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HOME > Classical Novels > Janus in Modern Life > CHAPTER V. THE NEED OF DIVERSITY.
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CHAPTER V. THE NEED OF DIVERSITY.
A large part of the aims of government in all ages has been the securing of uniformity, and much of the misery of mankind has been caused by the enforcing of it. But when we look at nature we see that a highly uniform species is the least likely to advance; and a seedsman or a breeder will try to break up too uniform a strain by exciting conditions which may lead to beneficial new varieties. It is only in a fluctuating species in which new "sports" easily arise, or are quickly developed by conditions, that we can expect to acquire new qualities or beneficial advance.

It is therefore one of the essentials for an advancing species that it should have full scope for diversity, so that any new varieties may not be crushed out by a uniformity of conditions. Too uniform a type of government is a deadly thing. Compulsory orthodoxy killed the vitality of Spain, and—so far as it succeeded—that of France also. No state was more brilliant or vigorous than the Norman rule in Sicily, which equally patronised Muhammedan and Christian.

Diversity may be secured in two ways, either by large varieties within a single great state, or by differences between homogeneous small states. The66 diversity within a large state may be seen in England or America; diversity between small states was attained between the cities of ancient Greece or mediaeval Italy.

But we meet with limiting conditions in the necessity of combination for mutual support; and in small states that can be carried out by a vigorous intolerance which weeds out those who are not conformable, and drives them into more congenial communities. Intolerance, therefore, is a gain to a small community, though detrimental to a large state where it excludes the neighbourhood of variety.

In modern times it is with large states that we have mainly to deal. They are a necessary development where communication is sufficiently easy for the concentrated military pressure of the whole to be brought to bear on a single point. If states are so small that concentration on the border is too easy, the state will expand; if concentration is difficult owing to size, the state will tend to fall apart again. The size for states which is most successful is a function of the facility of internal communication. Let those who deplore the absorption of small states, and the growth of Imperialism in all countries, ponder the tale of the North American Indians, who resented the power of the white man, and considered how to rid themselves of him. Their great council was rejoiced, when one sage said that if they would do as he said, he would promise that no white man should remain. "If the white man is to go you must give up all that he brought, the horse, the gun, the blanket, the firewater; if you will do this you may be free." They thought—and then said, "No, he must stay." So, if we are67 willing to revert to nothing quicker than a cob, we might get back to a Heptarchy.

The modern condition of great states being therefore forced upon us by the railway and telegraph, the only practical question is the form of life in such communities. Uniformity that is enforced, either by law, or by custom or fashion, is certainly a detriment, as it will suppress the useful variations when they arise. And the objection to it bursts out in the form of anarchism, which is specially a disease of great states. The amount of anarchism is very closely related to the size of the state; and it is probably an exact measure of the internal strain produced by repulsion of diverse types and the pressure needed to keep them together.

It is only a very crude form of intolerance to expect many tens of millions of people to agree in religion, morals, and government. A degree of intolerance that may succeed, and even be useful, for some thousands, will be disastrous if applied to as many millions of men.

But here we run against another guiding principle of many people. It is often assumed that possibly in government, probably in religion, and certainly in morals, there is an absolute standard of right and wrong, immutable and irremovable. To take the last subject—that of morals—to the utilitarian they are the conditions for the well-being of society, and may vary indefinitely with the variations of society, and he recognises that there is perhaps no action which may not belong to the best code of morality for certain possible conditions. To the theologian morals are the Divine dictates, which have varied immensely68 under different dispensations; and the Patriarchal, early Jewish, Prophetic, or Christian codes are represented as quite incompatible one with another. The subjects of sister-marriage, concubinage of captives, lapidation, private revenge, communal or individual responsibility, and others, all show how entirely variable the presentation of the moral standard is for different states of society. Hence we must always regard any given moral standard as being rightly associated with some particular condition of society and typical of it; much as the colour of red heat, or yellow heat, or white heat, is typical of particular temperatures. And instead of blindly reprobating those among us who do not conform to our present theoretical standard, or even the present normal standard, we should regard them as fragments of a different society gone astray in time or space.

Thus we see that diversity should be tolerated up to the limits of the laws that are absolutely necessary to avoid confusion and misunderstanding between members of the same community: and there is no constraining principle which would narrow the variability allowable, short of permitting injustice, hardship, or unfair competition between those who need to work together in mutual confidence and good faith. It may truly be said that civilisation is the means for giving scope to diversity.

Under stagnant and uniform conditions there may be a fossilised form of civilisation; but any living form must yield opportunities for individual effort, and every such opportunity is the making or marring of the man who rises to it or who falls before69 it. The leading tenth and the submerged tenth are equally the proof that a living civilisation is doing its work of sorting out the best and getting rid of the worst stock.

From another point of view, toleration is essential to completion. The enormous variety of character, and ability for special work, is all needed in a complete community. There are many "wrong paradises" in a whole society. We see the necessity for mental diversity, from the pure mathematician who is proud of the inapplicability of his results, through all the successive stages of research work, commercial work, administrative management, and mechanical work, even down to merely automatic work which needs no more mind than a cow\'s. And it is perfectly clear that such mental diversity must have corresponding variety of external life to accommodate it. The student or experimental worker finds the disturbances of communal life almost insufferable, while the mechanical worker would be miserable almost to suicide in the silence and lack of excitement of a life devoted to abstract thought or to millionths of an inch. If, therefore, the productions of the externals of life differ so profoundly in a complete society, we must expect and allow equally great differences in all the feelings, instincts, and requirements. One man may have a physical repulsion to affecting his mind and condition by stimulants and narcotics, a repulsion that extends more or less to every one addicted to such drugging of the senses. But it would be a misfortune to be without that variety, and the world would be poorer by losing Falstaff, or even Bardolph. The utmost we can say is that we should never be70 blind to the bad effects on the community of a low type if it be too widely diffused.

So long as the extreme parties are but a small portion, and the distribution of variation is normal, most in the middle course and thinning away to the upper and lower limits, the society is stable and benefits by its variations. But if the curve of variation is irregular, and shows two large groups with fewer in the middle course between them, the condition is dangerous. We had such a condition in England in the seventeenth century, and after a long struggle of each group to capture the middle party, the separation into two communities took place. The spiritual ancestors of Clifford and Perks and Byles were happy in their paradise of intolerant puritanism in New England, while Old England had internal peace for a couple of centuries. Another such process of fission now seems growing imminent, and it is again the question as to which group will capture the middle party. The positive danger of a diversity running into two separate groups is notorious in history. The Copts invited the Arab invasion to rid them of Byzantine bondage; the Britons invited the Saxons to save them from their neighbours. The ideals of a County Council which will not tolerate a quiet square in London, or of labour members who promote marches of the unemployed and unlimited taxation at their will, may drive the best thought in England to the tranquillity of a well-governed capital abroad; and as there are many people now who would prefer in England a Boer domination to that of the party represented by Cecil, Halifax, and Riley, so there are many others who would rather submit to a German71 government of London than to a sacking by a hungry mob. The segregation into two groups with an unstable link between them is fatal to the virtues classed as Patriotism. A studious Englishman would sooner have a Japanese or Russian professor for a neighbour, than have the average drinking workman and rowdy family who may be his distant cousins. And assu............
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