncatching something of the manners and culture of their neighbours. And\nthus, when the final movement came, the Teutonic tribes slowly\nestablished themselves through the provinces, knowing something of the\nsystem to which they came, and not unwilling to be considered its\nmembers.' Taking friend and foe together, it may be doubted whether the\nfighting capacity of the two armies was not as great at last, when the\nEmpire fell, as ever it was in the long period while the Empire\nprevailed. During the Middle Ages the combining power of men often\nfailed; in a divided time you cannot collect as many soldiers as in a\nconcentrated time. But this difficulty is political, not military. If\nyou added up the many little hosts of any century of separation, they\nwould perhaps be found equal or greater than the single host, or the\nfewer hosts, of previous centuries which were more united. Taken as a\nwhole, and allowing for possible exceptions, the aggregate fighting\npower of mankind has grown immensely, and has been growing continuously\nsince we knew anything about it.\n\n\n\n[4] Mr. Bryce\n\n\n\nAgain, this force has tended to concentrate itself more and more in\ncertain groups which we call 'civilised nations.' The literati of the\nlast century were for ever in fear of a new conquest of the barbarians,\nbut only because their imagination was overshadowed and frightened by\nthe old conquests. A very little consideration would have shown them\nthat, since the monopoly of military inventions by cultivated states,\nreal and effective military power tends to confine itself to those\nstates. The barbarians are no longer so much as vanquished competitors;\nthey have ceased to compete at all. The military vices, too, of\ncivilisation seem to decline just as its military strength augments.\nSomehow or other civilisation does not make men effeminate or unwarlike\nnow as it once did. There is an improvement in our fibre--moral, if not\nphysical. In ancient times city people could not be got to\nfight--seemingly could not fight; they lost their mental courage,\nperhaps their bodily nerve. But now-a-days in all countries the great\ncities could pour out multitudes wanting nothing but practice to make\ngood soldiers, and abounding in bravery and vigour. This was so in\nAmerica; it was so in Prussia; and it would be so in England too. The\nbreed of ancient times was impaired for war by trade and luxury, but\nthe modern breed is not so impaired.\n\nA curious fact indicates the same thing probably, if not certainly.\nSavages waste away before modern civilisation; they seem to have held\ntheir ground before the ancient. There is no lament in any classical\nwriter for the barbarians. The New Zealanders say that the land will\ndepart from their children; the Australians are vanishing; the\nTasmanians have vanished. If anything like this had happened in\nantiquity, the classical moralists would have been sure to muse over\nit; for it is just the large solemn kind of fact that suited them. On\nthe contrary, in Gaul, in Spain, in Sicily--everywhere that we know\nof--the barbarian endured the contact of the Roman, and the Roman\nallied himself to the barbarian. Modern science explains the wasting\naway of savage men; it says that we have diseases which we can bear,\nthough they cannot, and that they die away before them as our fatted\nand protected cattle died out before the rinderpest, which is\ninnocuous, in comparison, to the hardy cattle of the Steppes. Savages\nin the first year of the Christian era were pretty much what they were\nin the 1800th; and if they stood the contact of ancient civilised men,\nand cannot stand ours, it follows that our race is presumably tougher\nthan the ancient; for we have to bear, and do bear, the seeds of\ngreater diseases than those the ancients carried with them. We may use,\nperhaps, the unvarying savage as a metre to gauge the vigour of the\nconstitutions to whose contact he is exposed.\n\nParticular consequences may be dubious, but as to the main fact there\nis no doubt: the military strength of man has been growing from the\nearliest time known to our history, straight on till now. And we must\nnot look at times known by written records only; we must travel back to\nolder ages, known to us only by what lawyers call REAL evidence--the\nevidence of things. Before history began, there was at least as much\nprogress in the military art as there has been since. The Roman\nlegionaries or Homeric Greeks were about as superior to the men of the\nshell mounds and the flint implements as we are superior to them. There\nhas been a constant acquisition of military strength by man since we\nknow anything of him, either by the documents he has composed or the\nindications he has left.\n\nThe cause of this military growth is very plain. The strongest nation\nhas always been conquering the weaker; sometimes even subduing it, but\nalways prevailing over it. Every intellectual gain, so to speak, that a\nnation possessed was in the earliest times made use of--was INVESTED\nand taken out--in war; all else perished. Each nation tried constantly\nto be the stronger, and so made or copied the best weapons; by\nconscious and unconscious imitation each nation formed a type of\ncharacter suitable to war and conquest. Conquest improved mankind by\nthe intermixture of strengths; the armed truce, which was then called\npeace, improved them by the competition of training and the consequent\ncreation of new power. Since the long-headed men first drove the\nshort-headed men out of the best land in Europe, all European history\nhas been the history of the superposition of the more military races\nover the less military of the efforts, sometimes successful, sometimes\nunsuccessful, of each race to get more military; and so the art of war\nhas constantly improved. But why is one nation stronger than another?\nIn the answer to that, I believe, lies the key to the principal\nprogress of early civilisation, and to some of the progress of all\ncivilisation. The answer is that there are very many advantages--some\nsmall and some great--every one of which tends to make the nation which\nhas it superior to the nation which has it not; that many of these\nadvantages can be imparted to subjugated races, or imitated by\ncompeting races; and that, though some of these advantages may be\nperishable or inimitable, yet, on the whole, the energy of civilisation\ngrows by the coalescence of strengths and by the competition of\nstrengths.\n\n\nII.\n\nBy far the greatest advantage is that on which I observed before--that\nto which I drew all the attention I was able by making the first of\nthese essays an essay on the Preliminary Age. The first thing to\nacquire is if I may so express it, the LEGAL FIBRE; a polity\nfirst--what sort of polity is immaterial; a law first--what kind of law\nis secondary; a person or set of persons to pay deference to--though\nwho he is, or they are, by comparison scarcely signifies. 'There is,'\nit has been said, 'hardly any exaggerating the difference between\ncivilised and uncivilised men; it is greater than the difference\nbetween a tame and a wild animal,' because man can improve more. But\nthe difference at first was gained in much the same way. The taming of\nanimals as it now goes on among savage nations, and as travellers who\nhave seen it describe it, is a kind of selection. The most wild are\nkilled when food is wanted, and the most tame and easy to manage kept,\nbecause they are more agreeable to human indolence, and so the keeper\nlikes them best. Captain Galton, who has often seen strange scenes of\nsavage and of animal life, had better describe the process:--'The\nirreclaimably wild members of every flock would escape and be utterly\nlost; the wilder of those that remained would assuredly be selected for\nslaughter--whenever it was necessary that one of the flock should be\nkilled. The tamest cattle--those which seldom ran away, that kept the\nflocks together, and those which led them homeward--would be preserved\nalive longer than any of the others. It is, therefore, these that\nchiefly become the parents of stock and bequeath their domestic\naptitudes to the future herd. I have constantly witnessed this process\nof selection among the pastoral savages of South Africa. I believe it\nto be a very important one on account of its rigour and its regularity.\nIt must have existed from the earliest times, and have been, in\ncontinuous operation, generation after generation, down to the present\nday.'[5]\n\n\n\n[5] Ethnological Society's Transactions, vol. iii. p. 137.\n\n\n\nMan, being the strongest of all animals, differs from the rest; he was\nobliged to be his own domesticator; he had to tame himself. And the way\nin which it happened was, that the most obedient, the tamest tribes\nare, at the first stage in the real struggle of life, the strongest and\nthe conquerors. All are very wild then; the animal vigour, the savage\nvirtue of the race has died out in none, and all have enough of it. But\nwhat makes one tribe--one incipient tribe, one bit of a tribe--to\ndiffer from another is their relative faculty of coherence. The\nslightest symptom of legal development, the least indication of a\nmilitary bond, is then enough to turn the scale. The compact tribes\nwin, and the compact tribes are the tamest. Civilisation begins,\nbecause the beginning of civilisation is a military advantage. Probably\nif we had historic records of the ante-historic ages--if some\nsuperhuman power had set down the thoughts and actions of men ages\nbefore they could set them down for themselves--we should know that\nthis first step in civilisation was the hardest step. But when we come\nto history as it is, we are more struck with the difficulty of the next\nstep. All the absolutely incoherent men--all the 'Cyclopes'--have been\ncleared away long before there was an authentic account of them. And\nthe least coherent only remain in the 'protected' parts of the world,\nas we may call them. Ordinary civilisation begins near the\nMediterranean Sea; the best, doubtless, of the ante-historic\ncivilisations were not far off. From this centre the conquering\nSWARM--for such it is--has grown and grown; has widened its subject\nterritories steadily, though not equably, age by age. But geography\nlong defied it. An Atlantic Ocean, a Pacific Ocean, an Australian\nOcean, an unapproachable interior Africa, an inaccessible and\nundesirable hill India, were beyond its range. In such remote places\nthere was no real competition, and on them inferior, half-combined men\ncontinued to exist. But in the regions of rivalry--the regions where\nthe better man pressed upon the worse man--such half-made associations\ncould not last. They died out and history did not begin till after they\nwere gone. The great difficulty which history records is not that of\nthe first step, but that of the second step. What is most evident is\nnot the difficulty of getting a fixed law, but getting out of a fixed\nlaw; not of cementing (as upon a former occasion I phrased it) a cake\nof custom, but of breaking the cake of custom; not of making the first\npreservative habit, but of breaking through it, and reaching something\nbetter.\n\nThis is the precise case with the whole family of arrested\ncivilisations. A large part, a very large part, of the world seems to\nbe ready to advance to something good--to have prepared all the means\nto advance to something good,--and then to have stopped, and not\nadvanced. India, Japan, China, almost every sort of Oriental\ncivilisation, though differing in nearly all other things, are in this\nalike. They look as if they had paused when there was no reason for\npausing--when a mere observer from without would say they were likely\nnot to pause.\n\nThe reason is, that only those nations can progress which preserve and\nuse the fundamental peculiarity which was given by nature to man's\norganism as to all other organisms. By a law of which we know no\nreason, but which, is among the first by which Providence guides and\ngoverns the world, there is a tendency in descendants to be like their\nprogenitors, and yet a tendency also in descendants to DIFFER from\ntheir progenitors. The work of nature in making generations is a\npatchwork--part resemblance, part contrast. In certain respects each\nborn generation is not like the last born; and in certain other\nrespects it is like the last. But the peculiarity of arrested\ncivilisation is to kill out varieties at birth almost; that is, in\nearly childhood, and before they can develop. The fixed custom which\npublic opinion alone tolerates is imposed on all minds, whether it\nsuits them or not. In that case the community feel that this custom is\nthe only shelter from bare tyranny, and the only security for they\nvalue. Most Oriental communities live on land which in theory is the\nproperty of a despotic sovereign, and neither they nor their families\ncould have the elements of decent existence unless they held the land\nupon some sort of fixed terms. Land in that state of society is (for\nall but a petty skilled minority) a necessary of life, and all the\nunincreasable land being occupied, a man who is turned out of his\nholding is turned out of this world, and must die. And our notion of\nwritten leases is as out of place in a world without writing and\nwithout reading as a House of Commons among Andaman Islanders. Only one\ncheck, one sole shield for life and good, is then possible;--usage. And\nit is but too plain how in such places and periods men cling to customs\nbecause customs alone stand between them and starvation.\n\nA still more powerful cause co-operated, if a cause more powerful can\nbe imagined. Dryden had a dream of an early age, 'when wild in woods\nthe noble savage ran;' but 'when lone in woods the cringing savage\ncrept' would have been more like all we know of that early, bare,\npainful period. Not only had they no comfort, no convenience, not the\nvery beginnings of an epicurean life, but their mind within was as\npainful to them as the world without. It was full of fear. So far as\nthe vestiges inform us, they were afraid of everything; they were\nafraid of animals, of certain attacks by near tribes, and of possible\ninroads from far tribes. But, above all things, they were frightened of\n'the world;' the spectacle of nature filled them with awe and dread.\nThey fancied there were powers behind it which must be pleased,\nsoothed, flattered, and this very often in a number of hideous ways. We\nhave too many such religions, even among races of great cultivation.\nMen change their religions more slowly than they change anything else;\nand accordingly we have religions 'of the ages'--(it is Mr. Jowett who\nso calls them)--of the 'ages before morality;' of ages of which the\ncivil life, the common maxims, and all the secular thoughts have long\nbeen dead. 'Every reader of the classics,' said Dr. Johnson, 'finds\ntheir mythology tedious.' In that old world, which is so like our\nmodern world in so many things, so much more like than many far more\nrecent, or some that live beside us, there is a part in which we seem\nto have no kindred, which we stare at, of which we cannot think how it\ncould be credible, or how it came to be thought of. This is the archaic\npart of that very world which we look at as so ancient; an 'antiquity'\nwhich descended to them, hardly altered, perhaps, from times long\nantecedent, which were as unintelligible to them as to us, or more so.\nHow this terrible religion--for such it was in all living detail,\nthough we make, and the ancients then made, an artistic use of the more\nattractive bits of it--weighed on man, the great poem of Lucretius, the\nmost of a nineteenth-century poem of any in antiquity, brings before us\nwith a feeling so vivid as to be almost a feeling of our own. Yet the\nclassical religion is a mild and tender specimen of the preserved\nreligions. To get at the worst, you should look where the destroying\ncompetition has been least--at America, where sectional civilisation\nwas rare, and a pervading coercive civilisation did not exist; at such\nreligions as those of the Aztecs.\n\nAt first sight it seems impossible to imagine what conceivable function\nsuch awful religions can perform in the economy of the world. And no\none can fully explain them. But one use they assuredly had: they fixed\nthe yoke of custom thoroughly on mankind. They were the prime agents of\nthe era. They put upon a fixed law a sanction so fearful that no one\ncould dream of not conforming to it. No one will ever comprehend the\narrested civilisations unless he sees the strict dilemma of early\nsociety. Either men had no law at all, and lived in confused tribes,\nhardly hanging together, or they had to obtain a fixed law by processes\nof incredible difficulty. Those who surmounted that difficulty soon\ndestroyed all those that lay in their way who did not. And then they a\nthemselves were caught in their own yoke. The customary discipline,\nwhich could only be imposed on any early men by terrible sanctions,\ncontinued with those sanctions, and killed out of the whole society the\npropensities to variation which are the principle--of progress.\nExperience shows how incredibly difficult it is to get men really to\nencourage the principle of originality. They will admit it in theory,\nbut in practice the old error--the error which arrested a hundred\ncivilisations--returns again. Men are too fond of their own life, too\ncredulous of the completeness of their own ideas, too angry at the pain\nof new thoughts, to be able to bear easily with a changing existence;\nor else, having new ideas, they want to enforce them on mankind--to\nmake them heard, and admitted, and obeyed before, in simple competition\nwith other ideas, they would ever be so naturally. At this very moment\nthere are the most rigid Comtists teaching that we ought to be governed\nby a hierarchy--a combination of savans orthodox in science. Yet who\ncan doubt that Comte would have been hanged by his own hierarchy; that\nhis essor materiel, which was in fact troubled by the 'theologians and\nmetaphysicians' of the Polytechnic School, would have been more impeded\nby the government he wanted to make? And then the secular Comtists, Mr.\nHarrison and Mr. Beesly, who want to 'Frenchify the English\ninstitutions'--that is, to introduce here an imitation of the\nNapoleonic system, a dictatorship founded on the proletariat--who can\ndoubt that if both these clever writers had been real Frenchmen they\nwould have been irascible anti-Bonapartists, and have been sent to\nCayenne long ere now? The wish of these writers is very natural. They\nwant to 'organise society,' to erect a despot who will do what they\nlike, and work out their ideas; but any despot will do what he himself\nlikes, and will root out new ideas ninety-nine times for once that he\nintroduces them. Again, side by side with these Comtists, and warring\nwith them--at least with one of them--is Mr. Arnold, whose poems we\nknow by heart, and who has, as much as any living Englishman, the\ngenuine literary impulse; and yet even he wants to put a yoke upon\nus--and, worse than a political yoke, an academic yoke, a yoke upon our\nminds and our styles. He, too, asks us to imitate France; and what else\ncan we say than what the two most thorough Frenchmen of the last age\ndid say?--'Dans les corps a talent, nulle distinction ne fait ombrage,\nsi ce n'est pas celle du talent. Un due et pair honore l'Academie\nFrancaise, qui ne veut point de Boileau, refuse la Bruyere, fait\nattendre Voltaire, mais recoit tout d'abord Chapelain et Conrart. De\nmeme nous voyons a l'Academie Grecque le vicomte invite, Corai\nrepousse, lorsque Jormard y entre comme dans un moulin.' Thus speaks\nPaul-Louis Courier in his own brief inimitable prose. And a still\ngreater writer--a real Frenchman, if ever there was one, and (what many\ncritics would have denied to be possible) a great poet by reason of his\nmost French characteristics--Beranger, tells us in verse:--\n\n     Je croyais voir le president\n     Fairs bailler--en repondant\n     Que l'on vient de perdre un grand homme;\n     Que moi je le vaux, Dieu sait comme.\n     Mais ce president sans facon[6]\n     Ne perore ici qu'en chanson:\n     Toujours trop tot sa harangue est finie.\n     Non, non, ce n'est point comme a l'Academia;\n     Ce n'est point comme a l'Academie.\n\n     Admis enfin, aurai-jo alors,\n     Pour tout esprit, l'esprit de corps?\n     Il rend le bon sens, quoi qu'on dise,\n     Solidaire de la sottise;\n     Mais, dans votes societe,\n     L'esprit de corps, c'est la gaite.\n     Cet esprit la regne sans tyrannie.\n     Non, non, ce n'est point comme a l'Academie;\n     Ce n'est point comme a l'Acadenie.\n\n\n\n[6] Desaugiers.\n\n\n\nAsylums of common-place, he hints, academies must ever be. But that\nsentence is too harsh; the true one is--the academies are asylums of\nthe ideas and the tastes of the last age. 'By the time,' I have heard a\nmost eminent man of science observe, 'by the time a man of science\nattains eminence on any subject, he becomes a nuisance upon it, because\nhe is sure to retain errors which were in vogue when he was young, but\nwhich the new race have refuted.' These are the sort of ideas which\nfind their home in academies, and out of their dignified windows\npooh-pooh new things. I may seem to have wandered far from early\nsociety, but I have not wandered. The true scientific method is to\nexplain the past by the present--what we see by what we do not see. We\ncan only comprehend why so many nations have not varied, when we see\nhow hateful variation is; how everybody turns against it; how not only\nthe conservatives of speculation try to root it out, but the very\ninnovators invent most rigid machines for crushing the 'monstrosities\nand anomalies'--the new forms, out of which, by competition and trial,\nthe best is to be selected for the future. The point I am bringing out\nis simple:--one most important pre-requisite of a prevailing nation is\nthat it should have passed out of the first stage of civilisation into\nthe second stage--out of the stage where permanence is most wanted into\nthat where variability is most wanted; and you cannot comprehend why\nprogress is so slow till you see how hard the most obstinate tendencies\nof human nature make that step to mankind.\n\nOf course the nation we are supposing must keep the virtues of its\nfirst stage as it passes into the after stage, else it will be trodden\nout; it will have lost the savage virtues in getting the beginning of\nthe civilised virtues; and the savage virtues which tend to war are the\ndaily bread of human nature. Carlyle said, in his graphic way, 'The\nultimate question between every two human beings is, \"Can I kill thee,\nor canst thou kill me?\"' History is strewn with the wrecks of nations\nwhich have gained a little progressiveness at the cost of a great deal\nof hard manliness, and have thus prepared themselves for destruction as\nsoon as the movements of the world gave a chance for it. But these\nnations have come out of the 'pre-economic stage' too soon; they have\nbeen put to learn while yet only too apt to unlearn. Such cases do not\nvitiate, they confirm, the principle--that a nation which has just\ngained variability without losing legality has a singular likelihood to\nbe a prevalent nation.\n\nNo nation admits of an abstract definition; all nations are beings of\nmany qualities and many sides; no historical event exactly illustrates\nany one principle; every cause is intertwined and surrounded with a\nhundred others. The best history is but like the art of Rembrandt; it\ncasts a vivid light on certain selected causes, on those which were\nbest and greatest; it leaves all the rest in shadow and unseen. To make\na single nation illustrate a principle, you must exaggerate much and\nyou must omit much. But, not forgetting this caution, did not Rome--the\nprevalent nation in the ancient world--gain her predominance by the\nprinciple on which I have dwelt? In the thick crust of her legality\nthere was hidden a little seed of adaptiveness. Even in her law itself\nno one can fail to see that, binding as was the habit of obedience,\ncoercive as use and wont at first seem, a hidden impulse of extrication\nDID manage, in some queer way, to change the substance while conforming\nto the accidents--to do what was wanted for the new time while seeming\nto do only what was directed by the old time. And the moral of their\nwhole history is the same each Roman generation, so far as we know,\ndiffers a little-and in the best times often but a VERY little--from\nits predecessors. And therefore the history is so continuous as it\ngoes, though its two ends are so unlike. The history of many nations is\nlike the stage of the English drama: one scene is succeeded on a sudden\nby a scene quite different,--a cottage by a palace, and a windmill by a\nfortress. But the history of Rome changes as a good diorama changes;\nwhile you look, you hardly see it alter; each moment is hardly\ndifferent from the last moment; yet at the close the metamorphosis is\ncomplete, and scarcely anything is as it began. Just so in the history\nof the great prevailing city: you begin with a town and you end with an\nempire, and this by unmarked stages?--So shrouded, so shielded, in the\ncoarse fibre of other qualities--was the delicate principle of\nprogress, that it never failed, and it was never broken.\n\nOne standing instance, no doubt, shows that the union of\nprogressiveness and legality does not secure supremacy in war. The\nJewish nation has its type of progress in the prophets, side by side\nwith its type of permanence in the law and Levites, more distinct than\nany other ancient people. Nowhere in common history do we see the two\nforces--both so necessary and both so dangerous--so apart and so\nintense: Judaea changed in inward thought, just as Borne changed in\nexterior power. Each change was continuous, gradual and good. In early\ntimes every sort of advantage tends to become a military advantage;\nsuch is the best way, then, to keep it alive. But the Jewish advantage\nnever did so; beginning in religion, contrary to a thousand analogies,\nit remained religious. For that we care for them; from that have issued\nendless consequences. But I cannot deal with such matters here, nor are\nthey to my purpose. As respects this essay, Judaea is an example of\ncombined variability and legality not investing itself in warlike\npower, and so perishing at last, but bequeathing nevertheless a legacy\nof the combination in imperishable mental effects.\n\nIt may be objected that this principle is like saying that men walk\nwhen they do walk, and sit when they do sit. The problem, is, why do\nmen progress? And the answer suggested seems to be, that they progress\nwhen they have a certain sufficient amount of variability in their\nnature. This seems to be the old style of explanation by occult\nqualities. It seems like saying that opium sends men to sleep because\nit has a soporific virtue, and bread feeds because it has an alimentary\nquality. But the explanation is not so absurd. It says: 'The beginning\nof civilisation is marked by an intense legality; that legality is the\nvery condition of its existence, the bond which ties it together; but\nthat legality--that tendency to impose a settled customary yoke upon\nall men and all actions if it goes on, kills out the variability\nimplanted by nature, and makes different men and different ages\nfacsimiles of other men and other ages, as we see them so often.\nProgress is only possible in those happy cases where the force of\nlegality has gone far enough to bind the nation together, but not far\nenough to kill out all varieties and destroy nature's perpetual\ntendency to change.' The point of the solution is not the invention of\nan imaginary agency, but an assignment of comparative magnitude to two\nknown agencies.\n\n\nIII.\n\nThis advantage is One of the greatest in early civilisation--one of the\nfacts which give a decisive turn to the battle of nations; but there\nare many others. A little perfection in POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS may do\nit. Travellers have noticed that among savage tribes those seemed to\nanswer best in which the monarchical power was most predominant, and\nthose worst in which the 'rule of many' was in its vigour. So long as\nwar is the main business of nations, temporary despotism--despotism\nduring the campaign--is indispensable. Macaulay justly said that many\nan army has prospered under a bad commander, but no army has ever\nprospered under a 'debating society;' that many-headed monster is then\nfatal. Despotism grows in the first societies, just as democracy grows\nin more modern societies; it is the government answering the primary\nneed, and congenial to the whole spirit of the time. But despotism is\nunfavourable to the principle of variability, as all history shows. It\ntends to keep men in the customary stage of civilisation; its very\nfitness for that age unfits it for the next. It prevents men from\npassing into the first age of progress--the VERY slow and VERY\ngradually improving age. Some 'standing system' of semi-free discussion\nis as necessary to break the thick crust of custom and begin progress\nas it is in later ages to carry on progress when begun; probably it is\neven more necessary. And in the most progressive races we find it. I\nhave spoken already of the Jewish prophets, the life of that nation,\nand the principle of all its growth. But a still more progressive\nrace--that by which secular civilisation was once created, by which it\nis now mainly administered--had a still better instrument of\nprogression. 'In the very earliest glimpses,' says Mr. Freeman, 'of\nTeutonic political life, we find the monarchic, the aristocratic, and\nthe democratic elements already clearly marked. There are leaders with\nor without the royal title; there are men of noble birth, whose noble\nbirth (in whatever the original nobility may have consisted) entitles\nthem to a pre-eminence in every way; but beyond these there is a free\nand armed people, in whom it is clear that the ultimate sovereignty\nresides. Small matters are decided by the chiefs alone; great matters\nare submitted by the chiefs to the assembled nation. Such a system is\nfar more than Teutonic; it is a common Aryan possession; it is the\nconstitution of the Homeric Achaians on earth and of the Homeric gods\non Olympus.' Perhaps, and indeed probably, this constitution may be\nthat of the primitive tribe which Romans left to go one way, and Greeks\nto go another, and Teutons to go a third. The tribe took it with them,\nas the English take the common law with them, because it was the one\nkind of polity which they could conceive and act upon; or it may be\nthat the emigrants from the primitive Aryan stock only took with them a\ngood aptitude--an excellent political nature, which similar\ncircumstances in distant countries were afterwards to develop into like\nforms. But anyhow it is impossible not to trace the supremacy of\nTeutons, Greeks, and Romans in part to their common form of government.\nThe contests of the assembly cherished the principle of change; the\ninfluence of the elders insured sedateness and preserved the mould of\nthought; and, in the best cases, military discipline was not impaired\nby freedom, though military intelligence was enhanced with the general\nintelligence. A Roman army was a free body, at its own choice governed\nby a peremptory despotism.\n\nThe MIXTURE OF RACES was often an advantage, too. Much as the old world\nbelieved in pure blood, it had very little of it. Most historic nations\nconquered prehistoric nations, and though they massacred many, they did\nnot massacre all. They enslaved the subject men, and they married the\nsubject women. No doubt the whole bond of early society was the bond of\ndescent; no doubt it was essential to the notions of a new nation that\nit should have had common ancestors; the modern idea that vicinity of\nhabitation is the natural cement of civil union would have been\nrepelled as an impiety if it could have been conceived as an idea. But\nby one of those legal fictions which Sir Henry Maine describes so well,\nprimitive nations contrived to do what they found convenient, as well\nas to adhere to what they fancied to be right. When they did not beget\nthey ADOPTED; they solemnly made believe that new persons were\ndescended from the old stock, though everybody knew that in flesh and\nblood they were not. They made an artificial unity in default of a real\nunity; and what it is not easy to understand now, the sacred sentiment\nrequiring unity of race was somehow satisfied: what was made did as\nwell as what was born. Nations with these sort of maxims are not likely\nto have unity of race in the modern sense, and as a physiologist\nunderstands it. What sorts of unions improve the breed, and which are\nworse than both the father-race and the mother, it is not very easy to\nsay. The subject was reviewed by M. Quatrefages in an elaborate report\nupon the occasion of the French Exhibition, of all things in the world.\nM. Quatrefages quotes from another writer the phrase that South America\nis a great laboratory of experiments in the mixture of races, and\nreviews the different results which different cases have shown. In\nSouth Carolina the Mulatto race is not very prolific, whereas in\nLouisiana and Florida it decidedly is so. In Jamaica and in Java the\nMulatto cannot reproduce itself after the third generation; but on the\ncontinent of America, as everybody knows, the mixed race is now most\nnumerous, and spreads generation after generation without impediment.\nEqually various likewise in various cases has been the fate of the\nmixed race between the white man and the native American; sometimes it\nprospers, sometimes it fails. And M. Quatrefages concludes his\ndescription thus: 'En acceptant comme vraies toutes les observations\nqui tendent a faire admettre qu'il en sera autrement dans les localites\ndont j'ai parle plus haut, quelle est la conclusion a tirer de faits\naussi peu semblables? Evidemment, on est oblige de reconnaitre que le\ndeveloppement de la race mulatre est favorise, retarde, ou empeche par\ndes circonstances locales; en d'autres termes, qu'il depend des\ninfluences exercees par l'ensemble des conditions d'existence, par le\nMILIEU.' By which I understand him to mean that the mixture of race\nsometimes brings out a form of character better suited than either\nparent form to the place and time; that in such cases, by a kind of\nnatural selection, it dominates over both parents, and perhaps\nsupplants both, whereas in other cases the mixed race is not as good\nthen and there as other parent forms, and then it passes away soon and\nof itself.\n\nEarly in history the continual mixtures by conquest were just so many\nexperiments in mixing races as are going on in South America now. New\nraces wandered into new districts, and half killed, half mixed with the\nold races. And the result was doubtless as various and as difficult to\naccount for then as now; sometimes the crossing answered, sometimes it\nfailed. But when the mixture was at its best, it must have excelled\nboth parents in that of which so much has been said; that is,\nvariability, and consequently progressiveness. There is more life in\nmixed nations. France, for instance, is justly said to be the mean term\nbetween the Latin and the German races. A Norman, as you may see by\nlooking at him, is of the north; a Provencal is of the south, of all\nthat there is most southern. You have in France Latin, Celtic, German,\ncompounded in an infinite number of proportions: one as she is in\nfeeling, she is various not only in the past history of her various\nprovinces, but in their present temperaments. Like the Irish element\nand the Scotch element in the English House of Commons, the variety of\nFrench races contributes to the play of the polity; it gives a chance\nfor fitting new things which otherwise there would not be. And early\nraces must have wanted mixing more than modern races. It is said, in\nanswer to the Jewish boast that 'their race still prospers, though it\nis scattered and breeds in-and-in,' 'You prosper BECAUSE you are so\nscattered; by acclimatisation in various regions your nation has\nacquired singular elements of variety; it contains within itself the\nprinciple of variability which other nations must seek by\nintermarriage.' In the beginning of things there was certainly no\ncosmopolitan race like the Jews; each race was a sort of 'parish race,'\nnarrow in thought and bounded in range, and it wanted mixing\naccordingly.\n\nBut the mixture of races has a singular danger as well as a singular\nadvantage in the early world. We know now the Anglo-Indian suspicion or\ncontempt for 'half-castes.' The union of the Englishman and the Hindoo\nproduces something not only between races, but BETWEEN MORALITIES. They\nhave no inherited creed or plain place in the world; they have none of\nthe fixed traditional sentiments which are the stays of human nature.\nIn the early world many mixtures must have wrought many ruins; they\nmust have destroyed what they could not replace--an inbred principle of\ndiscipline and of order. But if these unions of races did not work\nthus; if, for example, the two races were so near akin that their\nmorals united as well as their breeds, if one race by its great numbers\nand prepotent organisation so presided over the other as to take it up\nand assimilate it, and leave no separate remains of it, THEN the\nadmixture was invaluable. It added to the probability of variability,\nand therefore of improvement; and if that improvement even in part took\nthe military line, it might give the mixed and ameliorated state a\nsteady advantage in the battle of nations, and a greater chance of\nlasting in the world.\n\nAnother mode in which one state acquires a superiority over competing\nstates is by PROVISIONAL institutions, if I may so call them. The most\nimportant of these--slavery--arises out of the same early conquest as\nthe mixture of races. A slave is an unassimilated, an undigested atom;\nsomething which is in the body politic, but yet is hardly part of it.\nSlavery, too, has a bad name in the later world, and very justly. We\nconnect it with gangs in chains, with laws which keep men ignorant,\nwith laws that hinder families. But the evils which we have endured\nfrom slavery in recent ages must not blind us to, or make us forget,\nthe great services that slavery rendered in early ages. There is a\nwonderful presumption in its favour; it is one of the institutions\nwhich, at a certain stage of growth, all nations in all countries\nchoose and cleave to. 'Slavery,' says Aristotle, 'exists by the law of\nnature,' meaning that it was everywhere to be found--was a rudimentary\nuniversal point of polity. 'There are very many English colonies,' said\nEdward Gibbon Wakefield, as late as 1848, 'who would keep slaves at\nonce if we would let them,' and he was speaking not only of old\ncolonies trained in slavery, and raised upon the products of it, but\nlikewise of new colonies started by freemen, and which ought, one would\nthink, to wish to contain freemen only. But Wakefield knew what he was\nsaying; he was a careful observer of rough societies, and he had\nwatched the minds of men in them. He had seen that LEISURE is the great\nneed of early societies, and slaves only can give men leisure. All\nfreemen in new countries must be pretty equal; every one has labour,\nand every one has land; capital, at least in agricultural countries\n(for pastoral countries are very different), is of little use; it\ncannot hire labour; the labourers go and work for themselves. There is\na story often told of a great English capitalist who went out to\nAustralia with a shipload of labourers and a carriage; his plan was\nthat the labourers should build a house for him, and that he would keep\nhis carriage, just as in England. But (so the story goes) he had to try\nto live in his carriage, for his labourers left him, and went away to\nwork for themselves. In such countries there can be few gentlemen and\nno ladies. Refinement is only possible when leisure is possible; and\nslavery first makes it possible. It creates a set of persons born to\nwork that others may not work, and not to think in order that others\nmay think. The sort of originality which slavery gives is of the first\npractical advantage in early communities; and the repose it gives is a\ngreat artistic advantage when they come to be described in history. The\npatriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob could not have had the steady calm\nwhich marks them, if they had themselves been teased and hurried about\ntheir flocks and herds. Refinement of feeling and repose of appearance\nhave indeed no market value in the early bidding of nations; they do\nnot tend to secure themselves a long future or any future. But\noriginality in war does, and slave-owning nations, having time to\nthink, are likely to be more shrewd in policy, and more crafty in\nstrategy.\n\nNo doubt this momentary gain is bought at a ruinous after-cost. When\nother sources of leisure become possible, the one use of slavery is\npast. But all its evils remain, and even grow worse. 'Retail'\nslavery--the slavery in which a master owns a few slaves, whom he well\nknows and daily sees--is not at all an intolerable state; the slaves of\nAbraham had no doubt a fair life, as things went in that day. But\nwholesale slavery, where men are but one of the investments of large\ncapital, and where a great owner, so far from knowing each slave, can\nhardly tell how many gangs of them he works, is an abominable state.\nThis is the slavery which has made the name revolting to the best\nminds, and has nearly rooted the thing out of the best of the world.\nThere is no out-of-the-way marvel in this. The whole history of\ncivilisation, is strewn with creeds and institutions which were\ninvaluable at first, and deadly afterwards. Progress would not have\nbeen the rarity it is if the early food had not been the late poison. A\nfull examination of these provisional institutions would need half a\nvolume, and would be out of place and useless here. Venerable\noligarchy, august monarchy, are two that would alone need large\nchapters. But the sole point here necessary is to say that such\npreliminary forms and feelings at first often bring many graces and\nmany refinements, and often tend to secure them by the preservative\nmilitary virtue. There are cases in which some step in INTELLECTUAL\nprogress gives an early society some gain in war; more obvious cases\nare when some kind of MORAL quality gives some such gain. War both\nneeds and generates certain virtues; not the highest, but what may be\ncalled the preliminary virtues, as valour, veracity, the spirit of\nobedience, the habit of discipline. Any of these, and of others like\nthem, when possessed by a nation, and no matter how generated, will\ngive them a military advantage, and make them more likely to stay in\nthe race of nations. The Romans probably had as much of these\nefficacious virtues as any race of the ancient world,--perhaps as much\nas any race in the modern world too. And the success of the nations\nwhich possess these martial virtues has been the great means by which\ntheir continuance has been secured in the world, and the destruction of\nthe opposite vices insured also. Conquest is the missionary of valour,\nand the hard impact of military virtues beats meanness out of the world.\n\nIn the last century it would have sounded strange to speak, as I am\ngoing to speak, of the military advantage of RELIGION. Such an idea\nwould have been opposed to ruling prejudices, and would hardly have\nescaped philosophical ridicule. But the notion is but a commonplace in\nour day, for a man of genius has made it his own. Mr. Carlyle's books\nare deformed by phrases like 'infinities' and 'verities' and altogether\nare full of faults, which attract the very young, and deter all that\nare older. In spite of his great genius, after a long life of writing,\nit is a question still whether even a single work of his can take a\nlasting place in high literature. There is a want of sanity in their\nmanner which throws a suspicion on their substance (though it is often\nprofound); and he brandishes one or two fallacies, of which he has\nhimself a high notion, but which plain people will always detect and\nderide. But whatever may be the fate of his fame, Mr. Carlyle has\ntaught the present generation many lessons, and one of these is that\n'God-fearing' armies are the best armies. Before his time people\nlaughed at Cromwell's saying, 'Trust in God, and keep your powder dry.'\nBut we now know that the trust was of as much use as the powder, if not\nof more. That high concentration of steady feeling makes men dare\neverything and do anything.\n\nThis subject would run to an infinite extent if any one were competent\nto handle it. Those kinds of morals and that kind of religion which\ntend to make the firmest and most effectual character are sure to\nprevail, all else being the same; and creeds or systems that conduce to\na soft limp mind tend to perish, except some hard extrinsic force keep\nthem alive. Thus Epicureanism never prospered at Rome, but Stoicism\ndid; the stiff, serious character of the great prevailing nation was\nattracted by what seemed a confirming creed, and deterred by what\nlooked like a relaxing creed. The inspiriting doctrines fell upon the\nardent character, and so confirmed its energy. Strong beliefs win\nstrong men, and then make them stronger. Such is no doubt one cause why\nMonotheism tends to prevail over Polytheism; it produces a higher,\nsteadier character, calmed and concentrated by a great single object;\nit is not confused by competing rites, or distracted by miscellaneous\ndeities. Polytheism is religion IN COMMISSION, and it is weak\naccordingly. But it will be said the Jews, who were monotheist, were\nconquered by the Romans, who were polytheist. Yes, it must be answered,\nbecause the Romans had other gifts; they had a capacity for politics, a\nhabit of discipline, and of these the Jews had not the least. The\nreligious advantage WAS an advantage, but it was counter-weighed.\n\nNo one should be surprised at the prominence given to war. We are\ndealing with early ages; nation-MAKING is the occupation of man in\nthese ages, and it is war that makes nations. Nation-CHANGING comes\nafterwards, and is mostly effected by peaceful revolution, though even\nthen war, too, plays its part. The idea of an indestructible nation is\na modern idea; in early ages all nations were destructible, and the\nfurther we go back, the more incessant was the work of destruction. The\ninternal decoration of nations is a sort of secondary process, which\nsucceeds when the main forces that create nations have principally done\ntheir work. We have here been concerned with the political scaffolding;\nit will be the task of other papers to trace the process of political\nfinishing and building. The nicer play of finer forces may then require\nmore pleasing thoughts than the fierce fights of early ages can ever\nsuggest. It belongs to the idea of progress that beginnings can never\nseem attractive to those who live far on; the price of improvement is,\nthat the unimproved will always look degraded.\n\nBut how far are the strongest nations really the best nations? how far\nis excellence in war a criterion of other excellence? I cannot answer\nthis now fully, but three or four considerations are very plain. War,\nas I have said, nourishes the 'preliminary' virtues, and this is almost\nas much as to say that there are virtues which it does not nourish. All\nwhich may be called 'grace' as well as virtue it does not nourish;\nhumanity, charity, a nice sense of the rights of others, it certainly\ndoes not foster. The insensibility to human suffering, which is so\nstriking a fact in the world as it stood when history first reveals it,\nis doubtless due to the warlike origin of the old civilisation. Bred in\nwar, and nursed in war, it could not revolt from the things of war, and\none of the principal of these is human pain. Since war has ceased to be\nthe moving force in the world, men have become more tender one to\nanother, and shrink from what they used to inflict without caring; and\nthis not so much because men are improved (which may or may not be in\nvarious cases), but because they have no longer the daily habit of\nwar--have no longer formed their notions upon war, and therefore are\nguided by thoughts and feelings which soldiers as such--soldiers\neducated simply by their trade--are too hard to understand.\n\nVery like this is the contempt for physical weakness and for women\nwhich marks early society too. The non-combatant population is sure to\nfare ill during the ages of combat. But these defects, too, are cured\nor lessened; women have now marvellous means of winning their way in\nthe world; and mind without muscle has far greater force than muscle\nwithout mind. These are some of the after-changes in the interior of\nnations, of which the causes must be scrutinised, and I now mention\nthem only to bring out how many softer growths have now half-hidden the\nold and harsh civilisation which war made. But it is very dubious\nwhether the spirit of war does not still colour our morality far too\nmuch. Metaphors from law and metaphors from war make most of our\ncurrent moral phrases, and a nice examination would easily explain that\nboth rather vitiate what both often illustrate. The military habit\nmakes man think far too much of definite action, and far too little of\nbrooding meditation. Life is not a set campaign, but an irregular work,\nand the main forces in it are not overt resolutions, but latent and\nhalf-involuntary promptings. The mistake of military ethics is to\nexaggerate the conception of discipline, and so to present the moral\nforce of the will in a barer form than it ever ought to take. Military\nmorals can direct the axe to cut down the tree, but it knows nothing of\nthe quiet force by which the forest grows. What has been said is\nenough, I hope, to bring out that there are many qualities and many\ninstitutions of the most various sort which give nations an advantage\nin military competition; that most of these and most warlike qualities\ntend principally to good; that the constant winning of these favoured\ncompetitors is the particular mode by which the best qualities wanted\nin elementary civilisation are propagated and preserved.\n\n\nNO. III\n\nNATION-MAKING.\n\nIn the last essay I endeavoured to show that in the early age of\nman--the 'fighting age' I called it--there was a considerable, though\nnot certain, tendency towards progress. The best nations conquered the\nworst; by the possession of one advantage or another the best\ncompetitor overcame the inferior competitor. So long as there was\ncontinual fighting there was a likelihood of improvement in martial\nvirtues, and in early times many virtues are really 'martial'--that is,\ntend to success in war--which in later times we do not think of so\ncalling, because the original usefulness is hid by their later\nusefulness. We judge of them by the present effects, not by their\nfirst. The love of law, for example, is a virtue which no one now would\ncall martial, yet in early times it disciplined nations, and the\ndisciplined nations won. The gift of 'conservative innovation'--the\ngift of MATCHING new institutions to old--is not nowadays a warlike\nvirtue, yet the Romans owed much of their success to it. Alone among\nancient nations they had the deference to usage which, combines\nnations, and the partial permission of selected change which improves\nnations; and therefore they succeeded. Just so in most cases, all\nthrough the earliest times, martial merit is a token of real merit: the\nnation that wins is the nation that ought to win. The simple virtues of\nsuch ages mostly make a man a soldier if they make him anything. No\ndoubt the brute force of number may be too potent even then (as so\noften it is afterwards): civilisation may be thrown back by the\nconquest of many very rude men over a few less rude men. But the first\nelements of civilisation are great military advantages, and, roughly,\nit is a rule of the first times that you can infer merit from conquest,\nand that progress is promoted by the competitive examination of\nconstant war.\n\nThis principle explains at once why the 'protected' regions of the\nworld--the interior of continents like Africa, outlying islands like\nAustralia or New Zealand--are of necessity backward. They are still in\nthe preparatory school; they have not been taken on class by class, as\nNo. II., being a little better, routed effaced No. I.; and as No. III.,\nbeing a little better still, routed and effaced No. II. And it explains\nwhy Western Europe was early in advance of other countries, because\nthere the contest of races was exceedingly severe. Unlike most regions,\nit was a tempting part of the world, and yet not a corrupting part;\nthose who did not possess it wanted it, and those who had it, not being\nenervated, could struggle hard to keep it. The conflict of nations is\nat first a main force in the improvement of nations.\n\nBut what ARE nations? What are these groups which are so familiar to\nus, and yet, if we stop to think, so strange; which are as old as\nhistory; which Herodotus found in almost as great numbers and with\nquite as marked distinctions as we see them now? What breaks the human\nrace up into fragments so unlike one another, and yet each in its\ninterior so monotonous? The question is most puzzling, though the fact\nis so familiar, and I would not venture to say that I can answer it\ncompletely, though I can advance some considerations which, as it seems\nto me, go a certain way towards answering it. Perhaps these same\nconsiderations throw some light, too, on the further and still more\ninteresting question why some few nations progress, and why the greater\npart do not.\n\nOf course at first all such distinctions of nation and nation were\nexplained by original diversity of race. They ARE dissimilar, it was\nsaid, because they were created dissimilar. But in most cases this easy\nsupposition will not do its work. You cannot (consistently with plain\nfacts) imagine enough original races to make it tenable. Some\nhalf-dozen or more great families of men may or may not have been\ndescended from separate first stocks, but sub-varieties have certainly\nnot so descended. You may argue, rightly or wrongly, that all Aryan\nnations are of a single or peculiar origin, just as it was long\nbelieved that all Greek-speaking nations were of one such stock. But\nyou will not be listened to if you say that there were one Adam and Eve\nfor Sparta, and another Adam and Eve for Athens. All Greeks are\nevidently of one origin, but within the limits of the Greek family, as\nof all other families, there is some contrast-making force which causes\ncity to be unlike city, and tribe unlike tribe.\n\nCertainly, too, nations did not originate by simple natural selection,\nas wild varieties of animals (I do not speak now of species) no doubt\narise in nature. Natural selection means the preservation of those\nindividuals which struggle best with the forces that oppose their race.\nBut you could not show that the natural obstacles opposing human life\nmuch differed between Sparta and Athens, or indeed between Rome and\nAthens; and yet Spartans, Athenians, and Romans differ essentially. Old\nwriters fancied (and it was a very natural idea) that the direct effect\nof climate, or rather of land, sea, and air, and the sum total of\nphysical conditions varied man from man, and changed race to race. But\nexperience refutes this. The English immigrant lives in the same\nclimate as the Australian or Tasmanian, but he has not become like\nthose races; nor will a thousand years, in most respects, make him like\nthem. The Papuan and the Malay, as Mr. Wallace finds, live now, and\nhave lived for ages, side by side in the same tropical regions, with\nevery sort of diversity. Even in animals his researches show, as by an\nobject-lesson, that the direct efficacy of physical conditions is\noverrated. 'Borneo,' he says 'closely resembles New Guinea, not only in\nits vast size and freedom from volcanoes, but in its variety of\ngeological structure, its uniformity of climate, and the general aspect\nof the forest vegetation that clothes its surface. The Moluccas are the\ncounterpart of the Philippines in their volcanic structure, their\nextreme fertility, their luxuriant forests, and their frequent\nearthquakes; and Bali, with the east end of Java, has a climate almost\nas arid as that of Timor. Yet between these corresponding groups of\nislands, constructed, as it were, after the same pattern, subjected to\nthe same climate, and bathed by the same oceans, there exists the\ngreatest possible contrast, when we compare their animal productions.\nNowhere does the ancient doctrine--that differences or similarities in\nthe various forms of life that inhabit different countries are due to\ncorresponding physical differences or similarities in the countries\nthemselves--meet with so direct and palpable a contradiction. Borneo\nand New Guinea, as alike physically as two distinct countries can be,\nare zoologically as wide as the poles asunder; while Australia, with\nits dry winds, its open plains, its stony deserts and its temperate\nclimate, yet produces birds and quadrupeds which are closely related to\nthose inhabiting the hot, damp, luxuriant forests which everywhere\nclothe the plains and mountains of New Guinea.' That is, we have like\nliving things in the most dissimilar situations, and unlike living\nthings in the most similar ones. And though some of Mr. Wallace's\nspeculations on ethnology may be doubtful, no one doubts that in the\narchipelago he has studied so well, as often elsewhere in the world,\nthough rarely with such marked emphasis, we find like men in contrasted\nplaces, and unlike men in resembling places. Climate is clearly not THE\nforce which makes nations, for it does not always make them, and they\nare often made without it.\n\nThe problem of 'nation-making'--that is, the explanation of the origin\nof nations such as we now see them, and such as in historical times\nthey have always been--cannot, as it seems to me, be solved without\nseparating it into two: one, the making of broadly-marked races, such\nas the negro, or the red man, or the European; and the second, that of\nmaking the minor distinctions, such as the distinction between Spartan\nand Athenian, or between Scotchman and Englishman. Nations, as we see\nthem, are (if my arguments prove true) the produce of two great forces:\none the race-making force which, whatever it was, acted in antiquity,\nand has now wholly, or almost, given over acting; and the other the\nnation-making force, properly so called, which is acting now as much as\nit ever acted, and creating as much as it ever created.\n\nThe strongest light on the great causes which have formed and are\nforming nations is thrown by the smaller causes which are altering\nnations. The way in which nations change, generation after generation,\nis exceedingly curious, and the change occasionally happens when it is\nvery hard to account for. Something seems to steal over society, say of\nthe Regency time as compared with that of the present Queen. If we read\nof life at Windsor (at the cottage now pulled down), or of Bond Street\nas it was in the days of the Loungers (an extinct race), or of St.\nJames's Street as it was when Mr. Fox and his party tried to make\n'political capital' out of the dissipation of an heir apparent, we seem\nto be reading not of the places we know so well, but of very distant\nand unlike localities. Or let anyone think how little is the external\nchange in England between the age of Elizabeth and the age of Anne\ncompared with the national change. How few were the alterations in\nphysical condition, how few (if any) the scientific inventions\naffecting human life which the later period possessed, but the earlier\ndid not! How hard it is to say what has caused the change in the\npeople! And yet how total is the contrast, at least at first sight! In\npassing from Bacon to Addison, from Shakespeare to Pope, we seem to\npass into a new world.\n\nIn the first of these essays I spoke of the mode in which the literary\nchange happens, and I recur to it because, literature being narrower\nand more definite than life, a change in the less serves as a model and\nillustration of the change in the greater. Some writer, as was\nexplained, not necessarily a very excellent writer or a remembered one,\nhit on something which suited the public taste: he went on writing, and\nothers imitated him, and they so accustomed their readers to that style\nthat they would bear nothing else. Those readers who did not like it\nwere driven to the works of other ages and other countries,--had to\ndespise the 'trash of the day,' as they would call it. The age of Anne\npatronised Steele, the beginner of the essay, and Addison its\nperfecter, and it neglected writings in a wholly discordant key. I have\nheard that the founder of the 'Times' was asked how all the articles in\nthe 'Times' came to seem to be written by one man, and that he\nreplied--'Oh, there is always some one best contributor, and all the\nrest copy.' And this is doubtless the true account of the manner in\nwhich a certain trade mark, a curious and indefinable unity, settles on\nevery newspaper. Perhaps it would be possible to name the men who a few\nyears since created the 'Saturday Review' style, now imitated by\nanother and a younger race. But when the style of a periodical is once\nformed, the continuance of it is preserved by a much more despotic\nimpulse than the tendency to imitation,--by the self-interest of the\neditor, who acts as trustee, if I may say so, for the subscribers. The\nregular buyers of a periodical want to read what they have been used to\nread--the same sort of thought, the same sort of words. The editor sees\nthat they get that sort. He selects the suitable, the conforming\narticles, and he rejects the non-conforming. What the editor does in\nthe case of a periodical, the readers do in the case of literature in\ngeneral. They patronise one thing and reject the rest.\n\nOf course there was always some reason (if we only could find it) which\ngave the prominence in each age to some particular winning literature.\nThere always is some reason why the fashion of female dress is what it\nis. But just as in the case of dress we know that now-a-days the\ndetermining cause is very much of an accident, so in the case of\nliterary fashion, the origin is a good deal of an accident. What the\nmilliners of Paris, or the demi-monde of Paris, enjoin our English\nladies, is (I suppose) a good deal chance; but as soon as it is\ndecreed, those whom it suits and those whom it does not all wear it.\nThe imitative propensity at once insures uniformity; and 'that horrid\nthing we wore last year' (as the phrase may go) is soon nowhere to be\nseen. Just so a literary fashion spreads, though I am far from saying\nwith equal primitive unreasonableness--a literary taste always begins\non some decent reason, but once started, it is propagated as a fashion\nin dress is propagated; even those who do not like it read it because\nit is there, and because nothing else is easily to be found.\n\nThe same patronage of favoured forms, and persecution of disliked\nforms, are the main causes too, I believe, which change national\ncharacter. Some one attractive type catches the eye, so to speak, of\nthe nation, or a part of the nation, as servants catch the gait of\ntheir masters, or as mobile girls come home speaking the special words\nand acting the little gestures of each family whom they may have been\nvisiting. I do not know if many of my readers happen to have read\nFather Newman's celebrated sermon, 'Personal Influence the Means of\nPropagating the Truth;' if not, I strongly recommend them to do so.\nThey will there see the opinion of a great practical leader of men, of\none who has led very many where they little thought of going, as to the\nmode in which they are to be led; and what he says, put shortly and\nsimply, and taken out of his delicate language, is but this--that men\nare guided by TYPE, not by argument; that some winning instance must be\nset up before them, or the sermon will be vain, and the doctrine will\nnot spread. I do not want to illustrate this matter from religious\nhistory, for I should be led far from my purpose, and after all I can\nbut teach the commonplace that it is the life of teachers which is\nCATCHING, not their tenets. And again, in political matters, how\nquickly a leading statesman can change the tone of the community! We\nare most of us earnest with Mr. Gladstone; we were most of NOT so\nearnest in the time of Lord Palmerston. The change is what every one\nfeels, though no one can define it. Each predominant mind calls out a\ncorresponding sentiment in the country: most feel it a little. Those\nwho feel it much express it much; those who feel it excessively express\nit excessively; those who dissent are silent, or unheard.\n\nAfter such great matters as religion and politics, it may seem trifling\nto illustrate the subject from little boys. But it is not trifling. The\nbane of philosophy is pomposity: people will not see that small things\nare the miniatures of greater, and it seems a loss of abstract dignity\nto freshen their minds by object lessons from what they know. But every\nboarding-school changes as a nation changes. Most of us may remember\nthinking, 'How odd it is that this \"half\" should be so unlike last\n\"half:\" now we never go out of bounds, last half we were always going:\nnow we play rounders, then we played prisoner's base;' and so through\nall the easy life of that time. In fact, some ruling spirits, some one\nor two ascendant boys, had left, one or two others had come; and so all\nwas changed. The models were changed, and the copies changed; a\ndifferent thing was praised, and a different thing bullied. A curious\ncase of the same tendency was noticed to me only lately. A friend of\nmine--a Liberal Conservative--addressed a meeting of working men at\nLeeds, and was much pleased at finding his characteristic, and perhaps\nrefined points, both apprehended and applauded. 'But then,' as he\nnarrated, 'up rose a blatant Radical who said the very opposite things,\nand the working men cheered him too, and quite equally.' He was puzzled\nto account for so rapid a change. But the mass of the meeting was no\ndoubt nearly neutral, and, if set going, quite ready to applaud any\ngood words without much thinking. The ringleaders changed. The radical\ntailor started the radical cheer; the more moderate shoemaker started\nthe moderate cheer; and the great bulk followed suit. Only a few in\neach case were silent, and an absolute contrast was in ten minutes\npresented by the same elements.\n\nThe truth is that the propensity of man to imitate what is before him\nis one of the strongest parts of his nature. And one sign of it is the\ngreat pain which we feel when our imitation has been unsuccessful.\nThere is a cynical doctrine that most men would rather be accused of\nwickedness than of gaucherie. And this is but another way of saying\nthat the bad copying of predominant manners is felt to be more of a\ndisgrace than common consideration would account for its being, since\ngaucherie in all but extravagant cases is not an offence against\nreligion or morals, but is simply bad imitation. We must not think that\nthis imitation is voluntary, or even conscious. On the contrary, it has\nits seat mainly in very obscure parts of the mind, whose notions, so\nfar from having been consciously produced, are hardly felt to exist; so\nfar from being conceived beforehand, are not even felt at the time. The\nmain seat of the imitative part of our nature is our belief, and the\ncauses predisposing us to believe this, or disinclining us to believe\nthat, are among the obscurest parts of our nature. But as to the\nimitative nature of credulity there can be no doubt. In 'Eothen' there\nis a capital description of how every sort of European resident in the\nEast, even the shrewd merchant and 'the post-captain,' with his bright,\nwakeful eyes of commerce, comes soon to believe in witchcraft, and to\nassure you, in confidence, that there 'really is something in it.' He\nhas never seen anything convincing himself, but he has seen those who\nhave seen those who have seen those who have seen. In fact, he has\nlived in an atmosphere of infectious belief, and he has inhaled it.\nScarcely any one can help yielding to the current infatuations of his\nsect or party. For a short time--say some fortnight--he is resolute; he\nargues and objects; but, day by day, the poison thrives, and reason\nwanes. What he hears from his friends, what he reads in the party\norgan, produces its effect. The plain, palpable conclusion which every\none around him believes, has an influence yet greater and more subtle;\nthat conclusion seems so solid and unmistakable; his own good arguments\nget daily more and more like a dream. Soon the gravest sage shares the\nfolly of the party with which he acts, and the sect with which he\nworships.\n\nIn true metaphysics I believe that, contrary to common opinion,\nunbelief far oftener needs a reason and requires an effort than belief.\nNaturally, and if man were made according to the pattern of the\nlogicians, he would say, 'When I see a valid argument I will believe,\nand till I see such argument I will not believe.' But, in fact, every\nidea vividly before us soon appears to us to be true, unless we keep up\nour perceptions of the arguments which prove it untrue, and voluntarily\ncoerce our minds to remember its falsehood. 'All clear ideas are true,'\nwas for ages a philosophical maxim, and though no maxim can be more\nunsound, none can be more exactly conformable to ordinary human nature.\nThe child resolutely accepts every idea which passes through its brain\nas true; it has no distinct conception of an idea which is strong,\nbright, and permanent, but which is false too. The mere presentation of\nan idea, unless we are careful about it, or unless there is within some\nunusual resistance, makes us believe it; and this is why the belief of\nothers adds to our belief so quickly, for no ideas seem so very clear\nas those inculcated on us from every side.\n\nThe grave part of mankind are quite as liable to these imitated beliefs\nas the frivolous part. The belief of the money-market, which is mainly\ncomposed of grave people, is as imitative as any belief. You will find\none day everyone enterprising, enthusiastic, vigorous, eager to buy,\nand eager to order: in a week or so you will find almost the whole\nsociety depressed, anxious, and wanting to sell. If you examine the\nreasons for the activity, or for the inactivity, or for the change, you\nwill hardly be able to trace them at all, and as far as you can trace\nthem, they are of little force. In fact, these opinions were not formed\nby reason, but by mimicry. Something happened that looked a little\ngood, on which eager sanguine men talked loudly, and common people\ncaught their tone. A little while afterwards, and when people were\ntired of talking this, something also happened looking a little bad, on\nwhich the dismal, anxious people began, and all the rest followed their\nwords. And in both cases an avowed dissentient is set down as\n'crotchety.' 'If you want,' said Swift, 'to gain the reputation of a\nsensible man, you should be of the opinion of the person with whom for\nthe time being you are conversing.' There is much quiet intellectual\npersecution among 'reasonable' men; a cautious person hesitates before\nhe tells them anything new, for if he gets a name for such things he\nwill be called 'flighty,' and in times of decision he will not be\nattended to.\n\nIn this way the infection of imitation catches men in their most inward\nand intellectual part--their creed. But it also invades men--by the\nmost bodily part of the mind--so to speak--the link between soul and\nbody--the manner. No one needs to have this explained; we all know how\na kind of subtle influence makes us imitate or try to imitate the\nmanner of those around us. To conform to the fashion of Rome--whatever\nthe fashion may be, and whatever Rome we may for the time be at--is\namong the most obvious needs of human nature. But what is not so\nobvious, though as certain, is that the influence of the imitation goes\ndeep as well as extends wide. 'The matter,' as Wordsworth says, 'of\nstyle very much comes out of the manner.' If you will endeavour to\nwrite an imitation of the thoughts of Swift in a copy of the style of\nAddison, you will find that not only is it hard to write Addison's\nstyle, from its intrinsic excellence, but also that the more you\napproach to it the more you lose the thought of Swift. The eager\npassion of the meaning beats upon the mild drapery of the words. So you\ncould not express the plain thoughts of an Englishman in the grand\nmanner of a Spaniard. Insensibly, and as by a sort of magic, the kind\nof manner which a man catches eats into him, and makes him in the end\nwhat at first he only seems.\n\nThis is the principal mode in which the greatest minds of an age\nproduce their effect. They set the tone which others take, and the\nfashion which others use. There is an odd idea that those who take what\nis called a 'scientific view' of history need rate lightly the\ninfluence of individual character. It would be as reasonable to say\nthat those who take a scientific view of nature need think little of\nthe influence of the sun. On the scientific view a great man is a great\nnew cause (compounded or not out of other causes, for I do not here, or\nelsewhere in these papers, raise the question of free-will), but,\nanyhow, new in all its effects, and all its results. Great models for\ngood and evil sometimes appear among men, who follow them either to\nimprovement or degradation.\n\nI am, I know, very long and tedious in setting out this; but I want to\nbring home to others what every new observation of society brings more\nand more freshly to myself--that this unconscious imitation and\nencouragement of appreciated character, and this equally unconscious\nshrinking from and persecution of disliked character, is the main force\nwhich moulds and fashions men in society as we now see it. Soon I shall\ntry to show that the more acknowledged causes, such as change of\nclimate, alteration of political institutions, progress of science, act\nprincipally through this cause; that they change the object of\nimitation and the object of avoidance, and so work their effect. But\nfirst I must speak of the origin of nations--of nation-making as one\nmay call it--the proper subject of this paper.\n\nThe process of nation-making is one of which we have obvious examples\nin the most recent times, and which is going on now. The most simple\nexample is the foundation of the first State of America, say New\nEngland, which has such a marked and such a deep national character. A\ngreat number of persons agreeing in fundamental disposition, agreeing\nin religion, agreeing in politics, form a separate settlement; they\nexaggerate their own disposition, teach their own creed, set up their\nfavourite government; they discourage all other dispositions, persecute\nother beliefs, forbid other forms or habits of government. Of course a\nnation so made will have a separate stamp and mark. The original\nsettlers began of one type; they sedulously imitated it; and (though\nother causes have intervened and disturbed it) the necessary operation\nof the principles of inheritance has transmitted many original traits\nstill unaltered, and has left an entire New England character--in no\nrespect unaffected by its first character.\n\nThis case is well known, but it is not so that the same process, in a\nweaker shape, is going on in America now. Congeniality of sentiment is\na reason of selection, and a bond of cohesion in the 'West' at present.\nCompetent observers say that townships grow up there by each place\ntaking its own religion, its own manners, and its own ways. Those who\nhave these morals and that religion go to that place, and stay there;\nand those who have not these morals and that religion either settle\nelsewhere at first, or soon pass on. The days of colonisation by sudden\n'swarms' of like creed is almost over, but a less visible process of\nattraction by similar faith over similar is still in vigour, and very\nlikely to continue.\n\nAnd in cases where this principle does not operate all new settlements,\nbeing formed of 'emigrants,' are sure to be composed of rather restless\npeople, mainly. The stay-at-home people are not to be found there, and\nthese are the quiet, easy people. A new settlement voluntarily formed\n(for of old times, when people were expelled by terror, I am not\nspeaking) is sure to have in it much more than the ordinary proportion\nof active men, and much less than the ordinary proportion of inactive;\nand this accounts for a large part, though not perhaps all, of the\ndifference between the English in England, and the English in Australia.\n\nThe causes which formed New England in recent times cannot be conceived\nas acting much upon mankind in their infancy. Society is not then\nformed upon a 'voluntary system' but upon an involuntary. A man in\nearly ages is born to a certain obedience, and cannot extricate himself\nfrom an inherited government. Society then is made up, not of\nindividuals, but of families; creeds then descend by inheritance in\nthose families. Lord Melbourne once incurred the ridicule of\nphilosophers by saying he should adhere to the English Church BECAUSE\nit was the religion of his fathers. The philosophers, of course, said\nthat a man's fathers' believing anything was no reason for his\nbelieving it unless it was true. But Lord Melbourne was only uttering\nout of season, and in a modern time, one of the most firm and accepted\nmaxims of old times. A secession on religious grounds of isolated\nRomans to sail beyond sea would have seemed to the ancient Romans an\nimpossibility. In still ruder ages the religion of savages is a thing\ntoo feeble to create a schism or to found a community. We are dealing\nwith people capable of history when we speak of great ideas, not with\nprehistoric flint-men or the present savages. But though under very\ndifferent forms, the same essential causes--the imitation of preferred\ncharacters and the elimination of detested characters--were at work in\nthe oldest times, and are at work among rude men now. Strong as the\npropensity to imitation is among civilised men, we must conceive it as\nan impulse of which their minds have been partially denuded. Like the\nfar-seeing sight, the infallible hearing, the magical scent of the\nsavage, it is a half-lost power. It was strongest in ancient times, and\nIS strongest in uncivilised regions.\n\nThis extreme propensity to imitation is one great reason of the amazing\nsameness which every observer notices in savage nations. When you have\nseen one Euegian, you have seen all Fuegians--one Tasmanian, all\nTasmanians. The higher savages, as the New Zealanders, are less\nuniform; they have more of the varied and compact structure of\ncivilised nations, because in other respects they are more civilised.\nThey have greater mental capacity--larger stores of inward thought. But\nmuch of the same monotonous nature clings to them too. A savage tribe\nresembles a herd of gregarious beasts; where the leader goes they go\ntoo; they copy blindly his habits, and thus soon become that which he\nalready is. For not only the tendency, but also the power to imitate,\nis stronger in savages than civilised men. Savages copy quicker, and\nthey copy better. Children, in the same way, are born mimics; they\ncannot help imitating what comes before them. There is nothing in their\nminds to resist the propensity to copy. Every educated man has a large\ninward supply of ideas to which he can retire, and in which he can\nescape from or alleviate unpleasant outward objects. But a savage or a\nchild has no resource. The external movements before it are its very\nlife; it lives by what it sees and hears. Uneducated people in\ncivilised nations have vestiges of the same condition. If you send a\nhousemaid and a philosopher to a foreign country of which neither knows\nthe language, the chances are that the housemaid will catch it before\nthe philosopher. He has something else to do; he can live in his own\nthoughts. But unless she can imitate the utterances, she is lost; she\nhas no life till she can join in the chatter of the kitchen. The\npropensity to mimicry, and the power of mimicry, are mostly strongest\nin those who have least abstract minds. The most wonderful examples of\nimitation in the world are perhaps the imitations of civilised men by\nsavages in the use of martial weapons. They learn the knack, as\nsportsmen call it, with inconceivable rapidity. A North American\nIndian--an Australian even--can shoot as well as any white man. Here\nthe motive is at its maximum, as well as the innate power. Every savage\ncares more for the power of killing than for any other power.\n\nThe persecuting tendency of all savages, and, indeed, of all ignorant\npeople, is even more striking than their imitative tendency. No\nbarbarian can bear to see one of his nation deviate from the old\nbarbarous customs and usages of their tribe. Very commonly all the\ntribe would expect a punishment from the gods if any one of them\nrefrained from what was old, or began what was new. In modern times and\nin cultivated countries we regard each person as responsible only for\nhis own actions, and do not believe, or think of believing, that the\nmisconduct of others can bring guilt on them. Guilt to us is an\nindividual taint consequent on choice and cleaving to the chooser. But\nin early ages the act of one member of the tribe is conceived to make\nall the tribe impious, to offend its peculiar god, to expose all the\ntribe to penalties from heaven. There is no 'limited liability' in the\npolitical notions of that time. The early tribe or nation is a\nreligious partnership, on which a rash member by a sudden impiety may\nbring utter ruin. If the state is conceived thus, toleration becomes\nwicked. A permitted deviation from the transmitted ordinances becomes\nsimple folly. It is a sacrifice of the happiness of the greatest\nnumber. It is allowing one individual, for a moment's pleasure or a\nstupid whim, to bring terrible and irretrievable calamity upon all. No\none will ever understand even Athenian history, who forgets this idea\nof the old world, though Athens was, in comparison with others, a\nrational and sceptical place, ready for new views, and free from old\nprejudices. When the street statues of Hermes were mutilated, all the\nAthenians were frightened and furious; they thought that they should\nALL be ruined because some one had mutilated a god's image, and so\noffended him. Almost every detail of life in the classical times--the\ntimes when real history opens--was invested with a religious sanction;\na sacred ritual regulated human action; whether it was called 'law' or\nnot, much of it was older than the word 'law;' it was part of an\nancient usage conceived as emanating from a superhuman authority, and\nnot to be transgressed without risk of punishment by more than mortal\npower. There was such a solidarite then between citizens, that each\nmight be led to persecute the other for fear of harm to himself.\n\nIt may be said that these two tendencies of the early world--that to\npersecution and that to imitation--must conflict; that the imitative\nimpulse would lead men to copy what is new, and that persecution by\ntraditional habit would prevent their copying it. But in practice the\ntwo tendencies co-operate. There is a strong tendency to copy the most\ncommon thing, and that common thing is the old habit. Daily imitation\nis far oftenest a conservative force, for the most frequent models are\nancient. Of course, however, something new is necessary for every man\nand for every nation. We may wish, if we please, that to-morrow shall\nbe like to-day, but it will not be like it. New forces will impinge\nupon us; new wind, new rain, and the light of another sun; and we must\nalter to meet them. But the persecuting habit and the imitative combine\nto insure that the new thing shall be in the old fashion; it must be an\nalteration, but it shall contain as little of variety as possible. The\nimitative impulse tends to this, because men most easily imitate what\ntheir minds are best prepared for,--what is like the old, yet with the\ninevitable minimum of alteration; what throws them least out of the old\npath, and puzzles least their minds. The doctrine of development means\nthis,--that in unavoidable changes men like the new doctrine which is\nmost of a 'preservative addition' to their old doctrines. The imitative\nand the persecuting tendencies make all change in early nations a kind\nof selective conservatism, for the most part keeping what is old, but\nannexing some new but like practice--an additional turret in the old\nstyle.\n\nIt is this process of adding suitable things and rejecting discordant\nthings which has raised those scenes of strange manners which in every\npart of the world puzzle the civilised men who come upon them first.\nLike the old head-dress of mountain villages, they make the traveller\nthink not so much whether they are good or whether they are bad, as\nwonder how any one could have come to think of them; to regard them as\n'monstrosities,' which only some wild abnormal intellect could have hit\nupon. And wild and abnormal indeed would be that intellect if it were a\nsingle one at all. But in fact such manners are the growth of ages,\nlike Roman law or the British constitution. No one man--no one\ngeneration--could have thought of them,--only a series of generations\ntrained in the habits of the last and wanting something akin to such\nhabits, could have devised them. Savages PET their favourite habits, so\nto say, and preserve them as they do their favourite animals; ages are\nrequired, but at last a national character is formed by the confluence\nof congenial attractions and accordant detestations.\n\nAnother cause helps. In early states of civilisation there is a great\nmortality of infant life, and this is a kind of selection in\nitself--the child most fit to be a good Spartan is most likely to\nsurvive a Spartan childhood. The habits of the tribe are enforced on\nthe child; if he is able to catch and copy them he lives; if he cannot\nhe dies. The imitation which assimilates early nations continues\nthrough life, but it begins with suitable forms and acts on picked\nspecimens. I suppose, too, that there is a kind of parental selection\noperating in the same way and probably tending to keep alive the same\nindividuals. Those children which gratified their fathers and mothers\nmost would be most tenderly treated by them, and have the best chance\nto live, and as a rough rule their favourites would be the children of\nmost 'promise,' that is to say, those who seemed most likely to be a\ncredit to the tribe according to the leading tribal manners and the\nexisting tribal tastes. The most gratifying child would be the best\nlooked after, and the most gratifying would be the best specimen of the\nstandard then and there raised up.\n\nEven so, I think there will be a disinclination to attribute so marked,\nfixed, almost physical a thing as national character to causes so\nevanescent as the imitation of appreciated habit and the persecution of\ndetested habit. But, after all, national character is but a name for a\ncollection of habits more or less universal. And this imitation and\nthis persecution in long generations have vast physical effects. The\nmind of the parent (as we speak) passes somehow to the body of the\nchild. The transmitted 'something' is more affected by habits than, it\nis by anything else. In time an ingrained type is sure to be formed,\nand sure to be passed on if only the causes I have specified be fully\nin action and without impediment.\n\nAs I have said, I am not explaining the origin of races, but of\nnations, or, if you like, of tribes. I fully admit that no imitation of\npredominant manner, or prohibitions of detested manners, will of\nthemselves account for the broadest contrasts of human nature. Such\nmeans would no more make a Negro out of a Brahmin, or a Red-man out of\nan Englishman, than washing would change the spots of a leopard or the\ncolour of an Ethiopian. Some more potent causes must co-operate, or we\nshould not have these enormous diversities. The minor causes I deal\nwith made Greek to differ from Greek, but they did not make the Greek\nrace. We cannot precisely mark the limit, but a limit there clearly is.\n\nIf we look at the earliest monuments of the human race, we find these\nrace-characters as decided as the race-characters now. The earliest\npaintings or sculptures we anywhere have, give us the present contrasts\nof dissimilar types as strongly as present observation. Within\nhistorical memory no such differences have been created as those\nbetween Negro and Greek, between Papuan and Red Indian, between\nEsquimaux and Goth. We start with cardinal diversities; we trace only\nminor modifications, and we only see minor modifications. And it is\nvery hard to see how any number of such modifications could change man\nas he is in one race-type to man as he is in some other. Of this there\nare but two explanations; ONE, that these great types were originally\nseparate creations, as they stand--that the Negro was made so, and the\nGreek made so. But this easy hypothesis of special creation has been\ntried so often, and has broken down so very often, that in no case,\nprobably, do any great number of careful inquirers very firmly believe\nit. They may accept it provisionally, as the best hypothesis at\npresent, but they feel about it as they cannot help feeling as to an\narmy which has always been beaten; however strong it seems, they think\nit will be beaten again. What the other explanation is exactly I cannot\npretend to say. Possibly as yet the data for a confident opinion are\nnot before us. But by far the most plausible suggestion is that of Mr.\nWallace, that these race-marks are living records of a time when the\nintellect of man was not as able as it is now to adapt his life and\nhabits to change of region; that consequently early mortality in the\nfirst wanderers was beyond conception great; that only those (so to\nsay) haphazard individuals throve who were born with a protected\nnature--that is, a nature suited to the climate and the country, fitted\nto use its advantages, shielded from its natural diseases. According to\nMr. Wallace, the Negro is the remnant of the one variety of man who\nwithout more adaptiveness than then existed could live in Interior\nAfrica. Immigrants died off till they produced him or something like\nhim, and so of the Esquimaux or the American.\n\nAny protective habit also struck out in such a time would have a far\ngreater effect than it could afterwards. A gregarious tribe, whose\nleader was in some imitable respects adapted to the struggle for life,\nand which copied its leader, would have an enormous advantage in the\nstruggle for life. It would be sure to win and live, for it would be\ncoherent and adapted, whereas, in comparison, competing tribes would be\nincoherent and unadapted. And I suppose that in early times, when those\nbodies did not already contain the records and the traces of endless\ngenerations, any new habit would more easily fix its mark on the\nheritable element, and would be transmitted more easily and more\ncertainly. In such an age, man being softer and more pliable, deeper\nrace-marks would be more easily inscribed and would be more likely to\ncontinue legible.\n\nBut I have no pretence to speak on such matters; this paper, as I have\nso often explained, deals with nation-making and not with race-making.\nI assume a world of marked varieties of man, and only want to show how\nless marked contrasts would probably and naturally arise in each. Given\nlarge homogeneous populations, some Negro, some Mongolian, some Aryan,\nI have tried to prove how small contrasting groups would certainly\nspring up within each--some to last and some to perish. These are the\neddies in each race-stream which vary its surface, and are sure to last\ntill some new force changes the current. These minor varieties, too,\nwould be infinitely compounded, not only with those of the same race,\nbut with those of others. Since the beginning of man, stream has been a\nthousand times poured into stream--quick into sluggish, dark into\npale--and eddies and waters have taken new shapes and new colours,\naffected by what went before, but not resembling it. And then on the\nfresh mass, the old forces of composition and elimination again begin\nto act, and create over the new surface another world. 'Motley was the\nwear' of the world when Herodotus first looked on it and described it\nto us, and thus, as it seems to me, were its varying colours produced.\n\nIf it be thought that I have made out that these forces of imitation\nand elimination be the main ones, or even at all powerful ones, in the\nformation of national character, it will follow that the effect of\nordinary agencies upon that character will be more easy to understand\nthan it often seems and is put down in books. We get a notion that a\nchange of government or a change of climate acts equally on the mass of\na nation, and so are we puzzled--at least, I have been puzzled--to\nconceive how it acts. But such changes do not at first act equally on\nall people in the nation, On many, for a very long time, they do not\nact at all. But they bring out new qualities, and advertise the effects\nof new habits. A change of climate, say from a depressing to an\ninvigorating one, so acts. Everybody feels it a little, but the most\nactive feel it exceedingly. They labour and prosper, and their\nprosperity invites imitation. Just so with the contrary change, from an\nanimating to a relaxing place,--the naturally lazy look so happy as\nthey do nothing, that the naturally active are corrupted. The effect of\nany considerable change on a nation is thus an intensifying and\naccumulating effect. With its maximum power it acts on some prepared\nand congenial individuals; in them it is seen to produce attractive\nresults, and then the habits creating those results are copied far and\nwide. And, as I believe, it is in this simple but not quite obvious\nway, that the process of progress and of degradation may generally be\nseen to run.\n\n\n\n\nNO. IV.\n\nNATION-MAKING.\n\nAll theories as to the primitive man must be very uncertain. Granting\nthe doctrine of evolution to be true, man must be held to have a common\nancestor with the rest of the Primates. But then we do not know what\ntheir common ancestor was like. If ever we are to have a distinct\nconception of him, it can only be after long years of future researches\nand the laborious accumulation of materials, scarcely the beginning of\nwhich now exists. But science has already done something for us. It\ncannot yet tell us our first ancestor, but it can tell us much of an\nancestor very high up in the line of descent. We cannot get the least\nidea (even upon the full assumption of the theory of evolution) of the\nfirst man; but we can get a very tolerable idea of the\nPaulo-prehistoric man, if I may so say--of man as he existed some short\ntime (as we now reckon shortness), some ten thousand years, before\nhistory began. Investigators whose acuteness and diligence can hardly\nbe surpassed--Sir John Lubbock and Mr. Tylor are the chiefs among\nthem--have collected so much and explained so much that they have left\na fairly vivid result.\n\nThat result is, or seems to me to be, if I may sum it up in my own\nwords, that the modern pre-historic men--those of whom we have\ncollected so many remains, and to whom are due the ancient, strange\ncustoms of historical nations (the fossil customs, we might call them,\nfor very often they are stuck by themselves in real civilisation, and\nhave no more part in it than the fossils in the surrounding\nstrata)--pre-historic men in this sense were 'savages without the fixed\nhabits of savages;' that is, that, like savages, they had strong\npassions and weak reason; that, like savages, they preferred short\nspasms of greedy pleasure to mild and equable enjoyment; that, like\nsavages, they could not postpone the present to the future; that, like\nsavages, their ingrained sense of morality was, to say the best of it,\nrudimentary and defective. But that, unlike present savages, they had\nnot complex customs and singular customs, odd and seemingly\ninexplicable rules guiding all human life. And the reasons for these\nconclusions as to a race too ancient to leave a history, but not too\nancient to have left memorials, are briefly these:--First, that we\ncannot imagine a strong reason without attainments; and, plainly,\npre-historic men had not attainments. They would never have lost them\nif they had. It is utterly incredible that whole races of men in the\nmost distant parts of the world (capable of counting, for they quickly\nlearn to count) should have lost the art of counting, if they had ever\npossessed it. It is incredible that whole races could lose the elements\nof common sense, the elementary knowledge as to things material and\nthings mental--the Benjamin Franklin philosophy--if they had ever known\nit. Without some data the reasoning faculties of man cannot work. As\nLord Bacon said, the mind of man must 'work upon stuff.' And in the\nabsence of the common knowledge which trains us in the elements of\nreason as far as we are trained, they had no 'stuff.' Even, therefore,\nif their passions were not absolutely stronger than ours, relatively\nthey were stronger, for their reason was weaker than our reason. Again,\nit is certain that races of men capable of postponing the present to\nthe future (even if such races were conceivable without an educated\nreason) would have had so huge an advantage in the struggles of\nnations, that no others would have survived them. A single Australian\ntribe (really capable of such a habit, and really practising it) would\nhave conquered all Australia almost as the English have conquered it.\nSuppose a race of long-headed Scotchmen, even as ignorant as the\nAustralians, and they would have got from Torres to Bass's Straits, no\nmatter how fierce was the resistance of the other Australians. The\nwhole territory would have been theirs, and theirs only. We cannot\nimagine innumerable races to have lost, if they had once had it, the\nmost useful of all habits of mind--the habit which would most ensure\ntheir victory in the incessant contests which, ever since they began,\nmen have carried on with one another and with nature, the habit, which\nin historical times has above any other received for its possession the\nvictory in those contests. Thirdly, we may be sure that the morality of\npre-historic man was as imperfect and as rudimentary as his reason. The\nsame sort of arguments apply to a self-restraining morality of a high\ntype as apply to a settled postponement of the present to the future\nupon grounds recommended by argument. Both are so involved in difficult\nintellectual ideas (and a high morality the most of the two) that it is\nall but impossible to conceive their existence among people who could\nnot count more than five--who had only the grossest and simplest forms\nof language--who had no kind of writing or reading--who, as it has been\nroughly said, had 'no pots and no pans'--who could indeed make a fire,\nbut who could hardly do anything else--who could hardly command nature\nany further. Exactly also like a shrewd far-sightedness, a sound\nmorality on elementary transactions is far too useful a gift to the\nhuman race ever to have been thoroughly lost when they had once\nattained it. But innumerable savages have lost all but completely many\nof the moral rules most conducive to tribal welfare. There are many\nsavages who can hardly be said to care for human life--who have\nscarcely the family feelings--who are eager to kill all old people\n(their own parents included) as soon as they get old and become a\nburden--who have scarcely the sense of truth--who, probably from a\nconstant tradition of terror, wish to conceal everything, and would (as\nobservers say) 'rather lie than not'--whose ideas of marriage are so\nvague and slight that the idea, 'communal marriage' (in which all the\nwomen of the tribe are common to all the men, and them only), has been\ninvented to denote it. Now if we consider how cohesive and how\nfortifying to human societies are the love of truth, and the love of\nparents, and a stable marriage tie, how sure such feelings would be to\nmake a tribe which possessed them wholly and soon victorious over\ntribes which were destitute of them, we shall begin to comprehend how\nunlikely it is that vast masses of tribes throughout the world should\nhave lost all these moral helps to conquest, not to speak of others. If\nany reasoning is safe as to pre-historic man, the reasoning which\nimputes to him a deficient sense of morals is safe, for all the\narguments suggested by all our late researches converge upon it, and\nconcur in teaching it.\n\nNor on this point does the case rest wholly on recent investigations.\nMany years ago Mr. Jowett said that the classical religions bore relics\nof the 'ages before morality.' And this is only one of several cases in\nwhich that great thinker has proved by a chance expression that he had\nexhausted impending controversies years before they arrived, and had\nperceived more or less the conclusion at which the disputants would\narrive long before the public issue was joined. There is no other\nexplanation of such religions than this. We have but to open Mr.\nGladstone's 'Homer' in order to see with how intense an antipathy a\nreally moral age would regard the gods and goddesses of Homer; how\ninconceivable it is that a really moral age should first have invented\nand then bowed down before them; how plain it is (when once explained)\nthat they are antiquities, like an English court-suit, or a\nSTONE-sacrificial knife, for no one would use such things as implements\nof ceremony, except those who had inherited them from a past age, when\nthere was nothing better.\n\nNor is there anything inconsistent with our present moral theories of\nwhatever kind in so thinking about our ancestors. The intuitive theory\nof morality, which would be that naturally most opposed to it, has\nlately taken a new development. It is not now maintained that all men\nhave the same amount of conscience. Indeed, only a most shallow\ndisputant who did not understand even the plainest facts of human\nnature could ever have maintained it; if men differ in anything they\ndiffer in the fineness and the delicacy of their moral intuitions,\nhowever we may suppose those feelings to have been acquired. We need\nnot go as far as savages to learn that lesson; we need only talk to the\nEnglish poor or to our own servants, and we shall be taught it very\ncompletely. The lower classes in civilised countries, like all classes\nin uncivilised countries, are clearly wanting in the nicer part of\nthose feelings which, taken together, we call the SENSE of morality.\nAll this an intuitionist who knows his case will now admit, but he will\nadd that, though the amount of the moral sense may and does differ in\ndifferent persons, yet that as far as it goes it is alike in all. He\nlikens it to the intuition of number, in which some savages are so\ndefective that they cannot really and easily count more than three. Yet\nas far as three his intuitions are the same as those of civilised\npeople. Unquestionably if there are intuitions at all, the primary\ntruths of number are such. There is a felt necessity in them if in\nanything, and it would be pedantry to say that any proposition of\nmorals was MORE certain than that five and five make ten. The truths of\narithmetic, intuitive or not, certainly cannot be acquired\nindependently of experience nor can those of morals be so either.\nUnquestionably they were aroused in life and by experience, though\nafter that comes the difficult and ancient controversy whether anything\npeculiar to them and not to be found in the other facts of life is\nsuperadded to them independently of experience out of the vigour of the\nmind itself. No intuitionist, therefore, fears to speak of the\nconscience of his pre-historic ancestor as imperfect, rudimentary, or\nhardly to be discerned, for he has to admit much the same so as to\nsquare his theory to plain modern facts, and that theory in the modern\nform may consistently be held along with them. Of course if an\nintuitionist can accept this conclusion as to pre-historic men, so\nassuredly may Mr. Spencer, who traces all morality back to our\ninherited experience of utility, or Mr. Darwin, who ascribes it to an\ninherited sympathy, or Mr. Mill, who with characteristic courage\nundertakes to build up the whole moral nature of man with no help\nwhatever either from ethical intuition or from physiological instinct.\nIndeed of the everlasting questions, such as the reality of free will,\nor the nature of conscience, it is, as I have before explained,\naltogether inconsistent with the design of these papers to speak. They\nhave been discussed ever since the history of discussion begins; human\nopinion is still divided, and most people still feel many difficulties\nin every suggested theory, and doubt if they have heard the last word\nof argument or the whole solution of the problem in any of them. In the\ninterest of sound knowledge it is essential to narrow to the utmost the\ndebatable territory; to see how many ascertained facts there are which\nare consistent with all theories, how many may, as foreign lawyers\nwould phrase it, be equally held in condominium by them.\n\nBut though in these great characteristics there is reason to imagine\nthat the pre-historic man--at least the sort of pre-historic man I am\ntreating of, the man some few thousand years before history began, and\nnot at all, at least not necessarily, the primitive man--was identical\nwith a modern savage, in another respect there is equal or greater\nreason to suppose that he was most unlike a modern savage. A modern\nsavage is anything but the simple being which philosophers of the\neighteenth century imagined him to be; on the contrary, his life is\ntwisted into a thousand curious habits; his reason is darkened by a\nthousand strange prejudices; his feelings are frightened by a thousand\ncruel superstitions. The whole mind of a modern savage is, so to say,\ntattooed over with monstrous images; there is not a smooth place\nanywhere about it. But there is no reason to suppose the minds of\npre-historic men to be so cut and marked; on the contrary, the creation\nof these habits, these superstitions, these prejudices, must have taken\nages. In his nature, it may be said, pre-historic man was the same as a\nmodern savage; it is only in his acquisition that he was different.\n\nIt may be objected that if man was developed out of any kind of animal\n(and this is the doctrine of evolution which, if it be not proved\nconclusively, has great probability and great scientific analogy in its\nfavour) he would necessarily at first possess animal instincts; that\nthese would only gradually be lost; that in the meantime they would\nserve as a protection and an aid, and that pre-historic men, therefore,\nwould have important helps and feelings which existing savages have\nnot. And probably of the first men, the first beings worthy to be so\ncalled, this was true: they had, or may have had, certain remnants of\ninstincts which aided them in the struggle of existence, and as reason\ngradually came these instincts may have waned away. Some instincts\ncertainly do wane when the intellect is applied steadily to their\nsubject-matter. The curious 'counting boys,' the arithmetical\nprodigies, who can work by a strange innate faculty the most wonderful\nsums, lose that faculty, always partially, sometimes completely, if\nthey are taught to reckon by rule like the rest of mankind. In like\nmanner I have heard it said that a man could soon reason himself out of\nthe instinct of decency if he would only take pains and work hard\nenough. And perhaps other primitive instincts may have in like manner\npassed away. But this does not affect my argument. I am only saying\nthat these instincts, if they ever existed, DID pass away--that there\nwas a period; probably an immense period as we reckon time in human\nhistory, when pre-historic men lived much as savages live now, without\nany important aids and helps.\n\nThe proofs of this are to be found in the great works of Sir John\nLubbock and Mr. Tylor, of which I just now spoke. I can only bring out\ntwo of them here. First, it is plain that the first pre-historic men\nhad the flint tools which the lowest savages use, and we can trace a\nregular improvement in the finish and in the efficiency of their simple\ninstruments corresponding to that which we see at this day in the\nupward transition from the lowest savages to the highest. Now it is not\nconceivable that a race of beings with valuable instincts supporting\ntheir existence and supplying their wants would need these simple\ntools. They are exactly those needed by very poor people who have no\ninstincts, and those were used by such, for savages are the poorest of\nthe poor. It would be very strange if these same utensils, no more no\nless, were used by beings whose discerning instincts made them in\ncomparison altogether rich. Such a being would know how to manage\nwithout such things, or if it wanted any, would know how to make better.\n\nAnd, secondly, on the moral side we know that the pre-historic age was\none of much licence, and the proof is that in that age descent was\nreckoned through the female only, just as it is among the lowest\nsavages. 'Maternity,' it has been said, 'is a matter of fact, paternity\nis a matter of opinion;' and this not very refined expression exactly\nconveys the connection of the lower human societies. In all\nslave-owning communities--in Rome formerly, and in Virginia\nyesterday--such was the accepted rule of law; the child kept the\ncondition of the mother, whatever that condition was; nobody inquired\nas to the father; the law, once for all, assumed that he could not be\nascertained. Of course no remains exist which prove this or anything\nelse about the morality of pre-historic man; and morality can only be\ndescribed by remains amounting to a history. But one of the axioms of\npre-historic investigation binds us to accept this as the morality of\nthe pre-historic races if we receive that axiom. It is plain that the\nwide-spread absence of a characteristic which greatly aids the\npossessor in the conflicts between race and race probably indicates\nthat the primary race did not possess that quality. If one-armed people\nexisted almost everywhere in every continent; if people were found in\nevery intermediate stage, some with the mere germ of the second arm,\nsome with the second arm half-grown, some with it nearly complete; we\nshould then argue--'the first race cannot have had two arms, because\nmen have always been fighting, and as two arms are a great advantage in\nfighting, one-armed and half-armed people would immediately have been\nkilled off the earth; they never could have attained any numbers. A\ndiffused deficiency in a warlike power is the best attainable evidence\nthat the pre-historic men did not possess that power.' If this axiom be\nreceived it is palpably applicable to the marriage-bond of primitive\nraces. A cohesive 'family' is the best germ for a campaigning nation.\nIn a Roman family the boys, from the time of their birth, were bred to\na domestic despotism, which well prepared them for a subjection in\nafter life to a military discipline, a military drill, and a military\ndespotism. They were ready to obey their generals because they were\ncompelled to obey their fathers; they centered the world in manhood\nbecause as children they were bred in homes where the tradition of\npassionate valour was steadied by the habit of implacable order. And\nnothing of this is possible in loosely-bound family groups (if they can\nbe called families at all) where the father is more or less uncertain,\nwhere descent is not traced through him, where, that is, property does\nnot come from him, where such property as he has passes to his SURE\nrelations--to his sister's children. An ill-knit nation which does not\nrecognise paternity as a legal relation, would be conquered like a mob\nby any other nation which had a vestige or a beginning of the patria\npotestas. If, therefore, all the first men had the strict morality of\nfamilies, they would no more have permitted the rise of SEMI-moral\nnations anywhere in the world than the Romans would have permitted them\nto arise in Italy. They would have conquered, killed, and plundered\nthem before they became nations; and yet semi-moral nations exist all\nover the world.\n\nIt will be said that this argument proves too much. For it proves that\nnot only the somewhat-before-history men, but the absolutely first men,\ncould not have had close family instincts, and yet if they were like\nmost though not all of the animals nearest to man they had such\ninstincts. There is a great story of some African chief who expressed\nhis disgust at adhering to one wife, by saying it was 'like the\nmonkeys.' The semi-brutal ancestors of man, if they existed, had very\nlikely an instinct of constancy which the African chief, and others\nlike him, had lost. How, then, if it was so beneficial, could they ever\nlose it? The answer is plain: they could lose it if they had it as an\nirrational propensity and habit, and not as a moral and rational\nfeeling. When reason came, it would weaken that habit like all other\nirrational habits. And reason is a force of such infinite vigour--a\nvictory-making agent of such incomparable efficiency--that its\ncontinually diminishing valuable instincts will not matter if it grows\nitself steadily all the while. The strongest competitor wins in both\nthe cases we are imagining; in the first, a race with intelligent\nreason, but without blind instinct, beats a race with that instinct but\nwithout that reason; in the second, a race with reason and high moral\nfeeling beats a race with reason but without high moral feeling. And\nthe two are palpably consistent.\n\nThere is every reason, therefore, to suppose pre-historic man to be\ndeficient in much of sexual morality, as we regard that morality. As to\nthe detail of 'primitive marriage' or 'NO marriage,' for that is pretty\nmuch what it comes to, there is of course much room for discussion.\nBoth Mr. M'Clennan and Sir John Lubbock are too accomplished reasoners\nand too careful investigators to wish conclusions so complex and\nrefined as theirs to be accepted all in a mass, besides that on some\ncritical points the two differ. But the main issue is not dependent on\nnice arguments. Upon broad grounds we may believe that in pre-historic\ntimes men fought both to gain and to keep their wives; that the\nstrongest man took the best wife away from the weaker man; and that if\nthe wife was restive, did not like the change, her new husband beat\nher; that (as in Australia now) a pretty woman was sure to undergo many\nsuch changes, and her back to bear the marks of many such\nchastisements; that in the principal department of human conduct (which\nis the most tangible and easily traced, and therefore the most\nobtainable specimen of the rest) the minds of pre-historic men were not\nso much immoral as UNmoral: they did not violate a rule of conscience,\nbut they were somehow not sufficiently developed for them to feel on\nthis point any conscience, or for it to prescribe to them any rule.\n\nThe same argument applies to religion. There are, indeed, many points\nof the greatest obscurity, both in the present savage religions and in\nthe scanty vestiges of pre-historic religion. But one point is clear.\nAll savage religions are full of superstitions founded on luck. Savages\nbelieve that casual omens are a sign of coming events; that some trees\nare lucky, that some animals are lucky, that some places are lucky,\nthat some indifferent actions--indifferent apparently and indifferent\nreally--are lucky, and so of others in each class, that they are\nunlucky. Nor can a savage well distinguish between a sign of 'luck' or\nill-luck, as we should say, and a deity which causes the good or the\nill; the indicating precedent and the causing being are to the savage\nmind much the same; a steadiness of head far beyond savages is required\nconsistently to distinguish them. And it is extremely natural that they\nshould believe so. They are playing a game--the game of life--with no\nknowledge of its rules. They have not an idea of the laws of nature; if\nthey want to cure a man, they have no conception at all of true\nscientific remedies. If they try anything they must try it upon bare\nchance. The most useful modern remedies were often discovered in this\nbare, empirical way. What could be more improbable--at least, for what\ncould a pre-historic man have less given a good reason--than that some\nmineral springs should stop rheumatic pains, or mineral springs make\nwounds heal quickly? And yet the chance knowledge of the marvellous\neffect of gifted springs is probably as ancient as any sound knowledge\nas to medicine whatever. No doubt it was mere casual luck at first that\ntried these springs and found them answer. Somebody by accident tried\nthem and by that accident was instantly cured. The chance which happily\ndirected men in this one case, misdirected them in a thousand cases.\nSome expedition had answered when the resolution to undertake it was\nresolved on under an ancient tree, and accordingly that tree became\nlucky and sacred. Another expedition failed when a magpie crossed its\npath, and a magpie was said to be unlucky. A serpent crossed the path\nof another expedition, and it had a marvellous victory, and accordingly\nthe serpent became a sign of great luck (and what a savage cannot\ndistinguish from it--a potent deity which makes luck). Ancient medicine\nis equally unreasonable: as late down as the Middle Ages it was full of\nsuperstitions founded on mere luck. The collection of prescriptions\npublished under the direction of the Master of the Rolls abounds in\nsuch fancies as we should call them. According to one of them, unless I\nforget, some disease--a fever, I think--is supposed to be cured by\nplacing the patient between two halves of a hare and a pigeon recently\nkilled.[7] Nothing can be plainer than that there is no ground for this\nkind of treatment, and that the idea of it arose out of a chance hit,\nwhich came right and succeeded. There was nothing so absurd or so\ncontrary to common sense as we are apt to imagine about it. The lying\nbetween two halves of a hare or a pigeon was a priori, and to the\ninexperienced mind, quite as likely to cure disease as the drinking\ncertain draughts of nasty mineral water. Both, somehow, were tried;\nboth answered--that is. Both were at the first time, or at some\nmemorable time, followed by a remarkable recovery; and the only\ndifference is, that the curative power of the mineral is persistent,\nand happens constantly; whereas, on an average of trials, the proximity\nof a hare or pigeon is found to have no effect, and cures take place as\noften in cases where it is not tried as in cases where it is. The\nnature of minds which are deeply engaged in watching events of which\nthey do not know the reason, is to single out some fabulous\naccompaniment or some wonderful series of good luck or bad luck, and to\ndread ever after that accompaniment if it brings evil, and to love it\nand long for it if it brings good. All savages are in this position,\nand the fascinating effect of striking accompaniments (in some single\ncase) of singular good fortune and singular calamity, is one great\nsource of savage religions.\n\n\n\n[7] Readers of Scott's life will remember that an admirer of his in\nhumble life proposed to cure him of inflammation of the bowels by\nmaking him sleep a whole night on twelve smooth stones, painfully\ncollected by the admirer from twelve brooks, which was, it appeared, a\nrecipe of sovereign traditional power. Scott gravely told the proposer\nthat he had mistaken the charm, and that the stones were of no virtue\nunless wrapped up in the petticoat of a widow who never wished to marry\nagain, and as no such widow seems to have been forthcoming, he escaped\nthe remedy.\n\n\n\nGamblers to this day are, with respect to the chance part of their\ngame, in much the same plight as savages with respect to the main\nevents of their whole lives. And we well know how superstitious they\nall are. To this day very sensible whist-players have a certain\nbelief--not, of course, a fixed conviction, but still a certain\nimpression--that there is 'luck under a black deuce,' and will half\nmutter some not very gentle maledictions if they turn up as a trump the\nfour of clubs, because it brings ill-luck, and is 'the devil's\nbed-post.' Of course grown-up gamblers have too much general knowledge,\ntoo much organised common sense to prolong or cherish such ideas; they\nare ashamed of entertaining them, though, nevertheless, they cannot\nentirely drive them out of their minds. But child gamblers--a number of\nlittle boys set to play loo-are just in the position of savages, for\ntheir fancy is still impressible, and they have not as yet been\nthoroughly subjected to the confuting experience of the real world and\nchild gamblers have idolatries--at least I know that years ago a set of\nboy loo-players, of whom I was one, had considerable faith in a certain\n'pretty fish' which was larger and more nicely made than the other fish\nwe had. We gave the best evidence of our belief in its power to 'bring\nluck;' we fought for it (if our elders were out of the way); we offered\nto buy it with many other fish from the envied holder, and I am sure I\nhave often cried bitterly if the chance of the game took it away from\nme. Persons who stand up for the dignity of philosophy, if any such\nthere still are, will say that I ought not to mention this, because it\nseems trivial; but the more modest spirit of modern thought plainly\nteaches, if it teaches anything, the cardinal value of occasional\nlittle facts. I do not hesitate to say that many learned and elaborate\nexplanations of the totem--the 'clan' deity--the beast or bird which in\nsome supernatural way, attends to the clan and watches over it--do not\nseem to me to be nearly akin to the reality as it works and lives\namong--the lower races as the 'pretty fish' of my early boyhood. And\nvery naturally so, for a grave philosopher is separated from primitive\nthought by the whole length of human culture; but an impressible child\nis as near to, and its thoughts are as much like, that thought as\nanything can now be.\n\nThe worst of these superstitions is that they are easy to make and hard\nto destroy. A single run of luck has made the fortune of many a charm\nand many idols. I doubt if even a single run of luck be necessary. I am\nsure that if an elder boy said that 'the pretty fish was lucky--of\ncourse it was,' all the lesser boys would believe it, and in a week it\nwould be an accepted idol. And I suspect the Nestor of a savage\ntribe--the aged repository of guiding experience--would have an equal\npower of creating superstitions. But if once created they are most\ndifficult to eradicate. If any one said that the amulet was of certain\nefficacy--that it always acted whenever it was applied--it would of\ncourse be very easy to disprove; but no one ever said that the 'pretty\nfish' always brought luck; it was only said that it did so on the\nwhole, and that if you had it you were more likely to be lucky than if\nyou were without it. But it requires a long table of statistics of the\nresults of games to disprove this thoroughly; and by the time people\ncan make tables they are already above such beliefs, and do not need to\nhave them disproved. Nor in many cases where omens or amulets are used\nwould such tables be easy to make, for the data could not be found; and\na rash attempt to subdue the superstition by a striking instance may\neasily end in confirming it. Francis Newman, in the remarkable\nnarrative of his experience as a missionary in Asia, gives a curious\nexample of this. As he was setting out on a distant and somewhat\nhazardous expedition, his native servants tied round the neck of the\nmule a small bag supposed to be of preventive and mystic virtue. As the\nplace was crowded and a whole townspeople looking on, Mr. Newman\nthought that he would take an opportunity of disproving the\nsuperstition. So he made a long speech of explanation in his best\nArabic, and cut off the bag, to the horror of all about him. But as\nill-fortune would have it, the mule had not got thirty yards up the\nstreet before she put her foot into a hole and broke her leg; upon\nwhich all the natives were confirmed in their former faith in the power\nof the bag, and said, 'You see now what happens to unbelievers.'\n\nNow the present point as to these superstitions is their military\ninexpediency. A nation which was moved by these superstitions as to\nluck would be at the mercy of a nation, in other respects equal, which,\nwas not subject to them. In historical times, as we know, the panic\nterror at eclipses has been the ruin of the armies which have felt it;\nor has made them delay to do something necessary, or rush to do\nsomething destructive. The necessity of consulting the auspices, while\nit was sincerely practised and before it became a trick for disguising\nforesight, was in classical history very dangerous. And much worse is\nit with savages, whose life is one of omens, who must always consult\ntheir sorcerers, who may be turned this way or that by some chance\naccident, who, if they were intellectually able to frame a consistent\nmilitary policy--and some savages in war see farther than in anything\nelse--are yet liable to be put out, distracted, confused, and turned\naside in the carrying out of it, because some event, really innocuous\nbut to their minds foreboding, arrests and frightens them. A religion\nfull of omens is a military misfortune, and will bring a nation to\ndestruction if set to fight with a nation at all equal otherwise, who\nhad a religion without omens. Clearly then, if all early men\nunanimously, or even much the greater number of early men, had a\nreligion WITHOUT omens, no religion, or scarcely a religion, anywhere\nin the world could have come into existence WITH omens; the immense\nmajority possessing the superior military advantage, the small minority\ndestitute of it would have been crushed out and destroyed. But, on the\ncontrary, all over the world religions with omens once existed, in most\nthey still exist; all savages have them, and deep in the most ancient\ncivilisations we find the plainest traces of them. Unquestionably\ntherefore the pre-historic religion was like that of savages--viz., in\nthis that it largely consisted in the watching of omens and in the\nworship of lucky beasts and things, which are a sort of embodied and\npermanent omens.\n\nIt may indeed be objected--an analogous objection was taken as to the\nascertained moral deficiencies of pre-historic mankind--that if this\nreligion of omens was so pernicious and so likely to ruin a race, no\nrace would ever have acquired it. But it is only likely to ruin a race\ncontending with another race otherwise equal. The fancied discovery of\nthese omens--not an extravagant thing in an early age, as I have tried\nto show, not a whit then to be distinguished as improbable from the\ndiscovery of healing herbs or springs which pre-historic men also did\ndiscover--the discovery of omens was an act of reason as far as it\nwent. And if in reason the omen-finding race were superior to the races\nin conflict with them, the omen-finding race would win, and we may\nconjecture that omen-finding races were thus superior since they won\nand prevailed in every latitude and in every zone.\n\nIn all particulars therefore we would keep to our formula, and say that\npre-historic man was substantially a savage like present savages, in\nmorals, intellectual attainments, and in religion; but that he differed\nin this from our present savages, that he had not had time to ingrain\nhis nature so deeply with bad habits, and to impress bad beliefs so\nunalterably on his mind as they have. They have had ages to fix the\nstain on them selves, but primitive man was younger and had no such\ntime.\n\nI have elaborated the evidence for this conclusion at what may seem\nneedless and tedious length, but I have done so on account of its\nimportance. If we accept it, and if we are sure of it, it will help us\nto many most important conclusions. Some of these I have dwelt upon in\nprevious papers, but I will set them down again.\n\nFirst, it will in part explain to us what the world was about, so to\nspeak, before history. It was making, so to say, the intellectual\nconsistence--the connected and coherent habits, the preference of\nequable to violent enjoyment, the abiding capacity to prefer, if\nrequired, the future to the present, the mental pre-requisites without\nwhich civilisation could not begin to exist, and without which it would\nsoon cease to exist even had it begun. The primitive man, like the\npresent savage, had not these pre-requisites, but, unlike the present\nsavage, he was capable of acquiring them and of being trained in them,\nfor his nature was still soft and still impressible, and possibly,\nstrange as it may seem to say, his outward circumstances were more\nfavourable to an attainment of civilisation than those of our present\nsavages. At any rate, the pre-historic times were spent in making men\ncapable of writing a history, and having something to put in it when it\nis written, and we can see how it was done.\n\nTwo preliminary processes indeed there are which seem inscrutable.\nThere was some strange preliminary process by which the main races of\nmen were formed; they began to exist very early, and except by\nintermixture no new ones have been formed since. It was a process\nsingularly active in early ages, and singularly quiescent in later\nages. Such differences as exist between the Aryan, the Turanian, the\nnegro, the red man, and the Australian, are differences\ngreater--altogether than any causes now active are capable of creating\nin present men, at least in any way explicable by us. And there is,\ntherefore, a strong presumption that (as great authorities now hold)\nthese differences were created before the nature of men, especially\nbefore the mind and the adaptive nature of men had taken their existing\nconstitution. And a second condition precedent of civilisation seems,\nat least to me, to have been equally inherited, if the doctrine of\nevolution be true, from some previous state or condition. I at least\nfind it difficult to conceive of men, at all like the present men,\nunless existing in something like families, that is, in groups avowedly\nconnected, at least on the mother's side, and probably always with a\nvestige of connection, more or less, on the father's side, and unless\nthese groups were like many animals, gregarious, tinder a leader more\nor less fixed. It is almost beyond imagination how man, as we know man,\ncould by any sort of process have gained this step in civilisation. And\nit is a great advantage, to say the least of it, in the evolution\ntheory that it enables us to remit this difficulty to a pre-existing\nperiod in nature, where other instincts and powers than our present\nones may perhaps have come into play, and where our imagination can\nhardly travel. At any rate, for the present I may assume these two\nsteps in human progress made, and these two conditions realized.\n\nThe rest of the way, if we grant these two conditions, is plainer. The\nfirst thing is the erection of what--we may call a custom-making power,\nthat is, of an authority which can enforce a fixed rule of life, which,\nby means of that fixed rule, can in some degree create a calculable\nfuture, which can make it rational to postpone present violent but\nmomentary pleasure for future continual pleasure, because it ensures,\nwhat else is not sure, that if the sacrifice of what is in hand be\nmade, enjoyment of the contingent expected recompense will be received.\nOf course I am not saying that we shall find in early society any\nauthority of which these shall be the motives. We must have travelled\nages (unless all our evidence be wrong) from the first men before there\nwas a comprehension of such motives. I only mean that the first thing\nin early society was an authority of whose action this shall be the\nresult, little as it knew what it was doing, little as it would have\ncared if it had known. The conscious end of early societies was not at\nall, or scarcely at all, the protection of life and property, as it was\nassumed to be by the eighteenth-century theory of government. Even in\nearly historical ages--in the youth of the human race, not its\nchildhood--such is not the nature of early states. Sir Henry Maine has\ntaught us that the earliest subject of jurisprudence is not the\nseparate property of the individual, but the common property of the\nfamily group; what we should call private property hardly then existed;\nor if it did, was so small as to be of no importance: it was like the\nthings little children are now allowed to CALL their own, which they\nfeel it very hard to have taken from them, but which they have no real\nright to hold and keep. Such is our earliest property-law, and our\nearliest life--law is that the lives of all members of the family group\nwere at the mercy of the head of the group. As far as the individual\ngoes, neither his goods nor his existence were protected at all. And\nthis may teach us that something else was lacked in early societies\nbesides what in our societies we now think of.\n\nI do not think I put this too high when I say that a most important if\nnot the most important object of early legislation was the enforcement\nof LUCKY rites. I do not like to say religious rites, because that\nwould involve me in a great controversy as to the power, or even the\nexistence, of early religions. But there is no savage tribe without a\nnotion of luck; and perhaps there is hardly any which has not a\nconception of luck for the tribe as a tribe, of which each member has\nnot some such a belief that his own action or the action of any other\nmember of it--that he or the others doing anything which was unlucky or\nwould bring a 'curse'--might cause evil not only to himself, but to all\nthe tribe as well. I have said so much about 'luck' and about its\nnaturalness before, that I ought to say nothing again. But I must add\nthat the contagiousness of the idea of 'luck' is remarkable. It does\nnot at all, like the notion of desert, cleave to the doer. There are\npeople to this day who would not permit in their house people to sit\ndown thirteen to dinner. They do not expect any evil to themselves\nparticularly for permitting it or sharing in it, but they cannot get\nout of their heads the idea that some one or more of the number will\ncome to harm if the thing is done. This is what Mr. Tylor calls\nsurvival in culture. The faint belief in the corporate liability of\nthese thirteen is the feeble relic and last dying representative of\nthat great principle of corporate liability to good and ill fortune\nwhich has filled such an immense place in the world.\n\nThe traces of it are endless. You can hardly take up a book of travels\nin rude regions without finding 'I wanted to do so and so. But I was\nnot permitted, for the natives feared it might bring ill luck on the\n\"party,\" or perhaps the tribe.' Mr. Galton, for instance, could hardly\nfeed his people. The Damaras, he says, have numberless superstitions\nabout meat which are very troublesome. In the first place, each tribe,\nor rather family, is prohibited from eating cattle of certain colours,\nsavages 'who come from the sun' eschewing sheep spotted in a particular\nway, which those 'who come from the rain' have no objection to. 'As,'\nhe says, 'there are five or six eandas or descents, and I had men from\nmost of them with me, I could hardly kill a sheep that everybody would\neat;' and he could not keep his meat, for it had to be given away\nbecause it was commanded by one superstition, nor buy milk, the staple\nfood of those parts, because it was prohibited by another. And so on\nwithout end. Doing anything unlucky is in their idea what putting on\nsomething that attracts the electric fluid is in fact, you cannot be\nsure that harm will not be done, not only to the person in fault, but\nto those about him too. As in the Scriptural phrase, doing what is of\nevil omen is 'like one that letteth out water.' He cannot tell what are\nthe consequences of his act, who will share them, or how they can be\nprevented.\n\nIn the earliest historical nations I need not say that the corporate\nliabilities of states is to a modern student their most curious\nfeature. The belief is indeed raised far above the notion of mere\n'luck,' because there is a distinct belief in gods or a god whom the\nact offends, But the indiscriminate character of the punishment still\nsurvives; not only the mutilator of the Hermae, but all the\nAthenians--not only the violator of the rites of the Bona dea, but all\nthe Romans--are liable to the curse engendered; and so all through\nancient history. The strength of the corporate anxiety so created is\nknown to every one. Not only was it greately than any anxiety about\npersonal property, but it was immeasurably greater. Naturally, even\nreasonably we may say, it was greater. The dread of the powers of\nnature, or of the beings who rule those powers, is properly, upon\ngrounds of reason, as much greater than any other dread as the might of\nthe powers of nature is superior to that of any other powers. If a\ntribe or a nation have, by a contagious fancy, come to believe that the\ndoing of any one thing by any number will be 'unlucky,' that is, will\nbring an intense and vast liability on them all, then that tribe and\nthat nation will prevent the doing of that thing more than anything\nelse. They will deal with the most cherished chief who even by chance\nshould do it, as in a similar case the sailors dealt with Jonah.\n\nI do not of course mean that this strange condition of mind as it seems\nto us was the sole source of early customs. On the contrary, man might\nbe described as a custom-making animal with more justice than by many\nof the short descriptions. In whatever way a man has done anything\nonce, he has a tendency to do it again: if he has done it several times\nhe has a great tendency so to do it, and what is more, he has a great\ntendency to make others do it also. He transmits his formed customs to\nhis children by example and by teaching. This is true now of human\nnature, and will always be true, no doubt. But what is peculiar in\nearly societies is that over most of these customs there grows sooner\nor later a semi-supernatural sanction. The whole community is possessed\nwith the idea that if the primal usages of the tribe be broken, harm\nunspeakable will happen in ways you cannot think of, and from sources\nyou cannot imagine. As people now-a-days believe that 'murder will\nout,' and that great crime will bring even an earthly punishment, so in\nearly times people believed that for any breach of sacred custom\ncertain retribution would happen. To this day many semi-civilised races\nhave great difficulty in regarding any arrangement as binding and\nconclusive unless they can also manage to look at it as an inherited\nusage. Sir H. Maine, in his last work, gives a most curious case. The\nEnglish Government in India has in many cases made new and great works\nof irrigation, of which no ancient Indian Government ever thought; and\nit has generally left it to the native village community to say what\nshare each man of the village should have in the water; and the village\nauthorities have accordingly laid down a series of most minute rules\nabout it. But the peculiarity is that in no case do these rules\n'purport to emanate from the personal authority of their author or\nauthors, which rests on grounds of reason not on grounds of innocence\nand sanctity; nor do they assume to be dictated by a sense of equity;\nthere is always, I am assured, a sort of fiction under which some\ncustoms as to the distribution of water are supposed to have emanated\nfrom a remote antiquity, although, in fact, no such artificial supply\nhad ever been so much as thought of.' So difficult does this ancient\nrace--like, probably, in this respect so much of the ancient world-find\nit to imagine a rule which is obligatory, but not traditional.\n\nThe ready formation of custom-making groups in early society must have\nbeen greatly helped by the easy divisions of that society. Much of the\nworld--all Europe, for example--was then covered by the primeval\nforest; men had only conquered, and as yet could only conquer, a few\nplots and corners from it. These narrow spaces were soon exhausted, and\nif numbers grew some of the new people must move. Accordingly,\nmigrations were constant, and were necessary. And these migrations were\nnot like those of modern times. There was no such feeling as binds even\nAmericans who hate, or speak as if they hated, the present political\nEngland--nevertheless to 'the old home.' There was then no organised\nmeans of communication--no practical communication, we may say, between\nparted members of the same group; those who once went out from the\nparent society went out for ever; they left no abiding remembrance, and\nthey kept no abiding regard. Even the language of the parent tribe and\nof the descended tribe would differ in a generation or two. There being\nno written literature and no spoken intercourse, the speech of both\nwould vary (the speech of such communities is always varying), and\nwould vary in different directions. One set of causes, events, and\nassociations would act on one, and another set on another; sectional\ndifferences would soon arise, and, for speaking purposes, what\nphilologists call a dialectical difference often amounts to real and\ntotal difference: no connected interchange of thought is possible any\nlonger. Separate groups soon 'set up house;' the early societies begin\na new set of customs, acquire and keep a distinct and special 'luck.'\n\nIf it were not for this facility of new formations, one good or bad\ncustom would long since have 'corrupted' the world; but even this would\nnot have been enough but for those continual wars, of which I have\nspoken at such length in the essay on 'The Use of Conflict,' that I\nneed say nothing now. These are by their incessant fractures of old\nimages, and by their constant infusion of new elements, the real\nregenerators of society. And whatever be the truth or falsehood of the\ngeneral dislike to mixed and half-bred races, no such suspicion was\nprobably applicable to the early mixtures of primitive society.\nSupposing, as is likely, each great aboriginal race to have had its own\nquarter of the world (a quarter, as it would seem, corresponding to the\nspecial quarters in which plants and animals are divided), then the\nimmense majority of the mixtures would be between men of different\ntribes but of the same stock, and this no one would object to, but\nevery one would praise.\n\nIn general, too, the conquerors would be better than the conquered\n(most merits in early society are more or less military merits), but\nthey would not be very much better, for the lowest steps in the ladder\nof civilisation are very steep, and the effort to mount them is slow\nand tedious. And this is probably the better if they are to produce a\ngood and quick effect in civilising those they have conquered. The\nexperience of the English in India shows--if it shows anything--that a\nhighly civilised race may fail in producing a rapidly excellent effect\non a less civilised race, because it is too good and too different. The\ntwo are not en rapport together; the merits of the one are not the\nmerits prized by the other; the manner-language of the one is not the\nmanner-language of the other. The higher being is not and cannot be a\nmodel for the lower; he could not mould himself on it if he would, and\nwould not if he could. Consequently, the two races have long lived\ntogether, 'near and yet far off,' daily seeing one another and daily\ninterchanging superficial thoughts, but in the depths of their mind\nseparated by a whole era of civilisation, and so affecting one another\nonly a little in comparison with what might have been hoped. But in\nearly societies there were no such great differences, and the rather\nsuperior conqueror must have easily improved the rather inferior\nconquered.\n\nIt is in the interior of these customary groups that national\ncharacters are formed. As I wrote a whole essay on the manner of this\nbefore, I cannot speak of it now. By proscribing nonconformist members\nfor generations, and cherishing and rewarding conformist members,\nnonconformists become fewer and fewer, and conformists more and more.\nMost men mostly imitate what they see, and catch the tone of what they\nhear, and so a settled type--a persistent character--is formed. Nor is\nthe process wholly mental. I cannot agree, though the greatest\nauthorities say it, that no 'unconscious selection' has been at work at\nthe breed of man. If neither that nor conscious selection has been at\nwork, how did there come to be these breeds, and such there are in the\ngreatest numbers, though we call them nations? In societies\ntyrannically customary, uncongenial minds become first cowed, then\nmelancholy, then out of health, and at last die. A Shelley in New\nEngland could hardly have lived, and a race of Shelleys would have been\nimpossible. Mr. Galton wishes that breeds of men should be created by\nmatching men with marked characteristics with women of like\ncharacteristics. But surely this is what nature has been doing time out\nof mind, and most in the rudest nations and hardest times. Nature\ndisheartened in each generation the ill-fitted members of each\ncustomary group, so deprived them of their full vigour, or, if they\nwere weakly, killed them. The Spartan character was formed because none\nbut people with, a Spartan make of mind could endure a Spartan\nexistence. The early Roman character was so formed too. Perhaps all\nvery marked national characters can be traced back to a time of rigid\nand pervading discipline. In modern times, when society is more\ntolerant, new national characters are neither so strong, so featurely,\nnor so uniform.\n\nIn this manner society was occupied in pre-historic times,--it is\nconsistent with and explicable by our general principle as to savages,\nthat society should for ages have been so occupied, strange as that\nconclusion is, and incredible as it would be, if we had not been taught\nby experience to believe strange things.\n\nSecondly, this principle and this conception of pre-historic times\nexplain to us the meaning and the origin of the oldest and strangest of\nsocial anomalies--an anomaly which is among the first things history\ntells us--the existence of caste nations. Nothing is at first sight\nstranger than the aspect of those communities where several nations\nseem to be bound up together--where each is governed by its own rule of\nlaw, where no one pays any deference to the rule of law of any of the\nothers. But if our principles be true, these are just the nations most\nlikely to last, which would have a special advantage in early times,\nand would probably not only maintain themselves, but conquer and kill\nout others also. The characteristic necessity of early society as we\nhave seen, is strict usage and binding coercive custom. But the obvious\nresult and inevitable evil of that is monotony in society; no one can\nbe much different from his fellows, or can cultivate his difference.\n\nSuch societies are necessarily weak from the want of variety in their\nelements. But a caste nation is various and composite; and has in a\nmode suited to early societies the constant co-operation of contrasted\npersons, which in a later age is one of the greatest triumphs of\ncivilisation. In a primitive age the division between the warrior caste\nand the priestly caste is especially advantageous. Little popular and\nlittle deserving to be popular now-a-days as are priestly hierarchies,\nmost probably the beginnings of science were made in such, and were for\nages transmitted in such. An intellectual class was in that age only\npossible when it was protected by a notion that whoever hurt them would\ncertainly be punished by heaven. In this class apart discoveries were\nslowly made and some beginning of mental discipline was slowly matured.\nBut such a community is necessarily unwarlike, and the superstition\nwhich protects priests from home murder will not aid them in conflict\nwith the foreigner. Few nations mind killing their enemies' priests,\nand many priestly civilisations have perished without record before\nthey well began. But such a civilisation will not perish if a warrior\ncaste is tacked on to it and is bound to defend it. On the contrary,\nsuch a civilisation will be singularly likely to live. The head of the\nsage will help the arm of the soldier.\n\nThat a nation divided into castes must be a most difficult thing to\nfound is plain. Probably it could only begin in a country several times\nconquered, and where the boundaries of each caste rudely coincided with\nthe boundaries of certain sets of victors and vanquished. But, as we\nnow see, when founded it is a likely nation to last. A party-coloured\ncommunity of many tribes and many usages is more likely to get on, and\nhelp itself, than a nation of a single lineage and one monotonous rule.\nI say 'at first,' because I apprehend that in this case, as in so many\nothers in the puzzling history of progress, the very institutions which\nmost aid at step number one are precisely those which most impede at\nstep number two. The whole of a caste nation is more various than the\nwhole of a non-caste nation, but each caste itself is more monotonous\nthan anything is, or can be, in a non-caste nation. Gradually a habit\nof action and type of mind forces itself on each caste, and it is\nlittle likely to be rid of it, for all who enter it are taught in one\nway and trained to the same employment. Several non-caste nations have\nstill continued to progress. But all caste nations have stopped early,\nthough some have lasted long. Each colour in the singular composite of\nthese tesselated societies has an indelible and invariable shade.\n\nThirdly, we see why so few nations have made rapid advance, and how\nmany have become stationary. It is in the process of becoming a nation,\nand in order to become such, that they subjected themselves to the\ninfluence which has made them stationary. They could not become a real\nnation without binding themselves by a fixed law and usage, and it is\nthe fixity of that law and usage which has kept them as they were ever\nsince. I wrote a whole essay on this before, so I need say nothing now;\nand I only name it because it is one of the most important consequences\nof this view of society, if not indeed the most important.\n\nAgain, we can thus explain one of the most curious facts of the present\nworld. 'Manner,' says a shrewd observer, who has seen much of existing\nlife, 'manner gets regularly worse as you go from the East to the West;\nit is best in Asia, not so good in Europe, and altogether bad in the\nwestern states of America.' And the reason is this--an imposing manner\nis a dignified usage, which tends to preserve itself and also all other\nexisting usages along with itself. It tends to induce the obedience of\nmankind. One of the cleverest novelists of the present day has a\ncurious dissertation to settle why on the hunting-field, and in all\ncollections of men, some men 'snub and some men get snubbed;' and why\nsociety recognises in each case the ascendancy or the subordination as\nif it was right. 'It is not at all,' Mr. Trollope fully explains, 'rare\nability which gains the supremacy; very often the ill-treated man is\nquite as clever as the man who ill-treats him. Nor does it absolutely\ndepend on wealth; for, though great wealth is almost always a\nprotection from social ignominy, and will always ensure a passive\nrespect, it will not in a miscellaneous group of men of itself gain an\nactive power to snub others. Schoolboys, in the same way,' the novelist\nadds, 'let some boys have dominion, and make other boys slaves.' And he\ndecides, no doubt truly, that in each case 'something in the manner or\ngait' of the supreme boy or man has much to do with it. On this account\nin early society a dignified manner is of essential importance; it is,\nthen, not only an auxiliary mode of acquiring respect, but a principal\nmode. The competing institutions which have now much superseded it, had\nnot then begun. Ancient institutions or venerated laws did not then\nexist; and the habitual ascendancy of grave manner was a primary force\nin winning and calming mankind. To this day it is rare to find a savage\nchief without it; and almost always they greatly excel in it. Only last\nyear a red Indian chief came from the prairies to see President Grant,\nand everybody declared that he had the best manners in Washington. The\nsecretaries and heads of departments seemed vulgar to him; though, of\ncourse, intrinsically they were infinitely above him, for he was only\n'a plundering rascal.' But an impressive manner had been a tradition in\nthe societies in which he had lived, because it was of great value in\nthose societies; and it is not a tradition in America, for nowhere is\nit less thought of, or of less use, than in a rough English colony; the\nessentials of civilisation there depend on far different influences.\n\nAnd manner, being so useful and so important, usages and customs grow\nup to develop it. Asiatic society is full of such things, if it should\nnot rather be said to be composed of them.\n\n'From the spirit and decision of a public envoy upon ceremonies and\nforms,' says Sir John Malcolm, 'the Persians very generally form their\nopinion of the character of the country he represents. This fact I had\nread in books, and all I saw convinced me of its truth. Fortunately the\nElchee had resided at some of the principal courts of India, whose\nusages are very similar. He was, therefore, deeply versed in that\nimportant science denominated \"Kaida-e-nishest-oo-berkhast\" (or the art\nof sitting and rising), in which is included a knowledge of the forms\nand manners of good society, and particularly those of Asiatic kings\nand their courts.\n\n'He was quite aware, on his first arrival in Persia, of the consequence\nof every step he took on such delicate points; he was, therefore,\nanxious to fight all his battles regarding ceremonies before he came\nnear the footstool of royalty. We were consequently plagued, from the\nmoment we landed at Ambusheher, till we reached Shiraz, with daily\nalmost hourly drilling, that we might be perfect in our demeanour at\nall places, and under all circumstances. We were carefully instructed\nwhere to ride in a procession, where to stand or sit within-doors, when\nto rise from our seats, how far to advance to meet a visitor, and to\nwhat part of the tent or house we were to follow him when he departed,\nif he was of sufficient rank to make us stir a step.\n\n'The regulations of our risings and standings, and movings and\nreseatings, were, however, of comparatively less importance than the\ntime and manner of smoking our Kellians and taking our coffee. It is\nquite astonishing how much depends upon coffee and tobacco in Persia.\nMen are gratified or offended, according to the mode in which these\nfavourite refreshments are offered. You welcome a visitor, or send him\noff, by the way in which you call for a pipe or a cup of coffee. Then\nyou mark, in the most minute manner, every shade of attention and\nconsideration, by the mode in which he is treated. If he be above you,\nyou present these refreshments yourself, and do not partake till\ncommanded; if equal, you exchange pipes, and present him with coffee,\ntaking the next cup yourself; if a little below you, and you wish to\npay him attention, you leave him to smoke his own pipe, but the servant\ngives him, according to your condescending nod, the first cup of\ncoffee; if much inferior, you keep your distance and maintain your\nrank, by taking the first cup of coffee yourself, and then directing\nthe servant, by a wave of the hand, to help the guest. 'When a visitor\narrives, the coffee and pipe are called for to welcome him; a second\ncall for these articles announces that he may depart; but this part of\nthe ceremony varies according to the relative rank or intimacy of the\nparties.\n\n'These matters may appear light to those with whom observances of this\ncharacter are habits, not rules; but in this country they are of\nprimary consideration, a man's importance with himself and with others\ndepending on them.'\n\nIn ancient customary societies the influence of manner, which is a\nprimary influence, has been settled into rules, so that it may aid\nestablished usages and not thwart them--that it may, above all, augment\nthe HABIT of going by custom, and not break and weaken it. Every aid,\nas we have seen, was wanted to impose the yoke of custom upon such\nsocieties; and impressing the power of manner to serve them was one of\nthe greatest aids.\n\nAnd lastly, we now understand why order and civilisation are so\nunstable even in progressive communities. We see frequently in states\nwhat physiologists call 'Atavism'--the return, in part, to the unstable\nnature of their barbarous ancestors. Such scenes of cruelty and horror\nas happened in the great French Revolution, and as happen, more or\nless, in every great riot, have always been said to bring out a secret\nand suppressed side of human nature; and we now see that they were the\noutbreak of inherited passions long repressed by fixed custom, but\nstarting into life as soon as that repression was catastrophically\nremoved and when sudden choice was given. The irritability of mankind,\ntoo, is only part of their imperfect, transitory civilisation and of\ntheir original savage nature. They could not look steadily to a given\nend for an hour in their pre-historic state; and even now, when excited\nor when suddenly and wholly thrown out of their old grooves, they can\nscarcely do so. Even some very high races, as the French and the Irish,\nseem in troubled times hardly to be stable at all, but to be carried\neverywhere as the passions of the moment and the ideas generated at the\nhour may determine. But, thoroughly to deal with such phenomena as\nthese, we must examine the mode in which national characters can be\nemancipated from the rule of custom, and can be prepared for the use of\nchoice.\n\n\n\nNO. V.\n\nTHE AGE OF DISCUSSION.\n\nThe greatest living contrast is between the old Eastern and customary\ncivilisations and the new Western and changeable civilisations. A year\nor two ago an inquiry was made of our most intelligent officers in the\nEast, not as to whether the English Government were really doing good\nin the East, but as to whether the natives of India themselves thought\nwe were doing good; to which, in a majority of cases, the officers who\nwore the best authority, answered thus: 'No doubt you are giving the\nIndians many great benefits: you give them continued peace, free trade,\nthe right to live as they like, subject to the laws; in these points\nand others they are far better off than, they ever were; but still they\ncannot make you out. What puzzles them is your constant disposition to\nchange, or as you call it, improvement. Their own life in every detail\nbeing regulated by ancient usage, they cannot comprehend a policy which\nis always bringing something new; they do not a bit believe that the\ndesire to make them comfortable and happy is the root of it; they\nbelieve, on the contrary, that you are aiming at something which they\ndo not understand--that you mean to \"take away their religion;\" in a\nword, that the end and object of all these continual changes is to make\nIndians not what they are and what they like to be, but something new\nand different from what they are, and what they would not like to be.'\nIn the East, in a word, we are attempting to put new wine into old\nbottles-to pour what we can of a civilisation whose spirit is progress\ninto the form of a civilisation whose spirit is fixity, and whether we\nshall succeed or not is perhaps the most interesting question in an age\nabounding almost beyond example in questions of political interest.\n\nHistorical inquiries show that the feeling of the Hindoos is the old\nfeeling, and that the feeling of the Englishman is a modern feeling.\n'Old law rests,' as Sir Henry Maine puts it, 'not on contract but on\nstatus.' The life of ancient civilisation, so far as legal records go,\nruns back to a time when every important particular of life was settled\nby a usage which was social, political, and religious, as we should now\nsay, all in one--which those who obeyed it could not have been able to\nanalyse, for those distinctions had no place in their mind and\nlanguage, but which they felt to be a usage of imperishable import, and\nabove all things to be kept unchanged. In former papers I have shown,\nor at least tried to show, why these customary civilisations were the\nonly ones which suited an early society; why, so to say, they alone\ncould have been first; in what manner they had in their very structure\na decisive advantage over all competitors. But now comes the farther\nquestion: If fixity is an invariable ingredient in early civilisations,\nhow then did any civilisation become unfixed? No doubt most\ncivilisations stuck where they first were; no doubt we see now why\nstagnation is the rule of the world, and why progress is the very rare\nexception; but we do not learn what it is which has caused progress in\nthese few cases, or the absence of what it is which has denied it in\nall others.\n\nTo this question history gives a very clear and very remarkable answer.\nIt is that the change from the age of status to the age of choice was\nfirst made in states where the government was to a great and a growing\nextent a government by discussion, and where the subjects of that\ndiscussion were in some degree abstract, or, as we should say, matters\nof principle. It was in the small republics of Greece and Italy that\nthe chain of custom was first broken. 'Liberty said, Let there be\nlight, and, like a sunrise on the sea, Athens arose,' says Shelley, and\nhis historical philosophy is in this case far more correct than is\nusual with him. A free state--a state with liberty--means a state, call\nit republic or call it monarchy, in which the sovereign power is\ndivided between many persons, and in which there is a discussion among\nthose persons. Of these the Greek republics were the first in history,\nif not in time, and Athens was the greatest of those republics.\n\nAfter the event it is easy to see why the teaching of history should be\nthis and nothing else. It is easy to see why the common discussion of\ncommon actions or common interests should become the root of change and\nprogress. In early society, originality in life was forbidden and\nrepressed by the fixed rule of life. It may not have been quite so much\nso in Ancient Greece as in some other parts of the world. But it was\nvery much so even there. As a recent writer has well said, 'Law then\npresented itself to men's minds as something venerable and\nunchangeable, as old as the city; it had been delivered by the founder\nhimself, when he laid the walls of the city, and kindled its sacred\nfire.' An ordinary man who wished to strike out a new path, to begin a\nnew and important practice by himself, would have been peremptorily\nrequired to abandon his novelties on pain of death; he was deviating,\nhe would be told, from the ordinances imposed by the gods on his\nnation, and he must not do so to please himself. On the contrary,\nothers were deeply interested in his actions. If he disobeyed, the gods\nmight inflict grievous harm on all the people as well as him. Each\npartner in the most ancient kind of partnerships was supposed to have\nthe power of attracting the wrath of the divinities on the entire firm,\nupon the other partners quite as much as upon himself. The quaking\nbystanders in a superstitious age would soon have slain an isolated\nbold man in the beginning of his innovations, What Macaulay so relied\non as the incessant source of progress--the desire of man to better his\ncondition--was not then permitted to work; man was required to live as\nhis ancestors had lived.\n\nStill further away from those times were the 'free thought' and the\n'advancing sciences' of which we now hear so much. The first and most\nnatural subject upon which human thought concerns itself is religion;\nthe first wish of the half-emancipated thinker is to use his reason on\nthe great problems of human destiny--to find out whence he came and\nwhither he goes, to form for himself the most reasonable idea of God\nwhich he can form. But, as Mr. Grote happily said--'This is usually\nwhat ancient times would not let a man do. His _gens_ or his _phratria_\nrequired him to believe as they believed.' Toleration is of all ideas\nthe most modern, because the notion that the bad religion of A cannot\nimpair, here or hereafter, the welfare of B, is, strange to say, a\nmodern idea. And the help of 'science,' at that stage of thought, is\nstill more nugatory. Physical science, as we conceive it--that is, the\nsystematic investigation of external nature in detail--did not then\nexist. A few isolated observations on surface things--a half-correct\ncalendar, secrets mainly of priestly invention, and in priestly\ncustody--were all that was then imagined; the idea of using a settled\nstudy of nature as a basis for the discovery of new instruments and new\nthings, did not then exist. It is indeed a modern idea, and is peculiar\nto a few European countries even yet. In the most intellectual city of\nthe ancient world, in its most intellectual age, Socrates, its most\nintellectual inhabitant, discouraged the study of physics because they\nengendered uncertainty, and did not augment human happiness. The kind\nof knowledge which is most connected with human progress now was that\nleast connected with it then.\n\nBut a government by discussion, if it can be borne, at once breaks down\nthe yoke of fixed custom. The idea of the two is inconsistent. As far\nas it goes, the mere putting up of a subject to discussion, with the\nobject of being guided by that discussion, is a clear admission that\nthat subject is in no degree settled by established rule, and that men\nare free to choose in it. It is an admission too that there is no\nsacred authority--no one transcendent and divinely appointed man whom\nin that matter the community is bound to obey. And if a single subject\nor group of subjects be once admitted to discussion, ere long the habit\nof discussion comes to be established, the sacred charm of use and wont\nto be dissolved. 'Democracy,' it has been said in modern times, 'is\nlike the grave; it takes, but it does not give.' The same is true of\n'discussion.' Once effectually submit a subject to that ordeal, and you\ncan never withdraw it again; you can never again clothe it with\nmystery, or fence it by consecration; it remains for ever open to free\nchoice, and exposed to profane deliberation.\n\nThe only subjects which can be first submitted, or which till a very\nlate age of civilisation can be submitted to discussion in the\ncommunity, are the questions involving the visible and pressing\ninterests of the community; they are political questions of high and\nurgent import. If a nation has in any considerable degree gained the\nhabit, and exhibited the capacity, to discuss these questions with\nfreedom, and to decide them with discretion, to argue much on politics\nand not to argue ruinously, an enormous advance in other kinds of\ncivilisation may confidently be predicted for it. And the reason is a\nplain deduction from the principles which we have found to guide early\ncivilisation. The first pre-historic men were passionate savages, with\nthe greatest difficulty coerced into order and compressed into a state.\nFor ages were spent in beginning that order and founding that state;\nthe only sufficient and effectual agent in so doing was consecrated\ncustom; but then that custom gathered over everything, arrested all\nonward progress, and stayed the originality of mankind. If, therefore,\na nation is able to gain the benefit of custom without the evil--if\nafter ages of waiting it can have order and choice together--at once\nthe fatal clog is removed, and the ordinary springs of progress, as in\na modern community we conceive them, begin their elastic action.\n\nDiscussion, too, has incentives to progress peculiar to itself. It\ngives a premium to intelligence. To set out the arguments required to\ndetermine political action with such force and effect that they really\nshould determine it, is a high and great exertion of intellect. Of\ncourse, all such arguments are produced under conditions; the argument\nabstractedly best is not necessarily the winning argument. Political\ndiscussion must move those who have to act; it must be framed in the\nideas, and be consonant with the precedent, of its time, just as it\nmust speak its language. But within these marked conditions good\ndiscussion is better than bad; no people can bear a government of\ndiscussion for a day, which does not, within the boundaries of its\nprejudices and its ideas, prefer good reasoning to bad reasoning, sound\nargument to unsound. A prize for argumentative mind is given in free\nstates, to which no other states have anything to compare.\n\nTolerance too is learned in discussion, and, as history shows, is only\nso learned. In all customary societies bigotry is the ruling principle.\nIn rude places to this day any one who says anything new is looked on\nwith suspicion, and is persecuted by opinion if not injured by penalty.\nOne of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea. It\nis, as common people say, so 'upsetting;' it makes you think that,\nafter all, your favourite notions may be wrong, your firmest beliefs\nill-founded; it is certain that till now there was no place allotted in\nyour mind to the new and startling inhabitant, and now that it has\nconquered an entrance you do not at once see which of your old ideas it\nwill or will not turn out, with which of them it can be reconciled, and\nwith which it is at essential enmity. Naturally, therefore, common men\nhate a new idea, and are disposed more or less to ill-treat the\noriginal man who brings it. Even nations with long habits of discussion\nare intolerant enough. In England, where there is on the whole probably\na freer discussion of a greater number of subjects than ever was before\nin the world, we know how much power bigotry retains. But discussion,\nto be successful, requires tolerance. It fails wherever, as in a French\npolitical assembly, any one who hears anything which he dislikes tries\nto howl it down. If we know that a nation is capable of enduring\ncontinuous discussion, we know that it is capable of practising with\nequanimity continuous tolerance.\n\nThe power of a government by discussion as an instrument of elevation\nplainly depends--other things being equal--on the greatness or\nlittleness of the things to be discussed. There are periods when great\nideas are 'in the air,' and when, from some cause or other, even common\npersons seem to partake of an unusual elevation. The age of Elizabeth\nin England was conspicuously such a time. The new idea of the\nReformation in religion, and the enlargement of the MOENIA MUNDI by the\ndiscovery of new and singular lands, taken together, gave an impulse to\nthought which few, if any, ages can equal. The discussion, though not\nwholly free, was yet far freer than in the average of ages and\ncountries. Accordingly, every pursuit seemed to start forward. Poetry,\nscience, and architecture, different as they are, and removed as they\nall are at first sight from such an influence as discussion, were\nsuddenly started onward. Macaulay would have said you might rightly\nread the power of discussion 'in the poetry of Shakespeare, in the\nprose of Bacon, in the oriels of Longleat, and the stately pinnacles of\nBurleigh.' This is, in truth, but another case of the principle of\nwhich I have had occasion to say so much as to the character of ages\nand countries. If any particular power is much prized in an age, those\npossessed of that power will be imitated; those deficient in that power\nwill be despised. In consequence an unusual quantity of that power will\nbe developed, and be conspicuous. Within certain limits vigorous and\nelevated thought was respected in Elizabeth's time, and, therefore,\nvigorous and elevated thinkers were many; and the effect went far\nbeyond the cause. It penetrated into physical science, for which very\nfew men cared; and it began a reform in philosophy to which almost all\nwere then opposed. In a word, the temper of the age encouraged\noriginality, and in consequence original men started into prominence,\nwent hither and thither where they liked, arrived at goals which the\nage never expected, and so made it ever memorable.\n\nIn this manner all the great movements of thought in ancient and modern\ntimes have been nearly connected in time with government by discussion.\nAthens, Rome, the Italian republics of the Middle Ages, the COMMUNES\nand states-general of feudal Europe, have all had a special and\npeculiar quickening influence, which they owed to their freedom, and\nwhich states without that freedom have never communicated. And it has\nbeen at the time of great epochs of thought--at the Peloponnesian war,\nat the fall of the Roman Republic, at the Reformation, at the French\nRevolution--that such liberty of speaking and thinking have produced\ntheir full effect.\n\nIt is on this account that the discussions of savage tribes have\nproduced so little effect in emancipating those tribes from their\ndespotic customs. The oratory of the North American Indian--the first\nsavage whose peculiarities fixed themselves in the public\nimagination--has become celebrated, and yet the North American Indians\nwere scarcely, if at all, better orators than many other savages.\nAlmost all of the savages who have melted away before the Englishman\nwere better speakers than he is. But the oratory of the savages has led\nto nothing, and was likely to lead to nothing. It is a discussion not\nof principles, but of undertakings; its topics are whether expedition A\nwill answer, and should be undertaken; whether expedition B will not\nanswer, and should not be undertaken; whether village A is the best\nvillage to plunder, or whether village B is a better. Such discussions\naugment the vigour of language, encourage a debating facility, and\ndevelop those gifts of demeanour and of gesture which excite the\nconfidence of the hearers. But they do not excite the speculative\nintellect, do not lead men to argue speculative doctrines, or to\nquestion ancient principles. They, in some material respects, improve\nthe sheep within the fold; but they do not help them or incline them to\nleap out of the fold.\n\nThe next question, therefore, is, Why did discussions in some cases\nrelate to prolific ideas, and why did discussions in other cases relate\nonly to isolated transactions? The reply which history suggests is very\nclear and very remarkable. Some races of men at our earliest knowledge\nof them have already acquired the basis of a free constitution; they\nhave already the rudiments of a complex polity--a monarch, a senate,\nand a general meeting of citizens. The Greeks were one of those races,\nand it happened, as was natural, that there was in process of time a\nstruggle, the earliest that we know of, between the aristocratical\nparty, originally represented by the senate, and the popular party,\nrepresented by the 'general meeting.' This is plainly a question of\nprinciple, and its being so has led to its history being written more\nthan two thousand years afterwards in a very remarkable manner. Some\nseventy years ago an English country gentleman named Mitford, who, like\nso many of his age, had been terrified into aristocratic opinions by\nthe first French Revolution, suddenly found that the history of the\nPeloponnesian War was the reflex of his own time. He took up his\nThucydides, and there he saw, as in a mirror, the progress and the\nstruggles of his age. It required some freshness of mind to see this;\nat least, it had been hidden for many centuries. All the modern\nhistories of Greece before Mitford had but the vaguest idea of it; and\nnot being a man of supreme originality, he would doubtless have had\nvery little idea of it either, except that the analogy of what he saw\nhelped him by a telling object-lesson to the understanding of what he\nread. Just as in every country of Europe in 1793 there were two\nfactions, one of the old-world aristocracy, and the other of the\nincoming democracy, just so there was in every city of ancient Greece,\nin the year 400 B.C., one party of the many and another of the few.\nThis Mr. Mitford perceived, and being a strong aristocrat, he wrote a\n'history,' which is little except a party pamphlet, and which, it must\nbe said, is even now readable on that very account. The vigour of\npassion with which it was written puts life into the words, and retains\nthe attention of the reader. And that is not all. Mr. Grote, the great\nscholar whom we have had lately to mourn, also recognising the identity\nbetween the struggles of Athens and Sparta and the struggles of our\nmodern world, and taking violently the contrary side to that of\nMitford, being as great a democrat as Mitford was an aristocrat, wrote\na reply, far above Mitford's history in power and learning, but being\nin its main characteristic almost identical, being above all things a\nbook of vigorous political passion, written for persons who care for\npolitics, and not, as almost all histories of antiquity are and must\nbe, the book of a man who cares for scholarship more than for anything\nelse, written mainly if not exclusively, for scholars. And the effect\nof fundamental political discussion was the same in ancient as in\nmodern times. The whole customary ways of thought were at once shaken\nby it, and shaken not only in the closets of philosophers, but in the\ncommon thought and daily business of ordinary men. The 'liberation of\nhumanity,' as Goethe used to call it--the deliverance of men from the\nyoke of inherited usage, and of rigid, unquestionable law--was begun in\nGreece, and had many of its greatest effects, good and evil, on Greece.\nIt is just because of the analogy between the controversies of that\ntime and those of our times that some one has said, 'Classical history\nis a part of modern history; it is mediaeval history only which is\nancient.'\n\nIf there had been no discussion of principle in Greece, probably she\nwould still have produced works of art. Homer contains no such\ndiscussion. The speeches in the 'Iliad,' which Mr. Gladstone, the most\ncompetent of living judges, maintains to be the finest ever composed by\nman, are not discussions of principle. There is no more tendency in\nthem to critical disquisition than there is to political economy. In\nHerodotus you have the beginning of the age of discussion. He belongs\nin his essence to the age which is going out. He refers with reverence\nto established ordinance and fixed religion. Still, in his travels\nthrough Greece, he must have heard endless political arguments; and\naccordingly you can find in his book many incipient traces of abstract\npolitical disquisition. The discourses on democracy, aristocracy, and\nmonarchy, which he puts into the mouth of the Persian conspirators when\nthe monarchy was vacant, have justly been called absurd, as speeches\nsupposed to have been spoken by those persons. No Asiatic ever thought\nof such things. You might as well imagine Saul or David speaking them,\nas those to whom Herodotus attributes them. They are Greek speeches,\nfull of free Greek discussion, and suggested by the experience, already\nconsiderable, of the Greeks in the results of discussion. The age of\ndebate is beginning, and even Herodotus, the least of a wrangler of any\nman, and the most of a sweet and simple narrator, felt the effect. When\nwe come to Thucydides, the results of discussion are as full as they\nhave ever been; his light is pure, 'dry light,' free from the 'humours'\nof habit, and purged from consecrated usage. As Grote's history often\nreads like a report to Parliament, so half Thucydides reads like a\nspeech, or materials for a speech, in the Athenian Assembly. Of later\ntimes it is unnecessary to speak. Every page of Aristotle and Plato\nbears ample and indelible trace of the age of discussion in which they\nlived; and thought cannot possibly be freer. The deliverance of the\nspeculative intellect from traditional and customary authority was\naltogether complete.\n\nNo doubt the 'detachment' from prejudice, and the subjection to reason,\nwhich I ascribe to ancient Athens, only went down a very little way\namong the population of it. Two great classes of the people, the slaves\nand women, were almost excluded from such qualities; even the free\npopulation doubtless contained a far greater proportion of very\nignorant and very superstitious persons than we are in the habit of\nimagining. We fix our attention on the best specimens of Athenian\nculture--on the books which have descended to us, and we forget that\nthe corporate action of the Athenian people at various critical\njunctures exhibited the most gross superstition. Still, as far as the\nintellectual and cultivated part of society is concerned, the triumph\nof reason was complete; the minds of the highest philosophers were then\nas ready to obey evidence and reason as they have ever been since;\nprobably they were more ready. The rule of custom over them at least\nhad been wholly broken, and the primary conditions of intellectual\nprogress were in that respect satisfied.\n\nIt may be said that I am giving too much weight to the classical idea\nof human development; that history contains the record of another\nprogress as well; that in a certain sense there was progress in Judaea\nas well as in Athens. And unquestionably there was progress, but it was\nonly progress upon a single subject. If we except religion and omit\nalso all that the Jews had learned from foreigners, it may be doubted\nif there be much else new between the time of Samuel and that of\nMalachi. In Religion there was progress, but without it there was not\nany. This was due to the cause of that progress. All over antiquity,\nall over the East, and over other parts of the world which preserve\nmore or less nearly their ancient condition, there are two classes of\nreligious teachers--one, the priests, the inheritors of past accredited\ninspiration; the other, the prophet, the possessor of a like present\ninspiration. Curtius describes the distinction well in relation to the\ncondition of Greece with which history first presents us:--\n\n'The mantic art is an institution totally different from the\npriesthood. It is based on the belief that the gods are in constant\nproximity to men, and in their government of the world, which\ncomprehends every thing both great and small, will not disdain to\nmanifest their will; nay, it seems necessary that, whenever any hitch\nhas arisen in the moral system of the human world, this should also\nmanifest itself by some sign in the world of nature, if only mortals\nare able to understand and avail themselves of these divine hints.\n\n'For this a special capacity is requisite; not a capacity which can be\nlearnt like a human art or science, but rather a peculiar state of\ngrace in the case of single individuals and single families whose ears\nand eyes are opened to the divine revelations, and who participate more\nlargely than the rest of mankind in the divine spirit. Accordingly it\nis their office and calling to assert themselves as organs of the\ndivine will; they are justified in opposing their authority to every\npower of the world. On this head conflicts were unavoidable, and the\nreminiscences living in the Greek people, of the agency of a Tiresias\nand Calchas, prove how the Heroic kings experienced not only support\nand aid, but also opposition and violent protests, from the mouths of\nthe men of prophecy.'\n\nIn Judaea there was exactly the same opposition as elsewhere. All that\nis new comes from the prophets; all which is old is retained by the\npriests. But the peculiarity of Judaea--a peculiarity which I do not\nfor a moment pretend that I can explain--is that the prophetic\nrevelations are, taken as a whole, indisputably improvements; that they\ncontain, as time goes on, at each succeeding epoch, higher and better\nviews of religion. But the peculiarity is not to my present purpose. My\npoint is that there is no such spreading impetus in progress thus\ncaused as there is in progress caused by discussion. To receive a\nparticular conclusion upon the ipse dixit, upon the accepted authority\nof an admired instructor, is obviously not so vivifying to the\nargumentative and questioning intellect as to argue out conclusions for\nyourself. Accordingly the religious progress caused by the prophets did\nnot break down that ancient code of authoritative usage. On the\ncontrary, the two combined. In each generation the conservative\ninfluence 'built the sepulchres' and accepted the teaching of past\nprophets, even while it was slaying and persecuting those who were\nliving. But discussion and custom cannot be thus combined; their\n'method,' as modern philosophers would say, is antagonistic.\nAccordingly, the progress of the classical states gradually awakened\nthe whole intellect; that of Judaea was partial and improved religion\nonly. And, therefore, in a history of intellectual progress, the\nclassical fills the superior and the Jewish the inferior place; just as\nin a special history of theology only, the places of the two might be\ninterchanged.\n\nA second experiment has been tried on the same subject--matter. The\ncharacteristic of the Middle Ages may be approximately--though only\napproximately--described as a return to the period of authoritative\nusage and as an abandonment of the classical habit of independent and\nself-choosing thought. I do not for an instant mean that this is an\nexact description of the main mediaeval characteristic; nor can I\ndiscuss how far that characteristic was an advance upon those of\nprevious times; its friends say it is far better than the peculiarities\nof the classical period; its enemies that it is far worse. But both\nfriends and enemies will admit that the most marked feature of the\nMiddle Ages may roughly be described as I have described it. And my\npoint is that just as this mediaeval characteristic was that of a\nreturn to the essence of the customary epoch which had marked the\npre-Athenian times, so it was dissolved much in the same manner as the\ninfluence of Athens, and other influences like it, claim to have\ndissolved that customary epoch.\n\nThe principal agent in breaking up the persistent medieval customs,\nwhich were so fixed that they seemed likely to last for ever, or till\nsome historical catastrophe overwhelmed them, was the popular element\nin the ancient polity which was everywhere diffused in the Middle Ages.\nThe Germanic tribes brought with them from their ancient dwelling-place\na polity containing, like the classical, a king, a council, and a\npopular assembly; and wherever they went, they carried these elements\nand varied them, as force compelled or circumstances required. As far\nas England is concerned, the excellent dissertations of Mr. Freeman and\nMr. Stubbs have proved this in the amplest manner, and brought it home\nto persons who cannot claim to possess much antiquarian learning. The\nhistory of the English Constitution, as far as the world cares for it,\nis, in fact, the complex history of the popular element in this ancient\npolity, which was sometimes weaker and sometimes stronger, but which\nhas never died out, has commonly possessed great though varying power,\nand is now entirely predominant. The history of this growth is the\nhistory of the English people; and the discussions about this\nconstitution and the discussions within it, the controversies as to its\nstructure and the controversies as to its true effects, have mainly\ntrained the English political intellect, in so far as it is trained.\nBut in much of Europe, and in England particularly, the influence of\nreligion has been very different from what it was in antiquity. It has\nbeen an influence of discussion. Since Luther's time there has been a\nconviction more or less rooted, that a man may by an intellectual\nprocess think out a religion for himself, and that, as the highest of\nall duties, he ought to do so. The influence of the political\ndiscussion, and the influence of the religious discussion, have been so\nlong and so firmly combined, and have so effectually enforced one\nanother, that the old notions of loyalty, and fealty, and authority, as\nthey existed in the Middle Ages, have now over the best minds almost no\neffect.\n\nIt is true that the influence of discussion is not the only force which\nhas produced this vast effect. Both in ancient and in modern times\nother forces cooperated with it. Trade, for example, is obviously a\nforce which has done much to bring men of different customs and\ndifferent beliefs into close contiguity, and has thus aided to change\nthe customs and the beliefs of them all. Colonisation is another such\ninfluence: it settles men among aborigines of alien race and usages,\nand it commonly compels the colonists not to be over-strict in the\nchoice of their own elements; they are obliged to coalesce with and\n'adopt' useful bands and useful men, though their ancestral customs may\nnot be identical, nay, though they may be, in fact, opposite to their\nown. In modern Europe, the existence of a cosmopolite Church, claiming\nto be above nations, and really extending through nations, and the\nscattered remains of Roman law and Roman civilisation co-operated with\nthe liberating influence of political discussion. And so did other\ncauses also. But perhaps in no case have these subsidiary causes alone\nbeen able to generate intellectual freedom; certainly in all the most\nremarkable cases the influence of discussion has presided at the\ncreation of that freedom, and has been active and dominant in it.\n\nNo doubt apparent cases of exception may easily be found. It may be\nsaid that in the court of Augustus there was much general intellectual\nfreedom, an almost entire detachment from ancient prejudice, but that\nthere was no free political discussion at all. But, then, the ornaments\nof that time were derived from a time of great freedom: it was the\nrepublic which trained the men whom the empire ruled. The close\ncongregation of most miscellaneous elements under the empire, was, no\ndoubt, of itself unfavourable to inherited prejudice, and favourable to\nintellectual exertion. Yet, except in the instance of the Church, which\nis a peculiar subject that requires a separate discussion, how little\nwas added to what the republic left! The power of free interchange of\nideas being wanting, the ideas themselves were barren. Also, no doubt,\nmuch intellectual freedom may emanate from countries of free political\ndiscussion, and penetrate to countries where that discussion is\nlimited. Thus the intellectual freedom of France in the eighteenth\ncentury was in great part owing to the proximity of and incessant\nintercourse with England and Holland. Voltaire resided among us; and\nevery page of the 'Esprit des Lois' proves how much Montesquieu learned\nfrom living here. But, of course, it was only part of the French\nculture which was so derived: the germ might be foreign, but the tissue\nwas native. And very naturally, for it would be absurd to call the\nancien regime a government without discussion: discussion abounded\nthere, only, by reason of the bad form of the government, it was never\nsure with ease and certainty to affect political action. The despotism\n'tempered by epigram,' was a government which permitted argument of\nlicentious freedom within changing limits, and which was ruled by that\nargument spasmodically and practically, though not in name or\nconsistently.\n\nBut though in the earliest and in the latest time government by\ndiscussion has been a principal organ for improving mankind, yet, from\nits origin, it is a plant of singular delicacy. At first the chances\nare much against its living. In the beginning, the members of a free\nstate are of necessity few. The essence of it requires that discussion\nshall be brought home to those members. But in early time, when writing\nis difficult, reading rare, and representation undiscovered, those who\nare to be guided by the discussion must hear it with their own ears,\nmust be brought face to face with the orator, and must feel his\ninfluence for themselves. The first free states were little towns,\nsmaller than any political division which we now have, except the\nRepublic of Andorre, which is a sort of vestige of them. It is in the\nmarket-place of the country town, as we should now speak, and in petty\nmatters concerning the market-town, that discussion began, and thither\nall the long train of its consequences may be traced back. Some\nhistorical inquirers, like myself, can hardly look at such a place\nwithout some sentimental musing, poor and trivial as the thing seems.\nBut such small towns are very feeble. Numbers in the earliest wars, as\nin the latest, are a main source of victory. And in early times one\nkind of state is very common and is exceedingly numerous. In every\nquarter of the globe we find great populations compacted by traditional\ncustom and consecrated sentiment, which are ruled by some\nsoldier--generally some soldier of a foreign tribe, who has conquered\nthem, and, as it has been said, 'vaulted on the back' of them, or whose\nancestors have done so. These great populations, ruled by a single\nwill, have, doubtless, trodden down and destroyed innumerable little\ncities who were just beginning their freedom.\n\nIn this way the Greek cities in Asia were subjected to the Persian\nPower, and so OUGHT the cities in Greece proper to have been subjected\nalso. Every schoolboy must have felt that nothing but amazing folly and\nunmatched mismanagement saved Greece from conquest both in the time of\nXerxes and in that of Darius. The fortunes of intellectual civilisation\nwere then at the mercy of what seems an insignificant probability. If\nthe Persian leaders had only shown that decent skill and ordinary\nmilitary prudence which it was likely they would show, Grecian freedom\nwould have been at an end. Athens, like so many Ionian cities on the\nother side of the AEgean, would have been absorbed into a great\ndespotism; all we now remember her for we should not remember, for it\nwould never have occurred. Her citizens might have been ingenious, and\nimitative, and clever; they could not certainly have been free and\noriginal. Rome was preserved from subjection to a great empire by her\nfortunate distance from one. The early wars of Rome are with cities\nlike Rome--about equal in size, though inferior in valour. It was only\nwhen she had conquered Italy that she began to measure herself against\nAsiatic despotisms. She became great enough to beat them before she\nadvanced far enough to contend with them. But such great good fortune\nwas and must be rare. Unnumbered little cities which might have\nrivalled Rome or Athens doubtless perished without a sign long before\nhistory was imagined. The small size and slight strength of early free\nstates made them always liable to easy destruction.\n\nAnd their internal frailty is even greater. As soon as discussion\nbegins the savage propensities of men break forth; even in modern\ncommunities, where those propensities, too, have been weakened by ages\nof culture, and repressed by ages of obedience, as soon as a vital\ntopic for discussion is well started the keenest and most violent\npassions break forth. Easily destroyed as are early free states by\nforces from without, they are even more liable to destruction by forces\nfrom within.\n\nOn this account such states are very rare in history. Upon the first\nview of the facts a speculation might even be set up that they were\npeculiar to a particular race. By far the most important free\ninstitutions, and the only ones which have left living representatives\nin the world, are the offspring either of the first constitutions of\nthe classical nations or of the first constitutions of the Germanic\nnations. All living freedom runs back to them, and those truths which\nat first sight would seem the whole of historical freedom, can be\ntraced to them. And both the Germanic and the classical nations belong\nto what ethnologists call the Aryan race. Plausibly it might be argued\nthat the power of forming free states was superior in and peculiar to\nthat family of mankind. But unfortunately for this easy theory the\nfacts are inconsistent with it. In the first place, all the so-called\nAryan race certainly is not free. The eastern Aryans--those, for\nexample, who speak languages derived from the Sanscrit--are amongst the\nmost slavish divisions of mankind. To offer the Bengalese a free\nconstitution, and to expect them to work one, would be the maximum of\nhuman folly. There then must be something else besides Aryan descent\nwhich is necessary to fit men for discussion and train them for\nliberty; and, what is worse for the argument we are opposing, some\nnon-Aryan races have been capable of freedom. Carthage, for example,\nwas a Semitic republic. We do not know all the details of its\nconstitution, but we know enough for our present purpose. We know that\nit was a government in which many proposers took part, and under which\ndiscussion was constant, active, and conclusive. No doubt Tyre, the\nparent city of Carthage, the other colonies of Tyre besides Carthage,\nand the colonies of Carthage, were all as free as Carthage. We have\nthus a whole group of ancient republics of non-Aryan race, and one\nwhich, being more ancient than the classical republics, could not have\nborrowed from or imitated them. So that the theory which would make\ngovernment by discussion the exclusive patrimony of a single race of\nmankind is on the face of it untenable.\n\nI am not prepared with any simple counter theory. I cannot profess to\nexplain completely why a very small minimum of mankind were, as long as\nwe know of them, possessed of a polity which as time went on suggested\ndiscussions of principle, and why the great majority of mankind had\nnothing like it. This is almost as hopeless as asking why Milton was a\ngenius and why Bacon was a philosopher. Indeed it is the same, because\nthe causes which give birth to the startling varieties of individual\ncharacter, and those which give birth to similar varieties of national\ncharacter, are, in fact, the same. I have, indeed, endeavoured to show\nthat a marked type of individual character once originating in a nation\nand once strongly preferred by it, is likely to be fixed on it and to\nbe permanent in it, from causes which were stated. Granted the\nbeginning of the type, we may, I think, explain its development and\naggravation; but we cannot in the least explain why the incipient type\nof curious characters broke out, if I may so say, in one place rather\nthan in another. Climate and 'physical' surroundings, in the largest\nsense, have unquestionably much influence; they are one factor in the\ncause, but they are not the only factor; for we find most dissimilar\nraces of men living in the same climate and affected by the same\nsurroundings, and we have every reason to believe that those unlike\nraces have so lived as neighbours for ages. The cause of types must be\nsomething outside the tribe acting on something within--something\ninherited by the tribe. But what that something is I do not know that\nany one can in the least explain.\n\nThe following conditions may, I think, be historically traced to the\nnation capable of a polity, which suggests principles for discussion,\nand so leads to progress. First, the nation must possess the PATRIA\nPOTESTAS in some form so marked as to give family life distinctness and\nprecision, and to make a home education and a home discipline probable\nand possible. While descent is traced only through the mother, and\nwhile the family is therefore a vague entity, no progress to a high\npolity is possible. Secondly, that polity would seem to have been\ncreated very gradually; by the aggregation of families into clans or\nGENTES, and of clans into nations, and then again by the widening of\nnations, so as to include circumjacent outsiders, as well as the first\ncompact and sacred group--the number of parties to a discussion was at\nfirst augmented very slowly. Thirdly, the number of 'open' subjects--as\nwe should say nowadays--that is, of subjects on which public opinion\nwas optional, and on which discussion was admitted, was at first very\nsmall. Custom ruled everything originally, and the area of free\nargument was enlarged but very slowly. If I am at all right, that area\ncould only be enlarged thus slowly, for Custom was in early days the\ncement of society, and if you suddenly questioned such custom you would\ndestroy society. But though the existence, of these conditions may be\ntraced historically, and though the reason of them may be explained\nphilosophically, they do not completely solve the question why some\nnations have the polity and some not; on the contrary, they plainly\nleave a large 'residual phenomenon' unexplained and unknown.\n\n\nII.\n\nIn this manner politics or discussion broke up the old bonds of custom\nwhich were now strangling mankind, though they had once aided and\nhelped it. But this is only one of the many gifts which those polities\nhave conferred, are conferring, and will confer on mankind. I am not\ngoing to write an eulogium on liberty, but I wish to set down three\npoints which have not been sufficiently noticed.\n\nCivilised ages inherit the human nature which was victorious in\nbarbarous ages, and that nature is, in many respects, not at all suited\nto civilised circumstances. A main and principal excellence in the\nearly times of the human races is the impulse to action. The problems\nbefore men are then plain and simple. The man who works hardest, the\nman who kills the most deer, the man who catches the most fish--even\nlater on, the man who tends the largest herds, or the man who tills the\nlargest field--is the man who succeeds; the nation which is quickest to\nkill its enemies, or which kills most of its enemies, is the nation\nwhich succeeds. All the inducements of early society tend to foster\nimmediate action; all its penalties fall on the man who pauses; the\ntraditional wisdom of those times was never weary of inculcating that\n'delays are dangerous,' and that the sluggish man--the man 'who\nroasteth not that which he took in hunting'--will not prosper on the\nearth, and indeed will very soon perish out of it. And in consequence\nan inability to stay quiet, an irritable desire to act directly, is one\nof the most conspicuous failings of mankind.\n\nPascal said that most of the evils of life arose from 'man's being\nunable to sit still in a room;' and though I do not go that length, it\nis certain that we should have been a far wiser race than we are if 'we\nhad been readier to sit quiet--we should have known much better the way\nin which it was best to act when we came to act. The rise of physical\nscience, the first great body of practical truth provable to all men,\nexemplifies this in the plainest way. If it had not been for quiet\npeople, who sat still and studied the sections of the cone, if other\nquiet people had not sat still and studied the theory of\ninfinitesimals, or other quiet people had not sat still and worked out\nthe doctrine of chances, the most 'dreamy moonshine,' as the purely\npractical mind would consider, of all human pursuits; if 'idle\nstar-gazers' had not watched long and carefully the motions of the\nheavenly bodies--our modern astronomy would have been impossible, and\nwithout our astronomy 'our ships, our colonies, our seamen,' all which\nmakes modern life modern life could not have existed. Ages of\nsedentary, quiet, thinking people were required before that noisy\nexistence began, and without those pale preliminary students it never\ncould have been brought into being. And nine-tenths of modern science\nis in this respect the same: it is the produce of men whom their\ncontemporaries thought dreamers--who were laughed at for caring for\nwhat did not concern them--who, as the proverb went, 'walked into a\nwell from looking at the stars'--who were believed to be useless, if\nany one could be such. And the conclusion is plain that if there had\nbeen more such people, if the world had not laughed at those there\nwere, if rather it had encouraged them there would have been a great\naccumulation of proved science ages before there was. It was the\nirritable activity, the 'wish to be doing something,' that prevented\nit. Most men inherited a nature too eager and too restless to be quiet\nand find out things; and even worse--with their idle clamour they\n'disturbed the brooding hen,' they would not let those be quiet who\nwished to be so, and out of whose calm thought much good might have\ncome forth.\n\nIf we consider how much science has done and how much it is doing for\nmankind, and if the over-activity of men is proved to be the cause why\nscience came so late into the world, and is so small and scanty still,\nthat will convince most people that our over-activity is a very great\nevil. But this is only part, and perhaps not the greatest part of the\nharm that over-activity does. As I have said, it is inherited from\ntimes when life was simple, objects were plain, and quick action\ngenerally led to desirable ends. If A kills B before B kills A, then A\nsurvives, and the human race is a race of A's. But the issues of life\nare plain no longer. To act rightly in modern society requires a great\ndeal of previous study, a great deal of assimilated information, a\ngreat deal of sharpened imagination; and these pre-requisites of sound\naction require much time, and, I was going to say, much 'lying in the\nsun,' a long period of 'mere passiveness.' Even the art of killing one\nanother, which at first particularly trained men to be quick, now\nrequires them to be slow. A hasty general is the worst of generals\nnowadays; the best is a sort of Von Moltke, who is passive if any man\never was passive; who is 'silent in seven languages;' who possesses\nmore and better accumulated information as to the best way of killing\npeople than any one who ever lived. This man plays a restrained and\nconsiderate game of chess with his enemy. I wish the art of benefiting\nmen had kept pace with the art of destroying them; for though war has\nbecome slow, philanthropy has remained hasty. The most melancholy of\nhuman reflections, perhaps, is that, on the whole, it is a question\nwhether the benevolence of mankind does most good or harm. Great good,\nno doubt, philanthropy does, but then it also does great evil. It\naugments so much vice, it multiplies so much suffering, it brings to\nlife such great populations to suffer and to be vicious, that it is\nopen to argument whether it be or be not an evil to the world, and this\nis entirely because excellent people fancy that they can do much by\nrapid action--that they will most benefit the world when they most\nrelieve their own feelings; that as soon as an evil is seen 'something'\nought to be done to stay and prevent it. One may incline to hope that\nthe balance of good over evil is in favour of benevolence; one can\nhardly bear to think that it is not so; but anyhow it is certain that\nthere is a most heavy debit of evil, and that this burden might almost\nall have been spared us if philanthropists as well as others had not\ninherited from their barbarous forefathers a wild passion for instant\naction.\n\nEven in commerce, which is now the main occupation of mankind, and one\nin which there is a ready test of success and failure wanting in many\nhigher pursuits, the same disposition to excessive action is very\napparent to careful observers. Part of every mania is caused by the\nimpossibility to get people to confine themselves to the amount of\nbusiness for which their capital is sufficient, and in which they can\nengage safely. In some degree, of course, this is caused by the wish,\nto get rich; but in a considerable degree, too, by the mere love of\nactivity. There is a greater propensity to action in such men than they\nhave the means of gratifying. Operations with their own capital will\nonly occupy four hours of the day, and they wish to be active and to be\nindustrious for eight hours, and so they are ruined. If they could only\nhave sat idle the other four hours, they would have been rich men. The\namusements of mankind, at least of the English part of mankind, teach\nthe same lesson. Our shooting, our hunting, our travelling, our\nclimbing have become laborious pursuits. It is a common saying abroad\nthat 'an Englishman's notion of a holiday is a fatiguing journey;' and\nthis is only another way of saying that the immense energy and activity\nwhich have given us our place in the world have in many cases descended\nto those who do not find in modern life any mode of using that\nactivity, and of venting that energy.\n\nEven the abstract speculations of mankind bear conspicuous traces of\nthe same excessive impulse. Every sort of philosophy has been\nsystematised, and yet as these philosophies utterly contradict one\nanother, most of them cannot be true. Unproved abstract principles\nwithout number have been eagerly caught up by sanguine men, and then\ncarefully spun out into books and theories, which were to explain the\nwhole world. But the world goes clear against these abstractions, and\nit must do so, as they require it to go in antagonistic directions. The\nmass of a system attracts the young and impresses the unwary; but\ncultivated people are very dubious about it. They are ready to receive\nhints and suggestions, and the smallest real truth is ever welcome. But\na large book of deductive philosophy is much to be suspected. No doubt\nthe deductions may be right; in most writers they are so; but where did\nthe premises come from? Who is sure that they are the whole truth, and\nnothing but the truth, of the matter in hand? Who is not almost sure\nbeforehand that they will contain a strange mixture of truth and error,\nand therefore that it will not be worth while to spend life in\nreasoning over their consequences? In a word, the superfluous energy of\nmankind has flowed over into philosophy, and has worked into big\nsystems what should have been left as little suggestions.\n\nAnd if the old systems of thought are not true as systems, neither is\nthe new revolt from them to be trusted in its whole vigour. There is\nthe same original vice in that also. There is an excessive energy in\nrevolutions if there is such energy anywhere. The passion for action is\nquite as ready to pull down as to build up; probably it is more ready,\nfor the task is easier.\n\n'Old things need not be therefore true, O brother men, nor yet the new;\nAh, still awhile the old thought retain, And yet consider it again.'\n\nBut this is exactly what the human mind will not do. It will act\nsomehow at once. It will not 'consider it again.'\n\nBut it will be said, What has government by discussion to do with these\nthings? Will it prevent them, or even mitigate them? It can and does do\nboth in the very plainest way. If you want to stop instant and\nimmediate action, always make it a condition that the action shall not\nbegin till a considerable number of persons have talked over it, and\nhave agreed on it. If those persons be people of different\ntemperaments, different ideas, and different educations, you have an\nalmost infallible security that nothing, or almost nothing, will be\ndone with excessive rapidity. Each kind of persons will have their\nspokesman; each spokesman will have his characteristic objection, and\neach his characteristic counter-proposition, and so in the end nothing\nwill probably be done, or at least only the minimum which is plainly\nurgent. In, many cases this delay may be dangerous; in many cases quick\naction will be preferable. A campaign, as Macaulay well says, cannot be\ndirected by a 'debating society;' and many other kinds of action also\nrequire a single and absolute general. But for the purpose now in\nhand--that of preventing hasty action, and ensuring elaborate\nconsideration--there is no device like a polity of discussion.\n\nThe enemies of this object--the people who want to act quickly--see\nthis very distinctly. They are for ever explaining that the present is\n'an age of committees,' that the committees do nothing, that all\nevaporates in talk. Their great enemy is parliamentary government; they\ncall it, after Mr. Carlyle, the 'national palaver;' they add up the\nhours that are consumed in it, and the speeches which are made in it,\nand they sigh for a time when England might again be ruled, as it once\nwas, by a Cromwell--that is, when an eager, absolute man might do\nexactly what other eager men wished, and do it immediately. All these\ninvectives are perpetual and many-sided; they come from philosophers,\neach of whom wants some new scheme tried; from philanthropists, who\nwant some evil abated; from revolutionists, who want some old\ninstitution destroyed; from new aeraists, who want their new aera\nstarted forthwith. And they all are distinct admissions that a polity\nof discussion is the greatest hindrance to the inherited mistake of\nhuman nature, to the desire to act promptly, which in a simple age is\nso excellent, but which in a later and complex time leads to so much\nevil.\n\nThe same accusation against our age sometimes takes a more general\nform. It is alleged that our energies are diminishing; that ordinary\nand average men have not the quick determination nowadays which they\nused to have when the world was younger; that not only do not\ncommittees and parliaments act with rapid decisiveness, but that no one\nnow so acts. And I hope that in fact this is true, for according to me,\nit proves that the hereditary barbaric impulse is decaying and dying\nout. So far from thinking the quality attributed to us a defect, I wish\nthat those who complain of it were far more right than I much fear they\nare. Still, certainly, eager and violent action IS somewhat diminished,\nthough only by a small fraction of what it ought to be. And I believe\nthat this is in great part due, in England at least, to our government\nby discussion, which has fostered a general intellectual tone, a\ndiffused disposition to weigh evidence, a conviction that much may be\nsaid on every side of everything which the elder and more fanatic ages\nof the world wanted. This is the real reason why our energies seem so\nmuch less than those of our fathers. When we have a definite end in\nview, which we know we want, and which we think we know how to obtain,\nwe can act well enough. The campaigns of our soldiers are as energetic\nas any campaigns ever were; the speculations of our merchants have\ngreater promptitude, greater audacity, greater vigour than any such\nspeculations ever had before. In old times a few ideas got possession\nof men and communities, but this is happily now possible no longer. We\nsee how incomplete these old ideas were; how almost by chance one\nseized on one nation, and another on another; how often one set of men\nhave persecuted another set for opinions on subjects of which neither,\nwe now perceive, knew anything. It might be well if a greater number of\neffectual demonstrations existed among mankind; but while no such\ndemonstrations exist, and while the evidence which completely convinces\none man seems to another trifling and insufficient, let us recognise\nthe plain position of inevitable doubt. Let us not be bigots with a\ndoubt, and persecutors without a creed. We are beginning to bee this,\nand we are railed at for so beginning. But it is a great benefit, and\nit is to the incessant prevalence of detective discussion that our\ndoubts are due; and much of that discussion is due to the long\nexistence of a government requiring constant debates, written and oral.\n\nThis is one of the unrecognised benefits of free government, one of the\nmodes in which it counteracts the excessive inherited impulses of\nhumanity. There is another also for which it does the same, but which I\ncan only touch delicately, and which at first sight will seem\nridiculous. The most successful races, other things being equal, are\nthose which multiply the fastest. In the conflicts of mankind numbers\nhave ever been a great power. The most numerous group has always had an\nadvantage over the less numerous, and the fastest breeding group has\nalways tended to be the most numerous. In consequence, human nature has\ndescended into a comparatively uncontentious civilisation, with a\ndesire far in excess of what is needed; with a 'felt want,' as\npolitical economists would say, altogether greater than the 'real\nwant.' A walk in London is all which is necessary to establish this.\n'The great sin of great cities' is one vast evil consequent upon it.\nAnd who is to reckon up how much these words mean? How many spoiled\nlives, how many broken hearts, how many wasted bodies, how many ruined\nminds, how much misery pretending to be gay, how much gaiety feeling\nitself to be miserable, how much after mental pain, how much eating and\ntransmitted disease. And in the moral part of the world, how many minds\nare racked by incessant anxiety, how many thoughtful imaginations which\nmight have left something to mankind are debased to mean cares, how\nmuch every successive generation sacrifices to the next, how little\ndoes any of them make of itself in comparison with what might be. And\nhow many Irelands have there been in the world where men would have\nbeen contented and happy if they had only been fewer; how many more\nIrelands would there have been if the intrusive numbers had not been\nkept down by infanticide and vice and misery. How painful is the\nconclusion that it is dubious whether all the machines and inventions\nof mankind 'have yet lightened the day's labour of a human being.' They\nhave enabled more people to exist, but these people work just as hard\nand are just as mean and miserable as the elder and the fewer.\n\nBut it will be said of this passion just as it was said of the passion\nof activity. Granted that it is in excess, how can you say, how on\nearth can anyone say, that government by discussion can in any way cure\nor diminish, it? Cure this evil that government certainly will not; but\ntend to diminish it--I think it does and may. To show that I am not\nmaking premises to support a conclusion so abnormal, I will quote a\npassage from Mr. Spencer, the philosopher who has done most to\nillustrate this subject:--\n\n'That future progress of civilisation which the never-ceasing pressure\nof population must produce, will be accompanied by an enhanced cost of\nIndividuation, both in structure and function; and more especially in\nnervous structure and function. The peaceful struggle for existence in\nsocieties ever growing more crowded and more complicated, must have for\nits concomitant an increase of the great nervous centres in mass, in\ncomplexity, in activity. The larger body of emotion needed as a\nfountain of energy for men who have to hold their places and rear their\nfamilies under the intensifying competition of social life, is, other\nthings equal, the correlative of larger brain. Those higher feelings\npresupposed by the better self-regulation which, in a better society,\ncan alone enable the individual to leave a persistent posterity, are,\nother things equal, the correlatives of a more complex brain; as are\nalso those more numerous, more varied, more general, and more abstract\nideas, which must also become increasingly requisite for successful\nlife as society advances. And the genesis of this larger quantity of\nfeeling and thought in a brain thus augmented in size and developed in\nstructure, is, other things equal, the correlative of a greater wear of\nnervous tissue and greater consumption of materials to repair it. So\nthat both in original cost of construction and in subsequent cost of\nworking, the nervous system must become a heavier tax on the organism.\nAlready the brain of the civilised man is larger by nearly thirty\npercent, than the brain of the savage. Already, too, it presents an\nincreased heterogeneity--especially in the distribution of its\nconvolutions. And further changes like these which have taken place\nunder the discipline of civilised life, we infer will continue to take\nplace.... But everywhere and always, evolution is antagonistic to\nprocreative dissolution. Whether it be in greater growth of the organs\nwhich subserve self-maintenance, whether it be in their added\ncomplexity of structure, or whether it be in their higher activity, the\nabstraction of the required materials implies a diminished reserve of\nmaterials for race-maintenance. And we have seen reason to believe that\nthis antagonism between Individuation and Genesis becomes unusually\nmarked where the nervous system is concerned, because of the costliness\nof nervous structure and function. In Section 346 was pointed out the\napparent connection between high cerebral development and prolonged\ndelay of sexual maturity; and in Sections 366, 367, the evidence went\nto show that where exceptional fertility exists there is sluggishness\nof mind, and that where there has been during education excessive\nexpenditure in mental action, there frequently follows a complete or\npartial infertility. Hence the particular kind of further evolution\nwhich Man is hereafter to undergo, is one which, more than any other,\nmay be expected to cause a decline in his power of reproduction.'\n\nThis means that men who have to live an intellectual life, or who can\nbe induced to lead one, will be likely not to have so many children as\nthey would otherwise have had. In particular cases this may not be\ntrue; such men may even have many children--they may be men in all ways\nof unusual power and vigour. But they will not have their maximum of\nposterity--will not have so many as they would have had if they had\nbeen careless or thoughtless men; and so, upon an average, the issue of\nsuch intellectualised men will be less numerous than those of the\nunintellectual.\n\nNow, supposing this philosophical doctrine to be true--and the best\nphilosophers, I think, believe it--its application to the case in hand\nis plain. Nothing promotes intellect like intellectual discussion, and\nnothing promotes intellectual discussion so much as government by\ndiscussion. The perpetual atmosphere of intellectual inquiry acts\npowerfully, as everyone may see by looking about him in London, upon\nthe constitution both of men and women. There is only a certain QUANTUM\nof power in each of our race; if it goes in one way it is spent, and\ncannot go in another. The intellectual atmosphere abstracts strength to\nintellectual matters; it tends to divert that strength--which the\ncircumstances of early society directed to the multiplication of\nnumbers; and as a polity of discussion tends, above all things, to\nproduce an intellectual atmosphere, the two things which seemed so far\noff have been shown to be near, and free government has, in a second\ncase, been shown to tend to cure an inherited excess of human nature.\n\nLastly, a polity of discussion not only tends to diminish our inherited\ndefects, but also, in one case at least, to augment a heritable\nexcellence. It tends to strengthen and increase a subtle quality or\ncombination of qualities singularly useful in practical life-a quality\nwhich it is not easy to describe exactly, and the issues of which it\nwould require not a remnant of an essay, but a whole essay to elucidate\ncompletely. This quality I call ANIMATED MODERATION.\n\nIf anyone were asked to describe what it is which distinguishes the\nwritings of a man of genius who is also a great man of the world from\nall other writings, I think he would use these same words, 'animated\nmoderation.' He would say that such writings are never slow, are never\nexcessive, are never exaggerated; that they are always instinct with\njudgment, and yet that judgment is never a dull judgment; that they\nhave as much spirit in them as would go to make a wild writer, and yet\nthat every line of them is the product of a sane and sound writer. The\nbest and almost perfect instance of this in English is Scott. Homer was\nperfect in it, as far as we can judge; Shakespeare is often perfect in\nit for long together, though then, from the defects of a bad education\nand a vicious age, all at once he loses himself in excesses. Still,\nHomer, and Shakespeare at his best, and Scott, though in other respects\nso unequal to them, have this remarkable quality in common--this union\nof life with measure, of spirit with reasonableness.\n\nIn action it is equally this quality in which the English--at least so\nI claim it for them--excel all other nations. There is an infinite deal\nto be laid against us, and as we are unpopular with most others, and as\nwe are always grumbling at ourselves, there is no want of people to say\nit. But, after all, in a certain sense, England is a success in the\nworld; her career has had many faults, but still it has been, a fine\nand winning career upon the whole. And this on account of the exact\npossession of this particular quality. What is the making of a\nsuccessful merchant? That he has plenty of energy, and yet that he does\nnot go too far. And if you ask for a description of a great practical\nEnglishman, you will be sure to have this, or something like it, 'Oh,\nhe has plenty of go in him; but he knows when to pull up.' He may have\nall other defects in him; he may be coarse, he may be illiterate, he\nmay be stupid to talk to; still this great union of spur and bridle, of\nenergy and moderation, will remain to him. Probably he will hardly be\nable to explain why he stops when he does stop, or why he continued to\nmove as long as he, in fact, moved; but still, as by a rough instinct,\nhe pulls up pretty much where he should, though he was going at such a\npace before.\n\nThere is no better example of this quality in English statesmen than\nLord Palmerston. There are, of course, many most serious accusations to\nbe made against him. The sort of homage with which he was regarded in\nthe last years of his life has passed away; the spell is broken, and\nthe magic cannot be again revived. We may think that his information\nwas meagre, that his imagination was narrow, that his aims were\nshort--sighted and faulty. But though we may often object to his\nobjects, we rarely find much to criticise in his means. 'He went,' it\nhas been said, 'with a great swing;' but he never tumbled over; he\nalways managed to pull up 'before there was any danger.' He was an odd\nman to have inherited Hampden's motto; still, in fact, there was a\ngreat trace in him of _mediocria firma_--as much, probably, as there\ncould be in anyone of such great vivacity and buoyancy.\n\nIt is plain that this is a quality which as much as, if not more than,\nany other multiplies good results in practical life. It enables men to\nsee what is good; it gives them intellect enough for sufficient\nperception; but it does not make men all intellect; it does not' sickly\nthem o'er with the pale cast of thought;' it enables them to do the\ngood things they see to be good, as well as to see that they are good.\nAnd it is plain that a government by popular discussion tends to\nproduce this quality. A strongly idiosyncratic mind, violently disposed\nto extremes of opinion, is soon weeded out of political life, and a\nbodiless thinker, an ineffectual scholar, cannot even live there for a\nday. A vigorous moderateness in mind and body is the rule of a polity\nwhich works by discussion; and, upon the whole, it is the kind of\ntemper most suited to the active life of such a being as man in such a\nworld as the present one.\n\nThese three great benefits of free government, though great, are\nentirely secondary to its continued usefulness in the mode in which it\noriginally was useful. The first great benefit was the deliverance of\nmankind from the superannuated yoke of customary law, by the gradual\ndevelopment of an inquisitive originality. And it continues to produce\nthat effect upon persons apparently far remote from its influence, and\non subjects with which it has nothing to do. Thus Mr. Mundella, a most\nexperienced and capable judge, tells us that the English artisan,\nthough so much less sober, less instructed, and less refined than the\nartisans of some other countries, is yet more inventive than any other\nartisan. The master will get more good suggestions from him than from\nany other.\n\nAgain, upon plausible grounds--looking, for example, to the position of\nLocke and Newton in the science of the last century, and to that of\nDarwin in our own--it may be argued that there is some quality in\nEnglish thought which makes them strike out as many, if not more,\nfirst-rate and original suggestions than nations of greater scientific\nculture and more diffused scientific interest. In both cases I believe\nthe reason of the English originality to be that government by\ndiscussion quickens and enlivens thought all through society; that it\nmakes people think no harm may come of thinking; that in England this\nforce has long been operating, and so it has developed more of all\nkinds of people ready to use their mental energy in their own way, and\nnot ready to use it in any other way, than a despotic government. And\nso rare is great originality among mankind, and so great are its\nfruits, that this one benefit of free government probably outweighs\nwhat are in many cases its accessory evils. Of itself it justifies, or\ngoes far to justify, our saying with Montesquieu, 'Whatever be the cost\nof this glorious liberty, we must be content to pay it to heaven.'\n\n\n\nNO. VI.\n\nVERIFIABLE PROGRESS POLITICALLY CONSIDERED.\n\nThe original publication of these essays was interrupted by serious\nillness and by long consequent ill--health, I and now that I am putting\nthem together I wish to add another which shall shortly explain the\nmain thread of the argument which they contain. In doing so there is a\nrisk of tedious repetition, but on a subject both obscure and\nimportant, any defect is better than an appearance of vagueness.\n\nIn a former essay I attempted to show that slighter causes than is\ncommonly thought may change a nation from the stationary to the\nprogressive state of civilisation, and from the stationary to the\ndegrading. Commonly the effect of the agent is looked on in the wrong\nway. It is considered as operating on every individual in the nation,\nand it is assumed, or half assumed, that it is only the effect which\nthe agent directly produces on everyone that need be considered. But\nbesides this diffused effect of the first impact of the cause, there is\na second effect, always considerable, and commonly more potent--a new\nmodel in character is created for the nation; those characters which\nresemble it are encouraged and multiplied; those contrasted with it are\npersecuted and made fewer. In a generation or two, the look of the\nnation, becomes quite different; the characteristic men who stand out\nare different, the men imitated are different; the result of the\nimitation is different. A lazy nation may be changed into an\nindustrious, a rich into a poor, a religious into a profane, as if by\nmagic, if any single cause, though slight, or any combination of\ncauses, however subtle, is strong enough to change the favourite and\ndetested types of character.\n\nThis principle will, I think, help us in trying to solve the question\nwhy so few nations have progressed, though to us progress seems so\nnatural-what is the cause or set of causes which have prevented that\nprogress in the vast majority of cases, and produced it in the feeble\nminority. But there is a preliminary difficulty: What is progress, and\nwhat is decline? Even in the animal world there is no applicable rule\naccepted by physiologists, which settles what animals are higher or\nlower than others; there are controversies about it. Still more then in\nthe more complex combinations and politics of human beings it is likely\nto be hard to find an agreed criterion for saying which nation is\nbefore another, or what age of a nation was marching forward and which\nwas falling back. Archbishop Manning would have one rule of progress\nand decline; Professor Huxley, in most important points, quite an\nopposite rule; what one would set down as an advance, the other would\nset down as a retreat. Each has a distinct end which he wishes and a\ndistinct calamity which he fears, but the desire of the one is pretty\nnear the fear of the other; books would not hold the controversy\nbetween them. Again, in art, who is to settle what is advance and what\ndecline? Would Mr. Buskin agree with anyone else on this subject, would\nhe even agree with himself or could any common enquirer venture to say\nwhether he was right or wrong?\n\nI am afraid that I must, as Sir Wm. Hamilton used to say, 'truncate a\nproblem which I cannot solve.' I must decline to sit in judgment on\ndisputed points of art, morals, or religion. But without so doing I\nthink there is such a thing as 'verifiable progress,' if we may say so;\nthat is, progress which ninety-nine hundredths or more of mankind will\nadmit to be such, against which there is no established or organised\nopposition creed, and the objectors to which, essentially varying in\nopinion themselves, and believing one thing and another the reverse,\nmay be safely and altogether rejected.\n\nLet us consider in what a village of English colonists is superior to a\ntribe of Australian natives who roam about them. Indisputably in one,\nand that a main sense, they are superior. They can beat the Australians\nin war when they like; they can take from them anything they like, and\nkill any of them they choose. As a rule, in all the outlying and\nuncontested districts of the world, the aboriginal native lies at the\nmercy of the intruding European. 'Nor is this all. Indisputably in the\nEnglish village there are more means of happiness, a greater\naccumulation of the instruments of enjoyment, than in the Australian\ntribe. \"The English have all manner of books, utensils, and machines\nwhich the others do not use, value, or understand. And in addition, and\nbeyond particular inventions, there is a general strength which is\ncapable of being used in conquering a thousand difficulties, and is an\nabiding source of happiness, because those who possess it always feel\nthat they can use it.\"\n\nIf we omit the higher but disputed topics of morals and religion, we\nshall find, I think, that the plainer and agreed--on superiorities of\nthe Englishmen are these: first, that they have a greater command over\nthe powers of nature upon the whole. Though they may fall short of\nindividual Australians in certain feats of petty skill, though they may\nnot throw the boomerang as well, or light a fire with earthsticks as\nwell, yet on the whole twenty Englishmen with their implements and\nskill can change the material world immeasurably more than twenty\nAustralians and their machines. Secondly, that this power is not\nexternal only; it is also internal. The English not only possess better\nmachines for moving nature, but are themselves better machines. Mr.\nBabbage taught us years ago that one great use of machinery was not to\naugment the force of man, but to register and regulate the power of\nman; and this in a thousand ways civilised man can do, and is ready to\ndo, better and more precisely than the barbarian. Thirdly, | civilised\nman not only has greater powers over nature, but knows better how to\nuse them, and by better I here mean better for the health and comfort\nof his present body and mind. He can lay up for old age, which a savage\nhaving no durable means of sustenance cannot; he is ready to lay up\nbecause he can distinctly foresee the future, which the vague--minded\nsavage cannot; he is mainly desirous of gentle, continuous pleasure, I\nwhereas the barbarian likes wild excitement, and longs for stupefying\nrepletion. Much, if not all, of these three ways may be summed up in\nMr. Spencer's phrase, that progress is an increase of adaptation of man\nto his environment, that is, of his internal powers and wishes to his\nexternal lot and life. Something of it too is expressed in the old\npagan idea 'mens sana in corpore sano.' And I think this sort of\nprogress may be fairly investigated quite separately, as it is progress\nin a sort of good everyone worth reckoning with admits and I agrees in.\nNo doubt there will remain people like the aged savage, who in his old\nage went back to his savage tribe and said that he had 'tried\ncivilisation for forty years, and it was not worth the trouble.' But we\nneed not take account of the mistaken ideas of unfit men and beaten\nraces. On the whole the plainer sort of civilisation, the simpler moral\ntraining, and the more elementary education are plain benefits. And\nthough there may be doubt as to the edges of the conception yet there\ncertainly is a broad road of 'verifiable progress' which not only\ndiscoverers and admirers will like, but which all those who come upon\nit will use and value.\n\nUnless some kind of abstraction like this is made in the subject the\ngreat problem 'What causes progress?' will, I am confident, long remain\nunsolved. Unless we are content to solve simple problems first, the\nwhole history of philosophy teaches that we shall never solve hard\nproblems. This is the maxim of scientific humility so often insisted on\nby the highest enquirers that, in investigations, as in life, those\n'who exalt themselves shall be abased, and those who humble themselves\nshall be exalted;' and though we may seem mean only to look for the\nlaws of plain comfort and simple present happiness, yet we must work\nout that simple case first, before we encounter the incredibly harder\nadditional difficulties of the higher art, morals and religion.\n\nThe difficulty of solving the problem even thus limited is exceedingly\ngreat. The most palpable facts, are exactly the contrary to what we\nshould expect. Lord Macaulay tells us that 'In every experimental\nscience there is a tendency towards perfection. In every human being\nthere is a tendency to ameliorate his condition;' and these two\nprinciples operating everywhere and always, might well have been\nexpected to 'carry mankind rapidly forward.' Indeed, taking verifiable\nprogress in the sense which has just been given to it, we may say that\nnature gives a prize to every single step in it. Everyone that makes an\ninvention that benefits himself or those around him, is likely to be\nmore comfortable himself and to be more respected by those around him.\nTo produce new things 'serviceable to man's life and conducive to man's\nestate,' is, we should say, likely to bring increased happiness to the\nproducer. It often brings immense reward certainly now; a new form of\ngood steel pen, a way of making some kind of clothes a little better or\na little cheaper, have brought men great fortunes. And there is the\nsame kind of prize for industrial improvement in the earliest times as\nin the latest; though the benefits so obtainable in early society are\npoor indeed in comparison with those of advanced society. Nature is\nlike a schoolmaster, at least in this, she gives her finest prizes to\nher high and most instructed classes; Still, even in the earliest\nsociety, nature helps those who can help themselves, and helps them\nvery much.\n\nAll this should have made the progress of mankind--progress at least in\nthis limited sense-exceedingly common; but, in fact, any progress is\nextremely rare. As a rule (and as has been insisted on before) a\nstationary state is by far the most frequent condition of man, as far\nas history describes that condition; the progressive state is only a\nrare and an occasional exception. Before history began there must have\nbeen in the nation which writes it much progress; else there could have\nbeen no history. It is a great advance in civilisation to be able to\ndescribe the common facts of life, and perhaps, if we were to examine\nit, we should find that it was at least an equal advance to wish to\ndescribe them. But very few races have made this step of progress; very\nfew have been capable even of the meanest sort of history; and as for\nwriting such a history as that of Thucydides, most nations could as\nsoon have constructed a planet. When history begins to record, she\nfinds most of the races incapable of history, arrested, unprogressive,\nand pretty much where they are now.\n\nWhy, then, have not the obvious and natural causes of progress (as we\nshould call them) produced those obvious and natural effects? Why have\nthe real fortunes of mankind been so different from the fortunes which\nwe should expect? This is the problem which in various forms I have\ntaken up in these papers, and this is the outline of the solution which\nI have attempted to propose.\n\nThe progress of MAN requires the co--operation of MEN for its\ndevelopment. That which any one man or any one family could invent for\nthemselves is obviously exceedingly limited. And even if this were not\ntrue, isolated progress could never be traced. The rudest sort of\ncooperative society, the lowest tribe and the feeblest government, is\nso much stronger than isolated man, that isolated man (if he ever\nexisted in any shape which could be called man), might very easily have\nceased to exist. The first principle of the subject is that man can\nonly progress in 'co-operative groups;' I might say tribes and nations,\nbut I use the less common word because few people would at once see\nthat tribes and nations ARE co-operative groups, and that it is their\nbeing so which makes their value; that unless you can make a strong\nco-operative bond, your society will be conquered and killed out by\nsome other society which has such a bond; and the second principle is\nthat the members of such a group should be similar enough to one\nanother to co-operate easily and readily together. The co-operation in\nall such cases depends on a FELT UNION of heart and spirit; and this is\nonly felt when there is a great degree of real likeness in mind and\nfeeling, however that likeness may have been attained.\n\nThis needful co-operation and this requisite likeness I believe to have\nbeen produced by one of the strongest yokes (as we should think if it\nwere to be reimposed now) and the most terrible tyrannies ever known\namong men--the authority of 'customary law.', In its earlier stage this\nis no pleasant power--no 'rosewater' authority, as Carlyle would have\ncalled it--but a stern, incessant, implacable rule. And the rule is\noften of most childish origin, beginning in a casual superstition or\nlocal accident. 'These people,' says Captain Palmer of the Fiji,' are\nvery conservative. A chief was one day going over a mountain-path\nfollowed by a long string of his people, when he happened to stumble\nand fall; all the rest of the people immediately did the same except\none man, who was set upon by the rest to know whether he considered\nhimself better than the chief.' What can be worse than a life regulated\nby that sort of obedience, and that sort of imitation? This is, of\ncourse, a bad specimen, but the nature of customary law as we\neverywhere find it in its earliest stages is that of coarse casual\ncomprehensive usage, beginning, we cannot tell how, deciding, we cannot\ntell why, but ruling everyone in almost every action with an inflexible\ngrasp.\n\nThe necessity of thus forming co-operative groups by fixed customs\nexplains the necessity of isolation in early society. As a matter of\nfact all great nations have been prepared in privacy and in secret.\nThey have been composed far away from all distraction. Greece, Borne,\nJudaea, were framed each by itself, and the antipathy of each to men of\ndifferent race and different speech is one of their most marked\npeculiarities, and quite their strongest common property. And the\ninstinct of early ages is a right guide for the needs of early ages.\nIntercourse with foreigners then broke down in states the fixed rules\nwhich were forming their characters, so as to be a cause of weak fibre\nof mind, of desultory and unsettled action; the living spectacle of an\nadmitted unbelief destroys the binding authority of religious custom\nand snaps the social cord.\n\nThus we see the use of a sort of 'preliminary' age in societies, when\ntrade is bad because it prevents the separation of nations, because it\ninfuses distracting ideas among occupied communities, because it\n'brings alien minds to alien shores. And as the trade which we now\nthink of as an incalculable good, is in that age a formidable evil and\ndestructive calamity; so war and conquest, which we commonly and justly\nsee to be now evils, are in that age often singular benefits and great\nadvantages. It is only by the competition of customs that bad customs\ncan be eliminated and good customs multiplied. Conquest is the premium\ngiven by nature to those national characters which their national\ncustoms have made most fit to win in war, and in many most material\nrespects those winning characters are really the best characters. The\ncharacters which do win in war are the characters which we should wish\nto win in war.\n\nSimilarly, the best institutions have a natural military advantage over\nbad institutions. The first great victory of civilisation was the\nconquest of nations with ill-defined families having legal descent\nthrough the mother only, by nations of definite families tracing\ndescent through the father as well as the mother, or through the father\nonly. Such compact families are a much better basis for military\ndiscipline than the ill-bound families which indeed seem hardly to be\nfamilies at all, where 'paternity' is, for tribal purposes, an\nunrecognised idea, and where only the physical fact of 'maternity' is\nthought to be certain enough to be the foundation of law or custom. The\nnations with a thoroughly compacted family system have 'possessed the\nearth,' that is, they have taken all the finest districts in the most\ncompeted-for parts; and the nations with loose systems have been merely\nleft to mountain ranges and lonely islands. The family system and that\nin its highest form has been so exclusively the system of civilisation,\nthat literature hardly recognises any other, and that, if it were not\nfor the living testimony of a great multitude of scattered communities\nwhich are 'fashioned after the structure of the elder world,' we should\nhardly admit the possibility of something so contrary to all which we\nhave lived amongst, and which we have been used to think of. After such\nan example of the fragmentary nature of the evidence it is in\ncomparison easy to believe that hundreds of strange institutions may\nhave passed away and have left behind them not only no memorial, but\nnot even a trace or a vestige to help the imagination to figure what\nthey were.\n\nI cannot expand the subject, but in the same way the better religions\nhave had a great physical advantage, if I may say so, over the worse.\nThey have given what I may call a CONFIDENCE IN THE UNIVERSE. The\nsavage subjected to a mean superstition, is afraid to walk simply about\nthe world--he cannot do THIS because it is ominous, or he must do THAT\nbecause it is lucky, or he cannot do anything at all till the gods have\nspoken and given him leave to begin. But under the higher religions\nthere is no similar slavery and no similar terror.\n\nThe belief of the Greek\n\n  _eis oianos aristos amunesthai peri patres;_\n\nthe belief of the Roman that he was to trust in the gods of Borne, for\nthose gods are stronger than all others; the belief of Cromwell's\nsoldiery that they were 'to trust in God and keep their powder dry,'\nare great steps in upward progress, using progress in its narrowest\nsense. They all enabled those who believed them 'to take the world as\nit comes,' to be guided by no unreal reason, and to be limited by no\nmystic scruple; whenever they found anything to do, to do it with their\nmight. And more directly what I may call the fortifying religions, that\nis to say, those which lay the plainest stress on the manly parts of\nmorality--upon valour, on truth and industry--have had plainly the most\nobvious effect in strengthening the races which believed them, and in\nmaking those races the winning races.\n\nNo doubt many sorts of primitive improvement are pernicious to war; an\nexquisite sense of beauty, a love of meditation, a tendency to\ncultivate the force of the mind at the expense of the force of the\nbody, for example, help in their respective degrees to make men less\nwarlike than they would otherwise be. But these are the virtues of\nother ages. The first work of the first ages is to bind men together in\nthe strong bond of a rough, coarse, harsh custom; and the incessant\nconflict of nations effects this in the best way. Every nation, is an\n'hereditary co-operative group,' bound by a fixed custom; and out of\nthose groups those conquer which have the most binding and most\ninvigorating customs, and these are, as a rough rule, the best customs.\nThe majority of the 'groups' which win and conquer are better than the\nmajority of those which fail and perish, and thus the first world grow\nbetter and was improved.\n\nThis early customary world no doubt continued for ages. The first\nhistory delineates great monarchies, each composed of a hundred\ncustomary groups, all of which believed themselves to be of enormous\nantiquity, and all of which must have existed for very many\ngenerations. The first historical world is not a new-looking thing but\na very ancient, and according to principle it is necessary that it\nshould exist for ages. If human nature was to be gradually improved,\neach generation must be born better tamed, more calm, more capable of\ncivilisation--in a word, more LEGAL than the one before it, and such\ninherited improvements are always slow and dubious. Though a few gifted\npeople may advance much, the mass of each generation can improve but\nvery little on the generation which preceded it; and even the slight\nimprovement so gained is liable to be destroyed by some mysterious\natavism--some strange recurrence to a primitive past. Long ages of\ndreary monotony are the first facts in the history of human\ncommunities, but those ages were not lost to mankind, for it was then\nthat was formed the comparatively gentle and guidable thing which we\nnow call human nature.\n\nAnd indeed the greatest difficulty is not in preserving such a world\nbut in ending it. We have brought in the yoke of custom to improve the\nworld, and in the world the custom sticks. In a thousand cases--in the\ngreat majority of cases--the progress of mankind has been arrested in\nthis its earliest shape; it has been closely embalmed in a mummy-like\nimitation of its primitive existence. I have endeavoured to show in\nwhat manner, and how slowly, and in how few cases this yoke of custom\nwas removed. It was 'government by discussion ', which broke the bond\nof ages and set free the originality of mankind. Then, and then only,\nthe motives which Lord Macaulay counted on to secure the progress of\nmankind, in fact, begin to work; THEN 'the tendency in every man to\nameliorate his condition' begins to be important, because then man can\nalter his condition while before he is pegged down by ancient usage;\nTHEN the tendency in each mechanical art towards perfection begins to\nhave force, because the artist is at last allowed to seek perfection,\nafter having been forced for ages to move in the straight furrow of the\nold fixed way.\n\nAs soon as this great step upwards is once made, all or almost all, the\nhigher gifts and graces of humanity have a rapid and a definite effect\non 'verifiable progress'--on progress in the narrowest, because in the\nmost universally admitted sense of the term. Success in life, then,\ndepends, as we have seen, more than anything else on 'animated\nmoderation,' on a certain combination of energy of mind and balance of\nmind, hard to attain and harder to keep. And this subtle excellence is\naided by all the finer graces of humanity. It is a matter of common\nobservation that, though often separated, fine taste and fine judgment\ngo very much together, and especially that a man with gross want of\ntaste, though he may act sensibly and correctly for a while, is yet apt\nto break out, sooner or later, into gross practical error. In\nmetaphysics, probably both taste and judgment involve what is termed\n'poise of mind,' that is the power of true passiveness--the faculty of\n'waiting' till the stream of impressions, whether those of life or\nthose of art have done all that they have to do, and cut their full\ntype plainly upon the mind. The ill-judging and the untasteful are both\nover-eager; both move too quick and blur the image. In this way the\nunion between a subtle sense of beauty and a subtle discretion in\nconduct is a natural one, because it rests on the common possession of\na fine power, though, in matter of fact, that union may be often\ndisturbed. A complex sea of forces and passions troubles men in life\nand action, which in the calmer region of art are hardly to be felt at\nall. And, therefore, the cultivation of a fine taste tends to promote\nthe function of a fine judgment, which is a main help in the complex\nworld of civilised existence. Just so too the manner in which the more\ndelicate parts of religion daily work in producing that 'moderation'\nwhich, upon the whole, and as a rule, is essential to long success,\ndefining success even in its most narrow and mundane way, might be\nworked out in a hundred cases, though it would not suit these pages.\nMany of the finer intellectual tastes have a similar restraining effect\nthey prevent, or tend to prevent, a greedy voracity after the good\nthings of life, which makes both men and nations in excessive haste to\nbe rich and famous, often makes them do too much and do it ill, and so\noften leaves them at last without money and without respect.\n\nBut there is no need to expand this further. The principle is plain\nthat, though these better and higher graces of humanity are impediments\nand encumbrances in the early fighting period, yet that in the later\nera they are among the greatest helps and benefits, and that as soon as\ngovernments by discussion have become strong enough to secure a stable\nexistence, and as soon as they have broken the fixed rule of old\ncustom, and have awakened the dormant inventiveness of men, then, for\nthe first time, almost every part of human nature begins to spring\nforward, and begins to contribute its quota even to the narrowest, even\nto 'verifiable' progress. And this is the true reason of all those\npanegyrics on liberty which are often so measured in expression but are\nin essence so true to life and nature. Liberty is the strengthening and\ndeveloping power--the light and heat of political nature; and when some\n'Caesarism' exhibits as it sometimes will an originality of mind, it is\nonly because it has managed to make its own the products of past free\ntimes or neighbouring free countries; and even that originality is only\nbrief and frail, and after a little while, when tested by a generation\nor two, in time of need it falls away.\n\nIn a complete investigation of all the conditions of 'verifiable\nprogress,' much else would have to be set out; for example, science has\nsecrets of her own. Nature does not wear her most useful lessons on her\nsleeve; she only yields her most productive secrets, those which yield\nthe most wealth and the most 'fruit,' to those who have gone through a\nlong process of preliminary abstraction. To make a person really\nunderstand the 'laws of motion' is not easy, and to solve even simple\nproblems in abstract dynamics is to most people exceedingly hard. And\nyet it is on these out-of-the-way investigations, so to speak, that the\nart of navigation, all physical astronomy, and all the theory of\nphysical movements at least depend. But no nation would beforehand have\nthought that in so curious a manner such great secrets were to be\ndiscovered. And many nations, therefore, which get on the wrong track,\nmay be distanced--supposing there to be no communication by some nation\nnot better than any of them which happens to stumble on the right\ntrack. If there were no 'Bradshaw' and no one knew the time at which\ntrains started, a man who caught the express would not be a wiser or a\nmore business-like man than he who missed it, and yet he would arrive\nwhole hours sooner at the capital both are going to. And unless I\nmisread the matter, such was often the case with early knowledge. At\nany rate before a complete theory of 'verifiable progress' could be\nmade, it would have to be settled whether this is so or not, and the\nconditions of the development of physical science would have to be\nfully stated; obviously you cannot explain the development of human\ncomfort unless you know the way in which men learn and discover\ncomfortable things. Then again, for a complete discussion, whether of\nprogress or degradation, a whole course of analysis is necessary as to\nthe effect of natural agencies on man, and of change in those agencies.\nBut upon these I cannot touch; the only way to solve these great\nproblems is to take them separately. I only profess to explain what\nseem to me the political prerequisites of progress, and especially of\nearly progress, I do this the rather because the subject is\ninsufficiently examined, so that even if my views are found to be\nfaulty, the discussion upon them may bring out others which are truer\nand better.\n\n\n\n\n[THE END]","title":"Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of \"natural selection\" and \"inheritance\" to political society","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":56130}