Factors of a national character

We are already far from those times when Hume wrote: “If you want to know the Greeks and Romans, study the English and the French; the people described by Tacitus and Polybius resemble those around us. ” Referring to Tacitus, Polybius and Caesar to prove that man is the same everywhere, Hume did not notice that even the peoples described by these historians were strikingly different from each other. Each of them, along with his inherent virtues, had known flaws that could suggest the idea of ​​"decline and decay", while it was only a question of the beginning of historical life. Tacitus describes the mind. In Germans, as tall people, phlegmatic, with fierce blue eyes and red hair, with Herculesian power and insatiable stomachs, fed with meat, heated with alcoholic beverages, prone to rude and gloomy drunkenness, loving gambling, with cold temperament , slowly becoming attached to people, distinguished by comparative purity of morals (for savages), by the cult of the home, by rude manners, known for honesty, love for war and freedom, by faithful comrades, both in life and in death and that did not eliminate however the bloody quarrels and hereditary hatred in their midst. Undoubtedly, Tacitus gave this somewhat romantic description of the Germans with the secret intention to have a certain influence on the Romans; but nevertheless we will recognize in his picture the original race, which he characterized by the words: propriam et sinceram et tantum sui similem gentem (straightforward and permanent people, always looking like themselves). We find a completely different portrait in Caesar, when he draws us Gauls high and blond, with the same bright and wild eyes, with the same physical strength, but people of a more mixed race; morally, “impressionable and inconstant at meetings, prone to revolutions”, capable, under the influence of false rumors, to get carried away and perform actions that they later regret, decisively recklessly the most important things; despondent at the first misfortune and inflamed from the first offense; easily conceived without any reason war, but sluggish, devoid of energy in the time of disaster; passionately in love with all sorts of adventures, invading Greece or Rome for the pleasure of fighting; generous, hospitable, frank, friendly, but frivolous and impermanent; vain, addicted to everything brilliant, possessing a subtle mind, reduce joking, love to tell, insatiable curiosity towards everything new, the cult of eloquence, amazing ease of speech and the ability to get involved in words. Is it possible to deny, after such descriptions, that national types persist throughout history? The fact is that every character is determined to a large extent by the hereditary structure, which in turn depends on race and environment.
Without a doubt, it is impossible to include an entire people in the same definition, as not only individual differences, but also provincial and local, are noticed in every nation. The Fleming is not like Marseille, but the Breton is not like a Gascon. On the other hand, thanks to the mixing of races and ideological communication between nations, in every nation one can meet individuals who could equally well be representatives of the neighboring nation, both in physical and moral type. But the psychology of nations is not concerned with individuals, but with average characters; As for the mean definitions and characteristics, is it possible to deny that, in general, even on the basis of the most superficial signs, do you always distinguish an Englishman by his physiognomy? But in that case, how could the internal physiognomy of the French or the English mind not exist? Can we deny that, from the point of view of collective properties, all French people have some common features, whether they are Flemish or Marseille? Consequently, there is a national character in which all individuals are more or less involved, and whose existence cannot be contested, even if it cannot be detected by one or another individual or group.
National character is not a simple set of individual characters. In a strongly cohesive and organized society, such as, for example, the French nation, individuals need to influence each other, resulting in a well-known common way of feeling, thinking and desiring, different from what characterizes the mind of an individual member of society or the amount these minds. The national character is also not of a middle type, which would have turned out if the method proposed by Galton for photographing people could be applied to psychology and obtain a collective or "generic" image. The facial features reproduced by the photograph cannot act and are not causes; while the action of the national mind is different from individual actions and is capable of exerting a kind of pressure on the individuals themselves: it is not only a consequence, but in turn a cause; it is not only composed of individual minds, but also affects the mental makeup of individuals. In addition, the collective or average type of modern French, for example, cannot serve as a true reflection of the French character, since every nation has its own history and its age-old traditions; according to the famous dictum, its constituent elements are much more dead than living. The French character summarized the physical and social influences of the past centuries, and independent of the present generations and acting on them themselves only through national ideas, feelings and institutions. On the individual in his relationship to fellow citizens the whole history of his country. Thus, just as the existence of a nation, as a certain social group, is excellent (though inseparable) from the existence of individuals, the national character expresses a special combination of mental forces, the outward manifestation of which is national life.
One can get an idea of ​​the strong interactions that take place among a well-known people by studying, as many psychologists are currently trying to do, the transient and instantaneous manifestations of this interaction among a crowded gathering or crowd. When individuals living in different mental conditions act one upon another, a partial exchange occurs between them, according to Tard, leading to a complication of the inner state of each individual: if they are animated by the same passion and share the same impressions as happens in a crowd, these impressions, amplified by mutual influence, reach greater intensity; instead of the complexity of the individual internal state is the strengthening of the same mood in all individuals. This is the transition from chord to unison. “The crowd,” says Tarde, “has the simple and deep power of a huge unison.” If sects and castes are distinguished by all the characteristic properties of the crowd in their strongest manifestation, it is precisely because members of such closed groups "as if put in one common property a set of their similar ideas and beliefs," and which, by virtue of such growth, take on infinite dimensions . One might add that when some general feeling, such as national honor or patriotism, animates entire nations, it may take the form of a painful fit.
Who does not know that the collective mental mood is not measured by simply summing up individual moods. In human groups, it is easiest to detect and have a predominant influence on the decisions of feeling that are common to all of these individuals; but such feelings are usually the simplest and most primitive, and not sensations corresponding to the later stratifications of civilization. According to Siegel, Lebon and Tardu, a person in a crowd is lower in mental attitude than he is, as an individual. Intelligent jurors pronounce ridiculous verdicts; commissions composed of eminent scientists or artists are distinguished by “strange blunders”; political assemblies vote for measures contrary to the individual feelings of their constituent members. The fact, says Tarde, is that our mental and moral capital is divided into two parts, one of which cannot be transferred to others or exchanged, and, being different in different individuals, determines the originality and personal value of each of them; the other; subject to exchange, consists of unmotivated, unaccountable passions and feelings, common to all people of a known era and a famous country. It is this exchange part of capital that is accumulated in the crowd at the expense of its first part. Nevertheless, although the feelings of the crowd are often rude, they can also be magnanimous; in the latter case, however, it is still the elementary and immediate sensations that awaken the very basis of human sympathy.
Organized crowds have always played a significant role in the life of nations; but, according to Lebon, this role has never been as important as in modern democracies. If you believe him, then replacing the conscious activity of individuals with the unconscious activity of the crowd is one of the main distinguishing features of the current century and modern peoples. But although Lebon recognizes the extremely low mental level of the crowd, even if it consists of a select part of the population, he still finds it dangerous to concern her modern organization, that is, her electoral right. It is not in our power, he says, to make profound changes in social organisms; one time has a similar ability. Crowds, no doubt, will always remain unconscious, but in this unconsciousness, perhaps, lies the secret of their power. In nature, beings guided solely by instinct perform actions, the extraordinary complexity of which causes surprise to us; Reason is too new in humanity for it to reveal the laws of the unconscious to us, and especially to replace the unconscious activity. But he should, at least, lead her, we add. However, we cannot agree with Lebon that from the psychological point of view the crowd constitutes a “special being”, merging for more or less short time from heterogeneous elements “in exactly the same way as the cells that make up the living body, connecting together, form a new being, different very different properties than those possessed by each of them. " We think it means going too far. There is an intermediate level between the simple sum or arithmetic average of characters and the “creation of new characters”, namely, interaction, not equivalent to creation, but also not representing simple summation. This interaction generates not a new “psychological being,” even if only “temporary,” but creates an original and more or less solid combination.
In the midst of the nation, this kind of interaction is incomparably more complex and does not bear that fleeting character, which distinguishes the impulses of the crowd or the passion of the assembly. In this particular sense - and not at all in the metaphysical - the nation can be called a "permanent being." It is impossible to form an idea about a people by studying successively its constituent individuals: it is necessary to understand the complex body itself, and not only its individual constituent elements. Undoubtedly, the latter are a necessary condition for the formation of a complex body; but their contact, their mutual relations cause special phenomena and special laws, which of course does not mean at all that they create a new being.
To find out exactly what social interactions are, Guyot and Thard insisted on the phenomena of suggestion, more or less similar to hypnotism, occurring in the environment of all kinds of societies: crowds, legislative assemblies, peoples. Tarde, according to Tan, defines the human brain as a kind of multiplier: each of our perceptions and each of our thoughts are reproduced and spread throughout all the bends of the gray matter, so that brain activity can be viewed as "incessant self-imitation." If the individual mental life consists of the imitative suggestion that operates among the cells, then the social life consists of the suggestions that some people put on others. Consequently, a society or a nation can be defined as “a collection of beings among whom there is a process of mutual imitation”. Having barely been born, the child already imitates the father and is formed in his likeness; as he grows and, apparently, becomes more independent, needs of imitation develop more and more in him: other countless hypnotists join the original “hypnotist” who previously acted on him; at the same time, and regardless of his will, he himself becomes a hypnotist in relation to countless hypnotized. Tarde calls it a transition from one-sided to mutual influence. "Social life, like a hypnotic state, is only a special form of sleep ... To have only one suggested ideas and consider them to be your own, such is the illusion inherent in somnambulists just like a person living in society."
Without going so far and not assuming that hypnotic suggestion really occurred between members of a famous nation and that almost everything in this nation was accomplished as it were in a state of sleep, however, it can be assumed that there are a number of mutual influences between the brain centers of individuals leading to the establishment of feelings and ideas, the source of which no longer lies in one individual and not in the simple sum of individuals, but in the mutual dependence of one of them with respect to others, as well as with respect to their predecessors. It is only in this sense, in our opinion, that one can speak of a national “organism” as such solidarity, each part of which is explained by the whole, just as the whole is explained by its constituent parts.
These or other states of consciousness of individuals can respond to the general consciousness, but not directly: they first act one on the other due to relationships that put them in contact with each other, and only as a result of this interaction can a greater or lesser change in the national character occur. The reasons directly affecting the latter are the conditions in which the social body as a whole is placed; and these conditions are not identical to the particular conditions in which individuals are set. It is therefore necessary to carefully distinguish national from individual conditions; national character depends directly on the former and only indirectly on the latter. Thus, there is a whole gradation of various degrees of complexity among the forces, under the influence of which this social combination arises, as different from its constituent elements as water is from the components of its oxygen and hydrogen.
In a certain sense, every nation has its own consciousness and its own will. This sociological truth is too ignored by one-sided systems, both political, economic and political, as well as psychological and moral, systems that, grouped under the banner of individualism, eventually come to real social atomism. We do not intend at all to give concrete meaning to abstractions, to attribute to the people a special “soul,” a special “me,” as some sociologists do, such as Worms or Novikov; we will not even touch on this philosophical or rather metaphysical question. But just as a well-known system of ideas-feelings and, at the same time, ideas-forces, manifested in his consciousness and guiding his will, develops in each individual — this system also exists in the nation. Some of the guiding ideas of individuals are closely connected with the life of the society of which they are members, with that whole, of which they constitute a part. These ideas are the result and reproduction in each of us of those social interactions that we, for our part, have on others and experience on ourselves. Every Frenchman has his own role in the life of a nation; but no matter how individual their interests or duties are, they are always more or less connected with the interests and duties of France; we cannot, therefore, not have in our brain ideas relating to the common good, the common ideal, more or less correctly understood, more or less confined to our self, as a starting point. From this it turns out in the totality of heads and consciousnesses a system of ideas that serves as a reflection of the social environment, just as there is a system of ideas reflecting the physical environment. This is collective determinism, part of which is in ourselves, and the rest in all other members of society.This system of mutually connected, mutually conditioned ideas constitutes the national consciousness, which resides not in any single collective brain, but in the aggregate of all individual brain centers, and yet does not equal the sum of individual consciousnesses.
This systematization of the interconnected ideas-forces, aside from the national consciousness, also explains the “national will”, which, like every will, more or less fulfills the moral ideal. It is only by the explicit usurpation of the voters of any country or — even worse — of any one district, that their votes have the meaning of popular will. This is nothing more than a surrogate for it, partial and incomplete, which so far has to be content, but which is not at all in the nature of mystical "sovereignty." In fact, a national character is by no means always expressed in the best way by a mob, or even by a cash majority. There are select natures in which the soul of a whole nation, its deepest thought, its most essential desires, are reflected better than in all others. This is too often forgotten by our politicians.Rousseau himself, however, taught them that “there is often a huge difference between the will of all and the common will”: the first represents the sum of individual wants, each of which may strive to satisfy private interests; one second corresponds to the general interest. At the very least, it can be said that it expresses the aspirations of an entire nation, caused by the system of ideas and feelings that guide it. Separate minds are factors of national will, but none of them embodies it. Indeed, no individual is ever fully aware of even his own will, if we understand by it the whole system of his guiding ideas and feelings; however, he may be aware of the national will, which is composed of the mutual influence of all individual desires on one another and on the component of the known resultant of these desires.This resultant always goes beyond the visions and desires of each individual. Consequently, the national will can never be quite conscious of itself, even in the person of a chosen natures, even in the person of the greatest genius, be it Napoleon himself. One future opens, after all, the true direction of the national movement, which can only be foreseen with a greater or lesser probability based on past history and the present state of the nation.which can only be foreseen with greater or lesser probability based on the past history and the present state of the nation.which can only be foreseen with greater or lesser probability based on the past history and the present state of the nation.