CHAP. V gods. In fear of having their throats cut by the enemy they cheerfully submit to the will of the war leader. In dread of evildoers they rally round a power that can make law respected. They come to feel intense love and loyalty toward the statebuilding kings and dynasties who have allayed their terrors, and hate the recalcitrant and disloyal.

Origin
of the
Supply

of Govern

ment Bringing

Govern

ment

under

Control

Funda

mental Social

Evolution Changes the Value

ment and Therewith

the Strength of the Political Interest

The appetite for power, however, impels the masterful to supply more than enough government. In time the absolute state reveals its true inwardness and men start back in affright before a Frankenstein. Then ensues a struggle to wrest from government guarantees of individual liberties and rights. The next step is to dispense with governing families and classes and organize a state whose master is the people. Finally the people's 'state is used for a multitude of services which never occurred to government in an earlier day.

FLUCTUATIONS IN THE POLITICAL INTEREST

The intensity of feeling about the state varies with its apparent importance in the general scheme. Political loyalty is strongest when enemy blows rain harmless on the shield the of Govern state holds over its people. The flame of patriotism rises or sinks with the approach or retreat of violence. To the degree that peace and order, individual liberty and democratic control are attained, the old fears and passions die. Free associations take over the promotion of culture. Public opinion comes to be the chief regulator of conduct and law but reflects public opinion. The non-political side of society comes forward and politics ceases to be an arch joiner and sunderer of men. If, however, social evolution should cause the state to absorb so much of the industrial organization as to play the rôle of a supreme earthly Providence, no doubt men's interest in it would grow again.

The Intellectual Interest Springs

from Curi

osity at

First, but

Has Grown

Far Be

yond This

Instinct

ROOTS OF THE INTELLECTUAL INTEREST

The intellectual interest has far outgrown the craving for knowledge inspired by the instinct of curiosity. For one thing intellectual subtlety, always a coveted species of prowess, gratifies the instinct for self-assertion. Even in the early stages of culture a reputation for extraordinary wisdom brings the sage fame, favor and wealth. Later, learning confers distinction and has a value in bread-winning and mate-winning. As for real

knowledge, it has been means as well as end. Its branches were first cultivated as badges of leisure-class superiority. Later the sciences were promoted because they relieved pain, prolonged life, brought military victory and vastly augmented the production of wealth.

WHY SCIENCE HAS BEEN TOLERATED

CHAP. V

Despite
Her Dis-

and

Habits,

Science

Will Be
Because

Tolerated

of Her

Great

Practical
Services

Down to about the middle of the eighteenth century it was a question whether supernaturalism might not crush or enslave turbing science; but since then science has so won the favor and confi- Upsetting dence of the people by (her triumphs over disease and her conquest of the forces of Nature,) that it does not seem possible for the conservatives to bind her again in chains. Although to the great majority of men their religious traditions are infinitely dearer than the quest of Truth, they have been made to see that they cannot have from science the immense practical services she is rendering them unless they tolerate free inquiry. So, although the craving to find out is a very weak thing in human nature in comparison with the passions and interests which fear and hate it, it enjoys immunity because the world has learned that knowledge is power. Science labors ever with the noose about her neck; but it will not be drawn while science grants the health vainly besought by the worshipper; turns aside the pestilence; insures the husbandman his increase; and overcomes one's enemies.

THEORIES OF SOCIAL DETERMINISM

The dominance of now this interest and now that, creates the illusion that some one force is the shaper of social destiny. At the moment when the state attains its broadest significance the military-political interest seems to be the swaying force in history. At the moment when religion reaches its broadest significance the religious interest appears as the chief uniter and divider of men. Now it happens that in modern times certain well-understood influences have weakened the political and religious interests and thereby thrown into bolder relief other interests, chief among . which is the economic. Economism, so helpful a key to the evolution of modern society, is now. offered as the "Open sesame!" to the locked chambers of the past, the one magic formula for the interpretation of history. Its one rival is intel

Theory of the Worries

as Prime

ers of History

CHAP. V lectualism which pivots the whole social life of an age on its knowledge and beliefs. But these are one-sided theories and cannot explain the past as successfully as they explain the present. It is reasonable to suppose that men's attitudes and actions depend most on what most worries them. When they worry Determin- chiefly about what the Unseen will do to them, the course of society will be most affected by developments in the field of religion. When they lie awake for fear their property or their lives will be taken, their attitude toward everything will depend on how it is related to the security-furnishing organization, i.e., the State. When their supreme anxiety is where the next meal is coming from, they will be for everything that promises to promote economic success and against everything which appears to hinder it. As soon as one worry is soothed it ceases to shape the course of history and some other supreme worry takes charge.

CHAPTER VI

THE RACE FACTOR

F races differ in their original tendencies and in their response to the ideas by which original tendencies are moulded into desires, they will not develop the same type of society. The question comes up, then, whether each race of men is marked out for a distinct social destiny and whether the contrasts we find among contemporary peoples in respect to character, manner and institutions are to be explained in terms of race.

RACE OR SOCIAL HISTORY?

CHAP. VI

Does Each a Social

Race Have

Destiny of Its Own?

The ignorant always invoke race to account for any peculiarity! common to a certain stock. Why is the Chinese conservative? Race. Why is the Turk a fatalist? Race. Why is the Semite a monotheist? Race. Why is the Nordic a Protestant? Race. The vulgar wonder why the Chinese toil so hard, the Jews trade, the English follow sport, and the Germans engage in philosophical speculation, until some one tells them, "It 's in the blood." Then they go away satisfied.

Traits

Which

Have Their
Origin in

History

As soon, however, as we explore the social history of a people National we come upon good grounds for many of its puzzling traits. The Jew's distaste for farming is seen to be a traditional attitude caused by confinement in the Ghetto for several centuries and Social debarment from owning farm land. The proverbial thriftlessness of the Irish peasant is traceable to centuries of alien landlordism and rack-renting. Were it a race trait it would show also in his cousins, the Welshman, the Cornishman and the Breton. The passion of the Dutch for cleanliness seems to be product of a social standard made possible by easy access to water. In parts of China threaded by canals the standards of cleanliness are much higher than where water is not close at hand. On the other hand, the small use of water by the masses in Italy is said to be connected with the fact that many of the towns are situated on a hill so that water has to be brought from a distance.

CHAP. VI The national traits of the Japanese seem queer to us, and here if anywhere one is attempted to appeal to race. But it has been made clear that such Japanese peculiarities as self-immolation in battle, ritual suicide and exaggerated politeness are products of the severe feudal compression from which they have only recently escaped.

What Appears to Frove

Inequality

sity May

Be Due to

of the Motives to Inhibit

Races certainly appear to differ in the strength of their native. propensities. There is an imposing stock of facts which seem to of Propen prove that the Negro has a fiercer sex appetite than other men, that the South Italian has a bent for murder, that the Irishman Inequality has an uncommon taste for fighting, the Jew for money-making, the gypsy for wandering, the Levantine for lying, the Slav for Propensity anarchy, the Frenchman for gesticulation, the Yankee for asking personal questions. The trait is there to be sure; but is it because the owner has a stronger proclivity than we, or because he lacks the idea or social standard which prompts us to inhibit our proclivity? The Yankee has seen no reason to repress his inquisitiveness, the Slav lacks the social experience which generates reverence for law, the Jew is not heir to leisure-class ideals, the Frenchman has developed no standard which excludes gesticulation, the Negro like all primitives has not canalized his sex appetite.

Nevertheless, there Are Congenital Race Dif

ferences

Indications of

DIFFERENCES IN RACE PSYCHE

Nevertheless, after making due allowance for the moulding of a people's psyche by the products of its social evolution, there remain veritable differences in race mind. There is a mountain of evidence that the Northern peoples of Europe (Irish, Scotch, Scandinavians, Slavs) and most nature peoples are more intemperate than Southern races like the Portuguese, Spaniards, Italians, Greeks and Semites. The latter have known strong drink for some thousands of years and their members possessed of an uncontrollable love of vinous exhilaration drank themselves to death long ago. If the physical environment can thus mould the appetite it is likely that other contrasts have been produced by processes we do not yet understand.

Before the immigration boards of inquiry the emotional inEmotional stability of the South Italians stands out in the sharpest contrast to the self-control of the Hebrew and the stolidity of the Slav. They gesticulate much, and usually tears stand in their eyes.

Instability

of the South

Italians