Nationalism and Culture (78 page)

THE ESSENTIAL IDENTITY OF ALL CULTURE. THE DANGER OF THE COLLECTIVE CONCEPT. COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES. INFLUENCE OF THE SOCIAL IMPULSE. INDIVIDUAL AND MASS PSYCHOLOGY. JUDGMENT ABOUT FOREIGN PEOPLES. THE PICTURE OF ONE'S OWN NATION AS A WISH-CONCEPT. THE SYMBOL OF THE NATION. THE ILLUSION OF A NATIONAL CULTURE. CULTURE'S FREEDOM FROM FRONTIERS. CAPITALISM AS TEMPORARY RESULT OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION. THE RATIONALIZING OF CAPITALISTIC ECONOMY. THE "AMERICANIZING" OF EUROPE. THE INFLUENCE OF CAPITALISTIC ECONOMY ON MODERN STATE POLICY. THE FORM OF THE STATE NO EXPRESSION OF PECULIAR NATIONAL ENDOWMENTS. THE MODERN CONSTITUTIONAL STATE. THE NATURE OF PARTIES. THE PARLIAMENTARY MACHINE. ECONOMIC INDIVIDUALISM AND THE CAPITALISTIC STATE. ECONOMIC NATIONALISM. POLITICAL RECONSTRUCTIONS OF THE PRESENT TIME.

THERE is no culture of any sort of which it could be asserted that it arose altogether independently and without outside influences. It is true that we have long been accustomed to "organize" the so-called history of culture according to definite points of view, somewhat as a druggist puts up his stuff in little boxes, vials and cartons, but one cannot maintain that we have gained much by this. While we were busy working out very thoroughly the "inner contrasts" between different culture patterns, we lost the ability rightly to value the common features which lie at the foundation of every culture j we can no longer see the forest for the trees. Spengler's Decline of the West is only a belated, though completely logical, result of this obsession. The surprising achievements of modern ethnology and sociology gave renewed keenness to our understanding of the striking similarity of the social and cultural development in different human groups and led to a revision of the traditional views. Wherever scientific research has undertaken the investigation of a past culture epoch, it has come upon the remains of still older cultures or of blendings and transfers which plainly reveal the invigorating influence of earlier social patterns.

"We can't fall out of this world," as Grabbe says. This utterance

constantly reminds us of the Essential and Universal which unite all human beings with one another and which, in spite of all the peculiarities arising from differences in climate and in external conditions of life, quite harmonize the inner equilibrium between the different human groups. We are all children of this earth and subject to the same laws of life, which find their most elementary expression in hunger and love. And because we are, by and large, of the same physiological species, because the natural environment in which we live acts on us to the same degree, even if the external conditions are not everywhere the same, therefore the intellectual and spiritual precipitates which the external surroundings produce in us are much more similar than most people suspect. Everywhere man struggles for the preservation of his species and, within the species, for his personal existence j everywhere the bases of his behavior are the same. The natural environment and the inborn impulses which have been transmitted to him by the unbroken chain of his ancestors and which operate in the unconscious of our minds give rise everywhere to the same primal forms of religious experience. The struggle for existence leads in all regions to definite forms of economic and political life, which frequently display an astonishing similarity even when we are dealing with peoples of different race who are widely separated from one another by continents and oceans. All this shows that our thinking and doing, because we all possess the same physiological properties and the same sensitivity to the influences of the environment, are subject to the same fundamental laws of life, in comparison with which all the differences of expression play a quite subordinate role. Usually, we are dealing only with difference in degree, which springs merely from more developed or more primitive cultural requirements.

Since Hegel and others taught us to think in abstract general concepts, that manner of thinking has become the fashion. We have grown used to working with psychological quantities and thus we arrive at the most far-reaching generalizations without most of us even suspecting that we have been made the victims of arbitrary assumptions from which must ensue the most misleading conclusions. After Lazarus and Steinthal, following in the footsteps of Herbart, had, with all conceivable ingenuity, constructed the so-called "comparative psychology of peoples," the drift in this direction went merrily onward and led us with compelling logic to the abstract idea of a mass-, class-and race-soul and similar ideas created by intellectual acrobatics, according to which one can think everything and nothing. Thus Dostoievsky became the type of the Slavic soul as Goethe became the revealer of the German soul. The Englishman appears to us as the living embodiment of sober understanding to whom any sentimental consideration of things is denied j the Frenchman as the representative of frivolous vainglory J and the Germans as a "people of poets

and thinkers." We get drunk on this tumult of words and are happy as kings when the language is enriched with a new verbal fetish. We speak in all sobriety of an "individual people," yes, even of an "individual state." By which one is by no means to understand men who belong to a certain people or are citizens of a certain state j no, one is dealing in this case with an entire people or an entire state as if they were individuals with definite traits of character and peculiar psychic properties or intellectual qualities. Let us understand clearly what that means. An abstract structure, like state or people, that merely conveys to us a sociological concept, is endowed with definite properties which are perceptible only in the individual and which, applied to a generalization, must irrevocably lead to the most monstrously deceptive conclusions.

How such constructions come into being Lazarus has shown us with complete clarity in the argument of his Psychology of Peoples. After he had quite unthinkably transferred the properties of the individual to entire peoples and nations he explained profoundly that the separate man comes into the question at all merely as representative of the collective intellect and only as such can be a transmitter of ideas.^ Following the thought processes of W^ilhelm von Humboldt, Lazarus and Steinthal relied chiefly upon the difference of languages, the organic structure of which they tried to deduce from the special intellectual type of each people. To this peculiar intellectual and spiritual endowment they traced also the difference in the religious ideas of the peoples, their forms of government, their social institutions and their ethical concepts, and ascribed to every nation a particular type of feeling and thought which it could voluntarily neither accept nor reject.

Since then we have learned that language as expression of the special "intellectual and spiritual status" of a people does not enter into the question at all, since there is no longer any people which has retained its primitive language or has not changed its language in the course of its history, as has been already brought out. The same holds true for the different forms of government, social institutions, moral views and religious systems. Despite this, men continued along the lines that had been opened up by Lazarus and Steinthal. Gustav Le Bon became the founder of "mass psychology"j others discovered the psyche of the class; while the Gobineaus, Chamberlains, Woltmanns and Giinthers luckily found the "race soul." They all pursued the same method: they transferred the peculiar properties of the individual to nations, classes arid races, and thought that they had thus transformed an abstract construct into a living organism. This is the same method by which man made his gods: he transferred his own character to the pale creature of his imagination and then set it up as the master of his life. W^ho would doubt that the inventors

^ Moritz Lazarus, Das Leben ier Seele. Berlin, 1855-57.

of the various collective psychologies, who have constructed their schemes in the same way, will of necessity reach the same results? Every collective concept developed in this way becomes a Saturn, who in this case devours, not his children, but his parents.

When men began to work with the concept of mass psychology they meant by it at first merely that man, when he is together with many others of his kind and because of some stimulus is seized with the same excitement, is subject to a special emotion, which leads him under the circumstances to acts which he would not perform if alone by himself. So far, so good. Without doubt there are such moods j but here, too, we are always dealing with a mood of the individual, not with a mood of the mass as such. Emotions of this sort doubtless arise from the social impulse of man and merely show that this is an essential feature of his human existence. In this way arise moods of general sorrow and of general rejoicing and animation, just as, indeed, every profound psychic experience of the individual arises from the immediate influence of his social environment. A mass expression of human feeling such as we can observe in demonstrations by rather large numbers of men is impressive just because here the sum of the elementary force of all the individual emotions makes itself felt and so affects extraordinarily the state of mind of the individual.

Moreover, similarities of feelings among individuals shows itself not only in association with great masses, but with other accompanying phenomena, which is merely to say that, regardless of all the differences, there are present in human beings certain common basic instincts. Thus, enforced loneliness and enforced companionship induce in many individuals altogether similar emotions, which often even lead to the same behavior. The same thing is observed in many phenomena of sickness, in sexual excitement, and on a hundred other occasions. One can therefore speak only of an individual psychic or intellectual condition, for it is only in the individual that the physiological prerequisites for emotions of any sort or for mental impressions are present j they are not to be found in abstract entities like the state, nation or mass. We can just as little conceive the occurrence of a thought without the functioning of the brain or of sense impression without the mediation of the nerves as we can of the digestive process without the appropriate organs. Just for this reason every collective psychology lacks that firm basis on which alone any useful comparison could rest. But the adherents of these theories are undisturbed by such trifles and generalize merrily. What they bring forth is sometimes very cleverly constructed, but that is all.

Membership in a particular class, nation or race has for a long time not been decisive for the total thought and feeling of the individual} just as little can the essential nature of a nation, race or class be distilled

from the manner of thought and fundamentals of character of individuals. Every larger or smaller social structure includes persons of every conceivable trait of character, intellectual endowment and effective behavior-instincts, in which every shade of human thought and feeling find expression. Among the people who belong to such a group there exists usually a vague feeling of relationship, which is not in any way inborn, but is acquired, and is of little significance in judging the group as a whole. The same is also true of physical and intellectual similarities that have their origin in the conditions of the environment. In every instance the special characteristics of the individual throughout his entire development stand out much more sharply than do certain common features which have arisen in particular human groups in the course of time. Indeed, Schopenhauer had already recognized this when he said:

Besides, individuality greatly outweighs nationality and in any given human being deserves a thousand times more consideration. National character, since it has to do with the crowd, will never be anything fairly to boast about. It is rather that human limitation, perversity and baseness appear in every country in a different form, and we call this the national character. Disgusted by one of them, we praise another until this, too, has earned our disgust. Every nation speaks scornfully of every other—and they are all right.

What Schopenhauer says here about nationality and national character can be applied without change to every other collective concept. The properties which the "psychologists of the crowd" ascribe to or invent for their collective structures very seldom correspond to reality j they are always the result of personal wish-concepts, and are therefore to be valued only as fanciful structures. The race or nation whose qualities the race-or folk-psychologist tries to represent is always like the picture which he had made of it in advance. According to the affection or aversion which he feels for it at the given moment will this race or nation seem brilliant, chivalrous, faithful, idealistic, honorable, or intellectually inferior, calculating, faithless, materialistic and treacherous. Let one compare the different judgments which were passed during the World War by members of every nation upon other nations, and one will be unable to entertain any illusions about the true significance of such estimates. The impression would be still more devastating if one should bring into comparison also the estimates of earlier periods and contrast them with the later j say, the hymn of the French romantic, Victor Hugo, about the German peoples or the ode of the English poet, Thomas Campbell, "To the Germans" j and as contrasting pieces to these the effusions of respectable contemporaries in both countries concerning these same Germans. Though just here we are speaking of Englishmen and Frenchmen, the Germans would provide no better examples. Let one read the hot-headed judgments

of German race-theoreticians about the alleged inferiority of the Britons and the degeneracy of the French, and one understands at once the maxim of Nietzsche, "to associate with no man who had a share in the deceitful race-fraud." How greatly opinion about foreign nations is affected by altered circumstances and momentary moods is shown by the productions of two French authors whom Karl Lahn has presented in his valuable and frank little book. Frenchmen. Thus, Frederic-Constant de Rougemont was able to say this for the Germans:

The German comes into the world to a spiritual life. He lacks the light, simple cheerfulness of the Frenchman. His soul is rich, his temperament sensitive and profound. He is tireless at work, persistent in undertaking. No people has a higher moral code, among none do men attain a greater age. . . . While the inhabitants of other countries make it their boast that they are Frenchmen, Englishmen or Spaniards, the German embraces all mankind in his unprejudiced love. Just because of its location in the center of Europe the German nation seems to be at once the heart and the dominating reason of mankind.