Other important topics we have to consider are (1) the organisation of the national mind; (2) the national self-consciousness; (3) the interaction of the nation as a whole with other nations. All these we may advantageously consider in the light of an analogy, the analogy between the individual mind and the collective mind of the nation. This is a much closer and more illuminating analogy than that between the nation, or society, and the material organism. The latter analogy has been developed in detail by H. Spencer, Schäffle[78] and others; it has now fallen into some disrepute. It has no doubt a certain value, but it is popularly used in a way that leads to quite unjustifiable conclusions. Of these fallacies by far the most commonly accepted is that which asserts that, just as every animal organism inevitably grows old and dies, so too must nations.
This is one of the most popular dogmas of amateur philosophers, and so distinguished a statesman as the late Lord Salisbury gave it countenance; while Mr A. J. Balfour in his recent Sidgwick Memorial Lecture[79] courageously breaks away and proposes to substitute for senility as the cause of decay the word _decadence_--a proposal which merely implies that he trusts less to the analogical argument from the material organism and more to empirical induction, to the observation of the fact that so many nations have decayed.
All this serves to illustrate the dangers of analogy. We need no special cause to account for the fall and the decay of nations, no obscure principle of senility or decadence; the wonderful thing is that they exist at all; and what needs explanation is not so much the decay of some, but rather the long persistence of others.
Let us turn, then, to the analogy between the organisation of the national collective mind and that of the individual mind, which, I say, is so much closer and more illuminating than that between a society and a bodily organisation.
The actions of the individual organism are the expression of its mental constitution or organisation; in some creatures this organisation is almost wholly innate--the organisation consists of a number of reflex and instinctive dispositions each specialised for bringing about a special kind of behaviour under certain circumstances. Such old established racial dispositions with their special tendencies have their place in more complexly developed minds; but in these their operations are complicated and modified by the life of ideas, and by a variety of habits developed under the guidance of ideas and in the light of individual experience.