The Hero in History/Chapter 3
III
THE INFLUENCE OF MONARCHS
Perhaps the most extreme proponent of the heroic interpretation of history, next to Carlyle, is an American scholar, Frederick Adams Wood, whose contributions have been comparatively neglected in the literature of the subject. What distinguishes Wood from Carlyle and all other followers of the dour Scotch prophet is his attempt to give an empirical grounding of his thesis that will withstand critical, scientific scrutiny. Wood’s empirical investigations are independent of his rather bizarre “gametic” interpretation of history as well as of his a priori construction of the rise of ancient dynasties. His work in general exhibits a curious mixture of shrewd insight, patient inventory, and wild exaggeration. It has its humorous side in his constant reiteration of freedom from bias, although in places he argues for his thesis like a lawyer defending a client, as in his declaration of an objectivity so entire that “it makes no assumption whatever, unless it be an assumption that a book is a book and a printed word is a printed word.”[1]
Wood’s procedure is very interesting, and an understanding of it is necessary in order to evaluate his findings. He has made a detailed study of 386 sovereigns in western Europe from the eleventh century until the time of the French Revolution. These sovereigns are drawn from the national histories of fourteen countries: France, England, Portugal, The Netherlands, Russia, Prussia, Sweden, Austria, Denmark, Scotland, Turkey, Castile, Aragon, United Spain. The period of world history covered by this survey is one in which monarchs as a group exercised more absolute power, as far as the data on hand indicate, than at any period before or since. At the same time, Wood strikes a balance of the conditions prevailing in the country during the time of each monarch’s reign. He then compares the personal qualities and characteristics of the rulers with the condition of their countries in order to determine whether there is any positive correlation between them. Rulers are classified into three groups—strong, weak, and mediocre, designated respectively by the signs “+,” “−,” “＝.” The conditions of their realms are likewise classified in three ways as exhibiting a state of prosperity, a state of decline, or no clear indication of either. These, too, are designated respectively by the signs of “+,” “−,” “＝.”
Characterizations of the ruler which determine the group in which he is classified are derived from a comprehensive survey of “standard” historical accounts, encyclopedias, and other reference works independently of the point of view from which they have been written. It is in terms predominantly of intellectual traits, not moral ones, that the classifications into superior inferior or mediocre are made. Wood finds an impressive unanimity in the judgments of historians of varying schools concerning a monarch’s “brilliance,” “dullness,” “intelligence,” “stupidity,” “military and political capacity” in contradistinction to their judgments of the monarch’s “goodness” or “wickedness,” or whether he was a boon or a curse to mankind.
The condition of a country is judged only in relation to its material history, consisting almost entirely of “political and economic affairs.” More specifically, the classification of material conditions as progressive, declining, or as neither one nor the other is made on the basis of historians’ statements on the following topics: “finances, army, navy, commerce, agriculture, manufacture, public building, territorial changes, condition of law and order, general condition of the people as a whole, growth and decline of political liberty, and the diplomatic position of the nation, or its prestige when viewed internationally. No attempt is made to include literary, educational, scientific, or artistic activities.”[2] Presumably this last is omitted because relativity of estimates in authoritative histories, but Wood offers no evidence than the relativity of judgment is greater here than it is about material affairs.
The conclusion Wood reaches at the end of this patient procedure is very striking. Comparing the tables of monarchs and the tables of the conditions of their realms, he asserts that their coefficient of correlation is “about .60 to .70 with a probable error of about .05.” His most conservative estimate, generously counting all borderline cases against his own hypothesis, is .60 for the value of the correlation coefficient. In terms of percentages, he states his conclusion as follows: “Strong, mediocre, and weak monarchs are associated with strong, mediocre, and weak periods respectively in about 70 per cent. of the cases. Strong monarchs are associated with weak periods, and weak monarchs (including non-royal regents) with strong periods in about 10 per cent. of the cases. In about 20 per cent. of the cases mediocre monarchs are associated with strong or with weak periods, or mediocre periods are associated with strong or with weak monarchs.”[3]
These correlation coefficients and percentages are extremely high and cannot with plausibility be interpreted as merely coincidental. As they stand, they may be interpreted as evidence of three different hypothesis: (1) that historical conditions have produced strong, weak, or mediocre monarchs; (2) that the latter have exercised the decisive influence on historical condition; and (3) that both monarchs and conditions are the result of some third set of factors. Wood rejects the first and third hypotheses for the second—his own. He asserts, in a statement as moderate as any that can be found in his writings, that “monarchs have influenced history; moreover that monarchs have influenced European history from the eleventh to the nineteenth century very much, and that the characteristics of monarchs are correlated with the conditions of their countries to at least probably r＝.60.”[4]
This thesis is. certainly in line with the heroic interpretation of history, but it is tied up in Wood’s writings with two other positions from which it should be differentiated, preliminary to any criticism. The first is that the historical hero is primarily the monarch. The second is that the monarch is essentially a biological rather than a social creation. Indeed, Wood rides his biological fancy to the point of referring to royalty as a “sub-variety of the human race.”[5]
Wood systematically disregards the influence of eminent non-royal personages in history even when they serve as regents or powerful ministers of state. He does not deny the superiority of a Richelieu to a Louis XIII. or, were he to carry his study into the nineteenth century, of a Bismarck to a Wilhelm I. He counts that monarch weak who permits the reins of power to be taken from his hands by statesman, mistress, or priest. Were we to add these influential non-royal figures to Wood’s list of heroic monarchs, assuming that we take his list on its face value, the claim of the heroic interpretation would be strengthened. And were we to reject his list and his conclusion about the role of monarchs, this would not be a sufficient reply to the more broadly conceived heroic theory which counts its heroes in what ever social strata it finds them. It is difficult to understand, except in terms of his obsession with gametic predetermination, why Wood did not extend his investigations in order to determine the correlation between the characteristics of all individuals in decisive positions of power for whom data is available and the state of their country.
This gametic interpretation leads him to a blanket disregard of environmental factors and an almost exclusive stress on alleged facts of heredity. According to Wood, “mental qualities are inherited in the same way and to the same degree as physical,” and among the mental qualities are all the characteristics, like intelligence, military valour, ambition, whose presence or absence signify the strong or weak monarch. “While the separation into cruel or non-cruel types, licentious and chaste, ambitious and indolent, etc., is not clearly and absolutely defined, the tendency to segregation which is observed is to be expected tom the usual workings of heredity.”[6] Wood consequently affirms that “modern royalty (from a. d. 1000 onwards) as a whole has been decidedly superior to the average European in capacity; and we may say without danger of refutation, that the royal breed, considered as a unit, is superior to any other one family; be it that of noble or commoner.”[7]
Concerning Wood’s gametic interpretation of history, it is not too harsh to say that his biological theory is at fault, the reasoning from it crude and a priori, and the concrete evidence cited inadequate. Whatever reasons there are for believing in the hereditary transmission of mental traits, they certainly do not include the traits which Wood enumerates in classifying his monarchs. Opening his summary tables at random, note his characterization of Joseph II. of Austria: “Restless, brave, ambitious, mentally alert, and well informed… impractical visionary, incompetent general… benevolent, generous, anxious to bring about reforms. Austere but amiable. Praised for his domestic virtues. His chief vice was duplicity.” Or this of the Russian Demetrius: “Ambitious, courageous, accomplished, versatile, but imprudent. Good-natured, affable, well-meaning. Magnificent.” Or this of King John of England: “Not lacking in cleverness or spasmodic energy but devoid of judgment and breadth of insight. Utterly depraved, mean, vindictive, licentious, cruel, and false.”
There is not a shadow of justification in biological theory for asserting that most of these traits are genetically predetermined. A man’s energy may depend upon his native biological endowments, but what makes him “restless” or “ambitious,” zealous in war or in study, emphatically does not. Sexual power may be rooted in inherited glands, but it is the height of absurdity to regard “chastity,” that is, marital fidelity, or “licentiousness,” that is, the pursuit of other people’s wives—which is the way Wood uses these terms—as glandular predispositions. There is no reason to assume that St. Augustine’s glands changed when he abandoned his concubines for the Church and a life of celibacy.
Even about the moot question of “intelligence” Wood is no more persuasive. For, in the main, the sign of intelligence for him is success—“intelligence means the practical acquisition of wealth and power.” He infers its inherent presence or absence only from the success or failure in acquiring power. The inference might be legitimate if the opportunities to acquire power as between monarch and monarch, and monarch and commoner, were the same. But Wood does not venture to assert this except for the misty period of prehistory, concerning which Hegel once remarked that we can be most certain of what we know least about.
In evaluating the comparative significance of heredity and environment in developing the traits of monarchs and in generating the opportunities for the exercise of these traits, Wood resolutely plays down environmental influence. He even denies that monarchs have had better opportunities to develop their talents than have commoners, asserting that whatever superior advantages they enjoyed have been more than compensated for by greater disadvantages. Among the reasons he offers for his conclusion that royal eminence is a gift of nature rather than of society is that monarchs as a class have had greater success in government than their ministers. “…[T]he total number of statesmen alleged to be great is less than the total number of monarchs. Opportunity may have [!] helped the monarchs more than the ministers, but as differences of opportunity are shown by other tests to be usually of slight causative value [!], it is not at all likely that such differences would account for the vast differences in numerical ratios—differences that make it thousands of times more likely than among average people that the breed of kings will produce a statesman.”[8]
When one recalls that Wood is discussing a period in which absolute monarchy and hereditary succession were the rule, his statement that opportunity “may have” helped monarchs more than ministers seems a jest, and his reference to the comparative chances of the common people, a snobbish jest. With the same logic one can argue that the reason a hereditary priesthood shows the capacities it does in temple rites is to be found in its genetic superiority to laymen. And so far is it from being a settled thing that “differences of opportunity are shown by other tests to be usually of slight causative value,” one can cite numerous tests, ranging from educational to military achievement, which prove that differences of opportunity are often of great causative value. The greatest generals, as is well known, have almost always been professionally trained.
Perhaps the most conclusive evidence that Wood is riding a biological hobby-horse can be found in his own historical data as well as in the history of monarchy in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. By his own admission, from the year 1603 to 1811, no sovereign of outstanding capacity, with the possible exception of William III., sat on the English throne. And yet this prolonged period, according to him, was one of continuous progress. The same situation obtains for Scotland. There is no gametic explanation offered for this startling difference between English and Scotch history and that of other European nations. In the entire nineteenth century, monarchs were dwarfed by national statesmen in almost every country. In the twentieth century they were either thrown into the discard or became decorative symbols. Napoleon, a commoner by virtue of gametic and social station, played ducks and drakes with the crowned heads of Europe. A century later, Lenin, Trotsky, Mussolini, Hitler, Ataturk, Metaxas, and other midget followers of the pattern set by the dictators either buried their monarchs or converted the seed of “the most superior” family in the world into paltry retainers. So much for the gametic interpretation of history! ••••• The way is now clear for a consideration of Wood’s positive findings freed from the quaint conceits of his social Darwinism. Even if we accept his evaluations of monarchs and conditions and the coefficient of correlation between them would not be sufficient of itself to establish the view that “the work of the world has been initiated and directed by a few very great men.” The correlation suggests as much the causative influence of environment on great men as vice versa—a possibility that Wood dismisses by invalid and question-begging arguments. More important still, the relative value of the correlation cannot be ascertained until we know what correlation exists between national conditions and other variables like technological inventions, climatic changes, discoveries of new lands and resources, and additional factors not immediately dependent upon the decision of monarchs. Theoretically, the coefficients of correlation between these series may be higher than .60. We might be able to make more accurate predictions about the character of a culture on the basis of these series than on the basis of the hereditary constitution of rulers.
If we turn to Wood’s specific correlations, our first criticism is that they are between terms too broad to be very illuminating in evaluating heroic action in history. “The state of a country” at any time, or even over a period of time, is too inclusive and indeterminate to assign it to the consequences of individual action. Our own experience of the effects of human actions shows that we regard specific acts of omission or commission as historical causal agencies only when we can link them though a sequence of events to some particular happenings and their ensuing consequences. This failure to consider events in sequences vitiates Wood’s entire approach, for he has no way of handling eventful action and eventful men in history. For example, if a monarch is a strong character (+) but his reign is chaotic (−), Wood counts this as evidence that he played no decisive role in history. But obviously, the chaotic conditions of his reign may be the result of that monarch’s act, some victory or disaster or fateful policy whose consequences we can trace through a sequence of events to the given conditions. Similarly, if a monarch is strong and his country is prosperous, Wood assumes that this is evidence for the heroic interpretation. But such an assumption is gratuitous unless it can be shown that the prosperity of the country (however that be defined or measured) is the result of some historical event of which the monarch, or some other great individual, was the moving soul.
As great a deficiency in Wood’s approach is the assumption of causal connection between the contemporary monarch and his reign. What legitimate ground is there for the assumption that the “prosperous conditions” of a country or its “decline” must be the result of the characteristics or decisions of the reigning monarch? The state of a country in a specific important respect may be the result of the actions of a preceding monarch in launching a policy whose consequences, for good or evil, unrolled themselves after he disappeared from the historical scene. Louis XV. and Louis XVI. of France (1731–93) were “weak” kings, and their eras were marked by miserable social and economic conditions; but these latter may more plausibly be attributed to the activities and policies of Louis XIV. (1661–1715), a “strong” king, whose reign was comparatively more prosperous than those of his descendants. The consequences of the industrial revolution in Great Britain were much more pervasive and manifest in the time of Queen Victoria than in the time of George III. Yet it would be absurd to credit her, or Disraeli or Gladstone, with the efflorescence of trade and commercial prosperity and their attendant circumstances. Nor, and this is a weighty consideration against all heroic interpretations, is there any justification for attributing the industrial revolution to George III. or any contemporary of the period in which it got started. The tremendous revolutionary impact of urbanization on modern culture, to mention only one of the consequences of the industrial revolution, would have taken place no matter what crowned heads and ministerial figures had flourished at the time.
Examining Wood’s synoptic tables from another standpoint, we find that the term “prosperity” is too inclusive, even if taken in a “materialistic” sense, to enable us to characterize a period with sufficient definiteness. For Wood the prosperity of a country is inferred from the composite statements of historians concerning its “finances, army, navy, commerce, agriculture, manufacture, public building, territorial changes, condition of law and order, general condition of the people as a whole, growth and decline of political liberty, and the diplomatic position of the nation, or its prestige when viewed internationally.” He does not indicate clearly whether a nation must show progress in one, most, or all of these respects to be classified as prosperous. He does not evaluate the relative weight of advances in different fields although he is aware of the fact that a nation rarely “progresses” all along the line. Is a period of great public building, stable conditions of law and order, but excessive taxation and decline of political liberty to be regarded as “prosperous” or not? Or take the actual combination of features adduced by Wood for the England of Charles I. “Expansion of commerce and general material prosperity. Decline in international prestige. Public discontent. Distress during civil war. Parliament struggled for its existence.”[9] By what principles does Wood strike a balance of “prosperity” (+) from this array? The question becomes particularly pertinent when we contrast this conclusion with his characterization of the period from 1199 to 1216 in England as “＝,” that is, as neither prosperous nor in decline, on the basis of the following account. “Turbulence and discord resulting in the Magna Charta. The rights of individuals defined and enhanced. This constitutional growth must be regarded as of great importance.” The growth of constitutional democracy in England is indeed of great importance for that nation’s subsequent development. Why, then, does it not outweigh the temporary disorders and the local maladjustments of the time?
Periods of violent transformation of the status quo, no matter how progressive their ultimate fruits have been, would show relative declines in most of the respects listed on Wood’s scale. It is clear that unexpressed value judgments from which the author imagines himself totally free have played a large part in his use of the classifications. This is inescapable when we approach the subject with such inclusive categories as “prosperity” and “decline” and do not break them down into terms designating more limited social phenomena.
In justice to Wood it should be emphasized that he is aware of some of the difficulties, although he does not take them seriously enough. He admits at the outset of his study to some perplexity concerning the relative evaluation of political liberty because “one frequently finds that under strong kings the country flourished in almost every way except that the people were oppressed.” He cuts the Gordian knot by treating political freedom in states like courage and perseverance in individuals, as “middling attributes,” partly material and partly spiritual. He suggests that we “halve” them. This means either that we make our estimates of the condition of a country independently of the presence or absence of political liberty, or that sometimes, under conditions not indicated, we should regard freedom from oppression as essential to a prosperous community, and sometimes not. In either case, the procedure seems arbitrary. In practice Wood shows that he cannot do without reference to the state of political liberty and at the same time that he does not know what to do with it. Since he relies on the historians’ general appraisals of different periods, it should be observed that the weight assigned to political freedom by historians obviously has varied with their standpoint and philosophy of history. A Mommsen will view a period differently from a Gibbon, a Taine will shrink with horror from the political events that a Michelet applauds. When their judgments are incorporated into a presumably objective over-all description of an era, it masks a value judgment.
Nor is it always apparent why Wood classifies his monarchs as superior, mediocre, and inferior. For his classifications to have any scientific value, the traits that determine a monarch’s particular class must be independent of estimates of the conditions of his reign, since Wood believes that the conditions are in the main consequences of those traits. To infer the monarchs’ traits from the conditions of the country, and then to cite these traits as causal determinants of the conditions, would be gross question-begging. And yet one cannot escape the impression that, if the monarchs classified by Wood had lived in different periods, he would have classified their “innate” qualities differently. Of Charles I. of England Wood says that his chief faults were “duplicity and obstinacy.” Others might say, on the basis of the same data, that Charles I. was “shrewd and principled.” Perhaps Wood with a different political and religious bias, or considering the king in relation to a less difficult time, would have agreed. Here, too, moral judgments enter integrally into the total valuation of individual character.
Perhaps the most obvious objection to Wood’s thesis is its self-imposed restriction to the period before the French Revolution. The whole nineteenth century lay before him with practically inexhaustible materials on the life and fate of monarchs in all countries. But he does not touch it. The reason is clear. Not even the staunchest legitimist would seriously enter a claim for the monarch as hero either in the nineteenth or twentieth centuries, except for the non-royal usurper, Napoleon. The decline of the influence of monarchs in the last two centuries is something which Wood is totally at a loss to explain. The conditions and events that account for this decline cannot themselves be explained as consequences of the action of monarchs. For according to Wood the hereditary factors were relatively constant.
Concluding our study of Wood’s evidence for the historic period to which he restricts it, we are compelled to judge his gallant and interesting effort in behalf of royalty as a failure. His position might have been sounder, though it could not have been so extreme, had he made extended case studies of a score of his outstanding figures in order to trace specifically what they contributed to determining the course of empire and the direction of the historical stream. Whatever weight his findings have can be sufficiently accounted for by the fact that since he was studying the era of absolute monarchy, sovereigns would naturally have more power for good or evil than in subsequent periods. But if it is the nature of the historical era which delimits the sphere of monarchial infulence, what determines the transition from one era to another?
We must now turn to the counterclaims of the social determinists who are confident that they know the answer and have solved the problem.