Page:The Source and Aim of Human Progress.djvu/42

38 This law may be modified under conditions in which the individual is given freedom and more scope than in societies hitherto known to us. In this respect we may agree with the great French psychologist, Ribot, who in reviewing my work thinks that the law admits of exceptions. Professor Ross, however, seems to adopt the law without any qualification: "It is perhaps the dwarfing pressure of numbers" he writes "that explains why vast populous societies seem to produce small individualities, whereas little societies permit great men to arise. Compare great homogeneous aggregations, such as Egypt, China, Persia, Babylonia, India, with the diminutive communities of Judea, the Greek city-states, the Italian cities of the Middle Ages, the free towns of mediaeval Germany, the Netherlands, Scotland, and Switzerland."

However the case may be with societies under widely different conditions of development the law of mass and individuality holds true of the social facts known to us. The law is of far greater importance than the psychologist and sociologist are inclined to admit. It is certainly important to remember this law when dealing with social progress. The individual is getting dwarfed and stunted in proportion as the social aggregate is getting larger and more organized. The larger the empire the more dwindles the mind of the citizen. This is especially true of empires formed by conquest in which the individual is reduced by military discipline to the rôle of an automaton, where the automatic subconscious is alone cultivated and is in direct relation with the external world, with the commands, orders, suggestions given to him by his superiors. Such empires soon crumble, sometimes in the life time of a single generation. The empire of Alexander Macedon, the empire of Charlemagne, the empires of Djenghis Khan and Tamerlane; in modern times the empire of Napoleon, the Russian and Ottoman empires are good illustrations.

The insecurity, the instability of militaristic empires is brought out strongly in aggregates held by force for a few generations: the catastrophe of the empire. The empire falls at one blow, and is gone forever. The Assyrian, the Persian, the Carthaginian in ancient times, the Austrian, the German, the Russian empire in our own times are cases in point. The empires go to pieces, they crumble into dust. From a superficial standpoint it may be said that an empire upheld by the sword perishes by the sword. This, however, is not the full truth. A deeper insight discloses the fact that the spirit of the empire-building citizen has been dead long before the final collapse. In fact it is