Human Nature In Politics by Graham Wallas
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18 HUMAN NATURE IN POLITICS
BY
GRAHAM WALLAS
PREFACE
I offer my thanks to several friends who have been kind enough to read
the proofs of this book, and to send me corrections and suggestions;
among whom I will mention Professors John Adams and J.H. Muirhead, Dr.
A. Wolf, and Messrs. W.H. Winch, Sidney Webb, L. Pearsall Smith, and
A.E. Zimmern. It is, for their sake, rather more necessary than usual
for me to add that some statements still remain in the text which one or
more of them would have desired to see omitted or differently expressed.
I have attempted in the footnotes to indicate those writers whose books
I have used. But I should like to record here my special obligation to
Professor William James's _Principles of Psychology_, which gave me, a
good many years ago, the conscious desire to think psychologically about
my work as politician and teacher.
I have been sometimes asked to recommend a list of books on the
psychology of politics. I believe that at the present stage of the
science, a politician will gain more from reading, in the light of his
own experience, those treatises on psychology which have been written
without special reference to politics, than by beginning with the
literature of applied political psychology. But readers who are not
politicians will find particular points dealt with in the works of the
late Monsieur G. Tarde, especially _L'Opinion et la Foule_ and _Les Lois
de l'Imitation_ and in the books quoted in the course of an interesting
article on 'Herd Instinct,' by Mr. W. Trotter in the _Sociological
Review_ for July 1908. The political psychology of the poorer
inhabitants of a great city is considered from an individual and
fascinating point of view by Miss Jane Addams (of Chicago) in her
_Democracy and Social Ethics_.
GRAHAM WALLAS.
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
I have made hardly any changes in the book as it first appeared, beyond
the correction of a few verbal slips. The important political
developments which have occurred during the last eighteen months in the
English Parliament, in Turkey, Persia, and India, and in Germany, have
not altered my conclusions as to the psychological problems raised by
modern forms of government; and it would involve an impossible and
undesirable amount of rewriting to substitute 'up-to-date' illustrations
for those which I drew from the current events of 1907 and 1908. I
should desire to add to the books recommended above Mr. W. M'Dougall's
_Social Psychology_, with special reference to his analysis of Instinct.
G.W.
LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS AND POLITICAL SCIENCE, CLARE MARKET, LONDON,
W.C.,
_30th December 1909._
PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION (1920)
This edition is, like the second edition (1910), a reprint, with a few
verbal corrections, of the first edition (1908). I tried in 1908 to make
two main points clear. My first point was the danger, for all human
activities, but especially for the working of democracy, of the
'intellectualist' assumption, 'that every human action is the result of
an intellectual process, by which a man first thinks of some end which
he desires, and then calculates the means by which that end can be
attained' (p. 21). My second point was the need of substituting for that
assumption a conscious and systematic effort of thought. 'The whole
progress,' I argued, 'of human civilisation beyond its earliest stages,
has been made possible by the invention of methods of thought which
enable us to interpret and forecast the working of nature more
successfully than we could, if we merely followed the line of least
resistance in the use of our minds' (p. 114).
In 1920 insistence on my first point is not so necessary as it was in
1908. The assumption that men are automatically guided by 'enlightened
self-interest' has been discredited by the facts of the war and the
peace, the success of an anti-parliamentary and anti-intellectualist
revolution in Russia, the British election of 1918, the French election
of 1919, the confusion of politics in America, the breakdown of
political machinery in Central Europe, and the general unhappiness which
has resulted from four years of the most intense and heroic effort that
the human race has ever made. One only needs to compare the
disillusioned realism of our present war and post-war pictures and poems
with the nineteenth-century war pictures at Versailles and Berlin, and
the war poems of Campbell, and Berenger, and Tennyson, to realise how
far we now are from exaggerating human rationality.
It is my second point, which, in the world as the war has left it, is
most important. There is no longer much danger that we shall assume that
man always and automatically thinks of ends and calculates means. The
danger is that we may be too tired or too hopeless to undertake the
conscious effort by which alone we can think of ends and calculate
means.
The great mechanical inventions of the nineteenth century have given us
an opportunity of choosing for ourselves our way of living such as men
have never had before. Up to our own time the vast majority of mankind
have had enough to do to keep themselves alive, and to satisfy the blind
instinct which impels them to hand on life to another generation. An
effective choice has only been given to a tiny class of hereditary
property owners, or a few organisers of other men's labour. Even when,
as in ancient Egypt or Mesopotamia, nature offered whole populations
three hundred free days in the year if they would devote two months to
ploughing and harvest, all but a fraction still spent themselves in
unwilling toil, building tombs or palaces, or equipping armies, for a
native monarch or a foreign conqueror. The monarch could choose his
life, but his choice was poor enough. 'There is,' says Aristotle, 'a way
of living so brutish that it is only worth notice because many of those
who can live any life they like make no better choice than did
Sardanapalus.'
The Greek thinkers started modern civilisation, because they insisted
that the trading populations of their walled cities should force
themselves to think out an answer to the question, what kind of life is
good. 'The origin of the city-state,' says Aristotle, 'is that it
enables us to live; its justification is that it enables us to live
well.'
Before the war, there were in London and New York, and Berlin, thousands
of rich men and women as free to choose their way of life as was
Sardanapalus, and as dissatisfied with their own choice. Many of the
sons and daughters of the owners of railways and coal mines and rubber
plantations were 'fed up' with motoring or bridge, or even with the
hunting and fishing which meant a frank resumption of palaeolithic life
without the spur of palaeolithic hunger. But my own work brought me into
contact with an unprivileged class, whose degree of freedom was the
special product of modern industrial civilisation, and on whose use of
their freedom the future of civilisation may depend. A clever young
mechanic, at the age when the Wanderjahre of the medieval craftsman used
to begin, would come home after tending a 'speeded up' machine from 8
A.M., with an hour's interval, till 5 P.M. At 6 P.M. he had finished his
tea in the crowded living-room of his mother's house, and was 'free' to
do what he liked. That evening, perhaps, his whole being tingled with
half-conscious desires for love, and adventure, and knowledge, and
achievement. On another day he might have gone to a billiard match at
his club, or have hung round the corner for a girl who smiled at him as
he left the factory, or might have sat on his bed and ground at a
chapter of Marx or Hobson. But this evening he saw his life as a whole.
The way of living that had been implied in the religious lessons at
school seemed strangely irrelevant; but still he felt humble, and kind,
and anxious for guidance. Should he aim at marriage, and if so should he
have children at once or at all? If he did not marry, could he avoid
self-contempt and disease? Should he face the life of a socialist
organiser, with its strain and uncertainty, and the continual
possibility of disillusionment? Should he fill up every evening with
technical classes, and postpone his ideals until he had become rich? And
if he became rich what should he do with his money? Meanwhile, there was
the urgent impulse to walk and think; but where should he walk to, and
with whom?
The young schoolmistress, in her bed-sitting-room a few streets off, was
in no better case. She and a friend sat late last night, agreeing that
the life they were living was no real life at all; but what was the
alternative? Had the 'home duties' to which her High Church sister
devoted herself with devastating self-sacrifice any more meaning? Ought
she, with her eyes open, and without much hope of spontaneous love, to
enter into the childless 'modern' marriage which alone seemed possible
for her? Ought she to spend herself in a reckless campaign for the
suffrage? Meanwhile, she had had her tea, her eyes were too tired to
read, and what on earth should she do till bedtime?
Such moments of clear self-questioning were of course rare, but the
nerve-fretting problems always existed. Industrial civilisation had
given the growing and working generation a certain amount of leisure,
and education enough to conceive of a choice in the use of that leisure;
but had offered them no guidance in making their choice.
We are faced, as I write, with the hideous danger that fighting may
blaze up again throughout the whole Eurasian continent, and that the
young men and girls of Europe may have no more choice in the way they
spend their time than they had from 1914 to 1918 or the serfs of Pharaoh
had in ancient Egypt. But if that immediate danger is avoided, I dream
that in Europe and in America a conscious and systematic discussion by
the young thinkers of our time of the conditions of a good life for an
unprivileged population may be one of the results of the new vision of
human nature and human possibilities which modern science and modern
industry have forced upon us.
Within each nation, industrial organisation may cease to be a confused
and wasteful struggle of interests, if it is consciously related to a
chosen way of life for which it offers to every worker the material
means. International relations may cease to consist of a constant
plotting of evil by each nation for its neighbours, if ever the youth of
all nations know that French, and British, and Germans, and Russians,
and Chinese, and Americans, are taking a conscious part in the great
adventure of discovering ways of living open to all, and which all can
believe to be good.
GRAHAM WALLAS.
_August_ 1920.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
PART I
_THE CONDITIONS OF THE PROBLEM_
CHAPTER I
IMPULSE AND INSTINCT IN POLITICS
CHAPTER II
POLITICAL ENTITIES
CHAPTER III
NON-RATIONAL INFERENCE IN POLITICS
CHAPTER IV
THE MATERIAL OF POLITICAL REASONING
CHAPTER V
THE METHOD OF POLITICAL REASONING
PART II
_POSSIBILITIES OF PROGRESS_
CHAPTER I
POLITICAL MORALITY
CHAPTER II
REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT
CHAPTER III
OFFICIAL THOUGHT
CHAPTER IV
NATIONALITY AND HUMANITY
SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS
_(Introduction, page 1)_
The study of politics is now in an unsatisfactory position. Throughout
Europe and America, representative democracy is generally accepted as
the best form of government; but those who have had most experience of
its actual working are often disappointed and apprehensive. Democracy
has not been extended to non-European races, and during the last few
years many democratic movements have failed.
This dissatisfaction has led to much study of political institutions;
but little attention has been recently given in works on politics to the
facts of human nature. Political science in the past was mainly based,
on conceptions of human nature, but the discredit of the dogmatic
political writers of the early nineteenth century has made modern
students of politics over-anxious to avoid anything which recalls their
methods. That advance therefore of psychology which has transformed
pedagogy and criminology has left politics largely unchanged.
The neglect of the study of human nature is likely, however, to prove
only a temporary phase of political thought, and there are already signs
that it, is coming to an end.
_(PART I.--Chapter I.--Impulse and Instinct in Politics, page 21)_
Any examination of human nature in politics must begin with an attempt
to overcome that 'intellectualism' which results both from the
traditions of political science and from the mental habits of ordinary
men.
Political impulses are not mere intellectual inferences from
calculations of means and ends; but tendencies prior to, though modified
by, the thought and experience of individual human beings. This may be
seen if we watch the action in politics of such impulses as personal
affection, fear, ridicule, the desire of property, etc.
All our impulses and instincts are greatly increased in their immediate
effectiveness if they are 'pure,' and in their more permanent results if
they are 'first hand' and are connected with the earlier stages of our
evolution. In modern politics the emotional stimulus which reaches us
through the newspapers is generally 'pure,' but 'second hand,' and
therefore is both facile and transient.
The frequent repetition of an emotion or impulse is often distressing.
Politicians, like advertisers, must allow for this fact, which again is
connected with that combination of the need of privacy with intolerance
of solitude to which we have to adjust our social arrangements.
Political emotions are sometimes pathologically intensified when
experienced simultaneously by large numbers of human beings in physical
association, but the conditions of political life in England do not
often produce this phenomenon.
The future of international politics largely depends on the question
whether we have a specific instinct of hatred for human beings of a
different racial type from ourselves. The point is not yet settled, but
many facts which are often explained as the result of such an instinct
seem to be due to other and more general instincts modified by
association.
_(Chapter II.--Political Entities, page: 59)_
Political acts and impulses are the result of the contact between human
nature and its environment. During the period studied by the politician,
human nature has changed very little, but political environment has
changed with ever-increasing rapidity.
Those facts of our environment which stimulate impulse and action reach
us through our senses, and are selected from the mass of our sensations
and memories by our instinctive or acquired knowledge of their
significance. In politics the things recognised are, for the most part,
made by man himself, and our knowledge of their significance is not
instinctive but acquired.
Recognition tends to attach itself to symbols, which take the place of
more complex sensations and memories. Some of the most difficult
problems in politics result from the relation between the conscious use
in reasoning of the symbols called words, and their more or less
automatic and unconscious effect in stimulating emotion and action. A
political symbol whose significance has once been established by
association, may go through a psychological development of its own,
apart from the history of the facts which were originally symbolised by
it. This may be seen in the case of the names and emblems of nations and
parties; and still more clearly in the history of those commercial
entities--'teas' or 'soaps'--which are already made current by
advertisement before any objects to be symbolised by them have been made
or chosen. Ethical difficulties are often created by the relation
between the quickly changing opinions of any individual politician and
such slowly changing entities as his reputation, his party name, or the
traditional personality of a newspaper which he may control.
_(Chapter III.--Non-Rational Inference in Politics, page 98)_
Intellectualist political thinkers often assume, not only that political
action is necessarily the result of inferences as to means and ends, but
that all inferences are of the same 'rational' type.
It is difficult to distinguish sharply between rational and non-rational
inferences in the stream of mental experience, but it is clear that many
of the half-conscious processes by which men form their political
opinions are non-rational. We can generally trust non-rational
inferences in ordinary life because they do not give rise to conscious
opinions until they have been strengthened by a large number of
undesigned coincidences. But conjurers and others who study our
non-rational mental processes can so play upon them as to make us form
absurd beliefs. The empirical art of politics consists largely in the
creation of opinion by the deliberate exploitation of subconscious
non-rational inference. The process of inference may go on beyond the
point desired by the politician who started it, and is as likely to take
place in the mind of a passive newspaper-reader as among the members of
the most excited crowd.
_(Chapter IV.--The Material of Political Reasoning, page 114)_
But men can and do reason, though reasoning is only one of their mental
processes. The rules for valid reasoning laid down by the Greeks were
intended primarily for use in politics, but in politics reasoning has in
fact proved to be more difficult and less successful than in the
physical sciences. The chief cause of this is to be found in the
character of its material. We have to select or create entities to
reason about, just as we select or create entities to stimulate our
impulses and non-rational inferences. In the physical sciences these
selected entities are of two types, either concrete things made exactly
alike, or abstracted qualities in respect of which things otherwise
unlike can be exactly compared. In politics, entities of the first type
cannot be created, and political philosophers have constantly sought for
some simple entity of the second type, some fact or quality, which may
serve as an exact 'standard' for political calculation. This search has
hitherto been unsuccessful, and the analogy of the biological sciences
suggests that politicians are most likely to acquire the power of valid
reasoning when they, like doctors, avoid the over-simplification of
their material, and aim at using in their reasoning as many facts as
possible about the human type, its individual variations, and its
environment. Biologists have shown that large numbers of facts as to
individual variations within any type can be remembered if they are
arranged as continuous curves rather than as uniform rules or arbitrary
exceptions. On the other hand, any attempt to arrange the facts of
environment with the same approach to continuity as is possible with the
facts of human nature is likely to result in error. The study of history
cannot be assimilated to that of biology.
_(Chapter V.--The Method of Political Reasoning, page 138)_
The method of political reasoning has shared the traditional
over-simplification of its subject-matter.
In Economics, where both method and subject-matter were originally
still more completely simplified, 'quantitative' methods have since
Jevons's time tended to take the place of 'qualitative'. How far is a
similar change possible in politics?
Some political questions can obviously be argued quantitatively. Others
are less obviously quantitative. But even on the most complex political
issues experienced and responsible statesmen do in fact think
quantitatively, although the methods by which they reach their results
are often unconscious.
When, however, all politicians start with intellectualist assumptions,
though some half-consciously acquire quantitative habits of thought,
many desert politics altogether from disillusionment and disgust. What
is wanted in the training of a statesman is the fully conscious
formulation and acceptance of those methods which will not have to be
unlearned.
Such a conscious change is already taking place in the work of Royal
Commissions, International Congresses, and other bodies and persons who
have to arrange and draw conclusions from large masses of specially
collected evidence. Their methods and vocabulary, even when not
numerical, are nowadays in large part quantitative.
In parliamentary oratory, however, the old tradition of
over-simplification is apt to persist.
_(PART II.--Chapter I.--Political Morality, page 167)_
But in what ways can such changes in political science affect the actual
trend of political forces?
In the first place, the abandonment by political thinkers and writers of
the intellectualist conception of politics will sooner or later
influence the moral judgments of the working politician. A young
candidate will begin with a new conception of his moral relation to
those whose will and opinions he is attempting to influence. He will
start, in that respect, from a position hitherto confined to statesmen
who have been made cynical by experience.
If that were the only result of our new knowledge, political morality
might be changed for the worse. But the change will go deeper. When men
become conscious of psychological processes of which they have been
unconscious or half-conscious, not only are they put on their guard
against the exploitation of those processes in themselves by others, but
they become better able to control them from within.
If, however, a conscious moral purpose is to be strong enough to
overcome, as a political force, the advancing art of political
exploitation, the conception of control from within must be formed into
an ideal entity which, like 'Science,' can appeal to popular
imagination, and be spread by an organised system of education. The
difficulties in this are great (owing in part to our ignorance of the
varied reactions of self-consciousness on instinct), but a wide
extension of the idea of causation is not inconsistent with an increased
intensity of moral passion.
_(Chapter II.--Representative Government, page 199)_
The changes now going on in our conception of the psychological basis of
politics will also re-open the discussion of representative democracy.
Some of the old arguments in that discussion will no longer be accepted
as valid, and it is probable that many political thinkers (especially
among those who have been educated in the natural sciences) will return
to Plato's proposal of a despotic government carried on by a selected
and trained class, who live apart from the 'ostensible world'; though
English experience in India indicates that even the most carefully
selected official must still live in the 'ostensible world,' and that
the argument that good government requires the consent of the governed
does not depend for its validity upon its original intellectualist
associations.
Our new way of thinking about politics will, however, certainly change
the form, not only of the argument for consent, but also of the
institutions by which consent is expressed. An election (like a
jury-trial) will be, and is already beginning to be, looked upon rather
as a process by which right decisions are formed under right conditions,
than as a mechanical expedient by which decisions already formed are
ascertained.
Proposals for electoral reform which seem to continue the old
intellectualist tradition are still brought forward, and new
difficulties in the working of representative government will arise from
the wider extension of political power. But that conception of
representation may spread which desires both to increase the knowledge
and public spirit of the voter and to provide that no strain is put upon
him greater than he can bear.
_(Chapter III.--Official Thought, page 241)_
A quantitative examination of the political force created by popular
election shows the importance of the work of non-elected officials in
any effective scheme of democracy.
What should be the relation between these officials and the elected
representatives? On this point English opinion already shows a marked
reaction from the intellectualist conception of representative
government. We accept the fact that most state officials are appointed
by a system uncontrolled either by individual members of parliament or
by parliament as a whole, that they hold office during good behaviour,
and that they are our main source of information as to some of the most
difficult points on which we form political judgments. It is largely an
accident that the same system has not been introduced into our local
government.
But such a half-conscious acceptance of a partially independent Civil
Service as an existing fact is not enough. We must set ourselves to
realise clearly what we intend our officials to do, and to consider how
far our present modes of appointment, and especially our present methods
of organising official work, provide the most effective means for
carrying out that intention.
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