r 
 
LATENT IMPULSE IN 
 HISTORY AND POLITICS 
 
To MY MOTHER 
 
LATENT IMPULSE IN 
 HISTORY AND POLITICS 
 
 BY 
 
 R. N. BRADLEY, B.A. 
 
 LONDON : 
 MURRAY & EVENDEN 
 
 PLEYDELL HOUSE 
 PLEYDELL STREET, FLEET STREET, E.G. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 IN reading over this work before sending it to 
 press, I am affected by some small misgivings. 
 I feel that if I wrote it over again I might write 
 it somewhat differently, for I have not yet arrived 
 at the age when ideas begin to permanently crys- 
 tallise. Any faults of style and exaggerations of 
 opinion I beg the reader to ascribe to immaturity ; 
 any errors in fact to the defect of circumstances, 
 for the book was written in the heart of South 
 Africa. In spite of all, however, I put forward 
 my general theories of latent impulse with good 
 heart, for every subsequent experience I have 
 met with has tended to confirm them. 
 
 R. N. B. 
 /aw., 1911. 
 
LATENT IMPULSE IN 
 HISTORY AND POLITICS 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 A FITTING exordium to my undertaking should 
 be a tribute to him who first directed my ideas 
 upon it, and first taught me to take broad views 
 of history, as of many other things a tribute 
 which can now, alas ! only be paid to his memory. 
 Before I heard him, history was, to me, but a 
 dry catalogue from which one might, by monastic 
 studiousness, load up one's mind with a fairly 
 complete concatenation of facts, or, at best, an 
 interesting tale, in which event followed upon 
 event without any definite causation. The change 
 which Dr. Emil Reich's lectures brought to pass 
 in me was comparable to a similar one which 
 occurred to a friend of mine, when certain ad- 
 ministrative changes moved him from a Govern- 
 ment office in London to an out-station. In the 
 former he tells me he was sunk in an atmosphere 
 of unreality, and although he could see that 
 
io LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 everything was settled there whatever the news- 
 papers had to say on the lines of common sense, 
 or on the balance of probabilities, yet you could 
 not get away from the fact that it was all pure 
 abstraction, the letter without the reality. After 
 the move he was plunged into a world of 
 actuality, and the words became things and per- 
 sons, solid matter, flesh and blood. It was very 
 much the same with Dr. Reich's lectures, and 
 yet not quite the same. I had always read J. R. 
 Green, and surely if anyone can give flesh to 
 the dry bones of history, it is he. But the in- 
 fluence of the new method was rather to give one 
 a feeling of " throughth," or, even, without 
 going so far as the fourth dimension, of thick- 
 ness, where one had formerly only dealt with 
 length and breadth. " Concentrate, gentlemen, 
 concentrate," the Doctor would say, having, in 
 characteristic fashion, set his class a problem 
 to solve by discussion, in place of the orthodox 
 lecture. That, I think, is what we learnt more 
 than anything else concentration ; the hasty col- 
 lection of all the relevant things we knew in 
 history, literature, science, and bringing them 
 to bear on the point at issue. And then, again, 
 when the answer was long in coming, " Focus, 
 gentlemen, focus!" It was as if his main 
 idea was to wean us from the monastic methods 
 instilled at the Universities, and to make us 
 hammer out something for ourselves, our own 
 handiwork; or to let the broad light of philo- 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS u 
 
 sophy dwell upon a spot until it germinated and 
 blossomed. In " Mr. Isaacs " Mr. Marion 
 Crawford draws a comparison between the 
 Eastern and the Western methods of learning, 
 the European toiling laboriously up each ladder 
 of learning in turn, the Asiatic refining his mind 
 by prayer and fasting until, as he sits on his 
 mountain peak, he gradually perceives the little 
 patches of known country below widen beneath 
 his view, until by intuition the whole field has re- 
 vealed itself to him in a continuous area. How this 
 latter system would commend itself to the doctor, 
 with his cosmopolitan ideas, his world-wide 
 experience, his varied knowledge, and his rooted 
 distrust of ''authorities." Many of his views 
 cannot be accepted; he may err too greatly on 
 the side of originality ; often one feels that 
 he says things out of sheer perverseness ; but 
 it remains that he brings into being ideas which 
 none of the older methods could have engen- 
 dered, lays his finger on facts that had otherwise 
 passed unnoticed, and shows that some forgotten 
 event was the prime factor in an earth-shaking 
 movement. " Nullum est jam dictum, quod non 
 sit dictum prius," said the Latin poet, when he 
 wished to tell us that there was nothing new 
 under the sun ; and the Doctor was always the 
 first to admit that his startling theories were 
 no new thing. But his merit was by " concen- 
 tration," by " focussing," to show that that dry- 
 as-dust sentence, glossed over in the old history 
 
12 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 book was the ruling consideration, and should 
 have been printed in capital letters. Some watch- 
 word may have hounded on a people to a great 
 and successful revolution; but the watchword 
 was not new by any means; no more 
 than the discovery of the power of steam 
 was new when Watt and Stephenson applied it. 
 The important fact was that the time was ripe 
 for the use of the discovery, and in the same way 
 it was ripe for the watchword. But it is doubtful 
 whether the time was quite ripe for some of the 
 Reichian views. I am inclined to think he was a 
 little too far ahead of us, for our immediate 
 advantage. 
 
 Some of his more original ideas on a few of 
 the great events in English and general history 
 set me thinking, and when, later on, I took up 
 in a rather dilettante fashion, the study of psy- 
 chology I suppose owing to the fact that this 
 was the only subject upon which I could find 
 ?ny wealth of books in the up-country library in 
 South Africa, where I happened to be placed 
 I began to see a connection between the ideas 
 of latent impulse and collective psychology, 
 which I have adumbrated in this book. Had 
 I not gone further than the original ideas in try- 
 ing to investigate them psychologically, and, 
 moreover, had I not taken a wider field than the 
 original examples afforded, I might lay myself 
 open to a plea of unwarrantable plagiarism. Yet 
 even if I were so placed, I might attempt to 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 13 
 
 justify myself with the " nullum est jam dictum," 
 and meet critics with the reply that it is simply 
 impossible to say anything original. I will, 
 however, attempt to " focus," to " concentrate," 
 to cut a new cross-section in the well-exploited 
 mass of historical matter. 
 
 To show how true the Latin quotation is, I 
 might point out that even in classic antiquity it 
 had been stated that great disturbances arose out 
 of small things, indeed, but on account of great 
 ones; in other words, that the proximate facts 
 out of which great events arose were very dif- 
 ferent from the real underlying causes. And so, 
 when Dr. Reich affirmed that the American War 
 of Independence arose neither out of Stamp Acts 
 nor Tea Duties, nor even an innate feeling of 
 disloyalty to British regime, he merely gave 
 further instances of an old truth. These were 
 but the sparks, the pretexts, and if these had not 
 come to hand, doubtless others would have been 
 forthcoming. That the real underlying cause 
 was the great Hinterland question, will be a sub- 
 ject for consideration later on. 
 
 It may seem at times that I am endeavouring 
 to upset the old notions and traditions, which 
 have stood their ground for centuries in history, 
 and to substitute something cheap and startling, 
 something in the nature of a nostrum. Such 
 is not my intention, and if the reasons which I 
 offer are not the true ones, I stand open to correc- 
 tion. But science is playing havoc with tradi- 
 
14 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 tion, an'd much as we cherished the ideas in which 
 we were brought up, we cannot place ourselves 
 in a false position by holding to them when they 
 appear to be no longer true. There is a tendency 
 nowadays to bring back every effect, however 
 psychological or spiritual, to some simple 
 material cause, and there is much truth in the 
 assertion that the state of the digestion is answer- 
 able for many far-reaching developments. Recent 
 psychological research has tended to corroborate 
 this manner of thought. In following it, one 
 must take the risk of incurring a charge of 
 materialism, even of scurrilous levity. For in- 
 stance, in dealing with the American Civil War, 
 although I have, what seems to me, excellent 
 authority for my contentions, it may be thought 
 that I am somewhat iconoclastic with regard to 
 President Lincoln and the general anti-slavery 
 sentiments of his day. I shall strive to make it 
 clear, however, that my respect for this great 
 man's reputation is unabated, and that the noble 
 sentiments that actuated many of his country- 
 men at the time have my honour and esteem. 
 My idea is that they were not the tide, but rather 
 the billows borne upon its surface. Their aims 
 were accepted because they were in a line with 
 the hidden impulse of the masses behind them. 
 The aims were the same, but the grounds of them 
 differed. 
 
 In the earlier part of this book I propose to 
 treat of certain striking historical events, with a 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 15 
 
 view to showing that there was some strong 
 motive force behind them, a force which was not 
 obvious at the time, but could only be discovered 
 afterwards. Later, I propose to deal with the 
 psychological grounds for supposing that latent 
 impulse exists. In the concluding chapters I 
 shall attempt to elucidate the historical problems 
 in the light of the psychological arguments. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 LATENT IMPULSE. 
 
 WITH many events in history it is all plain sail- 
 ing, and if we read our books without thinking, 
 it is plain sailing with all of them that is, if 
 we read history as a mere chronology of events. 
 Fortunately the old system of learning the sub- 
 ject by means of a string of dates, and a list of 
 kings is gradually dying out, and a broader and 
 more logical method, especially since J. R. Green 
 set a bright example in his " History of the Eng- 
 lish People/' is coming into vogue. Not that I 
 think that a foundation of dates is not useful, as a 
 kind of array of milestones upon the road. But 
 we do not want to neglect the road for the mile- 
 stones, and readers of Dr. Reid's " Principles 
 of Heredity ' ' will acknowledge the importance 
 of warding off a deleterious influence from a child 
 in its earliest and most plastic years. The child 
 who has first learnt its history from a string of 
 dates will probably continue to study it as a 
 bead-roll of events merely concatenated by the 
 necessities of chronology. It is too much to 
 expect every body to be born again, and to sud- 
 denly begin to look upon this wilderness of 
 
 16 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 17 
 
 words as something of flesh and blood and spirit. 
 Better far start with the general and, as necessity 
 demands, narrow down to the particular and the 
 details. 
 
 But even if we read history in the broader 
 light, many of the events will seem to drop 
 harmoniously into the system of cause and 
 effect. A people are oppressed, and they rebel ; 
 a new country is discovered, and the discoverers 
 reap the benefit in wealth and prosperity. All 
 this is quite clear, and brilliant and sympathetic 
 descriptions will paint us a vivid picture, enabling 
 us to grasp the situation, and live with the heroes 
 and the sufferers. Then we may go casually on 
 and read how the leader of the down-trodden 
 becomes their general, their dictator, their 
 Emperor after all this bloodshed in the cause 
 of freedom ! Blinded by the glamour of descrip- 
 tion, and the romance of the story, we may fail 
 to pause here and ask " Why?" There must 
 surely have been some subtle reason, unknown 
 at the time to the French people themselves, 
 which induced them to give their life blood to 
 Napoleon, when they had rebelled at the taxes 
 of the Bourbons. 
 
 There are many places like this where the 
 thoughtful will halt and take stock of the situa- 
 tion. They occur both in Ancient and Modern 
 History, and as wars have usually entailed the 
 greatest sacrifices, and aroused the greatest en- 
 thusiasm, it is chiefly in respect of them that 
 
 B 
 
i8 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 such considerations arise. In a broad-minded 
 analytical age like our own, it is difficult for 
 the student in his arm-chair to appreciate the 
 attitude of mind of those who offer for some 
 ideal, which is surely part of life, the life in 
 which alone the ideal could be realised. To the 
 philosopher the game is not worth the candle. 
 But the world has never been made up of 
 philosophers, and so these great events have 
 taken place, and history has been written by the 
 heart, not by the hand. It is this heart that I 
 wish to study in these pages, not the logical 
 parts of history, but her illogicalities, and I 
 will endeavour to show that, judged by the 
 heart, the heart is justified. 
 
 I have used the expression " Latent Impulse, " 
 a term which from a scientific point of view may 
 be considered open to criticism. Psychologically 
 an impulse means rather a sudden reaction to a 
 stimulus, and can scarcely be applied to those 
 stable and persistent feelings which I am about 
 to describe. But I am not writing psychology, 
 and the ordinary parlance used when one says 
 he did a thing by impulse rather than by con- 
 sideration may be well applied to such generali- 
 ties as are here treated of. If the term " collec- 
 tive emotion " had not been appropriated for a 
 specific kind of emotion, perhaps it would be 
 more suitable here. But as it has already been 
 ear-marked, it cannot be used. Besides, the 
 term " emotion,'* used outside the sphere of pure 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 19 
 
 psychology might be misunderstood. The term 
 " latent," too, may be open to question, inas- 
 much as the " latency" is only existent for a 
 time, and then perhaps only relatively. Still, 
 for a general treatise I think the phrase may 
 stand, since the associations called up by the 
 words express my meaning better perhaps than 
 more truly scientific terms could. 
 
 Yet perhaps this " latency " is not of so 
 ephemeral duration as one might at first be led 
 to suppose. If it were, the ground would be cut 
 away from my feet and there would be no reason 
 for this book. Many are the results of great 
 popular movements, and it is only on deliberate 
 scrutiny that the real intent can be ascertained. 
 A profound politician or philosopher may be 
 able, even during the upheaval, to see what the 
 purpose is that lies beneath a people's actions, 
 out for this he must stand very much aloof from 
 popular feelings. A patriot would be debarred 
 by his patriotism, a zealot by his zeal. The 
 diviner of these things must be aloof either in 
 outlook or in point of time, and, on the whole, I 
 think, it may be stated that no true history can 
 be written until a century or so have elapsed after 
 the events. Otherwise you cannot see the wood 
 for trees, and your perspective and sense of pro- 
 portion are out. 
 
 At any rate, if we desire to discover that blind 
 purpose which urged a people on to a certain 
 end in an ^overwhelming and unaccountable 
 
20 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 manner, we must be able to look back over a 
 series of years, so as to judge of events and their 
 results as a whole. The key to the problem is 
 then afforded us, if we search diligently and 
 circumspectly, for usually the thing that the 
 people wanted was what, in the main, they got. 
 So our arguments will be ex post facto, and we 
 shall be prophets after the event. But the pro- 
 blems are not so easy as they may appear at first 
 sight. What did the Americans get by the War 
 of Independence? Their Independence? Why 
 then their admiration of the old institutions, the 
 feudal associations, belonging to the Old Coun- 
 try ? If we say " The Hinterland across the Alle- 
 ghanies in unfettered possession/* we shall 
 probably be nearer the mark. 
 
 "Hinterland" and " Enclave 1 ' are magic 
 words in this connection, and the territorial feel- 
 ing connected with them will be investigated in 
 due course. They bring us close to the primal 
 instincts of the human race, and of life itself, the 
 instinct of food and nourishment. We shall 
 also have instances of this instinct in its bare 
 unvarnished state, when some of the great trade 
 disputes are dealt with. Then we have " collec- 
 tive feeling," a remnant of the old " clan " and 
 "pack" days, and it will often appear in the 
 guise of " Nationalism." Times of stress and 
 international entanglement will show a sinking 
 of individuality and a resignation to the will of 
 a single despot, recalling the trustful emotion of 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 21 
 
 the child. And, outside the sphere of events, we 
 shall have to touch on great religious movements 
 and investigate their underlying spirit; also 
 strange unreasoning antipathies. This is a wide 
 field, and until the science of psychology has 
 emerged from its infancy, and we know more 
 about the principles of heredity, many of the 
 questions can have no answer. If, however, I 
 am able merely to arouse an interest in the sub- 
 ject I have undertaken, and to show the advan- 
 tage of the application of psychology to historical 
 problems, as Dr. Archdall Reid has shown the 
 intimate connection of Pathology with Evolu- 
 tion, and of both with Sociology, I shall feel 
 that my labour has been by no means vain. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE PELOPONNESIAN AND PUNIC WARS. 
 
 MODERN history is so much richer in personality, 
 so much nearer to our sympathies, that far 
 greater attention has been given to its reasons 
 and motives than has been the case with events 
 prior to the Christian Era. This is doubtless 
 in part owing to modern specialisation, which 
 keeps the Classic to his classics, and the Modern 
 to his modernities. Later history has a necessary 
 bearing even on the politics of our own day, 
 and a freer field has been open in them to his- 
 torians, political scientists, economists, and 
 general philosophers. On the other hand, the 
 beginning of the Christian Era seems to divide 
 history as a Rubicon between two utterly 
 different methods of thought and research. 
 Even when the more cosmopolitan genius of 
 Germany has been turned upon the earlier period, 
 it has been chiefly expended in the elucidation of 
 ancient manuscripts and the clearing up of 
 knotty points in paleography or grammar. The 
 interest evoked by great discoveries has only 
 encouraged the cult of classic atmosphere, with- 
 out encouraging a study of underlying principles 
 
 22 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 23 
 
 and broad movements. The atmosphere, in 
 fact, is that of the scholiasts and of the 
 monastics. The philosophy of history is little 
 known in it. 
 
 But light begins to break upon the old dark 
 mass, thanks to the efforts of Schrader, Sergi 
 and others who have brought modern science to 
 bear upon the problems of antiquity. When we 
 learn that the Greeks and the Romans could but 
 have been a small dominant community im- 
 posing their civilisation upon alien masses; when 
 we discover that a wide civilisation overspread 
 the Mediterranean before the coming of the con- 
 querors, that it extended through France to our 
 own islands, that it made its way, possibly from 
 the Sahara, by various channels, and that it re- 
 mains to a large extent in Egypt to this day, 
 how much broader is our outlook upon the history 
 of Greece and Rome, how much greater is our 
 interest in those old Pelasgians, Ligurians, and 
 Illyrians, who are all lumped together as Bar- 
 barians by classic writers. 
 
 There were two events which seem to stand out 
 particularly in the history of Greece and Rome, 
 inviting an application of the latent impulse 
 theory, the two named in the title of this chapter, 
 although many others may suggest themselves 
 to the reader. The Trojan War is too much 
 shrouded by age and mystery to be of interest 
 from this point of view, and most of the earlier 
 wars, both Greek and Roman bear their meaning 
 
24 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 on the surface, namely, the instinct of expansion, 
 of nationality, of greed. It is the old story of 
 the stronger devouring the weaker, one of the 
 oldest and most necessary principles of life ; 
 similarly when a people becomes rich, luxurious 
 and careless, a race of hard living shepherds or 
 hunters sweeps down upon them, and sets up a 
 new state which shall in time succeed to the 
 fortunes of the older one. The motives of such 
 events require no elucidation. But the two cases 
 I have mentioned are more mysterious, and one 
 of them amply repays investigation, although 
 the other finds a much simpler explanation. It 
 may seem a little strange, at first sight, that the 
 Carthaginians, a people who lived by trade, and 
 cared so little about fighting that they hired 
 mercenaries to do it for them, already wearied 
 by an exhaustive trade war with the Grecian 
 states, should seize an opportunity to inaugurate 
 an immense territorial war with the rising power 
 in Italy, and, on the other hand that an un- 
 imaginative, home-keeping, professedly law- 
 abiding people like the Romans should suddenly 
 give their aid to a community of outlaws and 
 robbers and thus involve themselves in a struggle 
 outside the mainland. Whether the Romans, 
 flushed with their victories nearer home, sus- 
 pected that their aid to Rhegium, and, in con- 
 sequence, to Messana would involve them in such 
 far reaching consequences, it is difficult to decide, 
 but it seems clear that for the moment they were 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 25 
 
 actuated by the ideas of a forward policy. It 
 seems easier to view the situation from the 
 Carthaginian standpoint. The Carthaginians 
 were a commercial nation, and their geographical 
 position marked them out for the pursuit of their 
 career both in the East and the West of the 
 Mediterranean, and in the seas beyond the 
 Pillars of Hercules. But the key to this position 
 was obviously Sicily, placed over against them 
 either as a ready market, halting place, and 
 haven of rest, or, on the other hand, as a guard 
 to threaten their city, to over-awe their navies 
 and to cut their sphere into two halves, and two 
 very important halves, the area of rough pro- 
 ducts and raw material, and that of finished 
 articles and wealthy consumers. The long and 
 weary wars with the Greeks had ended in com- 
 promise merely, and the main power of Greece 
 was too far away to threaten the very existence of 
 Carthage. But when the Romans began to con- 
 solidate their power, especially in the country 
 whence Carthage had long been used to draw the 
 flower of her mercenaries, it was a time for un- 
 easiness. When they crossed the strait and 
 threatened the very key of the Mediterranean 
 position, it was a time for action, and the prompt 
 seizure of Messana by Carthage was the result. 
 
 The Second Wa/ was but a development of 
 the first. The brain of Hamilcar conceived, and 
 the arm of Hannibal carried out, the scheme of 
 crushing the interloping state in the jaws of a 
 
26 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 nut-cracker, taking her from the side of Sicily 
 and by the Riviera at once. 
 
 The third phase is that of the proud imperious 
 conqueror crushing out the last remnants of her 
 victim's life, summed up in the words " Delenda 
 est Carthago." 
 
 The whole case is therefore quite simple, the 
 only outstanding feature being the realisation by 
 Carthage that the unification of the Italian 
 Peninsula and the combination of Sicily with this 
 meant her ruin. In the absence of any history 
 written from the Carthaginian point of view, the 
 incident between Hamilcar and the boy Hannibal 
 stands out almost alone. Whether or not the 
 old man made the boy swear eternal hatred to 
 the Romans, the incident at any rate symbolises 
 the Carthaginian attitude in the matter, and in 
 this tale of personal animus is veiled the secret 
 impulse of the whole people, their only condition 
 of existence was the annihilation of Rome. 
 
 An examination into the causes of the Pelo- 
 ponnesian War proved to be more interesting. 
 Much of the ground has already been covered by 
 Mr. F. M. Cornforth's " Thucydides Mythis- 
 toricus." The problem of the war is there 
 solved, and to those who would pursue the sub- 
 ject further I recommend a study of this inter- 
 esting book at first hand ; but I will nevertheless 
 give here the headings of the arguments and my 
 own comments. 
 
 Thucydides is the more interesting in this 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 27 
 
 connection as he forms a crucial instance of one 
 of the propositions of this book, namely, that 
 the real cause of events can only be safely judged 
 long after the event has taken place. As a 
 historian he had many advantages. He was an 
 eye-witness of many of the scenes which he de- 
 scribes, and a personal friend of many of the 
 actors. He was a man of great culture and 
 education, not marred by narrowness of view, 
 and without overpowering prejudices, although 
 he inclines naturally towards the Aristocratic 
 party. His philosophic breadth is shown in the 
 theories which he lays down with regard to 
 history, yet his practice is at times strongly at 
 variance with them. In the light of after ex- 
 perience we often find that the things which are 
 really great and essential he calls small, and the 
 small and casual, the pretexts and subterfuges he 
 calls great. One of the small pretexts according 
 to him, was the decrees against Megara. These, 
 however, were the very essentials of the struggle. 
 The deep causes he gives as several, but none 
 of them can be maintained in that category. 
 That the struggle was one of democrats against 
 oligarchs can be shown to be inconsistent with 
 the rest of Athenian policy. That it was a con- 
 flict between lonians and Dorians is open to a 
 similar objection. Finally, the argument that 
 the policy was due to Pericles personally can 
 be met in several ways: Pericles' tastes lay 
 another way, the manner in which the campaign 
 
28 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 was conducted shows clearly enough that he was 
 not the moving spirit; finally we may adduce 
 the greatest objection of all, that broad popular 
 movements of this kind are not those of a man, 
 but of a people. 
 
 The fact is that the war between Athens and 
 Sparta was a people's policy, and the people who 
 urged it were the Athenians. The Spartans were 
 too home-loving, too unimaginative, too self- 
 sufficient both in character and economically, 
 too unstable in their equilibrium to initiate a 
 struggle of such a far-reaching kind. The initia- 
 tive was that of the Athenians, and the war was 
 due to a change in the constitution of their 
 society. Since the building of the long walls, 
 and the growth of the Peiraeus, a large merchant 
 population had grown up in the city, a popula- 
 tion with views naturally resembling those of 
 Carthage at the time of the First Punic war ; and, 
 curiously enough, we shall see that the secret 
 objective of both peoples was the same. 
 
 This merchant population was a new thing, 
 despicable in the eyes of the Aristocratic party 
 and the country landholders, as we see from the 
 tone of Thucydides in dealing with Cleon and 
 Cleophon, or the caricatures of Aristophanes. 
 But we might as well go to Hudibras for the truth 
 about the Puritans, or to the modern Music 
 Halls for a sound opinion on Liberal Policy. 
 What made these upstarts more hated was their 
 power. Instead of employing slaves as did the 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 29 
 
 landed aristocracy, they necessarily commanded 
 to a large extent the votes of a great wage earn- 
 ing community. It is by the study of the 
 instincts of these people, so difficult to ascertain 
 in the garbled speeches of an unsympathetic his- 
 tory, that we shall arrive at the true inwardness 
 of the war. One of the most salient features of 
 the struggle is the hatred of Athens for the 
 seceded Megara. All her pent-up venom seemed 
 to be hurled upon the unfortunate city. Such 
 hatred in such a time of stress must have had a 
 deep inner cause, for hatred and cruelty are 
 necessary expressions of deep-seated primal 
 emotions of humanity. These are what appear 
 to us when all veneer, civilisation, intelligence 
 and education have been rubbed off or forgotten, 
 and such impulses should lay before us better 
 than anything the latent intent, the emotional 
 causes of action. 
 
 Megara, situated on the Isthmus of Corinth, 
 was the key to the Athenian position, as the 
 Athenian objective was Sicily. Thucydides may 
 omit all mention of the founding of the colony 
 of Thurii, and may gloze over the alliance with 
 Leontini ; he may give no point to the Corcyrean 
 argument that Corcyra was conveniently situated 
 for expeditions to Italy and Sicily ; but these facts 
 were deep down in the minds of the Athenian 
 trading population. They knew that it was only 
 by the possession of Megara that the well-known 
 dangers of the passage by Cape Malea could be 
 
30 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 avoided, or the correspondingly heavy tolls levied 
 by those who held the Isthmus of Corinth. The 
 Megarid was the gate of the Western Seas. 
 
 Thucydides does not appear to have grasped 
 the connection between the Sicilian policy and 
 the attacks on Megara. The Sicilian expedition 
 he considered an irrelevant interlude, and could 
 only ascribe the policy which actuated it to 
 motives of personal ambition or private gain, so 
 far was he from looking for causes in the primal 
 instincts of a people. 
 
 Of Pericles* part it is difficult to judge. As 
 an art patron of the Golden Age he could have 
 little sympathy with a devastating war, and his 
 speeches corroborate this estimate. But he was 
 determined to hold the powers which his talents 
 had given him, and his measures, most of them 
 of a half-hearted description, can only be ac- 
 counted for by the fact that he knew that he 
 could only lead by following. Like Queen 
 Elizabeth of England, he had ideas of his own, 
 but he knew when to yield ; and those cries of 
 the market-place, so darkly hinted at by our 
 historian, must have had their meaning for the 
 astute politician. 
 
 So much for Thucydides. But let us not 
 attach too light a value to him on account of 
 this failing. Let us rather say that if Thucydides 
 could not judge the causes of contemporary 
 events, how dangerous is it for any man to 
 attempt to do so! 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 31 
 
 It is curious to note that Diodorus, writing at 
 a later date, lays emphasis on the fact that the 
 demos of Athens courted the alliance with 
 Corcyra, because the latter was conveniently 
 situated for Sicily. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE AMERICAN WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. 
 
 As has been stated before, the struggle for 
 American Independence was one of the chief in- 
 stances adduced by Dr. Reich to illustrate the 
 working of latent impulse. No one who has 
 read English History in a liberal spirit, and 
 studied the works of modern historians, or who 
 has gone to the fountain-head in Burke's speeches 
 and the utterances of other politicians of the day, 
 can without difficulty bring himself to believe 
 that the motives which actuated the Americans 
 were other than the highest and noblest which 
 can inspire a social community. " No taxation 
 without representation " has developed from a 
 party cry to be one of tHe principles of our con- 
 stitution. We look back to the days when our 
 fathers and grandfathers struggled for the pass- 
 ing of the Reform Bill, through the era of 
 " Wilkes and Liberty," to the staunch John 
 Hampden who dared to refuse his king the money 
 which Parliament had not granted. It was on 
 this vantage ground we had always learnt that 
 the Americans stood in those dark days that 
 heralded the dawn. The facts seem so clear, 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 33 
 
 After an expensive war waged in all quarters of 
 the globe, it is suggested that the colonists who 
 have shared in the advantage of the British Army 
 should contribute towards its expense. Although 
 the Americans are loyal and not averse to doing 
 their share of fighting, they demur to paying 
 for the upkeep of a standing army of foreign 
 troops, while they are debarred from having any 
 say in the matter either of the grant or the ex- 
 penditure. But the King is obdurate and the 
 Ministers are short-sighted. A Stamp Act is 
 passed, levying the hated taxes. The Americans 
 are furious, and the act is in practice reduced to 
 a dead letter. A wiser minister repeals the act, 
 and the bells are rung in America. Another 
 swing of the pendulum at home, and the Declara- 
 tory Act is passed, demonstrating that the king 
 has the right to do these things by Royal Prero- 
 gative, even though he refrains from putting 
 them into practice. This was murdering without 
 robbing, a crime which brought no gain to its 
 perpetrator. Then come the Tea duties and other 
 taxes, opening up the old sore inflicted by the 
 Stamp Act, while the narrow and fettering trade 
 laws make the existence of the new community 
 intolerable. 
 
 That these were the causes of the war we 
 always learnt; these were the measures Burke 
 thundered against; the principles of the Ameri- 
 cans were his principles. Why take away from 
 this people the glory of having fought and won 
 
 c 
 
34 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 on the high grounds of constitutionalism ? 
 
 Because a people seldom, if ever, fights for a 
 principle, constitutional or otherwise. Let 
 philosophers do this in their Battles of the 
 Books! The Battles of blood are fought by 
 men's hearts, not by their understandings. Men 
 will fight on the wildest pretexts ; they may de- 
 ceive themselves into thinking their cause has 
 some motive of superfine and ethereal texture, 
 whereas, in fact, it is based upon some hidden 
 want in their natural being just as that great 
 need which is planted in the breast of every 
 healthy human being to propagate his kind 
 causes him to weave the most fantastic garland 
 of love, adoration, poetry, devotion, idealism 
 around his mistress. Is science killing all 
 phantasy with these hard notions ? No ; science 
 cherishes the phantasy as dearly as its cause, 
 and comes, moreover, a step nearer the truth. 
 
 No one has so well described the Americans of 
 this period as the novelist, Mr. Winston Church- 
 ill, no one seems to have so saturated himself 
 with the prevailing spirit of the age. Few 
 authors have seized on the meaning of latent 
 impulse better than he. What were the mov- 
 ing principles in the American colonists, as re- 
 vealed in " The Crossing ?" Abstract principles 
 as to taxation and representation? No, we are 
 shown pictures of Cumberland Gap, of bloody 
 conflicts with the Redskins as the settlers push 
 on to the dark and bloody ground, gorges with 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 3 5 
 
 leafy woods, wide prairies beyond covered with 
 buffalo, and waiting but to be tilled, new land 
 where men may start again, where they 
 can get away from Conservatism and con- 
 ventions, where they will be free from 
 the law's entangling mesh, where they 
 can shoot their man instead of suing him ; 
 and then that majestic river sweeping down to 
 the Gulf of Mexico, large and generous, ready 
 to bear the wealth of the land to the ports and 
 the open seas. 
 
 Bancroft's description of the matter is like an 
 epic poem, showing the final triumph of free- 
 dom and justice both in the whole American 
 populace and her individual citizens. Every 
 American is pure, upright, a man of perfect in- 
 tegrity, and usually, by the way, a fairly keen 
 man of business. According to him the issue 
 was fought out on the general principles above 
 referred to. But between the lines we read some- 
 thing which tallies more with Mr. Churchill's 
 view of the subject. 
 
 By a proclamation of 1763, the date of the 
 Peace of Paris, the boundary of the American 
 colony was fixed at the Alleghanies. A little 
 further on we gather that Franklin and others 
 formed a small syndicate to exploit the new lands 
 of the West. As the plot thickens, Choisul, the 
 far-seeing French Statesman, makes a significant 
 utterance. He says that if France still possessed 
 Louisiana (which had just been made over to 
 
36 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 Spain), her wisest policy would be to throw it 
 open to the Americans, and take away all the 
 restrictions which the English placed upon them 
 with regard to it. Much annoyance is caused 
 by the annexation by England of some of the 
 Hinterland to New York State, at the expense 
 of the more democratic Massachusetts. Finally, 
 in 1774, a series of Penal Acts are passed, one 
 of them definitely annexing the country West of 
 the Alleghanies to the colony of Quebec. Here- 
 in appear to lie the causes of the war. We have 
 before us a people of the hardiest stock, who had 
 fled from tyranny to found a country of their 
 own far from the rule of kings and priests. 
 After untold toil and suffering in their combat 
 with the hardness of Nature, and the treachery 
 of the Redskins, they were now well on towards 
 prosperity and happiness. By the help of the 
 old country they had proved that the Anglo- 
 Saxon was to be the dominating race in the 
 Continent, and the dangers of a Hinterland in 
 the possession of a hostile civilised nation was 
 averted. But now that the struggle was over, by a 
 stroke of the pen, all their hopes of a national 
 existence were blighted. Their pioneers had 
 already pressed through those mountains and 
 brought home glowing stories of the rich lands 
 beyond. Speculative minds were already pre- 
 paring to invest wealth thither, a bright and 
 happy future for their race, with boundless terri- 
 tory for the needs of their offspring, seemed 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 37 
 
 offered to them ; all to be snatched away in a 
 moment. The enthusiasm for the new land 
 whose dangers made it all the more worth fight- 
 ing for have been graphically described by Mr. 
 Churchill; no less than the undying hatred for 
 the king who plotted with their enemies, sold 
 their rights, and tried to restrain them from the 
 new territory. In short, the needs of the new 
 nation were no less than America from sea to sea. 
 She might couch her demands in the subtlest 
 language of the lawyers, or the most high flown 
 rhetoric of the patriot ; her grievances, she might 
 assert, lay in the breach of this constitution, or 
 that popular right. Her real grievance, whether 
 she knew it or not, lay in the check placed upon 
 that primeval instinct, possession. 
 
 Not that the Americans purposely gave high 
 moral and political reasons in justification of an 
 act that had for its basis mere greed. Far be it 
 from me as an Englishman to impute this, for 
 our nation is as ready as any to find a noble 
 pretext for its most questionable actions a point 
 which I hope to deal with later. No, the 
 Americans in setting forth those reasons most 
 probably believed them, just as we believe the 
 arguments we put forward to justify our own 
 actions. I merely say this : that these actions are 
 psychological, they are emotions, impulses, in 
 which the reason has no share. Nay, they even 
 go so far as to deceive and blind the reason, as 
 they blind the forward lover, leaving him to a 
 
38 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 late repentance. But I hope to deal with the 
 psychological side of the question at greater 
 length at a later stage, when I have adduced 
 more examples of the working of these 
 phenomena. 
 
 Let me, however, bring to bear the air-import- 
 ant question to this case. Instead of the old 
 cui bono, " Who advantaged ?" I will ask " quid 
 bonum," "What was the gain?" Was the 
 result of the War of Independence an affirmation 
 of the rights of man, an establishment of the 
 principle *' No taxes without representation," an 
 era of lofty statesmanship and high, political 
 principles? Or was it the establishment of 
 America from sea to sea ? 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR. 
 
 THE study of the American War of Independ- 
 dence should lead us to severely discount 
 lofty and idealistic motives when they are ad- 
 vanced as causes of great disturbances of this 
 kind. I do not wish to go so far as to say 
 that such motives do not sometimes find their 
 way into action, but it will be usually found that 
 individuals or small bodies of men are respon- 
 sible for such phenomena. In fact, the more 
 general and popular a movement is, the simpler 
 and more primitive is the impulse likely to be 
 which forms the common ground for the com- 
 bined action. Thus there are many individual 
 saints and martyrs, but sacrifices on the part of 
 a whole nation are rare. A Byron might give 
 his life for Greek Independence, but one cannot 
 fail to have been struck with the supineness of 
 Christian States in late years with regard to 
 persecution in the Near East, when there was 
 nothing to be gained by interference. 
 
 We are not surprised, then, that the two great 
 American Wars should have had deep material 
 motives underlying the high moral and political 
 
 39 
 
40 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 issues which have been put forward as their 
 causes. But it is curious to find that the real 
 question in both cases was the same the Hinter- 
 land. As in the earlier war it was a question of 
 whether the land beyond the Alleghanies should 
 be at the absolute disposal of the English King, 
 so in the later the issue was whether the North 
 or the South should have possession of that 
 Hinterland. To say that the Slavery Question 
 had nothing to do with the struggle would be 
 false, but how little the whole matter regarded 
 the slave himself is shown by several circum- 
 stances. The slaves seem to have been, on the 
 whole, happy under their old masters, and did 
 not for a long time benefit by the change ; when 
 they got their freedom, many of them took it 
 with reluctance, or tried not to take it. So far 
 were they from any rebellion against the system 
 that when John Brown made his hare-brained 
 attempt, not a slave joined him. Lastly, the 
 modern Northerner is no friend of the Negro, 
 and is as jealous of any advance in his social 
 and political position, as any other white man 
 who is brought into close touch with coloured 
 races. 
 
 In fact, the war was waged on the Slavery 
 Question; not in its humanitarian, but in its 
 economic phase. To quote Professor Cairnes : 
 " Perhaps the most striking example which the 
 world has ever seen of a foreign trade by the 
 peculiar personal qualities of those engaged in 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 41 
 
 ministering to it is that which was furnished by 
 the Southern States of the American Union 
 previous to the abolition of Slavery. The effect 
 of that institution was to give a very distinct 
 industrial character to the labouring population 
 of those states, which unfitted them for all but 
 a very limited number of occupations, but gave 
 them a certain special fitness for them. Almost 
 the entire industry of the country was conse- 
 quently turned to the production of two or three 
 commodities, in raising which the industry of 
 slaves was found to be effective ; and these were 
 used, through an exchange with foreign coun- 
 tries as the means of supplying the inhabitants 
 with all their requisites." From the earliest 
 days of colonisation, the North had borne the 
 brunt of the labour. Nature was rugged, and 
 when a bare subsistence was wrested from her, 
 there was still the treacherous native to 
 encounter. Hardy pioneers risked their lives in 
 the back-woods for skins and other treasure, but 
 returned with palpitating hearts lest they should 
 find -their homesteads burnt down and all that 
 they loved in this world murdered by a ruthless 
 foe. There a man was a man, and could be no 
 less. There was no room for a weakling or 
 anyone who could not take a man's share in a 
 fight. But in the South it was different, and the 
 more genial climate and greater security fostered 
 that system under which the Southern aristocracy 
 grew up, luxurious and arbitrary, living on the 
 
42 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 labours of an imported and subject race. 
 The War of Independence combined the two 
 races in its common issue, but it was no sooner 
 over than those causes which led to the ultimate 
 struggle began to manifest themselves. An 
 ordinance of 1787 prohibited slavery in the new 
 territory north of the Ohio, but, soon after, the 
 purchase of the immense stretch of country under 
 the name of Louisiana caused some uneasiness 
 from the point of view of the slave question. It 
 was at first admitted as a slave state, but when, 
 in 1812, Missouri asked to come into the Union, 
 a compromise had to be made, and the arrange- 
 ment took its name from the last state. Under 
 the Missouri Compromise, the state was to be 
 a slave state, but the remainder of the Lousiana 
 purchase north of the southern boundary of 
 Missouri was to be for ever free. Accordingly, 
 in 1850, when California, in the flush of her 
 wealth and prosperity, was admitted, it was as a 
 free state. This was a great blow to the South, 
 and was by no means the first intimation she had 
 received of the dangers threatening her interests. 
 The North had already attempted to pass a tariff 
 law, which, while protecting Northern indus- 
 tries, would cause the South to pay more for all 
 the numerous goods she had to import : this was 
 met with little short of a revolution. This ques- 
 tion, however, by means of decisive action on the 
 one hand, and some concession on the other, fell 
 into abeyance, but the danger must none the 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 43 
 
 less have been felt. The issue was now prac- 
 tically the one which England had to face at the 
 time of the abolition of the Corn Laws. Was 
 she to retain her corn duties for the benefit of the 
 agricultural interest, or abolish protection for the 
 benefit of her increasing industrial population ? 
 In short, was she to be industrial or agricultural ? 
 In America the question was : Should the South 
 be allowed to flood that vast Hinterland with her 
 slave labour and thus gain for ever an economic 
 advantage over the North by agricultural pur- 
 suits, or should the North prevail by her industry 
 and manufactures and white labour ? Each had 
 a weapon whereby it could make itself feared, the 
 one section its slaves, the other its growing 
 wealth and the power to impose tariffs, and it is 
 difficult to see which had the most to dread. At 
 all events the South took the initiative, so we must 
 suspect that she felt in the more dangerous posi- 
 tion. In 1854 the Missouri Compromise was 
 broken, and slavery admitted to the new states 
 of Nebraska and Kansas, and further events 
 marked the way of the wind. The Judiciary, at 
 the instance of the party in power, gave away the 
 Northern position by the famous Dred Scott 
 decision, which denied to a slave or his descen- 
 dant the status of citizenship. From these 
 events to the first active operations at Charles- 
 town is but a step. 
 
 The victory of the North meant the prevalence 
 of the hardy race which traced its descent from 
 
44 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 the Puritan stock, finding in the Mayflower days 
 a refuge from tyranny of Church and State in a 
 land where no difficulties were too great to be 
 overcome by a strong arm and steadfast heart. 
 For that the United States has to be thankful, 
 and to it she owes the self-reliance, courage, 
 elasticity, and resourcefulness of her citizens. It 
 might have been very different if the South had 
 won her case either wholly or in part, and either 
 implanted her system in the whole of the South 
 and West, or crippled the North by seceding and 
 taking from the Union the fair territories luxur- 
 iating in the genial sub-tropical warmth. But 
 whatever advantages the country may have 
 gained as regards the stamina and physique of 
 her manhood, the economic result is more doubt- 
 ful, and this quite apart from any considerations 
 of that abnormal and fictitious advantage which 
 the slave system conferred. 
 
 The South felt herself at the mercy of the North 
 on account of the two weapons which the latter 
 could bring to bear her growing wealth, and 
 her tariffs; and she struck her blow to obviate 
 her impending fate. But the more artificial 
 weapon of the Northerners to a certain extent 
 recoiled upon the heads of its wielders. I say 
 this quite apart from the Free Trade controversy, 
 and on excellent authority, that of the eminent 
 American economist, Professor Walker, to 
 whose pages I refer those who wish to pursue 
 the subject at greater length. The protection 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 45 
 
 of infant industries has found favour with some 
 of the most orthodox economists, and America 
 may have felt that if she were doing wrong, she 
 did so with excellent authority. And her early 
 politicians, seeing the vast resources of their 
 land, may have well imagined that their country, 
 could she only learn to manufacture her raw 
 material, might some day reach that state of self- 
 sufficiency, the boast of Pericles of old, which 
 forms an overwhelming advantage in time of 
 war. If there could have been an idea of this 
 kind, it is well in keeping with the rest of the 
 history of the United States witness the first 
 colonisation as a refuge from European tyranny, 
 the rebellion against England and the Munroe 
 doctrine. But the growth of foreign trade of late 
 years has shown such an idea to be absurd, and 
 any country which seriously adopted it would 
 gradually sink from her standard of living, 
 through having to do without certain luxuries, 
 lose her efficiency in production, by dint of the 
 absence of competition, and finally shut herself 
 up in priggish isolation, like ancient Sparta, 
 laying herself open to all the dangers which 
 threatened that state. Take the case of cotton 
 alone ; there is in the climate of Lancashire just 
 that combination of moisture and warmth which 
 is necessary for the proper working up of the 
 fibre, and the consequence is that if any country 
 denies itself the advantage of making use of the 
 Lancashire mills, she does it at her own cost. 
 
46 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 But whatever be the reasons which actuated 
 the first framers of the tariffs, these have become 
 a permanent institution, and in the manner of 
 tariffs they have grown with the years, as a 
 monument to the whole world of the great prin- 
 ciple that if you want a weak thing to grow 
 strong, it is of no use to protect it. The protec- 
 tion becomes a necessary part of its being, and 
 the more it grows the greater protection it will 
 require. If you want it to become strong and 
 hardy, give it the chance to buffet with the winds 
 and the weather. If there is any good in it, it 
 will learn to stand alone. If it falls, you have 
 at least the satisfaction of knowing that an 
 unsuitable thing is out of the way, and has left 
 room for something which can stand by itself. 
 
 The principles of Foreign Trade are based on 
 the fact that every country has some compara- 
 tive advantage in production. Let trade take its 
 free course, and it will find its own level ; the 
 commodity in which the advantage lies will find 
 itself automatically. Protect here and there, and 
 you will never find where your advantage lies. 
 So it has been with America, whose advantage 
 lay in that rich virgin soil of the West, which 
 coulcl have made her the granary of the world. 
 Labour expended upon this field is worth many 
 times the same amount spent in factories, for 
 the latter do not require any particular natural 
 advantages, save means of communication, fuel, 
 and a population, all of which are found to per- 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 47 
 
 faction in the crowded districts of the United 
 Kingdom, Germany, and Belgium. But as 
 wages in America are necesarily ruled by those 
 which can be earned in the area of greatest 
 efficiency, namely, the wheat fields, it comes 
 about that the wages paid in the factories are 
 far higher than those which prevail in the 
 countries mentioned, and the tariff makes it worth 
 while for these to be paid, with the obvious re- 
 sult of the waste of the difference between wages 
 in America and in Belgium, diminished by the 
 trifling expense of transport. Meanwhile the 
 cornlands lie largely undeveloped and the work- 
 man finds his high wage of no avail owing to the 
 high price of commodities. And thus does the 
 North rob the South, and herself as well; all 
 are robbed but the few individuals, the million- 
 aires in whose favour the whole scheme works 
 under the very eyes of the dupes. 
 
 Again let me put in a word to prevent the high 
 ideals which actuated many in this question from 
 being lightly thought on. No one can doubt 
 that the motives of President Lincoln and of 
 many of the abolitionists were pure as the day, 
 and instigated by the highest principles of Christ- 
 ianity and altruism. But such are useless unless 
 engrafted upon a stock of the baser sort, whose 
 baseness is an indication of its virility. Such 
 ideals are like those fine fruits which cannot be 
 propagated from seed, but are dependent for their 
 existence upon the wild and vigorous tree. 
 
48 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 Lincoln's ideals fell in with the spirit actuating 
 the North, and so he led the North on to vic- 
 tory. Had they run counter to the trend of feel- 
 ing, they would have been abortive, and their 
 possessor might have suffered an earlier martyr- 
 dom through their possession alone. Lincoln's 
 position recalls that of a very different type of 
 ruler, Henry VIII of England, whose evil and 
 not his good motives happened to fit in with the 
 impulses of his people, and who therefore be- 
 queathed to his descendants honour and pros- 
 perity, which were as suddenly changed into hate 
 and disaster, when later rulers of the same im- 
 perious spirit followed in his footsteps, after the 
 trend of the nation's feelings had changed. And 
 thus we see how little the individual makes 
 history. History is the current on which he 
 swims ; he is but a bubble borne upon the surface, 
 to be borne triumphantly forward or engulfed 
 in the abyss. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 PHASES OF NATIONAL FEELING. 
 
 HISTORY has been written so largely from the 
 individual point of view that there is always a 
 tendency to ascribe great events to the genius 
 or personal qualities, good or bad, of a particular 
 person. We have seen, on the other hand, that 
 far from being the causative element in national 
 movements, the individual is seized upon by the 
 imperious Zeitgeist and made to do its will. 
 Thus George III and Washington and Lincoln 
 were puppets in the hands of this great wire- 
 puller. The case of Henry VIII has also been 
 referred to, and we will pursue it in greater detail 
 here. Under the Tudors the English dynasty 
 became thoroughly consolidated. The throne, 
 now for the first time loosed from the fetters of 
 those jealous guardians, the barons and aris- 
 tocracy, practically all destroyed in the Civil 
 wars, stood out alone and majestic above the 
 meanness of the commonalty and the new 
 nobility which owed its whole existence to the 
 supreme power. It is no wonder that under the 
 moderate and astute rule of Henry VII no mur- 
 murings against the growing absolutism should 
 D 49 
 
50 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 arise ; but what can we say of his son, who start- 
 ing like a young Apollo, gradually gave way to 
 every evil passion, disappointed all hopes, and 
 broke the laws of God and man ? Yet, in face 
 of all his vagaries, his deeds of tyranny actuated 
 by whim or passion, there was no note of dis- 
 loyalty uttered against him, while towards his 
 daughter, Elizabeth, perhaps, more whimsical 
 still, loyalty became a passion and a cult. On 
 the other hand, this tyrannical conduct in the 
 Stuarts was combated from the very outset, inso- 
 much as it has been said that if James I had 
 lived long enough he would have lost his head 
 instead of his less fortunate son meeting with 
 that fate. Yet James I's tyranny cannot be 
 compared with Henry VIII's, and at least this 
 much could be said for the Stuart policy, that 
 it was usually consistent. The reason can only 
 be ascribed to luck ; the Stuarts were ill-starred. 
 Like the poet Gray, they were born out of due 
 time, and their end was mortification and dis- 
 appointment. Well might they have said with 
 Laertes 
 
 " I have a speech of fire, that fain would blaze 
 
 But that this folly doubts it." 
 
 Henry VI IPs luck, however, was in. Not 
 only did the English people of his day happen 
 to want a despot, but his policy, dependent solely 
 on a personal whim, happened to fit in with that 
 of the nation. With the discovery of America 
 the world's centre of gravity had changed, and 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 51 
 
 now from the position of ultima Thule, England 
 bade fair to be the very heart and centre of the 
 world, the more so as her insular position and 
 large seaboard had marked her out as a centre of 
 navigation. The position was therefore critical, 
 and at such times national feeling often 
 shows a fitting and unexpected modesty. In 
 this case England, as Professor Prothero has 
 shown, threw the reins upon the neck of the 
 horse. It is astonishing with what simplicity 
 and good faith this is sometimes done, and 
 therein mankind taken collectively shows itself 
 to be often superior in intuition to the individual. 
 But in times of danger or of critical importance 
 the need of unity is felt to outweigh any other 
 considerations. What is wanted is one leader 
 and one policy, be it good or bad, so long as it 
 leads somewhere in the right direction. One 
 indifferent policy, consistently pursued, is worth 
 several excellent ones making in contrary direc- 
 tions, or displacing one another as this or that 
 counsellor holds the place of pre-eminence. 
 
 And as it was necessary for England to be 
 ruled by a despot, so was it also necessary that 
 the despot should free her from all ties, bonds, 
 alliances and restrictions which might fetter her 
 free action in the new sphere, or make her a 
 catspaw to pull the chestnuts from the fire for 
 the benefit of one of the older powers. Henry 
 was tired of his wife, and to divorce her he must 
 needs break with Rome and with the Emperor 
 
52 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 and Spain and all the Catholic powers. What- 
 ever may have been the religious feelings of the 
 nation, they recognised that the real question 
 at issue was not a religious but a political one, 
 and they tolerated the king's actions accordingly. 
 
 The position of Elizabeth was more difficult. 
 In the first place she was a woman, and there- 
 fore less suited to lead a nation's destinies in 
 troublous times. Again, she would probably 
 marry, in fact she ought to, and if she took this 
 step injudiciously she might spoil all the pro- 
 gress that had so far been made. But if she 
 was lacking in determination and consistency, 
 she made up for it in tact, and a sympathetic 
 regard for the feelings of her subjects. In 
 spite of her petty tyrannies no one knew better 
 how to yield gracefully when it was manifest that 
 her actions were unpopular. In keeping free 
 from a Spanish alliance, and by helping, 
 although in her meagre and parsimonious 
 manner, the Protestant causes in Europe, she yet 
 kept the stem of the vessel in the straight track, 
 for which she earned the everlasting gratitude of 
 her people. 
 
 This voluntary resignation of a powerful and 
 freedom-loving people to the will of an absolute 
 monarch is still better exemplified by France 
 under Napoleon. The psychological side of the 
 motives in such cases I propose to deal with at 
 greater length at a later stage, and here they 
 are more complicated than those we have dealt 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 53 
 
 with in the earlier part of the chapter. There is 
 the Revolution itself to be considered, then the 
 rise of Napoleon, and finally the great campaigns. 
 The attitude of the people in the two latter 
 stages have been ascribed by a French historian 
 to the ruling passion of the Frenchman, 
 Vhonneur. In the light of psychology this 
 seems highly probable, and the love of honour 
 like patriotism and esprit de corps, we may take 
 to be manifestations of the national feeling pure 
 and simple. All the destinies of France seemed 
 to be wrapped up in the personality of " the little 
 corporal," and the enthusiasm which he kindled 
 in song and poetry, not only in France but 
 throughout Europe, is the clearest indication of 
 the hold which he possessed over the minds of 
 the people. And with a high-spirited and 
 chivalric people it is not difficult to comprehend 
 that the sentiment was maintained even after its 
 national utility was lost, and that the people gave 
 their sons to the armies of their great leader long 
 after his schemes had any national value. The 
 psychological counterpart of this phenomenon is 
 to be sought in the pathological form of an 
 emotion, and there are few emotions without such 
 forms. 
 
 But the strangest part of the relations between 
 Napoleon and the French is their first adoption 
 of him as their leader, almost their tyrant, just 
 at the close of a furious outbreak against 
 absolutism. If, however, the state of France 
 
54 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 under Napoleon is compared with that of Eng- 
 land under Henry VIII, the explanation seems 
 clear. The cruelties which were perpetrated 
 upon the Royal House and the nobility were, in 
 the main, due to the plots made by them for 
 bringing foreign armies into France. The dis- 
 covery of these made the people mad with 
 rage, and in the blindness of their fury they were 
 indiscriminating in their revenge. Probably if 
 it had not been for the imminence of foreign in- 
 vasion, the campaign which followed the Revolu- 
 tion would not have been entered upon. But it 
 is clear that the position of France was critical, 
 and that her very existence was threatened. The 
 need of absolutism followed as a matter of course. 
 So much for the National Feeling in its active 
 and positive form. But it is often met with as 
 an undercurrent of obstinacy, hostility and re- 
 bellion, when rulers or governments run counter 
 to the intent of the people. For an example of 
 this we need not go far from our own shores. It 
 is a platitude in the circles of shallow thinkers 
 that Ireland has all that can be reasonably given 
 her, if any account be taken of proportion of 
 population and like considerations, and that in 
 spite of that, " sops " are being constantly ad- 
 ministered by her more powerful sister in order 
 to quiet the discontent which nevertheless in- 
 creases. She is fairly, more than fairly, repre- 
 sented in our Parliament, possesses religious 
 freedom, has a special administration, and he r 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 55 
 
 own judiciary. Laws have been constantly 
 passed to better the condition of the peasant, and 
 to enable him to become a proprietor. The old 
 landlords are being bought out, and every 
 facility and encouragement is given to trade and 
 industry. What more can a people want? 
 
 It is sufficient to reply that if a people wants 
 one thing, it is of no use to lavish profusely 
 another thing upon it. By doing so, you only 
 add fuel to the flames and weapons to the 
 armoury. The Irish are a proud and imagina- 
 tive people, and they suffer under the galling mis- 
 fortune of never having had a chance. Com- 
 pare their union with England with that between 
 England and Scotland. The two latter coun- 
 tries had persisted side by side for years; two 
 separate communities, with separate institutions, 
 under a single king. The fact that the reigning 
 house had long been Scotch gave the Northern 
 country a prestige in the days when she might 
 have suffered in point of wealth and power. In 
 the back centuries England had struggled for the 
 mastery and lost. Ever since Scotland had been 
 a thorn in her side, and an enemy in the rear 
 of any king who wished to embark on enterprises 
 abroad without conciliating his neighbours. In 
 1707 she came, a single united people, used to a 
 single ruler and constitutional government, of her 
 own free will, into partnership with the sister 
 country, but retaining her law, her church, 
 everything she wished to keep. The union has 
 
56 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 proved since that day a blessing to both coun- 
 tries. The growing wealth, the colonial 
 possessions, the wider field of the Southern 
 country gave the new partner a sphere in which 
 to display her talents of thrift, hard-headedness, 
 and practical common-sense. Whereas England 
 was not only stimulated by the example of the 
 northern sons, but soon became deeply in their 
 debt for services in every branch of administra- 
 tion and industry. She had a Scotchman to 
 thank for the Bank of England, and Scotch 
 downrightness and plodding hard work has been 
 an excellent antidote to the Englishman's love of 
 sport and over-shyness of healthy manual labour. 
 If to-day we playfully grumble that we are 
 governed by Scotchmen, that they rule our 
 Colonies, manage our Banks, our Insurance 
 Companies, and most of our industries, we have 
 nevertheless the consolation, in addition to know- 
 ing that all these things are in the best possible 
 hands, of feeling that all is for the good of both 
 countries, and the same kingdom and nation. 
 
 But with Ireland it was sadly different. If 
 Nature had only placed her on the Eastern side 
 of England, there is a possibility that William 
 the Conqueror would have set himself to use his 
 iron fist upon her first, and weld her into a 
 single nation. That would have been her salva- 
 tion, as it has been ours. But, owing to that 
 lack of unity, she was always a trouble to her- 
 self, and consequently to her neighbours. Eng- 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 57 
 
 lish influence, in the Middle Ages, could go no 
 further than to set up a colony within the pale, 
 outside which there was nothing but lawlessness 
 and disorder. When this state of things came 
 to an end, a foreign and hated element was super- 
 posed in the North, adding bitterness and strife 
 to former disorders. Ireland's internal weakness 
 and lack of cohesion made her, in commerce, a 
 spoil in the hands of the English who, in the 
 Eighteenth Century, crushed out one industry 
 after another ; in politics, a slave to one or two 
 wealthy and unscrupulous landlords, carrying 
 the whole representation in their pockets. After 
 hopes had been given, and were suddenly 
 snatched out of reach, an opportunist coup was 
 made to put an end temporarily to the reign of 
 tumult, corruption and rebellion ; and the worth- 
 less Parliament was abolished and its functions 
 taken over by our own. But this coup was not 
 looked upon by its perpetrators as anything but 
 an ephemeral relief from the tension, a tem- 
 porary harbour in the storm. Pitt was too busy 
 with foreign complications to set himself to deal 
 with the refractory people in his rear. And the 
 temporary arrangement has become permanent, 
 and a proud people has had to submit to the 
 taunt that when she had a Parliament and a 
 Government of her own, it was corrupt and un- 
 workable. But Ireland never had in any true sense 
 a Parliament of her own. She was governed 
 by a handful of place-holders. And that is why 
 
58 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 the English people may lavish what wealth and 
 advantages they like upon Ireland, Ireland will 
 never be satisfied until her craving for 
 sovereignty had been satisfied. And by this I 
 do not mean that separation is necessary far 
 from it. It is the wounded self-feeling that 
 rankles in the breasts of Irishmen. The land 
 whose orators stir all hearers by their passion and 
 imagination has not, and has never had, the 
 opportunity of utilising them for her own better- 
 ment. This land of politics and discussion has 
 never had an assembly in which her leaders could 
 freely speak their minds to the end of a con- 
 structive policy. " Give us a chance of showing 
 that we can govern ourselves a chance we have 
 never had!" That, to my mind, is the founda- 
 tion of the Irish position. Given but that, all 
 the lawlessness, the disloyalty, the discontent, I 
 verily believe, would have place with her no 
 more, and the paid agitators could take up their 
 bags and retire into obscurity. And a loyal and 
 warm-hearted people would fittingly show how 
 they appreciated the coveted gift of their bene- 
 factress. 
 
 To see how futile it is to attempt to palliate a 
 wounded national feeling with gifts which do not 
 meet the particular need, it is only necessary 
 to turn to Hungary under Joseph II. This ruler 
 is acknowledged even by Hungarian writers to 
 have been one of the most beneficent and en- 
 lightened of rulers. But his enlightenment was 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 59 
 
 his doom. An eager disciple of that great rational- 
 istic movement whose best exponents were the 
 Encyclopaedists of France, he strove to rule under 
 its guidance, and to thrust out of his dominions all 
 that mass of tradition and the consequent abuses 
 handed down from the Middle Ages. Rationally 
 speaking he conferred on Hungary untold bene- 
 fits, in closing up many of the useless Monas- 
 teries, ameliorating the condition of the serfs, 
 and improving education. But his intellectualist 
 enthusiasm, in bringing everything to the touch- 
 stones of pure reason, underrated the emotional 
 forces lying dormant in the breasts of the Hun- 
 garians, and he unwittingly offended them by 
 actions of trivial import, but which to them 
 seemed an absolute outrage against their national 
 feelings. He refused to be crowned with the 
 sacred crown of Hungary, and he tried to abolish 
 their language. To a philosopher trifles like 
 these seem inconsiderable, but the popular mind, 
 finding a refuge from abstraction in symbolism, 
 regards such trifles as its most holy possessions. 
 To try to crush out a people's language is one 
 of the greatest mistakes a ruler can be guilty 
 of. Encourage it and it will probably die. Pro- 
 scribe it, and even though it be forgotten, every 
 one will suddenly remember that he has or has 
 had a language of his own. The Hungarians 
 wanted above all things independence from 
 Austria, and freedom from Germanising in- 
 fluence, and although Joseph's reforms, if pro- 
 
6o LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 perly introduced, could have worked untold 
 good, and were, in fact, eagerly clamoured for 
 when feeling had abated, yet the German tinge 
 about them all, and the obnoxious provisions 
 which went along with them, neutralised their 
 whole advantage, and Joseph learnt on his death- 
 bed that reason is not the only quality required 
 for the government of a people. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 NATIONALITY AND LITERATURE. 
 
 THE feeling for literature is one of the latest de- 
 veloped in the individual, and we shall expect 
 the case to be the same in the life of a nation. 
 And as it is of late growth, so it is more 
 ephemeral, and of less power than other senti- 
 ments. In the decay of human life the feelings 
 depart in the order of their acquisition, and con- 
 sequently those of the higher order go first, so 
 that the last phase of human decay is character- 
 ised by the few simplest and most animal im- 
 pulses. We have seen how these lower impulses 
 have been at the root of many of the great move- 
 ments of history, and we shall consequently not 
 be surprised if the higher motives have to account 
 for but few of them. And as intellectual enthu- 
 siasm is rather the province of the individual and 
 moreover, of the rarer individual, it is only 
 natural to find that the seeds of wisdom often 
 fall on barren soil. This explains, in part, why 
 no great truth has wakened the masses to action, 
 but it has been uttered before times out of 
 number. Nothing is new under the sun in the 
 way of wise saws and brilliant conceptions, but 
 they only take root when the ground happens to 
 
 61 
 
62 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 be prepared to receive them. The Lutherian 
 Revolution was foreshadowed by Huss and 
 Wycliffe, but the times were not ripe for it, just 
 as the French Revolution was preceded by the 
 Jacqueries. In fact, we come back to our old 
 principle that history is written by the heart and 
 not by the head, and if the head wants to play 
 its part, it must wait until the heart has climbed 
 to its level. 
 
 But whereas it will be almost impossible to find 
 cases in which great national movements have 
 been caused by intellectual activity, yet it is quite 
 a usual occurrence for a popular movement to 
 have an intellectual counterpart, and this has 
 been amply demonstrated by Taine, who writes, 
 however, from the literary, and not the national 
 standpoint. Nevertheless his remarks on this 
 head have considerable bearing on our subject. 
 Literary genius he holds to be no other than 
 power at the highest pitch of its development, 
 and he goes on to show that the great writers 
 have appeared at culminating epochs of their 
 nations' careers. The defeat of the Armada, the 
 discovery of America, loyalty to the Queen were 
 all factors which determined the existence of 
 Shakespeare, and but for them he could not have 
 been what he was. In the same way it required 
 all the doubt, the mysticism, the novelty of the 
 Nineteenth Century to bring forth a Goethe in 
 Germany. And so, he sums up, the greater the 
 poet is, the more national he must be. 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 63 
 
 There have been choice spirits who were 
 withered by the chilling blast of an unfriendly 
 world, and although such will always be 
 honoured in the Temple of Literature, as leaders 
 and protagonists they find no place. We must 
 not forget that the position of the poet is due to 
 the novel system of specialisation, thrust upon 
 us by the exigencies of our complicated civilisa- 
 tion. Our ancestors all joined in the dance and 
 song and mystic representation which have since 
 parted company and are now represented by three 
 sister arts. And so, just as we employ a pro- 
 fessional butcher, barber, priest, instead of per- 
 forming the functions of each within the family 
 circle, so we look to the professional Seer, or 
 better, Feeler, to sum up our emotions, and give 
 expression to them in fitting language. These, 
 on the evidence of Goethe, one of the greatest 
 of the tribe, are the chief functions of the poet. 
 
 " Wodurch bewegt er alle Herzen ? 
 Wodurch besiegt er jedes Element ? 
 1st es der Einklang nicht, der aus dem Busen dringt, 
 Und in sein Herz die Welt zurucke schlingt ? " 
 
 Not only our functions of feeling has he special- 
 ised, but he has also become a professor in the 
 art of play, so characteristic of animals, children 
 and savages. Organised play with the last, ir- 
 responsible play with the two first, is the school 
 in which the limbs and the functions are trained 
 for the battle of life, the muscles gain their 
 
64 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 strength, the eye its keenness, the brain its in- 
 telligence, and the mind its control. And as we 
 find that the greater the intelligence and the 
 elasticity of the animal, the greater its fondness 
 for play, so in man we find the play attitude pre- 
 vailing in all kinds of occupations and disporting 
 itself under manifold disguises. In national 
 poetry and literature a people finds its most 
 congenial playground. 
 
 Taine's saying that poetic genius is une 
 puissance developpee, expresses a truth only 
 from a literary point of view. As far as the 
 critic is concerned, it is pretty near the truth that 
 great poetic outbursts are contemporaneous with 
 a culmination in the political development of a 
 nation. Augustus has his Vergil, Elizabeth her 
 Shakespeare, Napoleon his Hugo, Frederick II 
 his Walther. Yet with a wider scope than 
 literature before our eyes, we have to take into 
 consideration the relation of letters to the active 
 life of a people. Poetic genius may, in a way, 
 be the mark of developed power, but it is not the 
 principal criterion. Great political achievements 
 are more important in this sense; but the two 
 phenomena are not unrelated. Some philos- 
 ophers have explained laughter as being due to 
 the sudden relaxation of a former tension. Our 
 perceptions led us to expect something great, 
 and our feelings were keyed up accordingly, pro- 
 bably for action, but the event turned out to be 
 something extremely small the exiguus mus. 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 65 
 
 Our feeling, our readiness for action, works 
 itself off in the act of laughter, as, conversely, a 
 dog's emotion finds a vent in the act of wagging 
 his tail. Whether this be a full and sufficient 
 explanation of laughter or not, it may serve, I 
 think, as an illustration of the possible relations 
 subsisting between national activity and aesthetic 
 expression. We could not expect a poet to enjoy 
 sufficient Wo-^o-^to- at the time of the invasion of 
 the Armada to pen King Lear. But when once 
 the danger is past, and while the feeling of power 
 which helped to keep the Armada at bay is still 
 in full vigour, it is then that we may expect the 
 desire for action to work itself off in the aesthetic 
 channel. Such a view appears to be confirmed 
 by the conditions of almost every literary out- 
 burst, and is further in accordance with the views 
 of poets themselves upon their art. They agree 
 that there must be power imagination or passion 
 they call it but there must also be control, the 
 passion must be " recollected in hours of tran- 
 quility." Poetic outburst may, therefore, be in 
 a sense regarded as a backwash to political 
 activity. 
 
 The study of poetic genius shows us that there 
 must be the right atmosphere also. The poet 
 must be in tune with his age, and he must also 
 neither play too loud or too soft for it. Musical 
 comedy would not suit the Greeks fresh from the 
 fields of Marathon, nor would the Orestean 
 Trilogy find favour with our busy devotees of 
 
 E 
 
66 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 the market and the exchange, who bring tired 
 minds for light diversion. 
 
 It is fortunate for a people when specialisation 
 has not deprived its individuals altogether of its 
 aesthetic and intellectual functions. Blest are 
 the days when every household has its bard and 
 its musician ! And fortunately, even to-day we 
 have instances of a thorough participation of the 
 people in aesthetic pursuits which have become 
 elsewhere under the ban of professionalism. The 
 Welsh and the Germans are perhaps the best 
 examples, the former evincing their musical and 
 poetical interest in their homes, their village 
 gatherings, and their eisteddfods; the latter by 
 their great love a love which is demonstrated 
 even in the lowliest cottages for their national 
 composers, and above all their extraordinary ap- 
 preciation of their greatest and most metaphysical 
 poet. But a people is in a bad way indeed when 
 it can no longer play, and when its members 
 crowd in thousands to witness the performance 
 of specialists and professionals. We cannot all 
 expect to be poets, but we still exercise our 
 minds and hearts in reading them ; but in merely 
 watching sports, without any ulterior object of 
 self-improvement, we not only waste our time 
 and national energies but are actually ruining 
 our characters. This form of amusement, exem- 
 plified in its most advanced stage in the watch- 
 ing of gladiatorial combats in the days of Rome's 
 decadence, is none other than the pathological 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 67 
 
 form of the aesthetic sentiment, and not only 
 works to the detriment of that sentiment, but also 
 unfits a nation for play, which has been shown 
 before to be the great school for the battle of 
 life ; to say nothing of its deadening the feelings 
 and sapping the energy. 
 
 After what has been said of poetry, it will be 
 only natural to expect its appearance at the close 
 of eras of national importance. But there is an 
 important exception. Literary exuberance is 
 far more the property of the individual than of 
 the mass, and of small classes of individuals than 
 larger ones. For, as the aesthetic and intellectual 
 sentiments are the latest developed, they are only 
 found in their fullness among the few, and are 
 only possessed collectively to any important 
 degree at certain epochs. Germany, until her 
 unification, was split up into hundreds of small 
 states, incapable of marked political action on 
 account of their weakness and isolation. During 
 the Eighteenth Century the German States were 
 especially subjected to the influence of their 
 powerful neighbour across the Rhine, and their 
 literature bears the impress of this influence. But, 
 as in the small Grecian communities, constant 
 friction with one's neighbours brought about a 
 sharpening of the wits, and most states possessed 
 their University, round which the brighter in- 
 telligencies clustered, and the spirit of learning 
 was fostered, as in the Italian Republics, by the 
 Maecenatum caritas liberally bestowed by the 
 
68 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 courts of the petty princes. Every student of 
 German literature knows what Schiller owed to 
 Jena, and Goethe to Weimar, and these examples 
 are paralleled in the lives of almost every German 
 author of the pre-Union days. 
 
 And so German activity, " cribbed, cabined 
 and confined," owing to disunion and the 
 proximity of powerful neighbours, found an 
 outlet in literary production, and a sphere of 
 industry and a general meeting-ground in the 
 world of spirit and intelligence which hovers 
 above the actualities of life. Thus when a surfeit of 
 French fashion supervened and slavish imitation 
 became nauseous, the first steps towards unity 
 and nationality and abolition of French influence 
 were made in literature, and are associated for 
 ever with the name of Lessing, the literary 
 counterpart of the political figure, Frederick the 
 Great. The sublety of the working of secret 
 impulse is the more remarkable in this case as 
 Lessing had no reason to be grateful in any \vay 
 to this sovereign. He could not say, like Goethe 
 of Karl August, that his prince had given him, 
 " Neigung, Musze, Vertraun, Felder und Garten 
 und Haus." On the contrary Schiller sings of 
 the German Muse, 
 
 " Von den grossten Deutschlands Sohne, 
 Von dem grossen Friedrichs Throne, 
 Ging sie schutzlos ungeehrt." 
 
 Frederick knew perhaps as little as Lessing 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 69 
 
 that the latter was working for German unity 
 and emancipation from French influences, and 
 he preferred Voltaire to his own compatriot. 
 Yet when Lessing in his critical essays tried to 
 wean the people's feelings from Boileau and 
 pseudo-Aristotelian dramatic theories, when he 
 showed that the Germans would do better to 
 follow Shakespeare than narrow themselves down 
 to the false unities of French tradition, he was 
 sowing the seeds of a harvest which Frederick 
 reaped, and the apotheosis of the Prussian king 
 is found in the pages of one of the most charming 
 of German plays, and her first great one, Less- 
 ing's " Minna von Barnhelm." 
 
 In these periods of literary outburst, 
 Blutezciten, as the Germans call them, all is 
 power, creation, imagination. These represent 
 the flood-tides. The ebbs correspond with the 
 falling in political vitality. The most character- 
 istic example of this parallelism is displayed in 
 that very marked phase of literature, the Eight- 
 eenth Century Period, governed by the canons 
 of Boileau and Pope, when all that appeared to 
 be necessary to poetic art was " to polish and 
 refine," to say " what oft was thought, but ne'er 
 so well expressed," and when, if we are to put a 
 simple interpretation upon some of the utterances 
 of Cowper and his contemporaries, the whole 
 business of mankind was to put their house in 
 order for the approaching end of the world. 
 What is more dead, more uninspiring than the 
 
70 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 teaching of this school ? How heartily did Gray 
 and Wordsworth and Coleridge on this side the 
 sea, and Lessing, and the Romantics on the 
 other rebel against it! How confined were the 
 bounds within which the Tragic Muse was to 
 exercise her art, the canons of dramatic art being 
 based on the narrowest of narrow mis-representa- 
 tions of the Grecian critic! And when the 
 French, the leaders in literary taste at the time 
 as at most others, broadened out into something 
 more general, more broadly human and humani- 
 tarian, it was still the literature of the salon, into 
 which no child and no animal could enter. So 
 Taine complains, and the grounds of his com- 
 plaint are the deeper when we see what the ex- 
 clusion of these creatures means to literature. 
 It amounts to the abolition of the naive, the 
 simple, above all, the playful, in which the soul 
 of true aestheticism lies. Perhaps this phase in 
 French literature summed up in the terms Ency- 
 clopaedist and Salon, has not the significance for 
 France that it would have, were not that country 
 so peculiarly situated. Taine says her literature, 
 like her religion and her other institutions, is 
 super-posed, not deep-rooted in nationality like 
 German poetry or English customs. But it 
 must be remembered that France was at the time 
 the leader of Europe, and her salons had corres- 
 pondents in every civilised country. Voltaire, says 
 Diderot wrote not only for the elite in France, 
 but for the whole of Europe. But, one may 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 71 
 
 object, does this not merely show the supremacy 
 of France in things literary over the rest of the 
 European nations ? Has it any general or 
 national bearing ? It has. No nation accepts 
 literary or intellectual principles of any kind until 
 it is ripe to receive them, and in a condition to 
 adopt them as its own. France dominated the 
 whole of Europe because all Europe was passing 
 through this Eighteenth Century Phase. 
 
 And this spirit, widened and warmed, en- 
 lightened and humanised by its international 
 bearing, its association with kings and princes, 
 by the sympathetic influence of women of talent 
 and culture, the exalted views of the philosophes, 
 what was it ? Wherein lay its leading character- 
 istics? Internationalism, sympathy, perfect- 
 ibilite, lucidity of expression, the testing of all 
 things by pure reason, an apotheosis of the in- 
 tellect. Schemes of economic improvement were 
 propounded by Turgot, the lurking vestiges of 
 tradition and superstition were routed by the 
 cynicism of Voltaire, the whole movement was 
 summed up in all its bearings by Diderot. 
 
 This was a great, a broad-minded movement. 
 We try in vain to emulate its breadth at the 
 present day. But in its breadth lay its weak- 
 ness. When sympathy and cosmopolitanism are 
 rife, it is a sign that nationality is sleeping. And 
 it awoke rudely in every direction- in France, 
 with Rousseau and the Revolution; in Germany, 
 with Lessing and Frederick the Great, with 
 
72 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 Wordsworth, and the tardy Reform Bill in Eng- 
 land ; in Hungary, with the rise of the Magyars 
 against Joseph II. Everywhere, and on every 
 hand, doubt, custom, antiquity, prejudice, 
 authority, tradition, cruelty, bloodthirstiness ; 
 but above and below and embracing all, 
 Nationality. 
 
 In the Eighteenth Century Europe was sleep- 
 ing after the Thirty Years' War and the great 
 strifes and commotions of the Seventeenth. 
 Great men had died out and the newer genera- 
 tions were lying in silence, waiting for the rude 
 birth which a new age should hasten. And so 
 politics fell from the hands of Gustavus and 
 Wallenstein and Richelieu into those of women 
 rulers, and infant sons, and the destinies of 
 nations were guided by tutors and regents, place- 
 hunters and favourites. These were the days of 
 Law and Alberoni and Pompadour and Cather- 
 ine mistresses and opportunists. No great 
 blow was struck save in the direction of petty 
 robbery and common intrigue, and the highest 
 aim of politicians was the balance of power, the 
 status quo, rudely shaken indeed by the great 
 awakening in France and the invasions of her 
 national leader. 
 
 To sum up, a nation's development is not 
 necessarily guaged by the state of her literature, 
 but, on the other hand, her literature may be one 
 of the signs of her political position. Literary 
 outbursts are often in the nature of an afterglow 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 73 
 
 from the flame of political crisis. In one case 
 however, that of Germany, we have seen how the 
 rule was reversed, and the political birth of Ger- 
 many was, characteristically enough, prepared in 
 the aesthetic and intellectual sphere, the only 
 ground, in fact, where freedom for such a move- 
 ment existed. And, curiously enough, the great 
 consummation reached, German literature has 
 again subsided, save for a few sporadic out- 
 bursts, into the commonplace and everyday. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY. 
 
 DESCENDING from the nation to the aggregates 
 and corporations which compose it, we have to 
 deal with something akin to the national feeling, 
 but less wide and more particular in its scope. 
 The terms Popular or Collective Sovereignty 
 are intended to sum up that attempt at self-real- 
 isation on the part of a section of the people 
 which is so noticeable in the individual, already 
 treated of in respect of the nation as a whole. In 
 fact, it is difficult to draw the line and say what 
 phenomena should be treated under the head of 
 nationality, and what under the present title. 
 The case of the Irish people I have already dealt 
 with, as it deserves, from the national standpoint. 
 Where a section of a community is marked off 
 by race, language, territory, its movements must 
 necessarily partake of the nature of national 
 phenomena, however political considerations 
 may disguise the outward seeming of the case. 
 But in the area of Civil Wars, where in spite 
 of pre-historic national distinctions the disturb- 
 ances are entirely internal to the circumference 
 of the homogeneous state, in her disputes be- 
 
 74 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 75 
 
 tween men of the hill and the plain, the plain 
 and the shore, between aristocrat and democrat, 
 merchant and farmer, the workings of this desire 
 for sovereignty may be studied. If I have been 
 over-brief in the historical examples hitherto set 
 forth, it is only because they are examples, and 
 subordinate, for my purpose, to the ruling 
 psychological laws which I propose to investi- 
 gate later. This chapter will be on a par with 
 its predecessors in this respect, and I will con- 
 fine myself to a few instances which shall serve 
 to illustrate my meaning and intention, rather 
 than aim at anything approaching historical ex- 
 haustiveness or completeness of scheme or detail. 
 During the recent negotiations over the ques- 
 tion of South African Union, much has been 
 thought and much written about the coloured 
 vote. Whatever may be the feelings obtaining 
 in civilised Europe towards the coloured races, 
 the broadest-minded of Europeans coming to 
 Africa feel that same strange antipathy to the 
 native as is prevalent among the oldest inhabi- 
 tants. Or if a broad sympathetic nature is able 
 to overcome this unreasoned sentiment, yet there 
 is always a feeling of superiority. Give but the 
 native equal rights with the white man, set both 
 on a political equality, and the kindly feeling will 
 receive a rude shock. I cannot say that I have 
 seen any instances of brutality to the natives 
 during my stay in South Africa, the general ten- 
 dency being to treat them well and liberally, so 
 
76 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 long as they are kept in their sphere. The 
 native question is one which I hope to go into 
 more fully in a subsequent chapter, so I will keep 
 my remarks within very narrow bounds at the 
 present juncture. The harm that may be done 
 to the native, the harm that Olive Schreiner has 
 recently raised her long-silent voice against, is 
 that which would arise from carelessness rather 
 than cruelty. One often hears it said in South 
 Africa that the Dutch knew best how to treat the 
 natives, and I think that this statement owes a 
 great deal of its cogency to the fact that the 
 English are too inclined to be easy-going and 
 good-natured. The fault lies in the English- 
 man's laziness and his adoption of the character 
 of the generous magnate who does not bother 
 about details. So long as his native servant is 
 obedient and respectful, does his work without 
 causing worry and annoyance, the English 
 master is not inclined to trouble himself further. 
 If the native steals or cheats a little, it only means 
 a little to the master, and it is not worth worry- 
 ing about. But what does it mean to the 
 " boy ?" If the boy is disobedient in some small 
 thing, it is often passed over, and he soons learns 
 to take advantage of this, and his character is 
 soon ruined. Above all, there does not seem to 
 be enough care as to what the native does in his 
 spare time, and when out of employment. What 
 of the evils which he has had a glimpse of in the 
 towns may he not practice in a degraded kind 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 77 
 
 of imitation, herded as he is with many others of 
 his kind in a sordid "location!'' 
 
 All this may seen gratuitously generous to 
 many European critics. We seize on a people's 
 country and in the height of our generosity try 
 to improve their position as our servants and 
 stipulate that the locations in which we confine 
 them shall be properly regulated. But into the 
 rights or wrongs of conquest and usurpation I 
 do not propose to enter. I start with the fact 
 that we are there, rightly or wrongly, and this 
 is how justice and humanity demand that we 
 shall act if we are going to remain there. 
 
 It was a rude shock to the majority of the 
 whites in South Africa when, under the 
 administration of Mr. Rhodes, the coloured popu- 
 lation of the Cape obtained the right to the 
 franchise. It is maintained by some that this 
 was a party move, and a mere bid for votes. Yet 
 it is difficult to ascribe a motive of this kind to 
 Cecil Rhodes, whose views on the native ques- 
 tion were much more enlightened than those of 
 the general politician. In his breadth of sym- 
 pathy, his world-embracing ideals, he stood far 
 above the crowd who are influenced by the lower 
 emotions, and from what one can glean as to his 
 personal tastes and habits, his claim for equal 
 rights for every civilised man, irrespective of 
 colour, seems to have been formulated in all 
 honesty and sincerity of purpose. 
 
 Yet United South Africa has condemned the 
 
78 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 enfranchisement of the native, and the whole 
 country breathes against the provisions which the 
 draft constitution makes for its curtailment. And 
 few who have to live the South African life can 
 disagree with this sentiment. Nothing is more 
 revolting to the feelings of the visitor from up 
 country than to be pushed off a Cape Town pave- 
 ment by coloured people of every nationality and 
 mixture; or to find every first-class carriage in 
 the local railway train filled by questionable- 
 looking individuals in a horrid and uncouth mix- 
 ture of indigenous and European dress, leaving 
 to the respectable white citizen the alternative of 
 the second or third class (something much worse 
 in South Africa than Englishmen might think), 
 or of making their journey by other means of 
 locomotion. Natives are like children, and when 
 they have a veneer of civilisation, they possess 
 too often the faults of growing youths, with all 
 the rudeness, boastfulness, priggishness, and 
 general uncouthness of youth. And I cannot help 
 thinking that their bearing is largely due to their 
 having been made at least the potential equals of 
 the white man, and this position they are not slow 
 to make the most of. It would be difficult to per- 
 suade the very muddiest of them that they are 
 not whiter than the Englishman. Let it be 
 understood that I am now speaking of the Cape 
 coloured people, who are more mixed, more 
 heterogeneous than the Kaffirs, and are to a very 
 large extent of Eastern origin. The up-country 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 79 
 
 Kaffir is to them what the honest uncouth peasant 
 is to the smart and repulsive barber's assistant. 
 
 I think that from what I have said it may be 
 safely inferred that the granting of the franchise 
 to a coloured population under such conditions is 
 one of the gravest errors of statesmanship. And 
 it illustrates what I propose to bring forward as 
 my main argument, that it is a huge mistake to 
 make a gratuitous gift of that greatest of all 
 social possessions, political sovereignty. This 
 is a thing to be obtained by prayer and fasting, 
 by fire and water, by battle and by blood. 
 
 When Mephistophiles made his compact with 
 Faust, he asked for his signature in blood, just 
 for formality's sake. And, although we learn 
 from sociologists that the tendency of advancing 
 civilisation is to conventionalise the barbarous 
 practices of the past, and " to count heads instead 
 of breaking them," reflection brings out the fact 
 that few lasting popular compacts have been 
 made without some spilling of blood, or its 
 equivalent. Perhaps it is better to say, in 
 deference to modern conditions, that a people 
 obtains nothing until it arrives at the blood-pitch, 
 for it is only by willingness to shed its blood that 
 its earnestness is proved. Intellectual aspira- 
 tions, dialectic speeches are of no account in this 
 matter; it is only the willingness to make the 
 ultimate sacrifice which evinces that unreason- 
 ing determination, all-powerful in the degree that 
 it defies all intellectual scrutiny. The power of 
 
8o LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 a movement may often be judged by its seeming 
 unreasonableness. What can be more alien to 
 the tenets of reason and decorum than the clang- 
 ing din and ranting doctrines of a Salvationist 
 meeting ? Yet in the lack of reason and decorum 
 lies the secret of the power of this body, both 
 socially and in the sphere of religion. 
 
 The doctrine of physical force has been well 
 appreciated by those last aspirants to sovereign 
 power, the Suffragists. You may argue with 
 them till your breath fails you about the proper 
 sphere of woman, and the righteousness of those 
 laws of nature which have given the superiority 
 to man. Woman is showing that she is also part 
 of the law of nature, and she is moulding nature 
 to her will. If woman is determined to share 
 in the sovereign power, no force on earth will 
 hold it from her, least of all the force of logic 
 and dialectic. You may point out to her that 
 she is making herself ridiculous, that she is bring- 
 ing shame and disgrace on her sex. She will 
 only retort by being more ridiculous and more 
 shameless until she has created a new tribunal by 
 which her actions shall be judged. You may as 
 well tell her that it is unwomanly and unladylike 
 to descend to physical violence, as try to enforce 
 the terms of the Geneva Convention upon an 
 army of hostile savages. While you are harang- 
 uing them, they will "assegai " you. Let but 
 a suffragist be killed in a scuffle with the police, 
 and their case is won for ever. 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 81 
 
 What did the surging mobs of the French 
 Revolution care about decorum or gratitude or 
 justice ? What discrimination did they make 
 between a beneficent aristocrat and a cruel one ? 
 What did loyalty, allegiance, mean to them? 
 They were fierce, wild, indiscriminate and they 
 were powerful in proportion as they were un- 
 reasoning. But why should this sea of passion 
 have burst forth at that particular time ? Were 
 the corvees heavier, the taxes more burdensome, 
 the nobles more unthinking, the court more sel- 
 fish than at other times? If we follow Arthur 
 Young we may be disposed to think so, but the 
 soundness of his conclusions has been called in 
 question of late years. Not that every detail he 
 gives may not be true but his is the wrong way 
 to set about things. If you want to collect griev- 
 ances you will find a crop of them in the best 
 managed institutions, just as in the richest and 
 most powerful states you will find the greatest 
 number of instances of poverty. A commission 
 collected statistics of our declining trades a few 
 years ago, and were really able to make such a 
 show as to make the newspapers howl with ex- 
 citement. And yet in the year that so many of 
 these cases were discovered our total trade was 
 booming to such an extent as had never been 
 experienced before. Such a state of things is 
 only to be expected under a Free Trade regime 
 which permits the stronger industry to come in 
 and push the weaker one to the wall. Under this 
 
 k 
 
82 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 system things find their own level, and there 
 must be a constant flow in consequence, and 
 while the most efficient trade is naturally selected, 
 the howls of the inefficient will make themselves 
 heard. Those who are steadily coining money 
 say nothing about it. In the same way Arthur 
 Young may have been deceived. He was not 
 let too freely into the secret of the hoard stowed 
 away in the bed; but every one has a grievance, 
 real and imaginary, and Young found it. On 
 the whole it is better to trust an indigenous 
 genius to the curiosity-hunter from a foreign 
 land, and de Tocqueville should be a safer guide 
 on the state of France before the Revolution than 
 Arthur Young. The former, after making a 
 most careful study of the evidence, has come to 
 the conclusion that the evils pressing upon the 
 peasantry were not more grievous than in former 
 times; in fact, in his opinion they were less so. 
 Further the influence of the Encyclopaedists, the 
 Physiocrats, and especially Turgot, rather made 
 for the betterment of the peasant, in that his im- 
 portance was better appreciated than ever before. 
 As has been said in the last chapter, this was an 
 age of sympathy, not callousness, of enlighten- 
 ment, not cruelty. Moreover, it was an age of 
 rest, and rest to the French peasant, whose 
 horror for war lay in the fact that his lands were 
 laid open to desolation, meant a steady increase 
 in wealth. That poor people do not make 
 revolutions we have seen in our own day, when 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 83 
 
 an Imperial Monarch granted a constitution to a 
 clamouring people, and snatched it away again 
 in all but the merest shadow. But the people 
 were too poor, too down-trodden, too utterly 
 miserable and broken-hearted to revolt. Our 
 historical experience tells us the same thing. 
 What could have been worse than the lot of the 
 French people in the days of the Jacqueries ? 
 But there was then no wide-spread, unanimous 
 rebellion. De Tocqueville's conclusion is, then, 
 that the French rose in revolution at the time they 
 did because they had become rich and powerful 
 enough to do so. He does not quite say why 
 they should want to revolt at all, being so well 
 off, but I think this is explained by that impulse 
 of popular sovereignty, the collective counter- 
 part of the personal "self-feeling," which 
 compels us all, in a greater or less degree, to 
 assert our personality. This particular event is 
 the better understood when we remember Taine's 
 observation that French literature, government, 
 and civilisation were superposed. France has 
 had a magnificent and romantic history, but it 
 all savoured of the chivalric days, even the 
 Homeric. The glory was of the leader, not of 
 the people, and belonged to the days when the 
 well-bred, well-fed noble, who rode into battle 
 clad in mail, and slaughtered hundreds of the 
 rabble armed with scythes and bill-hooks. Until 
 the Revolution the French peasantry could have 
 had no more weight, no more self-feeling than 
 
84 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 an unthinking rabble led out to the battle-field 
 to fight for the glory of their lord, or "le grand 
 monarque." But in the Revolution days the 
 mob learnt to know itself, to realise its power ; it 
 became self-conscious. Since then France has 
 been one body, one unified whole, and whether 
 she be a Republic or a Monarchical State, the 
 fact will remain that every man in France will 
 count, and will share in the sovereignty. That 
 is what France got from the Revolution, and it 
 is pretty safe to assume that that was what the 
 people revolted for. They had a Dictator, and 
 an Emperor, great campaigns, military glory, 
 the foundations of an empire. But none of these 
 things lasted, and none were required to last. 
 But the codification of the laws, the social 
 system, this France kept and keeps to the present 
 day, for they are all part and parcel of the thing 
 she strove for. 
 
 A country situated like France, with a small 
 dominating class and a large subject population, 
 was bound sooner or later to have her Revolu- 
 tion. In England we have had revolutions, too, 
 as the lower strata of society gradually thrust 
 themselves to the top with the usual accompani- 
 ments of earth-quakes and volcanic eruptions. 
 They have been minor adjustments rather than 
 great upheavals, but, for all that, no section of 
 the community has attained to sovereign power 
 without being determined to go to the extremest 
 lengths in order to obtain it. Just prior to 1832 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 85 
 
 Birmingham householders put up notices in their 
 windows to the effect that no taxes would be 
 paid until the Reform Bill was passed. The 
 townspeople began to drill, that they might 
 fittingly receive the Duke of Wellington, who 
 proposed to lay the town in ashes. We cannot 
 doubt, therefore, that the blood-pitch was 
 reached if there was no actual blood shed. But 
 so differently were we constituted from France 
 that no great upheaval was possible. In politics, 
 as in our law, a broadening down from precedent 
 to precedent has been the rule. The reason is 
 that with us there was no superposition of a 
 ruling class and of a strange government. The 
 Conqueror did his work well and conquered both 
 the nobles and the people. But he had good 
 reason to fear his own nobles, his own coun- 
 sellors, his own body-guard, and therefore he 
 made every Englishman swear to be his man as 
 well as being his lord's man ; and, following this 
 precedent, his successors were able to maintain 
 their power by pitting the people against the 
 nobles, being quite confident that the latter weie 
 always but too willing to turn on the people. 
 But, most important of all, in order that the 
 nobles might not wield too much power by virtue 
 of their offices, courts and jurisdiction, the local 
 customs of the Anglo-Saxons were fostered by 
 the Normans and the Plantagenets, so that the 
 chain of these institutions is unbroken from the 
 days of Alfred to our own. 
 
86 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 As there has always been a new class thrusting 
 itself into power on becoming qualified by 
 wealth and influence, so in the governing as- 
 sembly there has been a tendency towards a 
 well-defined division between the old wielders of 
 power, jealously guarding their traditional 
 rights, and the new men, alert and pushful, and 
 ever ready to shear some of the plumes of their 
 opposites. At times, owing to corruption, a 
 faulty system of representation, abeyance of in- 
 ternal considerations during foreign complica- 
 tions, Parliament has not voiced the feelings of 
 the people, and the line of division has been 
 slurred over. But potentially, at least, the 
 division has existed, and it is to a large extent 
 the basis of our party system, which, in spite 
 of its faults when decisive and prompt action is 
 required, is yet something of which all English- 
 men may be justly proud and to which they may 
 accord all honour, since it is a natural growth 
 from our conditions and circumstances. At all 
 events foreigners are wont to lavish on our Con- 
 stitution ana' Party System the warmest of praise 
 and admiration, and even to attempt to adopt it as 
 their own. But, transplanted, our Constitution 
 has not the advantage of the natural growth, and 
 therefore fails in one or other particular usually 
 with regard to the Parties. Our system is based 
 on that of a fight, and for a fight you want two 
 combatant parties, neither more or less. In 
 some countries we find but one party ; in another, 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 87 
 
 several; in a third, none at all. And can you 
 expect them to organise themselves on definite 
 lines, when a clear demarcation of interest does 
 not exist? Such can only come into being in 
 circumstances similar to our own where there has 
 been the steady conflict, first bloody, later con- 
 ventionalised, through the ages. The French 
 people obtained all they wanted at one fell 
 swoop, they were united in their aim, and they 
 have remained so since. How can such homo- 
 geneity resolve itself into opposing parts? If 
 it splits up at all, it must be into minor interests, 
 shades of feelings, predilections, antipathies, and 
 a melee, not a fair fight, is the result. In 
 America, since the North triumphed over the 
 South, these two being the nearest approach to 
 real parties, there has been almost complete 
 homogeneity, and the party system fails. And 
 wherever it fails, be it noticed, corruption of some 
 sort or other is likely to creep in. It is only the 
 constant friction and competition of the party 
 machine which can keep the wheels of state 
 going bright and smooth, without clog of rust 
 or dirt. 
 
 Such are the difficulties arising when a con- 
 stitution is bodily transplanted from one country 
 to another. In the former it has grown up in 
 accordance with the laws of evolution, and it fits 
 there like a glove. But transport it to a land 
 whose history has not prepared it for the change 
 and the result cannot fail, at any rate at first, to 
 
88 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 be without success. Our own party system is 
 the most characteristic factor of our constitution, 
 and it is this that has been most freely imitated. 
 But it is in the imitation of this particular fea- 
 ture that failure has been most general. You 
 cannot create two opposing parties. They must 
 grow. 
 
 J 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 CORPORATE SPIRIT. 
 
 WE have now passed in review the Nation feel- 
 ing, and the impulse of Popular Sovereignty, 
 psychologically the same, differing only as re- 
 gards the sociological status of the bodies they 
 actuate. It is now proposed to take one step 
 lower in the scale, the lowest degiee of which is 
 formed by the individual himself; to deal with 
 him we should have to enter the domain of pure 
 psychology, and study him under the heading 
 of the self feeling. But the scale is not yet com- 
 plete, for we have still to consider this same 
 seeking after self-expression exhibited by smaller 
 bodies within the state, instances of which we 
 are all familiar with under the name of esprit de 
 corps. Jurists and writers on Political Science 
 have dwelt at length upon the existence of cor- 
 porations within a state, and have noted the 
 jealousy with which the state regards them. It 
 cannot be otherwise, for there can exist but one 
 soverign in the state, and the ultimate realisa- 
 tion of the aims of corporate bodies must result 
 in something akin to sovereignty. The law, 
 perhaps, most of all, has found these institutions 
 very trying to deal with, for you cannot imprison 
 
go LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 a corporation if it does wrong, nor, when all are 
 jointly responsible, can you fix the blame on any 
 particular individual. An attempt has been 
 made of late years to get over these difficulties 
 by systems of registration, and articles of incor- 
 poration drawn up in legal form, whereby the 
 exact aims and liabilities of corporate bodies, as 
 regards commercial matters, at least, are clearly 
 laid down and responsibility to a certain extent 
 fixed. Yet there remain many social corpora- 
 tions with general and undefined aims which 
 cannot be brought within the four corners of regu- 
 lations without unjustifiable tyranny towards the 
 freedom of the person. In England we should 
 be especially familiar with these, for by the tacit 
 assent of the sovereign people, we are spiritually 
 and temporarily ruled by them. 
 
 It is curious to contrast France, whose Revolu- 
 tion made a clean sweep of the old estates and 
 placed everything on the footing of reason, lucid- 
 ity and uniformity. Such things as a recognition 
 of the right of the Church to sit in the Sovereign 
 Assembly as one of the Estates of the Realm, or 
 a tacit concurrence in rule by lawyers, belong to 
 the past, and are no longer tolerated there. That 
 France has had her difficulties in this respect, 
 even in recent times, is evidenced by the recent 
 conflict with the Church. But in that country 
 medievalism is at an end, and the Roman 
 Catholic Church, aiming, like most ecclesiastical 
 bodies when time and opportunity allow, at 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 91 
 
 temporal power, was forced to acknowledge 
 defeat. The Churches are viewed in the same 
 light in most of the more advanced states, and 
 in all our colonies. They must confine them- 
 selves to their proper sphere, the spiritual world, 
 or come into deadly conflict with the sovereign 
 people. Yet in England it is the same with our 
 customs as with our hotels, which all colonials 
 fight shy of on account of their antediluvian 
 arrangements. ' Ours is the country of natural 
 selection, and Nature is so slow about it. 
 Should not the rule of the survival of the fittest 
 reach its period with the advent of the intellec- 
 tual state, which is able to judge of what is most 
 fit? We will relegate this question for later 
 consideration. Yet freedom from revolution is 
 dearly bought at the cost of petty tyranny 
 suffered at the hands of bodies who owe their 
 prestige to crusted antiquity. It is all very well 
 for our country to be a Museum to which 
 Americans can flock to see a belted earl, a mitred 
 bishop, and a bewigged barrister, and our 
 national vanity is flattered in the possession of 
 such things, especially as we can descant upon 
 our national freedom at the same time ! But we 
 are not quite where we were in the days of Pitt, 
 when England could thank her insular position 
 for her monopoly of the world's trade. Other 
 nations, now that the demon of war is slumber- 
 ing, are placed more on a par with ourselves, 
 and enjoying the full advantage of our experi- 
 
92 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 ments, copying our successes, avoiding our mis- 
 takes, are running us very close in the world's 
 competition. Let the Englishman drop his talk 
 of tariffs, the weapon of the ignorant and in- 
 efficient, and determine, once and for all, to cut 
 away his gaudy impediments. How can com- 
 merce thrive when there are so few openings for 
 those who have left the Board School to obtain 
 technical instruction, when the pith and mar- 
 row of our intellectual youth are seized by those 
 monastic institutions, the Universities, and 
 taught to calculate in Asses and Sesterces ? 
 What political freedom can there be, so long as 
 by consent of the people the lawyer element pre- 
 dominates in Parliament, framing legislation in- 
 comprehensible to the many, which can only be 
 brought into operation by the employment of 
 the profession in their business capacity ? How 
 long will we tolerate this law which " broadens 
 down from precedent to precedent,*' having its 
 foundations in the musty darkness of the Middle 
 Ages? How long will the King's and the 
 People's law be in the hands of a private cor- 
 poration, admission to which is largely depend- 
 ent on the performance of mediaeval rights ? How 
 long shall a share of the sovereignty be in the 
 hands of that special corporation, the Church, 
 whose tenets and beliefs are disproved by the 
 laws of science, by which its members are fed and 
 clothed and ministered to in sickness ! 
 
 A friend of mine, a Civil servant, was refused 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 93 
 
 the rite of marriage by a Bishop, on the ground 
 that he had not been baptised. This rite was 
 refused by the State's Bishop to the State's ser- 
 vant. Ecclesiastically, the Bishop was quite 
 within his rights, and my friend had other means 
 to resort to. If he did not conform to the Church 
 of England, he had no right to demand of 
 the Bishop, as a member of an ecclesiastical 
 body, to have the ceremony performed under his 
 auspices. But why is he the State's Bishop? 
 
 Such an anomaly would not be tolerated in any 
 of our colonies, nor would any single one of the 
 anomalies above mentioned. Yet, strange to say, 
 the political feelings of the Colonies are all on 
 the side of the Bishops, the Lawyers, the Lords 
 at home. A fact, which shows how little 
 reason and logic enter into history and politics, 
 and which will be reserved for later considera- 
 tion. But let me pause; I see that my rational 
 feelings have won the upper hand, and that I 
 have become a partisan instead of an enquirer. 
 My theme is that history and politics are ir- 
 rational. 
 
 For brilliant study of the various corporations 
 fermenting in the France of to-day the Church, 
 the Nobility, the Army and the Jews I will 
 refer the reader to M. Anatole France's series of 
 works clustering round the figure of the amiable 
 M. Bergeret. In England we have our own 
 army problem, but on its social and constitutional 
 side it cannot have the importance which it has 
 
94 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 in the "conscription" states. With us the 
 Army is one of the closest of Corporations, and 
 its members look askance at the civilian as an 
 uncouth bird with no pedigree and ragged 
 plumage. But the uncouth fowl are in the 
 majority, and as most of them are unaware of 
 the manner in which they are regarded, and, if 
 they knew, would not be sensitive on the point, 
 the matter is of little consequence. The great 
 bearing which this state of things has upon 
 society is in the direction of efficiency. Setting 
 aside the growing class of professional soldiers, 
 one still meets with a few officers of the old 
 school, who are inclined to take up the stand- 
 point that the State owes them a living, irrespec- 
 tive of their merits. But the average citizen is 
 beginning to look for full value for his money. 
 Perhaps that is why the old rates of pay, fixed 
 in the days when a soldier was considered to be 
 a roving bachelor, without ties and liabilities, and 
 a man of family and means to boot, tend to be 
 continued in the older arms, although the 
 officer has developed into a Church-going married 
 man, who has to pass examinations, and is sup- 
 posed to be equipped with a certain amount of 
 technical knowledge. The officer very naturally 
 complains; the State, like Brer Rabbit, says 
 nothing. Perhaps the two are at cross pur- 
 poses, and each waits for the other to make a 
 move. The officer wants better pay for his in- 
 creasing duties; the State, on the other hand, 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 95 
 
 may have a sub-conscious uneasiness about the 
 changed conditions. The Army, like the 
 Church, must necessarily fall short of efficiency 
 in so far as it is a social function on the one 
 hand, and handicapped by tradition on the 
 other. In these days of competition, as much 
 keenness and knowledge are required from the 
 soldier as from the architect or civil engineer. 
 The days of the dashing, mustachio'd, amorous, 
 reckless and brainless cavalryman, are gone by, 
 and if the nation is tolerant of the old institu- 
 tions in this branch of her service, it is because 
 of her latent intuition that the Army is not her 
 only line of defence. 
 
 There is another corporation of a rather unique 
 kind which has at one time or other been the 
 cause of trouble in almost every European State. 
 It may be wondered why I do not treat this ques- 
 tion under the head of Nationality, for it is a 
 nation whose position I am about to discuss, a 
 nation which, strange to say, has given up its 
 nationality, that treasure which most people 
 defend with their life-blood. There has been 
 much said and written of a repatriation of the 
 Jews, but a sudden change in the character and 
 impulses which have persisted for eighteen cen- 
 turies is scarcely to be expected. The " Wan- 
 dering Jew " is too used to wandering to give it 
 up at once. Besides, as I propose to show later 
 on, such a change of policy would be contrary to 
 the principles of evolution and development of 
 all nations. 
 
96 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 Why are Jews so hated by all the peoples 
 among whom they settle ? Are they physically 
 repulsive ? On the whole they are a handsome 
 race. Is their presence detrimental to the State ? 
 As unofficial bankers they have always been 
 most useful. Do they possess a low intellectual 
 and moral standard ? In the realms of know- 
 ledge and the arts they have always been 
 supreme, and recent investigations show the 
 morality of their poorer classes to be above the 
 average. Is it then simply as a corporation that 
 they are hated ? Is there a secret political reason 
 for the feeling? It is hard to think so, for far 
 from making a parade of solidarity, there appears 
 to be a tendency to conceal their difference from 
 the rest of the population. And yet for the con- 
 stant endurance of persecution probably no race 
 which has ever peopled the earth can equal their 
 record. Why should this be ? 
 
 It was once suggested to me that the constancy 
 of this antipathy was due to the Jews never hav- 
 ing fought their persecutors, that the great blood- 
 seal had never been given to make a lasting com- 
 pact. There may be something in this reason, 
 for, if we consider the humble ass, the reason for 
 the contempt with which he is regarded can only 
 be due to the submissive manner in which he 
 bears the harshest treatment. We are most of 
 us, too, familiar with the cruelty so conspicuous 
 in herds of animals, as it is among savage races 
 of mankind, and even among the civilised when 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 97 
 
 the passions have been so roused as to burst 
 through the thin veneer of culture, when a weak 
 member has fallen into a position of disadvan- 
 tage. The persecution thus finds several 
 parallels in Nature. But to me the reason sug- 
 gested seems to be only a partial one. We must 
 go back a step further and ask " Why have the 
 Jews been reluctant to shed blood in their 
 defence?" The answer seems to be " Because 
 they are a socially unemotional people." Have 
 we not seen that they have sacrificed, of their 
 own accord, that greatest of all social emotions 
 nationality ? Yet, what, if we examine it, is this 
 vaunted nationality? Why should the same 
 feeling, when applied to one's village be sneered 
 at as parochialism ? And may we not look for- 
 ward to a day when even nationality and patriot- 
 ism will be regarded as things of man's infancy? 
 The world took from the Jews their Jehovah, and 
 adopted their monotheism ; they also took from 
 the Jewish people the iiK&v whereby the Es- 
 sence might be comprehended. In exchange it 
 gave persecution and hatred. But this great 
 originative race has still a gift which may not 
 be wrested from her, the intellectual ev ?TJV, the 
 freedom from unreasoning collective impulse. 
 The Jews, like philosophers, have stood aloof 
 from the silly conflicts of nations, and have let 
 the fools struggle for folly and fame, language, 
 empty titles. But when the fight was over and 
 half the combatants on each side slain, they have 
 G 
 
98 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 always been on the spot to reap the benefit. 
 Thus wise men reap the benefit of folly. 
 
 Is there a necessary antipathy between the 
 emotional and the intellectual nature? Not 
 essentially, I think. But if the intellectual 
 nature is to increase at the expense of the 
 emotional, there is every reason for antipathy. 
 This is just the ground on which latent impulse 
 would grow. If some day the nations of the 
 world are to sink all their national individual- 
 ities in a broad, intellectual cosmopolitanism, 
 there is every chance for those who have been 
 first in the field taking a long lead, especially as 
 many throats must first be cut under the old 
 regime. But whether our secret impulses carry 
 us as far as this, it would be difficult to say, 
 and perhaps the real reason, after all, may be 
 but instinctive cruelty where there is no retalia- 
 tion, coupled perhaps with a sentiment of aver- 
 sion for those who are unlike both in nationality 
 and character. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW OF EMOTION. 
 
 THE exact science of to-day is playing havoc with 
 the ideals of our grandfathers. Ruskin railed 
 against modern competition, modern invention as 
 though they were evil spirits grinning with de- 
 light as they removed the last vestiges of poverty 
 and tiadition from the world. But let the 
 laudator temporis acti pour forth his sarcasm, 
 backed with all the learning of the ancients, as 
 much as he will, he is fighting no artificial thing, 
 but the great natural movement of events. The 
 electric dynamo does its work by virtue of that 
 same evolution and natural force by which wood- 
 land nooks 
 
 " Send violets up and paint them blue." 
 After all our ancient philosophers are not al- 
 together consistent. These natural, perfectly 
 naive developments they look askance at, yet 
 wish artificially to keep up those old superstitions 
 and customs which, though perfectly natural in 
 their own age, would be the height of artificiality 
 in our own. But it is a phychological fact that 
 as men grow older, their sympathy with the new 
 decreases, and finally leaves them. Enterprise 
 
 99 
 
ioo LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 and love of invention, only found when mankind 
 has reached a certain stage of development, have 
 the same history in the individual as in the race, 
 and fall off in the inverse order of their acquire- 
 ment. Now invention and progress advance in 
 geometrical progression, or, following the rule 
 "To him that hath shall be given," at an even 
 greater rate, and, with our recent freedom from 
 general wars and disturbing influences, the ad- 
 vance has been phenomenal since our fathers 
 were boys. No wonder then that their fathers 
 are more out of touch with extreme modernity 
 than grandfathers have ever been before during 
 the whole world's history. Let us not forget 
 that the old myths, beautiful as they are, are out 
 of place as soon as they no longer apply to 
 modern life, and, although they will always have 
 great antiquarian interest, we could not retain 
 them as the guiding principles of our lives with- 
 out incurring social suicide. Even the greatest 
 protagonist among the clergy of the claims of 
 religion against science, for instance, does not 
 deprive himself of the benefit of electric baths, 
 or the X-Rays, if they will benefit his health ; nor 
 when his earthly battles are about to close, does 
 he fail to call in the most expert exponents of 
 that science which he has vigorously opposed in 
 the exercise of his calling. One gets tired of 
 the oft repeated question, " What do you give 
 us in place of the doctrines taught us in our 
 youth?" It is like the complaint of the man 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 101 
 
 waked from those ineffable dreams which the 
 fatal snow-sleep gives. We cannot presume to 
 offer the truth in place of the old teachings, but 
 we can at least point out the futility of relying 
 upon that which is proved to be false. 
 
 The refined mind finds a great pleasure in 
 dwelling upon the myths with which natural 
 phenomena were enveloped by an infant race, 
 and his love of these things is apt to incite a kind 
 of proselytism. He is happy in this world of 
 thought and association. How beautiful it 
 would be, he thinks, if the mechanic and the 
 ploughman and the child on its way to school, 
 could be filled with the same beautiful thoughts. 
 This cult of the past he begins to regard as 
 something naive, because the ideas originated 
 with simple peoples. In reality his mind is 
 steeped in artificiality, a character which he 
 desires to confer on his straight-thinking con- 
 temporaries. No, the desire for truth and for 
 knowledge is as much an emotion as love or 
 anger, and is as much part of our evolution as 
 they. But it is of later development and appear- 
 ance; in our present state of civilisation, it is the 
 latest, and, accordingly, the first to disappear on 
 the approach of senility. Here is a further cause 
 of estrangement between the new and the old. 
 And, if we look at the question impartially, is 
 there no romance in knowledge and research and 
 striving after truth ? Was there no pathos in the 
 words of the declining Lessing, when he said : 
 
102 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 " If God held in his right hand truth, and in 
 his left the eternal desire for truth, coupled with 
 the certainty of always erring, and said 
 ' Choose,' I would in all humility choose the 
 left hand, and say ' Father, the truth is for 
 Thee alone.' ' Can science boast of no martyr- 
 doms, and those suffered in no frenzy which 
 would abate the fury of the flames, but in pure 
 desire for truth, or Promethean sympathy for 
 mankind? Are not the pleasures of pure know- 
 ledge comparable to those more aesthetic and 
 artificial delights of the fancy ? 
 
 But, however these questions be answered, we 
 have to live this life as it is, according to the best 
 of our lights, and true happiness can only come 
 through doing well that which our hand is set 
 to. Happiness is the result of the full and 
 proper use of all our functions. A dream may 
 confer unspeakable pleasure, but it is ephemeral 
 and unreal, and therefore we must take as our 
 leaders those poets and apostles of duty and real 
 life rather than the faddists and men of taste. 
 Plato would have abolished poets from his Re- 
 public because truth was not the commodity they 
 dealt in, and in our own day the difficulties which 
 exact science has to cope with in gaining a foot- 
 hold are as great as ever. 
 
 The poet and the novelist have found an ample 
 field for their labours in the emotions of man- 
 kind, and their treatment of the subject has been 
 largely accountable for an error in emotional 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 103 
 
 psychology which largely persists to-day even 
 among the exponents of the science. What is 
 more natural to our way of thinking than to 
 imagine some untoward circumstance affecting 
 an individual, and the latter, on comprehending 
 it, falling into a passion, or, perhaps a tremor 
 of fear? The newer school of psychologists, 
 however, reverse the order of the process, and 
 say that the circumstance causes the passion or 
 the trembling, and thereafter we become aware 
 of our feeling. That is, we do not tremble be- 
 cause we are angry, but we are angry because 
 we tremble, and are merry because we laugh. 
 The emotion takes place and our intellect may 
 or may not be concerned. Usually it is con- 
 cerned, and if so, it is only concerned in a second- 
 ary manner. In the lower regions of life we 
 perceive that there are sensations and conscious- 
 ness without there being any possibility of 
 awareness, as with plants and lower forms of 
 animal life. What the nature of emotion is can 
 hardly be definitely stated in the present con- 
 dition of psychological research, no more than 
 we can say exactly what electricity is. We can 
 only point to its effects, and make guesses at 
 the nature of the phenomenon. Definite symp- 
 toms have been established for the various kinds 
 of emotion, namely, derangements and changes 
 in the functions and organs of the body. These 
 are the visible manifestations of the emotion, not 
 the emotion itself. Still, it is maintained that 
 
io 4 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 these are more closely allied with it than the 
 mental concomitants are, the intellectual states 
 of fear, love, and anger. From an examination 
 of the symptoms, enlargement or contraction of 
 certain organs, differences in the flow of blood, 
 abnormal action of the heart, changes of colour 
 and temperature, feelings of nausea, sickness and 
 the rest, it would appear that some chemical 
 change is effected in the body through the sense 
 impression, and that this is the emotion. 
 
 If this view is correct and it is that main- 
 tained by Professor Ribot, one of the most im- 
 portant figures in the phsychological world an 
 explanation would be afforded of those strange 
 spontaneous emotions which we sometimes feel 
 without any support from the intellect, often in 
 its despite. We may feel an unaccountable 
 malaise in a certain person's company, or be 
 affected with positive aversion for him, while 
 nevertheless, our mind can assign no reason for 
 the affection. At other times w r e are affected 
 with grave depression and mysterious forebod- 
 ings without apparent cause or reason. If it be 
 admitted that the intellect is not necessarily 
 affected by emotion, and only then in a second- 
 ary sense, the reason of such phenomena be- 
 comes perfectly clear. We can then understand 
 Antonio's state of mind as described by himself 
 in the opening lines of the " Merchant of 
 Venice": 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 105 
 
 "In sooth I know not why I am so sad; 
 It wearies me, you say it wearies you ; 
 But how I found it, caught it, came by it, 
 What stuff 'tis made of, whereof it is born, 
 I am to learn." 
 
 But there are degrees in people's susceptibility 
 of these unconscious impressions. Those who 
 have studied Dr. Reid's book, "The Principles 
 of Heredity," will remember his luminous 
 account of the way in which man's intellect has 
 developed at the expense of his instincts. The 
 dragonfly comes into the world fully equipped 
 for the battle of life, replete with an uncon- 
 scious instinct to meet every likely emergency. 
 It is so with all the lower animals. They are the 
 productions of a natural selection which has 
 eliminated all limbs and members and all in- 
 stincts which would be detrimental to existence ; 
 at the same time encouraging all those which are 
 useful and beneficial. Just how intelligence 
 arose we are unable to say, but with it came a 
 great change, and the change is greater, the 
 more highly the creature is placed in the in- 
 tellectual scale. When a thing can understand, 
 it can be taught, and the knowledge it acquires 
 by teaching is more elastic, and a far deeper and 
 more trenchant weapon than the old equipment. 
 There is no longer any need to bend to Nature ; 
 by reason, Nature can be bent. But there is 
 always a retribution, and honest instinct which 
 came a volunteer, and was a fairly reliable 
 machine in its own narrow sphere, was lost, as 
 
io6 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 the new acquirement was gained. But this may 
 not be so much owing to a kind of natural 
 justice and compensation as to a much more 
 important fact, namely, that there would have 
 been an eternal conflict between reason and in- 
 stinct, such as is even now experienced in ex- 
 ceptional cases, and this could only have resulted 
 in disaster. And so the child, the culmination 
 of this process, comes into the world helpless and 
 unequipped, but, on the other hand, a perfectly 
 plastic being, docile to the teacher, full of latent 
 capabilities which will be brought out by educa- 
 tion, a ready instrument in the hands of the all- 
 powerful Environment. I say, all-powerful, but 
 this is perhaps going too far. Dr. Reid, as an 
 exponent of Weissmann, is anxious to prove that 
 acquired characters are not inherited, and so he 
 lays great stress on the negative side of the in- 
 fant's position. But as Dr. Reid points out at 
 the same time, heredity in its broader sense is 
 still in play, and the child tends to reproduce an 
 average character of its ancestors; and beyond 
 this he maintains that there is the spontaneous 
 generation of new and unexpected characters. 
 Much of this teaching has to be revised in the 
 light of modern experiment and research, and 
 prominence which has recently been given to 
 the views of de Vries and Mendel. But in the 
 main the position seems sound, and no one can 
 doubt that this intellectual plasticity has been 
 gained, and the old instincts have become 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 107 
 
 atrophied in the human being; and these are 
 the main points I wish to insist on for the pur- 
 poses of my discussion. The comparative 
 method of research has thrown new light upon 
 these subjects, and in the uncivilised and less 
 advanced races of mankind we are able to study 
 ourselves in an earlier stage of development. 
 Further, the study of embryology and investiga- 
 tions into the growth and development of the 
 human being, have clearly demonstrated that 
 the civilised man tends to pass through all the 
 stages, not only of the physical evolution of the 
 race, but also of its social and intellectual de- 
 velopment. Thus we find close parallelism be- 
 tween the ways of savages and children, a f^ct 
 which should be well remembered in dealing 
 with uncivilised and partly civilised peoples. 
 The comparative method also teaches us to recog- 
 nise partial and arrested development in mem- 
 bers of our own societies, and, as few members 
 come up to the highest pitch of development in 
 all their faculties or on every occasion, it also 
 points out to us examples of the same phenomena 
 in the normal individual. In times of weakness 
 or excitement we may feel in ourselves the 
 dominant culture giving way to the latent im- 
 pulses of a lower stage of development or the 
 more primitive instincts of the animal. And, as 
 intellect stands above emotion, so, in the emo- 
 tions, there are grades in the order of develop- 
 ment. At the top are the love and passion for 
 
io8 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 knowledge, the intellectual emotion; a little 
 lower, the aesthetic ; and at the bottom, the primi 
 tive instincts of self-preservation. In pathology 
 the peeling off in order of the latest acquirments 
 can be perceived in the decaying individual, 
 until finally only the animal feelings are left, 
 the desire to eat and drink and live ; a state re- 
 calling the verse of Juvenal : 
 
 " Et propter vitam, vivendi perdere causas." 
 
 There art often met with in society poor crea- 
 tures possessing but half the wit of a normal 
 man, yet gifted to a strange degree on the instinc- 
 tive and emotional side. Readers of fiction will 
 remember many instances, especially in the 
 novels of the Romantic period of literature, 
 when the eerie and mysterious and the irrational 
 were in favour. The wise woman and the half- 
 witted fiddler figure largely in Sir Walter Scott's 
 works, and very beautifully do they play their 
 parts, stepping in to save by their superhuman, 
 or, had we not better say, infra-human know- 
 ledge, where intellect had been unable to cope 
 with adverse fortunes. Modern German romance 
 has a parallel figure in Wieten Penn, the good 
 genius of Jorn Uhl ; she is known among her 
 people as Wieten Klook, that is, Klug, Wise 
 Wieten. She can tell when good or evil fortune 
 is approaching and reads the omens like the seers 
 of old. In the Middle Ages these half-wits were 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 109 
 
 regarded with little favour, chiefly owing to the 
 influence of the Church; but they were greatly 
 feared for their supposed supernatural powers, 
 and if ducking did not quench the evil spirit, the 
 fire was usually resorted to as a safe and certain 
 method. But before the Church held sway these 
 abnormal beings enjoyed better days, and were 
 honoured among the classic nations as prophets, 
 seers, and holy beings, the " insanavates " 
 being a recognised social and religious institu- 
 tion ; and among the Celts and Teutons the bards 
 and alrunas were similarly honoured. Poets, 
 too, were supposed to be possessed of a similar 
 divine madness, and this view of poetical genius 
 is strongly corroborated by modern research. 
 Professor Lombroso seems to have clearly 
 demonstrated that genius normally goes hand in 
 hand with some form of degeneration, and is 
 almost a symptom of atrophy in one or other of 
 the functions; and poetic expression is one of the 
 most characteristic phases of the genius. The 
 normal man, by whom the state of our develop- 
 ment can alone be fairly judged, is punctual, 
 methodical, a good paterfamilias, endowed with 
 prudence and benevolence in due proportion, so 
 that neither out-tops the other. But as he is no 
 genius, so the man of genius has not usually 
 these attributes, or has very few of them. Most 
 great poets have been the reverse of punctual, 
 with no method in their daily life, anti-social 
 creatures, with a code of morals of their own, 
 
i io LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 without prudence or forethought. So common 
 are these faults with this class that their posses- 
 sion becomes almost typical, and a figure like 
 Goethe, possessing astonishing powers of intui- 
 tion and " natural magic," together with the 
 very highest social and beneficient qualities, 
 stands out as one of the great anomalies, an 
 exception to the invective and empirical rule, for 
 there is apparently no hard and fast a priori 
 necessity for the divorce of the great and the 
 good. Shakespeare, in the few lines in which he 
 sketches the character of Horatio, the antithesis 
 of that great example of degeneration coupled 
 witrf negative genius, Hamlet, has shown how 
 well he appreciated these principles, since eluci- 
 dated by science. 
 
 " Horatio, thou art e'en as just a man 
 As e'er my conversation coped withal. 
 
 For thou has been 
 
 (As one, in suffering all, that suffer nothing) ; 
 A man, that fortune's buffets and rewards 
 Has ta'en with equal thanks ; and blest are those 
 Whose blood and judgment are so well :o-mingled, 
 That they are not a pipe for fortune's finger 
 To sound what stop she pleases. Give me that 
 
 man. 
 
 That is not passion's slave, and I shall wear him 
 In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of hearts, 
 As I do thee." 
 
 " Edel sei der Mensch, hilfreich und gut," 
 writes Goethe, and the honest, unimaginative, 
 useful man has been a favourable theme in litera- 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS in 
 
 ture. Meredith's "old dog," who, in his blun- 
 dering, faithful way, proves the soundest man in 
 the end, Dobbin in " Vanity Fair," and, most 
 recent of all, Jorn Uhl, area few examples among 
 the many. But your genius is at once above and 
 below this standard. You cannot live with him ; 
 he has objectionable habits ; he is uncouth in his 
 manners, or he drinks, or deserts his family ; 
 often he has an immoral kink. But on the other 
 hand he has flights of fancy or imagination or 
 intellectuality which carry him beyond our ken. 
 There is something uncanny about him. Things 
 come to him in dreams; your poet often writes as 
 if at the dictation of a superior being; he is 
 "rapt," his functions are not his own for tie 
 time. His astonishing bouts of sensuousness, 
 when he seems to be holding communion with 
 the essesence of things around him, his intermit- 
 tent feeling of kinship with Nature and her spirit, 
 his interpretation of her moods, his seeming 
 acquaintance with the language of birds and the 
 habits of animals, are unattainable by the normal 
 man, but however great and admirable they may 
 be, however helpful and inspiring to the best, 
 they must, in a way, be considered to be but 
 lapses into the lower world of emotion and in- 
 stinct. The uncanny cleverness, and the certainty 
 of effect remind us of the qualities displayed by 
 the Red Indian and, still more, by the dog. Such 
 perfections are part of the lower world, of that 
 nature which equipped the young dragonfly with 
 
ii2 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 all her armour for the battle of life, or the pigeon 
 with its instinct for home ; they are not the normal 
 part of the race which has given up certainty on 
 a low level for the privilege of erring on the 
 heights. 
 
 Closely akin to the poet in respect of emotional 
 capacity is the child. The child is a poet in his 
 way; and the poet, to be good, must always be 
 something of a child ; to carry the imagination of 
 childhood into the power of manhood is, accord- 
 ing to the magician Coleridge, his great function. 
 And as " the child is father of the man," so is he, 
 in a way, man's ancestor, for he is passing 
 through a stage through which mankind once 
 passed. The child has wide sympathies with all 
 in Nature; he knows objects by secret names, 
 and is acquainted with their inner virtues. 
 Things animate and inanimate are his playmates, 
 and he is not widely differentiated from them. It 
 takes a clever hypocrite to deceive a child. So 
 here again we see emotionalism ascendant over 
 intellectuality, and it is associated with imma- 
 turity. And while we are dealing with the sub- 
 ject, it may be suggested here that many of those 
 telepathic phenomena which excite the curious at 
 the present day may be caused by a reversion, 
 temporary or otherwise, to a state of emotion- 
 alism and instinct to which the intellectually 
 sound are usually strangers. When the pigeon 
 flies direct to its home over miles of unknown 
 country, when the swallows fly to the South, 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 113 
 
 when the dog scents out the hare, we do not 
 bring in any supernatural interpretation to the 
 facts. Yet many less wonderful incidents in 
 human life are so explained. Of course, some of 
 them are of a very different character from any- 
 thing which could be experienced in the lives of 
 animals, yet others, which we are so apt to regard 
 as supernatural, might they not be sub-intellec- 
 tual ? At any rate, strange affections and anti- 
 pathies, hopes and forebodings might be so 
 explained, for they have all the symptoms of 
 emotions. 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 WOMAN AND EMOTION. 
 
 ASMUS SEMPER, in Otto Ernst's charming 
 romance, used to worry himself when he could 
 only grasp mathematical problems intellectually. 
 This was not enough for him ; he wanted to feel 
 them, just as he could feel that an equilateral 
 triangle was equilateral. Thus, in the perpetual 
 wave-motion of evolution, after deserting instinct 
 for intellect, we come back to a sort of shorthand 
 of the brain which is practically a new instinct. 
 Reflex action belongs to the realm of instinct, 
 but after a time custom teaches us to answer with- 
 out the necessity of reflection, and to add up 
 figures mechanically, and thus confers a reflex of 
 use. In this way the mathematician comes to 
 " feel " the solution of a problem. 
 
 But we are far from having exhausted the cate- 
 gory of beings in our own society who are pre- 
 eminently emotional in the primitive sense. It 
 is well known that, with the increasingly intellec- 
 tual, competitive and nervous life of woman, her 
 maternal capacity is much lower than under the 
 old conditions. We may go further and say 
 that the motherly side of a woman and her intel- 
 114 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 115 
 
 lectual side are in constant rivalry, and each is 
 intolerant of the other. There appears to be the 
 same compensation here as in the case of intel- 
 lectual development of the race, the intellect 
 increasing at the expense of the emotional and 
 instinctive side. Normally the limited vital 
 force goes to feed one kind of machinery or the 
 other, the mechanical-instinctive, or the elastic- 
 intellectual. But, in the light of the Mendelian 
 theory, we need not suppose that the instinctive 
 altogether decays in whole or part, but would 
 rather imagine that it is recressive beneath the 
 intellectual dominant. That is, it is always 
 there, and may crop out undisguised in a future 
 generation, or in the individual himself, given 
 the necessary conditions. And although in 
 woman the sex qualities and the instinctive 
 nature that accompanies them may exist in a most 
 astonishing way side by side, this must be looked 
 on as rather an exceptional, although always pos- 
 sible, instance, and comparable to the co-exis- 
 tence of na'ive poetic genius and moral, practical 
 method in a Goethe. An astonishing case of 
 this kind once came to my notice ; a lady of excep- 
 tional brain-power and intellectual attainments 
 was also possessed of emotional and instinctive 
 qualities quite strange to the sphere of civilisa- 
 tion and culture. Her sense of smell would tell 
 her infallibly by which member of her family 
 an overcoat had last been worn, to take a simple 
 instance, and rooms and houses conveyed mean- 
 
ii6 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 ings to her connected with past history and 
 associations to her senses. In a woman who was 
 less intellectual this would only be a case of the 
 exceptional development of the instinctive and 
 emotional qualities which are necessarily con- 
 nected with the sexual functions. The latter oc- 
 cupy so much more space in a woman's life than 
 in a man's, and they are much less easily got 
 away from. A man may lose his sex, and the 
 tendency of his development has been for him to 
 do so, or to let it slip into the background. But 
 the instinct of motherhood is not so easily got 
 away from, and thus, though a man may become 
 a philosopher, a woman nearly always remains a 
 woman. So, as man has become more civilised 
 the nature of woman has become more and more a 
 mystery to him, and he recognises that there is 
 a gulf fixed between them, a gulf which his 
 powers are unable to fathom. He looks and won- 
 ders at the ease vvith which she comprehends 
 things which took him hours of patient study to 
 discover, at her decision in times of crisis, her 
 certainty in times of doubt. A man works out 
 the probabilities as to which is the best course 
 to take ; a woman often feels which is best. When 
 I meet a man, I think him a good fellow, and 
 afterwards regret the day I met him ; or I am at 
 first repelled by his manners and afterwards find 
 him a sterling friend. Had I asked a certain 
 lady friend of my acquaintance, she would have 
 told me straight, not perhaps the character 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 117 
 
 of each, but whether he was " nice," as she 
 would call it, or the reverse. Her feeling in that 
 case would not be analytical, but she would 
 have an instinct of attraction or repulsion, she 
 would sense danger or the reverse, as a dog 
 would. This quality of detecting friends, to be 
 observed in animals and children, savages, and 
 women, is one of those old instincts which the 
 intellectual man has lost. 
 
 Woman's animal nature, by which I mean 
 simply the physical side of her existence, has 
 been perpetually with her in the past, and as it 
 is her strength, so it has been the source of her 
 weakness. Always subject to times of weakness, 
 she has been abused by the stronger half of the 
 community and enslaved. She soon found that 
 happiness could only be secured by pleasing 
 her victor, and the kind who pleased most have 
 tended to increase most. Thus selection has 
 developed the sexual side of woman and its con- 
 comitants, and even the champions of her ad- 
 vancement admit that she is over-sexed. Now 
 that individuals have shown sporadically what 
 woman can do, that she is not necessarily de- 
 barred from the higher walks of life by her sex, 
 a new era may set in with woman the intellectual 
 rival or companion of man, and sex may fall 
 more into abeyance to the advantage of the whole 
 community. But it is often risky to dabble with 
 Nature's method's and to attempt to supplant 
 a natural by an artificial selection. Nature as a 
 
u8 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 rule prevails, and in this case the sexually in- 
 clined would have a natural advantage as re- 
 gards increase over the opposite kind. But that 
 is really no argument at all if we are bent on 
 doing things thoroughly. We have interfered 
 with natural selection ever since the state came 
 into existence for the sake of the tu *}v, and 
 if critics carp at the failures of state socialism 
 one can retaliate that it is only because the pre- 
 sent measures are not thorough for the state 
 spells socialism, and necessarily entails it. 
 
 But however woman's position may be im- 
 proved by the endeavours of her protagonists, 
 the fact of motherhood cannot be got over, and 
 so long as it exists, which will probably be as 
 long as our race, woman will possess instincts 
 directed towards the preservation of her offspring, 
 and kindred feelings. Her emotions will always 
 be stronger than man's for that she can not be 
 dissociated from the physical functions which 
 entail them. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 COLLECTIVE PSYCHOLOGY. 
 
 IT may be wondered what my object was in de- 
 voting a chapter in a book of this character to 
 female psychology. My reason is that the latter 
 furnishes me with a most useful parallel for 
 phenomena in the sociological sphere. There 
 have been many theories as to the nature of the 
 civil state, from the ancient Greeks downwards, 
 and in politics as in many other sciences the cry 
 of " Back to Aristotle " is often raised after long 
 meanderings in mazes and by-paths. But if we 
 are unable to say much more to-day about the 
 reason, laws and nature of the state than the 
 Greek philosopher, the study of natural science 
 has at least been of some assistance in furnishing 
 illustrations and analogies which may in time 
 help to further elucidate the theory and reasoning 
 of the subject. It is obvious that there are two 
 concurrent existences in the state, the individual 
 and the collective, and there has been much 
 theorising as to the relations which subsist or 
 which should subsist between the two. The 
 vague impulsive reasoning of the Contrat Social 
 set men thinking, if it gave them little light, and 
 later the Utilitarians strove to lay down rules 
 119 
 
120 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 which should strike the balance between the two 
 claimants. Those who hold that the individual 
 should regulate his actions for the public good 
 is met by the objection that all the individual's 
 actions and impulses are and must be selfish or 
 self-regarding; then the exponent of the His- 
 torical method attempts to smooth over the 
 difficulty by showing that self-regarding actions 
 which were deleterious to the community would 
 tend to decrease with the necessary elimination 
 of their perpetrators, and thus self-regarding 
 actions which were also useful to the community 
 would gradually predominate. When the state 
 begins, at least, the self-conscious state, the old 
 natural selection ends, and a new biology, a new 
 evolution comes into being, and a sociological 
 must take the place of a physical science. But 
 this, I think, is within limits. For inasmuch as 
 biology has, by the examples it has furnished, 
 afforded great assistance in the elucidation of 
 sociological problems, I am inclined to think that 
 the cleavage between social and natural science 
 has been too premature, and that the state, or any 
 collection of individuals may yet be studied 
 biologically. 
 
 The state has by some been compared to cer- 
 tain forms of marine life, for instance, the 
 Hydroid Polypes, whose nature is colonial. 
 The group possesses a number of components, 
 each of which is an entity, with its own organs, 
 and functions. Yet the nourishment, and well- 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 121 
 
 being of the whole depends on that of the parts, 
 and as the part cannot live without the whole, 
 neither can the whole without the parts. The 
 one implies the other, and the two existences go 
 on together, each wrapped up in the other. We 
 may study an individual of the colony, as we 
 may study an individual in the state, or we may 
 regard, in each case, the whole collectively, ac- 
 cording to our point of view. There are some 
 things of which a definition cannot be given, 
 and we are obliged to fall back upon description 
 or analogy. In the present case if it were im- 
 possible to define the state, this natural analogy 
 would afford a very tolerable indication of its 
 nature and composition. 
 
 When we get beyond the region of analogy 
 and strive to explain sociological phenomena 
 biologically it is a more serious matter, and a 
 bountiful equipment of scientific knowledge is 
 requisite for absolute proof. I therefore confine 
 myself to suggestions which I hope may in time 
 be scientifically corroborated. But it is on them, 
 nevertheless, that I base the whole intention of 
 this work. In the earlier chapters I think it 
 has been conclusively shown that there is evi- 
 dence of popular impulse and feeling outside or 
 beneath the region of intelligence. We are 
 familiar with kindred psychological phenomena 
 in individuals. If now it can be proved that 
 the state or the group, considered apart from its 
 components, has a psychology of its own, a satis- 
 
122 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 factory explanation is obtained of the historical 
 facts discussed in the earlier half of this book. 
 
 Anyone who has observed the evolutions of 
 those huge flocks of starlings which are to be 
 seen in England in the Autumn, the extraordin- 
 ary oneness of their motion, especially if they 
 be gyrating about a hawk or other enemy, cannot 
 fail to have wondered whether the uniformity 
 was not due to some single impulse shared by 
 all animals accustomed to live, act and find their 
 nourishment in groups. To say that the unison 
 is merely caused by successive imitation is to 
 ignore the simultaneousness of the movements. 
 And if such an objection be raised or a similar 
 one that all followed the lead of a single in- 
 dividual it would be somewhat begging the 
 question, for you do not get away from the fact 
 that, even then, there is unity of purpose in 
 choosing the leader, or in the formation of a 
 group. I admit that the original grouping 
 might be considered to have arisen through a 
 similarity of individual desires and impulses and 
 to be a mere totalising of units, but such a view 
 is not in accordance with our own experiences 
 nor the teachings of evolution and history. We, 
 ourselves, as part of a crowd met together for 
 some special purpose, are different from our- 
 selves as individual beings. In such circum- 
 stances we are suddenly brought under the sway 
 of a wave of enthusiasm, emotion and anger, 
 which in subsequent solitude we have reviewed 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 123 
 
 with astonishment. We can imagine the Mag- 
 yars in their collective enthusiasm shouting 
 Moriamur pro reje nostro y when stirred by the 
 misfortunes of Maria Teresa, while her appeals 
 might have made no impression on them in- 
 dividually. Thus we cannot fail to recognise 
 that the crowd, even casually collected, has a 
 psychology. It seems only reasonable to sup- 
 pose that the unity of action in a group of animals 
 whose community of interests has drawn them 
 together is of the same nature, and the same 
 argument would apply to that most important of 
 all groups the State. The reasoning of 
 Rousseau might lead one to think that the com- 
 pact to hang together was a matter of the in- 
 telligence. Later study has shown it to be a 
 feature of natural evolution. The consideration 
 of the Folk and the Hundred, the Gens and the 
 Tribe, shows these to be spontaneous and not 
 conscious developments ; and whether the many 
 drops on the surface be collected into one, or 
 whether the one be divided into the many, 
 we may be certain that definite intention 
 had little to do with the occurrence. The wild 
 dog is a <f pack" animal because the living in 
 a pack is, owing to natural selection, a condition 
 of his existence. It is the same with man, whom 
 even Aristotle recognised to be a " naturally " 
 social animal. To be social and political has here 
 again been a condition of existence, and since 
 man did not become social intentionally, it does 
 
i2 4 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 not seem unreasonable to assume that the state 
 was formed by virtue of the possession of a 
 common and collective instinct by its members. 
 And since it is hard to suppose that the State 
 could have remained a permanent institution 
 without some dynamic foundation of this sort, I 
 think we may take it that the very formation of 
 the State manifests the existence of this col- 
 lective instinct. 
 
 Men did not meet together and say " It will 
 be to the advantage of us all to have a State," but 
 before they knew it they were one, and began 
 to wonder afterwards how it came about. Nor 
 is it sufficient to suppose that all the wills were 
 individual, but happened to be the same. How 
 could there be any prospect of permanency and 
 unity for the future, since each will is subject 
 to variation ? The State in its young and vigor- 
 ous days is remarkable for its singleness of aim 
 and purpose. Further a most important con- 
 sideration the general purpose is often at var- 
 iance with individual advantage, and can only 
 be carried out by the sacrifice, perhaps the death, 
 of the individual. This seems a most convinc- 
 ing argument that the State as a collective body 
 has an instinct, a will, a purpose of its own, and 
 that like the individual and the species, it 
 develops in its own way and conforms to the 
 necessities of life in accordance with the all- 
 controlling law of the survival of the fittest, until 
 the realisation of itself opens a new era when 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 125 
 
 artificial gives way to natural selection under the 
 aegis of socialism. Mr. Benjamin Kidd, in the 
 " Principles of Western Civilisation," has main- 
 tained that the underlying groundwork of this 
 civilisation was sacrifice, and sacrifice on the 
 part of present generations for the benefit of 
 future ones. To a certain extent this view har- 
 monises with my theories, but I would join issue 
 on the nature of the sacrifice. He has the 
 highest opinion of the Anglo-Saxon race and its 
 future development, and in his " Social Evolu- 
 tion,'* expressed the opinion that advance, by 
 means of the competition produced by altruism, 
 which in practice can only mean socialistic legis- 
 lation, was the main characteristic of this people, 
 an advance which would ultimately secure their 
 predominance over the whole of the globe. 
 With regard to Mr. Kidd's theories, always 
 worthy of deep thought and attention, I shall 
 have something to say later on ; but at the present 
 stage it may be sufficient to point out that 
 there are two kinds of sacrifices in this connec- 
 tion, the one, the blind emotional sacrifice which 
 induces a man to lose his life for his country; 
 the other would be a deliberate sacrifice with a 
 view to the production of some form of 
 Uebermensch in later generations. Now it would 
 seem that the Anglo-Saxon race with its con- 
 stant avidity for territory and elbow-room, its 
 continual finding of difficulties and muddling 
 through them, and its instinct for colonisation, is 
 
126 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 possessed of that emotional temperament which 
 leads it to make its sacrifices blindly, without re- 
 gard to any ethical idea in the future. Any such 
 deliberate attempt would be more reasonably 
 expected in a nation which has learnt to limit 
 its population, and thus has no need to be blindly 
 rushing into movements destined to provide for 
 its overflow; as, for example, the French, who 
 have much more inclination and much better 
 opportunity for bringing political proposals to 
 the touch-stone of reason. And I am not so 
 sure that this kind of sacrifice may not be the 
 most fruitful in results for the future. 
 
 But such considerations scarcely belong to the 
 state as conceived of hitherto, and before we deal 
 with the Ideal Republic we must give further 
 attention to the State as history has known it. 
 Most writers on Politics, Ethics and Jurispru- 
 dence have recognised the difference which exists 
 between the ideas of the people corporately ex- 
 pressed, as in religion, politics, and law, and 
 those of the most cultured individuals in the 
 society. In fact, the moral feelings as mirrored 
 in these three ways are usually found to lag 
 behind the times, for, as religion ana' law tend 
 to become stereotyped in the hands of a con- 
 servative and exclusive class, so they usually 
 remain in the rear of the general ideas of the 
 community as to what is right and fitting, and, 
 a fortiori, still further behind the notions of the 
 most advanced spirits of the age. In politics, 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 127 
 
 this feeling has been expressed as early as 
 Grotius' time, who considered nations to be to 
 one another in statu naturali, that is, between 
 nation and nation the law was the law of wild 
 beasts and savages, where might is right, and the 
 strong can not be gainsaid. Now it is mainly in 
 her external dealings that the State manifests her- 
 self, for in her internal politics she resolves her- 
 self into various units and entities, and there is 
 room for the individual to exercise his functions. 
 Here humane and intellectual considerations 
 may to some extent prevail, and there is a sanc- 
 tioning power to restrain and to punish. But in 
 her external relations she knows no law, and can 
 only act as advantage appears to lie. Here she 
 resembles an animal, and possesses all the 
 emotions and instincts of such, a condition of 
 things doubtless strengthened and perpetuated 
 through the absence of any law or sanction. So 
 we see that, as the origin of the state was in- 
 stinctive and unintelligent, so its being and 
 essence have been of the same nature ; and though 
 man has developed and individuals have attained 
 to the heights of morality and intelligence, yet 
 man, corporately expressed, has remained an 
 animal still. The State, when she represents 
 the sovereign people, may to some extent be 
 regarded as the rude mother of us all, who is to 
 provide room and draw materials for our exist- 
 ence, and who has retained all the instincts of 
 maternity, so that her sons sometimes wonder at 
 
128 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 her inscrutable ways and supernatural powers. 
 Sometimes she seems to scent danger from afar, 
 to know by instinct who are her enemies. She 
 leads her children into strange lands, but her in- 
 stinct often has a strange infallibility. She 
 appears to sense what is best for her children, 
 though the wisest look askance at her works, 
 But the wisest are not those who make history. 
 As man wonders at the strange ways of woman, 
 admires the certainty of her instincts, ponders on 
 the inscrutability of her ways, so may philo- 
 sophers ponder on the vagaries of the community ; 
 for, to me, the State is a woman. 
 
 We have seen how she knew her business in 
 the days of Rome and Carthage, in the Indepen- 
 dence War of America, in the French Revolu- 
 tion. We have observed similar workings in 
 sections of the community, the North against the 
 South in America, both so distinct as to be prac- 
 tically separate States; in the gradual or sudden 
 acquisitions of power by lower strata of society 
 in England and France, a new state superposing 
 itself upon the old; in the policy of the 
 Athenians in the Peloponnesian War, 
 the expression of feeling of a body 
 which made itself supreme and practically 
 became the State. This collective emotion is met 
 with in any body of people united by community 
 of feeling and purpose. It may be the State, 
 or a union of States; it may be merely a cor- 
 poration or an aggregate of ephemeral duration. 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 VARIETIES OF SOCIAL INSTINCT AND EMOTION. 
 
 THERE exists with regard to the human being a 
 whole gamut of instinctive and emotional re- 
 sponses to stimuli, the former expressing them- 
 selves in internal action, the latter in internal 
 feeling, and modification of the functions of the 
 body, stretching from the primal instinct of con- 
 servation, expressing itself in mere greed, to the 
 highest feelings connected with man's religions, 
 aesthetic and intellectual nature. As, however, 
 we do not expect social feeling to reach as high 
 as the ideals of the most advanced individuals of 
 a community, in whom the higher feelings dom- 
 inate to a more or less complete extinction of the 
 lower, we shall not be surprised to find 
 that social emotions are usually of the 
 lower order, seldom attaining to any ethical 
 elevation. Mere devouring greed, the character- 
 istic of the lowest forms of life, and generally 
 concealed with care when existing in man, is, on 
 the other hand, the order of the day in the life of 
 most virile states. It was with the ancient East- 
 ern empires, it was with Rome, to a more 
 modified extent with Greece; Spain experienced 
 it, and since the coming into being of the com- 
 i 129 
 
130 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 mercial, colonial empire, it has become the 
 normal characteristic. Let it not be thought that 
 this is written in a carping spirit, or that I wish 
 to detract from the credit of my own nation, who 
 are, perhaps, foremost in the game as it is 
 played. Greed in a man is repulsive, because 
 such a one falls short of our ethical standards. 
 But who shall set up an ethical standard for a 
 nation, any more than he shall set up a sanction 
 which shall put an end to international quarrels ? 
 While there is no court and code of ethics, so 
 long will there be war and nations be in the 
 " state of nature." But on the other hand it is 
 useless to deny that such are our principles, or 
 that such are the principles of most nations to 
 whom opportunity comes to put them into 
 practice. 
 
 Of all the men who have summed up in them- 
 selves in the loftiest and yet the most honest, 
 guileless manner, the modern English Imperial 
 principles, the foremost is, perhaps, the late Mr. 
 Cecil Rhodes. He was the man who set himself in 
 the forefront of empire, bearing the burdens on 
 his own broad shoulders, leaving his country 
 only the benefits ; the man who kindled 
 enthusiasm and was followed because he summed 
 up the wishes of the majority of the nation. His 
 views are characteristically expressed in the fol- 
 lowing words of his : " Having read the histories 
 of other countries, I saw that expansion was 
 everything, and that the world's surface being 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 131 
 
 everything, the great object of present humanity 
 should be to take as much of the world as it 
 possibly could." And to Rhodes it seemed best 
 for the world that England should take as much 
 as she could. If it be held that Rhodes is too 
 characteristic an "emotionalist" to quote, it 
 must be pointed out that philosophers have held 
 the same view or something akin to it. Mr. 
 Benjamin Kidd thought that the great principles 
 of altruism and advance thereby would be best 
 secured by the predominance of the Anglo-Saxon 
 race. Recent events, however, seem to have put 
 the question beyond doubt, that the main object 
 of the modern State is to expand, to found 
 colonies as homes for her superfluous popula- 
 tion, and at the same time to open up markets. 
 There are besides the acquisitive, other phases 
 connected with the instinct of conservation, 
 namely, the emotions of anger and fear, respect- 
 ively the aggressive and the recessive forms. 
 The former often expresses itself in deeds of 
 violence, harmful to the individual affected' and 
 others, external to him ; harmful to the individual, 
 too, are the transports of fear. The workings of 
 both seem to be well illustrated in the undiscern- 
 ing suicidal frenzy of the French Revolution, 
 resembling that of a maniac tearing himself in 
 pieces. The cruelties of the Revolution have 
 furnished a fair field for the writer of romance, 
 and he has been able to draw the most startling 
 and vivid pictures without incurring the charge 
 
132 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 of exaggeration, being fully justified by the old 
 proverb that truth is stranger than fiction. To 
 the historian, however, who should regard events 
 in the daylight of reason, these frenzied out- 
 bursts seem well nigh inexpressible, so out of 
 keeping are they with the normal course of 
 events. That a people's passions should so 
 suddenly be aroused, and as suddenly subside, 
 seems to challenge an explanation which history 
 of herself is unable to afford. The reason can, 
 I think, only be found in the application of 
 psychology to the problem. It is to be observed 
 that the floods of passion reach their highest level 
 just at the times when France was in the throes 
 of political danger, that of external oppression. 
 With the booming of the guns at Valny in the 
 distance, fear and panic are unbounded, and 
 frightful vengeance is wreaked upon those who 
 are supposed to be in treasonable correspondence 
 with their allies. When external danger is 
 over, the atrocities also cease, and when her posi- 
 tion is established, France can endure that a 
 Bourbon should again ascend the throne of his 
 ancestors. This is all in line with the 
 phenomena to be observed in the individual 
 under the influence of anger and fear, or both 
 combined. He becomes like a maniac, and 
 harms not only others, but himself. In the same 
 way France did untold harm, not only to her 
 nobility, but to herself as well. 
 Personal emotions seem to be somewhat in the 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 133 
 
 nature of chemical actions ; the quickening of the 
 pulse, the enlargement or contraction of certain 
 organs, feelings of nausea, changes in external 
 appearance and the like, can be best explained 
 on such a supposition. If the same explana- 
 tion can be given to corporate emotion of 
 this kind, the effects are certainly compar- 
 able, for the internal events of the Revolution 
 resemble nothing so much as violent chemical 
 action, and even explosion. 
 
 It is interesting to note, from the point of 
 view of any general argument, how singularly 
 the emotions expressed during the Revolution 
 partake of the corporate nature. If the explana- 
 tion of the atrocities is correct, one cannot fail 
 to be struck by the fact that the dangers which 
 threatened were not for the individual, but for 
 France the new France, which was emerging 
 from the melting pot under the eye of the revolu- 
 tionaries. It was a case of a new state super- 
 posing itself upon the old. The corporate feel- 
 ing which had already expressed itself in the 
 desire for the new state, still persists in its 
 anxiety for the product which is in the making. 
 
 That natural characteristic of cruelty to the 
 weak and helpless, so noticeable in herds of 
 animals, and still to be observed in savage races 
 as well as in our own impulses on certain occas- 
 ions I remember reading a Professor's account 
 of how he perceived that he was affected with 
 real pleasure and satisfaction in thrashing his 
 
134 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 dog must also be connected with the instinct of 
 conservation, and has been fortified by the pro- 
 cess of natural selection ; for the weak and suffer- 
 ing are of no avail in hunting and in warfare, 
 but they still have mouths to feed. The tribe or 
 pack, therefore, which got rid of these natural 
 encumberances, would stand a better chance of 
 survival, other things being equal. Examples 
 of this kind in social history would be common 
 enough to find, but that already quoted of the 
 persecution of the Jews would appear to be most 
 characteristic. 
 
 Another form of anger is displayed in the 
 bolder and more justifiable hatred shown by a 
 nation for its enemies for the time being. We 
 have seen striking instances in our times the 
 hatred of the French and the Germans at the 
 time of the Franco-Prussian War. The hatred 
 of the Americans for the Spaniards in similar 
 circumstances, and the passions aroused in 
 the Boer War. The strange thing is 
 the suddenness with which these feelings 
 die out. Anyone even suspected of pro-Boer 
 leanings during the war ran the risk of having 
 his windows smashed ; yet immediately after the 
 declaration of peace, people could hardly find 
 flattering enough expressions to characterise the 
 virtues and qualities of their late foes. All of 
 which tends to corroborate the view that the 
 hatred is due to the emotion of fear a kind of 
 poison in the blood, unreasonable, untrue, but 
 absolutely natural. 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 135 
 
 The emotion was due to danger, and when this 
 is past, the passion dies out, and reason takes its 
 place, unless the pendulum swings too much in 
 the other direction, and feelings of a too sanguine 
 and generous nature are generated. 
 
 The "conservation " instinct on its defensive 
 side, fear, is also abundantly exemplified, and 
 has to some extent been dealt with. In common, 
 perhaps with another feeling, it may be held to 
 explain that phenomenon already treated of, that 
 confiding surrender on the part of a people of its 
 power and individuality to a despot in times of 
 crisis. The times of Henry VIII and Napoleon 
 have already been mentioned in this connection. 
 So destructive and unbeneficial an emotion as fear 
 can hardly, one would think, be alone responsible 
 for courses so useful and advantageous. It 
 would appear that the self-feeling, egotism, plays 
 some part in such processes, but in its negative 
 form. The temporary suppression of the " ego " 
 seems here to be attended with most beneficial 
 results. 
 
 We have touched on a feeling it is scarcely 
 an emotion which is, perhaps, most paramount 
 of all in national life. Pure greed of possession 
 is not the sole motive for national expansion, and 
 is far from being the exclusive spirit of modern 
 imperialism. When Rhodes, a characteristic 
 English Imperialist, desired to paint as much of 
 the world red as possible, it was not so much with 
 the intent that his country should gain so much 
 
i 3 6 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 more wealth, although he did consider that 
 to a certain extent, but rather with the conviction 
 that it was the best that could happen to a terri- 
 tory to come under the British flag. That un- 
 reasonable, sentimental notion of patriotism is at 
 the bottom of it, the feeling that we have for our 
 school, our county, or country. It must be un- 
 reasonable, for all countries, all towns, all schools 
 cannot be the best, yet each man thinks his 
 own the best and the rest nowhere. The 
 Germans are probably just as much of opinion 
 that it would be best for Africa to come under the 
 German Eagle, and it is only natural that they 
 should do so. But the opinion is not necessarily 
 reasonable, and who is to judge which is right. 
 It is a case of *' devil take the hindmost." This 
 esprit de corps, parochialism, patriotism, call it 
 what you will, has persisted from the earliest 
 times to our own St. Paul felt it when he said, 
 "I am a citizen of no mean city," the Roman 
 gave expression to it in the words sum civis Ro- 
 manus, and so on without end and it is the most 
 characteristic form of social emotion, so charac- 
 teristic, because so illogical. It is the ground of 
 most of the great conflicts of the world, and the 
 secret of the advance of most of the great powers. 
 The Roman, solid, unimaginative, with a genius 
 for law and organisation, never avoiding any mis- 
 sion, yet, it would seem, ever conscious of one, 
 summed up in his sense of duty, duty to him- 
 self, and duty to his country. So Nature works, 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 137 
 
 and under the veil of a pretext, pride in one's 
 own nation, duty to one's fatherland, perfects her 
 great schemes for the world's advance. Civilisa- 
 tion succeeds civilisation, each endowed with a 
 spirit which shall enlighten the world', yet the 
 movers work by the dim light of patriotism, the 
 self-feeling of the State. Who knows what 
 lesson future inhabitants of this globe may not 
 glean from Britain's history, while we blindly 
 work out our principles with the proximate object 
 of painting the world red ! 
 
 But besides the territorial issues there are 
 others connected with this unconquerable feel- 
 ing, chief among them being that of " honour." 
 Professor Gardiner, in discussing the question of 
 arbitration as affecting the gradual extermination 
 of war, held that this method of settlement might 
 be effective in many cases, but never in the event 
 of a people's honour being concerned. Honour is 
 a foolish thing, but that is why it has such power. 
 It may be unreasonable, but men have died for 
 it and so will peoples. They will run the risk 
 of extermination for its sake, and no considera- 
 tions of ultimate gain, nor will any moral, ethi- 
 cal, or political bar restrain them; for the sub- 
 mission to certain circumstances would put an 
 end to their "ego" altogether; though they 
 might continue to exist, they would be no longer 
 "they," and as for morals and politics, these, 
 like English law, are made as we go along, and 
 no people will be content to be judged by a stan- 
 
i 3 8 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 dard the subversion of which is the very object of 
 their struggles, in that they desire to change the 
 status quo. Any kind of detriment will be suffered 
 by a state rather than a blow at its "ego," for 
 without that it is no longer a state, but merely 
 a conglomeration of individuals. The self-feel- 
 ing, unconscious as it may be, is yet the absolute 
 essential to the existence of a state ; we can, there- 
 fore, understand how it is chiefly instrumental in 
 the growth and paramount in the international 
 affairs of the commonweal. 
 
 Every emotion has its pathological form, and 
 the self-feeling is by no means an exception. An 
 exaggerated idea of one's own importance, exces- 
 sive pride and sensitiveness are common enough 
 faults in individuals, as also diffidence, humility, 
 and self-abasement, the negative forms of the 
 feeling. Among the historical instances already 
 taken, one at least may possibly be explained by 
 this morbid form of emotion, I refer to the great 
 campaigns of the French under the victorious 
 Napoleon. If, as one of their writers suggests, 
 the feeling of "honneur" was at the bottom of 
 their extraordinary enthusiasm displayed in these 
 years of conquest, the self-feeling must neces- 
 sarily be regarded as the cause, and since its 
 working was abnormal and led beyond the 
 limits of utility and common-sense, it is hardly 
 an exaggeration to regard the motive as 
 pathological. 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 AESTHETIC AND RELIGIOUS FEELINGS. 
 
 WE have hitherto been engaged on emotions 
 usually considered to be the concern of the indi- 
 vidual, and I have attempted to demonstrate that 
 collections of individuals may also possess such 
 emotions or something so similar as to be practi- 
 cally the same. The others which I have to touch 
 on are different in that they are recognised as 
 being of a social character. The aesthetic feeling 
 has already been dealt with in connection with 
 national literature, but its psychological side has 
 but been glanced at. The tendency of peoples 
 and individuals to busy themselves with arts, 
 plays, games, and music is a strange thing in a 
 world of utility, and much labour has been spent 
 in its explanation. The survival of a tendency, at 
 first sight purely ornamental, in a struggle for 
 existence which would appear to preclude the 
 carrying of useless impedimenta, only shows that 
 this activity is by no means useless. The impor- 
 tance of play as a school for the struggles of life 
 has been recognised since Schiller's time, ana' 
 much has been written about it since. I have 
 already alluded to the new light shed upon the 
 
140 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 subject by Dr. Reid's book, and little more need 
 be said here. Play, and art, the child of play, 
 are the result of a superabundance of energy and 
 motive power, which is utilised in some form of 
 activity whose object is internal to itself. On this 
 all good critics agree, that the beauty and com- 
 pleteness of an object of art lies within itself, and 
 should neither borrow external aid, nor purpose 
 to lend aid externally. Otherwise it is incom- 
 plete, or becomes utilitarian. But the play atti- 
 tude itself must, nevertheless, be regarded as a 
 great asset in a people. Yet, since the old social 
 forms of aesthetic activity have been dissolved and 
 become individualised, the Greek play, for 
 instance, having been torn limb from limb and 
 divided amongst the three sisters the Drama, 
 Music? and Dancing may we not ask whether the 
 feeling has not lost its utility, since that utility 
 was in the main social? On the other hand, it 
 would appear that a close connection exists 
 between the aesthetic and the intellectual senti- 
 ments, and the latter and intelligence itself must 
 be reckoned as the best equipment for modern 
 social life. 
 
 " Nur durch das Morgenthor des Schonen 
 Draugst du in der Erkenntnisz Land." 
 
 says Schiller of mankind in his relation to know- 
 ledge, and if it cannot be admitted that intelli- 
 gence is the child of the aesthetic sentiment, yet 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 141 
 
 I think it cannot be denied that it has much to do 
 with the Intellectual Feeling, that desire for know- 
 ledge and enthusiasm of wisdom which marks 
 the highwater-level of the emotional life. We 
 know that poetry was chanted before it was 
 written, and that men adorned their persons 
 before they applied themselves to pictorial art, 
 and signs, and eventually writing and pictures 
 could only have been the outcome of this super- 
 abundant energy expended in play. And those 
 who first wondered at the signs were at last 
 struck with their possible utility, and so grew the 
 house equipped for the use and preservation of 
 the spirit of intelligence. 
 
 The religious feeling is also an emotion, and 
 hence the difficulty of treating of it. If it were 
 a matter of intelligence or scholarship, or any- 
 thing of the kind, people could discuss it with- 
 out heat. As it is, however, when one comes to 
 discuss it, one party always takes refuge behind 
 a book, dogma, or watchword, which for him is 
 ultimate truth ; you cannot get beyond that, so 
 you may as well take your scaling ladders away 
 and retire to your camp. Yet it seems so curious 
 that you can talk socialism, evolution, criticism 
 with your friend, and he will probe everything 
 and bring to it the best of intelligence, yet in the 
 thing upon which you think he would want to be 
 sure of his ground, he stops you at the first 
 trench. You cannot get within that, and neither 
 dare he. He does not know what skeletons and 
 
142 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 emptiness may lie in the interior of his religious 
 camp, and he would rather not enlighten him- 
 self. How many critics of Homer regard the 
 Higher Criticism as blasphemous ? How aston- 
 ishing it seems to behold, as we sometimes do, a 
 man of great political or worldly wisdom, or a 
 broad-minded scholar, carry out to the last jot 
 and tittle the ritual and outward formalities of a 
 creed in unquestioning and childlike faith and 
 simplicity ? Is this weakness and cowardice, or 
 is it owing to the blind spot on the retina ? At 
 first sight this conduct seems inconsistent. Yet 
 really it is not so, although the last case I have 
 put is an instance a trifle abnormal, more so on 
 the Continent than with us. The intellectual 
 nature is one thing, the emotional quite another, 
 and religion belongs to the emotion. And just 
 as one has aversions and dreads which have no 
 reasonable foundation, things which the better 
 judgment laughs at, yet one has them just the 
 same, and they are undeniable facts. So it may 
 happen that a man knows that he is not applying 
 his critical powers to his religious beliefs, knows 
 that he is taking many of them on trust, knows 
 that much of his ritual is formal and out of date ; 
 yet in spite of his intelligence he has these beliefs 
 and carries out the observances. It is an aftair 
 of the heart, not of the head like history. 
 
 I said that this inconsistency was more com- 
 mon in our own country than on the Continent, 
 and foreigners laugh at us for it, as they laugh 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 143 
 
 at many of our hypocrisies, as they term them. 
 But it is not hypocrisy. We are certainly out- 
 wardly inconsistent, and the reason is partly our 
 insular position, and partly a result of this insu- 
 larity the permanency of our traditions. These 
 traditions have not only been fostered by our 
 kings, but, owing to our freedom from invasion, 
 and our inapproachableness generally, they have 
 been fostered; and as " corporations " have had 
 free play with us, so have the traditions, rites 
 and ceremonies appertaining to them. Strange 
 that we should talk of the emotional nature of 
 the French, when we ourselves are a standing 
 monument of emotion. But, it may be asked, 
 are we not the gainers by this characteristic, and 
 do we not remain a religious people, when other 
 nations appear to be given up to " Godless- 
 ness " ? Religion, viewed from a psychological 
 standpoint, is a great force, and, moreover, it is 
 a natural growth, and is therefore not to be 
 lightly treated. On the other hand, as an expres- 
 sion of the emotion, it belongs to the past, rather 
 than to the future. Professor Ribot, in his 
 " Psychology of the Emotions," a book to which 
 I am deeply indebted for many of the psycho- 
 logical views herein set forth, has clearly shown 
 how religion, probably personal in its origin, 
 but social in its development, is most virile in 
 the earlier stages of society, in the days of mystic 
 rites, social ceremonies, the frensies of crowds 
 and enthusiasm of multitudes. It is in essence 
 
144 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 non-moral, as we see from examples of its early 
 history, from Druidical and Indian sacrifices of 
 a murderous character, and only with the advance 
 of society does it become associated with the 
 moral feeling. To-day we are inclined to judge 
 of religious actions by examining how closely 
 they conform to the moral standard, and the more 
 enlightened look with some superiority upon the 
 drum-beatings of the Salvation Army, and even 
 upon such an emotional phenomenon as a Welsh 
 Revival. Ritual indeed survives with us, but it 
 is mainly a survival, a symbolism of things which 
 were at one time actual and social facts and it is 
 something else as well, of which more hereafter. 
 It is only with the more enlightened part of the 
 community that the wedding of religion and 
 morality takes place. There are instances enough 
 to be seen every day to prove that the two have 
 a different origin, and a different nature, however 
 beautifully they may work together in compact. 
 We are often struck with the absolute devotion 
 of a people whose daily lives seem quite at vari- 
 ance with their religion, and we are inclined to 
 put the anomaly down to hypocrisy. But this is 
 often incorrect. It is a well-known fact, based 
 on the evidence of doctors, prison officials, and 
 others who have every opportunity of knowing, 
 that thieves, murderers, and prostitutes are some- 
 times the most passionate devotees. When one 
 comes to think it out, this is only natural. These 
 people are throw-backs from modern social life ; 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 145 
 
 their intelligence and their higher emotions are 
 atrophied. Their lower and animal emotions 
 and the lower they are, the stronger we must 
 expect to find them have full and uncontrolled 
 sway at the expense of the intelligence and the 
 higher and moral feelings which, weak at first, 
 have gradually lost all their inhibitory power. 
 And coupled with these instincts one finds the 
 religion of the lower, more emotional and more 
 objective type. 
 
 I have striven as far as possible to treat my 
 subject scientifically and analytically, inquiring 
 into things as they were, without troubling as to 
 how they should be. I have broken away from 
 this rule once, however, and here I think I must 
 do so again. In a way I am forced to adopt this 
 course, for so hedged 1 in is the subject of religion 
 in our country that one is unable to treat the sub- 
 ject, even analytically, without causing offence. 
 How different is it in Germany, where the 
 broadest and most advanced critical views are 
 treated of in ordinary novels without shyness or 
 concealment ! Or in France if such an atheifjti- 
 cal country is not ruled out of court ! But surely 
 the time has come to brush aside these traditional 
 ways of thinking. It is impossible not to appre- 
 ciate the force of Dr. Reid's argument in "The 
 Principles of Heredity," that since the formation 
 of a child's character, and, therefore, that of the 
 race, depends upon environment, and principally 
 upon teaching, we must look to it that such teach- 
 
 K 
 
i 4 6 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 ing is sound, and really educational. A child in 
 its early and most plastic days blindly accepts 
 what we teach him, and his whole future charac- 
 ter is moulded by this early training. And when 
 he comes to teach himself, his way of taking 
 things in will depend on how he has been taught. 
 The day will come when he will have to decide 
 for himself between the true and the false. If he 
 is to go into business, we would be very careful 
 to prepare his mind so that he would not accept 
 everybody's word on trust, or be taken in by 
 mere appearances. And yet, in the most impor- 
 tant things of all, he is told to accept certain 
 statements absolutely without proof and without 
 examination. No question is allowed on these 
 points it is blasphemy to question them ! This 
 is fine training indeed for our future race, train- 
 ing which cannot fail to have deleterious effect 
 upon the whole manner of thinking of a future 
 generation. It is impossible to impose this 
 method upon a child without warping his intelli- 
 gence and deranging the machinery of his 
 thought. Either he will become inconsistent 
 and unbalanced, one of the "hypocritical" Eng- 
 lishmen whom foreigners laugh at, or a day will 
 come when he finds a flaw in the system, and 
 finding part untrue, he will place the whole in the 
 same category and lose all feelings of religion 
 and reverence. 
 
 But, one may say, is not this simple faith, this 
 childlike submission a beautiful thing have you 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 147 
 
 not admitted it to be part of man's emotional 
 nature? Yes, but let us distinguish. There is 
 a difference between letting an emotion develop 
 naturally and fostering it unnaturally to the 
 inevitable detriment of other qualities. Man 
 has rightly or wrongly thrown over the life 
 of instinct and impulse, and adopted that of intel- 
 lect. That is the line of our advance, and those 
 who would subject the intelligence to emotion are 
 enemies of the progress of mankind. Man is 
 what he is by virtue of his intelligence, not of his 
 emotions. 
 
 How few men do we meet in England who 
 could, like Lessing the German, stand up and 
 say, "Give me the everlasting striving after 
 truth, rather than truth itself." This is the only 
 honest position for a mortal to take up, for the 
 absolute truth is beyond the reach of mortals. 
 But most of us prefer to stand behind the card- 
 board fortifications of our fathers and mothers 
 and great aunts, saying "If you take these, what 
 have we left? Give us something we may call 
 truth at any price, even though we may suspect 
 some of it to be false. It is not right even to 
 suspect. It is unorthodox and contrary to the 
 principles on which our society is based." 
 Cowards! These are the people who groan 
 about the increasing power of Germany. But 
 not only Germany, Japan, nay, China, will wipe 
 us off the face of the globe if this is to be the 
 school in which the youthful intelligence of our 
 
148 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 country is to be nurtured. And do not let us be 
 afraid that by looking life firmly in the face by 
 the light of God's choicest gift that His throne 
 will be shaken. What blasphemy to think that 
 it can be based on a lie ! At least, if the truth is 
 for God alone, let us be as much like Him as 
 possible, by getting rid of all that our intelli- 
 gence shows us to be false, even though we may 
 never attain the truth. Religion is part of our 
 emotional nature, it is natural. Well, let Nature 
 do her work. If we interfere, the product is 
 exotic, not natural. If our religion is stripped 
 of certain forms and outward semblances, let it 
 find others of itself. We shall doubtless con- 
 tinue to be thrilled by the narration of a noble 
 action, be prompted to good by generous 
 impulses, succumb to a wave of devotion in 
 moments of solitude, stretch out our hands for 
 help in times of loneliness and sorrow, be over- 
 whelmed by the consciousness of the Great 
 Presence in gazing on the mighty mountains. 
 Let Nature do her work, and let the " Compli- 
 cated Capsticks " take their goods elsewhere! In 
 these days of national competition they are too 
 expensive a luxury. 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT (Continued). 
 
 IT is interesting in our present connection to 
 deal with an emotion which is in itself of a social 
 character. We have not, in such a case, to show 
 how it, as a personal emotion, displays itself 
 socially, but merely to examine phases of its 
 nature and history. Its origins are buried in 
 doubt and uncertainty, and this owing to the 
 wealth rather than the scarcity of ideas upon the 
 subject. But whatever they be, we may expect 
 them to be of a manifold nature, and many and 
 various may be the causes of the growth. Setting 
 aside many of the current explanations as some- 
 what fanciful, and savouring too much of the 
 a priori method, we should be safer in pinning 
 our faith to ancestor-worship with its anthropo- 
 morphic tendencies, since its growth into a sys- 
 tem of religion can be traced under our very eyes 
 among savage and uncivilised nations. But 
 you will do well not to question the savage over- 
 much on the subject, for as Mr. Dudley Kidd 
 points out with regard to the Kaffirs, any tinge 
 of suggestion in your questions will sterilize 
 149 
 
150 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 their ideas in a most fertile and contradictory 
 manner. The fact is they feel their religion, if 
 such it may be called, without reasoning about it. 
 But an ancestor, near or remote, forms the centre 
 of all they feel about the spirit- world, and since 
 he is a common ancestor to a larger or smaller 
 group, the feeling becomes social at once, and a 
 link is formed with the Bacchic orgies of the 
 ancients and their local and national religious 
 functions. 
 
 The more personal side of the religious feeling 
 is probably due to the savage's child-like inclina- 
 tion to regard everything as alive, and so he 
 forms associations with a community around 
 him ; and as objects become more and more real 
 to him, and this reality is manifested beyond a 
 doubt, yet he cannot get over his first ideas, and 
 he talks of the spirit of the object, just as he sees 
 a counterpart of himself in his shadow. But 
 such considerations have not much bearing on 
 the social side of the question, except this: it 
 will be interesting to note how a people's religion 
 is moulded by early surroundings and environ- 
 ment generally. 
 
 The early gods are very personal things ; there 
 is not much spirituality about them. In Ancient 
 Greece they are numerous and varying as the 
 phases of nature and the moods of the versatile 
 inhabitants. The country is divided by nature 
 into numerous fertile valleys separated from each 
 other by lofty mountain chains. The way was, 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 151 
 
 therefore, prepared for early development, and 
 for that sensuous point of view which is the out- 
 come of easy and pleasurable surroundings. So 
 Greece was divided into many small states, each 
 rejoicing in a constitution and a highly developed 
 culture of its own. But as this people never 
 attained to political unity, so, on the other hand, 
 they were incapable of monotheism. This was 
 the creation of a very different type of race, whose 
 manner of existence forms a striking contrast to 
 that of the Greeks. The Hebrew has always 
 been characterised by his depth of thought ; the 
 Greeks, on the other hand, were rather polished 
 thinkers than deep. The Greek's ideas were 
 concrete and clear cut, the Hebrew's deep, mys- 
 terious, rather of the "Romantic" character. The 
 Greeks lived on familiar terms with their gods, 
 who were gay spirits like themselves ; the Hebrew 
 God was regarded with fear and trembling. How 
 can these differences be accounted for ? Brush- 
 ing aside superficial reasons we must ultimately 
 arrive at the crucial distinction the geographi- 
 cal one. Perhaps, as immediate surroundings 
 are chiefly concerned, it would be better to say 
 that the difference was topographical. The 
 Hebrew had no smiling valleys protected by a 
 sheltering wall of mountains and watered by 
 delightful streams. Such surroundings invited 
 a people to stay and enjoy them, to reap the 
 fruits of the land in peace, to found cities, to 
 establish government and cultivate the arts. But 
 
152 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 the Hebrew's lot was to drive his flocks and 
 herds about the country, sojourning on one spot 
 only so long as food and water lasted. His 
 mode of life was therefore necessarily nomadic, 
 and as a consequence there could be no particular 
 attachment to one locality, no guarding it with 
 jealousy against covetous neighbours, no culti- 
 vating of petty local gods or household deities. 
 The eye could not dwell on local objects long 
 enough, even had there been characteristic 
 objects at hand for the imagination to exercise 
 free play upon, and for child to learn from father 
 all the local associations therewith and hand 
 them down in a more concrete, a more definite 
 form, embellished with wealth of detail. 
 Nature was all on a dead level for the Hebrew, 
 and there were few prominencies round which 
 associations might cluster. Thus, deprived of 
 objects whereon to feast the eye, his nature was 
 bent back upon itself, and in deep and brooding 
 meditation he spent those long days and nights 
 of watching over his flocks. Endless expanse 
 around him, endless expanse overhead, the stars 
 shining in countless millions, as the sand be- 
 neath his feet was unnumbered, the sense of the 
 infinite was impressed upon him every moment of 
 his existence; yet in this infinity there existed no 
 individuality on which his mind could dwell. 
 There was no distraction to interrupt the pene- 
 trating course of his thought, and, as many paths 
 lead to one town, so meditation from all points of 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 153 
 
 view leads if far enough pursued to unity. Thus 
 the great Unity was evolved in the far back ages, 
 and the greatness of the feat may be judged from 
 the fact that the world to-day, broadly speaking, 
 is unable to realise it, while professing and even 
 striving to do so. 
 
 To arrive at unity and simplicity is a work of 
 many years, for the life of early man is full of 
 complications. The simplest and easiest course 
 is not that which suggests itself to the savage, 
 and civilised man finds his time fully occupied 
 in trying to sweep away the complicated growths 
 of custom and tradition. But there is a still 
 deeper reason underlying the tardiness of man- 
 kind in arriving at monotheism. As the savage 
 idea of a personal god, with human passions, 
 desires and a human figure dies out, the deity 
 gradually comes to be regarded as all powerful 
 and all mighty, and finally He is regarded as the 
 origin and cause of everything. Man becomes 
 philosophical and enquiring, and begins to look 
 for the causes of the phenomena which his eyes 
 behold. Some of these he divines, rightly 
 or wrongly, but by others he is baffled ; as also 
 when he looks for the cause of the cause 
 and the cause of that. These unknown 
 causes he comes to regard as wrapped 
 up in the idea of the Divinity, who 
 ultimately becomes an Original Cause. When 
 the deity was merely a person, an idealised man, 
 he was easy of conception, as far as primitive 
 
154 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 mankind strove to conceive. But as soon as 
 they began to reason about these things, the 
 deity became more and more metaphysical. 
 When His personality was given up He became 
 a conception. The philosopher who can give 
 reasons for natural events, is also capable of an 
 abstract conception. This is one of the greatest 
 feats of the mind, and the generality of people 
 are not capable of it, being children in this 
 respect, and like children, preferring things 
 to be personal and objective. It is because this 
 Lenity involves abstraction that its acceptance is 
 so difficult. The Jews were capable of this, for 
 they have always been one of the most philo- 
 sophical and theorising of nations. And so they 
 are ahead of us in this, as it has been suggested 
 that they may be in politics. 
 
 Monotheism had to be adopted generally by 
 means of a compromise. There is no doubt 
 from the spirit of Jesus' teaching that he incul- 
 cated the worship of One God, but the teaching 
 only became universal by the introduction of a 
 dyad or a triad, an obvious step in the right 
 direction. No criticism of the New Testament 
 or scientific research can detract from the beauty 
 and merit of Christ's teaching, by virtue of 
 which Christian peoples are what they are. But 
 as regards the personality of Christ himself there 
 is more question, and we have reason to doubt 
 the assertions of those whose interest debars them 
 from applying impartial judgment. In France 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 155 
 
 and Germany, where opinions are freer on these 
 matters, owing to the lesser sway of the Religious 
 Corporations and other historical and social 
 reasons, this question is treated with much 
 greater freedom than with ourselves. But the 
 general position of more advanced thought is 
 illustrated by a sermon I heard as a boy from a 
 Presbyterian divine of great learning and 
 position. He said that as God, being a concep- 
 tion, could not easily be grasped by mankind, 
 He adopted the device of sending an eikdn, or 
 image, of Himself, who could be realised, in 
 order that He Himself could by this means be 
 known and loved. It did not require much 
 thought to arrive at the conclusion that if a 
 religious party desired the God they worshipped 
 to be generally accepted, but experienced some 
 difficulty owing to this nature being too abstract, 
 they could not do better than to find such an 
 eikon. Readers who are acquainted with the 
 works of Germany's greatest living novelist, 
 Gustav Frenssen, himself a pastor who has been 
 obliged to throw off the yoke of orthodoxy, will 
 remember that a view very like this is advanced 
 in Hilligenlei. Here Jesus is represented as one 
 of the old prophets, arriving in his country's 
 most critical need, and striving by the inculcation 
 of the virtues of truth and love to revive the 
 spirit of a people crushed politically, morally and 
 socially by the power, the extortion, the decaying 
 rottenness of Rome. It is suggested that the brief 
 
156 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 and bright episode of Jesus' life might have 
 passed into oblivion had it not been for a religious 
 fanatic and enthusiast who spent most of his time 
 in persecuting the Christians. Suddenly it 
 flashed upon this persecutor that this life, this 
 personality was just what was required for filling 
 a people with religious enthusiasm, and Paul 
 became the protagonist of Christianity. He saw 
 the value of the eikon. The general trend of the 
 Gospels is simple, but with the Epistles of St. 
 Paul, the New Testament develops a new char- 
 acter, the dogmatic, dialectic, and hierarchic. 
 Instead of a beautiful story of an inspiring life, 
 we have a whole religious system laid down with 
 all the attendant mysterious, symbolic, and meta- 
 physical concomitants. These views also co- 
 incide to some extent with those expressed by 
 Mr. Anatole France in " Sur la Pierre Blanche." 
 We read in the history of early German poetry 
 how, when the tale of the Gospels was done into 
 this language, the atmosphere and surroundings 
 of Jesus' life had to be translated into the bar- 
 barian warrior environment which the hearers 
 were used to. If Christ were not a Chief, and 
 a man of war, fighting as they did for something 
 tangible, he was no object of veneration for them. 
 This is by no means an isolated instance, and it 
 is more than probable that Christianity generally 
 was propagated by these means. Such a view 
 is confirmed by recent discoveries in the Medit- 
 erranean, which tend to show that certain 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 157 
 
 objects of veneration were age-encrusted before 
 Christianity was heard of, just as much of the 
 ritual of our churches finds a counterpart in 
 legends of the primitive Mediterranean and 
 Eastern races. 
 
 It would appear, therefore, that the legends in 
 which people are nursed are hard of dying and 
 that new doctrines, if they are to gain acceptance, 
 must not cut adrift too much from tradition. 
 This is, perhaps, clearer from a consideration of 
 the great part which the Virgin Mary has played 
 and plays still in the Christian religion. So 
 great has been her exaltation as compared with 
 the position the Gospels assign to her, that some 
 especial cause must have been at work. Her 
 position may be compared with that of Demeter 
 of old, and Isis of the Egyptians, who stand out 
 in strange contrast to Hera and the more tan- 
 gible goddesses of later Greece. In view of the 
 research which has busied itself with the His- 
 tory of the ancient Mediterranean race, I cannot 
 but associate this Mother-worship with the for- 
 tunes of this people. It is generally held that 
 the chief basis of ancient religion is ancestor- 
 worship, and it has been pretty clearly demon- 
 strated that this people was matriarchal. Where 
 the father was uncertain or unknown, descend- 
 ants would look back to, and eventually venerate 
 a woman-ancestor rather than a man. For in- 
 scriptions, chiefly Welsh and Irish corroborating 
 this view, I would refer the reader to that in- 
 
158 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 teresting work, " The Welsh People/' by Pro- 
 fessors Rys and Brynmor Jones. The work of 
 Sergi and others seems to have placed it beyond 
 a doubt that the long-headed men who peopled 
 the Mediterranean in pre-classic times and 
 pushed their way to Germany, France and 
 Britain before the coming of the Aryans, were 
 cradled in Northern Africa, probably the region 
 of the Sahara, where the Berbers now represent 
 them. Egypt was one of their outlets to the 
 lands of the North, and Egypt the land of ancient 
 wonders, preserves more of their associations than 
 any other land. It is a far cry from Egypt to 
 Wales, but, strange to say, the Welsh language, 
 an Aryan tongue, yet preserves the most char- 
 acteristic traits of Egyptian speech. A relation- 
 ship between the two peoples can be traced 
 beyond a doubt. 
 
 The superposition of Aryan language and 
 civilisation has considerably obfuscated the 
 position of this early race, and philologists have 
 gone beyond just limits in attempting to classify 
 peoples merely on the ground 1 of language 
 relationship. It would seem that in these 
 days of ancient conquests a small minority 
 could impose its laws and language 
 upon a whole nation, and as far as records go, 
 the subject people would appear to be wiped out. 
 But careful scrutiny and scientific method has 
 shown that this is not so, and the persistence of 
 dolicephazic skulls of particular shapes in our 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 159 
 
 own days shows how little the Mediterranean 
 race has died out. 
 
 The great problem of the races of Europe is 
 too far yet from definite conclusion for me to 
 base anything more than suggestion upon it, 
 but in the light of recent discoveries I feel myself 
 almost justified in advancing the theory that 
 Roman Catholicism, with its insistence on the 
 position of the Virgin Mary, has found its surest 
 and most abiding foothold in the countries most 
 closely associated with the Mediterranean race, 
 Spain, Italy, France, and Ireland. In the two 
 Southern peninsulas it would seem that when 
 the power of the conquerors had exhausted itself, 
 the nature of the vanquished was at last mani- 
 fested; and religion, being a thing of the 
 emotions, always finds a sure resting place in the 
 heart of a woman, and women survive all con- 
 quests and the ancient tendency would thus be 
 kept alive. Again we have subsidiary reasons 
 for the worship of the Virgin, not only in that 
 this worship would be more congenial to the 
 weaker sex, but also because in states whose 
 manhood is exhausted, woman's position is 
 usually enhanced, as we saw in the case of 
 Eighteenth Century politics. 
 
 But what shall we say of Wales ? Does not 
 her religious history, so strongly evangelical, 
 refute this theory ? I think not, although she 
 possesses many monuments of the pre-Aryans. 
 A large influx of pure Celts seems to have pressed 
 
160 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 right into her centre, and to have driven the 
 ancient inhabitants to the extremities, and into 
 Ireland. Brittany, on the other hand, has 
 always shown a decided hankering after the 
 female element in religion, and I have myself 
 passed through a wood there where stands a 
 statue of Isis, probably brought over by the 
 Egyptian contingent in the Roman army, which 
 is still, I was told, an object of veneration, and 
 throughout the ages has been worshipped, some- 
 times as the Virgin Mary, at others under more 
 heathen titles, to the great disgust of the priests. 
 On the other hand, the Puritanical and Evan- 
 gelical phase of religious thought, no less 
 emotional than the other, if less sensuous, I 
 would be inclined to associate with the descend- 
 ants of the Aryans, especially as the Protestant 
 strongholds are precisely those countries in 
 which these people made their most permanent 
 settlements the countries of Northern Europe, 
 England, Scotland, and particularly Germany, 
 the home of Luther. He, more than most theo- 
 logians has insisted upon the direct personal 
 relationship between man and his God, and has 
 deprecated the go-betweens which are the most 
 characteristic features of priesthood and hier- 
 archy. It may be only fancy on my part that 
 the absence of the female element in this type 
 of religion has any connection with the patri- 
 archal form of society appertaining to the Aryan 
 people, but I throw it out, like the preceding 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 161 
 
 idea, as a suggestion, for what it is worth. 
 
 But apart from historical associations of this 
 kind, there appears to be a broad difference in 
 the emotional bases of these two types of relig- 
 ion, analogous to that subsisting between 
 anger and fear, respectvely the aggres- 
 sive and defensive expressions of the 
 same instinct of conservation. Thus the 
 Evangelical is full of burning zeal, and his re- 
 ligion is an impulse filling his whole life and 
 informing its actions. The Catholic pursues his 
 religious course apart from the world, and he is 
 more inclined to draw a line between the 
 things of the soul ana' those of the material 
 world. The ordinary events of life are 
 not so wont to inspire him with holy 
 thoughts, but he often needs the aid of some 
 material object to bring him into the atmosphere 
 of reverence. This phase is more sensuous, 
 more aesthetic, more indirect and dependent than 
 the other, and has many characteristics of the 
 female nature, while the other partakes of the 
 male. 
 
 I have already suggested, however, that 
 woman, necessarily more bound by men by the 
 exigencies of physical life, preserves in her 
 emotional nature phases which have been lost by 
 her less restricted partner. So in the case of 
 these religious forms it would appear that the 
 more Catholic is the recessive form. By 
 Catholic, I do not wish to signalise the adherents 
 
 L 
 
162 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 of the Roman Church alone, since there is an 
 obvious movement in favour of symbolism and 
 mysticism to be observed among some of the 
 Protestant sects. The principle of receiving 
 guidance and inspiration through intermediaries, 
 however, can only be a survival of the days when 
 mankind was unable to compass an abstract con- 
 ception, and needed some material object or 
 palpable illustration to guide him to higher 
 things. In days of semi-barbarism this method 
 had always to be resorted to, and proved ex- 
 ceedingly beneficial to the moral condition of 
 peoples, but it was in the nature of spoon-feeding. 
 Unfortunately the spoon has too often remained 
 an object of veneration I mean in the excessive 
 devotion to ritual, images, and the like. 
 
 I do not wish to exalt one kind of religion 
 above another, and, in practice, as many sins of 
 intolerance and the like nature, can be ascribed, 
 in the aggressive days of religious controversy, 
 to the one side as the other. But for scientific 
 and analytical purposes a religion, as expounded 
 by Luther, inspiring a man's conduct, and spur- 
 ring him to activity, at the same time endeav- 
 ouring to cut away from tradition and subsidiary 
 aids and interventions and bringing problems to 
 the touchstone of one's own conscience, must 
 take a higher place in the category as being of a 
 more dynamic character and also giving more 
 play to individual intelligence, which is some- 
 thing above the feeling of the masses on such 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 163 
 
 matters, usually characterised by timidity, ignor- 
 ance, and superstition, just as it is above the 
 instinctive life of the animals. The individual 
 can rise to greater heights than the generality, 
 and an individual religion can rise higher than a 
 catholic and universal one. 
 
 The growing tendency to orthodoxy, reliance 
 on authority, and the partiality for symbolism, 
 can only be characterised as a reversion to a 
 lower condition, and its dangers socially have 
 already been touched on. If religion went no 
 further than the individual immediately 
 concerned, no great harm would necess- 
 arily result, for we might look upon such 
 a tendency as a parallel to the lull in 
 aesthetic taste as expressed in the present day 
 drama, and to the lack of creative fire generally 
 in a generation so given up to business that it 
 has no surplus energy for deep thought. But 
 when it is remembered that religious teaching 
 imparted to the young has the widest bearing 
 upon their thinking generally and their future 
 intellectual development, this reversion to the 
 yoke of authority must be regarded in a serious 
 light. But this question has already been 
 sufficiently dealt with. 
 
 Simple orthodoxy is especially remarkable 
 when it appears in conjunction with an active 
 and intelligent mind, used to sift evidence and 
 to detect the shams of the world. I have already 
 pointed out that the non-intellectual character of 
 
164 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 religion is usually responsible for this. But 
 often, I think, it will be found to be the case that 
 a busy and intellectual man, using his wits to 
 the utmost throughout the week, likes to feel that 
 there is a safe corner somewhere, and axioms 
 which he need not question, theories which he 
 may accept without probing ; and so he can face 
 the problems of his daily life in the assurance 
 that all is safe in the rear of his position. There 
 is less inconsistency in the case of the soldier, 
 always carrying his life in his hands, and liable 
 to meet death at any moment in the most terrible 
 circumstances. It is essential to such a one to 
 possess a sure and simple faith which may be 
 of real assistance in the hour of need. As re- 
 gards the world of intelligence the soldier is 
 somewhat of an anachronism. If peoples were 
 intelligent they would not go to war, and a 
 philosopher could never make a professional 
 soldier. Too much thought here, as with Hamlet, 
 would 
 
 " Sickly o'er the native hue of resolution 
 With the pale cast of fear," 
 
 and resolution is required in this sphere and un- 
 thinking courage. Moreover, the absolute sub- 
 mission to authority, the very essence of a 
 soldier's being, although one of the greatest 
 forces in the world', is still out of keeping with 
 the principles of intellectual advance. 
 
 If the particular cases of reversion to the older 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 165 
 
 and more established creeds are examined, it is 
 often found that they go hand in hand with a 
 change in political opinion, and both are con- 
 temporaneous with a betterment of social status. 
 Particularly are such cases to be noted in our 
 manufacturing cities, once the strongholds of 
 Liberal principles and free thought. But many 
 of the citizens having acquired wealth and posi- 
 tion, a political bridge leading by an easy route 
 to the ranks of Conservatism and constitutional- 
 ism, so called, was found to be a great boon, 
 and at the same time the ranks of traditional 
 orthodoxy were swelled more out of respect to 
 form and decorum than to conviction. Such a 
 movement can but fill a thinking man with pity, 
 for it points to a weakness which may in time 
 invalidate a nation's existence. If intelligence 
 be the index of man's advancement, backsliding 
 of this character must point to national decline. 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIOLOGY. 
 
 AFTER glancing at some of the phases of religion 
 in its social relation, I turn to the particular faith 
 which comes nearest to our business and bosoms. 
 Setting aside from our discussion the miraculous 
 side of the subject and the claims of revelation 
 and taking the strictly scientific view, the growth 
 of Christianity and its association with the 
 highest developments of civilisation seem to 
 invite special study. Mr. Benjamin Kidd in 
 " Social Evolution " expressed the opinion that 
 Christianity was itself the cause of the advance 
 of European nations in that it, more than any 
 other religion, inculcated those principles on 
 which social evolution was based. For him 
 Christianity marks off a new era in the world's 
 history. Prior to its birth the power and the 
 rule was in the hands of the one or the few, and 
 these made use of their advantages selfishly for 
 their own ends, so that the civilisation of the 
 ancients, confined to the few, was based upon 
 the suffering and the subservience of the many. 
 Christianity, Mr. Kidd considers, changed all 
 this, not at once, of course, but gradually, and, 
 1 66 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 167 
 
 by the inculcation of "altruism," induced the 
 few to bring the many into the arena, so that, as 
 the circle became wider and wider, the competi- 
 tion within the circle became ever keener, and 
 social advance was proportionate to the keenness 
 of the competition. Such a view is full of in- 
 terest, and strikes the imagination by its bold- 
 ness. It is only on careful reflection that doubts 
 begin to assert themselves, and, when these 
 arise, they begin to assail the theory from all 
 points of view. 
 
 We know that our modern socialism keeps alive 
 many who would be crushed out of existence if 
 left to their own efforts. But does such a system 
 increase the keenness of competition ? Since the 
 chances of the fit and the unfit tend to be equal- 
 ised, I am unable to agree that the system tends 
 to raise the standard of efficiency. In fact, in 
 these piping times of peace we find the world 
 getting so full of mediocre people that men of 
 brilliance, disgusted with the type of competitors 
 who stand in their way, are inclined to retire 
 from the conflict and to fall back on the methods 
 pursued by the masses, ^s we are situated at 
 present, to distinguish merit is almost as im- 
 possible as to find the proverbial needle, and 
 one has only to advertise sufficiently to be re- 
 ceived into the ranks of the famous, or, without 
 advertisement, make cunning use of the numer- 
 ous aids to advancement that exist under a bene- 
 ficent regime. No, so far is such a system from 
 
168 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 encouraging brilliance, that we feel that only a 
 war or some serious national danger, by suspend- 
 ing the operation of these vaunted principles, 
 could bring out true merit. In the Army, many 
 reputations are lost in a great war, and as the 
 peril increases the ordinary rules of promotion 
 by seniority tend to be more and more relaxed, 
 and finally a Wolfe is made a Major-General at 
 an age which usually qualifies only for a 
 Captain's rank. It is only then that the old 
 place-holders and figure-heads appear at their 
 true valuation, and are set aside to be replaced 
 when the danger is over. History is so full of 
 examples of brilliant men being brought to the 
 front by stress of circumstances that it is need- 
 less to labour the point. In the same way she 
 shows us that most great political reforms have 
 been carried out by small bodies of competent 
 persons. 
 
 Such statements would perhaps lead to the 
 supposition that I share the popular antipathy to 
 Socialism, a thing much talked about and little 
 understood. Far from it. I am a convinced 
 socialist, but not so bigoted as not to admit many 
 of the condemnations of the present state of 
 things; for instance, that of Dr. Archdale Reid, 
 who considers that our present method of dealing 
 with lunatics and the mentally afflicted only 
 causes an aggravation of the evil, in that we tend 
 and care for the demented and allow them, in 
 their lucid intervals to go out and propagate 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 169 
 
 their kind, whereas in the Middle Ages popular 
 ignorance and superstition made short work of 
 these poor creatures. But this, and a host of 
 similar charges are no condemnation of Social- 
 ism, but only of one particular system of Social- 
 ism, and that a bad and incomplete one. If we 
 shut up lunatics and incorrigible vagrants for 
 ever, we should at least be consistent, and 
 thoroughly socialistic, but hardly altruistic, and 
 still less Christian. It would appear, therefore, 
 that, far from altruism, as it is generally under- 
 stood, leading to progress, advance is only made 
 on its being suspended. 
 
 At present our social system seems to have 
 landed in a deadlock. Our Poor Law is a pauper- 
 making machine, and our grandmotherly system 
 fosters the unfit, generally. It is only too true 
 that the State is becoming a great hospital, and 
 it is time we looked round with a view to amend- 
 ment. Two alternatives appear to be open, 
 namely, to return to the laisses faire system, or 
 to amend our socialistic measures so that they 
 are thorough and effective with a view to future 
 generations. Both are essentially un-Christian 
 for the former is cruel and has been condemned 
 by experience, while the latter runs counter to 
 the sympathetic spirit which regards a man as a 
 man, however, unfit he be as a member of the 
 community. Socialism, however, is a natural 
 development, and it has come to stay, and it 
 seems unquestionable that reform will be made 
 
i 7 o LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 in revising its methods in the direction of 
 efficiency, discrimination and foresight. All of 
 which goes to show the futility of the idea of a 
 revealed and static religious system, the first 
 principles of which are buried in the obscurity of 
 the dark ages. Evolution is a system embracing 
 all nature; and religion, an essential factor of 
 man and not external to him, is subject to its 
 unbending laws. The religious fiction is like the 
 legal one ; the judge does not expound the law, 
 and yet we know that every judge adds a little 
 to it. Even so in the interpretation of the Scrip- 
 tures the sense is continually added to, and a 
 moral system is evolved approaching the 
 necessities of modern life yet always based on 
 the primal authority. Yet, with all due reverence 
 to the foundations of our belief, are not our 
 religious systems rather too much out of touch 
 with our surroundings owing to a lack of 
 criticism of these same foundations? Can a 
 system be free from reproach which demands the 
 acceptance of certain beliefs which no reasoning 
 person can honestly profess ? If only it could be 
 conceded that we should take of the old all that 
 is useful, and all that is on a sure foundation 
 and this would not be little and leave the rest 
 in abeyance, our religious life might receive a 
 great impetus in the forward direction, and be- 
 come a surer guide in the paths of morality. 
 
 I have already referred to views of Christ's 
 nature expressed by Frenssen and Anatole 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 171 
 
 France. According to theories advanced in a 
 work of the latter author, the acceptance of 
 Jehovah and the Christian teaching was strictly 
 in accordance with the principles of natural 
 development, and there was no marked step be- 
 tween the old and the new. He points out how 
 the ideas of the neo-Platonists and the Stoics had 
 prepared the way for Christian doctrines, for most 
 of which some sort of parallel can be found 
 among the most enlightened of the ancient philo- 
 sophers. The teachings of Christ, it is advanced, 
 in their moral aspect, were but a summing up 
 of the opinions of the illuminati of the time of 
 the Herods. However this be, if the miraculous 
 and revelationary elements are rejected, we may 
 feel secure that such doctrines must have had 
 some source, and that they would not have been 
 accepted unless the world was ready to receive 
 them. 
 
 The view that the teaching of Christ was not 
 far removed in spirit from neo-Platonic 
 philosophy receives support in an indirect 
 manner from the writings of a staunch Church- 
 man. When Charles Kingsley makes Raphael 
 aben Ezra attempt the conversion of Hypatia by 
 pointing out that the precepts of his new Master 
 were little at variance with her own philosophy, 
 he probably merely meant to show how near 
 neo-Platonism wa*s to Christianity. But, looked 
 at in another way, Christianity was just as near 
 to neo-Platonism. Which reminds me of a 
 
172 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 regret expressed by a Bishop of Lichfield with 
 reference to the great Nonconformist divine, Dr. 
 Dale, of Birmingham, " that is was so far from 
 Lichfield to Carr's Lane Chapel." Dr. Dale 
 replied that, as far as he could see, Carr's Lane 
 was no further from Lichfield, than Lichfield 
 was from Carr's Lane. 
 
 Still a further reference from the writings of 
 Kingsley may be given here as illustrating my 
 point of view. Raphael aben Ezra, the cynic, 
 had turned in disgust both from the religion of 
 his fathers and the unsatisfying philosophy of 
 Hypatia. The noble self-sacrifice of Victoria, 
 and the stern sense of duty of her father, how- 
 ever, strongly impress his mind, and he begins 
 to see that in this despised Christianity there is at 
 any rate little sham, and finally he finds a rest 
 from his wanderings in embracing its tenets. 
 He gives his reasons in these words: " Yes, sir, 
 this tent; within which I have seen you and 
 your children lead a life of deeds as new to me 
 the Jew, as they would be to Hypatia, the 
 Gentile. I have watched you for many a day, 
 and not in vain. When I saw you, an exper- 
 ienced officer, encumber your flight with 
 wounded men, I was only surprised. But since 
 J have seen you and your daughter, and, 
 strangest of all, your gay young Alcibiades of 
 a son, starving yourselves to feed these poor 
 ruffians performing for them, day and night, 
 the offices of menial slaves; comforting them, as 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 173 
 
 no man ever comforted me blaming no one but 
 yourselves, sacrificing nothing but yourselves; 
 and all this without hope of fame or reward, or 
 dream of appeasing the wrath of any god or 
 goddess, but simply because you thought it 
 right. When I saw that, sir, and more which I 
 have seen, and when reading in this book here, 
 I found unexpectedly those grand moral rules 
 which you were practising, seeming to spring 
 unconsciously, as natural results from the great 
 thoughts, true and false, which had preceded 
 them, then, sir, I began to suspect that the creed, 
 which could produce such deeds as I have 
 watched within the last few days, might have 
 on its side not merely a slight preponderance of 
 probabilities, but what we Jews used once to call, 
 when we believed in it or in anything the 
 mighty power of God." This passage seems to 
 me to sum up in a most beautiful manner the 
 meaning of Christianity in so far as it emanates 
 directly from the life and words of Christ. And 
 in this view the orthodox Churchman and the 
 heterodox author of Hilligenlei would appear to 
 be at one. The old religion and morality had 
 worked themselves out, the whole social state 
 was rotten. The happiness of the few was based 
 upon the suffering of the many, and the few had 
 become accordingly brutalised. The old 
 philosophy was as worn out as the old religions, 
 in spite of the efforts of devotees of Hypatia's 
 type to resuscitate them, and the consequence 
 
174 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 was that there was no light or leading in the 
 world, and no ideals. Nothing but callousness 
 and debauchery remained among the rich, and 
 hopelessness among the poor. It was time 
 indeed for a prophet to appear, and the prophet 
 who did come, filled to the brim with the Spirit 
 of God, had just the remedies which were needed 
 for the moral and social diseases of the day. 
 Mr. Richard Whiteing who, in " Number 5, 
 John Street, "after painting a very strong picture 
 of the inequalities of fortune obtaining to-day, 
 vigorously contrasting the two currents running 
 side by side, but never meeting, the lives of the 
 rich and poor in London, recommends " shak- 
 ing " as a remedy. Now, whether Christ was 
 divine or not, a question to be fought out between 
 religion and science, at all events He seems to 
 have been the greatest "shaker" of all time; 
 witness in particular the Sermon on the Mount. 
 In striving to break down the barriers between 
 the rich and the poor, the clergy and the laity, 
 the respectable and the out-cast; above all, in 
 His attempt to bring religion into line with 
 morality and reason, in His opposition to tradi- 
 tion and conventionality, He showed himself one 
 of the greatest radicals and revolutionaries the 
 world has ever known. So thoroughly did He 
 go to the root of social evils, that to-day, since 
 Church and State soon settled down to the old 
 routine and perpetrated their enormities in 
 greater security under the aegis of His name. His 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 175 
 
 teachings are as necessary as ever. But, never- 
 theless, those who follow the historical method 
 must make a reservation. Just as they cannot 
 admit that the Christians alone have the truth, 
 and that God has left the rest of the world in 
 outer darkness for the benefit of example to the 
 elect, so too they are unable to concede that in 
 point of time the true faith comes into existence at 
 a certain period and that all who have the luck 
 to live after that date can obtain salvation, and 
 devil take the rest! All religions are the ex- 
 pressions of a people's life, the turning of the 
 heart towards God, as the flower turns towards 
 the sun. In the same way as we recognise this 
 difference in expression as regards race and 
 locality, so, to be consistent, must it be 
 acknowledged upon the plane of time. 
 The Bible, itself, evidences the growth 
 and development of God as He appears 
 to the human mind from the fickle and relentless 
 to the all powerful and loving. Has not the 
 idea of God grown and evolved since; grown, in 
 fact, as man has grown, and evolved with him? 
 Religion, as an expression of a people's life, 
 must develop with mankind, for creeds become 
 outworn like a garment. 
 
 So far are we to-day from the standards Christ 
 set before us, very largely on account of the 
 misuse of His name, that we could ill afford to 
 lose sight of His teaching. It is, however, in 
 dealing with foreign and subject races that the 
 
i;6 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 catholicity of Christianity become open to ques- 
 tion. Our religious leaders will not admit for 
 many years to come that Jesus was a prophet for 
 His time, and therefore it is fruitless to attempt 
 to obtain a pause in the proselytising campaign 
 that takes place among " the Heathen," Christ- 
 ianity may be helpful or it may not, but if the 
 historical and evolutionary principle be admitted, 
 it ought to be administered discriminately and 
 with caution, for it is out of all keeping with 
 the traditions of savage peoples. Just as the 
 translation of the party system into a country 
 not historically prepared for it leads to jobbery 
 and corruption, so this sudden letting loose of 
 new and strange doctrines often leads to hypoc- 
 risy, impertinence and roguery. I have nothing 
 against those brave and self-sacrificing men who 
 spend their lives in ministering to the subject 
 races, and it is open to them to point out the 
 practical good that is done ; if my premises be 
 admitted, however, the system is not altogether 
 flawless according to the principles of deduction. 
 I remember walking down Adderly Street, Cape 
 Town, and seeing an old white-bearded gentle- 
 man in black, holding forth to two Kaffirs, whose 
 grins and gesticulations at first drew my atten- 
 tion. I thought at first he must be telling them 
 some huge joke, for they laughed and slapped 
 their sides, and became more and more uncon- 
 trolled, crying ecstatically, " Oah, yaas " and 
 " Yaas, baas," whenever they could get a word 1 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 177 
 
 in. But as I drew nearer, I heard some of the 
 words of the speaker, mere fragments: " As the 
 wind rushes down from the mountains cleaving 
 the sea destroying all before it all powerful 
 nothing can stand before it Such is the love 
 of God." And the boys chuckled loudly at this 
 climax and slapped their sides, and repeated their 
 nods and their grins and their " Yaas, baas!'* 
 Afterwards I found them delivering the old 
 gentleman's tracts along the jetty. It all seemed 
 very incongruous. 
 
 It reminds me of another incident, the moral 
 of which I must leave to the reader to divine. 
 In an up country church a native had performed 
 the duty of removing the heavy cross for clean- 
 ing. This small office he had carried out with 
 such reverence, such deep bowings and 
 obeisances, that the ladies who had charge 
 of the cleaning were immensely moved 
 by the spiritual manifestations in a savage 
 and were incited to high -resolutions. Un- 
 fortunately it came to light one day that the 
 boy was not a Christian ! The shock was too 
 terrible to be described in words. Needless to say 
 he was not allowed to touch the emblem again, 
 but some retrospective action seemed to be 
 required. I am unable to say what course was 
 finally adopted. 
 
 Setting trifles aside, I hope I have set down 
 with all reverence the position of one who 
 regards all human manifestations as part of 
 
 M 
 
i;8 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 humanity and sharing in the evolution of the 
 race. The views of the more advanced writers 
 in France and Germany have been touched on, 
 and a few necessary conclusions have been drawn 
 as regards our own times and concerns. If 
 sentiments such as these cause any shock to pious 
 minds, I would recommend a study of " Nathan 
 the Wise," the great work of a noble-minded 
 German, always with the regret that no such 
 plant of free religious thought has sprung up in 
 our soil our climate is unpropitious to such 
 growths. 
 
CHAPTER XVII. 
 ANTIPATHY TO LOWER RACES. 
 
 WHILE I am in the anecdotal vein I may as well 
 be rid of my pack as soon as possible, if the 
 reader is good enough to excuse personal incU 
 dent. Once more the scene is Cape Town, and 
 we were dining at our hotel. At our table sat a 
 Rhodesian gold-digger who had met with great 
 success, and had come to show the frugal Cape- 
 tonians how it was possible to get through a 
 thousand a month. Before his insistence upon 
 his wealth had come into evidence, I rather 
 sought his acquaintance in order to gather some- 
 thing of the state of the country and the prospects 
 of the gold-miner. Afterwards, however, his 
 manner became unbearable, and we had to resort 
 to very pointed snubbing in order to attempt to 
 repress him. One evening "Rhodesia" was 
 enlarging upon his personal characteristics, but 
 one particular experience he imparted to us was 
 so extraordinary as to be really amusing. He said 
 that on a previous visit to the hotel, he found that 
 evening that the Japanese Ambassador (he pro- 
 bably meant the Consul) was being entertained 
 to dinner in the dining saloon. "Rhodesia" 
 
 179 
 
i8o LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 insisted on having his dinner served in a separate 
 room, declaring he \vould never sit down to meals 
 in the same room as a "nigger." A friend of 
 mine was also sitting at table with us, a man of 
 great refinement, belonging, to use his own com- 
 parison, to the Eighteenth Century type. Of 
 course, he simply boiled over with disgust when 
 he heard this tale, and immediately proposed to 
 ask the Chinese Consul to dinner at the same 
 table with "Rhodesia/ 5 This proposition was 
 unhappily not carried out. 
 
 People living in England could hardly believe 
 such an occurrence to be possible, but those who 
 have had experience with Colonial life would 
 probably see nothing extraordinary in it. Such 
 antipathies are not felt at home, where people 
 are away from the hard facts of the case, but 
 the mildest and most philosophical of men, when 
 brought into actual contact with coloured races, 
 soon become imbued with an aversion, fight 
 against it as they will. One of the few I have 
 met who have lived among the Kaffirs, and not 
 been touched by this feeling, is, curiously 
 enough, my Eighteenth Century friend. It was 
 he who ascribed himself to this period, not I ; 
 but on studying his character, in which culture, 
 refinement, and sympathy played conspicuous 
 parts, I was more and more struck with the recti- 
 tude of his view, The incident above mentioned 
 I think corroborated it, for sympathy with sub- 
 ject races was a characteristic of that age. But 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 181 
 
 with the ordinary man these feelings towards the 
 native are not greatly in evidence. Although 
 brutality and actual cruelty may not take place 
 there is always that deep-down feeling, unreason- 
 ing and unintelligent, which Mr. Bryce observed 
 and remarked upon. The reason that those at 
 home cannot fathom this sentiment is simply 
 because it is illogical and unreasonable; it is, in 
 fact, one of the best examples of those uncon- 
 scious impulses which we have been discussing, 
 being a thing in which the higher nature and 
 the intellect have no part, pertaining to the lower 
 emotional side of man, and only arising on actual 
 contact with the object itself. It has no abstract 
 value, and from the armchair point of view is 
 ridiculous and childish. It is so with many of 
 our emotions, which arise in re, and are difficult 
 to recall, and still harder, often, to justify. 
 
 From " Rhodesia's" views it will be observed 
 that this feeling is by no means confined to the 
 area of the black man, and still more convincing 
 proof is afforded by the unpleasantness which 
 arose some little time ago in regard to the Japan- 
 ese in the Western States of America. To the 
 normal white man anyone who differs in colour, 
 features, manners or dress, is to some extent a 
 "nigger"; to some of our old-fashioned squires 
 the Frenchman has something of the same taint. 
 They are not English, and that is enough. 
 
 National hostility will account for much of 
 this, but in the case of subject races I think there 
 
i8 2 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 must be subtler reasons underlying the phenome- 
 non, and these I propose to discuss, although I 
 do not venture to offer a solution. The race 
 feeling, as I have observed it in South Africa, 
 is stronger in the uncultured than the refined, 
 and, I think, more pronounced in women than 
 in men. This might simply mean that it par- 
 takes of the emotional nature, which I have main- 
 tained to be largely shared in by women, and also 
 by the less cultured among men. A fear or 
 hatred of anything strange and unknown is one 
 of the characteristics of more primitive minds, 
 and this aversion may but be the vestige of those 
 old emotions. Or again, the feeling may be of 
 a more specialised kind, being directed against 
 a people who have in the past been enemies. 
 This, however, seems hardly likely, for such a 
 theory would imply too much of the conscious 
 element. Yet, if we can bring ourselves to 
 ascribe so much discriminination to unconscious 
 impulses, it might be wondered whether there is 
 not here some kind of scenting danger in the 
 future. The Black Problem is causing great 
 uneasiness in the States, and may soon loom 
 much larger than at present in South Africa. 
 There are some races which tend to disappear on 
 the advance of the white man ; the Negro and 
 the Kaffir, on the other hand, rather tend to 
 increase. Herein may He the danger which is 
 sub-consciously felt. And if I am right in saying 
 that animosity is not so conspicuous in the deal- 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 183 
 
 ings of white men with repressive races, such as 
 the Maoris and Red Indians, some conviction 
 would be added to the suggestion. , 
 
 In such case, the sub-conscious feeling is of 
 the "we or you" character, and is comparable to 
 tlie undying hatred between Rome and Carthage, 
 or those waves of popular passion which arise 
 when peoples are at war with each other. But 
 we may not even yet have got to the root of the 
 matter. The lady whom I have above referred 
 to as having unconsciously given me useful hints 
 on the working of the emotions has often amused 
 me by her antipathy to the Kaffirs. I was at 
 first rather surprised at this, as she is kindly and 
 sympathetic, and extremely broad-minded. I 
 observed this feeling grow upon her, and wanted 
 to see what explanation she would give, for she 
 herself was surprised at the power it had upon 
 her. Finally she volunteered a verdict. " I 
 know why I hate them they are so ugly." This 
 may seem somewhat childish at first sight, but 
 if further thought is given I do not think it is so. 
 If it is any reason at all, it appears to be open to 
 two interpretations. In the first place it might 
 point to the sex feeling, in its defensive or nega- 
 tive sense, as being the cause; for most feelings 
 and emotions have these two senses, the positive 
 or aggressive, and the negative or defensive. The 
 root of the repulsion with which an ugly man 
 usually inspires a woman is probably sex horror, 
 and this, together with sex attraction, we know 
 
184 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 to have been one of the greatest factors in evolu- 
 tion. The persistency of these feelings is still 
 wrapped up with the welfare of the human race, 
 and in a case like the present, in the contact of 
 one of the most advanced with a decidedly back- 
 ward people, we should naturally expect a 
 marked manifestation of repulsion. And if it be 
 advanced that such an explanation could only 
 apply to white women and not men, I must reply 
 in a decided negative ; for just as biology and 
 embryology have shown that the male possesses 
 in his earlier stages of growth certain of the 
 female organs, but that with his development 
 these are suppressed, so psychology can show 
 that a man may have the instincts of a woman, 
 or vice versa. It is quite common to meet with 
 a man whose nature is distinctly feminine, and 
 it is quite possible that there might be some 
 subtle physical cause for this, as there is for most 
 psychological phenomena. At any rate enough 
 has been said, I think, to show that the feeling 
 under discussion would not necessarily be con- 
 fined to one sex alone. 
 
 I have heard the view expressed by inhabitants 
 of South Africa that the cause of the feeling is 
 a sexual one in a more limited sense, namely, 
 that it is a dread on account of the native's very 
 strong sexual proclivities. The latter cannot be 
 denied, but I would hesitate in accepting such a 
 limitation, for a sentiment of aversion is known 
 to exist where there can be no question of par- 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 185 
 
 ticular sexual fear, as when men alone are con- 
 cerned in the period of pioneering, and also 
 where races are concerned who have not the 
 Kaffir's proclivities in any marked degree. I 
 must admit that there always exists, unfortu- 
 nately, a fear of this kind among the white com- 
 munity in South Africa, but I am inclined to 
 think it is nevertheless something quite apart 
 from the race antipathy in its broader sense with 
 which I am dealing. 
 
 There is yet another reason why a people 
 should be hated on account of their ugliness. 
 Those who are acquainted with Dr. Reid's book 
 already referred to, "The Principles of Here- 
 dity," will recollect how he demonstrates the 
 enormous effect that environment has upon the 
 child, as opposed to heredity. Of course the 
 physical qualities inherited, especially the size 
 of the skull, must needs be limiting factors as 
 regards intelligence and capabilities. But given 
 the physical requirement there would seem to be 
 little to debar a savage child from attaining to a 
 high pitch of civilisation, provided the necessary 
 environment were furnished. Dr. Reid gives a 
 cogent negative example of this in the complete 
 cessation of the culture of Rome on the invasion 
 of the barbarians. The Romans remained, but 
 the environment being swept away, civilisation 
 went too. As a positive example, I may mention 
 that negroes, the blackest of the black, may be 
 seen in London competing at Law examinations 
 
i86 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 with our own students, to say nothing of innu- 
 merable instances which might be taken from 
 America. A very short span of years has shown 
 the advance of Japan from an unknown barbarian 
 country, laughed at in the "Mikado," to one of 
 the first-class Powers, owing to her determination 
 to secure the all-important * 'environment." She 
 must surely be regarded as a crucial instance of 
 Dr. Reid's theory. And yet there appears to 
 exist the same racial aversion with regard to the 
 Japanese, at least in America. Can it be that 
 the acquirement of civilisation does not set a limit 
 to the continuation of this sentiment? Very 
 probably it does not, and for the following 
 reasons. Although Weismann's theory of the 
 non-transmissibility of acquired characteristics 
 holds the ground, yet it must probably be sub- 
 jected to certain limitations. If a man acquires 
 a great proficiency in Classics or Music, or if by 
 a vigorous course of "Sandow" he enormously 
 develops his biceps, there is no reason to sup- 
 pose that his son will inherit these qualities. But 
 if we go beyond this we reach debatable ground, 
 and until the doctors are in agreement it would 
 be unwise to be too dogmatic on one side or the 
 other. Experiment has shown that the genera- 
 tion of living organisms is subject to sudden, 
 fortuitous, and strange variation, that is to the 
 production of ' 'sports," and from these new 
 species have been developed. In view of the 
 objections raised on all hands that mere natural 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 187 
 
 selection is insufficient to account for evolution- 
 ary development without some positive and 
 dynamic factor moving in a forward direction, 
 it seems almost impossible not to admit that the 
 phenomenon of ' 'sporting" must have played an 
 important role in the matter. This, however, is 
 rather beside my point, except in so far as it points 
 to the insufficiency of Weismann's position. But 
 to come nearer to the case in hand, Professor 
 Lloyd Morgan has thrown some doubt upon the 
 theory, and suggested that, in spite of the fact 
 that developments in the cells which compose 
 the body cannot actually and materially affect the 
 germ-cells, yet there may be a "spin," as he 
 terms it (borrowing a very apt simile from a 
 mechanical experiment) of the whole body in a 
 certain direction which might affect the germ 
 cells. This would be a kind of "environment" 
 in respect of the ovum, and, although such a 
 thing cannot be proved, it would seem highly 
 probable, and the theory would be abundantly 
 justified by results. For instance, I think I am 
 right in saying that it would not be improbable 
 for a child of drunken parents to have a taste for 
 drink even though it were removed from the 
 tainted environment, and although the habits of 
 the parents were of an acquired nature. I might 
 even make an alternative suggestion to Professor 
 Morgan's, a chemical instead of a physical one. 
 For, as it seems not unreasonable that the 
 physical counterpart of emotion is a chemical 
 
1 88 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 disturbance of the particles of the body, so also 
 it may be possible that certain habits have chemi- 
 cal effects which might affect the germ cells. 
 
 The drift of the discussion is to show that 
 though the Japanese may assume the culture, the 
 learning, and the manners of the European, yet 
 he, for all that, falls short in certain very impor- 
 tant respects. Though he has found a short cut 
 to the goal, yet he is a loser in certain respects 
 in not having taken the more circuitous route. 
 We have evolved our civilisation, and I believe 
 that in so doing we have been impressed with 
 the stamp of our experience. The white races 
 have attained to a certain pitch in intellect, 
 morality, and all those qualities which go to 
 make up what is termed * 'civilisation." Some 
 of these can be obtained through environment 
 without all the weariness of past history. But 
 others, I think, can not, and one quality which in 
 especial is incapable of acquisition is character, 
 that particular possession which only history 
 and experience can give. Character, indivi- 
 duality, are things belonging to a person or a 
 people absolutely and essentially, and cannot be 
 put on as a garment. Here, then, is a decided 
 limitation of the "environment" theory. 
 
 The windows of the soul are the eyes, and the 
 outward expression of character is the face 
 broadly speaking, of course, and neglecting 
 the trivial intra-racial anomalies and exceptions. 
 When we have races to deal with, the type of 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 189 
 
 face is usually a clear index of character, and I 
 have only to suggest a comparison of the faces of 
 Greek statuary with the low foreheads and thick 
 lips of many of the black races to show the drift 
 of my contention. Small differences of character 
 may be impossible of detection in this manner, 
 but broad racial differences are clear enough. 
 And that is why perhaps the ugliness of the 
 savage should be the cause of hatred. His 
 ugliness implies something retrograde, and, 
 therefore, to be avoided. We are used to a cer- 
 tain standard of beauty because that is the index 
 of our culture and character, qualities which have 
 been perpetuated by inheritance and the more 
 special kind of environment suggested above. 
 
 I have now finished my suggestions on the sub- 
 ject, and the reader may take any or which he 
 will. I feel too uncertain myself to pin my faith 
 to any one i,n particular, although I am 
 inclined to think that the sexual reason in its 
 broad sense is fairly probable, implying as it 
 does to a very large extent the question of racial 
 advance. I hope with longer experience to crys- 
 tallise my views on the subject, or perhaps that 
 others of greater skill may find my suggestions 
 of use for further investigation. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII. 
 ENGLAND AND SOUTH AFRICA. 
 
 IT may perhaps be wondered why I should have 
 deferred the subject which forms this chapter to 
 so late a place in my book, when it might have 
 been discussed with similar questions at the 
 beginning. The main reason is that the South 
 African question is not one of history but of 
 politics, and is too close to the eye to be properly 
 focussed for the purpose of drawing any 
 inferences. It is only after the lapse of time 
 that events take their place in history, and that 
 causes and motives can be discussed. I have, 
 therefore, delayed reference to this subject until 
 after the psychological arguments, since as an 
 illustration of the latter it may possibly afford 
 some interest, although as a basis on which to 
 found any theories it would have been unsatis- 
 factory by reason of uncertainty. 
 
 Is the time yet ripe for inquiring what were 
 the real causes of the South African War? 
 According to general experience it should not 
 be, the air being still too obfuscated by political 
 feeling, personal interests, animus, and partisan- 
 ship, to say nothing of lack of information. Yet 
 190 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 191 
 
 since we have already passed in review several 
 cases in which a latent purpose lurked, and have 
 attempted to divine what that purpose was, we 
 may be in some position to hazard a guess upon 
 the subject. 
 
 We have heard it said in many quarters and 
 with much heat that the war was a capitalists' 
 war, a made war, in the interests of the Rand 
 proprietors and those who held interests in the 
 country. I will not deny that our Empire is 
 taking on more and more the characteristics of 
 a trading concern, that many of our enterprises 
 are of a distinctly commercial character, and that 
 there is usually lurking at the back of the Eng- 
 lishman's mind the feeling that trade follows 
 the flag. But granted all this, I still have strong 
 doubts as to whether the commercial feeling is 
 the true one actuating such a policy as that pur- 
 sued in South Africa, or any other external 
 movement of national importance. M. Anatole 
 France considers the modern empire to be a dis- 
 tinctly commercial concern, and to be maintained 
 to that end, but I would rather be inclined to the 
 view that the commercial phase of empire is 
 altogether a new and modern one, the stability 
 of which is not altogether assured. I know that 
 at the time of the war there was a considerable 
 expectation among manufacturers of Birming- 
 ham and other cities that much commercial 
 advantage might accrue from it. The policy 
 was to a certain extent a "Birmingham" one, 
 
IQ2 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 but I am extremely doubtful as to whether the 
 "Birmingham" kind of feeling would have 
 carried it through, for when it was sought to 
 impose this phase of policy upon the country in 
 the guise of Fiscal Reform the country would 
 have nothing to do with it. Yet the country 
 was pretty solid for the war, which leads me to 
 surmise that the commercial spirit was not the 
 prime mover. The Englishman is not an 
 economist, yet, without too overwhelming a 
 knowledge of Ricardo and Marshall and the 
 theory of rent, he feels sub-consciously that if 
 the demand for goods increases, not he, but the 
 capitalist, gets nearly all the advantage, and he 
 is at bottom too astute to risk his all for the 
 benefit of the few, just as he is too astute, or we 
 hope he is, to pay more for all his commodities 
 to the same end. Interests of so narrow a kind 
 could hardly cause such widespread and earnest 
 sentiments as those we are discussing, and it is 
 unreasonable to advance such an argument when 
 there is always the more important and general 
 interest at hand, that, namely, the craving for 
 room and space, the need the Americans felt 
 when it was proposed to confine them to this 
 side of the Alleghanies. This is a consideration 
 which comes home to every man's bosom. 
 
 But I suggested in an earlier chapter that a 
 rough test was applicable when we desired to 
 discover the latent intent. " What was actually 
 obtained in the end?" Well, it may be answered 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 193 
 
 that we got the mines and the Rand free of dis- 
 turbance, tyranny, and heavy taxation. If any- 
 one thinks this answer a good one, he should 
 have seen Johannesburg when I did, some years 
 after the war. Many mines were closed down, 
 some were just paying dividends, a few were 
 doing well. Those who had invested in land 
 were mostly bankrupt and ruined. Many of the 
 former capitalists were working as miners. 
 Hotels were run at a loss. Land that bought at 
 a fabulous price was worth next to nothing. We 
 got the mines if you like, but, if so, we got 
 nothing or just enough was obtained to keep 
 South Africa from bankruptcy. If this is the 
 sum total of our gain, we are but fools for our 
 pains. 
 
 But in reality something more than this was 
 obtained, something which is best expressed in 
 the words of the wise Pro-consul who has felt 
 the pulses of the country during those years of 
 doubt and uncertainty which succeeded the fever 
 of war. I quote from a speech of Lord Sel- 
 borne, made at Johannesburg in March, 1909. 
 soon after the delegates had published to the 
 world that practical and masterly document, the 
 draft constitution for a United South Africa. 
 " South Africa is one, always has been one, and 
 always will be one. That is a simple, naked, 
 natural fact, and what the fathers of your consti- 
 tution have done will have been for the first time 
 to acknowledge that fact and bring South Afri- 
 
 N 
 
I 9 4 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 can politics into conformity with fact. I think 
 it is Bishop Butler who says somewhere, ' Facts 
 are facts, and the consequences of facts will be 
 what they will be.' Now the whole history of 
 South Africa up to the present time has been the 
 history of a set of statesmen, British and Boer, 
 who had refused to admit the logic of facts. If 
 a politician chooses to ignore facts he will 
 invariably find facts too strong for him, and his 
 policy and he will be shattered by the stubborn 
 wall of facts against which he insisted upon run- 
 ning his head. Gentlemen, that is the history 
 of South Africa in a nutshelh South Africa 
 was one, nature made it one, but politicians have 
 tried to make it half a dozen." 
 
 If in after years people look back and ask the 
 question what was obtained by the South African 
 War, I think that will be the answer which will 
 hold good then. That is the grand consumma- 
 tion of the struggle and the strife which have 
 occupied so many bitter years. Politicians have 
 tried to make South Africa half a dozen, or more 
 correctly, the result of their efforts has been to 
 make it half a dozen, since we know that a united 
 South Africa was an idea which was germinating 
 in the brains of two leaders of men at the same 
 time. President Kruger wanted a united Dutch 
 South Africa, and his allies at the Cape would 
 have been only too willing to join him, so bitter 
 over the whole land was the feeling against the 
 British, who by lack of sympathy and under- 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 195 
 
 standing had managed to alienate almost all ihe 
 old inhabitants. It is the old story in Africa, 
 as in India, want of knowledge, want of 
 sympathy, want of firm and continuous 
 policy on the part of the Government, 
 and on the other hand the salvation of the situa- 
 tion by the brains, courage, pertinacity, self- 
 sacrifice of the individual. If there was ever a 
 man who summed up in himself all the elements 
 of popular emotion and instinct as regards 
 colonial policy, it was Cecil Rhodes, and he was 
 the man who pointed and made the way 
 to a united South Africa ; but a South Africa for 
 the British. Instances of this kind are not un- 
 common where the individual embodies in him- 
 self the desires and aspirations of the community 
 and becomes their leader. The masses are too 
 ponderous to carve a way for themselves, and if 
 all were left to them there would be no progress. 
 Fortunately, individual geniuses are striking out 
 in all possible directions ; those who are accepted 
 through happening to fall in with the current of 
 feeling become great, while the others are 
 treated as cranks and lunatics. Judged from a 
 high ethical and intellectual standpoint, these 
 leaders of men usually show something to be 
 lacking, and history, in after years when the 
 enthusiasm has cooled, writes them down, and 
 writes others up, and tells of others whom the 
 current has swept aside upon the rocks. Then 
 we are inclined to lose heart and say that only 
 
tg6 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 advertisement pays. But, although there has 
 been much window-dressing in the cause of 
 history, we may be sure that many of the world's 
 champions have been accepted, not on their own 
 valuation, but on the world's. A people's aims, 
 being instinctive and emotional, are not very 
 high. Compared with the better sort of in- 
 dividual's they are primitive and animal. 
 How can we expect then that the in- 
 dividual who sums up these aims, shall be the 
 pink of ethical perfection ? It is rather a wonder 
 that many of them are so good as they are. 
 It must be understood in all this talk about the 
 emotion of a people, that I am postulating that 
 the people has arrived at such a pitch as to have 
 an emotion and a will and a way of expressing it. 
 There are days, of course, in which the people 
 do not count, when their slumbering all-might- 
 iness has not been wakened. Then champion 
 wages war with champion and aristocracy with 
 aristocracy, and the will of the masses counts 
 for naught. 
 
 About Cecil Rhodes there is something rough 
 and ready, he is the man for an emergency, full 
 of energy, full of facts, full of sympathy, but he 
 is an idealist, too. He sketched out in his mind 
 the paths on which advance of the British Empire 
 should run. But we must not expect that his 
 ideals will bear the test of logic or high 
 philosophy. I have already quoted one of his 
 utterances to the effect that it was the great object 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 197 
 
 of humanity to obtain as much of the earth's 
 space as it possibly could. The corollary he 
 draws from this is that it is Britain's duty to 
 conquer as much as she can. But every other 
 country might draw the same deduction with 
 quite as much reason. His ideal appears there- 
 fore to be based on the assumption that might 
 is right, and that one's own country is better 
 than anybody elses, ideas which are essentially 
 true from the primitive emotional standpoint, 
 but essentially wrong from the logical and 
 ethical. Rhodes was a genius from the practical 
 and popular point of view, and our Empire has 
 to be thankful for him. The instinct for land, 
 so evident in the American War of Indepen- 
 dence, is one of the strongest which can possess 
 a people. The Union Jack gives us a thrill, and 
 we are flattered when we see so much of the map 
 coloured red. There is the self-feeling behind 
 this, but still more strong there is the instinct 
 of conservation. Our country is overflowing its 
 bounds, we want land, space, sustenance for the 
 superfluous. It is a mother's feeling for her 
 children. Rhodes' great idea was to paint the 
 map red, and herein he proved a great leader. 
 But he was not an indiscriminate land-grabber, 
 and therein lies his chief merit. He was one of 
 the most astute and far-seeing of politicians. 
 " Rhodes, you are putting a ring-fence round 
 me," said Paul Kruger, watching with alarm as 
 the Englishman occupied first that neck of 
 
198 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 Bechuanaland to the West of the Transvaal, and 
 finally acquired almost unlimited rights to the 
 North. The idea of the Englishman was the 
 thin red line, a line joining North and South, 
 capable of extension on either side. It would 
 not do to have hostile enclaves threatening his 
 base, and one of the first necessities was to 
 weaken them or to wipe them out. It was hoped 
 that the better prospects and freer government 
 of Rhodesia might have drawn off most of the 
 Boers and made them loyal British subjects; 
 hence, in part, that great move Northward. 
 Meanwhile the railway and the telegraph, those 
 two great instruments of civilisation, were pushed 
 on with Khartoum always ahead as the goal. 
 " Khartoum/' says Rhodes, " has been taken 
 and the valley of the Nile, and we are coming up 
 from the South, and I wish Cape Colony to share 
 in the whole development." How important to 
 his purpose this thin unbroken line was we see 
 from his alarm when the French threatened to 
 cut across it. Fortunately the pioneer was sup- 
 ported by the home Government, and the scheme 
 was saved saved, strange to say, by a Liberal ; 
 but an Imperialist. 
 
 Imperialism sums up the phase of popular feel- 
 ing aroused during the war, and persisting since, 
 persisting in such a way as to change the face 
 of our politics. We obtained our Empire by 
 private enterprise, by hazard, because we could 
 not help it. It is only of late that we have 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 199 
 
 become definitely and determinedly imperialistic. 
 The key-note of the sentiment is summed up in 
 the following words of Mr. Rhodes, uttered in 
 1899: "The people of England are finding out 
 that trade follows the flag, and that they have 
 all become Imperialists. . . . The English 
 people intend to retain every inch of land that 
 they have got, and perhaps, sir, they intend to 
 secure a few more inches. ... I feel con- 
 vinced that we should all be united on the pro- 
 position that Africa is not, after all, big enough 
 for us." Cheap, you may say, playing to the 
 gallery, all this. Perhaps so, but its strength 
 lies in that it does play to the gallery. There 
 is a quip for the stalls, too, that " Trade 
 follows the flag,*' a phrase for million- 
 aires and manufacturers, who were well repre- 
 sented in the Cabinet at the time. But although 
 Rhodes was keen about England, keen about her 
 trade, he was no market-rigger or commercial 
 mountebank. Land, room, space, were his lead- 
 ing ideas ; trade afterwards. And it is well to 
 note that in a stirring speech he condemned the 
 imposition of tariffs on infant industries in the 
 new colonies, pointing out that in so doing these 
 communities would hamper themselves as 
 Australia had done. 
 
 I had the privilege a short time back of going 
 over Mr. Rhodes' old residence near Cape Town, 
 Groot Schuur. Characteristically enough, the 
 very house was dedicated to the future, for it 
 
200 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 was to be the official home of the Presi- 
 dent of the United South Africa. Thus the 
 Master combined with his prophecy that union 
 would take place a promise which might turn 
 the scale in the favour of the city which had 
 been the scene of his activities, when the question 
 of the capital should come to be considered. For 
 Cape Town was the base of his operations, and 
 he wished the Cape to share in all the benefits 
 which should accrue from his undertakings. 
 
 As the coloured servant, Mr. Rhodes' personal 
 attendant, through many years of storm and 
 stress, showed us the wonders of the lovely man- 
 sion, he dwelt with fervour upon the little Union 
 Jack which still hangs in the library, and which 
 is to be borne on the engine of the 
 first train which runs from the Cape to 
 Cairo. Another emblem, and another phophecy, 
 both characteristic of the Empire Builder. 
 
CHAPTER XIX. 
 ON COLONIES GENERALLY. 
 
 I HAVE been struck by nothing more forcibly dur- 
 ing my stay in South Africa than the antipathy 
 which is generally harboured towards the Liberal 
 policy at home. The local newspapers scoff at 
 economies, laugh at Social Reform, are up in 
 arms against any measure detrimental to the 
 Church and the Lords, and seem to regard the 
 Liberals as a kind of interlopers and their 
 measures as quaint antics. Above all it took me 
 by surprise to find that John Burns was consid- 
 ered to be not at all a fit man to be in the Cabinet 
 this in a land where everybody who is anybody, 
 is a John Burns, only too often without his genius. 
 I had just arrived from a very conservative old 
 county town in England where one even- 
 ing, as I sat down to dinner with some 
 dear old ladies, one of them, to start 
 the conversation, asked what I thought of 
 John Burns' recent appointment. I replied, 
 without guile, that I thought it a very good one. 
 The speaker made an attempt to rise from her 
 place, saying that she could not sit at the same 
 table with one who held such views. But that 
 was in conservative England, and an old Cathe- 
 dral town. One expects something different 
 in the Colonies. 
 
 201 
 
202 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 This antipathy is very strange when it is con- 
 sidered that in South Africa there exist few of 
 those encumbrances which the Liberals aim at 
 removing, nor would the bulk of them be 
 tolerated for a moment. The colonists are quite 
 of the same opinion as an Australian I met on a 
 Channel steamer, who asked me what I thought 
 had made the Colonies, and promptly over-ruled 
 my guesses by his answer, " The Church and 
 the landlords. " A State Church is out of the 
 question in the Colonies, so are our land laws. 
 There is no House of Lords, and generally one 
 is struck by the absence of encumbrances to well- 
 living and better-living. It might be thought 
 that the feeling against the more advanced party 
 prevails on account of there being no work for 
 such a party to do in South Africa, or possibly 
 as a result of a swing of the pendulum after an 
 elimination of the old institutions. A better 
 reason, however, is probably to be found in the 
 external policy of the Liberals. It has been 
 already pointed out that the whole Colonial spirit 
 is an instinctive and emotional one, and is the 
 work of the heart rather than the head. More- 
 over, in that it partakes less of the intellect than 
 of the emotion, it is not to be ranked in the 
 forefront of advance. Be this as it may, we live 
 in a practical world, and it is of no use to play 
 one game when all our rivals play another. If 
 we are to hold up our heads, in the old sense, as 
 a great Empire, it is of no use to play the in- 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 203 
 
 tellectual and moral game until we find ourselves 
 in a hole, and then attempt too late to play the 
 other. There is the one policy or the other, and no 
 half measures are possible. Even Mr. Stead 
 raised his voice to reprove those of his party who 
 were in favour of fewer Dreadnoughts, waiving 
 his principles in view of the practical necessities 
 of the case. It is very well to have a policy 
 fitted for a millennium, but such a policy is 
 useless until the millennium is at hand. And it 
 is because of their adoption in the past of this 
 millennium policy, the policy of absolute right 
 and wrong that the Liberals are distrusted in ex- 
 ternal politics both at home and in the colonies, 
 and no country more than South Africa has 
 borne the penalty of their mistakes, through their 
 application of pure Christian principles to cases 
 which will not bear them. Colonisation is not 
 Christian, and in it you must either serve God 
 or Mammon. Nations are to one another in 
 statu naturali ; it is of no use to expect them to 
 comply with the codes of ethics. 
 
 Moreover, the Colonial has reason to fear home 
 interference of all kinds and from both parties. 
 In the realms of civilisation, the life of logic, of 
 intellect, of morality, can to some extent be led ; 
 but at the outposts of Empire, the pioneer lives 
 face to face with Nature, with hard facts, with 
 hostile foes. He needs to become something of 
 an animal again, and to revive the old habits. 
 It is a life of instinct, and the colonist feels, if 
 
204 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 he does not know, what to do in certain emer- 
 gencies. He is immediately brought to a stand- 
 still by a telegram from the grandmotherly 
 government at home, which for these purposes 
 has not the knowledge, the sympathy, nor above 
 all, the instinct requisite for dealing with the 
 case. The result is the addition of another 
 blunder to the large score. If you want an 
 empire, you must really " think imperially," and 
 leave Christianity and reason out of the question. 
 And if you have local governors and High Com- 
 missioners, the best thing you can do is to trust 
 the man on the spot. 
 
 Cecil Rhodes, the Empire builder, hated the 
 Little Englanders, and with reason, for they were 
 his antipodes. Fortunately for his schemes, a 
 Big Englander and an Imperialist, although a 
 Liberal, was in power at the time the French 
 threatened to cut the line in their Fashoda march, 
 and Lord Rosebery was determined even "at the 
 expense of war, to stop them. But Liberal 
 Imperialist sounds almost a contradiction in 
 terms. Yet why ? Why should the Conserva- 
 tives and Unionists lay claim to be the only 
 people who care for Empire, and have their 
 claim accepted ? Has the Little Englander any 
 claim to existence at all ? Yes, on the very 
 highest grounds he has, but perhaps not as yet 
 on any practical grounds. Perhaps the most 
 characteristic politician of this class was Sir 
 Henry Campbell - Bannerman, a man whose 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 205 
 
 lot it was to bear as much hatred as most. But 
 he had his ideal and he stuck to it, and being 
 found faithful to the end, was rewarded accord- 
 ingly. His views on foreign policy can only 
 have appeared mischievous to the many, yet only 
 because the many were not advanced enough to 
 share them. Sir Henry was a friend of France 
 and a great sympathiser with her ; France, who 
 has always been a leader of European thought, 
 and who is not, perhaps, so very much behind- 
 hand in politics and sociology. We know that 
 her policy is different from our own, from that 
 generally followed in Europe. Can it be that 
 it is in advance of us ? Let us hear what one of 
 her most advanced thinkers has to say on the 
 subject, M. Anatole France, in " Sur La Pierre 
 Blanche." I will take the liberty of rendering 
 the sense of some of his remarks into English. 
 
 The French are not a colonising people, and 
 we sometimes say in a superior manner that it 
 is because they are unable to colonise. I think 
 the following quotations will tend to show that 
 the true reason is that they do not want to do 
 so. One speaker in the work referred to states 
 in no measured terms : " Colonies are the scourge 
 of peoples." This naturally meets with some 
 surprise and some objection, and another speaker 
 instances the wealth and position of England, 
 largely due to her colonies. The first speaker 
 continues: "England is less a people than 
 a race. The Anglo-Saxons have no fatherland 
 
206 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 but the sea. And this England, believed to be 
 rich by virtue of her vast domains, owes her for- 
 tune and her power to her commerce. .It is not 
 her colonies one should envy her, but rather her 
 merchants, the authors of her wealth." Then 
 the question of France is broached. " But we! 
 Our people, thrifty, careful in having no more 
 children than their Motherland can easily sup- 
 port, producing in moderation and, chary of dis- 
 tant adventure! France, who scarcely ventures 
 outside her garden, what need has she of 
 colonies? Great Heaven, why should she want 
 them ? What advantage do they bring her ? 
 She has spent a wealth of men and money so 
 that the Congo, Cochin China, Annam, Tonquin, 
 Guiana and Madagascar may buy their cotton 
 goods at Manchester, arms at Birmingham and 
 Lie*ge, brandy at Dantzic, and cases of Bordeaux 
 wine at Hamburg. For seventy years she has 
 despoiled, hunted, persecuted the Arabs in order 
 to people Algeria with Italians and Spaniards.*' 
 
 The speaker goes on to show that colonisation 
 attaches to the Government the army, navy, 
 jobbers, clergy, all the interests and corporations, 
 and thus keeps the unruly element at peace. 
 Colonisation is much easier than social reform. 
 
 After this he expresses a hope for the future, 
 that commercial civilisation shall take the place 
 of commercial barbarism. " La grande valeur 
 humaine, c'est rhomme lui-meme," it is the man 
 alone who counts, and on the human value 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 207 
 
 should the acquisition of wealth be based. The 
 world's work, he continues, needs the white, the 
 black, and the yellow man. In colonisation we 
 work against ourselves in neglecting these 
 factors. These people should be allowed to 
 acquire wealth themselves, and our own wealth 
 would follow. 
 
 But as for France, her true power lies in her 
 intellectual force. 
 
 Thus the chief speaker in " Sur La Pierre 
 Blanche." It will be seen that a sort of excep- 
 tion is made as regards the British Empire in this 
 condemnation of commercial colonisation. It is 
 admitted that the Britons are born to empire be- 
 cause they are born to the sea. The Empire is 
 like the Bank of England it grew. Hence its 
 abnormalities, and its lack of system. And thus 
 when a union on a fiscal basis was first proposed 
 some years ago, some of the sayings of our old 
 statesmen were quoted by objectors, to the effect 
 that our Empire was sui generis, and that it was 
 based upon sentiment. Fears were expressed 
 that any chaffering and bargaining would spoil 
 the grand old arrangement of voluntary obliga- 
 tion ; and the critics were probably right. In 
 the proposed fiscal union the cloven hoof may 
 be perceived by those who look closely 
 the policy, which may be termed " Birming- 
 ham." The idea that trade follows the flag has 
 only crystallised out of recent years, and this 
 appears to have been the underlying motive of 
 
208 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 the Birmingham policy. It was, however, a 
 conscious motive and aimed at the good of the 
 few, rather than the many, and so it met the 
 same fate as the corresponding internal policy, 
 that of protection at home. Argue as they could, 
 the Tariff Reformers could not overcome the feel- 
 ings of the country on the subject. Emotion 
 still ruled and the age of logic had not set in. 
 The latter may have its way later, and when it 
 comes, let us hope that it will be good logic. 
 
 So far we have dealt with our colonies as with 
 the rest of our difficulties, made no plans, but 
 blundered into action as occasion arose. When 
 they were in danger, we protected them, though 
 we had to distribute our forces over the whole 
 globe, when they lent us a helping hand we ac- 
 cepted it as a grateful surprise, when they had 
 internal troubles, we did our best in a wrong- 
 minded way to right them. But it was all on 
 the spur of the moment. There was no plan and 
 policy beforehand. The colonies and colonial 
 policy grew like our law ; there was no code, but 
 ingenuity never failed to alter the old govern- 
 ment to fit new contingencies. So far our 
 colonial policy has been unconscious, and as a 
 true policy can hardly be said to have existed. 
 
 It is only when other people begin to have 
 empires that we become conscious of having one 
 ourselves, just as when we begin to lose the 
 monopoly of the world's trade we begin to think 
 of protection. And as soon as we realise this 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 209 
 
 empire, we wish to systematise it. Other 
 people's empires have not grown precisely like 
 ours as the result of sea-power. Others have 
 profited by our experience and acquired their 
 colonies with definite ends in view, those of trade 
 and commercial advantage. They do not desire 
 to have a country like India on their hands, a 
 responsibility and a duty rather than a possess- 
 ion. Foundlings have been thrown into the 
 street or sold for hard cash, and only profitable 
 heirlings retained. These are the kinds of 
 colonies that M. France is thinking of. But the 
 fiscal reformers, not grasping as that clear-think- 
 ing writer has done, that our wealth lies in our 
 maritime commerce and not in our colonies which 
 are a dependency upon it, would systemise our 
 colonies on the lines of the new commercial em- 
 pires, binding them to us by commercial ties, 
 and making them a market for our manufactures. 
 At any rate such a proposal means a system, and 
 it may be argued that any system is better than 
 none. On the other hand it may be objected that 
 a bad system is worse than none at all. To 
 discuss these proposals is scarcely within the 
 scope of this work, but the weak points may just 
 be pointed out here. It is needless to labour 
 them, as they have been discussed over and over 
 again in connection with the fiscal proposals. 
 England, with a large proportion of the unfit left 
 on her hands, would have to penalise herself for 
 the benefit of the colonies, where most people are 
 o 
 
210 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 fit. Preferential arrangements usually lead to 
 jobbery, and in making these with the various 
 colonies, disputes would be sure to arise, and the 
 cable might at any time be cut. From a defence 
 point of view the scheme seems absurd when the 
 scattered nature of our empire is considered. 
 
 The main argument, however, seems to be the 
 point which M. France has hit on. We are a 
 maritime people, and our wealth lies in our 
 marine. We trade with our colonies indeed, but 
 by far the larger proportion of our trade is en- 
 tirely independent of them, being with foreign 
 countries and, as far as our wealth is concerned, 
 we should not be much, if any, poorer by the 
 loss of them. The idea, then, to convert them 
 into a commercial appendage is absurd on the 
 face of it. The colonial and imperial sentiment 
 of our people, however, is not based on any such 
 consideration, but rather, as has been pointed 
 out, on the " land " consideration, and also for 
 any sentiment of this kind must be of the most 
 complex character to some extent on the per- 
 sonal feeling, the egotism which is flattered by 
 having dependents and dependencies. 
 
 But, if some day sentiment in politics dies 
 down before intellectualism, what shall we think 
 about the colonies then ? It will depend to a 
 certain extent on what the Colonies think about 
 us. At present they acknowledge our 
 supremacy, and help us at a pinch, but the ties 
 which bind them to us are as webs of gossamer. 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 211 
 
 When we come, in the golden future, to under- 
 stand the French and the Germans and the 
 Russians better, in the general friendliness 
 colonial ties may tend to dissolve and all will be 
 friends on the same footing, and citizens of a 
 world-state. But at the same time as the 
 colonies begin to recognise that they are prac- 
 tically self-sufficient states, we, too, may begin to 
 wonder where the advantage of our sovereignty 
 lies. It does not lie in trade; like France, we 
 conquer as much for the benefit of the Germans 
 and Americans as for ourselves. As regards 
 land, we may some day be indifferent whether we 
 emigrate to a country coloured red, or one 
 coloured yellow. There will only remain senti- 
 ment and relationship, both things of the emotion 
 and sentiment, and both, perhaps, moribund in 
 the intellectual cosmos of the future. If reason 
 shall one day rule, we may expect empire and 
 patriotism to go the same way as parochialism. 
 Such I think may be considered the arguments 
 of the Little Englanders, not so " little " after 
 all, since they aspire rather to be citizens of the 
 world than of the British Empire. But we have 
 to live in our age, and it is of no use to have a 
 morality or a policy too much ahead of it, and as 
 yet such ideas are not practical politics. Like 
 Mr. Stead we must vote for the Dreadnoughts, 
 although they be against reason and our private 
 principles. For nations are still in a state of 
 nature, and the reign of emotion is not yet over. 
 
CHAPTER XX. 
 
 COLLECTIVE EMOTION IN THE FUTURE. 
 
 IN the first part of this book I have treated my 
 subject analytically and attempted to look into 
 the causes of things as they were. In advancing 
 from history into politics I have occassionally de- 
 parted from this method, and the discussion of 
 things as they are has sometimes led me from 
 the path of dispassionate enquiry to that of 
 dogmatism. Politics are moving quantities, and 
 it is difficult not to adopt the dynamic method 
 when dealing with them, and adumbrating a 
 possible ideal. In the present and concluding 
 chapter it will be fitting to depart from the former 
 method altogether, and attempt to pierce into the 
 future. 
 
 The State, as Aristotle would say, by nature 
 is. It is an unconscious, a spontaneous develop- 
 ment. Most of our gifts are in our possession 
 before we become conscious of them. When 
 consciousness supervenes, we strive to mould 
 them to our wishes. Just as primitive man was 
 preserved and protected by instinct, so was the 
 early State. With man instinct gave way before 
 a more powerful, perhaps a more uncertain ac- 
 212 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 213 
 
 quirement; the intelligence, and instinct grad- 
 ually became atrophied. I have suggested in 
 these pages that the State, too, has its instincts 
 and emotions and that these persist, at strange 
 variance with the intelligence of the community. 
 Old jurists have observed how the state in its 
 external dealings was at best a savage. Some 
 are inclined to think this must be an essential 
 part of the nature of the State. I am inclined to 
 differ, and to suppose that she will undergo the 
 same evolution as the individual. Experience 
 leads us to think so. Hague Conventions have 
 not proved of much use, but they are at least 
 taken seriously. If a world-State can only be 
 thought of, it is an indication of the direction in 
 which things are moving. So long as there 
 exists no sovereign and supreme power, might is 
 right. So long as there is no sanction to punish 
 wrong-doing, wrong-doing will continue. 
 Within the State the sovereign power brings 
 offenders to justice, but there is no sovereign 
 among States. Arbitration, say our historians, 
 may settle many disputes, but, they add, when a 
 State's honour is concerned, never. My view 
 would be that honour is part of the emotional 
 side of the State, and may one day give place to 
 reason. In such a case arbitration might settle 
 everything. States may be wise enough some 
 day to cease this bitter competition in arma- 
 ments, or be driven to such a course by bank- 
 ruptcy, and an international court, with supreme 
 
2i 4 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 power, may become an actuality, each State 
 being willing to make a sacrifice in the interests 
 of reason. A Contrat Social of a new kind may 
 be entered into; a real, not a hypothetical one. 
 Each State may find wisdom in the way France 
 has, and discover that her true power lies within 
 herself. No newspapers will then venture to 
 say that our politicians are sleeping over the dis- 
 cussion of social reform, the welfare of our 
 children, our manhood, our womanhood 
 and other trifles, while the writing 
 on the wall tells us the Germans are 
 going to build so many Dreadnoughts. The 
 welfare of the individual will then be the great 
 care of the aggregate of individuals that is, 
 reason will prevail. Do men exist for arma- 
 ments, or armaments for men ? The answer will 
 be according as the State is intellectual or 
 emotional. 
 
 As soon as the State becomes conscious of it- 
 self, a great change takes place. The old rule of 
 natural selection, the survival of the fittest, tends 
 to cease its operation. The State asks, " Fittest 
 for what?" Nature replied, " Their existence " ; 
 but for the conscious State this was answer was 
 not sufficient. The State in some mysterious 
 way got hold of an idea of its own, and said, 
 again with Aristotle, " Life is not sufficient, it 
 must be the good life." The State does not die 
 with the individual ; it is a perpetual corporation. 
 It exists after the individual is dead and buried. 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 215 
 
 So, just as it can afford to undertake tree-plant- 
 ing and other things which it would not pay the 
 individual to inaugurate, so it can afford to busy 
 itself with the child as with future generations. 
 In fact, the State found that it could work more 
 practically with the child than with its parents 
 and grandparents. You cannot pauperise and 
 patronise a child it is intended for these things 
 but you can spoil the elder generation. So 
 the modern State works for the future, for the 
 Uebermensch. That is the aim of Socialism. 
 
 The reason of society's moral attitude, in de- 
 manding "the good life," was that it wanted a 
 kind of life that was fitting to itself ; a social life. 
 Morality is a relative term ; what is moral in one 
 age is not so in another. That is because society 
 develops, and with her development requires a 
 changing code. The State, as part of society, 
 also has her special code, a particular form of 
 the greater social one. If a man has anti-social 
 qualities he is of no use to the State, and he is 
 found to be immoral. This is the sum total of 
 TO EL Zrjv. There is much sin and immorality 
 to-day because we have been born quite casually, 
 many of us on anti-social lines. The morality 
 prevailing is that of the State or society, and 
 many necessarily fall short of that owing to their 
 antecedents. When the State's machinery for 
 producing Uebermenschen has got into working 
 order there will be less sin, because the ante- 
 cedents will have been well looked to. The sin, 
 
216 LATENT IMPULSE 
 
 if any, will be on the part of the State. 
 
 Many will be the changes which will take place 
 in the household, the family, marriage. Our 
 love of home life will die hard, but as a thing of 
 the sentiment, and necessarily in some degree 
 antipathetic to the aims of the State, it will have 
 to be modified, perhaps gradually to disappear. 
 In some of the more rational countries we find a 
 tendency in this direction already ; in France and 
 America the home is far less an institution than 
 with us, fortunately and unfortunately. But the 
 abuses in those countries may be largely due to 
 a State of transition, the new not having yet 
 displaced the old. 
 
 The family tie is also destined to be 
 weakened, as being a thing of unreason. 
 Far be it from me to say aught to the 
 detriment of filial piety. But in the 
 future many good things must be wiped out in 
 the decay of the old order : 
 
 " God fulfils Himself in many ways, 
 Lest one good custom should corrupt the world." 
 
 In reason there is no justification for thinking 
 one's father better than any other man, and 
 reason is to prevail. Family affection has per- 
 sisted and is held to be moral because it is part 
 of our social system. Families which have hung 
 together have survived. When protection is no 
 longer left to private venture, these private 
 affections will be less essential, and a new moral- 
 
IN HISTORY AND POLITICS 217 
 
 ity will judge of them differently. Furthermore, 
 modifications in the system of marriage may do 
 much to weaken family affection. The child may 
 become the property of the State, the State's 
 child. But these peeps into the arrangement of 
 the future are scarcely in place in such a work ; 
 the subject has been exhaustively treated by Mr. 
 Wells, and to a less degree by M. Anatole 
 France. 
 
 Of one thing we may be certain, a thing whose 
 beginnings are already sufficiently in evidence at 
 the present time the present inequality of the 
 sexes will not exist as it does to-day. It 
 has already been pointed out how woman's 
 inferiority is due, originally, to physical reasons, 
 and to the hypertrophy of sexuality. In the 
 world of intelligence these reasons will have less 
 validity and mere sex will constitute no bar. 
 France and America have pointed one way to 
 woman's enfranchisement in her greater freedom 
 from the drudgery of household duties. Until 
 she is free of these she has no time and no 
 energy to improve her position. I do not say 
 that she should not be mistress in her house, but 
 between that and being tied down to the position 
 of a slave there is a world of difference. No 
 woman can be a true wife who occupies this posi- 
 tion ; no man a true husband who permits of it. 
 InFrance one hears of husband and wife pursu- 
 ing scientific research together ana' both together 
 sharing the honour of success, the martrydom of 
 
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