To all who are capable of new impressions
and fresh thought, some modification of
former beliefs and hopes has been brought by
the war. What the modification has been has
depended, in each case, upon character and circumstance;
but in one form or another it has
been almost universal. To me, the chief thing
to be learnt through the war has been a certain
view of the springs of human action, what they
are, and what we may legitimately hope that
they will become. This view, if it is true, seems
to afford a basis for political philosophy more
capable of standing erect in a time of crisis than
the philosophy of traditional Liberalism has
shown itself to be. The following lectures,
though only one of them will deal with war, all
are inspired by a view of the springs of action
which has been suggested by the war. And all
of them are informed by the hope of seeing such
political institutions established in Europe as
shall make men averse to war—a hope which I
firmly believe to be realizable, though not without
a great and fundamental reconstruction of
economic and social life.
To one who stands outside the cycle of beliefs
and passions which make the war seem necessary,
an isolation, an almost unbearable separation
from the general activity, becomes unavoidable.
At the very moment when the universal
disaster raises compassion in the highest degree,
compassion itself compels aloofness from
the impulse to self-destruction which has swept
over Europe. The helpless longing to save men
from the ruin towards which they are hastening
makes it necessary to oppose the stream, to incur
hostility, to be thought unfeeling, to lose for
the moment the power of winning belief. It is
impossible to prevent others from feeling hostile,
but it is possible to avoid any reciprocal hostility
on one’s own part, by imaginative understanding
and the sympathy which grows out of
it. And without understanding and sympathy
it is impossible to find a cure for the evil from
which the world is suffering.
There are two views of the war neither of
which seems to me adequate. The usual view
in this country is that it is due to the wickedness
of the Germans; the view of most pacifists
is that it is due to the diplomatic tangle and
to the ambitions of Governments. I think both
these views fail to realize the extent to which
war grows out of ordinary human nature. Germans,
and also the men who compose Governments,
are on the whole average human beings,
actuated by the same passions that actuate
others, not differing much from the rest of the
world except in their circumstances. War is accepted
by men who are neither Germans nor
diplomatists with a readiness, an acquiescence
in untrue and inadequate reasons, which would
not be possible if any deep repugnance to war
were widespread in other nations or classes.
The untrue things which men believe, and the
true things which they disbelieve, are an index
to their impulses—not necessarily to individual
impulses in each case (since beliefs are
contagious), but to the general impulses of the
community. We all believe many things which
we have no good ground for believing, because,
subconsciously, our nature craves certain kinds
of action which these beliefs would render reasonable
if they were true. Unfounded beliefs
are the homage which impulse pays to reason;
and thus it is with the beliefs which, opposite
but similar, make men here and in Germany believe
it their duty to prosecute the war.
The first thought which naturally occurs to
one who accepts this view is that it would be
well if men were more under the dominion of
reason. War, to those who see that it must
necessarily do untold harm to all the combatants,
seems a mere madness, a collective insanity
in which all that has been known in time
of peace is forgotten. If impulses were more
controlled, if thought were less dominated by
passion, men would guard their minds against
the approaches of war fever, and disputes would
be adjusted amicably. This is true, but it is not
by itself sufficient. It is only those in whom the
desire to think truly is itself a passion who will
find this desire adequate to control the passions
of war. Only passion can control passion, and
only a contrary impulse or desire can check impulse.
Reason, as it is preached by traditional
moralists, is too negative, too little living, to
make a good life. It is not by reason alone that
wars can be prevented, but by a positive life of
impulses and passions antagonistic to those that
lead to war. It is the life of impulse that
needs to be changed, not only the life of conscious
thought.
All human activity springs from two sources:
impulse and desire. The part played by desire
has always been sufficiently recognized. When
men find themselves not fully contented, and
not able instantly to procure what will cause
content, imagination brings before their minds
the thought of things which they believe would
make them happy. All desire involves an interval
of time between the consciousness of a
need and the opportunity for satisfying it.
The acts inspired by desire may be in themselves
painful, the time before satisfaction can
be achieved may be very long, the object desired
may be something outside our own lives,
and even after our own death. Will, as a directing
force, consists mainly in following desires
for more or less distant objects, in spite
of the painfulness of the acts involved and the
solicitations of incompatible but more immediate
desires and impulses. All this is familiar,
and political philosophy hitherto has been almost
entirely based upon desire as the source of
human actions.
But desire governs no more than a part of
human activity, and that not the most important
but only the more conscious, explicit, and
civilized part.
In all the more instinctive part of our nature
we are dominated by impulses to certain kinds
of activity, not by desires for certain ends.
Children run and shout, not because of any good
which they expect to realize, but because of a
direct impulse to running and shouting. Dogs
bay the moon, not because they consider that it
is to their advantage to do so, but because they
feel an impulse to bark. It is not any purpose,
but merely an impulse, that prompts such
actions as eating, drinking, love-making, quarreling,
boasting. Those who believe that man
is a rational animal will say that people boast
in order that others may have a good opinion
of them; but most of us can recall occasions
when we have boasted in spite of knowing that
we should be despised for it. Instinctive acts
normally achieve some result which is agreeable
to the natural man, but they are not performed
from desire for this result. They are performed
from direct impulse, and the impulse
is often strong even in cases in which the normal
desirable result cannot follow. Grown men like
to imagine themselves more rational than children
and dogs, and unconsciously conceal from
themselves how great a part impulse plays in
their lives. This unconscious concealment always
follows a certain general plan. When an
impulse is not indulged in the moment in which
it arises, there grows up a desire for the expected
consequences of indulging the impulse.
If some of the consequences which are reasonably
to be expected are clearly disagreeable, a
conflict between foresight and impulse arises.
If the impulse is weak, foresight may conquer;
this is what is called acting on reason. If the
impulse is strong, either foresight will be falsified,
and the disagreeable consequences will be
forgotten, or, in men of a heroic mold, the consequences
may be recklessly accepted. When
Macbeth realizes that he is doomed to defeat,
he does not shrink from the fight; he exclaims:—
Lay on, Macduff,
And damned be him that first cries, Hold, enough!
But such strength and recklessness of impulse
is rare. Most men, when their impulse
is strong, succeed in persuading themselves,
usually by a subconscious selectiveness of
attention, that agreeable consequences will
follow from the indulgence of their impulse.
Whole philosophies, whole systems of ethical
valuation, spring up in this way: they are the
embodiment of a kind of thought which is subservient
to impulse, which aims at providing a
quasi-rational ground for the indulgence of impulse.
The only thought which is genuine is
that which springs out of the intellectual impulse
of curiosity, leading to the desire to know
and understand. But most of what passes for
thought is inspired by some non-intellectual impulse,
and is merely a means of persuading ourselves
that we shall not be disappointed or do
harm if we indulge this impulse.1
When an impulse is restrained, we feel discomfort
or even violent pain. We may indulge
the impulse in order to escape from this pain,
and our action is then one which has a purpose.
But the pain only exists because of the impulse,
and the impulse itself is directed to an act, not
to escaping from the pain of restraining the impulse.
The impulse itself remains without a
purpose, and the purpose of escaping from pain
only arises when the impulse has been momentarily
restrained.
Impulse is at the basis of our activity, much
more than desire. Desire has its place, but not
so large a place as it seemed to have. Impulses
bring with them a whole train of subservient
fictitious desires: they make men feel that they
desire the results which will follow from indulging
the impulses, and that they are acting for
the sake of these results, when in fact their
action has no motive outside itself. A man may
write a book or paint a picture under the belief
that he desires the praise which it will bring
him; but as soon as it is finished, if his creative
impulse is not exhausted, what he has done
grows uninteresting to him, and he begins a new
piece of work. What applies to artistic creation
applies equally to all that is most vital in
our lives: direct impulse is what moves us, and
the desires which we think we have are a mere
garment for the impulse.
Desire, as opposed to impulse, has, it is true,
a large and increasing share in the regulation
of men’s lives. Impulse is erratic and anarchical,
not easily fitted into a well-regulated system;
it may be tolerated in children and artists,
but it is not thought proper to men who hope to
be taken seriously. Almost all paid work is
done from desire, not from impulse: the work itself
is more or less irksome, but the payment
for it is desired. The serious activities that fill
a man’s working hours are, except in a few fortunate
individuals, governed mainly by purposes,
not by impulses towards those activities.
In this hardly any one sees an evil, because the
place of impulse in a satisfactory existence is
not recognized.
An impulse, to one who does not share it
actually or imaginatively, will always seem to
be mad. All impulse is essentially blind, in the
sense that it does not spring from any prevision
of consequences. The man who does not share
the impulse will form a different estimate as to
what the consequences will be, and as to whether
those that must ensue are desirable. This difference
of opinion will seem to be ethical or intellectual,
whereas its real basis is a difference
of impulse. No genuine agreement will be
reached, in such a case, so long as the difference
of impulse persists. In all men who have any
vigorous life, there are strong impulses such
as may seem utterly unreasonable to others.
Blind impulses sometimes lead to destruction
and death, but at other times they lead to the
best things the world contains. Blind impulse
is the source of war, but it is also the source of
science, and art, and love. It is not the weakening
of impulse that is to be desired, but the direction
of impulse towards life and growth
rather than towards death and decay.
The complete control of impulse by will, which
is sometimes preached by moralists, and often
enforced by economic necessity, is not really desirable.
A life governed by purposes and desires,
to the exclusion of impulse, is a tiring life;
it exhausts vitality, and leaves a man, in the
end, indifferent to the very purposes which he
has been trying to achieve. When a whole nation
lives in this way, the whole nation tends to
become feeble, without enough grasp to recognize
and overcome the obstacles to its desires.
Industrialism and organization are constantly
forcing civilized nations to live more and more
by purpose rather than impulse. In the long
run such a mode of existence, if it does not dry
up the springs of life, produces new impulses,
not of the kind which the will has been in the
habit of controlling or of which thought is conscious.
These new impulses are apt to be worse
in their effects than those that have been
checked. Excessive discipline, especially when
it is imposed from without, often issues in impulses
of cruelty and destruction; this is one
reason why militarism has a bad effect on national
character. Either lack of vitality, or impulses
which are oppressive and against life,
will almost always result if the spontaneous impulses
are not able to find an outlet. A man’s
impulses are not fixed from the beginning by his
native disposition: within certain wide limits,
they are profoundly modified by his circumstances
and his way of life. The nature of
these modifications ought to be studied, and the
results of such study ought to be taken account
of in judging the good or harm that is
done by political and social institutions.
The war has grown, in the main, out of the
life of impulse, not out of reason or desire.
There is an impulse of aggression, and an impulse
of resistance to aggression. Either may,
on occasion, be in accordance with reason, but
both are operative in many cases in which they
are quite contrary to reason. Each impulse
produces a whole harvest of attendant beliefs.
The beliefs appropriate to the impulse of aggression
may be seen in Bernhardi, or in the
early Mohammedan conquerors, or, in full perfection,
in the Book of Joshua. There is first
of all a conviction of the superior excellence of
one’s own group, a certainty that they are in
some sense the chosen people. This justifies
the feeling that only the good and evil of one’s
own group is of real importance, and that the
rest of the world is to be regarded merely as
material for the triumph or salvation of the
higher race. In modern politics this attitude is
embodied in imperialism. Europe as a whole
has this attitude towards Asia and Africa, and
many Germans have this attitude towards the
rest of Europe.
Correlative to the impulse of aggression is
the impulse of resistance to aggression. This
impulse is exemplified in the attitude of the
Israelites to the Philistines or of medieval
Europe to the Mohammedans. The beliefs
which it produces are beliefs in the peculiar
wickedness of those whose aggression is feared,
and in the immense value of national customs
which they might suppress if they were victorious.
When the war broke out, all the reactionaries
in England and France began to
speak of the danger to democracy, although until
that moment they had opposed democracy
with all their strength. They were not insincere
in so speaking: the impulse of resistance
to Germany made them value whatever was endangered
by the German attack. They loved
democracy because they hated Germany; but
they thought they hated Germany because they
loved democracy.
The correlative impulses of aggression and
resistance to aggression have both been operative
in all the countries engaged in the war.
Those who have not been dominated by one or
other of these impulses may be roughly divided
into three classes. There are, first, men whose
national sentiment is antagonistic to the State
to which they are subject. This class includes
some Irish, Poles, Finns, Jews, and other members
of oppressed nations. From our point of
view, these men may be omitted from our consideration,
since they have the same impulsive
nature as those who fight, and differ merely in
external circumstances.
The second class of men who have not been
part of the force supporting the war have been
those whose impulsive nature is more or less
atrophied. Opponents of pacifism suppose that
all pacifists belong to this class, except when
they are in German pay. It is thought that
pacifists are bloodless, men without passions,
men who can look on and reason with cold detachment
while their brothers are giving their
lives for their country. Among those who are
merely passively pacifist, and do no more than
abstain from actively taking part in the war,
there may be a certain proportion of whom this
is true. I think the supporters of war would be
right in decrying such men. In spite of all the
destruction which is wrought by the impulses
that lead to war, there is more hope for a nation
which has these impulses than for a nation
in which all impulse is dead. Impulse is
the expression of life, and while it exists there
is hope of its turning towards life instead of towards
death; but lack of impulse is death, and
out of death no new life will come.
The active pacifists, however, are not of this
class: they are not men without impulsive force
but men in whom some impulse to which war is
hostile is strong enough to overcome the impulses
that lead to war. It is not the act of a
passionless man to throw himself athwart the
whole movement of the national life, to urge an
outwardly hopeless cause, to incur obloquy and
to resist the contagion of collective emotion.
The impulse to avoid the hostility of public opinion
is one of the strongest in human nature, and
can only be overcome by an unusual force of
direct and uncalculating impulse; it is not cold
reason alone that can prompt such an act.
Impulses may be divided into those that make
for life and those that make for death. The
impulses embodied in the war are among those
that make for death. Any one of the impulses
that make for life, if it is strong enough, will
lead a man to stand out against the war. Some
of these impulses are only strong in highly
civilized men; some are part of common humanity.
The impulses towards art and science are
among the more civilized of those that make for
life. Many artists have remained wholly untouched
by the passions of the war, not from
feebleness of feeling, but because the creative
instinct, the pursuit of a vision, makes them
critical of the assaults of national passion, and
not responsive to the myth in which the impulse
of pugnacity clothes itself. And the few men
in whom the scientific impulse is dominant have
noticed the rival myths of warring groups, and
have been led through understanding to neutrality.
But it is not out of such refined impulses
that a popular force can be generated
which shall be sufficient to transform the world.
There are three forces on the side of life
which require no exceptional mental endowment,
which are not very rare at present, and might
be very common under better social institutions.
They are love, the instinct of constructiveness,
and the joy of life. All three are checked and
enfeebled at present by the conditions under
which men live—not only the less outwardly fortunate,
but also the majority of the well-to-do.
Our institutions rest upon injustice and authority:
it is only by closing our hearts against
sympathy and our minds against truth that
we can endure the oppressions and unfairnesses
by which we profit. The conventional conception
of what constitutes success leads most men
to live a life in which their most vital impulses
are sacrificed, and the joy of life is lost in listless
weariness. Our economic system compels
almost all men to carry out the purposes of
others rather than their own, making them feel
impotent in action and only able to secure a certain
modicum of passive pleasure. All these
things destroy the vigor of the community, the
expansive affections of individuals, and the
power of viewing the world generously. All
these things are unnecessary and can be ended
by wisdom and courage. If they were ended,
the impulsive life of men would become wholly
different, and the human race might travel towards
a new happiness and a new vigor. To
urge this hope is the purpose of these lectures.
The impulses and desires of men and women,
in so far as they are of real importance in their
lives, are not detached one from another, but
proceed from a central principle of growth, an
instinctive urgency leading them in a certain direction,
as trees seek the light. So long as this
instinctive movement is not thwarted, whatever
misfortunes may occur are not fundamental disasters,
and do not produce those distortions
which result from interference with natural
growth. This intimate center in each human
being is what imagination must apprehend if
we are to understand him intuitively. It differs
from man to man, and determines for each man
the type of excellence of which he is capable.
The utmost that social institutions can do for a
man is to make his own growth free and vigorous:
they cannot force him to grow according to
the pattern of another man. There are in men
some impulses and desires—for example, those
towards drugs—which do not grow out of the
central principle; such impulses, when they become
strong enough to be harmful, have to
be checked by self-discipline. Other impulses,
though they may grow out of the central principle
in the individual, may be injurious to the
growth of others, and they need to be checked in
the interest of others. But in the main, the impulses
which are injurious to others tend to result
from thwarted growth, and to be least in
those who have been unimpeded in their instinctive
development.
Men, like trees, require for their growth the
right soil and a sufficient freedom from oppression.
These can be helped or hindered by political
institutions. But the soil and the freedom
required for a man’s growth are immeasurably
more difficult to discover and to obtain than the
soil and the freedom required for the growth of
a tree. And the full growth which may be
hoped for cannot be defined or demonstrated;
it is subtle and complex, it can only be felt by a
delicate intuition and dimly apprehended by
imagination and respect. It depends not only
or chiefly upon the physical environment, but
upon beliefs and affections, upon opportunities
for action, and upon the whole life of the community.
The more developed and civilized the
type of man the more elaborate are the conditions
of his growth, and the more dependent
they become upon the general state of the society
in which he lives. A man’s needs and desires
are not confined to his own life. If his
mind is comprehensive and his imagination
vivid, the failures of the community to which he
belongs are his failures, and its successes are
his successes: according as his community succeeds
or fails, his own growth is nourished or
impeded.
In the modern world, the principle of growth
in most men and women is hampered by institutions
inherited from a simpler age. By the
progress of thought and knowledge, and by the
increase in command over the forces of the physical
world, new possibilities of growth have
come into existence, and have given rise to new
claims which must be satisfied if those who make
them are not to be thwarted. There is less
acquiescence in limitations which are no longer
unavoidable, and less possibility of a good life
while those limitations remain. Institutions
which give much greater opportunities to some
classes than to others are no longer recognized
as just by the less fortunate, though the more
fortunate still defend them vehemently. Hence
arises a universal strife, in which tradition and
authority are arrayed against liberty and justice.
Our professed morality, being traditional,
loses its hold upon those who are in revolt. Coöperation
between the defenders of the old and
the champions of the new has become almost impossible.
An intimate disunion has entered
into almost all the relations of life in continually
increasing measure. In the fight for freedom,
men and women become increasingly unable to
break down the walls of the Ego and achieve
the growth which comes from a real and vital
union.
All our institutions have their historic basis
in Authority. The unquestioned authority of
the Oriental despot found its religious expression
in the omnipotent Creator, whose glory was
the sole end of man, and against whom man
had no rights. This authority descended to the
Emperor and Pope, to the kings of the Middle
Ages, to the nobles in the feudal hierarchy, and
even to every husband and father in his dealings
with his wife and children. The Church
was the direct embodiment of the Divine authority,
the State and the law were constituted
by the authority of the King, private property
in land grew out of the authority of conquering
barons, and the family was governed by the authority
of the pater-familias.
The institutions of the Middle Ages permitted
only a fortunate few to develop freely: the vast
majority of mankind existed to minister to the
few. But so long as authority was genuinely
respected and acknowledged even by its least
fortunate subjects, medieval society remained
organic and not fundamentally hostile to life,
since outward submission was compatible with
inward freedom because it was voluntary. The
institutions of Western Christendom embodied
a theory which was really believed, as no theory
by which our present institutions can be defended
is now believed.
The medieval theory of life broke down
through its failure to satisfy men’s demands for
justice and liberty. Under the stress of oppression,
when rulers exceeded their theoretical
powers, the victims were forced to realize that
they themselves also had rights, and need not
live merely to increase the glory of the few.
Gradually it came to be seen that if men have
power, they are likely to abuse it, and that
authority in practice means tyranny. Because
the claim to justice was resisted by the holders
of power, men became more and more separate
units, each fighting for his own rights, not a
genuine community bound together by an organic
common purpose. This absence of a common
purpose has become a source of unhappiness.
One of the reasons which led many men
to welcome the outbreak of the present war was
that it made each nation again a whole community
with a single purpose. It did this by destroying,
for the present, the beginnings of a
single purpose in the civilized world as a whole;
but these beginnings were as yet so feeble that
few were much affected by their destruction.
Men rejoiced in the new sense of unity with their
compatriots more than they minded the increased
separation from their enemies.
The hardening and separation of the individual
in the course of the fight for freedom
has been inevitable, and is not likely ever to
be wholly undone. What is necessary, if an organic
society is to grow up, is that our institutions
should be so fundamentally changed as to
embody that new respect for the individual and
his rights which modern feeling demands. The
medieval Empire and Church swept away the
individual. There were heretics, but they were
massacred relentlessly, without any of the
qualms aroused by later persecutions. And
they, like their persecutors, were persuaded that
there ought to be one universal Church: they
differed only as to what its creed should be.
Among a few men of art and letters, the Renaissance
undermined the medieval theory, without,
however, replacing it by anything but skepticism
and confusion. The first serious breach in this
medieval theory was caused by Luther’s assertion
of the right of private judgment and the
fallibility of General Councils. Out of this assertion
grew inevitably, with time, the belief
that a man’s religion could not be determined
for him by authority, but must be left to the free
choice of each individual. It was in matters of
religion that the battle for liberty began, and
it is in matters of religion that it has come nearest
to a complete victory.2
The development through extreme individualism
to strife, and thence, one hopes, to a new
reintegration, is to be seen in almost every
department of life. Claims are advanced in the
name of justice, and resisted in the name of tradition
and prescriptive right. Each side honestly
believes that it deserves to triumph, because
two theories of society exist side by side
in our thought, and men choose, unconsciously,
the theory which fits their case. Because the
battle is long and arduous all general theory is
gradually forgotten; in the end, nothing remains
but self-assertion, and when the oppressed win
freedom they are as oppressive as their former
masters.
This is seen most crudely in the case of what
is called nationalism. Nationalism, in theory,
is the doctrine that men, by their sympathies and
traditions, form natural groups, called “nations,”
each of which ought to be united under
one central Government. In the main this doctrine
may be conceded. But in practice the doctrine
takes a more personal form. “I belong,”
the oppressed nationalist argues, “by sympathy
and tradition to nation A, but I am subject to a
government which is in the hands of nation B.
This is an injustice, not only because of the general
principle of nationalism, but because nation
A is generous, progressive, and civilized, while
nation B is oppressive, retrograde, and barbarous.
Because this is so, nation A deserves to
prosper, while nation B deserves to be abased.”
The inhabitants of nation B are naturally deaf
to the claims of abstract justice, when they are
accompanied by personal hostility and contempt.
Presently, however, in the course of
war, nation A acquires its freedom. The
energy and pride which have achieved freedom
generates a momentum which leads on, almost
infallibly, to the attempt at foreign conquest, or
to the refusal of liberty to some smaller nation.
“What? You say that nation C, which forms
part of our State, has the same rights against
us as we had against nation A? But that is absurd.
Nation C is swinish and turbulent, incapable
of good government, needing a strong
hand if it is not to be a menace and a disturbance
to all its neighbors.” So the English used to
speak of the Irish, so the Germans and Russians
speak of the Poles, so the Galician Poles speak
of the Ruthenes, so the Austrians used to speak
of the Magyars, so the Magyars speak of the
South Slav sympathizers with Serbia, so the
Serbs speak of the Macedonian Bulgars. In
this way nationalism, unobjectionable in theory,
leads by a natural movement to oppression and
wars of conquest. No sooner was France free
from the English, in the fifteenth century, than
it embarked upon the conquest of Italy; no
sooner was Spain freed from the Moors than it
entered into more than a century of conflict
with France for the supremacy in Europe. The
case of Germany is very interesting in this respect.
At the beginning of the eighteenth century
German culture was French: French was
the language of the Courts, the language in
which Leibnitz wrote his philosophy, the universal
language of polite letters and learning.
National consciousness hardly existed. Then a
series of great men created a self-respect in
Germany by their achievements in poetry,
music, philosophy, and science. But politically
German nationalism was only created by Napoleon’s
oppression and the uprising of 1813.
After centuries during which every disturbance
of the peace of Europe began with a French or
Swedish or Russian invasion of Germany, the
Germans discovered that by sufficient effort and
union they could keep foreign armies off their
territory. But the effort required had been too
great to cease when its purely defensive purpose
had been achieved by the defeat of Napoleon.
Now, a hundred years later, they
are still engaged in the same movement,
which has become one of aggression and
conquest. Whether we are now seeing the end
of the movement it is not yet possible to
guess.
If men had any strong sense of a community
of nations, nationalism would serve to define
the boundaries of the various nations. But because
men only feel community within their own
nation, nothing but force is able to make them
respect the rights of other nations, even when
they are asserting exactly similar rights on their
own behalf.
Analogous development is to be expected,
with the course of time, in the conflict between
capital and labor which has existed since the
growth of the industrial system, and in the conflict
between men and women, which is still in its
infancy.
What is wanted, in these various conflicts, is
some principle, genuinely believed, which will
have justice for its outcome. The tug of war
of mutual self-assertion can only result in
justice through an accidental equality of force.
It is no use to attempt any bolstering up of institutions
based on authority, since all such institutions
involve injustice, and injustice once
realized cannot be perpetuated without fundamental
damage both to those who uphold it and
to those who resist it. The damage consists in
the hardening of the walls of the Ego, making
them a prison instead of a window. Unimpeded
growth in the individual depends upon many
contacts with other people, which must be of the
nature of free coöperation, not of enforced service.
While the belief in authority was alive,
free coöperation was compatible with inequality
and subjection, but now equality and mutual
freedom are necessary. All institutions, if they
are not to hamper individual growth, must be
based as far as possible upon voluntary combination,
rather than the force of the law or the
traditional authority of the holders of power.
None of our institutions can survive the application
of this principle without great and fundamental
changes; but these changes are imperatively
necessary if the world is to be withheld
from dissolving into hard separate units each at
war with all the others.
The two chief sources of good relations between
individuals are instinctive liking and a
common purpose. Of these two, a common purpose
might seem more important politically,
but, in fact, it is often the outcome, not the
cause, of instinctive liking, or of a common instinctive
aversion. Biological groups, from
the family to the nation, are constituted by a
greater or less degree of instinctive liking, and
build their common purposes on this foundation.
Instinctive liking is the feeling which makes
us take pleasure in another person’s company,
find an exhilaration in his presence, wish to
talk with him, work with him, play with him.
The extreme form of it is being in love, but its
fainter forms, and even the very faintest, have
political importance. The presence of a person
who is instinctively disliked tends to make any
other person more likable. An anti-Semite
will love any fellow-Christian when a Jew is
present. In China, or the wilds of Africa, any
white man would be welcomed with joy. A
common aversion is one of the most frequent
causes of mild instinctive liking.
Men differ enormously in the frequency and
intensity of their instinctive likings, and the
same man will differ greatly at different times.
One may take Carlyle and Walt Whitman as opposite
poles in this respect. To Carlyle, at any
rate in later life, most men and women were repulsive;
they inspired an instinctive aversion
which made him find pleasure in imagining them
under the guillotine or perishing in battle. This
led him to belittle most men, finding satisfaction
only in those who had been notably destructive
of human life—Frederick the Great, Dr. Francia,
and Governor Eyre. It led him to love war
and violence, and to despise the weak and the
oppressed—for example, the “thirty thousand
distressed needlewomen,” on whom he was
never weary of venting his scorn. His morals
and his politics, in later life, were inspired
through and through by repugnance to almost
the whole human race.
Walt Whitman, on the contrary, had a warm,
expansive feeling towards the vast majority of
men and women. His queer catalogues seemed
to him interesting because each item came before
his imagination as an object of delight.
The sort of joy which most people feel only in
those who are exceptionally beautiful or splendid
Walt Whitman felt in almost everybody.
Out of this universal liking grew optimism,
a belief in democracy, and a conviction that it is
easy for men to live together in peace and amity.
His philosophy and politics, like Carlyle’s, were
based upon his instinctive attitude towards ordinary
men and women.
There is no objective reason to be given to
show that one of these attitudes is essentially
more rational than the other. If a man finds
people repulsive, no argument can prove to him
that they are not so. But both his own desires
and other people’s are much more likely to find
satisfaction if he resembles Walt Whitman
than if he resembles Carlyle. A world of
Walt Whitmans would be happier and more
capable of realizing its purposes than a world of
Carlyles. For this reason, we shall desire, if we
can, to increase the amount of instinctive liking
in the world and diminish the amount of instinctive
aversion. This is perhaps the most
important of all the effects by which political institutions
ought to be judged.
The other source of good relations between individuals
is a common purpose, especially where
that purpose cannot be achieved without knowing
its cause. Economic organizations, such as
unions and political parties are constituted almost
wholly by a common purpose; whatever instinctive
liking may come to be associated with
them is the result of the common purpose, not
its cause. Economic organizations, such as railway
companies, subsist for a purpose, but this
purpose need only actually exist in those who
direct the organization: the ordinary wage-earner
need have no purpose beyond earning his
wages. This is a defect in economic organizations,
and ought to be remedied. One of the objects
of syndicalism is to remedy this defect.
Marriage is (or should be) based on instinctive
liking, but as soon as there are children, or
the wish for children, it acquires the additional
strength of a common purpose. It is this chiefly
which distinguishes it from an irregular connection
not intended to lead to children. Often, in
fact, the common purpose survives, and remains
a strong tie, after the instinctive liking has
faded.
A nation, when it is real and not artificial, is
founded upon a faint degree of instinctive liking
for compatriots and a common instinctive aversion
from foreigners. When an Englishman returns
to Dover or Folkestone after being on
the Continent, he feels something friendly in the
familiar ways: the casual porters, the shouting
paper boys, the women serving bad tea, all warm
his heart, and seem more “natural,” more what
human beings ought to be, than the foreigners
with their strange habits of behavior. He is
ready to believe that all English people are good
souls, while many foreigners are full of designing
wickedness. It is such feelings that make
it easy to organize a nation into a governmental
unit. And when that has happened, a common
purpose is added, as in marriage. Foreigners
would like to invade our country and lay it
waste, to kill us in battle, to humble our pride.
Those who coöperate with us in preventing this
disaster are our friends, and their coöperation
intensifies our instinctive liking. But common
purposes do not constitute the whole source of
our love of country: allies, even of long standing,
do not call out the same feelings as are
called out by our compatriots. Instinctive liking,
resulting largely from similar habits and
customs, is an essential element in patriotism,
and, indeed, the foundation upon which the
whole feeling rests.
If men’s natural growth is to be promoted and
not hindered by the environment, if as many as
possible of their desires and needs are to be
satisfied, political institutions must, as far as
possible, embody common purposes and foster
instinctive liking. These two objects are interconnected,
for nothing is so destructive of instinctive
liking as thwarted purposes and unsatisfied
needs, and nothing facilitates coöperation
for common purposes so much as instinctive
liking. When a man’s growth is unimpeded,
his self-respect remains intact, and he is
not inclined to regard others as his enemies.
But when, for whatever reason, his growth is
impeded, or he is compelled to grow into some
twisted and unnatural shape, his instinct presents
the environment as his enemy, and he becomes
filled with hatred. The joy of life abandons
him, and malevolence takes the place of
friendliness. The malevolence of hunchbacks
and cripples is proverbial; and a similar
malevolence is to be found in those who have
been crippled in less obvious ways. Real freedom,
if it could be brought about, would go a
long way towards destroying hatred.
There is a not uncommon belief that what is
instinctive in us cannot be changed, but must
be simply accepted and made the best of. This
is by no means the case. No doubt we have a
certain native disposition, different in different
people, which coöperates with outside circumstances
in producing a certain character. But
even the instinctive part of our character is very
malleable. It may be changed by beliefs, by
material circumstances, by social circumstances,
and by institutions. A Dutchman has probably
much the same native disposition as a German,
but his instincts in adult life are very different
owing to the absence of militarism and of the
pride of a Great Power. It is obvious that the
instincts of celibates become profoundly different
from those of other men and women. Almost
any instinct is capable of many different
forms according to the nature of the outlets
which it finds. The same instinct which leads to
artistic or intellectual creativeness may, under
other circumstances, lead to love of war. The
fact that an activity or belief is an outcome of
instinct is therefore no reason for regarding it
as unalterable.
This applies to people’s instinctive likes and
dislikes as well as to their other instincts. It
is natural to men, as to other animals, to like
some of their species and dislike others; but
the proportion of like and dislike depends on
circumstances, often on quite trivial circumstances.
Most of Carlyle’s misanthropy is attributable
to dyspepsia; probably a suitable
medical regimen would have given him a completely
different outlook on the world. The defect
of punishment, as a means of dealing with
impulses which the community wishes to discourage,
is that it does nothing to prevent the
existence of the impulses, but merely endeavors
to check their indulgence by an appeal to self-interest.
This method, since it does not eradicate
the impulses, probably only drives them to
find other outlets even when it is successful in
its immediate object; and if the impulses are
strong, mere self-interest is not likely to curb
them effectually, since it is not a very powerful
motive except with unusually reasonable and
rather passionless people. It is thought to be
a stronger motive than it is, because our moods
make us deceive ourselves as to our interest, and
lead us to believe that it is consistent with the
actions to which we are prompted by desire or
impulse.
Thus the commonplace that human nature
cannot be changed is untrue. We all know that
our own characters and those of our acquaintance
are greatly affected by circumstances; and
what is true of individuals is true also of nations.
The root causes of changes in average
human nature are generally either purely material
changes—for instance, of climate—or
changes in the degree of man’s control over the
material world. We may ignore the purely material
changes, since these do not much concern
the politician. But the changes due to man’s
increased control over the material world, by
inventions and science, are of profound present
importance. Through the industrial revolution,
they have radically altered the daily lives of
men; and by creating huge economic organizations,
they have altered the whole structure of
society. The general beliefs of men, which are,
in the main, a product of instinct and circumstance,
have become very different from what
they were in the eighteenth century. But our
institutions are not yet suited either to the instincts
developed by our new circumstances, or
to our real beliefs. Institutions have a life of
their own, and often outlast the circumstances
which made them a fit garment for instinct.
This applies, in varying degrees, to almost all
the institutions which we have inherited from
the past: the State, private property, the patriarchal
family, the Churches, armies and navies.
All of these have become in some degree oppressive,
in some measures hostile to life.
In any serious attempt at political reconstruction,
it is necessary to realize what are the
vital needs of ordinary men and women. It is
customary, in political thought, to assume that
the only needs with which politics is concerned
are economic needs. This view is quite inadequate
to account for such an event as the present
war, since any economic motives that may be
assigned for it are to a great extent mythical,
and its true causes must be sought for outside
the economic sphere. Needs which are normally
satisfied without conscious effort remain
unrecognized, and this results in a working
theory of human needs which is far too simple.
Owing chiefly to industrialism, many needs
which were formerly satisfied without effort
now remain unsatisfied in most men and women.
But the old unduly simple theory of human
needs survives, making men overlook the source
of the new lack of satisfaction, and invent quite
false theories as to why they are dissatisfied.
Socialism as a panacea seems to me to be mistaken
in this way, since it is too ready to suppose
that better economic conditions will of
themselves make men happy. It is not only
more material goods that men need, but more
freedom, more self-direction, more outlet for
creativeness, more opportunity for the joy of
life, more voluntary coöperation, and less involuntary
subservience to purposes not their
own. All these things the institutions of the
future must help to produce, if our increase of
knowledge and power over Nature is to bear its
full fruit in bringing about a good life.
