And, in effect, the ethical standards of Englishmen undergo a profound change as they pass from the essentially peaceful atmosphere of their own country into that of their conquered and militarily occupied Indian Empire. Things which would be absolutely unthinkable at home are not only thinkable, but do-able and actually done in India. The Amritsar massacre, for example. Long immunity from war and civil violence can do more to promote the common decencies of life than any amount of ethical exhortation. War and violence are the prime causes of war and violence. A country where, as in Spain, there is a tradition of civil strife, is far more liable to civil strife than one in which there exists a long habit of peaceful co-operation.
We see, then, that large-scale manipulation of the social order can do much to preserve individuals from temptations which, before the reforms were made, were ever present and almost irresistible. So far so good. But we must not forget that reforms may deliver men from one set of evils, only to lead them into evils of another kind. It often happens that reforms merely have the effect of transferring the undesirable tendencies of individuals from one channel to another channel. An old outlet for some particular wickedness is closed; but a new outlet is opened. The wickedness is not abolished; it is merely provided with a different set of opportunities for self-expression. It would be possible to write a most illuminating History of Sin, showing the extent to which the various tendencies to bad behaviour have been given opportunities in the different civilizations of the world, enumerating the defects of every culture’s specific virtues, tracing the successive metamorphoses of evil under changing technological and political conditions.
Consider, by way of example, the recent history of that main source of evil, the lust for power, the craving for personal success and dominance. In this context we may describe the passage from mediaeval to modern conditions as a passage from violence to cunning, from the conception of power in terms of military prowess and the divine right of aristocracy to its conception in terms of finance. In the earlier period the sword and the patent of nobility are at once the symbols and the instruments of domination. In the later period their place is taken by money. Recently the lust for power has come to express itself once again in ways that are almost mediaeval. In the Fascist states there has been a return towards rule by the sword and by divine right. True, the right is that of self-appointed leaders rather than that of hereditary aristocrats; but it is still essentially divine.
Mussolini is infallible; Hitler, appointed by God. In collectivized Russia a system of state capitalism has been established. Private ownership of the means of production has disappeared and it has become impossible for individuals to use money as a means for dominating their fellows. But this does not mean that the lust for power has been suppressed; rather it has been deflected from one channel to another channel. Under the new regime the symbol and the instrument of power is political position. Men seek, not wealth, but a strategic post in the hierarchy. How ruthlessly they would fight for these strategic posts was shown during the treason trials of 1936 and 1937. In Russia, and to a certain extent in the other dictatorial countries, the situation is very similar to that which existed in the religious orders, where position was more important than money. Among the Communists ambition has been more or less effectively divorced from avarice, and the lust of power manifests itself in a form which is, so to say, chemically pure.
This is the cue for smiling indulgently and saying: ‘You can’t change human nature.’ To which the anthropologist replies by pointing out that human nature has in fact been made to assume the most bewilderingly diverse, the most amazingly improbable forms. It is possible to arrange a society in such a way that even so fundamental a tendency as the lust for power cannot easily find expression. Among the Zuñi Indians, for example, individuals are not led into the kind of temptation which invites the men of our civilization to work for fame, wealth, social position or power. By us, success is always worshipped. But among the Zuñis it is such bad form to pursue personal distinction that very few people even think of trying to raise themselves above their fellows, while those who try are regarded as dangerous sorcerers and punished accordingly. There are no Hitlers, no Kreugers, no Napoleons and no Calvins. The lust for power is simply not given an opportunity for expressing itself. In the tranquil and well-balanced communities of the Zuñis and other Pueblo Indians all those† outlets for personal ambition—the political, the financial, the military, the religious outlets with which our own has made us so painfully familiar—are closed.†
The pattern of Pueblo culture is one which a modern industrialized society could not possibly copy. Nor, even if it were possible, would it be desirable that we should choose these Indian societies as our model. For the Pueblo Indians’ triumph over the lust for power has been secured at an excessive cost. Individuals do not scramble for wealth and position, as with us; but they purchase these advantages at a great price. They are weighed down under a great burden of religious tradition; they are attached to all that is old and terrified of all that is novel and unfamiliar; they spend an enormous amount of time and energy in the performance of magic rites and the repetition, by rote, of interminable formulas.
Using the language of theology, we can say that the deadly sins to which we are peculiarly attached are pride, avarice and malice. Their special attachment is to sloth—above all to the mental sloth, or stupidity, against which the Buddhist moralists so insistently warn their disciples. The problem which confronts us is this: can we combine the merits of our culture with those of the Pueblo culture? Can we create a new pattern of living in which the defects of the two contrasted patterns, Pueblo-Indian and Western-Industrial, shall be absent? Is it possible for us to acquire their admirable habits of non-attachment to wealth and personal success and at the same time to preserve our intellectual alertness, our interest in science, our capacity for making rapid technological progress and social change?
These are questions which it is impossible to answer with any degree of confidence. Only experience and deliberate experiment can tell us if our problem can be completely solved. All we certainly know is that, up† to the present, scientific curiosity and a capacity for making rapid social changes have always been associated with frequent manifestations of the lust for power and the worship of success.[2]
As a matter of historical fact, scientific progressiveness has never been divorced from aggressiveness. Does this mean that they can never be divorced? Not necessarily. Every culture is full of arbitrary and fortuitous associations of behaviour-patterns, thought-patterns, feeling-patterns. These associations may last for long periods and are regarded, while they endure, as necessary, natural, right, inherent in the scheme of things. But a time comes when, under the pressure of changing circumstances, these long-standing associations fall apart and give place to others, which in due course come to seem no less natural, necessary and right than the old. Let us consider a few examples. In the richer classes of mediaeval and early modern European society there was a very close association between thoughts and habits concerned with sex and thoughts and habits concerned with property and social position.
The mediaeval nobleman married a fief, the early-modern bourgeois married a dowry. Kings married whole countries and, by judiciously choosing their bedfellows, could build up an empire. And not only did the wife represent property; she also was property. The ferocious jealousies which it was traditionally right and proper to feel, were due at least as much to an outraged property sense as to a thwarted sexual passion. Hurt pride and offended avarice combined with wounded love to produce the kind of jealousy that could be satisfied only with the blood of the unfaithful spouse. Meanwhile the faithful spouse was ornamented and bejewelled, occasionally no doubt out of genuine affection, but more often and chiefly to gratify the husband’s desire for self-glorification. The sumptuously attired† wife was a kind of walking advertisement for her owner’s wealth and social position. The tendency towards what Veblen calls ‘conspicuous consumption’ came to be associated in these cultures with the pattern of sexual behaviour.
I have used the past tense in the preceding passage. But in fact this association of conspicuous consumption with matrimony—and also with fornication—is still characteristic of our societies. In the other cases, however, there has been a considerable measure of dissociation. Spouses do not regard one another as private property to quite
