A
S. N. RATH
Lecturer
in Politics,
When
first published in 1908, Graham Wallas’s Human
Nature in Politics created a stir among students of political and social
history; and in estimating the permanent impact of the book an eminent student
of British politics once said: “I am inclined to argue that no English thinker
since Hobbes had seen more clearly the importance of the psychological
foundation of politics; and since that book, few treatises on this theme have
been usefully written that have not been coloured by
its conclusions,” Why did the book produce such an impact? In what way did the
book open a new vista in socio-political studies? And, what is the relevance of
Human Nature in Politics to the political problems, especially,
those of
The
“curiously unsatisfactory position” of the study of politics in the opening
decade of this century led Wallas, an active
politician, to re-examine the method of enquiry in political studies. He found
that politicians and students of politics everywhere were puzzled and
disappointed with the operation of Representative Democracy, a system of polity
which had been generally accepted by the nations of Europe and America by the
end of the nineteenth century. In the United States it was becoming common to
refer to the electoral system as “the electoral machine,” while in Britain, Wallas noticed that his own canvassers in an election said
among themselves that the work of electioneering was “a queer business,” To
explain the causes of disillusion and dissatisfaction produced by experience of
the actual working of representative democracy, nearly all contemporary
students of politics had turned to the analysis of the institutions in a
democracy, and avoided the analysis of man. In Wallas’s
view, the current tendency to separate the study of politics from the study of
human nature was harmful, because it did not permit political science to grow
efficient or useful in a practical way. Though pedagogy was improving
itself by utilising the knowledge offered by the new
psychology, the lessons of the latter were neglected by political scientists.
Since society now enjoys new opportunities for a better life created by the
mechanical inventions of the nineteenth century, politics would, in all
probability, play an ever-increasing role in human affairs. As a consequence,
the need for efficiency of politics, for the power of politics to forecast the
results of political causes, would be felt ever more. And to increase the
efficiency of politics as a science of practical implications would require the
employment of a method of political enquiry which would be scientific as far as
possible. This is, in brief, the theme of “The Conditions of the Problem,” the
first part Wallas’s book.
The
method of studying politics scientifically would be governed, says Wallas, by the subject matter itself, which includes not
only political principles but also man. Man is ever engaged, by way of
reaction to his environment, in invention of ideas and institutions, which, in
turn, act on his life in society. The entities which man thus creates in the
process of maintaining the political organisation of society are included in
the material for study in politics. To be scientific, a study in politics needs
to adopt, says Wallas, several general
characteristics of the method of natural science; these are: first, observation
of the significant facts relating to a phenomenon or event; second, the framing
of a hypothesis to account for the occurrence of these facts; and third,
deducing from the hypothesis general laws to explain the behaviour
of similar facts or probable occurrences in the future. In the application of
the above principles of scientific method there are, however, certain
limitations; one of these, to which Wallas would
invite our attention, is that the student of politics can never assume
uniformity, or produce an artificial uniformity in man. Exact comparisons like
those made in natural science, therefore, cannot be made in a study of
politics.
Bentham and his
followers, who strove to make politics a science, held that the motives of
pleasure and pain were fundamental, and that these two motives established in
politics, as well as in life generally, a rule of uniformity between man and
man. The Benthamites failed to perceive that pleasure
and pain were not the only facts about human nature.
In their zeal for the pleasure and pain principle, they urged that instinctive
impulse, habit, and tradition, were also forms of
pleasure and pain. They did not see that calculation of pleasure
and pain assumes a prior conception of the end to which human
action is directed for pleasure, or for avoidance of
pain, while in action prompted by an instinctive impulse there is really no
foresight of the end. By his reading of modern psychology, Wallas
was convinced of the inadequacy of the Benthamite
standard of pleasure and pain in politics: “the search for a basis of valid
political reasoning has to begin again.”
Political
reasoning, says Wallas, must be based on a close
observation of human nature in politics, of man as he reacts to, and reacts
upon, the political entities that constitute his political environment. Like a
biologist, the student of politics must discover how many common qualities can
be observed and measured in a group of related beings. The facts thus collected
could be arranged under three main heads: first, descriptive facts as to the
human type; second, quantitative facts as to inherited variations from the type
observed either in individuals or in groups; and third, facts, both
quantitative and descriptive, as to the environment into which men are born,
and the observed effect of that environment upon their political actions and
impulses. Much knowledge of facts about the human type could be obtained from a
study of modern psychology.
The
old psychology has tended to explain human nature by a few simple formulas, and
to exaggerate the intellectuality of man: the idea that every activity of man
is determined by an intellectual process, involving a reasoned calculation of
the probable consequences of each action. Under the influence of Willialm James’s Principles of Psychology, Wallas was led to study the role of the non-rational
motives behind human acts. There are many acts, Wallas
found, in which motives do not occur from any idea of an end to be gained by
them; such acts are guided by instincts: “impulses towards definite acts or series
of acts, independent of any conscious anticipation of their probable effects.”
Because during the lifetime of each individual, such factors as memory, habit
and thought, increasingly modify instincts, their non-rational character is not
easily perceived. Nevertheless instincts exist as inherited dispositions, and
are manifested in behaviour in response to stimuli
supplied by the environment. A few instincts, which Wallas
discusses in detail, because of their bearing on politics, are: personal
affection, fear, desire for property, aversion to repetition, desire for
privacy, racial love and hatred.
The
part played by the impulse of personal affection in the success or failure of a
candidate in an election is a fact hard to deny. “The tactics of an election”
says Wallas
“consist largely of contrivances by which this immediate emotion of personal
affection may be set up.” The Monarchy in
Till this point in his statement of the non-rational in politics, Wallas has attempted to throw light on those instincts or impulses which, even without our being fully conscious of their existence, actively motivate certain aspects of our political behaviour. These instincts, it must be admitted, do not exhaust the list of all human instincts which might, under suitable stimuli, shape political action of consequence or importance. But this criticism points only to the limitations of Wallas’s probe into the non-rational springs in political attitudes and behaviour; it does not refute the thesis of Wallas that every political action is not motivated by intellectuality or reasoning in man, that the irrational, or non-rational, plays a larger role in politics than it is commonly supposed, or known, to play.
This
thesis would be better appreciated if we turn to Wallas’s
view of political environment in relation to human nature. The political
environment, like other aspects of social environment, has undergone tremendous
changes through time; seemingly unaltered and old, parts of it are built of new
habits of thought and feeling, and of new entities which are the objects of
political thought and feeling. How these new political entities affect the
instincts of man should be studied in order to get a complete
picture of human nature in politics.
The
significant political entities discussed by Wallas
are related to the modern nation-state and the party-system. Wallas found that the prevailing pattern of analysing the state as an abstract organisation of human
beings did not explain satisfactorily the emotional fervour
inspired by a nation-state among its citizens. The phenomenon was easily
explained when studied from a psychological approach. The new nation-states of
Within
a modern nation-state, a political party, according to Wallas,
was the most effective entity, for: “it represents the most vigorous attempt
which has been made to adapt the form of our political institutions to the
actual facts of human nature,” The majority of voters in a democracy were
hardly aware of the, raison d’etre of a
political party. Then how did a political party manage to exist through
successive generations and enjoy the loyalty of its supporters in successive
elections? The explanation offered by Wallas is
plausible: as an object of thought and feeling, a political party was simple
enough to be loved, trusted and recognised easily in
successive elections. The emotional response evoked by its name was intensified
by party colour and tunes. The feeling of affection
thus generated became a habit which tended to exist irrespective
of party policies and programmes. From this analysis of loyalty to party, Wallas draws two lessons which are of special interest:
first, the policy and programme of a party has little effect on those whose
loyalty is determined by habitual affection for the party; second, party
leaders should remember that the organisation they guide is no abstract idea
but an entity having an existence in the memory and emotions of the electors,
and, as such, does not depend entirely on the opinions and actions of the
leaders.
As
preparatory to his observations on the role of reason, as distinct from
instinct, Wallas next analyses the issue of inference
in politics. Deduction of conclusion from observed facts was a necessary step
in scientific investigation. Deduction involved inference, a process of
reasoning logically to a conclusion. Inference in politics could be
non-rational even though its rationality was taken for granted by the person
involved. His personal observation of active politics led Wallas
to maintain that most of the political opinions most people held were the
result, not of reasoning from their individual experience, but of unconscious
or half-conscious inference by habit. Habit extended its power
in politics through formation of tracks of thought. Occasionally inferences
were drawn from suggestions broadcast by posters, slogans and other
contrivances used at the time of elections. Newspapers also had a share in the
responsibility for urging the public, especially readers devoted to particular
newspapers, to non-rational inference. In academic political
thinking, too, inference tended to be irrational when drawn by deduction from
broad, untried generalisations.
Conclusions derived through such reasoning were unscientific, often absurd. For
instance, the logical democrats in
The
quantitative method in politics demanded: first, exact collection of detailed
political facts; and second, the application of these facts quantitatively in
political reasoning. Wallas shows that quantitative reasoning could be used by changing
on occasions the nature of a question relating to practical policy. For
example, on the issue between Individualism and Socialism, instead of asking
in the ordinary way to choose “either Socialism or Individualism,” one should
ask: “How much Socialism” or “How much Individualism?” This quantitative
approach has an advantage for the student of political theory as well as the
practical politician; the former could use it to explore the sphere in which
each of the two, Socialism and Individualism, has an objective necessity; the
latter could use this approach to find a basis for real discussion as to how
much of Socialism and Individualism could be combined in
one system.
The
efficacy of any branch of knowledge could be judged by a pragmatic estimate of
the ability or power it affords us, first, in understanding, as far as possible
and in the right perspective, the facts coming within its scope; and second, in
perceiving their probable consequences so that practice might be modified or
improved further. To bring real efficacy in a branch of knowledge, its students
should be required to make a conscious and systematic effort of thought in a
suitable method. To outline such a method had been the object of Wallas in the first part of his book; in the second part,
which he entitles “Possibilities of Progress,” the author studied the scope of
rational reform in the practice of political morality, representative
government, official thought, and nationality and humanity.
What
should be the ideals of political morality? Should the politician abandon
ethical traditions and adopt methods of exploiting the irrational elements of
human nature? Should the student of politics view reason as the opposite of
passion? Or, should he consider one of the two as superior to the other? Such
problems must arise with a fuller knowledge of the obscurer impulses of the
human personality and of channels of their manifestation in politics. In
solving these problems, the approach which Wallas
regards as correct is to aim at a harmony of reason and passion, of thought and
impulse. “In politics, indeed, the preaching of reason as opposed to feeling is
peculiarly ineffective, because the feelings of mankind not only provide a
motive for political thought but also fix the scale of values which must be
used in political judgment.” Deliberate, scientific education in the emotional
and intellectual facts of man’s nature could gradually lead men to conceive of
the co-ordination of reason and passion as a moral ideal.
While
the political strength of the individual citizen stood in constant need of an
increase through moral and educational changes, the
democratic structure was ever in need of repair or improvement through a
critical awareness, on the part of its advocates, of its current ills and
drawbacks. Considering the operation of the democratic system in
The
efficiency of British representative democracy depended in no small measure on
the permanent civil service which satisfied the psychological need among the British
people for a second base in politics. The civil service was expected by the
nation to function also as an instrument of effective political thinking. Its
effectiveness in this respect was hampered by the narrowness of official life
and a habit of narrow, departmental thinking. These defects should be removed,
according to Wallas, through adequate contacts with
other sections of the people, variety in civil service training, and
encouragement of the habits of research and organised
work among its members.
How
can we promote international and inter-racial understanding? This question
seemed to Wallas especially pertinent in the context
of the peculiar psychological basis of the modern nation-state. As an entity of
the mind, an object of thought and feeling of the people, the modern
nation-state was a factor which had come to stay. In promoting political
consciousness, nationalism had considerable value, but it was proving
inadequate in solving many of the problems of the twentieth century. Nationalism
tended to develop into national egoism and vanity, of White Man Imperialism,
which overlooked the demands of humanity on modern nation-state, and
contributed to conflict and war. The findings of evolutionists should teach us,
says Wallas, that biological expansion
and improvement of any community was to be hoped for not from ruthless struggle
but from a stimulation, deliberate and systematic, of the social impulse to
co-operation. This would hold good of individual nation-states as much as of
individuals in a community. There was an imperative need of developing a
feeling of affection for humanity as a new entity of thought and feeling. The
value of stimulating such an impulse would be two-fold: first; it would
counteract the irrational race hatred among nations; and second, it would
promote among them a positive feeling of co-operation for the progress of
humanity as a whole. In the development of this new conception of a man’s or a
nation’s relation to the whole human community, reason or conscious thinking
would be of great aid. The future of humanity, which could be anticipated from
a happy co-ordination, in international politics, of the forces of reason and
passion would not be unreal, for the different parts of the world are being
brought close by modern scientific inventions.
Such
in brief are the principal ideas and arguments of Human Nature in Politics. Ernest
Barker has noticed in Wallas’s book “a fallacy to derationalise political society because it is not an
explicit organisation of conscious reason.” Other critics, too, have complained
that reason does not receive from Wallas the
recognition which is its due as a fundamental factor in organised
social life. Surely it was because of his attempt to persuade the student of
politics to revise the nineteenth-century conception of the role of reason in
politics that Wallas is remembered as a political
thinker. We have noticed earlier in this essay that Wallas
criticises the tendency among political scientists
and politicians to “exaggerate the intellectuality of mankind.” The main
argument in Human Nature in Politics is that the irrational, the
instincts and impulses, play in the totality of human behaviour
and thinking in politics, as in other aspects of life, a part which is greater
than ordinarily realised by political scientists and
politicians; that in the light of modern psychology, and of the author’s
personal experience in active politics, the assumption, held by students of
politics generally when the book was published, that political entities have a
base in reason only, or very largely in reason, the process of deliberate,
conscious reasoning, is not an adequate, valid basis of reasoning in politics.
We have seen that Wallas also urges that politics, to
become effective in guiding human development in rational manner,
should adopt the quantitative method in reasoning; that reason can, and does,
produce in course of time new tracks of thought, or new entities and instincts
in man. Wallas is aware of the power of reason in
making the human type better than what we find him; though reasoning is only
one of the processes of the mind, in human affairs it is the instrument of
progress, of new achievement in civilization. It seems to us that Wallas does not deny or minimise
unduly the part played by reason in politics. In this connection one should
remember that Wallas makes a plea for the idea of the
Co-ordination of reason and passion as a moral ideal. This ideal is as old as
the Greeks; Plato, and even more than Plato, Aristotle conceived of such
harmony as ideal. What is significant in Wallas’s
suggestion is the point that such a harmony should come
neither from an assumption of the dominance of reason nor from a hatred of the
passions, but from a sufficient realisation of the useful
role each can play when combined, under appropriate conditions, with the other.
Another
line of criticism indicated by Barker is that by his insistence on the
quantitative method of enquiry in politics Wallas is running
out of the arena of political theory into that of the art of the practical
statesman. Barker seems to think that Wallas requires
us to employ in politics the quantitative method of statistics. What Wallas really means by the quantitative method as applied
to politics is that in an investigation, or piece of reasoning, a student of
politics needs to take into consideration as many facts as to uniformity as
well as variations in political behaviour as might be
relevant to the problem under study. Since this is suggested by Wallas as a necessary condition of effective reasoning
especially in the context of modern times, the method is, as we
see it, a concern of the political theorists of today. Barker’s idea that theory
in politics “studies the ‘pure’ instance” which has little to do with the
political art of the practical statesman can no longer be accepted as a rule. A
political thinker can hardly think effectively or purposefully about a subject
matter without considering possible results of its application to conditions of
actual life. Wallas is a political theorist in a true
sense, for he has a vision of the future and of the ideal, and at the same
time he enjoins us to study the habits of ordinary men in politics, for, as Wallas said, theory as a way of understanding must be effective
or useful in a practical way. An exercise in theoretical speculation without
meaningful reference to current political entities need not be regarded as the
only kind of essay which deserves to be classified as a work in political
theory.
Wallas is now recognized as a
pioneer in the modern socio-psychological approach in politics. This method had
been tried by Gustave Le Bon in his The Crowd, A
Study of the Popular Mind, published in 1900; but the work was, as
suggested by the main title, of limited scope. A more significant study in
social psychology was William McDougall’s Introduction
to Social Psychology, published in the same year in which Wallas published his Human Nature in Politics. McDougall drew attention to the supremacy of instincts and
impulses over reason as prime movers of human action, but he did not study
their effects on political inference, nor did he say how co-ordination of
reason and instincts could serve to improve political thinking. Wallas was a pioneer in the sense that his book was the
first important attempt to apply in detail contemporary psychological knowledge
to the institutions of the democratic state. But Wallas
was not merely a pioneer but also a rescuer; he rescued the socio-psychological
method from developing into a cult of loose anti-intellectualism. The latter
tendency was strong in McDougall, who held that
reason was secondary and hence a servant of instincts and impulses. Wallas, on the other hand, did not regard human nature as a
bundle of instincts and passions only; he recognized the role of reason in
human progress, in the creation of new social entities. This point was
elaborated further in Wallas’s The Great Society published
in 1914; in it he argued that the instinct to reason as manifested in thinking
was, under appropriate conditions, as original and independent in man as the
instinct to run away from danger.
The
Great Society was an attempt on Wallas’s
part to supply some of the gaps in the investigations of Human Nature in Polilics. For in the Human Nature Wallas did not deal exhaustively with many instincts which,
under appropriate stimuli, might issue in political behaviour.
For example, Wallas did not study such instincts as
sex, self-preservation, self-abasement and parental affection. And he said
little of the effect of his socio-psychological method on the conceptions of
Liberty Rights, Authority, Law, and the State as a type in relation to other
social and political types. In Human Nature Wallas
studied human nature in relation to political environment; the Great
Society, as the title signified, depicted human nature against the wider
background of society as a whole.
What
is the relevance of Human Nature in Politics to the present day
political problems? The relevance of the book in this respect seems to lie in
its value as an analysis of the danger for all human activities, especially for
the working of democracy, of the “intellectualist assumption” that every human
action is the result of an intellectual process. The experiment of democracy in
Asia and Africa is based on political values developed in Europe
and America; the working of democracy in new areas has
either failed or attained only partial success. In India, our three general
elections have shown clearly how easily electoral opinion is moulded by non-rational forces like casteism,
communalism, all forms of sectarianism, love of monetary or other reward, and
the fear of the evil and the wicked, which tend to weaken a democratic polity.
Disappointment with the political parties, which have deliberately aroused the
less desirable instincts among the voters, has, in some quarters, given rise to
the idea of a party-less democracy in India. Those who advocate this change,
however, have failed to answer satisfactorily the question whether
parliamentary democracy as envisaged in the present Constitution can be run
without political parties. Would it be possible to keep political parties away
from the village Panchayats? What changes in their
organisation are likely to make the existing political parties better suited to
serve the true interests of Indian democracy? These and similar questions await
a socio-psychological probe on the lines indicated by Wallas
in Human Nature in Politics. Wallas’s
quantitative method in political reasoning may prove especially useful in
solving, among others, the peculiar problem raised by the introduction of a
scheme for democratic decentralisation side by side
state planning of economy in India. A tendency towards centralisation
is implicit in our planning for a Welfare State, but the clamour
for more and more decentralisation of governmental
power is growing louder. Both state planning and democratic decentralisation
are novel ideas to the Indian masses; the psychological demands of a planned
economy along with a decentralised democracy might
prove too heavy for our people at the present level of education, political
training and economic condition. We should approach the problem quantitatively,
and ask: how much of decentralisation at what level
of the planned development of economy in Indian democracy? Looking
beyond our national frontiers, the problem of peaceful progress of humanity as
a whole looms large before all. The race for empires has, in our times, been
replaced by a race for nuclear armaments of tremendous destructive potentiality.
The evil of national egoism has to be counteracted, in all parts of the world,
by a superior faith and intelligent concern for survival and peaceful progress
of humanity as a whole. How to achieve this end is a problem to be tackled by
conscious and systematic effort of thought following the method which Wallas’s Human Nature in Politics has offered over
half a century ago as an antidote to an overdose of reason or unreason in
politics.