In the foregoing chapter we noticed certain well-marked and generally recognised differences of national character presented by the French and the English peoples—namely, the greater independence of the English, the greater sociability of the French people; and we noted how these differences of national character show themselves throughout the institutions of the two nations, and how they have played a great part in determining the difference of their histories; especially, we saw, how they are of prime importance, when we seek to account for the greater expansion of the English people throughout the world.
We then noticed several attempts that have been made, by Buckle, Boutmy, Maine and others, to account for these differences as results of differences of political institutions during the last thousand years. We found that all these attempts fail, and that the differences of political institutions, which these authors have regarded as the causes of the differences of national character, are really the expressions of a fundamental racial difference; that, in short, these authors have inverted the true causal relation. I then drew attention to the work of the school of Le Play and especially to its fundamental principle—namely, that, while peoples are in a state of primitive or lowly culture, their geographical or physical environment determines their occupations and, through their occupations, their social organisations, especially their domestic organisation; and that particular modes of occupation and of social organisation of a primitive people, persisting through many generations, mould the innate qualities and form the racial character.
I said that two brilliant workers of the school—namely, Demolins and de Tourville—had applied this principle to account for those differences between the national characters of the French and English peoples which we were considering. I have now to reproduce their account in as condensed a form as possible.
Demolins claims to show that the short dark round-headed people, who formed the bulk of the Gauls and also of the population of modern France, came, in prehistoric times, from the Eurasian steppe region, reaching France by way of the valley of the Danube, a long narrow lowland region confined on the north by the Carpathians and mountains of Bohemia, on the south by the Balkans and Swiss Alps. He supposes that, for long ages, they had lived as pastoral nomads on the steppes. By examining the nomads who still lead the pastoral life on the steppes, he shows the kind of social organisation to which this pastoral life inevitably gives rise and under which they lived; and he traces the effects which such occupation and such social organisation produce on the mental qualities of a people.
The system is the patriarchal system _par excellence_. It is something very different from the Roman system characterised by the _patria potestas_, which the writings of Sir H. Maine have perhaps tended to confuse with the true patriarchal system. The patriarchal system of the pastoral nomads is essentially a communal system, under which all the brothers, sons, and grandsons of the patriarch form, with their families, a community which holds all the property, consisting of flocks and herds, in common; each member having his claim to his share of the produce, each doing his share of the common labour, and each having a voice in the regulation of the affairs of the family. Such a system represses individualism; there is no individual property, there are no individual rights, duties, or responsibilities; no scope for individual initiative; the individual is swallowed up in the community; superior energy or enterprise bring no superior rewards, but rather tend to social disorganisation and to the detriment of the individual who displays them. Further, the work of looking after the herds of cattle is easy and delightful, calling for no sustained exertion; and the herds provide every necessary article of food, clothing, and shelter. Beyond the family group there exists no political organisation; for the group is self-supporting and independent, it has no need of relations with other groups, and each group lives far apart from others, wandering in some ill-defined region of the immense plain.
The peculiarities of this social organisation and of this mode of life are clearly created by the physical environment, by the boundless grassy plains, which enable each family group to maintain a large troup of cattle, chiefly horses. At the same time, these conditions render necessary the co-operation of all the members of the family in the common work of tending the cattle; while the necessity of continually moving on to fresh pasture prevents the growth of any fixed forms of property and of any more elaborate social organisation.
It is an extremely stable and persistent mode of life and of social organisation. So long as the geographical conditions remain unchanged, it is difficult to see how any change would take place in it, how any progress towards civilisation could begin. And, as a matter of fact, the people who have remained in these regions continue to lead just the same patriarchal, pastoral, nomadic life. Long ages of this mode of life may well put upon a people the stamp of sociability and communism and kill out individualism and individual initiative! Demolins points out in a very interesting way how these effects of the patriarchal system of the pastoral nomads are displayed most clearly still by the population of southern Russia, who, of all the settled European peoples descended from such pastoral nomads, have suffered fewest disturbing influences; how still the individual is subordinated to the community, to the _mir_, by which all private life and industrial activity is directed and which is the owner of the principal property, namely the land; and how, in consequence, the people remain devoid of all individual initiative and enterprise.
The Celts arriving in Gaul retained these qualities and something of the patriarchal organisation, although they were no longer simply pastoral nomads; for, in the course of their migrations, they had been forced to take up agriculture and the rearing of other domestic animals, especially the pig, through lack of sufficient open steppe land. While in this disorganised condition in Gaul, they were overrun by tribes of the Nordic race, who established themselves as a conquering nobility, superimposing upon the rudimentary political organisation of the Celts a loose military organisation of clans; each clan was led by a popular warrior who attached to himself by his personal qualities as large as possible a number of clients or clansmen, acquiring rights over their land and property, in return for the patronage and protection he offered them. These nobles with their blood relatives were the tall fair-haired Gauls described by Caesar. The Celts lent themselves readily to this system based on personal loyalty and leadership, owing to their lack of independence of character engendered by long ages of the patriarchal communal régime. And the new social organisation fostered and developed still more through many generations the spirit of dependence, the tendency to look for authoritative guidance and control to some recognised centre of power.
Under the two circumstances, the long régime of patriarchal communism and the subsequent prevalence for many generations of the clan system, we may see, according to Demolins, the causes of those deep-seated tendencies of the French nation (summed up by Buckle in the phrase the spirit of protection) which throughout their history have played so large a part in shaping the destinies of the people, and which are still the source of grave anxiety to many patriotic Frenchmen.
It is interesting to note that among the Celtic populations of the British Isles the same features have been clearly displayed. We see among them the clan-system with its dual ownership of the soil, which has been perpetuated in Ireland to the present day and has received more formal and legal recognition from the British government in its recent legislation. We see the strong clannish spirit and relative lack of independence. These qualities are clearly shown by the Celtic Irish, even when they have been compelled by necessity to emigrate to America. There they are not found to be pioneers on the frontiers of civilisation, but rather remain herded together in clannish communities in the cities of the eastern states, where they create such powerful unofficial associations as ‘Tammany Hall.’
Demolins’ account of the genesis of the spirit of independence and enterprise of the Anglo-Saxons is still more interesting and seductive. He supposes that their ancestors also came originally in very remote times from the Eurasian steppes; but that is a disputable point and forms no essential part of his argument. They settled in prehistoric times around the coasts of the Baltic and the North Sea, especially in Scandinavia. And the physical peculiarities of this region impressed upon their descendants the qualities which have enabled them to play a leading part in the destruction of the Roman power and in the development of the civilisation of modern Europe, and which have established them in almost every part of the world as a dominant race, increasing in power and numbers at the expense of other peoples.
What, then, are these physical conditions?
Scandinavia is a mass of barren mountains coming down in almost all parts abruptly to the sea. Its coast line is indented by innumerable fiords and bordered by thousands of small islands; and the sea which washes these coasts is warmed by the Gulf Stream. This sea, owing to its warmth and to the existence of a great bank which lies near the surface and runs parallel to the coast line, is extremely rich in fish. Hence, the Nordic tribes who settled in Scandinavia inevitably became a sea-faring folk, spreading slowly along the coasts in small boats, supporting themselves in large part upon the fish which they caught in the sea; for the land is barren, while the sea offers ideal conditions for fishing in small boats. But, unlike the herds of pastoral peoples, sea-fishing does not provide all the necessities of a simple life. It must be combined with agriculture. Hence, the ancient Northmen became a race of hardy seafarers who at the same time practised agriculture.
The character of the land which was available for the necessary but supplementary agriculture was all important. It consisted, as it does still, of small isolated strips of cultivatable soil at the feet of the mountains where they plunge into the sea. On such land it was impossible for the family to retain the form of a patriarchal community. The fertile areas were too small to support such communities, and the individualistic form of family was inevitably evolved. On each small plot of cultivatable land a little farm was formed, a homestead in which lived a family restricted to father, mother, and children. As the children grew up, it was impossible to support them on the one small farm or to divide it among them; one son alone was chosen as the inheritor of the paternal farm; and each of the others had to seek a new piece of land, build a new homestead, and acquire his own boat.
Thus, the family was forced to become the individualistic family; and the home of each such family was necessarily isolated, widely separated from that of every other, owing to the scattered distribution of the little areas of fertile soil. Thus were formed the first homes in the English sense of the word; the home in which the father rules supreme over his own little household, brooking no interference from outside; the home in which the children are brought up to look forward to establishing, each child for himself, similar independent individualistic homes. Such homes have been established by the Northmen in every part of the world in which they have settled; and they are peculiar to them and their descendants.
It is obvious that all the very limited domains of the Scandinavian coasts must have been fully occupied in the way described in a comparatively few generations after the process of settlement began. This seems to have occurred about the fourth or fifth century A.D. Then the younger sons, for whom there was no place at home and for whom there remained no spots suitable for homesteads in their native land, were sent out into the world to seek their fortunes. They banded themselves together to man single boats, or formed fleets of boats; and, leaving their parents and women-folk behind, set out to conquer for themselves new homesteads. Large numbers, sailing to the southern shores of the Baltic and up the Weser and the Elbe, settled on the plains of Saxony; and from this new centre they again spread, as the Anglo-Saxons to England, and as the Franks to Gaul. Others settled directly in northern France and became the Normans. Others, the Varegs, penetrated the plains of Russia and established themselves as princes over the Slav population.
This was a migration such as had never before been seen; bands of armed men, all young or in the prime of life, coming not as mere robbers, but seeking to conquer for themselves and to settle upon whatever land seemed to them most desirable. Everywhere they went they conquered and either exterminated or drove out the indigenous population, as in the south and east of England, or established themselves as an aristocracy, a ruling military caste, as the Franks in the north-east of Gaul. And everywhere they established firmly their individualistic social organisation, especially the isolated homestead of the individualistic family, characterised by the despotic power of the father and by great regard for individual property and for the rights of the individual as against all State institutions and public powers. In hostile countries the homestead became a fortified place, or at least was furnished with a fortified keep or castle; and in those regions, such as Gaul, in which the indigenous population was not exterminated, the feudal system was thus initiated. Everywhere they carried their spirit of independence, enterprise, and initiation.
It was the swarming of the young broods of Northmen in search of new homes that caused the Romans to describe these Northern lands as the womb of peoples, and to regard them with wonder and something of fear.
These qualities and habits continued to be displayed in the highest degree by the Normans after their first settlement in the north of France. The younger sons kept up the good old fashion of going out into the world to seek a fortune or rather a territory, which often was a dukedom or a kingdom. Their most characteristic performance was the conquest of the greater part of Italy. A little before William of Normandy and his companions secured for themselves domains in this country, Norman knights, engaging in enterprises that might well have seemed absolutely foolhardy, had established themselves in Mediterranean lands. Some two thousand Normans, arriving Viking fashion in their small ships, conquered Sicily and the south of Italy and divided these lands among themselves; and for a time they introduced order and a settled mode of life among the peoples of those parts. The leading spirits among them were ten sons of one Norman gentleman, Tancrède de Hauteville, the father of twelve sons of whom two only remained at home, while each of the others carved out for himself a domain in Italy. As Demolins remarks, these families, retaining undiminished their individualistic tendencies and spirit of independence, were veritable factories of men for exportation.
The modern Frenchman, says Demolins, would regard as the height of folly the enterprises of the old Northmen, who, mounted on their frail ships, quitted each spring the coast of Scandinavia, launched out on the wild sea, landed, a mere handful of men, on the coasts of Germany, Britain, or Gaul, and there with their swords carved out domains and made new homesteads. It was thus that the ancestors of Tancred had acquired the manor of Hauteville, and it was thus that his sons conquered Italy and Sicily.
It was in a very similar way that, in a later age, men of the same breed carried to the new world the same individualistic institutions and the same spirit of independence, and in doing so, laid the sure foundations of the immense vigour and prosperity of the American people.
There is one almost more striking illustration of the great and lasting effects upon character and institutions of the mode of life of the Northmen determined by their physical environment. It is furnished by the character and habits of the people who still dwell in the plains between the mouths and lower parts of the Weser and the Elbe, a region which was naturally one of the first to be conquered and occupied by the Northmen. This territory is an infertile sandy plain, and at the time of the coming of the Northmen had but scanty population; hence, instead of becoming the military and ruling caste of a subject people, the Northmen became themselves peasants and farmers. In doing so, they retained all the characteristic features of the individualistic family and have perpetuated them, together with the spirit of enterprise and independence, undiminished to the present day.
In this region each farm is a freehold which has remained in the hands of the same family for long periods, in many cases for hundreds of years. Each farm has its isolated homestead inhabited by the head of the family, his wife and young children, and one or two hired servants. Each homestead is well nigh completely self-supporting and lives almost independent of the outside world. In spite of the isolation, which might have been expected to engender an extreme conservatism and backwardness of culture, these farmers have continued to exhibit the old Northmen’s spirit of enterprise and their power of voluntary combination in the pursuit of individual ends. They were the first in Europe to establish a society for the scientific study of agriculture, and they have thus maintained themselves in the first rank as cultivators of the land, quite without State assistance. In the same way and at an early date they established schools for their children. They have continued to produce large families and have retained the custom of handing over the farm and homestead intact to one son, chosen for his ability to manage it; while all the other sons keep up the old custom of going out into the world to seek their fortunes, in the shape of new homesteads.
Most striking of all, they still do this in the old Norse fashion as nearly as possible. In one district these farmers combined their efforts some sixty years ago and built a ship which, since that time, has sailed every year to South Africa, carrying there the surplus sons in search of new domains for themselves. In that far country their spirit of independence finds satisfaction in establishing new homesteads, new families of the individualistic type, and in perpetuating their traditions of enterprise and self-reliance.
It is because the modern Scandinavians are of the same stock, fashioned for long ages by the same physical environment, that they have continued to emigrate in large numbers to North America, where some of their ancestral race landed centuries before Columbus was born, and where, in the newly opened territories of Canada and the United States, they are generally recognised as being among the best of the settlers.
Demolins does not enter into the question—How did the institutions and mode of life of these or other peoples, determined by physical environment, bring about adaptation of racial qualities to the environment? He seems to assume in all cases use-inheritance. But if, as seems possible or even probable, this is a false assumption, we may still see clearly that, in the case of the Northmen at least, adaptation may well have been effected by selection. The conditions of life of these Northmen were such that in each generation the majority of men could become fathers of families only after carrying through successfully an enterprise in which a bold independence of spirit was the prime condition of success.
Those who were deficient in the spirit of independence must have shrunk from these wild expeditions in search of new homes to be won only by the sword, or must in the main have failed to attain the end; remaining at home, or returning there after failing in the enterprise to which they proved unequal, to finish their days as bachelor uncles at the paternal hearth. This process, carried on for many generations, would lead to the evolution of just those qualities which are characteristic of their descendants in all the many parts of the earth where they now rule. Not only must such social selection have been operative during the period of settlement of Scandinavia; but each great migration to a new area must have sifted out the most independent and enterprising spirits to be the founders and fathers of the new branch of the race[119]. Thus the descendants of the pilgrim fathers were the product of three such processes of severe selection; the migration from Scandinavia to Northern Germany; that from Germany to England; and that from England to America. No wonder that they proved themselves well able to cope with the hardships and dangers of a new continent inhabited by savages only less fiercely tempered than their own stock by many generations of warfare! When we thus find the same institutions and the same mental traits characterising, from the dawn of history to the present time, all the widely separated branches of one racial stock and of this stock alone, we realize how powerful over the destiny of nations is the influence of racial character formed in the long prehistoric ages; we see how futile it is to attempt to explain the mental traits of a people by the history of their political institutions during a few recent centuries; we understand that these institutions are the effects, not the causes, of those mental qualities and that, even among the peoples who have attained the highest degree of civilisation, racial qualities remain of supreme importance.
