Social Heritage in Work and Thought

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Social Heritage in Work and Thought OUR SOCIAL HERITAGE OUR SOCIAL HERITAGE BY GRAHAM WALLAS AUTHOR OF "HUMAN NATURE IN POLITICS" AND "THE GREAT SOCIETY" NEW HAVEN YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS 1921 Copyright 1921 by Yale University Press • The material of part of this book was given in 1919 as a course of Dodge Lectures on the Duties of Citizenship in Yale University. TO MY WIFE OCTOBER 1920 TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter I. Introduction . 13 Our social heritage consists of that part of our "nurture" which we acquire by the social process of teaching and learning. Men have more social heritage than other animals, and are more dependent on it for existence. We have, indeed, become biologically parasitic upon our social heritage; and, if we once forgot what we have been taught, our species might die out before it had time to acquire a new social heritage. The mass of our social heritage is rapidly increasing, and the problem of securing economy in its acquirement and use, and efficiency in its continuous criticism and improvement, is becoming more urgent. Chapter II. Social Heritage in Work and Thought ...... 24 Part of our social heritage consists of the power, which we acquire by education from infancy onwards, of making sustained and con­ scious muscular and mental efforts. We learn to recognize the dif­ ference between will and impulse; and are thereby enabled to make continuous use of processes which are naturally intermittent, to in­ vent methods of compensating for the resulting nervous strain, and to avail ourselves of the "drive" of artistic impulse. Thought under modem conditions requires us to leam, not only how to stimulate artificial intellectual effort, but also how to use artificial intellectual methods. These methods have hitherto been most successful in the physical sciences; but it seems likely that in certain respects the direc­ tion of self-conscious intellectual effort may in the future be de­ veloped more successfully by the students of the moral sciences. If so, that development may produce an important effect on educa­ tional technique both in Britain and in America. 7 OUR SOCIAL HERITAGE Chapter III. Group Cooperation ... 54 Group cooperation under modem conditions, requires (like individual work and thought) a combination of socially inherited expedients with biologically inherited instincts. Men are a loosely gregarious species who instinctively used significant cries even before the inven­ tion of language; and they naturally cooperate by a clamorous alter­ nation of the impulse to lead with the impulse to follow. Our so­ cially inherited expedients of group cooperation by discipline and discussion are still imperfectly worked out, and are apt at any mo­ ment to break down, and their place to be taken by the primitive instinctive process. These facts may be illustrated from the Reports of the British Dardanelles and Mesopotamia Commissions of 1917. Chapter IV. The Nation as Idea and Fact . 77 National cooperation is more dependent on our social heritage than group cooperation. In a group, men think and feel about direct sen­ sations and memories of their fellows; in a nation, they must think and feel about some entity of the mind. At present we generally leave the formation of the mental "panoramas" which represent our nation for each of us, to chance, or to the scheming of professional manipulators of motive. We should try to make the formation of a trustworthy idea of our nation into a conscious process. Our idea when it is formed should remind us of the facts of the human type, of the differences between individual human beings, and of the quan­ titative relation between the grades and kinds of difference. Such an idea will help us to realize that a modem industrial nation is not likely to be permanently coherent unless habit is based on content­ ment; and unless contentment is made possible by an approximation to social equality, by a clearer understanding of economic facts, and by a greater liking in each of us for his work. That liking will only be secured under modem conditions if our social organization and our educational methods are based more on the idea of difference than on the idea of identity. Chapter V. The Control of National Coopera­ tion 102 During the nineteenth century the industrial nations of the world directed their large-scale cooperative activities by two main expedi­ ents, the territorial state and capitalism. Both expedients are now widely distrusted, and progressive opinion often inclines towards 8 TABLE OF CONTENTS vocationalism. Vocational organization is in many ways useful, but when it is proposed to make vocationalism the main source of social power we must examine its tendencies in the present and its history in the past. Does guild socialism offer us a sufficiently varied and interesting life ? Will it tend to strengthen professional conservatism ? Is it compatible with "integration of labor," when that process is socially desirable, or with the sufficient accumulation of capital for future work ? On all these points our experience in the war indicated that the modem democratic state tends to take the more socially desirable and the modem vocational organizations the less socially desirable side. Chapter VI. Professionalism . 122 The problem of vocational organization as a socially inherited expedi­ ent can be approached with less prejudice by examining the profes­ sions than by examining the Trade Unions. The profession of the law is the most powerful of the English vocational organizations, and shows the difficulties and dangers of uncontrolled vocationalism most clearly. The organization of the medical profession is more recent, and yet reveals important intellectual and administrative defects. Mili­ tary professionalism has a history as old as civilization, and its dan­ gers are obvious. The professionalism of teachers is peculiar in its relation to the special but intermittent teaching instinct, and in the relation between the process of teaching and learning and the whole of our social heritage of new and old knowledge. Chapter VII. Liberty 158 The psychological facts which give political force to the idea of Liberty may be seen in the results which follow from the obstruction of human impulses. Those results depend on the nature of the obstructing cause even more than on the nature of the obstruction. Obstruction by human agents produces a different reaction from that produced by obstruction by non-human causes; but this unfreedom- reaction is only produced when obstruction is felt to be an inter­ ference with the normal course of human relations. Pericles' con­ ception of Liberty showed enormously more psychological insight than did that of Mill; and the loss of control by the British Liberal Party in the nineteenth century was largely due to an insufficient analysis of the principle which they shared with Mill. The Oxford metaphysical criticism of the principle of Liberty and Arnold's psy- 9 OUR SOCIAL HERITAGE chological criticism of it were ineffective as political forces. The future of Liberalism may depend on its power to apply to modern conditions the vision of Pericles. Chapter VIII. Rights, Honor, and Independence 187 The analysis of Liberty helps us to analyze Natural Right. That analysis will show both that Natural Rights are real things, and that it is not always good for us to receive them in full. It also will show the cause of the historical assertion and denial and conflicting interpretation of Rights. The principle of Honor is based on similar psychological facts, and can be made more useful by a similar analy­ sis. So is the principle of Independence, in the case of judges, quasi- judicial officers, technicians, and administrators. A psychological analysis of the principle of Independence may also help us in the diffi­ cult task of adapting to modern needs the expedients of parliamentary representation and the newspaper press. Chapter IX. World Cooperation . 203 The change of scale from national cooperation to world cooperation involves a change in the cooperative process. Our cooperative in­ stincts of defense may here act as a cause of international hatred. But world cooperation is necessary if the human species is to survive; and the chief hope of world-peace lies in a recognition of that fact, leading to the effort of rational calculation and calculated action. For that purpose we must bring a new "problem-attitude" to bear on such sciences as logic, history, law, and biology, and on such princi­ ples as Liberty, Independence, Nationality, and Equality. We must also make an effort of invention in the adaptation of national institu­ tions to world purposes, and in the creation of new world institutions and traditions. Chapter X. Constitutional Monarchy . 222 British constitutional monarchy is described by Bagehot and other writers as a means of securing instinctive personal loyalty for a government which is in fact parliamentary and impersonal. It is also now described as the "great symbol" of that relation between Britain and the Dominions which would otherwise be "openly and frankly nothing." Queen Victoria and the other British monarchs during the nineteenth century claimed, however, that their prerogative was "limited" rather than symboUc. The limitation of British monar- 10 TABLE OF CONTENTS chical prerogative depends on the two conventions: that the monarch should not veto legislation, or retain in power a ministry without a majority in the House of Commons; and on the presumption that the army will always obey a parliamentary government. The events of 1909-1913 left the first convention and the presumption no longer imchallenged; and during the war, constitutional monarchy abroad became less constitutional. Constitutional monarchy as symbol rep­ resents the primitive expedient of a "specimen-symbol" rather than a "word-symbol." It has the psychological advantages of its type; but it also has the disadvantage of providing a less penetrating work­ ing conception of the political relation which it symbolizes.
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