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WHY MEN FIGHT
WHY MEN FIGHT
A METHOD OF ABOLISHING
THE INTERNA TIONAL DUEL
BY
BERTRAND RUSSELL, M.A., F.R.S.
Sometime Fellow and Lecturer in Trinity
College, Cambridge
NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
1917
Copyright, 1916, by
The Century Co.
Published, January, 1917
iJ 'S
'KH
Le soufHe, le rhythme, la vraie force populaire
manqua a la reaction. Elle eut les rois, les tresors,
les armees; elle ecrasa les peuples, mais elle resta
muette. Elle tiia en silence; elle ne put parler
qu'avee le canon sur ses horribles champs de
bataille. . . . Tuer quinze millions d'hommes par
la faim et I'epee, a la bonne heure, cela se pent.
Mais faire un petit chant, un air aime de tous, voila
ce que nuUe machination ne donnera. . , . Don
reserve, beni. . . . Ce chant peut-etre a I'aube jaillira
d'un coeur simple, ou I'alouette le trouvera en mon-
tant au soleil, de son sillon d'avril.
MiCHELET.
lysoosG
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I The Principle of Growth 3
II The State 42
III War as an Institution 79
IV Property 117
V Education 153
VI Marriage and the Population Question 182
VII Religion and the Churches .... 215
VIII What We Can Do 245
WHY MEN FIGHT
WHY MEN FIGHT
THE PRINCIPLE OF GROWTH
TO all who are capable of new impressions
and fresh thought, some modification of
former beliefs and hopes has been brought by
the war. What the modification has been has
depended, in each case, upon character and cir-
cumstance; but in one form or another it has
been almost universal. To me, the chief thing
to be learnt through the war has been a certain
view of the springs of human action, what they
are, and what we may legitimately hope that
they will become. This view, if it is true, seems
to afford a basis for political philosophy more
capable of standing erect in a time of crisis than
the philosophy of traditional Liberalism has
shown itself to be. The following lectures,
though only one of them will deal with war, all
are inspired by a view of the springs of action
3
4 WHY MEN FIGHT
which has been suggested by the war. And all
of them are informed by the hope of seeing such
political institutions established in Europe as
shall make men averse to war — a hope which I
firmly believe to be realizable, though not with-
out a great and fundamental reconstruction of
economic and social life.
To one who stands outside the cycle of beliefs
and passions which make the war seem neces-
sary, an isolation, an almost unbearable separa-
tion from the general activity, becomes unavoid-
able. At the very moment when the universal
disaster raises compassion in the highest de-
gree, compassion itself compels aloofness from
the impulse to self-destruction which has swept
over Europe. The helpless longing to save men
from the ruin towards which they are hastening
makes it necessary to oppose the stream, to in-
cur hostility, to be thought unfeeling, to lose for
the moment the power of winning belief. It is
impossible to prevent others from feeling hos-
tile, but it is possible to avoid any reciprocal hos-
tility on one's own part, by imaginative under-
standing and the sympathy which grows out of
it. And without understanding and sympathy
it is impossible to find a cure for the evil from
which the world is suffering.
THE PRINCIPLE OF GROWTH 5
There are two views of the war neither of
which seems to me adequate. The usual view
in this country is that it is due to the wicked-
ness of the Germans ; the view of most pacifists
is that it is due to the diplomatic tangle and
to the ambitions of Governments. I think both
these views fail to realize the extent to which
war grows out of ordinary human nature. Ger-
mans, and also the men who compose Govern-
ments, are on the whole average human beings,
actuated by the same passions that actuate
others, not differing much from the rest of the
world except in their circumstances. War is ac-
cepted by men who are neither Germans nor
diplomatists with a readiness, an acquiescence
in untrue and inadequate reasons, which would
not be possible if any deep repugnance to war
were widespread in other nations or classes.
The untrue things which men believe, and the
true things which they disbelieve, are an in-
dex to their impulses — not necessarily to indi-
vidual impulses in each case (since beliefs are
contagious), but to the general impulses of the
community. We all believe many things which
we have no good ground for believing, because,
subconsciously, our nature craves certain kinds
of action which these beliefs would render reas-
6 WHY MEN FIGHT
onable if they were true. Unfounded beliefs
are the homage which impulse pays to reason;
and thus it is with the beliefs which, opposite
but similar, make men here and in Germany be-
lieve it their duty to prosecute the war.
The first thought which naturally occurs to
one who accepts this view is that it would be
well if men were more under the dominion of
reason. War, to those who see that it must
necessarily do untold harm to all the combat-
ants, seems a mere madness, a collective in-
sanity in which all that has been known in time
of peace is forgotten. If impulses were more
controlled, if thought were less dominated by
passion, men would guard their minds against
the approaches of war fever, and disputes would
be adjusted amicably. This is true, but it is not
by itself sufficient. It is only those in whom the
desire to think truly is itself a passion who will
find this desire adequate to control the passions
of war. Only passion can control passion, and
only a contrary impulse or desire can check im-
pulse. Reason, as it is preached by traditional
moralists, is too negative, too little living, to
make a good life. It is not by reason alone that
wars can be prevented, but by a positive life of
impulses and passions antagonistic to those that
THE PRINCIPLE OP GROWTH 7
lead to war. It is the life of impulse that
needs to be changed, not only the life of con-
scious thought.
All human activity springs from two sources :
impulse and desire. The part played by desire
has always been sufficiently recognized. When
men find themselves not fully contented, and
not able instantly to procure what will cause
content, imagination brings before their minds
the thought of things which they believe would
make them happy. All desire involves an in-
terval of time between the consciousness of a
need and the opportunity for satisfying it.
The acts inspired by desire may be in them-
selves painful, the time before satisfaction can
be achieved may be very long, the object de-
sired may be something outside our own lives,
and even after our own death. Will, as a di-
recting force, consists mainly in following de-
sires for more or less distant objects, in spite
of the painfulness of the acts involved and the
solicitations of incompatible but more imme-
diate desires and impulses. All this is familiar,
and political philosopliy hitherto has been al-
most entirely based upon desire as the source of
human actions.
But desire governs no more than a part of
8 WHY MEN FIGHT
human activity, and that not the most impor-
tant but only the more conscious, explicit, and
civilized part.
In all the more instinctive part of our nature
we are dominated by impulses to certain kinds
of activity, not by desires for certain ends.
Children run and shout, not because of any good
which they expect to realize, but because of a
direct impulse to running and shouting. Dogs
bay the moon, not because they consider that it
is to their advantage to do so, but because they
feel an impulse to bark. It is not any purpose,
but merely an impulse, that prompts such
actions as eating, drinking, love-making, quar-
reling, boasting. Those who believe that man
is a rational animal will say that people boast
in order that others may have a good opinion
of them; but most of ns can recall occasions
when we have boasted in spite of knowing that
we should be despised for it. Instinctive acts
normally achieve some result which is agreeable
to the natural man, but they are not performed
from desire for this result. They are per-
formed from direct impulse, and the impulse
is often strong even in cases in which the normal
desirable result cannot follow. Grown men like
to imagine themselves more rational than chil-
THE PRINCIPLE OF GROWTH 9
dren and dogs, and unconsciously conceal from
themselves how great a part impulse plays in
their lives. This unconscious concealment al-
ways follows a certain general plan. When an
impulse is not indulged in the moment in which
it arises, there grows up a desire for the ex-
pected consequences of indulging the impulse.
If some of the consequences which are reason-
ably to be expected are clearly disagreeable, a
conflict between foresight and impulse arises.
If the impulse is weak, foresight may conquer;
this is what is called acting on reason. If the
impulse is strong, either foresight will be falsi-
fied, and the disagreeable consequences will be
forgotten, or, in men of a heroic mold, the con-
sequences may be recklessly accepted. When
Macbeth realizes that he is doomed to defeat,
he does not shrink from the fight; he ex-
claims : —
Lay on, Macduff,
And damned be him that first cries, Hold, enough!
But such strength and recklessness of im-
pulse is rare. Most men, when their impulse
is strong, succeed in persuading themselves,
usually by a subconscious selectiveness of
attention, that agreeable consequences will
follow from the indulgence of their impulse.
10 WHY MEN FIGHT
"Whole philosophies, whole systems of ethical
valuation, spring up in this way: they are the
embodiment of a kind of thought w^hich is sub-
servient to impulse, which aims at providing a
quasi-rational ground for the indulgence of im-
pulse. The only thought which is genuine is
that which springs out of the intellectual im-
pulse of curiosity, leading to the desire to know
and understand. But most of what passes for
thought is inspired by some non-intellectual im-
pulse, and is merely a means of persuading our-
selves that we shall not be disappointed or do
harm if we indulge this impulse.^
When an impulse is restrained, we feel dis-
comfort or even violent pain. We may indulge
the impulse in order to escape from this pain,
and our action is then one which has a purpose.
But the pain only exists because of the impulse,
and the impulse itself is directed to an act, not
to escaping from the pain of restraining the im-
pulse. The impulse itself remains without a
purpose, and the purpose of escaping from pain
only arises when the impulse has been momen-
tarily restrained.
1 On this subject compare Bernard Hart's "Psychology of
Insanity" (Cambridge University Press, 1914), chap, v, espe-
cially pp. 62-5,
THE PRINCIPLE OF GROWTH 11
Impulse is at the basis of our activity, much
more than desire. Desire has its place, but not
so large a place as it seemed to have. Impulses
bring with them a whole train of subservient
fictitious desires : they make men feel that they
desire the results which w^ill follow from indulg-
ing the impulses, and that they are acting for
the sake of these results, when in fact their
action has no motive outside itself. A man may
write a book or paint a picture under the belief
that he desires the praise which it will bring
him ; but as soon as it is finished, if his creative
impulse is not exhausted, what he has done
grows uninteresting to him, and he begins a new
piece of work. What applies to artistic crea-
tion applies equally to all that is most vital in
our lives : direct impulse is what moves us, and
the desires which we think we have are a mere
garment for the impulse.
Desire, as opposed to impulse, has, it is true,
a large and increasing share in the regulation
of men's lives. Impulse is erratic and anarch-
ical, not easily fitted into a well-regulated sys-
tem ; it may be tolerated in children and artists,
but it is not thought proper to men who hope to
be taken seriously. Almost all paid work is
done from desire, not from impulse : the work it-
12 WHY MEN FIGHT
self is more or less irksome, but the payment
for it is desired. The serious activities that fill
a man's working hours are, except in a few for-
tunate individuals, governed mainly by pur-
poses, not by impulses towards those activities.
In this hardly any one sees an evil, because the
place of impulse in a satisfactory existence is
not recognized.
An impulse, to one who does not share it
actually or imaginatively, will always seem to
be mad. All impulse is essentially blind, in the
sense that it does not spring from any prevision
of consequences. The man who does not share
the impulse will form a different estimate as to
what the consequences will be, and as to whether
those that must ensue are desirable. This dif-
ference of opinion will seem to be ethical or in-
tellectual, whereas its real basis is a difference
of impulse. No genuine agreement will be
reached, in such a case, so long as the difference
of impulse persists. In all men who have any
vigorous life, there are strong impulses such
as may seem utterly unreasonable to others.
Blind impulses sometimes lead to destruction
and death, but at other times they lead to the
best things the world contains. Blind impulse
is the source of war, but it is also the source of
THE PRINCIPLE OF GROWTH 13
science, and art, and love. It is not the weaken-
ing of impulse that is to be desired, but the (^
rection of impulse towards life and growth
rather than towards death and decay.
The complete control of impulse by will, which
is sometimes preached by moralists, and often
enforced by economic necessity, is not really de-
sirable. A life governed by purposes and de-
sires, to the exclusion of impulse, is a tiring life ;
it exhausts vitality, and leaves a man, in the
end, indifferent to the very purposes which he
has been trying to achieve. When a whole na-
tion lives in this way, the whole nation tends to
become feeble, without enough grasp to recog-
nize and overcome the obstacles to its desires.
Industrialism and organization are constantly
forcing civilized nations to live more and more
by purpose rather than impulse. In the long
run such a mode of existence, if it does not dry
up the springs of life, produces new impulses,
not of the kind which the will has been in the
habit of controlling or of which thought is con-
scious. These new impulses are apt to be worse
in their effects than those that have been
checked. Excessive discipline, especially when
it is imposed from without, often issues in im-
pulses of cruelty and destruction; this is one
14 WHY MEN FIGHT
reason why militarism has a bad effect on na-
tional character. Either lack of vitality, or im-
pulses which are oppressive and against life,
will almost always result if the spontaneous im-
pulses are not able to find an outlet. A man's
impulses are not fixed from the beginning by his
native disposition: within certain wide limits,
they are profoundly modified by his circum-
stances and his way of life. The nature of
these modifications ought to be studied, and the
results of such study ought to be taken ac-
count of in judging the good or harm that is
done by political and social institutions.
The war has grown, in the main, out of the
life of impulse, not out of reason or desire.
There is an impulse of aggression, and an im-
pulse of resistance to aggression. Either may,
on occasion, be in accordance with reason, but
both are operative in many cases in which they
are quite contrary to reason. Each impulse
produces a whole harvest of attendant beliefs.
The beliefs appropriate to the impulse of ag-
gression may be seen in Bernhardi, or in the
early Mohammedan conquerors, or, in full per-
fection, in the Book of Joshua. There is first
of all a conviction of the superior excellence of
one's own group, a certainty that they are in
THE PRINCIPLE OF GROWTH 15
some sense the chosen people. This justifies
the feeling that only the good and evil of one's
own group is of real importance, and that the
rest of the world is to be regarded merely as
material for the triumph or salvation of the
higher race. In modern politics this attitude is
embodied in imperialism. Europe as a whole
has this attitude towards Asia and Africa, and
many Germans have this attitude towards the
rest of Europe.
Correlative to the impulse of aggression is
the impulse of resistance to aggression. This
impulse is exemplified in the attitude of the
Israelites to the Philistines or of medieval
Europe to the Mohammedans. The beliefs
which it produces are beliefs in the peculiar
wickedness of those whose aggression is feared,
and in tlie immense value of national customs
which they might suppress if they were vic-
torious. When the war broke out, all the re-
actionaries in England and France began to
speak of the danger to democracy, although un-
til that moment they had opposed democracy
with all their strength. They were not insin-
cere in so speaking: the impulse of resistance
to Germany made them value whatever was en-
dangered by the German attack. They loved
16 WHY MEN FIGHT
democracy because they hated Germany; but
they thought they hated Germany because they
loved democracy.
The correlative impulses of aggression and
resistance to aggression have both been opera-
tive in all the countries engaged in the war.
Those who have not been dominated by one or
other of these impulses may be roughly divided
into three classes. There are, first, men whose
national sentiment is antagonistic to the State
to which they are subject. This class includes
some Irish, Poles, Finns, Jews, and other mem-
bers of oppressed nations. From our point of
view, these men may be omitted from our con-
sideration, since they have the same impulsive
nature as those who fight, and differ merely in
external circumstances.
The second class of men who have not been
part of the force supporting the war have been
those whose impulsive nature is more or less
atrophied. Opponents of pacifism suppose that
all pacifists belong to this class, except when
they are in German pay. It is thought that
pacifists are bloodless, men without passions,
men who can look on and reason with cold de-
tachment while their brothers are giving their
lives for their country. Among those who are
THE PRINCIPLE OF GROWTH 17
merely passively pacifist, and do no more than
abstain from actively taking part in the war,
there may be a certain proportion of whom this
is true. I think the supporters of war would be
right in decrying such men. In spite of all the
destruction which is wrought by the impulses
that lead to war, there is more hope for a na-
tion which has these impulses than for a na-
tion in which all impulse is dead. Impulse is
the expression of life, and while it exists there
is hope of its turning towards life instead of to-
wards death; but lack of impulse is death, and
out of death no new life will come.
The active pacifists, however, are not of this
class : they are not men without impulsive force
but men in whom some impulse to which war is
hostile is strong enough to overcome the im-
pulses tliat lead to war. It is not the act of a
passionless man to throw himself athwart the
whole movement of the national life, to urge an
outwardly hopeless cause, to incur obloquy and
to resist the contagion of collective emotion.
The impulse to avoid the hostility of public opin-
ion is one of the strongest in human nature, and
can only be overcome by an unusual force of
direct and uncalculating impulse ; it is not cold
reason alone that can prompt such an act.
18 WHY MEN FIGHT
Impulses may be divided into those that make
for life and those that make for death. The
impulses embodied in the war are among those
that make for death. Any one of the impulses
that make for life, if it is strong enough, will
lead a man to stand out against the war. Some
of these impulses are only strong in highly
civilized men ; some are part of common human-
ity. The impulses towards art and science are
among the more civilized of those that make for
life. Many artists have remained wholh^ un-
touched by the passions of the war, not from
feebleness of feeling, but because the creative
instinct, the pursuit of a vision, makes them
critical of the assaults of national passion, and
not responsive to the myth in which the impulse
of pugnacity clothes itself. And the few men
in whom the scientific impulse is dominant have
noticed the rival myths of warring groups, and
have been led through understanding to neu-
trality. But it is not out of such refined im-
pulses that a popular force can be generated
which shall be sufficient to transform the world.
There are three forces on the side of life
which require no exceptional mental endowment,
which are not very rare at present, and might
be very common under better social institutions.
THE PRINCIPLE OF GROWTH 19
They are love , the instinct of co nstmc tiveness.
and the joy of life. AH three are checked and
enfeebled at present by the conditions under
which men live — not only the less outwardly for-
tunate, but also the majority of the well-to-do.
Our institutions rest upon injustice and author-
ity: it is only by closing our hearts against
sympathy and our minds against truth that
we can endure the oppressions and unfairnesses
by which we profit. The conventional concep-
tion of what constitutes success leads most men
to live a life in which their most vital impulses
are sacrificed, and the joy of life is lost in list-
less weariness. Our economic system compels
almost all men to carry out the purposes of
others rather than their own, making them feel
impotent in action and only able to secure a cer-
tain modicum of passive pleasure. All these
things destroy the vigor of the community, the
expansive affections of individuals , and the
power of viewing the world generously. All
these things are unnecessary and can be ended
by wisdom and courage. If they were ended,
the impulsive life of men would become wholly
different, and the human race might travel to-
wards a new happiness and a new vigor. To
urge this hope is the purpose of these lectures.
20 WHY MEN FIGHT
The impulses and desires of men and women,
in so far as they are of real importance in their
lives, are not detached one from another, but
proceed from a central principle of growth, an
instinctive urgency leading them in a certain di-
rection, as trees seek the light.. So long as this
instinctive movement is not thwarted, whatever
misfortunes may occur are not fundamental dis-
asters, and do not produce those distortions
which result from interference with natural
growth. This intimate center in each human
being is what imagination must apprehend if
we are to understand him intuitively. It differs
from man to man, and detennines for each man
the type of excellence of which he is capable.
The utmost that social institutions can do for a
man is to make his own growth free and vigor-
ous : they cannot force him to grow according to
the pattern of another man. There are in men
some impulses and desires — for example, those
towards dmgs — ^which do not grow out of the
central principle ; such impulses, when they be-
come strong enough to be harmful, have to
be checked by self-discipline. Other impulses,
though they may grow out of the central prin-
ciple in the individual, may be injurious to the
growth of others, and they need to be checked in
THE PRINCIPLE OF GROWTH 21
the interest of others. But in the main, the im-
pulses which are injurious to others tend to re-
sult from thwarted growth, and to be least in
those who have been unimpeded in their instinc-
tive development.
Men, like trees, require for their growth the
right soil and a sufficient freedom from oppres-
sion. These can be helped or hindered by politi-
cal institutions. But the soil and the freedom
required for a man's growth are immeasurably
more difficult to discover and to obtain than the
soil and the freedom required for the growth of
a tree. And the full growth which may be
hoped for cannot be defined or demonstrated;
it is subtle and complex, it can only be felt by a
delicate intuition and dimly apprehended by
imagination and respect. It depends not only
or chiefly upon the physical environment, but
upon beliefs and affections, upon opportunities
for action, and upon the whole life of the com-
munity. The more developed and civilized the
type of man the more elaborate are the condi-
tions of his growth, and the more dependent
they become upon the general state of the so-
ciety in which he lives. A man's needs and de-
sires are not confined to his own life. If his
mind is comprehensive and his imagination
22 WHY MEN FIGHT
vivid, the failures of the community to which he
belongs are his failures, and its successes are
his successes: according as his community suc-
ceeds or fails, his own growth is nourished or
impeded.
In the modern world, the principle of growth
in most men and women is hampered by insti-
tutions inherited from a simpler age. By the
progress of thought and knowledge, and by the
increase in command over the forces of the phys-
ical world, new possibilities of growth have
come into existence, and have given rise to new
claims which must be satisfied if those who make
them are not to be thwarted. There is less
acquiescence in limitations which are no longer
unavoidable, and less possibility of a good life
while those limitations remain. Institutions
which give much greater opportunities to some
classes than to others are no longer recognized
as just by the less fortunate, though the more
fortunate still defend them vehemently. Hence
arises a universal strife, in which tradition and
authority are arrayed against liberty and jus-
tice. Our professed morality, being traditional,
loses its hold upon those who are in revolt. Co-
operation between the defenders of the old and
the champions of the new has become almost im-
THE PRINCIPLE OF GROWTH 23
possible. An intimate disunion has entered
into almost all the relations of life in continually
increasing measure. In the fight for freedom,
men and women become increasingly unable to
break down the walls of the Ego and achieve
the growth which comes from a real and vital
union.
All our institutions have their historic basis
in Authority. The unquestioned authority of
the Oriental despot found its religious expres-
sion in the omnipotent Creator, whose glory was
the sole end of man, and against whom man
had no rights. This authority descended to the
Emperor and Pope, to the kings of the Middle
Ages, to the nobles in the feudal hierarchy, and
even to every husband and father in his deal-
ings with his wife and children. The Church
was the direct embodiment of the Divine au-
thority, the State and the law were constituted
by the authoriy of the King, private property
in land grew out of the authority of conquering
barons, and the family was governed by the au-
thority of the pater-familias.
The institutions of the Middle Ages permitted
only a fortunate few to develop freely : the vast
majority of mankind existed to minister to the
few. But so long as authority was genuinely
24 WHY MEN FIGHT
respected and acknowledged even by its least
fortunate subjects, medieval society remained
organic and not fundamentally hostile to life,
since outward submission was compatible with
inward freedom because it was voluntary. The
institutions of Western Christendom embodied
a theory which was really believed, as no theory
by which our present institutions can be de-
fended is now believed.
The medieval theory of life broke down
through its failure to satisfy men's demands for
justice and liberty. Under the stress of oppres-
sion, w^hen rulers exceeded their theoretical
powers, the victims were forced to realize that
they themselves also had rights, and need not
live merely to increase the glory of the few.
Gradually it came to be seen that if men have
power, they are likely to abuse it, and that
authority in practice means tyranny. Because
the claim to justice was resisted by the holders
of power, men became more and more separate
units, each fighting for his own rights, not a
genuine community bound together by an or-
ganic common purpose. This absence of a com-
mon purpose has become a source of unhappi-
ness. One of the reasons which led many men
to welcome the outbreak of the present war was
THE PEINCIPLE OF GROWTH 25
that it made each nation again a whole com-
munity with a single purpose. It did this b}" de-
stroying, for the present, the beginnings of a
single purpose in the civilized world as a whole ;
but these beginnings were as yet so feeble that
few were much affected by their destruction.
Men rejoiced in the new sense of unity with their
compatriots more than they minded the in-
creased separation from their enemies.
The hardening and separation of the indi-
vidual in the course of the fight for freedom
has been inevitable, and is not likely ever to
be wholly undone. What is necessary, if an or-
ganic society is to grow up, is that our institu-
tions should be so fundamentally changed as to
embody that new respect for the individual and
his rights which modern feeling demands. The
medieval Empire and Church swept away the
individual. There were heretics, but they were
massacred relentlessly, without any of the
qualms aroused by later persecutions. And
they, like their persecutors, were persuaded that
there ought to be one universal Church: they
differed only as to what its creed should be.
Among a few men of art and letters, the Renais-
sance undermined the medieval theory, without,
however, replacing it by anything but skepticism
26 WHY MEN FIGHT
and confusion. The first serious breach in this
medieval theory was caused by Luther's asser-
tion of the right of private judgment and the
fallibiUty of General Councils. Out of this as-
sertion grew inevitably, with time, the belief
that a man's religion could not be determined
for him by authority, but must be left to the free
choice of each individual. It was in matters of
religion that the battle for liberty began, and
it is in matters of religion that it has come near-
est to a comjDlete victory.^
The development through extreme individu-
alism to strife, and thence, one hopes, to a new
reintegration, is to be seen in almost every
department of life. Claims are advanced in the
name of justice, and resisted in the name of tra-
dition and prescriptive right. Each side hon-
estly believes that it deserves to triumph, be-
cause two theories of society exist side by side
in our thought, and men choose, unconsciously,
the theory which fits their case. Because the
battle is long and arduous all general theory is
gradually forgotten ; in the end, nothing remains
but self-assertion, and when the oppressed win
1 This was written before Christianity had become punish-
able by hard labor, penal servitude, or even death, under the
Military Service Act (Xo. 2). [Note added in 1916.]
THE PRINCIPLE OF GROWTH 27
freedom they are as oppressive as their former
masters.
This is seen most crudely in the case of what
is called nationalism. Nationalism, in theory,
is the doctrine that men, by their sympathies and
traditions, form natural groups, called "na-
tions," each of which ought to be united under
one central Government. In the main this doc-
trine may be conceded. But in practice the doc-
trine takes a more personal form. "I belong,"
the oppressed nationalist argues, ''by sympathy
and tradition to nation A, but I am subject to a
government which is in the hands of nation B.
This is an injustice, not only because of the gen-
eral principle of nationalism, but because nation
A is generous, progressive, and civilized, while
nation B is oppressive, retrograde, and barbar-
ous. Because this is so, nation A deserves to
prosper, while nation B deserves to be abased."
The inhabitants of nation B are naturally deaf
to the claims of abstract justice, when they are
accompanied by personal hostility and con-
tempt. Presently, however, in the course of
war, nation A acquires its freedom. The
energy and pride which have achieved freedom
generates a momentum which leads on, almost
infallibly, to the attempt at foreign conquest, or
28 WHY MEN FIGHT
to the refusal of liberty to some smaller nation.
''What? You say that nation C, which forms
part of our State, has the same rights against
as as we had against nation A ? But that is ab-
surd. Nation C is swinish and turbulent, in-
capable of good government, needing a strong
hand if it is not to be a menace and a disturbance
to all its neighbors." So the English used to
speak of the Irish, so the Germans and Russians
speak of the Poles, so the Galician Poles speak
of the Ruthenes, so the Austrians used to speak
of the Magyars, so the Magyars speak of the
South Slav sympathizers with Serbia, so the
Serbs speak of the Macedonian Bulgars. In
this way nationalism, unobjectionable in theory,
leads by a natural movement to oppression and
wars of conquest. No sooner was France free
from the English, in the fifteenth century, than
it embarked upon the conquest of Italy; no
sooner was Spain freed from the Moors than it
entered into more than a century of conflict
with France for the supremacy in Europe. The
case of Germany is very interesting in this re-
spect. At the beginning of the eighteenth cen-
tury German culture was French: French was
the language of the Courts, the language in
which Leibnitz wrote his philosophy, the uni-
THE PRINCIPLE OF GROWTH 29
versal language of polite letters and learning.
National consciousness liardly existed. Then a
series of great men created a self-respect in
Germany by their achievements in poetry,
music, philosophy, and science. But politically
German nationalism was only created by Na-
poleon's oppression and the uprising of 1813.
After centuries during which every disturbance
of the peace of Europe began with a French or
Swedish or Russian invasion of Germany, the
Germans discovered that by sufficient effort and
union they could keep foreign armies off their
territory. But the effort required had been too
great to cease when its purely defensive pur-
pose had been achieved by the defeat of Na-
poleon. Now, a hundred years later, they
are still engaged in the same movement,
which has become one of aggression and
conquest. Whether we are now seeing the end
of the movement it is not yet possible to
guess.
If men had any strong sense of a community
of nations, nationalism would serve to define
the boundaries of the various nations. But be-
cause men only feel community within their own
nation, nothing but force is able to make them
respect the rights of other nations, even when
30 WHY MEN FIGHT
they are asserting exactly similar rights on their
own behalf.
Analogous development is to be expected,
with the course of time, in the conflict between
capital and labor which has existed since the
growth of the industrial system, and in the con-
flict between men and women, which is still in its
infancy.
What is wanted, in these various conflicts, is
some principle, genuinely believed, w^hich will
have justice for its outcome. The tug of w^ar
of mutual self-assertion can only result in
justice through an accidental equality of force.
It is no use to attempt any bolstering up of in-
stitutions based on authority, since all such in-
stitutions involve injustice, and injustice once
realized cannot be perpetuated without funda-
mental damage both to those who uphold it and
to those who resist it. The damage consists in
the hardening of the walls of the Ego, making
them a prison instead of a window. Unimpeded
growth in the individual depends upon many
contacts with other people, which must be of the
nature of free cooperation, not of enforced serv-
ice. While the belief in authority was alive,
free cooperation was compatible with inequality
and subjection, but now equality and mutual
THE PRINCIPLE OF GROWTH 31
freedom are necessary. All institutions, if they
are not to hamper individual growth, must be
based as far as possible upon voluntary com-
bination, rather than the force of the law or the
traditional authority of the holders of power.
None of our institutions can survive the applica-
tion of this principle without great and funda-
mental changes; but these changes are impera-
tively necessary if the world is to be withheld
from dissolving into hard separate units each at
war with all the others.
The two chief sources of good relations be-
tween individuals are instinctive liking and a
common purpose. Of these two, a common pur-
pose might seem more important politically,
but, in fact, it is often the outcome, not the
cause, of instinctive liking, or of a common in-
stinctive aversion. Biological groups, from
the family to the nation, are constituted by a
greater or less degree of instinctive liking, and
build their common purposes on this founda-
tion.
Instinctive liking is the feeling which makes
us take pleasure in another person's company,
find an exhilaration in his presence, wish to
talk with him, work with him, play with him.
The extreme form of it is being in love, but its
32 WHY MEN FIGHT
fainter forms, and even the very faintest, have
political importance. The presence of a person
who is instinctively disliked tends to make any
other person more likable. An anti-Semite
will love any fellow-Christian when a Jew is
present. In China, or the wilds of Africa, any
white man would be welcomed with joy. A
common aversion is one of the most frequent
causes of mild instinctive liking.
Men differ enormously in the frequency and
intensity of their instinctive likings, and the
same man w^ill differ greatly at different times.
One may take Carlyle and Walt Whitman as op-
posite poles in this respect. To Carlyle, at any
rate in later life, most men and women were re-
pulsive; they inspired an instinctive aversion
which made him find pleasure in imagining them
under the guillotine or perishing in battle. This
led him to belittle most men, finding satisfaction
only in those who had been notably destructive
of human life — Frederick the Great, Dr. Fran-
cia, and Governor Eyre. It led him to love war
and violence, and to despise the weak and the
oppressed — for example, the ''thirty thousand
distressed needlewomen," on whom he was
never weary of venting his scorn. His morals
and his politics, in later life, were inspired
THE PRINCIPLE OF GROWTH 33
through and through by repugnance to almost
the whole human race.
Walt Whitman, on the contrary, had a warm,
expansive feeling towards the vast majority of
men and women. His queer catalogues seemed
to him interesting because each item came be-
fore his imagination as an object of delight.
The sort of joy which most people feel only in
those who are exceptionally beautiful or splen-
did Walt Whitman felt in almost everybody.
Out of this universal liking grew optimism,
a belief in democracy, and a conviction that it is
easy for men to live together in peace and amity.
His philosophy and politics, like Carlyle's, were
based upon his instinctive attitude towards ordi-
nary men and women.
There is no objective reason to be given to
show that one of these attitudes is essentially
more rational than the other. If a man finds
people repulsive, no argument can prove to him
that they are not so. But both his own desires
and other people's are much more likely to find
satisfaction if he resembles Walt Whitman
than if he resembles Carlyle. A world of
Walt Whitmans would be happier and more
capable of realizing its purposes than a world of
Carlyles. For this reason, we shall desire, if we
34 WHY MEN FIGHT
can, to increase the amount of instinctive liking
in the world and diminish the amount of in-
stinctive aversion. This is perhaps the most
important of all the effects by which political in-
stitutions ought to be judged.
The other source of good relations between in-
dividuals is a common purpose, especially where
that purpose cannot be achieved without know-
ing its cause. Economic organizations, such as
unions and political parties are constituted al-
most wholly by a common purpose ; whatever in-
stinctive liking may come to be associated with
them is the result of the common purpose, not
its cause. Economic organizations, such as rail-
way companies, subsist for a purpose, but this
purpose need only actually exist in those who
direct the organization: the ordinary wage-
earner need have no purpose beyond earning his
wages. This is a defect in economic organiza-
tions, and ought to be remedied. One of the ob-
jects of syndicalism is to remedy this defect.
Marriage is (or should be) based on instinc-
tive liking, but as soon as there are children, or
the wish for children, it acquires the additional
strength of a common purpose. It is this chiefly
which distinguishes it from an irregular connec-
tion not intended to lead to children. Often, in
THE PRINCIPLE OP GROWTH 35
fact, the common purpose survives, and remains
a strong tie, after the instinctive liking has
faded.
A nation, when it is real and not artificial, is
founded upon a faint degree of instinctive liking
for compatriots and a common instinctive aver-
sion from foreigners. When an Englishman re-
turns to Dover or Folkestone after being on
the Continent, he feels something friendly in the
familiar ways : the casual porters, the shouting
paper boys, the women serving bad tea, all warm
his heart, and seem more *' natural," more what
human beings ought to be, than the foreigners
with their strange habits of behavior. He is
ready to believe that all English people are good
souls, while many foreigners are full of design-
ing wickedness. It is such feelings that make
it easy to organize a nation into a governmental
unit. And when that has happened, a common
purpose is added, as in marriage. Foreigners
would like to invade our country and lay it
waste, to kill us in battle, to humble our pride.
Those who cooperate with us in preventing this
disaster are our friends, and their cooperation
intensifies our instinctive liking. But common
purposes do not constitute the whole source of
our love of country : allies, even of long stand-
36 WHY MEN FIGHT
ing, do not call out the same feelings as are
called out by our compatriots. Instinctive lik-
ing, resulting largely from similar habits and
customs, is an essential element in patriotism,
and, indeed, the foundation upon which the
whole feeling rests.
If men's natural growth is to be promoted and
not hindered by the environment, if as many as
possible of their desires and needs are to be
satisfied, political institutions must, as far as
possible, embody common purposes and foster
instinctive liking. These two objects are inter-
connected, for nothing is so destructive of in-
stinctive liking as thwarted purposes and un-
satisfied needs, and nothing facilitates cooper-
ation for common purposes so much as instinc-
tive liking. When a man's growth is unim-
peded, his self-respect remains intact, and he is
not inclined to regard others as his enemies.
But when, for whatever reason, his growth is
impeded, or he is compelled to grow into some
twisted and unnatural shape, his instinct pre-
sents the environment as his enemy, and he be-
comes filled with hatred. The joy of life aban-
dons him, and malevolence takes the place of
friendliness. The malevolence of hunchbacks
and cripples is proverbial; and a similar
THE PRINCIPLE OF GROWTH 37
malevolence is to be found in those who have
been crippled in less obvious ways. Real free-
dom, if it could be brought about, would go a
long way towards destroying hatred.
There is a not uncommon belief that what is
instinctive in us cannot be changed, but must
be simply accepted and made the best of. This
is by no means the case. No doubt we have a
certain native disposition, different in different
people, which cooperates with outside circum-
stances in producing a certain character. But
even the instinctive part of our character is very
malleable. It may be changed by beliefs, by
material circumstances, by social circumstances,
and by institutions. A Dutchman has probably
much the same native disposition as a German,
but his instincts in adult life are very different
owing to the absence of militarism and of the
pride of a Great Power. It is obvious that the
instincts of celibates become profoundly differ-
ent from those of other men and women. Al-
most any instinct is capable of many different
forms according to the nature of the outlets
which it finds. The same instinct which leads to
artistic or intellectual creativeness may, under
other circumstances, lead to love of war. The
fact that an activity or belief is an outcome of
38 WHY MEN FIGHT
instinct is therefore no reason for regarding it
as unalterable.
This applies to people's instinctive likes and
dislikes as well as to their other instincts. It
is natural to men, as to other animals, to like
some of their species and dislike others; but
the proportion of like and dislike depends on
circumstances, often on quite trivial circum-
stances. Most of Carlyle's misanthropy is at-
tributable to dyspepsia; probably a suitable
medical regimen would have given him a com-
pletely different outlook on the world. The de-
fect of punishment, as a means of dealing with
impulses which the community wishes to dis-
courage, is that it does nothing to prevent the
existence of the impulses, but merely endeavors
to check their indulgence by an appeal to self-
interest. This method, since it does not eradi-
cate the impulses, probably only drives them to
find other outlets even when it is successful in
its immediate object; and if the impulses are
strong, mere self-interest is not likely to curb
them effectually, since it is not a very powerful
motive except with unusually reasonable and
rather passionless people. It is thought to be
a stronger motive than it is, because our moods
make us deceive ourselves as to our interest, and
THE PRINCIPLE OF GROWTH 39
lead us to believe that it is consistent with the
actions to which we are prompted by desire or
impulse.
Thus the commonplace that human nature
cannot be changed is untrue. We all know that
our ow^n characters and those of our acquaint-
ance are greatly affected by circumstances ; and
what is true of individuals is true also of na-
tions. The root causes of changes in average
human nature are generally either purely ma-
terial changes — for instance, of climate — or
changes in the degree of man's control over the
material world. We may ignore the purely ma-
terial changes, since these do not much concern
the politician. But the changes due to man's
increased control over the material world, by
inventions and science, are of profound present
importance. Through the industrial revolution,
they have radically altered the daily lives of
men; and by creating huge economic organiza-
tions, they have altered the whole structure of
society. The general beliefs of men, which are,
in the main, a product of instinct and circum-
stance, have become very different from what
they were in the eighteenth century. But our
institutions are not yet suited either to the in-
stincts developed by our new circumstances, or
40 WHY MEN FIGHT
to our real beliefs. Institutions have a life of
their own, and often outlast the circumstances
which made them a fit garment for instinct.
This applies, in varying degrees, to almost all
the institutions which we have inherited from
the past : the State, private property, the patri-
archal family, the Churches, armies and navies.
All of these have become in some degree oppres-
sive, in some measures hostile to life.
In any serious attempt at political recon-
struction, it is necessary to realize what are the
vital needs of ordinary men and women. It is
customary, in political thought, to assume that
the only needs with which politics is concerned
are economic needs. This view is quite inade-
quate to account for such an event as the pres-
ent war, since any economic motives that may be
assigned for it are to a great extent mythical,
and its true causes must be sought for outside
the economic sphere. Needs which are nor-
mally satisfied without conscious effort remain
unrecognized, and this results in a working
theory of human needs which is far too simple.
Owing chiefly to industrialism, many needs
which were formerly satisfied without effort
now remain unsatisfied in most men and women.
But the old unduly simple theory of human
THE PRINCIPLE OF GROWTH 41
needs survives, making men overlook the source
of the new lack of satisfaction, and invent quite
false theories as to why they are dissatisfied.
Socialism as a panacea seems to me to be mis-
taken in this way, since it is too ready to sup-
pose that better economic conditions will of
themselves make men happy. It is not only
more material goods that men need, but more
freedom, more self-direction, more outlet for
creativeness, more opportunity for the joy of
life, more voluntary cooperation, and less in-
voluntary subservience to purposes not their
own. All these things the institutions of the
future must help to produce, if our increase of
knowledge and power over Nature is to bear its
full fruit in bringing about a good life.
n
THE STATE
UNDER the influence of socialism, most
liberal thought in recent years has been
in favor of increasing the power of the State,
but more or less hostile to the power of private
property. On the other hand, syndicalism has
been hostile both to the State and to private
property. I believe that syndicalism is more
nearly right than socialism in this respect, that
both private property and the State, which are
the two most powerful institutions of the
modem world, have become harmful to life
through excess of power, and that both are
hastening the loss of vitality from which the
civilized world increasingly suffers. The two
institutions are closely connected, but for the
present I wish to consider only the State. I
shall trj^ to show how great, how unnecessary,
how harmful, many of its powers are, and how
enormously they might be diminished without
loss of what is useful in its activity. But I shall
42
THE STATE 43
admit that in certain directions its functions
ought to be extended rather than curtailed.
Some of the functions of the State, such as
the Post Office and elementary education, might
be performed by private agencies, and are only
undertaken by the State from motives of con-
venience. But other matters, such as the law,
the police, the Army, and the Navy, belong more
essentially to the State : so long as there is a
State at all it is difficult to imagine these mat-
ters in private hands. The distinction between
socialism and individualism turns on the non-
essential functions of the State, which the social-
ist wishes to extend and the individualist to re-
strict. It is the essential functions, which
are admitted by individualists and socialists
alike, that I wish to criticize, since the others
do not appear to me in themselves objection-
able.
The essence of the. State is that it is the
repository of the collective force of its citizens.
This force takes two forms, one internal and
one external. The internal form is the law and
the police; the external form is the power of
waging war, as embodied in the Army and Navy.
The State is constituted by the combination
of all the inhabitants in a certain area using
44 WHY MEN FIGHT
their united force in accordance with the com-
mands of a Government. In a civilized State
force is only employed against its own citizens
in accordance with rules previously laid down,
which constitute the criminal law. But the em-
ployment of force against foreigners is not regu-
lated by any code of rules, and proceeds, with
few exceptions, according to some real or fan-
cied national interest.
There can be no doubt that force employed
according to law is less pernicious than force
employed capriciously. If international law
could acquire sufficient hold on men's alle-
giance to regulate the relations of States, a very
great advance on our present condition would
have been made. The primitive anarchy which
precedes law is worse than law. But I believe
there is a possibility of a stage to some extent
above law, where the advantages now secured
by the law are secured without loss of freedom,
and without the disadvantages which the law
and the police render inevitable. Probably
some repository of force in the background will
remain necessary, but the actual employment
of force may become very rare, and the degree
of force required very small. The anarchy
which precedes law gives freedom only to the
THE STATE 45
strong; the condition to be aimed at will give
freedom as nearly as possible to every one. It
will do this, not by preventing altogether the
existence of organized force, but by limiting the
occasions for its employment to the greatest
possible extent.
The power of the State is only limited inter-
nally by the fear of rebellion and externally
by the fear of defeat in war. Subject to these
restrictions, it is absolute. In practice, it can
seize men's property through taxation, deter-
mine the law of marriage and inheritance, pun-
ish the expression of opinions which it dislikes,
put men to death for wishing the region they
inhabit to belong to a different State, and order
all able-bodied males to risk their lives in bat-
tle whenever it considers war desirable. On
many matters disagreement with the purposes
and opinions of the State is criminal. Prob-
ably the freest States in the world, before the
war, were America and England ; yet in Amer-
ica no immigrant may land until he has pro-
fessed disbelief in anarchism and polygamy,
while in England men were sent to prison in
recent years for expressing disagreement with
the Christian religion ^ or agreement with the
1 The blasphemy prosecutions.
46 WHY MEN FIGHT
teaching of Christ.^ In time of war, all criti-
cism of the external policy of the State is crim-
inal. Certain objects having appeared desir-
able to the majority, or to the effective holders
of power, those who do not consider these ob-
jects desirable are exposed to pains and penal-
ties not unlike those suffered by heretics in the
past. The extent of the tyranny thus exer-
cised is concealed by its very success : few men
consider it worth while to incur a persecution
which is almost certain to be thorough and ef-
fective.
Universal military service is perhaps the ex-
treme example of the power of the State, and
the supreme illustration of the difference be-
tween its attitude to its own citizens and its at-
titude to the citizens of other States. The State
punishes, with impartial rigor, both those who
kill their compatriots and those who refuse to
kill foreigners. On the whole, the latter is con-
sidered the graver crime. The phenomenon of
war is familiar, and men fail to realize its
strangeness ; to those who stand inside the cycle
of instincts which lead to war it all seems nat-
ural and reasonable. But to those who stand
1 The Bvndicalist prosecutions. [The punishment of con-
scientious objectors must now be added, 1916.]
THE STATE 47
outside the strangeness of it grows with famil-
iarity. It is amazing that the vast majority of
men should tolerate a system which compels
them to submit to all the horrors of the battle-
field at any moment when their Government
commands them to do so. A French artist, in-
different to politics, attentive only to his paint-
ing, suddenly finds himself called upon to shoot
Germans, who, his friends assure him, are a
disgrace to the human race. A German mu-
sician, equally unknowing, is called upon to
shoot the perfidious Frenchman. Why cannot
the two men declare a mutual neutrality! Why
not leave war to those who like it and bring it
on? Yet if the two men declared a mutual neu-
trality they would be shot by their compatriots.
To avoid this fate they try to shoot each other.
If the world loses the artist, not the musician,
Germany rejoices; if the world loses the musi-
cian, not the artist, France rejoices. No one
remembers the loss to civilization, which is
equal whichever is killed.
This is the politics of Bedlam. If the artist
and the musician had been allowed to stand
aside from the war, nothing but unmitigated
good to mankind would have resulted. The
power of the State, which makes this impossi-
48 WHY MEN FIGHT
ble, is a wholly evil thing, quite as evil as the
power of the Church which in former days put
men to death for unorthodox thought. Yet if,
even in time of peace, an international league
were founded to consist of Frenchmen and Ger-
mans in equal numbers, all pledged not to take
part in war, the French State and the German
State would persecute it with equal ferocity.
Blind obedience, unlimited willingness to kill
and die are exacted of the modern citizens of a
democracy as much as of the Janizaries of medi-
eval sultans or the secret agents of Oriental
despots.^
The power of the State may be brought to
bear, as it often is in England, through public
opinion rather than through the laws. By ora-
tory and the influence of the Press, public opin-
ion is largely created by the State, and a tyran-
nous public opinion is as great an enemy to
liberty as tyrannous laws. If the young man
who will not fight finds that he is dismissed from
his employment, insulted in the streets, cold-
shouldered by his friends, and thrown over with
scorn by any woman who may formerly have
1 In a democratic country it is the majority who must after
all rule, and the minority will be obliged to submit with the
best grace possible {Westminster Gazette on Conscription,
December 29, 1915).
THE STATE 49
liked him, lie will feel the penalty quite as hard
to bear as a death sentence.^ A free commun-
ity requires not only legal freedom, but a tol-
erant public opinion, an absence of that instinc-
tive inquisition into our neighbors' affairs
which, under the guise of upholding a high
moral standard, enables good people to indulge
1 Some very strong remarks on the conduct of the "white
feather" women were made by Mr. Reginald Kemp, the Deputy
Coroner for West Middlesex, at an inquest at Ealing on Satur-
day on Richard Charles Roberts, aged thirty-four, a taxicub
driver, of Shepherd's Bush, who committed suicide in conse-
quence of worry caused by his rejection from the Army and
the taunts of women and other amateur recruiters.
It was stated that he tried to join the Army in October,
but was rejected on account of a weak heart. That alone, said
his widow, had depressed him, and he had been worried be-
cause he thought he would lose his license owing to the state
of his heart. He had also been troubled by the dangerous
illness of a child.
A soldier relative said that the deceased's life had been made
"a perfect misery" by women who taunted him and called him
a coward because he did not join the Army. A few days ago
two women in Maida Vale insulted him "something shocking."
Tlie Coroner, speaking with some warmth, said the conduct
of such women was abominable. It was scandalous that women
who knew nothing of individual circumstances sliould be
allowed to go about making unbearable the lives of men who
had tried to do their duty. It waa a pity they had nothing
better to do. Here was a man who perhaps had been driven
to death by a pack of silly women. He hoped something would
soon be done to put a stop to such conduct {Daily News,
July 26, 1915).
50 WPIY MEN FIGHT
unconsciously a disposition to cruelty and per-
secution. Thinking ill of others is not in itself
a good reason for thinking well of ourselves.
But so long as this is not recognized, and so
long as the State can manufacture public opin-
ion, except in the rare cases where it is revo-
lutionary, public opinion must be reckoned as a
definite part of the power of the State.
The power of the State outside its own bor-
ders is in the main derived from war or the
threat of war. Some power is derived from the
ability to persuade its citizens to lend money or
not to lend it, but this is unimportant in com-
parison with the power derived from armies
and navies. The external activity of the State
— with exceptions so rare as to be negligible —
is selfish. Sometimes selfishness is mitigated
by the need of retaining the goodwill of other
States, but this onh^ modifies the methods em-
ployed, not the ends pursued. The ends pur-
sued, apart from mere defense against other
States, are, on the one hand, opportunities for
successful exploitation of weak or uncivilized
countries, on the other hand, power and pres-
tige, which are considered more glorious and
less material than money. In pursuit of these
objects, no State hesitates to put to death in-
THE STATE 51
numerable foreigners whose happiness is not
compatible with exploitation or subjection, or
to devastate territories into which it is thought
necessary to strike terror. Apart from the
present war, such acts have been performed
within the last twenty years by many minor
States and by all the Great Powers ^ except Aus-
tria ; and in the case of Austria only the oppor-
tunity, not the will, was lacking.
Why do men acquiesce in the power of the
State? There are many reasons, some tradi-
tional, some very present and pressing.
The^raditional reason for obedience to the
State is personal loyalty to the sovereign. Eu-
ropean States grew up under the feudal sys-
tem, and were originally the several territories
owTied by feudal chiefs. But this source of
obedience has decayed, and probably now
counts for little except in Japan, and to a lesser
extent in Russia.
Tribal feeling, which always underlay loyalty
to the sovereign, has remained as strong as it
ever was, and is now the chief support for the
power of the State. Almost every man finds
1 By Enprland in South Africa. Amorioa in the Pliilippinos,
France in Morocco, Italy in Tripoli, Germany in Southwest
Africa, Russia in Persia and Manchuria, Japan in Manchuria.
52 WHY MEN FIGHT
it essential to his liappiness to feel himself a
member of a group, animated by common friend-
ships and enmities and banded together for de-
fense and attack. But such groups are of two
kinds : there are those which are essentially en-
largements of the family, and there are those
which are based upon a conscious common pur-
pose. Nations belong to the first kind.
Churches to the second. At times when men
are profoundly swayed by creeds national di-
visions tend to break down, as they did in the
wars of religion after the Eeformation. At
such times a common creed is a stronger bond
than a common nationality. To a much slighter
extent, the same thing has occurred in the mod-
ern world with the rise of socialism. Men who
disbelieve in private property, and feel the cap-
italist the real enemy, have a bond which
transcends national divisions. It has not been
found strong enough to resist the passions
aroused by the present war, but it has made
them less bitter among socialists than among
others, and has kept alive the hope of a Euro-
pean community to be reconstructed when the
war is over. In the main, however, the uni-
versal disbelief in creeds has left tribal feeling
triumphant, and has made nationalism stronger
THE STATE 53
than at any previous period of the world's his-
tory. A few sincere Christians, a few sincere
socialists, have found in their creed a force ca-
pable of resisting the assaults of national pas-
sion, but they have been too few to influence
the course of events or even to cause serious
anxiety to the Governments.
It is chiefly tribal feeling that generates the
unity of a national State, but it is not only
tribal feeling that generates its strength. Its
strength results principally from two fears,
neither of which is unreasonable: the fear of
crime and anarchy within, and the fear of ag-
gression from without.
The internal orderliness of a civilized com-
munity is a great achievement, chiefly brought
about by the increased authority of the State.
It would be inconvenient if peaceable citizens
were constantly in imminent risk of being
robbed and murdered. Civilized life would be-
come almost impossible if adventurous people
could organize private armies for purposes of
plunder. These conditions existed in the Mid-
dle Ages, and have not passed away without a
great struggle. It is thought by many — espe-
cially by the rich, who derive the greatest ad-
vantage from law and order — that any diminu-
54 WHY MEN FIGHT
tion in the power of the State might bring back
a condition of universal anarchy. They regard
strikes as portents of dissolution. They are
terrified by such organizations as the Confe-
deration Generale du Travail and the Interna-
tional Workers of the World. They remember
the French Eevolution, and feel a not unnat-
ural desire to keep their heads on their shoul-
ders. They dread particularly any political
theory which seems to excuse private crimes,
such as sabotage and political assassination.
Against these dangers they see no protection
except the maintenance of the authority of the
State, and the belief that all resistance to the
State is wicked.
Fear of the danger within is enhanced by
fear of the danger without. Every State is
exposed at all times to the risk of foreign in-
vasion. No means has hitherto been devised
for minimizing this risk except the increase of
armaments. But the armaments which are
nominally intended to repel invasion may also
be used to invade. And so the means adopted
to diminish the external fear have the effect of
increasing it, and of enormously enhancing the
destructiveness of war when it does break out.
In this way a reign of terror becomes univer-
THE STATE 55
sal, and the State acquires everywhere some-
thing of the character of the Comite du Salut
Public.
The tribal feeling out of which the State de-
velops is natural, and the fear by which the
State is strengthened is reasonable under pres-
ent circumstances. And in addition to these
two, there is a third source of strength in a na-
tional State, namely patriotism in its religious
aspect.
Patriotism is a very complex feeling, built
up out of primitive instincts and highly intel-
lectual convictions. There is love of home and
family and friends, making us peculiarly anx-
ious to preserve our own country from invasion.
There is the mild instinctive liking for com-
patriots as against foreigners. There is pride,
which is bound up with the success of the com-
munity to which we feel that we belong. There
is a belief, suggested by pride but reinforced
by history, that one's own nation represents a
great tradition and stands for ideals that are
important to the human race. But besides all
these, there is another element, at once nobler
and more open to attack, an element of worship,
of willing sacrifice, of joyful merging of the in-
dividual life in the life of the nation. This re-
56 WHY MEN FIGHT
ligious element in patriotism is essential to the
strength of the State, since it enlists the best
that is in most men on the side of national sac-
rifice.
The religious element in patriotism is rein-
forced by education, especially by a knowledge
of the history and literature of one's own coun-
try, provided it is not accompanied by much
knowledge of the history and literature of other
countries. In every civilized country all in-
struction of the young emphasizes the merits
of their own nation and the faults of other na-
tions. It comes to be universally believed that
one 's own nation, because of its superiority, de-
serves support in a quarrel, however the quar-
rel may have originated. This belief is so gen-
uine and deep that it makes men endure pa-
tiently, almost gladly, the losses and hardships
and sufferings entailed by war. Like all sin-
cerely believed religions, it gives an outlook on
life, based upon instinct but sublimating it,
causing a devotion to an end greater than any
personal end, but containing many personal
ends as it were in solution.
Patriotism as a religion is unsatisfactory be-
cause of its lack of universality. The good at
which it aims is a good for one's own nation
THE STATE 57
only, not for all mankind. The desires which
it inspires in an Englishman are not the same
as the desires which it inspires in a German. A
world full of patriots may be a world full of
strife. The more intensely a nation believes
in its patriotism, the more fanatically indiffer-
ent it will become to the damage suffered by
other nations. When once men have learnt to
subordinate their own good to the good of a
larger whole, there can be no valid reason for
stopping short of the human race. It is the ad-
mixture of national pride that makes it so easy
in practice for men's impulses towards sacrifice
to stop short at the frontiers of their own coun-
try. It is this admixture that poisons patriot-
ism, and makes it inferior, as a religion, to be-
liefs which aim at the salvation of all mankind.
We cannot avoid having more love for our own
country than for other countries, and there is
no reason why we should wish to avoid it, any
more than we should wish to love all individual
men and women equally. But any adequate re-
ligion will lead us to temper inequality of af-
fection by love of justice, and to universalize
our aims by realizing the common needs of man.
This change was effected by Christianity in
Judaism, and must be effected in any merely na-
58 WHY MEN FIGHT
tional religion before it can be purged of eviL
In practice, patriotism has many other ene-
mies to contend with. Cosnropolitanism can-
not fail to grow as men acquire more knowledge
of foreign countries by education and travel.
There is also a kind of individualism which is
continually increasing, a realization that every
man ought to be as nearly free as possible to
choose his own ends, not compelled by a geo-
graphical accident to pursue ends forced upon
him by the community. Socialism, syndicalism,
and anti-capitalist movements generally, are
against patriotism in their tendency, since they
make men aware that the present State is
largely concerned in defending the privileges
of the rich, and that many of the conflicts be-
tween States have their origin in the financial
interests of a few plutocrats. This kind of op-
position is perhaps temporary, a mere incident
in the struggle of labor to acquire power.
Australia, where labor feels its triumph secure,
is full of patriotism and militarism, based upon
determination to prevent foreign labor from
sharing the benefits of a privileged position. It
is not unlikely that England might develop a
similar nationalism if it became a socialist
State. But it is probable that such nationalism
THE STATE 59
would be purely defensive. Schemes of foreign
'aggression, entailing great loss of life and
wealth in the nation which adopts them, would
hardly be initiated except by those whose in-
stincts of dominion have been sharpened
through the power derived from private prop-
erty and the institutions of the capitalist State.
The evil wrought in the modern world by the
excessive power of the State is very great, and
very little recognized.
The chief harm wrought by the State is pro-
motion of efficiency in war. If all States in-
crease their strength, the balance of power is
unchanged, and no one State has a better chance
of victory than before. And when the means of
offense exist, even though their original pur-
pose may have been defensive, the temptation
to use them is likely, sooner or later, to prove
ovei'whelming. In this way the very measures
which promoted security within the borders of
the State promote insecurity elsewhere. It is
of the essence of the State to suppress violence
within and to facilitate it w^ithout. The State
makes an entirely artificial division of mankind
and of our duties toward them: towards one
group we are bound by the law, towards the
other only by the prudence of highwaymen.
60 WHY MEN FIGHT
The State is rendered evil by its exclusions, and
by the fact that, whenever it embarks upon ag-
gressive war, it becomes a combination of men
for murder and robbery. The present system
is irrational, since external and internal anar-
chy must be both right or both wrong. It is
supported because, so long as others adopt it,
it is thought the only road to safety, and be-
cause it secures the pleasures of triumph and
dominion, which cannot be obtained in a good
community. If these pleasures were no longer
sought, or no longer possible to obtain, the prob-
lem of securing safety from invasion would not
be difficult.
Apart from war, the modem great State is
harmful from its vastness and the resulting
sense of individual helplessness. The citizen
who is out of sympathy with the aims of the
State, unless he is a man of very rare gifts, can-
not hope to persuade the State to adopt pur-
poses which seem to him better. Even in a
democracy, all questions except a very few are
decided by a small number of officials and emi-
nent men ; and even the few questions which are
left to the popular vote are decided by a dif-
fused mass-psychology, not by individual initia-
tive. This is especially noticeable in a country
THE STATE 61
like the United States, where, in spite of de-
mocracy, most men have a sense of almost com-
plete impotence in regard to all large issues.
In so vast a country the popular will is like one
of the forces of Nature, and seems nearly as
much outside the control of any one man. This
state of things leads, not only in America but
in all large States, to something of the weari-
ness and discouragement that we associate with
the Eoman Empire. Modern States, as op-
posed to the small city States of ancient Greece
or medieval Italy, leave little room for initia-
tive, and fail to develop in most men any sense
of ability to control their political destinies.
The few men who achieve power in such States
are men of abnormal ambition and thirst for
dominion, combined with skill in cajolery and
subtlety in negotiation. All the rest are
dwarfed by knowledge of their own impotence.
A curious survival from the old monarchical
idea of the State is the belief that there is some
peculiar wickedness in a wish to secede on the
part of any section of the population. If Ire-
land or Poland desires independence, it is
thought obvious that this desire must be strenu-
ously resisted, and any attempt to secure it is
condemned as ''high treason." The only in-
62 WHY MEN FIGHT
stance to the contrary that I can remember is
the separation of Norway and Sweden, which
was commended but not imitated. In other
cases, nothing but defeat in war has induced
States to part with territory: although this at-
titude is taken for granted, it is not one which
would be adopted if the State had better ends
in view. The reason for its adoption is that
the chief end of almost all great States is power,
especially power in war. And power in war is
often increased by the inclusion of unwilling
citizens. If the well-being of the citizens were
the end in view, the question whether a certain
area should be included, or should form a sepa-
rate State, would be left freely to the decision
of that area. If this principle were adopted,
one of the main reasons for war would be ob-
viated, and one of the most tyrannical elements
in the State would be removed.
The principal source of the harm done by the
State is the fact that power is its chief end.
This is not the case in America, because Amer-
ica is safe against aggression ; ^ but in aU other
great nations the chief aim of the State is to
possess the greatest possible amount of exter-
nal force. To this end, the liberty of the citi-
1 TMs was written in 1915,
THE STATE 63
zens is curtailed, and anti-militarist propa-
ganda is severely punished. This attitude is
rooted in pride and fear: pride, which refuses
to be conciliatory, and fear, which dreads the
results of foreign pride conflicting with our own
pride. It seems something of a historical ac-
cident that these two passions, which by no
means exhaust the political passions of the or-
dinary man, should so completely determine the
external policy of the State. Without pride,
there would be no occasion for fear: fear on
the part of one nation is due to the supposed
pride of another nation. Pride of dominion,
unwillingness to decide disputes otherwise than
by force or the threat of force, is a habit of
mind greatly encouraged by the possession of
power. Those who have long been in the habit
of exercising power become autocratic and quar-
relsome, incapable of regarding an equal other-
wise than as a rival. It is notorious that head
masters' conferences are more liable to violent
disagreements than most similar bodies: each
head master tries to treat the others as he treats
his own boys; they resent such treatment, and
he resents their resentment. Men who have the
habit of authority are peculiarly unfit for
friendly negotiation; but the official relations
64 WHY MEN FIGHT
of States are mainly in the hands of men with
a great deal of authority in their own country.
This is, of course, more particularly the case
where there is a monarch who actually governs.
It" is less true where there is a governing oli-
garchy, and still less true where there is some
approach to real democracy. Brt it is true to
a considerable extent in all coui-tries, because
Prime Ministers and Foreign Secretaries are
necessarily men in authority. The first step
towards remedying this state of things is a gen-
uine interest in foreign affairs on the part of
the ordinary citizen, and an insistence that na-
tional pride shall not be allowed to jeopardize
his other interests. During war, when he is
roused, he is willing to sacrifice everything to
pride; but in quiet times he will be far more
ready than men in authority to realize that for-
eign affairs, like private concerns, ought to be
settled amicably according to principles, not
brutally by force or the threat of force.
The effect of personal bias in the men who
actually compose the Government may be seen
very clearly in labor disputes. French syndi-
calists affirm that the State is simply a product
of capitalism, a part of the weapons which cap-
ital employs in its conflict with labor. Even in
THE STATE 65
democratic States there is much to bear out this
view. In strikes it is common to order out the
soldiers to coerce the strikers ; although the em-
ployers are much fewer, and much easier to co-
erce, the soldiers are never employed against
them. When labor troubles paralyze the indus-
try of a country, it is the men who are thought
to be unpatriotic, not the masters, though
clearly the responsibility belongs to both sides.
The chief reason for this attitude on the part
of Governments is that the men composing them
belong, by their success if not by their origin,
to the same class as the great employers of
labor. Their bias and their associates combine
to make them view strikes and lockouts from
the standpoint of the rich. In a democracy
public opinion and the need of conciliating po-
litical supporters partially correct these pluto-
cratic influences, but the correction is always
only partial. And the same influences which
warp the views of Governments on labor ques-
tions also warp their views on foreign affairs,
with the added disadvantage that the ordinary
citizen has much fewer means of arriving at an
independent judgment.
The excessive power of the State, partly
through internal oppression, but principally
66 WHY MEN FIGHl^
through war and the fear of war, is one of the
chief causes of misery in the modern world,
and one of the main reasons for the discourage-
ment which prevents men from growing to their
full mental stature. Some means of curing
this excessive power must be found if men are
not to be organized into despair, as they were
in the Eoman Empire.
The State has one purpose which is on the
whole good, namely, the substitution of law for
force in the relations of men. But this purpose
can only be fully achieved by a world-State,
without which international relations cannot be
made subject to law. And although law is bet-
ter than force, law is still not the best way of
settling disputes. Law is too static, too much
on the side of what is decaying, too little on
the side of what is growing. So long as law is
in theory supreme, it will have to be tempered,
from time to time, by internal revolution and
external war. These can only be prevented by
perpetual readiness to alter the law in accord-
ance with the present balance of forces. If this
is not done, the motives for appealing to force
will sooner or later become irresistible. A
world-State or federation of States, if it is to
be successful, will have to decide questions, not
THE STAT13 6?
by the legal maxims which would be applied by
the Hague tribunal, but as far as possible in
the same sense in which they would be decided
by war. The function of authority should be
to render the appeal to force unnecessary, not
to give decisions contrary to those which would
be reached by force.
This view may be thought by some to be im-
moral. It may be said that the object of civ-
ilization should be to secure justice, not to give
the victory to the strong. But when this an-
tithesis is allowed to pass, it is forgotten that
love of justice may itself set force in motion.
A Legislature which wishes to decide an issue
in the same way as it would be decided if there
were an appeal to force will necessarily take
account of justice, provided justice is so fla-
grantly on one side that disinterested parties
are willing to take up the quarrel. If a strong
man assaults a weak man in the streets of Lon-
don, the balance of force is on the side of the
weak man, because, even if the police did not
appear, casual passers-by would step in to de-
fend him. It is sheer cant to speak of a contest
of might against right, and at the same time to
hope for a victory of the right. If the contest
is really between miglit and right, that means
68 WHY MEN FIGHT
that right will be beaten. What is obscurely
intended, when this phrase is used, is that the
stronger side is only rendered stronger by
men's sense of right. But men's sense of right
is very subjective, and is only one factor in de-
ciding the preponderance of force. What is de-
sirable in a Legislature is, not that it should de-
cide by its personal sense of right, but that it
should decide in a way which is felt to make an
appeal to force unnecessary.
Having considered what the State ought not
to do, I come now to what it ought to do.
Apart from war and the preservation of in-
ternal order, there are certain more positive
functions which the State performs, and certain
others which it ought to perform.
We may lay down two principles as regards
these positive functions.
First : there are matters in which the welfare
of the whole community depends upon the prac-
tically universal attainment of a certain mini-
mum; in such cases the State has the right to
insist upon this minimum being attained.
Secondly : there are ways in which, by insist-
ing upon the maintenance of law, the State, if
it does nothing further, renders possible vari-
ous forms of injustice which would otherwise
THE STATE 69
be prevented by the anger of their victims.
Such injustices ought, as far as possible, to be
prevented by the State.
The most obvious example of a matter where
the general welfare depends upon a universal
minimum is sanitation and the prevention of
infectious diseases. A single case of plague,
if it is neglected, may cause disaster to a whole
community. No one can reasonably maintain,
on general grounds of liberty, that a man suf-
fering from plague ought to be left free to
spread infection far and wide. Exactly similar
considerations apply to drainage, notification
of fevers, and kindred matters. The interfer-
ence with liberty remains an evil, but in some
cases it is clearly a smaller evil than the spread
of disease which liberty would produce. The
stamping out of malaria and yellow fever by
destroying mosquitoes is perhaps the most strik-
ing example of the good which can be done in
this way. But when the good is small or doubt-
ful, and the interference with liberty is great,
it becomes better to endure a certain amount of
preventable disease rather than suffer a scien-
tific tyranny.
Compulsory education comes under the same
head as sanitation. The existence of ignorant
70 WHY MEN FIGHT
masses in a population is a danger to the com-
munity; wlien a considerable percentage are il-
literate, the whole machinery of government has
to take account of the fact. Democracy in its
modern form would be quite impossible in a na-
tion where many men cannot read. But in this
case there is not the same need of absolute uni-
versality as in the case of sanitary measures.
The gipsies, whose mode of life has been ren-
dered almost impossible by the education au-
thorities, might well have been allowed to re-
main a picturesque exception. But apart from
such rather unimportant exceptions, the argu-
ment for compulsory education is irresistible.
What the State does for the care of children
at present is less than what ought to be done,
not more. Children are not capable of looking
after their own interests, and parental responsi-
bility is in many ways inadequate. It is clear
that the State alone can insist upon the children
being provided with the minimum of knowledge
and health which, for the time being, satisfies
the conscience of the community.
The encouragement of scientific research is
another matter which comes rightly within the
powers of the State, because the benefits of dis-
coveries accrue to the community, while the in-
THE STATE 71
vestigations are expensive and never individ-
ually certain of achieving any result. In this
matter, Great Britain lags behind all other civ-
ilized countries.
The second kind of powers which the State
ought to possess are those that aim at dimin-
ishing economic injustice. It is this kind that
has been emphasized by socialists. The law
creates or facilitates monopolies, and monopo-
lies are able to exact a toll from the commun-
ity. The most glaring example is the private
o^vnership of land. Railways are at present
controlled by the State, since rates are fixed by
law; and it is clear that if they were uncon-
trolled, they would acquire a dangerous degree
of power.^ Such considerations, if they stood
alone, would justify complete socialism. But I
think justice, by itself, is, like law, too static to
be made a supreme political principle: it does
not, when it has been achieved, contain any
seeds of new life or any impetus to develop-
ment. For this reason, when we wish to rem-
edy an injustice, it is important to consider
whether, in so doing, we shall be destroying the
incentive to some form of vigorous action which
1 This would be as true under a eyndicaliat regime as it is
at present.
72 WHY MEN FIGHT
is on the whole useful to the community. No
such form of action, so far as I can see, is as-
sociated with private ownership of land or of
any other source of economic rent ; if this is the
case, it follows that the State ought to be the
primary recipient of rent.
If all these powers are allowed to the State,
what becomes of the attempt to rescue individ-
ual liberty from its tyranny ?
This is part of the general problem which
confronts all those who still care for the ideals
which inspired liberalism, namely the problem
of combining liberty and personal initiative
with organization. Politics and economics are
more and more dominated by vast organizations,
in face of which the individual is in danger of
becoming powerless. The State is the greatest
of these organizations, and the most serious
menace to liberty. And yet it seems that many
of its functions must be extended rather than
curtailed.
There is one way by which organization and
liberty can be combined, and that is, by secur-
ing power for voluntary organizations, consist-
ing of men who have chosen to belong to them
because they embody some purpose which all
their members consider important, not a pur-
THE STATE 73
pose imposed by accident or outside force. The
State, being geographical, cannot be a wholly
voluntary association, but for that very reason
there is need of a strong public opinion to re-
strain it from a tyrannical use of its powers.
This public opinion, in most matters, can only
be secured by combinations of those who have
certain interests or desires in common.
The positive purposes of the State, over and
above the preservation of order, ought as far
as possible to be carried out, not by the State
itself, but by independent organizations, which
should be left completely free so long as they
satisfied the State that they were not falling
below a necessary minimum. This occurs to
a certain limited extent at present in regard to
elementary education. The universities, also,
may be regarded as acting for the State in the
matter of higher education and research, except
that in their case no minimum of achievement
is exacted. In the economic sphere, the State
ought to exercise control, but ought to leave
initiative to others. There is every reason to
multiply opportunities of initiative, and to give
the greatest possible share of initiative to each
individual, for if this is not done there will be
a general sense of impotence and discourage-
74 WHY MEN FIGHT
ment. There ought to be a constant endeavor
to leave the more positive aspects of govern-
ment in the hands of voluntary organizations,
the purpose of the State being merely to exact
efficiency and to secure an amicable settlement
of disputes, whether within or ^\dthout its own
borders. And wdth this ought to be combined
the greatest possible toleration of exceptions
and the least possible insistence upon uniform
system.
A good deal may be achieved through local
government by trades as well as by areas. This
is the most original idea in syndicalism, and it
is valuable as a check upon the tyranny which
the community may be tempted to exercise over
certain classes of its members. All strong or-
ganizations which embody a sectional public
opinion, such as trade unions, cooperative so-
cieties, professions, and universities, are to be
welcomed as safeguards of liberty and oppor-
tunities for initiative. And there is need of a
strong public opinion in favor of liberty itself.
The old battles for freedom of thought and free-
dom of speech, which it was thought had been
definitively won, will have to be fought all over
again, since most men are only willing to accord
freedom to opinions which happen to be popu-
THE STATE 75
lar. Institutions cannot preserve liberty un-
less men realize that liberty is precious and
are willing to exert themselves to keep it
alive.
There is a traditional objection to every im-
perium in imperio, but this is only the jealousy
of the tyrant. In actual fact, the modern State
contains many organizations which it cannot de-
feat, except perhaps on rare occasions when pub-
lic opinion is roused against them. Mr. Lloyd
George's long fight with the medical profession
over the Insurance Act was full of Homeric
fluctuations of fortune. The Welsh miners re-
cently routed the whole power of the State,
backed by an excited nation. As for the finan-
ciers, no Government would dream of a conflict
with them. When all other classes are ex-
horted to patriotism, they are allowed their 4l^
per cent, and an increase of interest on their
consols. It is well understood on all sides that
an appeal to their patriotism would show gross
ignorance of the world. It is against the
traditions of the State to extort their money
by threatening to withdraw police protection.
This is not due to the difficulty of such a meas-
ure, but only to the fact that great wealth wins
genuine admiration from us all, and we cannot
76 WHY MEN FIGHT
bear to think of a very rich man being treated
with disrespect.
The existence of strong organizations within
the State, such as trade unions, is not undesir-
able except from the point of view of the official
who wishes to wield unlimited power, or of the
rival organizations, such as federations of em-
ployers, which would prefer a disorganized ad-
versary. In view of the vastness of the State,
most men can find little political outlet for in-
itiative except in subordinate organizations
formed for specific purposes. Without an out-
let for political initiative, men lose their social
vigor and their interest in public affairs: they
become a prey to corrupt wire-pullers, or to
sensation-mongers who have the art of captur-
ing a tired and vagrant attention. The cure
for this is to increase rather than diminish the
powers of voluntary organizations, to give
every man a sphere of political activity small
enough for his interest and his capacity, and
to confine the functions of the State, as far as
possible, to the maintenance of peace among
rival interests. The essential merit of the
State is that it prevents the internal use of force
by private persons. Its essential demerits are,
THE STATE 77
that it promotes the external use of force, and
that, by its great size, it makes each individual
feel impotent even in a democracy. I shall re-
turn in a later lecture to the question of pre-
venting war. The prevention of the sense of
individual impotence cannot be achieved by a
return to the small City State, which would be
as reactionary as a return to the days before
machinery. It must be achieved by a method
which is in the direction of present tendencies.
Such a method would be the increasing devolu-
tion of positive political initiative to bodies
formed voluntarily for specific purposes, leav-
ing the State rather in the position of a federal
authority or a court of arbitration. The State
will then confine itself to insisting upon some
settlement of rival interests: its only principle
in deciding what is the right settlement will be
an attempt to find the measure most acceptable,
on the whole, to all the parties concerned.
This is the direction in which democratic States
naturally tend, except in so far as they are
turned aside by war or the fear of war. So
long as war remains a daily imminent danger,
the State will remain a Moloch, sacrificing
sometimes the life of the individual, and always
78 WHY MEN FIGHT
his unfettered development, to the barren strug-
gle for mastery in the competition with other
States. In internal as in external affairs, the
worst enemy of freedom is war.
in
WAR AS AN INSTITUTION
IN spite of the fact that most nations at most
times, are at peace, war is one of the per-
manent institutions of all free communities,
just as Parliament is one of our permanent in-
stitutions in spite of the fact that it is not al-
ways sitting. It is war as a permanent insti-
tution that I wish to consider: why men toler-
ate it; why they ought not to tolerate it; what
hope there is of their coming not to tolerate
it ; and how they could abolish it if they wished
to do so.
War is a conflict between two groups, each
of which attempts to kill and maim as many
as possible of the other group in order to
achieve some object which it desires. The ob-
ject is generally either power or wealth. It is
a pleasure to exercise authority over other men,
and it is a pleasure to live on the produce of
other men's labor. The victor in war can en-
joy more of these delights than the vanquished.
79
80 WHY MEN FIGHT
But war, like all other natural activities, is not
so much prompted by the end which it has in
\dew as by an impulse to the activity itself.
Very often men desire an end, not on its own
account, but because their nature demands the
actions which will lead to the end. And so it is
in this case : the ends to be achieved by war ap-
pear in prospect far more important than they
will appear when they are realized, because
war itself is a fulfilment of one side of our na-
ture. If men's actions sprang from desires for
what would in fact bring happiness, the purely
rational arguments against war would have
long ago put an end to it. What makes war
difficult to suppress is that it springs from an
impulse, rather than from a calculation of the
advantages to be derived from war.
War differs from the employment of force
by the police through the fact that the actions
of the police are ordered by a neutral author-
ity, whereas in war it is the parties to the dis-
pute themselves who set force in motion. This
distinction is not absolute, since the State is
not always wholly neutral in internal disturb-
ances. When strikers are shot down, the State
is taking the side of the rich. When opinions
adverse to the existing State are punished, the
WAR AS AN INSTITUTION 81
State is obviously one of the parties to the dis-
pute. And from the suppression of individual
opinion up to civil war all gradations are pos-
sible. But broadly speaking, force employed
according to laws previously laid down by the
community as a whole may be distinguished
from force employed by one community against
another on occasions of which the one com-
munity is the sole judge. I have dwelt upon
this difference because I do not think the use
of force by the police can be wholly eliminated,
and I think a similar use of force in interna-
tional affairs is the best hope of permanent
peace. At present, international affairs are
regulated by the principle that a nation must
not intervene unless its interests are involved:
diplomatic usage forbids intervention for the
mere maintenance of international law. Amer-
ica may protest when American citizens are
drowned by German submarines, but must not
protest when no American citizens are involved.
The case would be analogous in internal affairs
if the police would only interfere with murder
when it happened that a policeman had been
killed. So long as this principle prevails in the
relations of States, the power of neutrals can-
not be effectively employed to prevent war.
82 WHY MEN FIGHT
In every civilized country two forces coop-
erate to produce war. In ordinary times some
men — usually a small proportion of the popula-
tion — are bellicose: they predict war, and ob-
viously are not unhappy in the prospect. So
long as war is not imminent, the bulk of the
population pay little attention to these men, and
do not actively either support or oppose them.
But when war begins to seem very near, a war-
fever seizes hold of people, and those who were
already bellicose find themselves enthusias-
tically supported by all but an insignificant mi-
nority. The impulses which inspire w^ar-fever
are rather different from those which make
some men bellicose in ordinary times. Only ed-
ucated men are likely to be warlike at ordinary
times, since they alone are vividly aware of
other countries or of the part which their own
nation might play in the affairs of the world.
But it is only their knowledge, not their nature,
that distinguishes them from their more igno-
rant compatriots.
To take the most ob^dous example, German
policy, in recent years before the war, w^as not
averse from war, and not friendly to England.
It is worth while to try to understand the state
of mind from which this policy sprang.
WAR AS AN INSTITUTION 83
The men who direct German policy are, to
begin with, patriotic to an extent which is al-
most unknown in France and England. The in-
terests of Germany appear to them unquestion-
ably the only interests they need take into ac-
count. What injury may, in pursuing those
interests, be done to other nations, what de-
struction may be brought upon populations and
cities, what irreparable damage may result to
civilization, it is not for them to consider. If
they can confer what they regard as benefits
upon Germany, everything else is of no account.
The second noteworthy point about German
policy is that its conception of national wel-
fare is mainly competitive. It is not the in-
trinsic wealth of Germany, whether materially
or mentally, that the rulers of Germany con-
sider important: it is the comparative wealth
in the competition with other civilized coun-
tries. For this reason the destruction of good
things abroad appears to them almost as desir-
able as the creation of good things in Germany.
In most parts of the world the French are re-
garded as the most civilized of nations: their
art and their literature and their way of life
have an attraction for foreigners which those
of Germany do not have. The English have
84 WHY MEN FIGHT
developed political liberty, and the art of main-
taining an Empire with a minimum of coercion,
in a way for which Germany, hitherto, has
shown no aptitude. These are grounds for
envjy and envy wishes to destroy what is good
in other countries. German militarists, quite
rightly, judged that what was best in France
and England would probably be destroyed by a
great war, even if France and England were
not in the end defeated in the actual fighting.
I have seen a list of young French writers
killed on the battlefield; probably the German
authorities have also seen it, and have reflected
with joy that another year of such losses will
destroy French literature for a generation —
perhaps, through loss of tradition, for ever.
Every outburst against liberty in our more bel-
licose newspapers, every incitement to perse-
cution of defenseless Germans, every mark of
growing ferocity in our attitude, must be read
with delight by German patriots, as proving
their success in robbing us of our best, and in
forcing us to imitate whatever is worst in Prus-
sia.
But what the rulers of Germany have envied
ns most was power and wealth — the power de-
rived from command of the seas and the straits,
WAR AS AN INSTITUTION 85
the wealth derived from a centuiy of industrial
supremacy. In both these respects they feel
that their deserts are higher than ours. They
have devoted far more thought and skill to mil-
itary and industrial organization. Their aver-
age of intelligence and knowledge is far supe-
rior; their capacity for pursuing an attainable
end, unitedly and with forethought, is infinitely
greater. Yet we, merely (as they think) be-
cause we had a start in the race, have achieved
a vastly larger Empire than they have, and an
enormously greater control of capital. All this
is unbearable ; yet nothing but a great war can
alter it.
Besides all these feelings, there is in many
Germans, especially in those who know us best,
a hot hatred of us on account of our pride.
Farinata degli Uberti surveyed Hell ''come
avesse lo Inferno in gran dispitto." Just so,
by German accounts, English officer prisoners
look round them among their captors — hold-
ing aloof, as though the enemy were noxious,
unclean creatures, toads or slugs or centipedes,
which a man does not touch willingly, and
shakes off with loathing if he is forced to touch
them for a moment. It is easy to imagine how
the devils hated Farinata, and inflicted greater
86 WHY MEN FIGHT
pains upon him than upon his neighbors, hop-
ing to win recognition by some slight wincing
on his part, driven to frenzy by his continuing
to behave as if they did not exist. In just the
same way the Germans are maddened by our
spiritual immobility. At bottom we have re-
garded the Geraians as one regards flies on a
hot day: they are a nuisance, one has to brush
them off, but it would not occur to one to be
turned aside by them. Now that the initial cer-
tainty of victory has faded, we begin to be af-
fected inwardly by the Germans. In time, if
we continue to fail in our military enterprises,
we shall realize that they are human beings, not
just a tiresome circumstance. Then perhaps
we shall hate them with a hatred which they
will have no reason to resent. And from such
a hatred it will be only a short journey to a
genuine rapprochement.
The problem which must be solved, if the fu-
ture of the world is to be less terrible than its
present, is the problem of preventing nations
from getting into the moods of England and
Germany at the outbreak of the war. These
two nations as they were at that moment might
be taken as almost mythical representatives of
pride and envy — cold pride and hot envy. Ger-
WAR AS AN INSTITUTION 87
many declaimed passionately: *'You, Eng-
land, swollen and decrepit, you overshadow my
whole growth — your rotting branches keep the
sun from shining upon me and the rain from
nourishing me. Your spreading foliage must
be lopped, your symmetrical beauty must be
destroyed, that I too may have freedom to grow,
that my young vigor may no longer be
impeded by your decaying mass." England,
bored and aloof, unconscious of the claims of
outside forces, attempted absent-mindedly to
sweep away the upstart disturber of medita-
tion; but the upstart was not swept away, and
remains so far with every prospect of making
good his claim. The claim and the resistance
to it are alike folly. Germany had no good
ground for envy; we had no good ground for
resisting whatever in Germany's demands was
compatible with our continued existence. Is
there any method of averting such reciprocal
folly in the future ?
I think if either the English or the Germans
were capable of thinking in terms of individual
welfare rather than national pride, they would
have seen that, at every moment during the war
the wisest course would have been to conclude
peace at once, on the best terms that could have
88 WHY MEN FIGHT
been obtained. This course, I am convinced,
would have been the wisest for each separate
nation, as well as for civilization in general.
The utmost evil that the enemy could inflict
through an unfavorable peace would be a trifle
compared to the evil which all the nations in-
flict upon themselves by continuing to fight.
What blinds us to this obvious fact is pride, the
pride which makes the acknowledgment of de-
feat intolerable, and clothes itself in the garb
of reason by suggesting all kinds of evils which
are supposed to result from admitting defeat.
But the only real evil of defeat is humiliation,
and humiliation is subjective; we shall not feel
humiliated if we become persuaded that it was
a mistake to engage in the war, and that it is
better to pursue other tasks not deiDendent upon
world-dominion. If either the English or the
Germans could admit this inwardly, any peace
which did not destroy national independence
could be accepted without real loss in the self-
respect which is essential to a good life.
The mood in which Germany embarked upon
the war was abominable, but it was a mood
fostered by the habitual mood of England. We
have prided ourselves upon our territory and
our wealth ; we have been ready at all times to
WAR AS AN INSTITUTION 89
defend by force of arms what we have conquered
in India and Africa. If we had realized the
futility of empire, and had shown a willingness
to yield colonies to Germany without waiting for
the threat of force, we might have been in a
position to persuade the Germans that their
ambitions were foolish, and that the respect of
the world was not to be won by an imperialist
policy. But by our resistance we showed that
we shared their standards. We, being in pos-
session, became enamored of the status quo.
The Germans were willing to make war to up-
set the status quo; we were willing to make war
to prevent its being upset in Germany's favor.
So convinced were we of the sacredness of the
status quo that we never realized how advan-
tageous it was to us, or how, by insisting upon
it, we shared the responsibility for the war. In
a world where nations grow and decay, where
forces change and populations become cramped,
it is not possible or desirable to maintain the
status quo for ever. If peace is to be pre-
served, nations must learn to accept unfavor-
able alterations of the map without feeling that
tliey must first be defeated in war, or that in
yielding they incur a humiliation.
It is the insistence of legalists and friends of
90 WHY MEN FIGHT
peace upon the maintenance of the status quo
that has driven Germany into militarism.
Germany had as good a right to an Empire as
any other Great Power, but could only acquire
an Empire through war. Love of peace has
been too much associated with a static concep-
tion of international relations. In economic
disputes we all know that whatever is vigorous
in the wage-earning classes is opposed to "in-
dustrial peace," because the existing distribu-
tion of wealth is felt to be unfair. Those who
enjoy a privileged position endeavor to bolster
up their claims by appealing to the desire for
peace, and decrying those who promote strife
between the classes. It never occurs to them
that by opposing changes without considering
whether they are just, the capitalists share the
responsibility for the class war. And in ex-
actly the same way England shares the respon-
sibility for Germany's war. If actual war is
ever to cease there will have to be political
methods of achieving the results which now
can only be achieved by successful fighting, and
nations will have voluntarily to admit adverse
claims which appear just in the judgment of
neutrals.
It is only by some such admission, embody-
WAR AS AN INSTITUTION 91
ing itself in a Parliament of the nations with
full power to alter the distribution of territory,
that militarism can be permanently overcome.
It may be that the present war will bring, in the
Western nations, a change of mood and outlook
sufficient to make such an institution possible.
It may be that more wars and more destruction
will be necessary before the majority of civil-
ized men rebel against the brutality and futile
destruction of modern war. But unless our
standards of civilization and our powers of con-
structive thought are to be permanently low-
ered, I cannot doubt that, sooner or later,
reason will conquer the blind impulses which
now lead nations into war. And if a large ma-
jority of the Great Powers had a firm determi-
nation that peace should be preserved, there
would be no difficulty in devising diplomatic
machinery for the settlement of disputes, and
in establishing educational systems which
would implant in the minds of the young an in-
eradicable horror of the slaughter which they
are now taught to admire.
Besides the conscious and deliberate forces
leading to war, there are the inarticulate feel-
ings of common men, which, in most civilized
countries, are always ready to burst into war
92 WHY MEN FIGHT
fever at the bidding of statesmen. If peace is
to be secure, the readiness to catch war fever
must be somehow diminished. Whoever wishes
to succeed in this must first understand what
war fever is and why it arises.
The men who have an important influence in
the world, whether for good or evil, are domi-
nated as a rule by a threefold desire: they de-
sire, ^rst, an activity which calls fully into play
the faculties in which they feel that they excel ;
secondly, the sense of successfully overcoming
resistance ; thirdly, the respect of others on ac-
count of their success. The third of these de-
sires is sometimes absent : some men who have
been great have been without the "last infinn-
ity," and have been content with their own
sense of success, or merely with the joy of diffi-
cult effort. But as a rule all three are pres-
ent. Some men's talents are specialized, so
that their choice of activities is circumscribed
by the nature of their faculties ; other men have,
in youth, such a wide range of possible aptitudes
that their choice is chiefly determined by the
varying degrees of respect which public opinion
gives to different kinds of success.
The same desires, usually in a less marked
degree, exist in men who have no exceptional
WAR AS AN INSTITUTION 93
talents. But such men cannot achieve any-
thing very difficult by their individual efforts;
for them, as units, it is impossible to acquire
the sense of greatness or the triumph of strong
resistance overcome. Their separate lives are
unadventurous and dull. In the morning they
go to the office or the plow, in the evening
they return tired and silent, to the sober
monotony of wife and children. Believing that
security is the supreme good, they have insured
against sickness and death, and have found an
employment where they have little fear of dis-
missal and no hope of any great rise. But se-
curity, once achieved, brings a Nemesis of
ennui. Adventure, imagination, risk, also have
their claims ; but how can these claims be satis-
fied by the ordinary wage-earner I Even if it
were possible to satisfy them, the claims of
wife and children have priority and must not be
neglected.
To this victim of order and good organiza-
tion the realization comes, in some moment of
sudden crisis, that he belongs to a nation, that
his nation may take risks, may engage in diffi-
cult enterprises, enjoy the hot passion of doubt-
ful combat, stimulate adventure and imagina-
tion by military expeditions to Mount Sinai and
94 WHY MEN FIGHT
the Garden of Eden. What his nation does, in
some sense, he does ; what his nation suffers, he
suffers. The long years of private caution are
avenged by a wild plunge into public madness.
All the horrid duties of thrift and order and
care which he has learnt to fulfil in private are
thought not to apply to public affairs: it is
patriotic and noble to be reckless for the na-
tion, though it would be wicked to be reckless
for oneself. The old primitive passions, which
civilization has denied, surge up all the stronger
for repression. In a moment imagination and
instinct travel back through the centuries, and
the wild man of the woods emerges from the
mental prison in which he has been confined.
This is the deeper part of the psychology of the
war fever.
But besides the irrational and instinctive ele-
ment in the war fever, there is alwaj^s also, if
only as a liberator of primitive impulse, a cer-
tain amount of quasi-rational calculation and
what is euphemistically called * ' thought. ' ' The
war fever very seldom seizes a nation unless it
believes that it will be victorious. Undoubt-
edly, under the influence of excitement, men
over-estimate their chances of success ; but there
is some proportion between what is hoped and
WAR AS AN INSTITUTION 95
what a rational man would expect. Holland,
though quite as humane as England, had no
impulse to go to war on behalf of Belgium, be-
cause the likelihood of disaster was so obvi-
ously overwhelming. The London populace, if
they had known how the war was going to de-
velop, would not have rejoiced as they did on
that August Bank Holiday long ago. A nation
which has had a recent experience of war, and
has come to know that a war is almost always
more painful than it is expected to be at the
outset, becomes much less liable to war fever
until a new generation grows up. The ele-
ment of rationality in war fever is recognized
by Governments and journalists who desire
war, as may be seen by their invariably mini-
raizing the perils of a war which they wish to
provoke. At the beginning of the South Afri-
can War Sir William Butler was dismissed, ap-
parently for suggesting that sixty thousand
men and three months might not suffice to sub-
due the Boer Republics. And when the war
proved long and difficult, the nation turned
against those who had made it. We may as-
sume, I think, without attributing too great
a share to reason in human affairs, that a na-
tion would not suffer from war fever in a case
96 WHY MEN FIGHT
where every sane man could see that defeat was
very probable.
The importance of this lies in the fact that it
would make aggressive war very unlikely if its
chances of success were very small. If the
peace-loving nations were sufficiently strong to
be obviously capable of defeating the nations
which were willing to wage aggressive war, the
peace-loving nations might form an alliance and
agree to fight jointly against any nation which
refused to submit its claims to an Interna-
tional Council. Before the present war we
might have reasonably hoped to secure the
peace of the world in some such way; but the
military strength of Germany has shown that
such a scheme has no great chance of success at
present. Perhaps at some not far distant date
it may be made more feasible by developments
of policy in America.
The economic and political forces which make
for war could be easily curbed if the will to
peace existed strongly in all civilized nations.
But so long as the populations are liable to war
fever, all work for peace must be precarious;
and if war fever could not be aroused, political
and economic forces would be powerless to pro-
duce any long or very destructive war. The
WAR AS AN INSTITUTION 97
fundamental problem for the pacifist is to pre-
vent the impulse towards war which seizes
whole communities from time to time. And
this can only be done by far-reaching changes
in education, in the economic structure of so-
ciety, and in the moral code by which public
opinion controls the lives of men and women. ^
A great many of the impulses which now lead
nations to go to war are in themselves essential
to any vigorous or progressive life. Without
imagination and love of adventure a society
soon becomes stagnant and begins to decay.
Conflict, provided it is not destructive and
brutal, is necessary in order to stimulate men's
activities, and to secure the victory of what is
living over what is dead or merely traditional.
The wish for the triumph of one's cause, the
sense of solidarity with large bodies of men,
are not things which a wdse man will wish to
destroy. It is only the outcome in death and
destruction and hatred that is evil. The prob-
lem is, to keep these impulses, without making
war the outlet for them.
All Utopias that have hitherto been con-
1 These changes, which are to be desired on their own ac-
count, not only in order to prevent war, will be discussed in
later lectures.
98 WHY MEN FIGHT
structed are intolerably dull. Any man with
any force in him would rather live in this world,
with all its ghastly horrors, than in Plato's Re-
public or among Swift's Houylmhnms. The
men who make Utopias proceed upon a radi-
cally false assumption as to what constitutes a
good life. They conceive that it is possible to
imagine a certain state of society and a certain
way of life which should be once for all recog-
nized as good, and should then continue for ever
and ever. They do not realize that much the
greater part of a man's happiness depends upon
activity, and only a very small remnant con-
sists in passive enjoyment. Even the pleas-
ures which do consist in enjoyment are only
satisfactory, to most men, when they come in
the intervals of activity. Social reformers, like
inventors of Utopias, are apt to forget this very
obvious fact of human nature. They aim
rather at securing more leisure, and more op-
portunity for enjoying it, than at making work
itself more satisfactory, more consonant with
impulse, and a better outlet for creativeness and
the desire to employ one's faculties. Work, in
the modern world, is, to almost all who depend
on earnings, mere work, not an embodiment of
the desire for activity. Probably this is to a
WAR AS AN INSTITUTION 99
considerable extent inevitable. But in so far
as it can be prevented something will be done
to give a peaceful outlet to some of the im-
pulses which lead to war.
It would, of course, be easy to bring about
peace if there were no vigor in the world. The
Roman Empire was pacific and unproductive;
the Athens of Pericles was the most productive
and almost the most warlike community known
to history. The only form of production in
which our own age excels is science, and in
science Germany, the most warlike of Great
Powers, is supreme. It is useless to multiply
examples; but it is plain that the very same
vital energy which produces all that is best also
produces war and the love of war. This is the
basis of the opposition to pacifism felt by many
men whose aims and activities are by no means
brutal. Pacifism, in practice, too often ex-
presses merely lack of force, not the refusal to
use force in thwarting others. Pacifism, if it is
to be both victorious and beneficent, must find
an outlet, compatible with humane feeling, for
the vigor which now leads nations into war and
destruction.
This problem was considered by William
James in an admirable address on **The Moral
100 WHY MEN FIGHT
Equivalent of War," delivered to a congress of
pacifists during the Spanish-American War of
1898. His statement of the problem could not
be bettered; and so far as I know, he is the
only writer who has faced the problem ade-
quately. But his solution is not adequate ; per-
haps no adequate solution is possible. The
problem, however, is one of degree : every addi-
tional peaceful outlet for men's energies dimin-
ishes the force which urges nations towards
war, and makes war less frequent and less
fierce. And as a question of degree, it is cap-
able of more or less partial solutions.^
Every vigorous man needs some kind of con-
test, some sense of resistance overcome, in or-
der to feel that he is exercising his faculties.
Under the influence of economics, a theory has
grown up that what men desire is wealth ; this
theory has tended to verify itself, because peo-
ple's actions are more often determined by
what they think they desire than by what they
really desire. The less active members of a
community often do in fact desire wealth, since
it enables them to gratify a taste for passive
1 Wliat is said on this subject in the present lecture is only
preliminary, since the subsequent lectures all deal with some
aspect of the same problem.
WAE AS AN INSTITUTION 101
enjoyment, and to secure respect without exer-
tion. But tlie energetic men who make great
fortunes seldom desire the actual money: they
desire ,the sense of power through a contest,
and the joy of successful activity. For this
reason, those who are the most ruthless in mak-
ing money are often the most willing to give it
away; there are many notorious examples of
this among American millionaires. The only
element of truth in the economic theory that
these men are actuated by desire for money is
this: owing to the fact that money is what is
believed to be desirable, the making of money
is recognized as the test of success. What is de-
sired is visible and indubitable success ; but this
can only be achieved by being one of the few
who reach a goal which many men would wish to
reach. For this reason, public opinion has a
great influence in directing the activities of
vigorous men. In America a millionaire is
more respected than a great artist; this leads
men who might become either the one or the
other to choose to become millionaires. In
Renaissance Italy great artists were more re-
spected than millionaires, and the result was the
opposite of what it is in America.
Some pacifists and all militarists deprecate
102 WHY MEN FIGHT
social and political conflicts. In tins the mili-
tarists are in the right, from their point of
view; but the pacifists seem to me mistaken.
Conflicts of party politics, conflicts between
capital and labor, and generally all those con-
flicts of principle which do not involve war,
serve many useful purposes, and do very little
harm. They increase men's interest in public
affairs, they afford a comparatively innocent
outlet for the love of contest, and they help to
alter laws and institutions, when changing con-
ditions or greater knowledge create the wish
for an alteration. Everything that intensifies
political life tends to bring about a peaceful
interest of the same kind as the interest which
leads to desire for war. And in a democratic
community political questions give every voter
a sense of initiative and power and responsi-
bility which relieves his life of something of its
narrow unadventurousness. The object of the
pacifist should be to give men more and more
political control over their own lives, and in
particular to introduce democracy into the man-
agement of industry, as the syndicalists advise.
The problem for the reflective pacifist is two-
fold : how to keep his own country at peace, and
how to preserve the peace of the world. It is
WAR AS AN INSTITUTION 103
impossible that the peace of the world should
be preserved while nations are liable to the
mood in which Germany entered upon the war
— unless, indeed, one nation were so obviously
stronger than all others combined as to make
war unnecessary for that one and hopeless for
all the others. As this war has dragged on its
weary length, many people must have asked
themselves whether national independence is
worth the price that has to be paid for it.
Would it not perhaps be better to secure uni-
versal peace by the supremacy of one Power?
"To secure peace by a world federation" — so
a submissive pacifist may argue — "would re-
quire some faint glimmerings of reason in
rulers and peoples, and is therefore out of the
question ; but to secure it by allowing Germany
to dictate terms to Europe would be easy, in
view of Germany's amazing military success.
Since there is no other way of ending war" —
so our advocate of peace at any price would
contend — ' * let us adopt this way, which happens
at the moment to be open to us." It is worth
while to consider this view more attentively
than is commonly considered.
There is one great historic example of a long
peace secured in this way; I mean the Roman
104 WHY MEN FIGHT
Empire. We in England boast of the Pax Bri-
tannica which we have imposed, in this way,
upon the warring races and religions in India.
If we are right in boasting of this, if we have
in fact conferred a benefit upon India by en-
forced peace, the Germans would be right in
boasting if they could impose a Pax Germanica
upon Europe. Before the war, men might have
said that India and Europe are not analogous,
because India is less civilized than Europe ; but
now, I hope, no one would have the effrontery
to maintain anything so preposterous. Re-
peatedly in modern history there has been a
chance of achieving European unity by the
hegemony of a single State; but always Eng-
land, in obedience to the doctrine of the Balance
of Power, has prevented this consummation,
and preserved what our statesmen have called
the "liberties of Europe." It is this task upon
which we are now engaged. But I do not think
our statesmen, or any others among us, have
made much effort to consider whether the task
is worth what it costs.
In one case we were clearly wrong: in our
resistance to revolutionary France. If revolu-
tionary France could have conquered the Con-
tinent and Great Britain, the world would now
WAR AS AN INSTITUTION 105
be happier, more civilized, and more free, as
well as more peaceful. But revolutionary
France was a quite exceptional case, because
its early conquests were made in the name of
liberty, against tyrants, not against peoples;
and everywhere the French armies were wel-
comed as liberators by all except rulers and
bigots. In the case of Philip II we were as
clearly right as we were wrong in 1793. But
in both cases our action is not to be judged by
some abstract diplomatic conception of the
''liberties of Europe," but by the ideals of the
Power seeking hegemony, and by the probable
effect upon the welfare of ordinary men and
women throughout Europe.
"Hegemony" is a very vague word, and
everything turns upon the degree of interfer-
ence with liberty which it involves. There is a
degree of interference with liberty which is
fatal to many forms of national life; for ex-
ample, Italy in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries was crushed by the supremacy of
Spain and Austria. If the Germans were actu-
ally to annex French provinces, as they did in
1871, they would probably inflict a serious in-
jury upon those provinces, and make tliem less
fruitful for civilization in general. For suet
106 WHY MEN FIGHT
reasons national liberty is a matter of real im-
portance, and a Europe actually governed by
Germany would probably be very dead and un-
productive. But if ''hegemony" merely means
increased weight in diplomatic questions, more
coaling stations and possessions in Africa, more
power of securing advantageous commercial
treaties, then it can hardly be supposed that it
would do any vital damage to other nations;
certainly it would not do so much damage as the
present war is doing. I cannot doubt that, be-
fore the war, a hegemony of this kind would
have abundantly satisfied the Germans. But
the effect of the war, so far, has been to in-
crease immeasurably all the dangers which it
was intended to avert. We have now only the
choice between certain exhaustion of Europe in
fighting Germany and possible damage to the
national life of France by German tyranny.
Stated in terms of civilization and human wel-
fare, not in terms of national prestige, that is
now in fact the issue.
Assuming that war is not ended by one State
conquering all the others, the only way in which
it can be permanently ended is by a wpjld-
federation. So long as there are many sover-
eign States, each with its own Army, there can
WAR AS AN INSTITUTION 107
be no security that there will not be war.
There will have to be in the world only one
Army and one Navy before there will be any
reason to think that wars have ceased. This
means that, so far as the military functions of
the State are concerned, there will be only one
State, which will be world-wide.
The civil functions of the State — legislative,
administrative, and judicial — have no very es-
sential connection with the military functions,
and there is no reason why both kinds of func-
tions should normally be exercised by the
same State. There is, in fact, every reason
why the civil State and the military State
should be different. The greater modern
States are already too large for most civil pur-
poses, but for military purposes they are not
large enough, since they are not world-wide.
This difference as to the desirable area for the
two kinds of State introduces a certain perplex-
ity and hesitation, when it is not realized that
the two functions have little necessary connec-
tion: one set of considerations points towards
small States, the other towards continually
larger States. Of course, if there were an in-
ternational Army and Navy, there would have
to be some international authority to set them
108 WHY MEN FIGHT
in motion. But this authority need never con-
cern itself with any of the internal affairs of
national States: it need only declare the rules
which should regulate their relations, and pro-
nounce judicially when those rules have been so
infringed as to call for the intervention of the
international force. How easily the limit of
the authority could be fixed may be seen by
many actual examples.
The civil and military State are often differ-
ent in practice, for many purposes. The South
American Republics are sovereign for all pur-
poses except their relations with Europe, in re-
gard to which they are subject to the United
States : in dealings with Europe, the Army and
Navy of the United States are their Army and
Navy. Our self-governing Dominions depend
for their defense, not upon their own forces but
upon our Navy. Most Governments, nowa-
days, do not aim at formal annexation of a
country which they wish to incorporate, but only
at a protectorate — that is, civil autonomy sub-
ject to military control. Such autonomy is, of
course, in practice incomplete, because it does
not enable the "protected" country to adopt
measures which are vetoed by the Power in
military control. But it may be very nearly
. WAR AS AN INSTITUTION 109
complete, as in the case of our self-governing
Dominions. At the other extreme, it may be-
come a mere farce, as in Egypt. In the case of
an alliance, there is complete autonomy of the
separate allied countries, together with what
is practically a combination of their military
forces into one single force.
The great advantage of a large military
State is that it increases the area over which
internal war is not possible except by revolu-
tion. If England and Canada have a disagree-
ment, it is taken as a matter of course that a
settlement shall be arrived at by discussion, not
by force. Still more is this the case if Man-
chester and Liverpool have a quarrel, in spite
of the fact that each is autonomous for many
local purposes. No one would have thought it
reasonable that Liverpool should go to war to
prevent the construction of the Manchester
Ship Canal, although almost any two Great
Powers would have gone to war over an issue
of the same relative importance. England and
Russia would probably have gone to war over
Persia if they had not been allies ; as it is, they
arrived by diplomacy at much the same iniqui-
tous result as they would otherwise have
reached by fighting. Australia and Japan
110 WHY MEN FIGHT
would probably fight if they were both com-
pletely independent; but both depend for their
liberties upon the British Navy, and therefore
they have to adjust their differences peaceably.
The chief disadvantage of a large military
State is that, when external war occurs, the area
affected is greater. The quadruple Entente
forms, for the present, one military State; the
result is that, because of a dispute between Aus-
tria and Serbia, Belgium is devastated and Aus-
tralians are killed in the Dardanelles. Another
disadvantage is that it facilitates oppression.
A large military State is practically omnipotent
against a small State, and can impose its will,
as England and Russia did in Persia and as
Austria-Hungary has been doing in Serbia. It
is impossible to make sure of avoiding oppres-
sion by any purely mechanical guarantees ; only
a liberal and humane spirit can afford a real
protection. It has been perfectly possible for
England to oppress Ireland, in spite of democ-
racy and the presence of Irish Members at
Westminster. Nor has the presence of Poles
in the Reichstag prevented the oppression of
Prussian Poland. But democracy and repre-
sentative government undoubtedly make op-
pression less probable : they afford a means by
WAR AS AN INSTITUTION 111
which those who might be oppressed can cause
their wishes and grievances to be publicly
known, they render it certain that only a minor-
ity can be oppressed, and then only if the ma-
jority are nearly unanimous in wishing to op-
press them. Also the practice of oppression
affords much more pleasure to the governing
classes, who actually carry it out, than to the
mass of the population. For this reason the
mass of the population, where it has power, is
likely to be less tjTannical than an oligarchy or
a bureaucracy.
In order to prevent war and at the same
time preserve liberty it is necessary that there
should be only one military State in the world,
and that when disputes between different coun-
tries arise, it should act according to the de-
cision of a central authority. This is what
would naturally result from a federation of the
world, if such a thing ever came about. But
the prospect is remote, and it is worth while
to consider why it is so remote.
The unity of a nation is produced by similar
habits, instinctive liking, a common history,
and a common pride. The unity of a nation is
partly due to intrinsic affinities between its
citizens, but partly also to the pressure and con-
112 WHY MEN FIGHT
trast of the outside world: if a nation were
isolated, it would not have the same cohesion
or the same fervor of patriotism. When we
come to alliances of nations, it is seldom any-
thing except outside pressure that produces
solidarity. England and America, to some ex-
tent, are drawn together by the same causes
which often make national unity: a (more or
less) common language, similar political insti-
tutions, similar aims in international politics.
But England, France, and Russia were drawn
together solely by fear of Germany; if Ger-
many had been annihilated by a natural cata-
clysm, they would at once have begun to hate
one another, as they did before Germany was
strong. For this reason, the possibility of co-
operation in the present alliance against Ger-
many affords no ground whatever for hoping
that all the nations of the world might cooper-
ate permanently in a peaceful alliance. The
present motive for cohesion, namely a common
fear, would be gone, and could not be replaced
by any other motive unless men's thoughts and
purposes were very different from what they
are now.
The ultimate fact from which war results is
not economic or political, and does not rest
WAR AS AN INSTITUTION 113
upon any mechanical difficulty of inventing
means for the peaceful settlement of interna-
tional disputes. The ultimate fact from which
war results is the fact that a large proportion
of mankind have an impulse to conflict rather
than harmony, and can only be brought to co-
operate with others in resisting or attacking a
common enemy. This is the case in private
life as w^ell as in the relations of States. Most
men, when they feel themselves suflficiently
strong, set to work to make themselves feared
rather than loved; the wish to gain the good
opinion of others is confined, as a rule, to those
who have not acquired secure power. The im-
pulse to quarreling and self-assertion, the
pleasure of getting one's own way in spite of
opposition, is native to most men. It is this
impulse, rather than any motive of calculated
self-interest, which produces war, and causes
the difficulty of bringing about a World-State.
And this impulse is not confined to one nation ;
it exists, in varying degrees, in all the vigorous
nations of the world.
But although this impulse is strong, there is
no reason why it should be allowed to lead to
war. It was exactly the same impulse which
led to duelling; yet now civilized men conduct
114 WHY MEN FIGHT
their private quarrels without bloodshed. If
political contest within a World-State were
substituted for w^ar, imagination would soon
accustom itself to the new situation, as it has
accustomed itself to absence of duelling.
Through the influence of institutions and habits,
without any fundamental change in human na-
ture, men would leani to look back upon war as
we look upon the burning of heretics or upon
human sacrifice to heathen deities. If I were to
buy a revolver costing several pounds, in order
to shoot my friend with a view to stealing six-
pence out of his pocket, I should be thought
neither very wise nor very virtuous. But if I
can get sixty-five million accomplices to join me
in this criminal absurdity, I become one of a
great and glorious nation, nobly sacrificing the
cost of my revolver, perhaps even my life, in
order to secure the sixpence for the honor of
my country. Historians, who are almost in-
variably sycophants, will praise me and my ac-
complices if we are successful, and say that we
are worthy successors of the heroes who over-
threw the might of Imperial Rome. But if my
opponents are victorious, if their sixpences are
defended at the cost of many pounds each and
the lives of a large proportion of the popula-
WAR AS AN INSTITUTION 115
tion, then historians will call me a brigand (as I
am), and praise the spirit and self-sacrifice of
those who resisted me.
War is surrounded with glamour, by tradi-
tion, by Homer and the Old Testament by early
education, by elaborate myths as to the impor-
tance of the issues involved, by the heroism and
self-sacrifice, which these myths call out. Jeph-
thah sacrificing his daughter is a heroic figure,
but he would have let her live if he had not been
deceived by a myth. Mothers sending their sons
to the battlefield are heroic, but they are as
much deceived as Jephthah. And, in both cases
alike, the heroism which issues in cruelty would
be dispelled if there were not some strain of
barbarism in the imaginative outlook from
which myths spring. A God wlio can be pleased
by the sacrifice of an innocent girl could only
be worshiped by men to whom the thought of
receiving such a sacrifice is not wholly abhor-
rent. A nation which believes that its welfare
can only be secured by suffering and inflicting
hundreds of thousands of equally horrible sacri-
fices, is a nation which has no very spiritual con-
ception of what constitutes national welfare.
It would be better a hundredfold to forgo ma-
terial comfort, power, pomp, and outward glory
116 WHY MEN FIGHT
than to kill and be killed, to hate and be hated,
to throw away in a mad moment of fury the
bright heritage of the ages. We have learnt
gradually to free our God from the savagery
with which the primitive Israelites and the
Fathers endowed Him: few of us now believe
that it is His pleasure to torture most of the
human race in an eternity of hell-fire. But we
have not yet learnt to free our national ideals
from the ancient taint. Devotion to the nation
is perhaps the deepest and most widespread re-
ligion of the present age. Like the ancient re-
ligions, it demands its persecutions, its holo-
causts, its lurid heroic cruelties ; like them, it is
noble, primitive, brutal, and mad. Now, as in
the past, religion, lagging behind private con-
sciences through the weight of tradition, steels
the hearts of men against mercy and their minds
against truth. If the world is to be saved, men
must learn to be noble without being cruel, to be
filled with faith and yet open to truth, to be
inspired by great purposes without hating those
who try to thwart them. But before this can
happen, men must first face the terrible realiza-
tion that the gods before whom they have bowed
down were false gods and the sacrifices they
have made were vain.
IV
PROPERTY
AMONG the many gloomy novelists of the
realistic school, perhaps the most full of
gloom is Gissing. In common with all his char-
acters, he lives under the weight of a great op-
pression: the power of the fearful and yet
adored idol of Money. One of his typical
stories is ''Eve's Ransom," where the heroine,
with various discreditable subterfuges, throws
over the poor man whom she loves in order to
marry the rich man whose income she loves still
better. The poor man, finding that the rich
man's income has given her a fuller life and a
better character than the poor man's love could
have given her, decides that she has done quite
right, and that he deserves to be punished for
his lack of money. In this story, as in his other
books, Gissing has set forth, quite accurately,
the actual dominion of money, and the imper-
sonal worship which it exacts from the great
majority of civilized mankind.
Gissing 's facts are undeniable, and yet his
117
118 WHY MEN FIGHT
attitude produces a revolt in any reader who
has vital passions and masterful desires. His
worship of money is bound up with his con-
sciousness of inward defeat. And in the
modern world generally, it is the decay of life
which has promoted the religion of material
goods; and the religion of material goods, in
its turn, has hastened the decay of life on which
it thrives. The man who worships money has
ceased to hope for happiness through his own
efforts or in his own activities: he looks upon
happiness as a passive enjoyment of pleasures
derived from the outside world. The artist or
the lover does not worship money in his mo-
ments of ardor, because his desires are specific,
and directed towards objects which only he can
create. And conversely, the worshiper of
money can never achieve greatness as an artist
or a lover.
Love of money has been denounced by
moralists since the world began. I do not wish
to add another to the moral denunciations, of
which the efficacy in the past has not been en-
couraging. I wish to show how the worship of
money is both an effect and a cause of diminish-
ing vitality, and liow our institutions might be
changed so as to make the worship of money
PROPERTY 119
grow less and the general vitality grow more.
It is not the desire for money as a means to defi-
nite ends that is in question. A struggling
artist may desire money in order to have leisure
for his art, but this desire is finite, and can be
satisfied fully by a very modest sum. It is the
worship of money that I wish to consider: the
belief that all values may be measured in terms
of money, and that money is the ultimate test
of success in life. This belief is held in fact,
if not in words, by multitudes of men and
women, and yet it is not in harmony with human
nature, since it ignores vital needs and the in-
stinctive tendency towards some specific kind
of growth. It makes men treat as unimportant
those of their desires which run counter to the
acquisition of money, and yet such desires are,
as a rule, more important to well-being than any
increase of income. It leads men to mutilate
their own natures from a mistaken theory of
what constitutes success, and to give admiration
to enterprises which add notliing to human wel-
fare. It promotes a dead uniformity of char-
acter and purpose, a diminution in the joy of
life, and a stress and strain which leaves whole
communities weary, discouraged, and disillu-
sioned.
120 WHY MEN FIGHT
America, the pioneer of Western progress, is
thought by many to display the worship of
money in its most perfect form. A well-to-do
American, who already has more than enough
money to satisfy all reasonable requirements,
almost always continues to work at his office
with an assiduity which would only be pardon-
able if starvation were the alternative.
But England, except among a small minority,
is almost as much given over to the worship of
money as America. Love of money in Eng-
land takes, as a rule, the form of snobbishly de-
siring to maintain a certain social status, rather
than of striving after an indefinite increase of
income. Men postpone marriage until they
have an income enabling them to have as
many rooms and servants in their house
as they feel that their dignity requires. This
makes it necessary for them while they are
young to keep a watch upon their affections, lest
they should be led into an imprudence : they ac-
quire a cautious habit of mind, and a fear of
''giving themselves away," which makes a free
and vigorous life impossible. In acting as they
do they imagine that they are being virtuous,
since they would feel it a hardship for a woman
to be asked to descend to a lower social status
PROPEETY 121
than that of her parents, and a degradation to
themselves to marry a woman whose social
status was not equal to their own. The things
of nature are not valued in comparison with
money. It is not thought a hardship for a
woman to have to accept, as her only experience
of love, the prudent and limited attentions of a
man whose capacity for emotion has been lost
during j^ears of wise restraint or sordid rela-
tions with women whom he did not respect.
The woman herself does not know that it is a
hardship ; for she, too, has been taught prudence
for fear of a descent in the social scale, and
from early yoiith she has had it instilled into
her that strong feeling does not become a young
woman. So the two unite to slip through life
in ignorance of all that is worth knowing.
Their ancestors were not restrained from pas-
sion by the fear of hell-fire, but they are re-
strained effectually by a worse fear, the fear of
coming down in the world.
The same motives which lead men to marry
late also lead them to limit their families. Pro-
fessional men wish to send their sons to a pub-
lic school, though the education they will ob-
tain is no better than at a grammar school, and
the companions with whom they will associate
122 WHY MEN FIGHT
are more vicious. But snobdom has decided
that public schools are best, and from its ver-
dict there is no appeal. What makes them the
best is that they are the most expensive. And
the same social struggle, in varying forms,
runs through all classes except the very highest
and the very lowest. For this purpose men
and women make great moral efforts, and show
amazing powers of self-control ; but all their ef-
forts and all their self-control, being not used
for any creative end, serve merely to dry up the
well-spring of life within them, to niake them
feeble, listless, and trivial. It is not in
such a soil that the passion which produces
genius can be nourished. Men's souls have
exchanged the wilderness for the drawing-room :
they have become cramped and petty and de-
formed, like Chinese women's feet. Even the
horrors of war have hardly awakened them
from the smug somnambulism of respectability.
And it is chiefly the worship of money that has
brought about this deathlike slumber of all that
makes men great.
In France the worship of money takes the
form of thrift. It is not easy to make a fortune
in France, but an inherited competence is very
common, and where it exists the main purpose
PEOPEETY 123
of life is to hand it on undiminished, if not in-
creased. The French rentier is one of the great
forces in international politics : it is he through
whom France has been strengthened in diplo-
macy and weakened in war, by increasing the
supply of French capital and diminishing the
supply of French men. The necessity of pro-
viding a dot for daughters, and the subdivision
of property by the law of inheritance, have made
the family more powerful, as an institution,
than in any other civilized country. In order
that the family may prosper, it is kept small,
and the individual members are often sacrificed
to it. The desire for family continuity makes
men timid and unadventurous : it is only in
the organized proletariat that the daring spirit
survives which made the Eevolution and led
the world in political thought and practice.
Through the influence of money, the strength
of the family has become a weakness to the na-
tion by making the population remain station-
ary and even tend to decline. The same love
of safety is beginning to produce the same ef-
fects elsewhere; but in this, as in many better
things, France has led the way.
In Germany the worship of money is more
recent than in France, England, and America;
124 -^ WHY MEN FIGHT
indeed, it hardly existed until after the Franco-
Prussian War. But it has been adopted now
with the same intensity and whole-heartedness
which have always marked German beliefs. It
is characteristic that, as in France the worship
of money is associated with the family, so in
Germany it is associated with the State. Liszt,
in deliberate revolt against the English econo-
mists, taught his compatriots to think of eco-
nomics in national terms, and the German who
develops a business is felt, by others as well as
by himself, to be performing a service to the
State. Germans believe that England's great-
ness is due to industrialism and Empire, and
that our success in these is due to an intense
nationalism. The apparent internationalism of
our Free Trade policy they regard as mere hy-
pocrisy. They have set themselves to imitate
what they believe we really are, with only the
hypocrisy omitted. It must be admitted that
their success has been amazing. But in the
process they have destroyed almost all that
made Germany of value to the world, and they
have not adopted whatever of good there may
Have been among us, since that was all swept
aside in the wholesale condemnation of *4iy-
pocrisy." And in adopting our worst faults,
PEOPERTY 125
they have made them far worse by a system, a
thoroughness, and a unanimity of which we are
happily incapable. Germany's religion is of
great importance to the world, since Germans
have a power of real belief, and have the energy
to acquire the virtues and vices which their
creed demands. For the sake of the world, as
well as for the sake of Germany, we must hope
that they will soon abandon the worship of
wealth which they have unfortunately learnt
from us.
AVorship of money is no new thing, but it is
a more harmful thing than it used to be, for
several reasons. Industrialism has made work
more wearisome and intense, less capable of
affording pleasure and interest by the way to
the man who has undertaken it for the sake of
money. The power of limiting families has
opened a new field for the operation of thrift.
The general increase in education and self-disci-
pline has made men more capable of pursuing
a purpose consistently in spite of temptations,
and when the purpose is against life it becomes
more destructive with every increase of tenacity
in those who adopt it. The greater produc-
tivity resulting from industrialism has en-
abled us to devote more labor and capital to
126 WHY MEN FIGHT
armies and navies for the protection of our
wealth from envious neighbors, and for the ex-
ploitation of inferior races, which are ruthlessly
wasted by the capitalist regime. Through the
fear of losing money, forethought and anxiety
eat away men's power of happiness, and the
dread of misfortune becomes a greater misfor-
tune than the one which is dreaded. The hap-
piest men and women, as we can all testify from
our own experience, are those who are indif-
ferent to money because they have some posi-
tive purpose which shuts it out. And yet all
our political thought, whether imperialist, rad-
ical, or socialist, continues to occupy itself al-
most exclusively with men's economic desires,
as though they alone had real importance.
In judging of an industrial system, whether
the one under which we live or one proposed by
reformers, there are four main tests which may
be applied. We may consider whether the sys-
tem secures (1) the maximum of production, or
(2) justice in distribution, or (3) a tolerable ex-
istence for producers, or (4) the greatest pos-
sible freedom and stimulus to vitality and prog-
ress. We may say, broadly, that the present
system aims only at the first of these objects,
while socialism aims at the second and third.
PROPERTY 127
Some defenders of the present system contend
that technical progress is better promoted by
private enterprise than it would be if indus-
tiy were in the hands of the State ; to this ex-
tent they recognize the fourth of the objects
we have enumerated. But they recognize it
only on the side of the goods and the capitalist,
not on the side of the wage-earner. I believe
that the fourth is much the most important of
the objects to be aimed at, that the present sys-
tem is fatal to it, and that orthodox socialism
might well prove equally fatal.
One of the least questioned assumptions of
the capitalist system is, that production ought
to be increased in amount by every possible
means : by new kinds of machinery, by employ-
ment of women and boys, by making hours of
labor as long as is compatible with efficiency.
Central African natives, accustomed to living
on raw fruits of the earth and defeating Man-
chester by dispensing with clothes, are com-
pelled to work by a hut tax which they can only
pay by taking employment under European cap-
italists. It is admitted that they are perfectly
happy while they remain free from European
influences, and that industrialism brings upon
them, not only the unwonted misery of confine-
128 WHY MEN FIGHT
ment, but also death from diseases to which
white men have become partially immune. It
is admitted that the best negro workers are the
''raw natives," fresh from the bush, uncontami-
nated by previous experience of wage-earning.
Nevertheless, no one effectively contends that
they ought to be preserved from the deteriora-
tion which we bring, since no one effectively
doubts that it is good to increase the world's
production at no matter what cost.
The belief in the importance of production
has a fanatical irrationality and ruthlessness.
So long as something is produced, what it is
that is produced seems to be thought a matter
of no account. Our whole economic system en-
courages this view, since fear of unemployment
makes any kind of work a boon to wage-earn-
ers. The mania for increasing production has
turned men's thoughts away from much more
important problems, and has prevented the
world from getting the benefits it might have
got out of the increased productivity of labor.
When we are fed and clothed and housed,
further material goods are needed only for os-
tentation.^ With modern methods, a certain
1 Except by that small minority who are capable of artistic
enjoyment.
PROPEETY 129
proportion of the population, without working
long hours, could do all the work that is really
necessary in the way of producing commodi-
ties. The time which is now spent in produc-
ing luxuries could be spent partly in enjoyment
and country holidays, partly in better educa-
tion, partly in work that is not manual or sub-
serving manual work. We could, if we wished,
have far more science and art, more diffused
knowledge and mental cultivation, more leisure
for wage-earners, and more capacity for intelli-
gent pleasures. At present not only wages, but
ahnost all earned incomes, can only be obtained
by working much longer hours than men ought
to work. A man who earns £800 a year by hard
work could not, as a rule, earn £400 a year by
half as much work. Often he could not earn
anything if he were not willing to work prac-
tically all day and every day. Because of the
excessive belief in the value of production, it
is thought right and proper for men to work
long hours, and the good that might result from
shorter hours is not realized. And all the cruel-
ties of the industrial system, not only in Europe
but even more in the tropics, arouse only an
occasional feeble protest from a few philanthro-
pists. This is because, owing to the distortion
130 WHY MEN FIGHT
produced by our present economic methods,
men's conscious desires, in such matters, cover
only a very small part, and that not the most
important part, of the real needs affected by
industrial work. If this is to be remedied, it
can only be by a different economic system, in
which the relation of activity to needs will be
less concealed and more direct.
The purpose of maximizing production will
not be achieved in the long run if our present
industrial system continues. Our present sys-
tem is wasteful of human material, partly
through damage to the health and efficiency of
industrial workers, especially when women and
children are employed, partly through the fact
that the best workers tend to have small fam-
ilies and that the more civilized races are in
danger of gradual extinction. Every great
city is a center of race-deterioration. For the
case of London this has been argued with a
wealth of statistical detail by Sir H. Llewelyn
Smith ; ^ and it cannot easily be doubted that it
is equally true in other cases. The same is true
of material resources: the minerals, the virgin
forests, and the newly developed wheatfields of
the world are being exhausted with a reckless
1 Booth's " Life and Labour of the People," vol. iii.
PEOPERTY 131
prodigality which entails almost a certainty of
hardship for future generations.
Socialists see the remedy in State ownership
of land and capital, combined with a more just
system of distribution. It cannot be denied that
our present system of distribution is indefen-
sible from every point of view, including the
point of view of justice. Our system of distri-
bution is regulated by law, and is capable of
being changed in many respects which familiar-
ity makes us regard as natural and inevitable.
We may distinguish four chief sources of rec-
ognized legal rights to private property: (1) a
man's right to what he has made himself; (2)
the right to interest on capital which has been
lent; (3) the ownership of land; (4) inheritance.
These form a crescendo of respectability: cap-
ital is more respectable than labor, land is more
respectable than capital, and any form of
wealth is more respectable when it is inherited
than when it has been acquired by our own ex-
ertions.
A man's right to the produce of his own la-
bor has never, in fact, had more than a very lim-
ited recognition from the law. The early so-
cialists, especially the English forerunners of
Marx, used to insist upon this right as the basis
132 WHY MEN FIGHT
of a just system of distribution, but in the com-
plication of modern industrial processes it is
impossible to say what a man has produced.
What proportion of the goods carried by a rail-
way should belong to the goods porters con-
cerned in their journey? When a surgeon saves
a man's life by an operation, what proportion
of the commodities which the man subsequently
produces can the surgeon justly claim? Such
problems are insoluble. And there is no spe-
cial justice, even if they were soluble, in allow-
ing to each man what he himself produces.
Some men are stronger, healthier, cleverer,
than others, but there is no reason for increas-
ing these natural injustices by the artificial in-
justices of the law. The principle recommends
itself partly as a way of abolishing the very
rich, partly as a way of stimulating people to
work hard. But the first of these objects can
be better obtained in other ways, and the second
ceases to be obviously desirable as soon as we
cease to worship money.
Interest arises naturally in any community
in which private property is unrestricted and
theft is punished, because some of the most eco-
nomical processes of production are slow, and
those who have the skill to perform them may
PROPERTY 133
not have tlie means of living while they are
being completed. But the power of lending
money gives such great wealth and influence to
private capitalists that unless strictly controlled
it is not compatible with any real freedom for
the rest of the population. Its effects at pres-
ent, both in the industrial world and in interna-
tional politics, are so bad that it seems impera-
tively necessary to devise some means of curb-
ing its power.
Private property in land has no justification
except historically through power of the sword.
In the beginning of feudal times, certain men
had enough military strength to be able to force
those whom they disliked not to live in a cer-
tain area. Those whom they chose to leave on
the land became their serfs, and were forced to
work for them in return for the gracious per-
mission to stay. In order to establish law in
place of private force, it was necessary, in the
main, to leave undisturbed the rights which had
been acquired by the sword. The land became
the property of those who had conquered it, and
the serfs were allowed to give rent instead of
service. There is no justification for private
property in land, except the historical necessity
to conciliate turbulent robbers who would not
134 WHY MEN FIGHT
otherwise have obeyed the law. This neces-
sity arose in Europe many centuries ago, but
in Africa the whole process is often quite re-
cent. It is by this process, slightly disguised,
that the Kimberley diamond mines and the
Eand gold mines were acquired in spite of prior
native rights. It is a singular example of hu-
man inertia that men should have continued
until now to endure the tyranny and extortion
which a small minority are able to inflict by
their possession of the land. No good to the
community, of any sort or kind, results from
the private ownership of land. If men were
reasonable, they would decree that it should
cease to-morrow, with no compensation beyond
a moderate life income to the present holders.
The mere abolition of rent would not remove
injustice, since it would confer a capricious ad-
vantage upon the occupiers of the best sites and
the most fertile land. It is necessary that there
should be rent, but it should be paid to the State
or to some body which performs public serv-
ices; or, if the total rental were more than is
required for such purposes, it might be paid
into a common fund and divided equally among
the population. Such a method would be just,
and would not only help to relieve poverty, but
PROPERTY 135
would prevent wasteful employment of land and
the tyranny of local magnates. Much that ap-
pears as the power of capital is really the power
of the landowner — for example, the power of
railway companies and mine-owners. The evil
and injustice of the present system are glaring,
but men's patience of preventable evils to which
they are accustomed is so great that it is impos-
sible to guess when they will put an end to this
strange absurdity.
Inheritance, which is the source of the greater
part of the unearned income in the world, is re-
garded by most men as a natural right. Some-
times, as in England, the right is inherent in
the o^vner of property, who may dispose of it in
any way that seems good to him. Sometimes,
as in France, his right is limited by the right of
his family to inherit at least a portion of what
he has to leave. But neither the right to dis-
pose of property by will nor the right of chil-
dren to inherit from parents has any basis out-
side the instincts of possession and family
pride.
There may be reasons for allowing a man
whose work is exceptionally fruitful — for in-
stance, an inventor — to enjoy a larger income
than is enjoyed by the average citizen, but there
136 WHY MEN FIGHT
can be no good reason for allowing this privi-
lege to descend to his children and grandchil-
dren and so on for ever. The effect is to pro-
duce an idle and exceptionally fortunate class,
who are influential through their money, and
opposed to reform for fear it should be di-
rected against themselves. Their whole habit
of thought becomes timid, since they dread
being forced to acknowledge that their position
is indefensible; yet snobbery and the wish to
secure their favor leads almost the whole middle
class to ape their manners and adopt their opin-
ions. In this way they become a poison infect-
ing the outlook of almost all educated people.
It is sometimes said that without the incen-
tive of inheritance men would not work so well.
The great captains of industry, we are assured,
are actuated by the desire to found a family,
and would not devote their lives to unremitting
toil without the hope of gratifying this desire.
I do not believe that any large proportion of
really useful work is done from this motive.
Ordinary work is done for the sake of a living,
and the very best work is done for the interest
of the work itself. Even the captains of indus-
try, who are thought (perhaps by themselves as
well as by others) to be aiming at founding a
PROPERTY 137
family, are probably more actuated by love of
power and by the adventurous pleasure of great
enterprises. And if there were some slight
diminution in the amount of work done, it
would be well worth while in order to get rid
of the idle rich, with the oppression, feeble-
ness, and corruption which they inevitably in-
troduce.
The present system of distribution is not
based upon any principle. Starting from a sys-
tem imposed by conquest, the arrangements
made by the conquerors for their own benefit
were stereotyped by the law, and have never
been fundamentally reconstructed. On what
principles ought the reconstruction to be
based?
Socialism, which is the most widely advo-
cated scheme of reconstruction, aims chiefly at
justice: the present inequalities of wealth are
unjust, and socialism would abolish them. It
is not essential to socialism that all men should
have the same income, but it is essential that
inequalities should be justified, in each case, by
inequality of need or of service performed.
There can be no disputing that the present sys-
tem is grossly unjust, and that almost all that
is unjust in it is harmful. But I do not think
138 WHY MEN FIGHT
justice alone is a sufficient principle upon which
to base an economic reconstruction. Justice
would be secured if all were equally unhappy,
as well as if all were equally happy. Justice,
I by itself, when once realized, contains no source
of new life. The old type of Marxian revolu-
tionary socialist never dwelt, in imagination,
upon the life of communities after the establish-
ment of the millennium. He imagined that,
like the Prince and Princess in a fairy story,
they would live happily ever after. But that
is not a condition possible to human nature.
Desire, activity, purpose, are essential to a tol-
erable life, and a millennium, though it may be
a joy in prospect, would be intolerable if it were
actually achieved.
The more modern socialists, it is true, have
lost most of the religious ferv^or which charac-
terized the pioneers, and view socialism as a
tendency rather than a definite goal. But they
still retain the view that what is of most po-
I litical importance to a man is his income, and
I that the principal aim of a democratic politician
[ ought to be to increase the wages of labor. I
believe this involves too passive a conception
of what constitutes happiness. It is true that,
in the industrial world, large sections of the
PROPERTY 139
population are too poor to have any possibility
of a good life ; but it is not true that a good life
will come of itself with a diminution of poverty.
Very few of the well-to-do classes have a good
life at present, and perhaps socialism would
only substitute the evils which now afflict the
more prosperous in place of the evils resulting
from destitution.
In the existing labor movement, although it
is one of the most vital sources of change, there
are certain tendencies against which reformers
ought to be on their guard. The labor move-
ment is in essence a movement in favor of jus-
tice, based upon the belief that the sacrifice of
the many to the few is not necessary now, what-
ever may have been the case in the past. When
labor was less productive and education was less
widespread, an aristocratic civilization may
have been the only one possible: it may have
been necessary that the many should contribute
to the life of the few, if the few were to trans-
mit and increase the world's possessions in art
and thought and civilized existence. But this
necessity is past or rapidly passing, and there
is no longer any valid objection to the claims of
justice. The labor movement is morally irre-
sistible, and is not now seriously opposed ex-
140 WHY MEN FIGHT
cept by prejudice and simple self-assertion.
All living thought is on its side ; what is against
it is traditional and dead. But although it it-
self is living, it is not by any means certain that
it will make for life.
Labor is led by current political thought in
certain directions which would become repres-
sive and dangerous if they were to remain
strong after labor had triumphed. The aspira-
tions of the labor movement are, on the whole,
opposed by the great majority of the educated
classes, who feel a menace, not only or chiefly
to their personal comfort, but to the civilized
life in which they have their part, which they
profoundly believe to be important to the world.
Owing to the opposition of the educated classes,
labor, when it is revolutionary and vigorous,
tends to despise all that the educated classes
represent. When it is more respectful, as its
leaders tend to be in England, the subtle and
almost unconscious influence of educated men
is apt to sap revolutionary ardor, producing
doubt and uncertainty instead of the swift, sim-
ple assurance by which victory might have been
won. The very sympathy which the best men
in the well-to-do classes extend to labor, their
very readiness to admit the justice of its claims,
PKOPERTY 141
may have the effect of softening the opposition
of labor leaders to the status quo, and of open-
ing their minds to the suggestion that no funda-
mental change is possible. Since these influ-
ences affect leaders much more than the rank
and file, they tend to produce in the rank and file
a distrust of leaders, and a desire to seek out
new leaders who will be less ready to concede
the claims of the more fortunate classes. The
result may be in the end a labor movement as
hostile to the life of the mind as some terrified
property-owners believe it to be at present.
The claims of justice, narrowly interpreted,
may reinforce this tendency. It may be thought
unjust that some men should have larger in-
comes or shorter hours of work than other men.
But efficiency in mental work, including the
work of education, certainly requires more com-
fort and longer periods of rest than are required
for efficiency in physical work, if only because
mental work is not physiologically wholesome.
If this is not recognized, the life of the mind
may suffer through short-sightedness even
more than through deliberate hostility.
Education suffers at present, and may long
continue to suffer, through the desire of par-
ents that their children should earn money as
142 WHY MEN FIGHT
soon as possible. Every one knows that the
half-time system, for example, is bad; but the
power of organized labor keeps it in existence.
It is clear that the cure for this evil, as for
those that are concerned with the population
question, is to relieve parents of the expense
of their children's education, and at the same
time to take away their right to appropriate
their children's earnings.
The way to prevent any dangerous opposition
of labor to the life of the mind is not to oppose
the labor movement, which is too strong to be
opposed with justice. The right way is, to
show by actual practice that thought is useful
to labor, that without thought its positive aims
cannot be achieved, and that there are men in
the world of thought who are willing to devote
their energies to helping labor in its struggle.
Such men, if they are wise and sincere, can pre-
vent labor from becoming destructive of what
is living in the intellectual world.
Another danger in the aims of organized la-
bor is the danger of conservatism as to meth-
ods of production. Improvements of machin-
ery or organization bring great advantages to
employers, but involve temporary and some-
times permanent loss to the wage-earners. For
PROPERTY 143
this reason, and also from mere instinctive dis-
like of any change of habits, strong labor or-
ganizations are often obstacles to technical
progress. The ultimate basis of all social prog-
ress must be increased technical efficiency, a
greater result from a given amount of labor.
If labor were to offer an effective opposition
to this kind of progress, it would in the long
run paralyze all other progress. The way to
overcome the opposition of labor is not by hos-
tility or moral homilies, but by giving to labor
the direct interest in economical processes
which now belongs to the employers. Here, as
elsewhere, the unprogressive part of a move-
ment which is essentially progressive is to be
eliminated, not by decrying the whole movement
but by giving it a wider sweep, making it more
progressive, and leading it to demand an even
greater change in the structure of society than
any that it had contemplated in its inception.
The most important purpose that political in-
stitutions can achieve is to keep alive in indi-
viduals creativeness, vigor, vitality, and the joy
of life. These things existed, for example, in
Elizabethan England in a way in which they
do not exist now. They stimulated adventure,
poetry, music, fine architecture, and set going
144 WHY MEN FIGHT
the whole movement out of which England's
greatness has sprung in every direction in which
England has been great. These things coex-
isted with injustice, but outweighed it, and made
a national life more admirable than any that is
likely to exist under socialism.
I What is wanted in order to keep men full of
I vitality is opportunity, not security. Security
is merely a refuge from fear ; opportunity is the
source of hope. The chief test of an economic
system is not whether it makes men prosperous,
or whether it secures distributive justice
(though these are both very desirable), but
hvhether it leaves men's instinctive growth un-
iimpeded. To achieve this purpose, there are
tjj^o main conditions which it should fulfil: it
should not cramp men's private affections, and
it should give the greatest possible outlet to
^ the impulse of creation. There is in most men,
until it becomes atrophied by disuse, an instinct
of constructiveness, a wish to make something.
The men who achieve most are, as a rule, those
in whom this instinct is strongest: such men
become artists, men of science, statesmen, em-
pire-builders, or captains of industry, accord-
ing to the accidents of temperament and oppor-
tunity. The most beneficent and the most
PROPERTY ■ 145
harmful careers are inspired by this impulse.
Without it, the world would sink to the level of
Tibet: it would subsist, as it is always prone
to do, on the wisdom of its ancestors, and each
generation would sink more deeply into a life-
less traditionalism.
But it is not only the remarkable men who
have the instinct of constructiveness, though it
is they who have it most strongly. It is almost
universal in boys, and in men it usually sur-
vives in a greater or less degree, according to
the greater or less outlet which it is able to
find. Work inspired by this instinct is satis-
fying, even when it is irksome and difficult, be-
cause every effort is as natural as the effort of
a dog pursuing a hare. The chief defect of
the present capitalistic system is that work done
for wages very seldom affords any outlet for
the creative impulse. The man who works for
wages has no choice as to what he shall make :
the whole creativeness of the processes concen-
trate in the employer who orders the work to
be done. For this reason the work becomes a
merely external means to a certain result, the
earning of wages. Employers grow indignant
about the trade union rules for limitation of
output, but they have no right to be indignant,
146 WHY MEN FIGHT
since they do not permit the men whom they
employ to have any share in the purpose for
which the work is undertaken. And so the proc-
ess of production, which should form one in-
stinctive cycle, becomes divided into separate
purposes, which can no longer provide any sat-
isfaction of instinct for those who do the work.
This result is due to our industrial system,
but it would not be avoided by socialism. In
a socialist community, the State would be the
employer, and the individual workman would
have almost as little control over his work as
he has at present. Such control as he could
exercise would be indirect, through political
channels, and would be too slight and round-
about to afford any appreciable satisfaction.
It is to be feared that instead of an increase of
self-direction, there would only be an increase
of mutual interference.
The total abolition of private capitalistic en-
terprise, which is demanded by Marxian social-
ism, seems scarcely necessary. Most men who
construct sweeping systems of reform, like most
of those who defend the status quo, do not allow
enough for the importance of exceptions and
the undesirability of rigid system. Provided
the sphere of capitalism is restricted, and a
PROPERTY 147
large proportion of the population are rescued
from its dominion, there is no reason to wish
it wholly abolished. As a competitor and a
rival, it might serve a useful purpose in pre-
venting more democratic enterprises from sink-
ing into sloth and technical conservatism. But
it is of the very highest importance that capital-
ism should become the exception rather than the
rule, and that the bulk of the world's industry
should be conducted on a more democratic sys-
tem.
Much of what is to be said against militarism
in the State is also to be said against capitalism
in the economic sphere. Economic organiza-
tions, in the pursuit of efficiency, grow larger
and larger, and there is no possibility of re-
versing this process. The causes of their
growth are technical, and large organizations
must be accepted as an essential part of civ-
ilized society. But there is no reason why their
government should be centralized and monar-
chical. The present economic system, by rob-
bing most men of initiative, is one of the causes
of the universal weariness which devitalizes
urban and industrial populations, making them
perpetually seek excitement, and leading them
to welcome even the outbreak of war as a relief
148 WHY MEN FIGHT
from the dreary monotony of their daily lives.
If the vigor of the nation is to be preserved,
if we are to retain any capacity for new ideas,
if we are not to sink into a Chinese condition of
stereotyped immobility, the monarchical organ-
ization of industry must be swept away. All
large businesses must become democratic and
federal in their government. The whole wage-
earning system is an abomination, not only be-
cause of the social injustice which it causes and
perpetuates, but also because it separates the
man who does the work from the purpose for
which the work is done. The whole of the con-
trolling purpose is concentrated in the capital-
ist; the purpose of the wage-earner is not the
produce, but the wages. The purpose of the
capitalist is to secure the maximum of work for
the minimum of wages; the purpose of the
wage-earner is to secure the maximum of wages
for the minimum of work. A system involv-
ing this essential conflict of interests cannot be
expected to work smoothly or successfully, or
to produce a community with any pride in ef-
ficiency.
Two movements exist, one already well ad-
vanced, the other in its infancy, which seem
capable, between them, of effecting most of
PROPERTY 149
what is needed. The two movements I mean
are the cooperative movement and syndical-
ism. The cooperative movement is capable of
replacing the wage system over a very wide
field, but it is not easy to see how it could be
applied to such things as railways. It is just
in these cases that the principles of syndicalism
are most easily applicable.
If organization is not to crush individuality,
membership of an organization ought to be vol-
untary, not compulsory, and ought always to
carry with it a voice in the management. This
is not the case with economic organizations,
which give no opportunity for the pride and
pleasure that men find in an activity of their
own choice, provided it is not utterly monot-
onous.
It must be admitted, however, that much of
the mechanical work which is necessary in in-
dustry is probably not capable of being made
interesting in itself. But it will seem less
tedious than it does at present if those who do
it have a voice in the management of their in-
dustry. And men who desire leisure for other
occupations might be given the opportunity of
doing uninteresting work during a few hours
of the day for a low wage; this would give an
150 WHY MEN FIGHT
opening to all who wished for some activity not
immediately profitable to themselves. When
everything that is possible has been done to
make work interesting, the residue will have to
be made endurable, as almost all work is at
present, by the inducement of rewards outside
the hours of labor. But if these rewards are
to be satisfactory, it is essential that the unin-
teresting work should not necessarily absorb a
man's whole energies, and that opportunities
should exist for more or less continuous activi-
ties during the remaining hours. Such a sys-
tem might be an immeasurable boon to artists,
men of letters, and others who produce for their
owm satisfaction works which the public does
not value soon enough to secure a living for
the producers ; and apart from such rather rare
cases, it might provide an opportunity for
young men and women with intellectual ambi-
tions to continue their education after they have
left school, or to prepare themselves for careers
which require an exceptionally long training.
The evils of the present system result from
the separation between the several interests of
consumer, producer, and capitalist. No one of
these three has the same interests as the com-
munity or as either of the other two. The co-
PKOPERTY 151
operative system amalgamates the interests of
consumer and capitalist; syndicalism would
amalgamate the interests of producer and cap-
italist. Neither amalgamates all three, or
makes the interests of those who direct indus-
try quite identical with those of the commun-
ity. Neither, therefore, would wholly prevent
industrial strife, or obviate the need of the
State as arbitrator. But either would be bet-
ter than the present system, and probably a
mixture of both would cure most of the evils
of industrialism as it exists now. It is surpris-
ing that, while men and women have struggled
to achieve political democracy, so little has been
done to introduce democracy in industry. I be-
lieve incalculable benefits might result from in-
dustrial democracy, either on the cooperative
model or with recognition of a trade or indus-
try as a unit for purposes of government, with
some kind of Home Rule such as syndicalism
aims at securing. There is no reason why all
governmental units should be geographical:
this system was necessary in the past because
of the slowness of means of communication, but
it is not necessary now. By some such system
many men might come to feel again a pride in
their work, and to find again that outlet for the
152 WHY MEN FIGHT
creative impulse whicli is now denied to all but
a fortunate few. Such a system requires the
abolition of the land-owner and the restriction
of the capitalist, but does not entail equality of
earnings. And unlike socialism, it is not a
static or final system : it is hardly more than a
framework for energy and initiative. It is only
by some such method, I believe, that the free
growth of the individual can be reconciled with
the huge technical organizations which have
been rendered necessary by industrialism.
EDUCATION
NO political theory is adequate unless it is
applicable to children as well as to men
and women. Theorists are mostly childless, or,
if they have children, they are carefully
screened from the disturbances which would be
caused by youthful turmoil. Some of them
have written books on education, but without,
as a rule, having any actual children present to
their minds while they wrote. Those educa-
tional theorists who have had a knowledge of
children, such as the inventors of Kindergarten
and the Montessori system,^ have not always
had enough realization of the ultimate goal of
education to be able to deal successfully with
advanced instruction. I have not the knowl-
edge either of children or of education which
would enable me to supply whatever defects
there may be in the writings of others. But
1 As repfards the education of youn<T rliildren, Madame
Monteauori'a methods seem to me full of wisdom.
153
154 WHY MEN FIGHT
some questions, concerning education as a po-
litical institution, are involved in any hope of
social reconstruction, and are not usually con-
sidered by writers on educational theory. It
is these questions that I wish to discuss.
The power of education in forming character
and opinion is very great and very generally
recognized. The genuine beliefs, though not
usually the professed precepts, of parents and
teachers are almost unconsciously acquired by
most children; and even if they depart from
these beliefs in later life, something of them re-
mains deeply implanted, ready to emerge in a
time of stress or crisis. Education is, as a rule,
the strongest force on the side of what exists
and against fundamental change : threatened in-
stitutions, while they are still powerful, pos-
sess themselves of the educational machine, and
instil a respect for their own excellence into
the malleable minds of the young. Reformers
retort by trying to oust their opponents from
their position of vantage. The children them-
selves are not considered by either party; they
are merely so much material, to be recruited
into one army or the other. If the children
themselves were considered, education would
not aim at making them belong to this party
EDUCATION 155
or that, but at enabling them to choose intelli-
gently between the parties; it would aim at
making them able to think, not at making them
think what their teachers think. Education as
a political weapon could not exist if we re-
spected the rights of children. If we respected
the rights of children, we should educate them
so as to give them the knowledge and the men-
tal habits required for forming independent
opinions; but education as a political institu-
tion endeavors to form habits and to circum-
scribe knowledge in such a way as to make one
set of opinions inevitable.
The two principles of justice and liberty,
which cover a very great deal of the social re-
construction required, are not by themselves
sufficient where education is concerned. Jus-
tice, in the literal sense of equal rights, is ob-
viously not wholly possible as regards children.
And as for liberty, it is, to begin with, essen-
tially negative: it condemns all avoidable in-
terference with freedom, without giving a posi-
tive principle of construction. But education
is essentially constructive, and requires some
positive conception of what constitutes a good
life. And although liberty is to be respected
in education as much as is compatible with in-
156 WHY MEN FIGHT
struotion, and although a very great deal more
liberty than is customary can be allowed with-
out loss to instruction, yet it is clear that some
departure from complete liberty is unavoid-
able if children are to be taught anything, ex-
cept in the case of unusually intelligent chil-
dren who are kept isolated from more normal
companions. This is one reason for the great
responsibility which rests upon teachers: the
children must, necessarily, be more or less at
the mercy of their elders, and cannot make
themselves the guardians of their own interests.
Authority in education is to some extent un-
avoidable, and those who educate have to find
a way of exercising authority in accordance
with the spirit of liberty.
Where authority is unavoidable, what is
needed is reverence. A man who is to educate
really well, and is to make the young grow and
develop into their full stature, must be filled
through and through with the spirit of rever-
ence. It is reverence towards others that is
lacking in those Avho advocate machine-made
cast-iron systems: militarism, capitalism, Fa-
bian scientific organization, and all the other
prisons into which reformers and reactionaries
try to force the human spirit. In education,
EDUCATION 157
with its codes of rules emanating from a Gov-
ernment office, its large classes and fixed cur-
riculum and overworked teachers, its deter-
mination to produce a dead level of glib medi-
ocrity, the lack of reverence for the child is all
but universal. Reverence requires imagination
and vital warmth; it requires most imagina-
tion in respect of those who have least actual
achievement or power. The child is weak and
superficially foolish, the teacher is strong, and
in an every-day sense wiser than the child.
The teacher without reverence, or the bureau-
crat without reverence, easily despises the child
for these outward inferiorities. He thinks it
is bis duty to ''mold" the child: in imagina-
tion he is the potter with the clay. And so he
gives to the child some unnatural shape, which
hardens with age, producing strains and spir-
itual dissatisfactions, out of which grow cruelty
and envy, and the belief that others must be
compelled to undergo the same distortions.
Th© man who has reverence will not think it
his duty to "mold" the young. He feels in
all that lives, but especially in human beings,
and most of all in children, something sacred,
indefinable, unlimited, something individual
and strangely precious, the growing principle
158 WHY MEN FIGHT
of life, an embodied fragment of the dumb striv-
ing of the world. In the presence of a child
he feels an unaccountable humility — a humil-
ity not easily defensible on any rational
ground, and yet somehow nearer to wisdom than
the easy self-confidence of many parents and
teachers. The outward helplessness of the
child and the appeal of dependence make him
conscious of the responsibility of a trust. His
imagination shows him what the child may be-
come, for good or evil, how its impulses may
be developed or thwarted, how its hopes must
be dimmed and the life in it grow less living,
how its trust will be bruised and its quick de-
sires replaced by brooding will. All this gives
him a longing to help the child in its own bat-
tle; he would equip and strengthen it, not for
some outside end proposed by the State or by
any other impersonal authority, but for the
ends which the child's own spirit is obscurely
seeking. The man who feels this can wield the
authority of an educator without infringing the
principle of liberty.
It is not in a spirit of reverence that educa-
tion is conducted by States and Churches and
the great institutions that are subservient to
them. What is considered in education is
EDUCATION 159
hardly ever the boy or girl, the young man or
young woman, but almost always, in some form,
the maintenance of the existing order. When
the individual is considered, it is almost ex-
clusively with a view to worldly success — mak-
ing money or achieving a good position. To be
ordinary, and to acquire the art of getting on,
is the ideal which is set before the youthful
mind, except by a few rare teachers who have
enough energy of belief to break through the
system within which they are expected to work.
Almost all education has a political motive : it
aims at strengthening some group, national or
religious or even social, in the competition with
other groups. It is this motive, in the main,
which determines the subjects taught, the
knowledge offered and the knowledge withheld,
and also decides what mental habits the pupils
are expected to acquire. Hardly anything is
done to foster the inward growth of mind and
spirit; in fact, those who have had most educa-
tion are very often atrophied in their mental
and spiritual life, devoid of impulse, and pos-
sessing only certain mechanical aptitudes which
take the place of living thought.
Some of the things which education achieves
at present must continue to be adiieved by edu-
160 WHY MEN FIGHT
cation in any civilized country. All children
must continue to be taught how to read and
write, and some must continue to acquire the
knowledge needed for such professions as medi-
cine or law or engineering. The higher educa-
tion required for the sciences and the arts is
necessary for those to whom it is suited. Ex-
cept in history and religion and kindred mat-
ters, the actual instruction is only inadequate,
not positively harmful. The instruction might
be given in a more liberal spirit, with more at-
tempt to show its ultimate uses j and of course
much of it is traditional and dead. But in the
main it is necessary, and would have to form
a part of any educational system.
It is in history and religion and other contro-
versial subjects that the actual instruction is
positively harmful. These subjects touch the
interests by which schools are maintained ; and
the interests maintain the schools in order that
certain views on these subjects may be instilled.
History, in every country, is so taught as to
magnify that country : children learn to believe
that their own country has always been in the
right and almost always victorious, that it has
produced almost all the great men, and that it
is in all respects superior to all other countries.
EDUCATION 161
Since these beliefs are flattering, they are eas-
ily absorbed, and hardly ever dislodged from
instinct by later knowledge.
To take a simple and almost trivial example :
the facts about the battle of Waterloo are
known in great detail and with minute accu-
racy; but the facts as taught in elementary
schools will be widely different in England,
France, and Germany. The ordinary English
boy imagines that the Prussians played hardly '
any part; the ordinary German boy imagines
that Wellington was practically defeated when
the day was retrieved by Bliicher's gallantry.
If the facts were taught accurately in both
countries, national pride would not be fostered
to the same extent, neither nation would feel
so certain of victory in the event of war, and the
willingness to fight would be diminished. It is
this result which has to be prevented. Every
State wishes to promote national pride, and is
conscious that this cannot be done by unbiased
history. The defenseless children are taught
by distortions and suppressions and sugges-
tions. The false ideas as to the history of the
world which are taught in the various countries
are of a kind which encourages strife and serves
to keep alive a bigoted nationalism. If good
162 WHY MEN FIGHT
relations between States were desired, one of
the first steps ought to be to submit all teaching
of history to an international commission, which
should produce neutral textbooks free from the
patriotic bias which is now demanded every-
where.^
Exactly the same thing applies to religion.
Elementary schools are practically always in
the hands either of some religious body or of
a State which has a certain attitude towards re-
ligion. A religious body exists through the
fact that its members all have certain definite
beliefs on subjects as to which the truth is not
ascertainable. Schools conducted by religious
bodies have to prevent the young, who are often
inquiring by nature, from discovering that
1 The TitACHiNQ of Patriotism. His Majesty's
Approval.
The King has been graciously pleased to accept a copy of the
little book containing suggestions to local education authorities
and teachers in Wales as to the teaching of patriotism which
has just been issued by the Welsh Department of the Board
of Education in connection with the observance of the Na-
tional Anniversary of St. David's Day. His Private Secretary
(Lord Stamfordham) , in writing to ]Mr. Alfred T. Davies, the
Permanent Secretary of the Welsh Department, says that his
Majesty is much pleased with the contents of the book, and
trusts that the principles inculcated in it will bear good fruit
in the lives and characters of the coming generation. — Morning
Post, January 29, 1916.
EDUCATION 163
these definite beliefs are opposed by others
which are no more unreasonable, and that many
of the men best qualified to judge think that
there is no good evidence in favor of any defi.-
nite belief. When the State is militantly secu-
lar, as in France, State schools become as dog-
matic as those that are in the hands of the
Churches (I understand that the word ''God"
must not be mentioned in a French elementary
school). The result in all these cases is the
same : free inquiry is checked, and on the most
important matter in the world the child is met
with dogma or with stony silence.
It is not only in elementary education that
these evils exist. In more advanced education
they take subtler forms, and there is more at-
tempt to conceal them, but they are still pres-
ent. Eton and Oxford set a certain stamp
upon a man's mind, just as a Jesuit College
does. It can hardly be said that Eton and Ox-
ford have a conscious purpose, but they have a
purpose which is none the less strong and effec-
tive for not being formulated. In almost all
who have been through them they fjroduce a
worship of "good form," which is as destruc-
tive to life and thought as the medieval
Church. ''Good form" is quite compatible
164 WHY MEN FIGHT
with a superficial open-mindedness, a readiness
to hear all sides, and a certain urbanity towards
opponents. But it is not compatible with funda-
mental open-mindedness, or with any inward
readiness to give weight to the other side. Its
essence is the assumption that what is most im-
portant is a certain kind of behavior, a behav-
ior which minimizes friction between equals
and delicately impresses inferiors with a con-
viction of their own crudity. As a political
weapon for preserving the privileges of the rich
in a snobbish democracy it is unsurpassable.
As a means of producing an agreeable social
milieu for those who have money with no strong
beliefs or unusual desires it has some merit.
In every other respect it is abominable.
The evils of *'good form" arise from two
sources : its perfect assurance of its own right-
ness, and its belief that correct manners are
more to be desired than intellect, or artistic
creation, or vital energy, or any of the other
sources of progress in the world. Perfect as-
surance, by itself, is enough to destroy all men-
tal progress in those who have it. And when
it is combined with contempt for the angulari-
ties and awkwardnesses that are almost inva-
riably associated with great mental power, it
EDUCATION 165
becomes a source of destruction to all who come
in contact with it. ''Good form" is itself dead
and incapable of growth ; and by its attitude to
those who are without it it spreads its own death
to many who might otherwise have life. The
harm which it has done to well-to-do English-
men, and to men whose abilities have led the
well-to-do to notice them, is incalculable.
The prevention of free inquiry is unavoid-
able so long as the purpose of education is to
produce belief rather than thought, to compel
the young to hold positive opinions on doubt-
ful matters rather than to let them see the
doubtfulness and be encouraged to indepen-
dence of mind. Education ought to foster the
wish for truth, not the conviction that some
particular creed is the truth. But it is creeds
that hold men together in fighting organiza-
tions : Churches, States, political parties. It is
intensity of belief in a creed that produces ef-
ficiency in fighting: victory comes to those who
feel the strongest certainty about matters on
which doubt is the only rational attitude. To
produce this intensity of belief and this effi-
ciency in fighting, the child's nature is warped,
and its free outlook is cramped, by cultivating
inhibitions as a check to the growth of new
166 WHY MEN FIGHT
ideas. In those whose minds are not very ao
tive the result is the omnipotence of prejudice;
while the few whose thought cannot be wholly
killed become cynical, intellectually hopeless,
destructively critical, able to make all that is
living seem foolish, unable themselves to sup-
ply the creative impulses which they destroy in
others.
The success in fighting which is achieved by
suppressing freedom of thought is brief and
very worthless. In the long run mental vigor
is as essential to success as it is to a good life.
The conception of education as a form of drill,
a means of producing unanimity through slav-
ishness, is very common, and is defended chiefly
on the ground that it leads to victory. Those
who enjoy parallels from ancient history will
point to the victory of Sparta over Athens to
enforce their moral. But it is Athens that has
had power over men's thoughts and imagina-
tions, not Sparta: any one of us, if we could
be born again into some past epoch, would
rather be born an Athenian than a Spartan.
And in the modem world so much intellect is
required in practical affairs that even the ex-
ternal victory is more likely to be won by in-
EDUCATION 167
telligence than by docility. Education in cre-
dulity leads by quick stages to mental decay;
it is only by keeping alive the spirit of free in-
quiry that the indispensable minimum of prog-
ress can be achieved.
Certain mental habits are commonly instilled
by tliose who are engaged in educating: obedi-
ence and discipline, ruthlessness in the struggle
for worldly success, contempt towards oppos-
ing groups, and an unquestioning credulity, a
passive acceptance of the teacher's wisdom.
All these habits are against life. Instead of
obedience and discipline, we ought to aim
at preserving independence and impulse. In-
stead of ruthlessness, education should try to
develop justice in thought. Instead of con-
tempt, it ought to instil reverence, and the at-
tempt at understanding; towards tlie opinions
of others it ought to produce, not necessarily
acquiescence, but only such opposition as is
combined with imaginative apprehension and
a clear realization of the grounds for opposi-
tion. Instead of credulity, the object should
be to stimulate constructive doubt, the love of
mental adventure, the sense of worlds to con-
quer by enterprise and boldness in thought.
168 WHY MEN FIGHT
Contentment with the status quo, and subor-
dination of the individual pupil to political
aims, owing to the indifference to the things
of the mind, are the immediate causes of these
evils; but beneath these causes there is one
more fundamental, the fact that education is
treated as a means of acquiring power over tTie
pupil, not as a means of nourishing his own
growth. It is in this that lack of reverence
shows itself; and it is only by more reverence
that a fundamental reform can be effected.
Obedience and discipline are supposed to be
indispensable if order is to be kept in a class,
and if any instruction is to be given. To some
extent this is true; but the extent is much less
than it is thought to be by those who regard
obedience and discipline as in themselves desir-
able. Obedience, the yielding of one's will to
outside direction, is the counterpart of author-
ity. Both may be necessary in certain cases.
Refractory children, lunatics, and criminals
may require authority, and may need to be
forced to obey. But in so far as this is neces-
sary it is a misfortune: what is to be desired
is the free choice of ends with which it is not
necessary to interfere. And educational re-
formers have shown that this is far more pos-
EDUCATION 169
sible than our fathers would ever have be-
lieved/
What makes obedience seem necessary in
schools is the large classes and overworked
teachers demanded by a false economy. Those
who have no experience of teaching are inca-
pable of imagining the expense of spirit en-
tailed by any really living instruction. They
think that teachers can reasonably be expected
to work as many hours as bank clerks. Intense
fatigTie and irritable nerves are the result, and
an absolute necessity of performing the day's
task mechanically. But the task cannot be per-
formed mechanically except by exacting obedi-
ence.
If we took education seriously, and thought
it as important to keep alive the minds of chil-
dren as to secure victory in war, we should
conduct education quite differently: we should
make sure of achieving the end, even if the
expense were a hundredfold greater than it is.
To many men and women a small amount of
teaching is a delight, and can be done with a
fresh zest and life which keeps most pupils in-
1 What Madame Montessori has achieved in the way of
minimizing obedience and discipline with advantage to educa-
tion is almost miraculous.
170 WHY MEN FIGHT
terested without any need of discipline. The
few who do not become interested might be
separated from the rest, and given a different
kind of instruction. A teacher ought to have
only as much teaching as can be done, on most
days, with actual pleasure in the work, and
with an awareness of the pupil's mental needs.
The result would be a relation of friendliness
instead of hostility between teacher and pupil,
a realization on the part of most pupils that
education serves to develop their own lives and
is not merely an outside imposition, interfer-
ing with play and demanding many hours of sit-
ting still. All that is necessary to this end
is a greater expenditure of money, to secure
teachers with more leisure and with a natural
love of teaching.
Discipline, as it exists in schools, is very
largely an evil. There is a kind of discipline
which is necessary to almost all achievement,
and which perhaps is not sufficiently valued by
those who react against the purely external dis-
cipline of traditional methods. The desirable
kind of discipline is the kind that comes from
within, which consists in tlie power of pursuing
a distant object steadily, foregoing and suffer-
ing many things on the way. This involves the
EDUCATION 171
subordination of impulse to will, the power of
a directing action by large creative desires even
at moments when they are not vividly alive.
Without this, no serious ambition, good or bad,
can be realized, no consistent purpose can domi-
nate. This kind of discipline is very necessary,
but can only result from strong desires for
ends not immediately attainable, and can only
be produced by education if education fosters
such desires, which it seldom does at present.
Such discipline springs from one's own will,
not from outside authority. It is not this kind
which is sought in most schools, and it is not
this kind which seems to me an evil.
Although elementary education encourages
the undesirable discipline that consists in pas-
sive obedience, and although hardly any exist-
ing education encourages the moral discipline
of consistent self-direction, there is a certain
kind of purely mental discipline which is pro-
duced by the traditional higher education. The
kind I mean is that which enables a man to con-
centrate his thoughts at will upon any matter
that he has occasion to consider, regardless of
preoccupations or boredom or intellectual dif-
ficulty. This quality, though it has no impor-
tant intrinsic excellence, greatly enhances the
172 WHY MEN FIGHT
eflBciency of the mind as an instrument. It is
this that enables a lawyer to master the scien-
tific details of a patent case which he forgets as
soon as judgment has been given, or a civil
servant to deal quickly with many different ad-
ministrative questions in succession. It is this
that enables men to forget private cares dur-
ing business hours. In a complicated world it
is a very necessary faculty for those whose
work requires mental concentration.
Success in producing mental discipline is the
chief merit of traditional higher education. I
doubt whether it can be achieved except by com-
pelling or persuading active attention to a pre-
scribed task. It is for this reason chiefly that
I do not believe methods such as Madame Mon-
tessori's applicable when the age of childhood
has been passed. The essence of her method
consists in giving a choice of occupations, any
one of which is interesting to most children, and
all of which are instructive. The child's at-
tention is wholly spontaneous, as in play ; it en-
joys acquiring knowledge in this way, and does
not acquire any knowledge which it does not
desire. I am convinced that this is the best
method of education with young children: the
actual results make it ahnost impossible to think
EDUCATION 173
otherwise. But it is difficult to see how this
method can lead to control of attention by the
will. Many things which must be thought
about are uninteresting, and even those that are
interesting at first often become very weari-
some before they have been considered as long
as is necessary. The power of giving pro-
longed attention is very important, and it is
hardly to be widely acquired except as a habit
induced originally by outside pressure. Some
few boys, it is true, have sufficiently strong in-
tellectual desires to be willing to undergo all
that is necessary by their own initiative and
free will ; but for all others an external induce-
ment is required in order to make them learn
any subject thoroughly. There is among edu-
cational reformers a certain fear of demanding
great efforts, and in the world at large a grow-
iug unwillingness to be bored. Both these tend-
encies have their good sides, but both also have
their dangers. The mental discipline which is
jeopardized can be preserved by mere advice
without external compulsion whenever a boy^s
intellectual interest and ambition can be suffi-
ciently stimulated. A good teacher ought to
bo able to do this for any boy who is capable
of much mental achievement; and for many of
174 WHY MEN FIGHT
the others the present purely bookish education
is probably not the best. In this way, so long
as the importance of mental discipline is real-
ized, it can probably be attained, whenever it
is attainable, by appealing to the pupil's con-
sciousness of his own needs. So long as teach-
ers are not expected to succeed by this method,
it is easy for them to slip into a slothful dull-
ness, and blame their pupils when the fault is
really their o^vn.
Ruthlessness in the economic struggle will
almost unavoidably be taught in schools so long
as the economic structure of society remains
unchanged. This must be particularly the case
in middle-class schools, which depend for their
numbers upon the good opinion of parents, and
secure the good opinion of parents by adver-
tising the successes of pupils. This is one of
many ways in which the competitive organiza-
tion of the State is harmful. Spontaneous and
disinterested desire for knowledge is not at all
uncommon in the young, and might be easily
aroused in many in whom it remains latent.
But it is remorselessly checked by teachers who
think only of examinations, diplomas, and de-
grees. For the abler boys there is no time for
thought, no time for the indulgence of intellec-
EDUCATION 175
tual taste, from the moment of first going to
school until the moment of leaving the univer-
sity. From first to last there is nothing but
one long drudgery of examination tips and text-
book facts. The most intelligent, at the end,
are disgusted with learning, longing only to for-
get it and to escape into a life of action. Yet
there, as before, the economic machine holds
them prisoners, and all their spontaneous de-
sires are bruised and thwarted.
The examination system, and the fact that
instruction is treated mainly as training for a
livelihood, leads the young to regard knowledge,
from a purely utilitarian point of view, as the
j*oad to money, not as the gateway to wisdom.
This would not matter so much if it affected
only those who have no genuine intellectual
interests. But unfortunately it affects most
those whose intellectual interests are strongest,
since it is upon them that the pressure of ex-
aminations falls with most severity. To them
most, but to all in some degree, education ap-
pears as a means of acquiring superiority over
others ; it is infected through and through with
ruthlessness and glorification of social inequal-
ity. Any free, disinterested consideration
shows that, whatever inequalities might remain
176 WHY MEN FIGHT
in a Utopia, the actual inequalities are almost
all contrary to justice. But our educational
system tends to conceal this from all except the
failures, since those who succeed are on the way
to profit by the inequalities, with every encour-
agement from the men who have directed their
education.
Passive acceptance of the teacher's wisdom
is easy to most boys and girls. It involves no
effort of independent thought, and seems ra-
tional because the teacher knows more than his
pupils ; it is moreover the way to win the favor
of the teacher unless he is a very exceptional
man. Yet the habit of passive acceptance is a
disastrous one in later life. It causes men to
seek a leader, and to accept as a loader who-
ever is established in that position. It makes
the power of Churches, Governments, party
caucuses, and all the other organizations by
which plain men are misled into supporting old
systems which are harmful to the nation and to
themselves. It is possible that there would not
be much independence of thought even if educa-
tion did everything to promote it; but there
would certainly be more than there is at pres-
ent. If the object were to make pupils think,
rather than to make them accept certain con-
EDUCATION 177
elusions, education would be conducted quite
differently: there would be less rapidity of in-
struction and more discussion, more occasions
when pupils were encouraged to express them-
selves, more attempt to make education con-
cern itself with matters in which the pupils felt
some interest.
Above all, there would be an endeavor to
rouse and stimulate the love of mental adven-
ture. The world in which we live is various
and astonishing: some of the things that seem
plainest grow more and more difficult the more
they are considered; other things, which might
have been thought quite impossible to discover,
have nevertheless been laid bare by genius and
industry. The powers of thought, the vast
regions which it can master, the much more vast
regions wliicli it can only dimly suggest to im-
agination, give to those whose minds have
traveled beyond the daily round an amazing
richness of material, an escape from the triv-
iality and wearisomeness of familiar routine,
by which the whole of life is filled with interest,
and the prison walls of the commonplace are
broken down. The same love of adventure
which takes men to the South Pole, the same
passion for a conclusive trial of strength which
178 WHY MEN FIGHT
leads some men to welcome war, can find in
creative thought an outlet which is neither
wasteful nor cruel, but increases the dignity of
man by incarnating in life some of that shining
splendor which the human spirit is bringing
down out of the unknown. To give this joy, in
a greater or less measure, to all who are capable
of it, is the supreme end for which the education
of the mind is to be valued.
It will be said that the joy of mental adven-
^ ture must be rare, that there are few who can
appreciate it, and that ordinary education can
take no account of so aristocratic a good. I do
not believe this. The joy of mental adventure
is far commoner in the young than in grown
men and women. Among children it is very
common, and grows naturally out of the period
of make-believe and fancy. It is rare in later
life because everything is done to kill it during
education. Men fear thought as they fear noth-
ing else on earth — more than ruin, more even
than death. Thought is subversive and revolu-
tionary, destructive and terrible; thought is
merciless to privilege, established institutions,
and comfortable habits ; thought is anarchic and
lawless, indifferent to authority, careless of the
well-tried wisdom of the ages. Thought looks
EDUCATION 179
into the pit of hell and is not afraid. It sees
man, a feeble speck, surrounded by unfathom-
able depths of silence; yet it bears itself
proudly, as unmoved as if it were lord of the
universe. Thought is great and swift and free,
the light of the world, and the chief glory of
man.
But if thought is to become the possession of
many, not the privilege of the few, we must
have done with fear. It is fear that holds men
back — fear lest their cherished beliefs should
prove delusions, fear lest the institutions by
which they live should prove harmful, fear lest
they themselves should prove less worthy of
respect than they have supposed themselves
to be. ''Should the working man think freely
about property? Then what will become of us,
the rich ? Should young men and young women
think freely about sex ? Then what will become
of morality? Should soldiers think freely
about war? Then what will become of mili-
tary discipline? Away with thought! Back
into the shades of prejudice, lest property,
morals, and war should be endangered ! Better
men should be stupid, slothful, and oppressive
than that their thoughts should be free. For
if their thoughts were free they might not think
180 WHY MEN FIGHT
as we do. And at all costs this disaster must
be averted." So the opponents of thought
argue in the unconscious depths of their souls.
And so they act in their churches, their schools,
and their universities.
No institution inspired by fear can further
life. Hope, not fear, is the creative principle
in human affairs. All that has made man great
has sprung from the attempt to secure what is
good, not from the struggle to avert what was
thought evil. It is because modern education
is so seldom inspired by a great hope that it so
seldom achieves a gTeat result. The wish to
preserve the past rather than the hope of cre-
ating the future dominates the minds of those
who control the teaching of the young. Educa-
tion should not aim at a passive awareness of
dead facts, but at an activity directed towards
the world that our efforts are to create. It
should be inspired, not by a regretful hankering
after the extinct beauties of Greece and the
Renaissance, but by a shining vision of the so-
ciety that is to be, of the triumphs that thought
will achieve in the time to come, and of the ever-
widening horizon of man's survey over the uni-
verse. Those who are taught in this spirit will
EDUCATION 181
be filled with life and hope and joy, able to bear
their part in bringing to mankind a future less
somber than the past, with faith in the glory
that human effort can create.
VI
IVIARRIAGE AND THE POPULATION
QUESTION
THE influence of the Christian religion on
daily life has decayed very rapidly
throughout Europe during the last hundred
years. Not only has the proportion of nominal
believers declined, but even among those who
believe the intensity and dogmatism of belief is
enormously diminished. But there is one social
institution which is still profoundly affected by
the Christian tradition — I mean the institution
of marriage. The law and public opinion as re-
gards marriage are dominated even now to a
very great extent by the teachings of the
Church, which continue to influence in this way
the lives of men, women, and children in their
most intimate concerns.
It is marriage as a political institution that I
wish to consider, not marriage as a matter for
the private morality of each individual. Mar-
riage is regulated by law, and is regarded as a
182
THE POPULATION QUESTION 183
matter in which the community has a right to
interfere. It is only the action of the com-
munity in regard to marriage that I am con-
cerned to discuss: whether the present action
furthers the life of the community, and if not,
in what ways it ought to be changed.
There are two questions to be asked in regard
to any marriage system : first, how it affects the
development and character of the men and
women concerned ; secondly, what is its influence
on the propagation and education of children.
These two questions are entirely distinct, and a
system may well be desirable from one of these
two points of view when it is very undesirable
from the other. I propose first to describe the
present English law and public opinion and
practice in regard to the relations of the
sexes, then to consider their effects as re-
gards children, and finally to consider how
these effects, which are bad, could be obviated
by a system which would also have a better in-
fluence on the character and development of
men and women.
The law in England is based upon the ex-
pectation that the great majority of marriages
will be lifelong. A marriage can only be dis-
solved if either the wife or the husband, but not
184 WHY MEN FIGHT
both, can be proved to have committed adultery.
In case the husband is the ''guilty party," he
must also be guilty of cruelty or desertion.
Even when these conditions are fulfilled, in
practice only the well-to-do can be divorced, be-
cause the expense is very great.^ A marriage
cannot be dissolved for insanity or crime, or for
cruelty, however abominable, or for desertion,
or for adultery by both parties ; and it cannot
be dissolved for any cause whatever if both hus-
band and wife have agreed that they wish it dis-
solved. In all these cases the law regards the
man and woman as bound together for life. A
special official, the King's Proctor, is employed
to prevent divorce when there is collusion and
when both parties have committed adultery.^
1 There was a provision for suits in forma pauperis, but for
various reasons this provision was nearly useless; a new and
Bomewhat better provision has recently been made, but is still
very far from satisfactory.
2 The following letter {Neic Statesman, December 4, 1915)
illustrates the nature of his activities: —
DiVOBCE AND Wab.
To the Editor of the "New Statesman."
Sib, — The following episodes may be of interest to your
readers. Under the new facilities for divorce offered to the
London poor, a poor woman recently obtained a decree nisi for
divorce against her husband, who had often covered her body
with bruises, infected her with a dangerous disease, and com-
THE POPULATION QUESTION 185
This interesting system embodies the opinions
held by the Church of England some fifty years
ago, and by most Nonconformists then and
now. It rests npon the assumption that adult-
ery is sin, and that when this sin has been com-
mitted by one party to the marriage, the other
is entitled to revenge if he is rich. But when
both have committed the same sin, or when the
one who has not committed it feels no righteous
anger, the right to revenge does not exist. As
soon as this point of view is understood, the
law, which at first seems somewhat strange,
is seen to be perfectly consistent. It rests,
broadly speaking, upon four propositions: (1)
that sexual intercourse outside marriage is sin;
(2) that resentment of adultery by the "inno-
mitted bigamy. By this bigamous marriage the husband had
ten illegitimate children. In order to prevent this decree being
made absolute, the Treasury spent at least £200 of the taxes
in briefing a leading counsel and an eminent junior counsel
and in bringing about ten witnesses from a city a hundred
miles away to prove that this woman had committed casual
acts of adultery in 1895 and 1898. The net result is that this
woman will probably be forced by destitution into further
adultery, and that the husband will be able to treat his mistress
exactly as he treated his wife, with impunity, so far as dis-
ease is concerned. In nearly every other civilized country the
marriage would have been dissolved, the children could have
been legitimated by subsequent marriage, and the lawyers
employed by the Treasury would not have earned the large fees
186 WHY MEN FIGHT
cent" party is a righteous horror of wrong-do-
ing; (3) that his resentment, but nothing else,
may be rightly regarded as making a common
life impossible; (4) that the poor have no right
to fine feelings. The Church of England, under
the influence of the High Church, has ceased to
believe the third of these propositions, but it
still believes the first and second, and does noth-
ing actively to show that it disbelieves the
fourth.
The penalty for infringing the marriage law
is partly financial, but depends mainly upon
they did from the community for an achievement which seems
to most other lawyers thoroughly anti-social in its effects. If
any lawyers really feel that society is benefited by this sort of
litigation, why cannot they give their services for nothing,
like the lawyers who assisted the wife? If we are to practise
economy in war-time, why cannot the King's Proctor be satis-
fied with a junior counsel only? The fact remains that many
persons situated like the husband and wife in question prefer
to avoid having illegitimate children, and the birth-rate ac-
cordingly suffers.
The other episode is this. A divorce was obtained by Mr.
A. against Mrs. A. and Mr. B. Mr. B. was married and Mrs.
B., on hearing of the divorce proceedings, obtained a decree
nisi against Mr. B. Mr. B. is at any moment liable to be
called to the Front, but Mrs. B. has for some months declined
to make the decree nisi absolute, and this prevents him marry-
ing Mrs. A., as he feels in honor bound to do. Yet the law
allows any petitioner, male or female, to obtain a decree nisi
and to refrain from making it absolute for motives which
are probably discreditable. The Divorce Law Commissioners
THE POPULATION QUESTION 187
public opinion. A rather small section of the
public genuinely believes that sexual relations
outside marriage are wicked ; those who believe
this are naturally kept in ignorance of the con-
duct of friends who feel otherwise, and are able
to go through life not knowing how others live
or what others think. This small section of
the public regards as depraved not only actions,
but opinions, which are contrary to its prin-
ciples. It is able to control the professions of
politicians through its influence on elections,
and the votes of the House of Lords through the
presence of the Bishops. By these means it
governs legislation, and makes any change in
the marriage law almost impossible. It is able,
also, to secure in most cases that a man who
openly infringes the marriage law shall be dis-
strongly condemned this state of things, and the hardship in
question is immensely aggravated in war-time, just as the war
has given rise to many cases of bigamy owing to the chivalrous
desire of our soldiers to obtain for the de facto wife and family
the separation allowance of the State. The legal wife is often
united by similar ties to anotlier man. I commend these facts
to consideration in your columns, having regard to your fre-
quent complaints of a falling birth-rate. The iniquity of our
marriage laws is an important contributory cause to the fall
in question.
Yours, etc.,
E. S. P. Haynks.
November 2dth.
188 WHY MEN FIGHT
missed from his employment or ruined by the
defection of his customers or clients. A doctor
or lawj^er, or a tradesman in a country town,
cannot make a living, nor can a politician be in
Parliament, if he is publicly known to be "im-
moral." Whatever a man's own conduct may
be, he is not likely to defend publicly those who
have been branded, lest some of the odium
should fall on him. Yet so long as a man has
not been branded, few men will object to him,
whatever they may know privately of his be-
havior in these respects.
Owing to the nature of the penalty, it falls
very unequally upon different professions. An
actor or journalist usually escapes all punish-
ment. An urban workingman can almost al-
ways do as he likes. A man of private means,
unless he wishes to take part in public life, need
not suffer at all if he has chosen his friends
suitably. Women, who formerly suffered more
than men, now suffer less, since there are large
-sircles in which no social penalty is inflicted, and
a very rapidly increasing number of women who
do not believe the conventional code. But for
the majority of men outside the working classes
the penalty is still sufficiently severe to be pro-
hibitive.
THE POPULATION QUESTION 189
The result of this state of things is a wide-
spread but very flimsy hj^ocrisy, which allows
many infractions of the code, and forbids only
those which must become public. A man may
not live openly with a woman who is not his
wife, an unmarried woman may not have a
child, and neither man nor woman may get into
the divorce court. Subject to these restric-
tions, there is in practice very great freedom.
It is this practical freedom which makes the
state of the law seem tolerable to those who
do not accept the principles upon which it is
based. What has to be sacrificed to propitiate
the holders of strict views is not pleasure, but
only children and a common life and truth and
honesty. It cannot be supposed that this is
the result desired by those who maintain the
code, but equally it cannot be denied that this
is the result which they do in fact achieve. Ex-
tra-matrimonial relations which do not lead to
children and are accompanied by a certain
amount of deceit remain unpunished, but severe
penalties fall on those which are honest or lead
to children.
Within marriage, the expense of children
leads to continually greater limitation of fami-
lies. The limitation is greatest among those
190 WHY MEN FIGHT
who have most sense of parental responsibility
and most wish to educate their children well,
since it is to them that the expense of children
is most severe. But although the economic
motive for limiting families has hitherto prob-
ably been the strongest, it is being continually
reinforced by another. Women are acquiring
freedom — not merely outward and formal free-
dom, but inward freedom, enabling them to
think and feel genuinely, not according to re-
ceived maxims. To the men who have prated
confidently of women's natural instincts, the re-
sult would be surprising if they were aware of
it. Very large numbers of women, when they
are sufiSciently free to think for themselves, do
not desire to have children, or at most desire
one child in order not to miss the experience
which a child brings. There are women who
are intelligent and active-minded who resent
the slavery to the body which is involved in hav-
ing children. There are ambitious women, who
desire a career which leaves no time for chil-
dren. There are women who love pleasure and
gaiety, and women who love the admiration of
men; such women will at least postpone child-
bearing until their youth is past. All these
classes of women are rapidly becoming more
THE POPULATION QUESTION 191
numerous, and it may be safely assumed that
their numbers will continue to increase for
many years to come.
It is too soon to judge with any confidence
as to the effects of women's freedom upon pri-
vate life and upon the life of the nation. But I
think it is not too soon to see that it will be
profoundly different from the effect expected
by the pioneers of the women's movement.
Men have invented, and women in the past have
often accepted, a theory that women are the
guardians of the race, that their life centers in
motherhood, that all their instincts and desires
are directed, consciously or unconsciously, to
this end. Tolstoy's Natacha illustrates this
theory: she is charming, gay, liable to passion,
until she is married ; then she becomes merely a
virtuous mother, without any mental life. This
result has Tolstoy's entire approval. It must
be admitted that it is very desirable from the
point of view of the nation, whatever we may
think of it in relation to private life. It must
also be admitted that it is probably common
among women who are physically vigorous and
not highly civilized. But in countries like
France and England it is becoming increasingly
rare. More and more women find motherhood
192 WHY MEN FIGHT
unsatisfying, not what their needs demand.
And more and more there comes to be a conflict
between their personal development and the fu-
ture of the community. It is difficult to know
what ought to be done to mitigate this conflict,
but I think it is worth while to see what are
likely to be its effects if it is not mitigated.
Owing to the combination of economic pru-
dence with the increasing freedom of women,
there is at present a selective birth-rate of a very
singular kind.^ In France the population is prac-
tically stationary, and in England it is rapidly
becoming so ; this means that some sections are
dwindling while others are increasing. Unless
some change occurs, the sections that are
dwindling will practically become extinct, and
the population will be almost wholly replenished
from the sections that are now increasing.^
1 Some interesting facts were given by Mr. Sidney Webb in
two letters to The Times, October 11 and 16, 1906; there is also
a Fabian tract on the subject: "The Decline in the Birth-
Rate," by Sidney Webb (Xo. 131). Some further information
may be found in "The Declining Birth-Rate: Its National and
International Significance," by A. Newsholme, M.D., M.R.C.S.
(Cassell, 1911).
2 The fall in the death-rate, and especially in the infant
mortality, which has occurred concurrently with the fall in
the birth-rate, has hitherto been sufficiently great to allow the
population of Great Britain to go on increasing. But there
THE POPULATION QUESTION 193
The sections that are dwindling include the
whole middle-class and the skilled artisans.
The sections that are increasing are the very
poor, the shiftless and drunken, the feeble-
minded — feeble-minded women, especially, are
apt to be very prolific. There is an increase in
those sections of the population which still
actively believe the Catholic religion, such as
the Irish and the Bretons, because the Catholic
religion forbids limitation of families. Within
the classes that are dwindling, it is the best ele-
ments that are dwindling most rapidly. Wouk-
ing-class boys of exceptional ability rise, by
means of scholarships, into the professional
class; they naturally desire to marry into the
class to which they belong by education, not into
the class from which they spring; but as they
have no money beyond what they earn, they can-
not marry young, or afford a large family. The
result is that in each generation the best ele-
ments are extracted from the working classes
and artificially sterilized, at least in comparison
with those who are loft. In the professional
classes the young women who have initiative^
are obvious limits to tlic fall of the doath-rate, whereas the
birth-rate mif;ht easify fall to a point which would maJce an
actual diminution of numbers unavoidable.
194 WHY MEN FIGHT
energy, or intelligence are as a rule not in-
clined to marry young, or to have more than one
or two children when they do marry. Marriage
has been in the past the only obvious means of
livelihood for women; pressure from parents
and fear of becoming an old maid combined to
force many women to marry in spite of a com-
plete absence of inclination for the duties of a
wife. But now a young woman of ordinary in-
telligence can easily earn her own living, and
can acquire freedom and experience without the
permanent ties of a husband and a family of
children. The result is that if she marries she
marries late.
For these reasons, if an average sample of
children were taken out of the population of
England, and their parents were examined, it
would be found that prudence, energy, intellect,
and enlightenment were less common among
the parents than in the population in general;
while shiftlessness, feeble-mindedness, stupid-
ity, and superstition were more common than
in the population in general. It would be found
that those who are prudent or energetic or in-
telligent or enlightened actually fail to repro-
duce their own numbers ; that is to say, they do
not on the average have as many as two children
THE POPULATION QUESTION 195
each who survive infancy. On the other hand,
those who have the opposite qualities have,
on the average, more than two childnen each,
and more than reproduce their own num-
bers.
It is impossible to estimate the effect which
this will have upon the character of the popula-
tion without a much greater knowledge of
heredity than exists at present. But so long as
children continue to live with their parents, pa-
rental example and early education must have
a great influence in developing their character,
even if we leave heredity entirely out of account.
Whatever may be thought of genius, there can
be no doubt that intelligence, whether through
heredity or through education, tends to run in
families, and that the decay of the families in
which it is common must lower the mental
standard of the population. It seems unques-
tionable that if our economic system and our
moral standards remain unchanged, there will
be, in the next two or three generations, a rapid
change for the worse in the character of the
population in all civilized countries, and an
actual diminution of numbers in the most civil-
ized.
The diminution of numbers, in all likelihood,
196 WHY MEN FIGHT
will rectify itself in time tlirougli the elimina-
tion of those characteristics which at present
lead to a small birth-rate. Men and w^omen who
can still believe the Catholic faith will have a
biological advantage ; gradually a race will grow
up which will be impervious to all the assaults
of reason, and will believe imperturbably that
limitation of families leads to hell-fire. Women
who have mental interests, who care about art
or literature or politics, who desire a career or
who value their liberty, will gradually grow
rarer, and be more and more replaced by a
placid maternal type w^hich has no interests out-
side the home and no dislike of the burden of
motherhood. This result, which ages of mascu-
line domination have vainly striven to achieve,
is likely to be the final outcome of women's
emancipation and of their attempt to enter upon
a wider sphere than that to which the jealousy
of men confined them in the past.
Perhaps, if the facts could be ascertained,
it would be found that something of the same
kind occurred in the Roman Empire. The de-
cay of energy and intelligence during the sec-
ond, third, and fourth centuries of our era has
always remained more or less mysterious. But
there is reason to think that then, as now, the
THE POPULATION QUESTION 197
best elements of the population in eacli genera-
tion failed to reproduce themselves, and that
the least vigorous were, as a rule, those to whom
the continuance of the race was due. One might
be tempted to suppose that civilization, when it
has reached a certain height, becomes unstable,
and tends to decay through some inherent weak-
ness, some failure to adapt the life of instinct to
the intense mental life of a period of high cul-
ture. But such vague theories have always
something glib and superstitious which makes
them worthless as scientific explanations or as
guides to action. It is not by a literary for-
mula, but by detailed and complex thought, that
a true solution is to be found.
Let us first be clear as to what we desire.
There is no importance in an increasing popula-
tion; on the contrary, if the population of Eu-
rope were stationary, it would be much easier to
promote economic reform and to avoid war.
What is regrettable at present is not the decline
of the birth-rate in itself, but the fact that the
decline is greatest in the best elements of the
population. There is reason, however, to fear
in the future three bad results : first, an absolute
decline in the numbers of English, French, and
Germans; secondly, as a consequence of this
198 WHY MEN FIGHT
decline, their subjugation by less civilized races
and the extinction of their tradition; thirdly, a
revival of their numbers on a much lower plane
of civilization, after generations of selection of
those who have neither intelligence nor fore-
sight. If this result is to be avoided, the pres-
ent unforunate selectiveness of the birth-rate
must be somehow stopped.
The problem is one which applies to the whole
of Western civilization. There is no difficulty
in discovering a theoretical solution, but there
is great difficulty in persuading men to adopt a
solution in practice, because the effects to be
feared are not immediate and the subject is one
upon which people are not in the habit of using
their reason. If a rational solution is ever
adopted, the cause will probably be interna-
tional rivalry. It is obvious that if one State —
say Germany — adopted a rational means of
dealing with the matter, it would acquire an
enormous advantage over other States unless
they did likewise. After the war, it is possible
that population questions will attract more at-
tention than they did before, and it is likely that
they will be studied from the point of view
of international rivalry. This motive, unlike
reason and humanity, is perhaps strong enough
THE POPULATION QUESTION 199
to overcome men's objections to a scientific
treatment of the birth-rate.
In the past, at most periods and in most so-
cieties, the instincts of men and women led of
themselves to a more than sufiScient birth-rate ;
Malthus's statement of the population question
had been true enough up to the time when he
wrote. It is still true of barbarous and semi-
civilized races, and of the worst elements among
civilized races. But it has become false as re-
gards the more civilized half of the population
in Western Europe and America. Among
them, instinct no longer suffices to keep numbers
even stationary.
We may sum up the reasons for this in order
of importance, as follows : —
1. The expense of children is very great if
parents are conscientious.
2. An increasing number of women desire to
have no children, or only one or two, in order
not to be hampered in their own careers.
3. Owing to the excess of women, a large
number of women remain unmarried. These
women, though not debarred in practice from
relations with men, are debarred by the code
from having children. In this class are to be
found an enormous and increasing number of
200 WHY MEN FIGHT
women who earn their own living as typists, in
shops, or otherwise. The war has opened many
emiDloyments to women from which they were
formerly excluded, and this change is probably
only in part temporary.
If the sterilizing of the best parts of the popu-
lation is to be arrested, the first and most press-
ing necessity is the removal of the economic
motives for limiting families. The expense of
children ought to be borne wholly by the com-
munity. Their food and clothing and education
ought to be provided, not only to the very poor
as a matter of charity, but to all classes as a
matter of public interest. In addition to this, a
woman who is capable of earning money, and
who abandons wage-earning for motherhood,
ought to receive from the State as nearly as pos-
sible what she would have received if she had not
had children. The only condition attached to
State maintenance of the mother and the chil-
dren should be that both parents are physically
and mentally sound in all ways likely to affect
the children. Those who are not sound should
not be debarred from having children, but
should continue, as at present, to bear the ex-
pense of children themselves.
It ought to be recognized that the law is only
THE POPULATION QUESTION 201
concerned with marriage through the question
of children, and should be indifferent to what
is called "morality," which is based upon cus-
tom and texts of the Bible, not upon any real
consideration of the needs of the community.
The excess women, who at present are in every
way discouraged from having children, ought
no longer to be discouraged. If the State is to
undertake the expense of children, it has the
right, on eugenic grounds, to know who the
father is, and to demand a certain stability in a
union. But there is no reason to demand or
expect a lifelong stability, or to exact any
ground for divorce beyond mutual consent.
This would make it possible for the women who
must at present remain unmarried to have chil-
dren if they wished it. In this way an enor-
mous and unnecessary waste would be pre-
vented, and a great deal of needless unhappiness
would be avoided.
There is no necessity to begin such a system
all at once. It might be begun tentatively
with certain exceptionally desirable sections of
the community. It might then be extended
gradually, with the experience of its working
which had been derived from the first experi-
ment. If the birth-rate were very much in-
202 WHY MEN FIGHT
creased, the eugenic conditions exacted might
be made more strict.
There are of course various practical diffi-
culties in the way of such a scheme : the opposi-
tion of the Church and the upholders of tradi-
tional moralit}^, the fear of weakening parental
responsibility, and the expense. All these, how-
ever, might be overcome. But there remains
one difficulty which it seems impossible to over-
come completely in England, and that is, that
the whole conception is anti-democratic, since it
regards some men as better than others, and
would demand that the State should bestow a
better education upon the children of some men
than upon the children of others. This is con-
trary to all the principles of progressive politics
in England. For this reason it can hardly be
expected that any such method of dealing with
the population question will ever be adopted in
its entirety in this country. Something of the
sort may well be done in Germany, and if so, it
will assure German hegemony as no merely mili-
tary victory could do. But among ourselves we
can only hope to see it adopted in some partial,
piecemeal fashion, and probably only after a
change in the economic structure of society
which will remove most of the artificial inequali-
THE POPULATION QUESTION 203
ties that progressive parties are rightly trying
to diminish.
So far we have been considering the question
of the reproduction of the race, rather than the
effect of sex relations in fostering or hindering
the development of men and women. From the
point of view of the race, what seems needed is
a complete removal of the economic burdens due
to children from all parents who are not phys-
ically or mentally unfit, and as much freedom
in the law as is compatible with public knowl-
edge of paternity. Exactly the same changes
seem called for when the question is considered
from the point of view of the men and women
concerned.
In regard to marriage, as with all the other
traditional bonds between human beings, a very
extraordinary change is taking place, wholly
inevitable, wholly necessary as a stage in the de-
velopment of a new life, but by no means wholly
satisfactory until it is completed. All the tra-
ditional bonds were based on authority — of the
king, the feudal baron, the priest, the father, the
husband. All these bonds, just because they
were based on authority, are dissolving or al-
ready dissolved, and the creation of other bonds
to take their place is as yet very incomplete.
204 WHY MEN FIGHT
For this reason human relations have at present
an unusual triviality, and do less than they did
formerly to break down the hard walls of the
Ego.
The ideal of marriage in the past depended
upon the authority of the husband, which was
admitted as a right by the wife. The husband
was free, the wife was a willing slave. In all
matters which concerned husband and wife
jointly, it was taken for granted that the hus-
band's fiat should be final. The wife was ex-
pected to be faithful, while the husband, except
in very religious societies, was only expected to
throw a decent veil over his infidelities. Fami-
lies could not be limited except by continence,
and a wife had no recognized right to demand
continence, however she might suffer from fre-
quent children.
So long as the husband's right to authority
was unquestioningly believed by both men and
women, this system was fairly satisfactory, and
afforded to both a certain instinctive fulfilment
which is rarely achieved among educated peo-
ple now. Only one will, the husband's, had to
be taken into account, and there was no need of
the difl&cult adjustments required when common
decisions have to be reached by two equal wills.
THE POPULATION QUESTION 205
The wife's desires were not treated seriously
enough to enable them to thwart the husband's
needs, and the wife herself, unless she was ex-
ceptionally selfish, did not seek self-develop-
ment, or see in marriage anything but an op-
portunity for duties. Since she did not seek or
expect much happiness, she suffered less, when
happiness was not attained, than a woman does
now: her suffering contained no element of in-
dignation or surprise, and did not readily turn
into bitterness and sense of injury.
The saintly, self-sacrificing woman whom our
ancestors praised had her place in a certain
organic conception of societ}^, the conception of
the ordered hierarchy of authorities which domi-
nated the Middle Ages. She belongs to the same
order of ideas as the faithful servant, the loyal
subject, and the orthodox son of the Church.
This whole order of ideas has vanished from the
civilized word, and it is to be hoped that it has
vanished for ever, in spite of the fact that the
society w^iicli it produced was vital and in some
ways full of nobility. The old order has been
destroyed by the new ideals of justice and
liberty, beginning with religion, passing on to
politics, and reaching at last the private rela-
tions of marriage and the family. When once
206 WHY MEN FIGHT
the question lias been asked, "Why should a
woman submit to a man!" when once the an-
swers derived from tradition and the Bible have
ceased to satisfy, there is no longer any possi-
bility of maintaining the old subordination. To
every man who has the power of thinking im-
personally and freely, it is obvious, as soon as
the question is asked, that the rights of women
are precisely the same as the rights of men.
Whatever dangers and difficulties, whatever
temporary chaos, may be incurred in the transi-
tion to equality, the claims of reason are so in-
sistent and so clear that no opposition to them
can hope to be long successful.
Mutual liberty, which is now demanded, is
making the old form of marriage impossible.
But a new form, which shall be an equally good
vehicle for instinct, and an equal help to spirit-
tual growth, has not yet been developed. For
the present, women who are conscious of liberty
as something to be preserved are also conscious
of the difficulty of preserving it. The wish for
mastery is an ingredient in most men's sexual
passions, especially in those which are strong
and serious. It survives in many men whose
theories are entirely opposed to despotism.
The result is a fight for liberty on the one side
THE POPULATION QUESTION 207
and for life on the other. Women feel that they
must protect their individuality ; men feel, often
very dumbly, that the repression of instinct
which is demanded of them is incompatible with
vigor and initiative. The clash of these oppos-
ing moods makes all real mingling of personali-
ties impossible; the man and woman remain
hard, separate units, continually asking them-
selves whether anything of value to themselves
is resulting from the union. The effect is that
relations tend to become trivial and temporary,
a pleasure rather than the satisfaction of a
profound need, an excitement, not an attain-
ment. The fundamental loneliness into which
we are born remains untouched, and the hunger
for inner companionship remains unappeased.
No cheap and easy solution of this trouble
is possible. It is a trouble which affects most
the most civilized men and women, and is an out-
come of the increasing sense of individuality
which springs inevitably from mental progress.
I doubt if there is any radical cure except in
some form of religion, so firmly and sincerely
believed as to dominate even the life of instinct.
The individual is not the end and aim of his own
being: outside the individual, there is the com-
munity, the future of mankind, the immensity
208 WHY MEN FIGHT
of the universe in which all our hopes and fears
are a mere pin-point. A man and woman with
reverence for the spirit of life in each other,
with an equal sense of their own unimportance
beside the w^hole life of man, may become com-
rades without interference with liberty, and
may achieve the union of instinct without do-
ing violence to the life of mind and spirit. As
religion dominated the old form of marriage, so
religion must dominate the new. But it must
be a new religion, based upon liberty, justice,
and love, not upon authority and law and hell-
lire.
A bad effect upon the relations of men and
w^omen has been produced by the romantic
movement, through directing attention to what
ought to be an incidental good, not the purpose
for which relations exist. Love is what gives
intrinsic value to a marriage, and, like art and
thought, it is one of the supreme things w4iich
make human life worth preserving. But though
there is no good marriage without love, the best
marriages have a purpose which goes beyond
love. The love of two people for each other is
too circumscribed, too separate from the com-
munity, to be by itself the main purpose of a
good life. It is not in itself a sufficient source
THE POPULATION QUESTION 209
of activities, it is not sufficiently prospective, to
make an existence in which ultimate satisfaction
can be found. It brings its great moments, and
then its times which are less great, which are
unsatisfying because they are less great. It
becomes, sooner or later, retrospective, a tomb
of dead joys, not a well-spring of new life. This
evil is inseparable from any purpose which is
to be achieved in a single supreme emotion.
The only adequate purposes are those which
stretch out into the future, which can never be
fully achieved, but are always growing, and in-
finite with the infinity of human endeavor. And
it is only when love is linked to some infinite
purpose of this kind that it can have the serious-
ness and depth of which it is capable.
For the great majority of men and women
seriousness in sex relations is most likely to
be achieved through children. Children are to
most people rather a need than a desire: in-
stinct is as a rule only consciously directed to-
wards what used to lead to children. The desire
for children is apt to develop in middle life,
when the adventure of one's own existence is
past, when the friendships of youth seem less
important than they once did, when the prospect
of a lonely old age begins to terrify, and the
210 WHY MEN FIGHT
feeling of having no share in the future becomes
oppressive. Then those who, while they were
young, have had no sense that children would
be a fulfilment of their needs, begin to regret
their former contempt for the normal, and to
envy acquaintances whom before they had
thought humdrum. But owing to economic
causes it is often impossible for the young, and
especially for the best of the young, to have
children without sacrificing things of vital im-
portance to their own lives. And so youth
passes, and the need is felt too late.
Needs without corresponding desires have
grown increasingly common as life has grown
more different from that primitive existence
from which our instincts are derived, and to
which, rather than to that of the present day,
they are still very largely adapted. An un-
satisfied need produces, in the end, as much
pain and as much distortion of character as if
it had been associated with a conscious desire.
For this reason, as well as for the sake of the
race, it is important to remove the present eco-
nomic inducements to childlessness. There is
no necessity whatever to urge parenthood upon
those who feel disinclined to it, but there is
/
THE POPULATION QUESTION 211
necessity not to place obstacles in the way of
those who have no such disinclination.
In speaking of the importance of preserving
seriousness in the relations of men and women,
I do not mean to suggest that relations which
are not serious are always harmful. Tradi-
tional morality has erred by laying stress on
what ought not to happen, rather than on what
ought to happen. What is important is that
men and women should find, sooner or later, the
best relation of which their natures are capable.
It is not always possible to know in advance
what will be the best, or to be sure of not missing
the best if everything that can be doubted is re-
jected. Among primitive races, a man wants a
female, a woman wants a male, and there is no
such differentiation as makes one a much more
suitable companion than another. But with the
increasing complexity of disposition that civil-
ized life brings, it becomes more and more diffi-
cult to find the man or woman who will bring
happiness, and more and more necessary to
make it not too difficult to acknowledge a mis-
take.
The present marriage law is an inheritance
from a simpler age, and is supported, in the
212 WHY MEN FIGHT
main, by unreasoning fears and by contempt
for all that is delicate and difficult in the life of
the mind. Owing to the law, large numbers of
men and women are condemned, so far as their
ostensible relations are concerned, to the so-
ciety of an utterly uncongenial companion, with
all the embittering consciousness that escape is
practically impossible. In these circumstances,
happier relations with others are often sought,
but they have to be clandestine, without a com-
mon life, and without children. Apart from the
great evil of being clandestine, such relations
have some almost inevitable drawbacks. They
are liable to emphasize sex unduly, to be excit-
ing and disturbing; and it is hardly possible that
they should bring a real satisfaction of instinct.
It is the combination of love, children, and a
common life that makes the best relation be-
tween a man and a woman. The law at present
confines children and a common life within the
bonds of monogamy, but it cannot confine love.
By forcing many to separate love from children
and a common life, the law cramps their J.ives,
prevents them from reaching the full measure
of their possible development, and inflicts a
wholly unnecessary torture upon those who are
not content to become frivolous.
THE POPULATION QUESTION 213
To sum up : The present state of the law, of
public opinion, and of our economic system is
tending to degrade the quality of the race, by
making the worst half of the population the par-
ents of more than half of the next generation.
At the same time, women's claim to liberty is
making the old form of marriage a hindrance to
the development of both men and women. A
new system is required, if the European nations
are not to degenerate, and if the relations of
men and women are to have the strong happi-
ness and organic seriousness which belonged to
the best marriages in the past. The new sys-
tem must be based upon the fact that to produce
children is a service to the State, and ought not
to expose parents to heavy pecuniary penal-
ties. It will have to recognize that neither the
law nor public opinion should concern itself
with the private relations of men and women,
except where children are concerned. It ought
to remove the inducements to make relations
clandestine and childless. It ought to admit
that, although lifelong monogamy is best when
it is successful, the increasing complexity of our
needs makes it increasingly often a failure for
which divorce is the best preventive. Here, as
elsewhere, liberty is the basis of political wis-
214 WHY MEN FIGHT
dom. And when liberty has been won, what re-
mains to be desired must be left to the con-
science and religion of individual men and
women.
VII
RELIGION AND THE CHURCHES
ALMOST all the changes which the world
has undergone since the end of the Middle
Ages are due to the discovery and diffusion of
new knowledge. This was the primary cause of
the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the in-
dustrial revolution. It was also, very directly,
the cause of the decay of dogmatic religion.
The study of classical texts and early Church
history, Copernican astronomy and physics.
Darwinian biology and comparative anthro-
pology, have each in turn battered down some
part of the edifice of Catholic dogma, until, for
almost all thinking and instructed people, the
most that seems defensible is some inner spirit,
some vague hope, and some not very definite
feeling of moral obligation. This result might
perhaps have remained limited to the educated
minority but for the fact that the Churches have
almost everywhere opposed political progress
with the same bitterness with which they have
216
216 WHY MEN FIGHT
opposed progress in thought. Political con-
servatism has brought the Churches into conflict
with whatever was vigorous in the w^orking
classes, and has spread free thought in wide
circles which might otherwise have remained
orthodox for centuries. The decay of dogmatic
religion is, for good or evil, one of the most
important facts in the modern world. Its ef-
fects have hardly yet begun to show themselves :
what they will be it is impossible to say, but they
will certainly be profound and far-reaching.
Eeligion is partly personal, partly social: to
the Protestant primarily personal, to the Catho-
lic primarily social. It is only when the two
elements are intimately blended that religion
becomes a powerful force in molding society.
The Catholic Church, as it existed from the time
of Constantine to the time of the Reformation,
represented a blending which would have
seemed incredible if it had not been actually
achieved, the blending of Christ and Caesar, of
the morality of humble submission with the
pride of Imperial Rome. Those who loved the
one could find it in the Thebaid ; those who loved
the other could admire it in the pomp of metro-
politan archbishops. In St. Francis and Inno-
cent III the same two sides of the Church are
EELIGION AND THE CHURCHES 217
still represented. But since the Reformation
personal religion has been increasingly outside
the Catholic Church, while the religion which
has remained Catholic has been increasingly a
matter of institutions and politics and historic
continuity. This division has weakened the
force of religion : religious bodies have not been
strengthened by the enthusiasm and single-
mindedness of the men in whom personal re-
ligion is strong, and these men have not found
their teaching diffused and made permanent by
the power of ecclesiastical institutions.
The Catholic Church achieved, during the
Middle Ages, the most organic society and the
most harmonious inner synthesis of instinct,
mind, and spirit, that the Western world has
ever known. St. Francis, Thomas Aquinas, and
Dante represent its summit as regards indi-
vidual development. The cathedrals, the men-
dicant Orders, and the triumph of the Pa-
pacy over the Empire represent its supreme
political success. But the perfection which had
been achieved was a narrow perfection : instinct,
mind, and spirit all suffered from curtailment in
order to fit into the pattern ; laymen found them-
selves subject to the Church in ways which they
resented, and the Church used its power for
218 WHY MEN FIGHT
rapacity and oppression. The perfect synthe-
sis was an enemy to new growth, and after the
time of Dante all that was living in the world
had first to fight for its right to live against the
representatives of the old order. This fight is
even now not ended. Only when it is quite
ended, both in the external world of politics and
in the internal world of men's own thoughts,
will it be possible for a new organic society and
a new inner synthesis to take the place which
the Church held for a thousand years.
The clerical profession suffers from two
causes, one of which it shares with some other
professions, while the other is peculiar to itself.
The cause peculiar to it is the convention that
clergymen are more virtuous than other men.
Any average selection of mankind, set apart and
told that it excels the rest in virtue, must tend
to sink below the average. This is an ancient
commonplace in regard to princes and those who
used to be called "the great." But it is no less
true as regards those of the clergy who are not
genuinely and by nature as much better than the
average as they are conventionally supposed to
be. The other source of harm to the clerical
profession is endowments. Property which is
only available for those who will support an es-
RELIGION AND THE CPIUKCHES 219
tablished institution has a tendency to warp
men's judgments as to the excellence of the in-
stitution. The tendency is aggravated when
the property is associated with social considera-
tion and opportunities for petty power. It is at
its worst when the institution is tied by law to
an ancient creed, almost impossible to change,
and yet quite out of touch with the unfettered
thought of the present day. All these causes
combine to damage the moral force of the
Church.
It is not so much that the creed of the Church
is the wrong one. What is amiss is the mere
existence of a creed. As soon as income, posi-
tion, and power are dependent upon acceptance
of no matter what creed, intellectual honesty is
imperiled. Men will tell themselves that a
formal assent is justified by the good which
it will enable them to do. They fail to real-
ize that, in those whose mental life has any
vigor, loss of complete intellectual integrity puts
an end to the power of doing good, by pro-
ducing gradually in all directions an inability to
see truth simply. The strictness of party disci-
pline has introduced the same evil in politics;
there, because the evil is comparatively new, it
is visible to many who think it unimportant as
220 WHY MEN FIGHT
regards the Church. But the evil is greater as
regards the Church, because religion is of more
importance than politics, and because it is more
necessary that the exponents of religion should
be wholly free from taint.
The evils we have been considering seem in-
separable from the existence of a professional
priesthood. If religion is not to be harmful in a
world of rapid change, it must, like the Society
of Friends, be carried on by men who have other
occupations during the week, who do their re-
ligious work from enthusiasm, without receiving
any payment. And such men, because they
know the everyday world, are not likely to fall
into a remote morality which no one regards as
applicable to common life. Being free, they
will not be bound to reach certain conclusions
decided in advance, but will be able to consider
moral and religious questions genuinely, with-
out bias. Except in a quite stationary society,
no religious life can be living or a real support
to the spirit unless it is freed from the incubus
of a professional priesthood.
It is largely for these reasons that so little
of what is valuable in morals and religion comes
nowadays from the men who are eminent in the
religious world. It is true that among pro-
RELIGION AND THE CHUECHES 221
fessed believers there are raany who are wholly
sincere, who feel still the inspiration which
Christianity brought before it had been weak-
ened by the progress of knowledge. These sin-
cere believers are valuable to the world because
they keep alive the conviction that the life of
the spirit is what is of most importance to men
and women. Some of them, in all the countries
now at war, have had the courage to preach
peace and love in the name of Christ, and have
done what lay in their power to mitigate the bit-
terness of hatred. All praise is due to these
men, and without them the world would be even
worse than it is.
But it is not through even the most sincere
and courageous believers in the traditional re-
ligion that a new spirit can come into the world.
It is not through them that religion can be
brought back to those who have lost it because
their minds were active, not because their spirit
was dead. Believers in the traditional religion
necessarily look to the past for inspiration
rather than to the future. They seek wisdom
in the teaching of Christ, which, admirable as it
is, remains quite inadequate for many of the
social and spiritual issues of modern life. Art
and intellect and all the problems of govern-
222 WHY MEN FIGHT
ment are ignored in the Gospels. Those who,
like Tolstoy, endeavor seriously to take the
Gospels as a guide to life are compelled to re-
gard the ignorant peasant as the best type of
man, and to brush aside political questions by an
extreme and impracticable anarchism.
If a religious view of life and the world is
ever to reconquer the thoughts and feelings of
free-minded men and women, much that we are
accustomed to associate with religion will have
to be discarded. The first and greatest change
that is required is to establish a morality of
initiative, not a morality of submission, a mor-
ality of hope rather than fear, of things to be
done rather than of things to be left un-
done. It is not the whole duty of man to
slip through the world so as to escape the
wrath of God. The world is our world, and it
rests with us to make it a heaven or a hell. The
power is ours, and the kingdom and the glory
would be ours also if we had courage and in-
sight to create them. The religious life that we
must seek will not be one of occasional solemnity
and superstitious prohibitions, it will not be sad
or ascetic, it will concern itself little with rules
of conduct. It will be inspired by a vision of
what human life may be, and will be happy with
RELIGION AND THE CHURCHES 223
the joy of creation, living in a large free world
of initiative and hope. It will love mankind,
not for what they are to the outward eye, but
for what imagination shows that they have it
in them to become. It will not readily con-
demn, but it will give praise to positive achieve-
ment rather than negative sinlessness, to the joy
of life, the quick affection, the creative insight,
by which the world may grow young and beauti-
ful and filled with vigor.
** Religion" is a word which has many mean-
ings and a long history. In origin, it was con-
cerned with certain rites, inherited from a re-
mote past, performed originally for some reason
long since forgotten, and associated from time
to time with various myths to account for their
supposed importance. Much of this lingers
still. A religious man is one who goes to
church, a communicant, one who "practises," as
Catholics say. How he behaves otherwise, or
how he feels concerning life and man's place in
the world, does not bear upon the question
whether he is ''religious" in this simple but his-
torically correct sense. Many men and women
are religious in this sense without having in
their natures anything that deserves to be called
religion in the sense in which I mean the word.
224 WHY MEN FIGHT
The mere familiarity of the Church service has
made them impervious to it; they are uiicon-
soious of all the history and human experience
by which the liturgy has been enriched, and
unmoved by the glibly repeated words of the
Gospel, which condemn almost all the activities
of those who fancy themselves disciples of
Christ. This fate must overtake any habitual
rite : it is impossible that it should continue to
produce much effect after it has been performed
so often as to grow mechanical.
The activities of men may be roughly derived
from three sources, not in actual fact sharply
separate one from another, but sufficiently dis-
tinguishable to deserve different names. The
three sources I mean are instinct, mind, and
spirit, and of these three it is the life of the
spirit that makes religion.
The life of instinct includes all that man
shares with the lower animals, all that is con-
cerned with self-preservation and reproduction
and the desires and impulses derivative from
these. It includes vanity and love of posses-
sions, love of family, and even much of what
makes love of country. It includes all the im-
pulses that are essentially concerned witli the
biological success of oneself or one's group —
EELIGION AND THE CHUECHES 225
for among gTegarious animals the life of in-
stinct includes the group. The impulses which
it includes may not in fact make for success,
and may often in fact militate against it, but
are nevertheless those of which success is the
raison d'etre, those which express the animal
nature of man and his position among a world
of competitors.
. The life of the mind is the life of pursuit of
knowledge, from mere childish curiosity up to
the greatest efforts of thought. Curiosity ex-
ists in animals, and serves an obvious biolog-
ical purpose ; but it is only in men that it passes
beyond the investigation of particular objects
which may be edible or poisonous, friendly or
hostile. Curiosity is the primary impulse out
of which the whole edifice of scientific knowl-
edge has grown. Knowledge has been found
so useful that most actual acquisition of it is
no longer prompted by curiosity; innumerable
other motives now contribute to foster the in-
tellectual life. Nevertheless, direct love of
knowledge and dislike of error still play a very
large part, especially with those who are most
successful in learning. No man acquires much
knowledge unless the acquisition is in itself de-
lightful to him, apart from any consciousness
226 WHY MEN FIGHT
of the use to which the knowledge may be put.
The impulse to acquire knowledge and the activ-
ities which center round it constitute what I
mean by the life of the mind. The life of the
mind consists of thought w^hich is wholly or par-
tially impersonal, in the sense that it concerns
itself with objects on their own account, and
not merely on account of their bearing upon
our instinctive life.
The life of the spirit centers round imper-
sonal feeling, as the life of the mind centers
round impersonal thought. In this sense, all
ar,t belongs to the life of the spirit, though its
greatness i's'derited ffom its ^^iiig also inti-
mately bound up with the life of instinct. Art
starts from instinct and rises into the region
of the spirit; religion starts from the spirit
and endeavors to dominate and inform the life
of instinct. It is possible to feel the same in-
terest in the joys and sorrows of others as in
our own, to love and hate independently of all
relation to ourselves, to care about the destiny
of man and the development of the universe
without a thought that we are personally in-
volved. Eeverence and worship, the sense of
an obligation to mankind, the feeling of im-
perativeness and acting under orders which tra-
EELIGION AND THE CHURCHES 227
ditional religion has interpreted as Divine in-
spiration, all belong to the life of the spirit.
And deeper than all these lies the sense of a
mystery half revealed, of a hidden wisdom and
glory, of a transfiguring vision in which com-
mon things lose their solid importance and be-
come a thin veil behind which the ultimate truth
of the world is dimly seen. It is such feelings
that are the source of religion, and if they were
to die most of what is best would vanish out
of life.
Instinct, mind, and spirit are all essential to
a full life; each has its own excellence and its
own corruption. Each can attain a spurious
excellence at the expense of the others; each
has a tendency to encroach upon the others;
but in the life which is to be sought all three
will be developed in coordination, and inti-
mately blended in a single harmonious whole.
Among uncivilized men instinct is supreme, and
mind and spirit hardly exist. Among educated
men at the present day mind is developed, as
a rule, at the expense of both instinct and spirit,
producing a curious inhumanity and lifeless-
ness, a paucity of both personal and imper-
sonal desires, which leads to cynicism and in-
tellectual destructiveness. Among ascetics and
228 WHY MEN FIGHT
most of those who would be call saints, the life
of the spirit has been developed at the expense
of instinct and mind, producing an outlook
which is impossible to those who have a healthy
animal life and to those who have a love of ac-
tive thought. It is not in any of these one-
sided developments that we can find wisdom or
a philosophy which will bring new life to the
civilized world.
Among civilized men and w^omen at the pres-
ent day it is rare to find instinct, mind, and
spirit in harmony. Very few have achieved a
practical philosophy which gives its due place
to each ; as a rule, instinct is at war with either
mind or spirit, and mind and spirit are at war
with each other. This strife compels men and
women to direct much of their energy inwards,
instead of being able to expend it all in objec-
tive activities. When a man achieves a pre-
carious inward peace by the defeat of a part of
his nature, his vital force is impaired, and his
growth is no longer quite healthy. If men are
to remain whole, it is very necessary that they
should achieve a reconciliation of instinct,
mind, and spirit.
Instinct is the source of vitality, the oond
that unites the life of the individual with the
EELIGION AND THE CHURCHES 229
life of the race, the basis of all profound sense
of union with others, and the means by which
the collective life nourishes the life of the sepa-
rate units. But instinct by itself leaves us
powerless to control the forces of Nature, either
in ourselves or in our physical environment,
and keeps us in bondage to the same unthink-
ing impulse by which the trees grow. Mind can
liberate us from this bondage, by the power of
impersonal thought, which enables us to judge
critically the purely biological purposes towards
which instinct more or less blindly tends. But
mind, in its dealings with instinct, is merely
critical: so far as instinct is concerned, the un-
checked activity of the mind is apt to be de-
structive and to generate cynicism. Spirit is an
antidote to the cynicism of mind: it universal-
izes the emotions that spring from instinct, and
by universalizing them makes them impervious
to mental criticism. And when thought is in-
formed by spirit it loses its cruel, destructive
quality; it no longer promotes tlie death of in-
stinct, but only its purification from insistence
and ruthlessness and its emancipation from the
prison walls of accidental circumstance. It is
instinct that gives force, mind that gives the
means of directing force to desired ends, and
230 WHY MEN FIGHT
spirit that suggests impersonal uses for force
of a kind that thought cannot discredit by criti-
cism. This is an outUne of the parts that in-
stinct, mind, and spirit would play in a harmoni-
ous life.
Instinct, mind, and spirit are each a help to
the others when their development is free and
unvitiated ; but when corruption comes into any
one of the three, not only does that one fail, but
the others also become poisoned. All three
must grow together. And if they are to grow
to their full stature in any one man or woman,
that man or woman must not be isolated, but
must be one of a society where growth is not
thwarted and made crooked.
The life of instinct, when it is unchecked by
mind or spirit, consists of instinctive cycles,
which begin with impulses to more or less defi-
nite acts, and pass on to satisfaction of needs
through the consequences of these impulsive
acts. Impulse and desire are not directed
towards the whole cycle, but only towards its
initiation: the rest is left to natural causes.
We desire to eat, but we do not desire to be
nourished unless we are valetudinarians. Yet
without the nourishment eating is a mere mo-
mentary pleasure, not part of the general im-
RELIGION AND THE CHURCHES 231
pulse to life. Men desire sexual intercourse,
but they do not as a rule desire children
strongly or often. Yet without the hope of
children and its occasional realization, sexual
intercourse remains for most people an isolated
and separate pleasure, not uniting their per-
sonal life with the life of mankind, not continu-
ous with the central purposes by which they
live, and not capable of bringing that profound
sense of fulfilment which comes from comple-
tion by children. Most men, unless the impulse
is atrophied through disuse, feel a desire to cre-
ate something, great or small according to their
capacities. Some few are able to satisfy this
desire : some happy men can create an Empire,
a science, a poem, or a picture. The men of sci-
ence, who have less difficulty than any others
in finding an outlet for creativeness, are the
happiest of intelligent men in the modern
world, since their creative activity affords full
satisfaction to mind and spirit as well as to the
instinct of creation.^ In them a beginning is
to be seen of the new way of life which is to be
sought ; in their happiness we may perhaps find
1 1 should add artists but for the fact that most modern
artists seem to find much greater difficulty in creation than
men of science usually find.
232 WHY MEN FIGHT
the germ of a future happiness for all man-
kind. The rest, with few exceptions, are
thwarted in their creative impulses. They can-
not build their own house or make their own
garden, or direct their own labor to producing
what their free choice would lead them to pro-
duce. In this way the instinct of creation,
which should lead on to the life of mind and
spirit, is checked and turned aside. Too often
it is turned to destruction, as the only effective
action which remains possible. Out of its de-
feat grows envy, and out of env}^ grows the im-
pulse to destroy the creativeness of more for-
tunate men. This is one of the greatest sources
of corruption in the life of instinct.
The life of instinct is important, not only on
its own account, or because of the direct use-
fulness of the actions w^hich it inspires, but also
because, if it is unsatisfactory, the individual
life becomes detached and separated from the
general life of man. All really profound sense
of unity with others depends upon instinct, upon
cooperation or agreement in some instinctive
purpose. This is most obvious in the relations
of men and women and parents and children.
But it is true also in wider relations. It is true
of large assemblies swayed by a strong common
RELIGION AND THE CHUECHES 233
emotion, and even of a whole nation in times of
stress. It is part of what makes the value of
religion as a social institution. Where this
feeling is wholly absent, other human beings
seem distant and aloof. Where it is actively
thwarted, other human beings become objects
of instinctive hostility. The aloofness or the
instinctive hostility may be masked by religious
love, which can be given to all men regardless
of their relation to ourselves. But religious
love does not bridge the gulf that parts man
from man: it looks across the gulf, it views
others with compassion or impersonal sympa-
thy, but it does not live with the same life with
which they live. Instinct alone can do this, but
only when it is fruitful and sane and direct. To
this end it is necessary that instinctive cycles
should be fairly often completed, not inter-
rupted in the middle of their course. At pres-
ent they are constantly interrupted, partly by
purposes which conflict with them for economic
or other reasons, partly by the pursuit of pleas-
ure, which picks out the most agreeable part of
the cycle and avoids the rest. In this way in-
stinct is robbed of its importance and serious-
ness; it becomes incapable of bringing any real
fulfilment, its demands grow more and more
234 WHY MEN FIGHT
excessive, and life becomes no longer a whole
with a single movement, but a series of detached
moments, some of them pleasurable, most of
them full of weariness and discouragement.
The life of the mind, although supremely ex-
cellent in itself, cannot bring health into the
life of instinct, except when it results in a not
too difficult outlet for the instinct of creation.
In other cases it is, as a rule, too widely sepa-
rated from instinct, too detached, too destitute
of inward growth, to afford either a vehicle for
instinct or a means of subtilizing and refining
it. Thought is in its essence impersonal and
detached, instinct is in its essence personal and
tied to particular circumstances: between the
two, unless both reach a high level, there is a
war which is not easily appeased. This is the
fundamental reason for vitalism, futurism,
pragmatism, and the various other philosophies
which advertise themselves as vigorous and
virile. All these represent the attempt to find
a mode of thought which shall not be hostile to
instinct. The attempt, in itself, is deserving of
praise, but the solution offered is far too facile.
What is proposed amounts to a subordination of
thought to instinct, a refusal to allow thought
to achieve its own ideal. Thought which does
BELIGION AND THE CHUECHES 235
not rise above what is personal is not thought
in any true sense: it is merely a more or less
intelligent use of instinct. It is thought and
spirit that raise man above the level of the
brutes. By discarding them we may lose the
proper excellence of men, but cannot acquire
the excellence of animals. Thought must
achieve its full growth before a reconciliation
with instinct is attempted.
When refined thought and unrefined instinct
coexist, as they do in many intellectual men,
the result is a complete disbelief in any impor-
tant good to be achieved by the help of instinct.
According to their disposition, some such men
will as far as possible discard instinct and be-
come ascetic, while others will accept it as a ne-
cessity, leaving it degraded and separated from
all that is really important in their lives.
Either of these courses prevents instinct from
remaining vital, or from being a bond with oth-
ers; either produces a sense of physical soli-
tude, a gulf across which the minds and spirits
of others may speak, but not their instincts.
To very many men, the instinct of patriotism,
when the war broke out, was the first instinct
that had bridged the gulf, the first that had made
them feel a really profound unity with others.
236 WHY MEN FIGHT
This instinct, just because, in its intense form,
it was new and unfamiliar, had remained unin-
fected by thought, not paralyzed or devitalized
by doubt and cold detachment. The sense of
unity which it brought is capable of being
brought by the instinctive life of more normal
times, if thought and spirit are not hostile to
it. And so long as this sense of unity is ab-
sent, instinct and spirit cannot be in harmony,
nor can the life of the community have vigor
and the seeds of new growth.
The life of the mind, because of its detach-
ment, tends to separate a man inwardly from
other men, so long as it is not balanced by the
life of the spirit. For this reason, mind with-
out spirit can render instinct corrupt or atro-
phied, but cannot add any excellence to the life
of instinct. On this ground, some men are hos-
tile to thought. But no good purpose is served
by trying to prevent the growth of thought,
which has its own insistence, and if checked in
the directions in which it tends naturally, will
turn into other directions where it is more harm-
ful. And thought is in itself god-like: if the
opposition between thought and instinct were
irreconcilable, it would be thought that ought
to conquer. But the opposition is not irrecou-
RELIGION AND THE CHURCHES 237
ciliable: all that is necessary is that both
thought and instinct should be informed by the
life of the spirit.
In order that human life should have vigor,
it is necessary for the instinctive impulses to
be strong and direct; but in order that human
life should be good, these impulses must be dom-
inated and controlled by desires less personal
and ruthless, less liable to lead to conflict than
those that are inspired by instinct alone. Some-
thing impersonal and universal is needed over
and above what springs out of the principle of
individual growth. It is this that is given by
the life of the spirit.
Patriotism affords an example of the kind of
control which is needed. Patriotism is com-
pounded out of a number of instinctive feelings
and impulses : love of home, love of those whose
ways and outlook resemble our own, the impulse
to cooperation in a group, the sense of pride in
the achievements of one's group. All these im-
pulses and desires, like everything belonging to
the life of instinct, are personal, in the sense
that the feelings and actions which they inspire
towards others are determined by the relation
of those others to ourselves, not by what those
others are intrinsically. All these impulses
238 WHY MEN FIGHT
and desires unite to produce a love of man's
own country which is more deeply implanted in
the fiber of his being, and more closely united
to his vital force, than any love not rooted in
instinct. But if spirit does not enter in to gen-
eralize love of country, the exclusiveness of in-
stinctive love makes it a source of hatred of
other countries. What spirit can effect is to
make us realize that other countries equally are
worthy of love, that the vital warmth which
makes us love our own country reveals to us
that it deserves to be loved, and that only the
poverty of our nature prevents us from loving
all countries as we love our own. In this way
instinctive love can be extended in imagination,
and a sense of the value of all mankind can grow
up, which is more living and intense than any
that is possible to those whose instinctive love
is weak. Mind can only show us that it is ir-
rational to love our own country best; it can
weaken patriotism, but cannot strengthen the
love of all mankind. Spirit alone can do this,
by extending and universalizing the love that is
born of instinct. And in doing this it checks
and purifies whatever is insistent or ruthless
or oppressively personal in the life of instinct.
The same extension through spirit is neces-
RELIGION AND THE CHURCHES 239
sary with other instinctive loves, if they are not
to be enfeebled or corrupted by thought. The
love of husband and wife is capable of being a
very good thing, and when men and women are
sufficiently primitive nothing but instinct and
good fortune is needed to make it reach a cer-
tain limited perfection. But as thought begins
to assert its right to criticize instinct the old
simplicity becomes impossible. The love of
husband and wife, as unchecked instinct leaves
it, is too narrow and personal to stand against
the shafts of satire, until it is enriched by the
life of the spirit. The romantic view of mar-
riage, which our fathers and mothers professed
to believe, will not survive an imaginative pere-
grination down a street of suburban villas, each
containing its couple, each couple having con-
gratulated themselves as they first crossed the
threshold, that here they could love in peace,
without interruption from others, without con-
tact with the cold outside world. The separate-
ness and stuffiness, the fine names for coward-
ices and timid vanities, that are shut within the
four walls of thousands upon thousands of lit-
tle villas, present themselves coldly and merci-
lessly to those in whom mind is dominant at
the expense of spirit.
240 WHY MEN FIGHT
Nothing is good in the life of a human being
except the very best that his nature can achieve.
As men advance, things which have been good
cease to be good, merely because something bet-
ter is possible. So it is with the life of instinct :
for those whose mental life is strong, much that
was really good while mind remained less de-
veloped has now become bad merely through
the greater degree of truth in their outlook on
the world. The instinctive man in love feels
that his emotion is unique, that the lady of his
heart has perfections such as no other woman
ever equaled. The man who has acquired the
power of impersonal thought realizes, when he
is in love, that he is one of so many millions
of men who are in love at this moment, that not
more than one of all the millions can be right
in thinking his love supreme, and that it is not
likely that that one is oneself. He perceives
that the state of being in love in those whose in-
stinct is unaffected by thought or spirit, is a
state of illusion, serving the ends of Nature and
making a man a slave to the life of the species,
not a willing minister to the impersonal ends
which he sees to be good. Thought rejects this
slavery; for no end that Nature may have in
view will thought abdicate, or forgo its right
EELIGION AND THE CHURCHES 241
to think truly. ''Better the world should per-
ish than that I or any other human being should
believe a lie" — this is the religion of thought,
in whose scorching flames the dross. of the world
is being burnt away. It is a good religion, and
its work of destruction must be completed. But
it is not all that man has need of. New growth
must come after the destruction, and new
growth can come only through the spirit.
Both patriotism and the love of man and
woman, when they are merely instinctive,, have
the same defects : their exclusions, their enclos-
ing walls, their indifference or hostility to the
outside world. It is through this that thought
is led to satire, that comedy has infected what
men used to consider their holiest feelings. The
satire and the comedy are justified, but not the
death of instinct which they may produce if
they remain in supreme command. They are
justified, not as the last word of wisdom but as
the gateway of pain through which men pass
to a new life, where instinct is purified and yet
nourished by the deeper desires and insight of
spirit.
The man who has the life of the spirit within
him views the love of man and woman, both
in himself and in others, quite differently from
242 WHY MEN FIGHT
the man wlio is exclusively dominated by mind.
He sees, in his moments of insight, that in all
human beings there is something deserving of
love, something mysterious, something appeal-
ing, a cry out of the night, a groping journey,
and a possible victory. When his instinct loves,
he welcomes its help in seeing and feeling the
value of the human being whom he loves. In-
stinct becomes a reinforcement to spiritual in-
sight. What instinct tells him spiritual insight
confirms, however much the mind may be aware
of littlenesses, limitations, and enclosing walls
that prevent the spirit from shining forth. His
spirit divines in all men what his instinct shows
him in the object of his love.
The love of parents for children has need of
the same transformation. The purely instinc-
tive love, unchecked by thought, uninformed by
spirit, is exclusive, ruthless, and unjust. No
benefit to others is felt, by the purely instinc-
tive parent, to be worth an injury to one's own
children. Honor and conventional morality
place certain important practical limitations on
the vicarious selfishness of parents, since a civ-
ilized community exacts a certain minimum be-
fore it will give respect. But within the limits
allowed by public opinion, parental affection,
EELIGION AND THE CHURCHES 243
when it is merely instinctive, will seek the ad-
vantage of children without regard to others.
Mind can weaken the impulse to injustice, and
diminish the force of instinctive love, but it can-
not keep the whole force of instinctive love and
turn it to more universal ends. Spirit can do
this. It can leave the instinctive love of chil-
dren undimmed, and extend the poignant devo-
tion of a parent, in imagination, to the whole
world. And parental love itself will prompt
the parent who has the life of the spirit to give
to his children the sense of justice, the readiness
for service, the reverence, the will that controls
self-seeking, which he feels to be a greater good
than any personal success.
The life of the spirit has suffered in recent
times by its association with traditional reli-
gion, by its apparent hostility to the life of the
mind, and by the fact that it has seemed to cen-
ter in renunciation. The life of the spirit de-
mands readiness for renunciation when the oc-
casion arises, but is in its essence as positive
and as capable of enriching individual existence
as mind and instinct are. It brings with it the
joy of vision, of the mystery and profundity of
the world, of the contemplation of life, and
above all the joy of universal love. It liberates
244 WHY MEN FIGHT
those who have it from the prison-house of in-
sistent personal passion and mundane cares.
It gives freedom and breadth and beauty to
men's thoughts and feelings, and to all their
relations with others. It brings the solution of
doubts, the end of the feeling that all is vanity.
It restores harmony between mind and in-
stinct, and leads the separated unit back into
his place in the life of mankind. For those who
have once entered the world of thought, it is
only through spirit that happiness and peace
can return.
vin
WHAT WE CAN DO
WHAT can we do for the world while we
live?
Many men and women would wish to serve
mankind, but they are perplexed and their
power seems infinitesimal. Despair seizes
them ; those who have the strongest passion suf-
fer most from the sense of impotence, and are
most liable to spiritual ruin through lack of
hope.
So long as we think only of the immediate
future, it seems that what we can do is not much.
It is probably impossible for us to bring the war
to an end. We cannot destroy the excessive
power of the State or of private property. We
cannot, here and now, bring new life into edu-
cation. In such matters, though we may see
the evil, we cannot quickly cure it by any of the
ordinary methods of politics. We must recog-
nize that the world is ruled in a wrong spirit,
and that a change of spirit will not come from
245
246 WHY MEN FIGHT
oue day to the next. Our expectations must
not be for to-morrow, but for the time when
what is thought now by a few shall have become
the common thought of many. If we have cour-
age and patience, we can think the thoughts and
feel the hopes by which, sooner or later, men
will be inspired, and weariness and discourage-
ment will be turned into energy and ardor. For
this reason, the first thing we have to do is to
be clear in our own minds as to the kind of life
we think good and the kind of change that we
desire in the world.
The ultimate power of those whose thought
is vital is far greater than it seems to men who
suffer from the irrationality of contemporary
politics. Eeligious toleration was once the soli-
tary speculation of a few bold philosophers.
Democracy, as a theory, arose among a hand-
ful of men in Cromwell's army; by them, after
the Eestoration, it was carried to America,
where it came to fruition in the War of Inde-
pendence. From America, Lafayette and the
other Frenchmen who fought by the side of
Washington brought the theory of democracy
to France, where it united itself with the teach-
ing of Rousseau and inspired the Revolution.
Socialism, whatever we may think of its merits,
WHAT WE CAN DO 247
is a gTeat and growing power, which is trans-
forming economic and political life; and social-
ism owes its origin to a very small number of
isolated theorists. The movement against the
subjection of women, which has become irresist-
ible and is not far from complete triumph, be-
gan in the same way with a few impracticable
idealists — Mary Wollstonecraft, Shelley, John
Stuart Mill. The power of thought, in the long
run, is greater than any other human power.
Those who have the ability to think and the
imagination to think in accordance with men's
needs, are likely to achieve the good they aim
at sooner or later, though probably not while
they are still alive.
But those who wish to gain the world by
thought must be content to lose it as a support
in the present. Most men go through life with-
out much questioning, accepting the beliefs and
practices which they find current, feeling that
the world will be their ally if they do not put
themselves in opposition to it. New thought
about the world is incompatible with this com-
fortable acquiescence; it requires a certain in-
tellectual detachment, a certain solitary energy,
a power of inwardly dominating the world and
the outlook that the world engenders. Without
248 WHY MEN FIGHT
some willingness to be lonely new thought can-
not be achieved. And it will not be achieved to
any purpose if the lonelijiess is accompanied by
aloofness, so that the wish for union with others
dies, or if intellectual detachment leads to con-
tempt. It is because the state of mind required
is subtle and difficult, because it is hard to be
intellectually detached yet not aloof, that fruit-
ful thought on human affairs is not common, and
that most theorists are either conventional or
sterile. The right kind of thought is rare and
difficult, but it is not impotent. It is not the
fear of impotence that need turn us aside from
thought if we have the wish to bring new hope
into the world.
In seeking a political theory which is to be
useful at any given moment, what is wanted is
not the invention of a Utopia, but the discovery
of the best direction of movement. The direc-
tion which is good at one time may be super-
ficially very different from that which is good
at another time. Useful thought is that which
indicates the right direction for the present
time. But in judging what is the right direc-
tion there are two general principles which are
always applicable.
1. The growth and vitality of individuals and
WHAT WE CAN DO 249
communities is to be promoted as far as pos-
sible.
2. The growth of one individual or one com-
munity is to be as little as possible at the ex-
pense of another.
The second of these principles, as applied by
an individual in his dealings with others, is the
principle of reverence, that the life of another
has the same importance which we feel in our
own life. As applied impersonally in politics,
it is the principle of liberty, or rather it includes
the principle of liberty as a part. Liberty in
itself is a negative principle; it tells us not to
interfere, but does not give any basis for con-
struction. It shows that many political and so-
cial institutions are bad and ought to be swept
away, but it does not show what ought to be put
in their place. For this reason a further prin-
ciple is required, if our political theory is not
to be purely destructive.
The combination of our two principles is not
in practice an easy matter. Much of the vital
energy of the world runs into channels which
are oppressive. The Germans have shown
themselves extraordinarily full of vital energy,
but unfortunately in a form which seems incom-
patible with the vitality of their neighbors.
250 WHY MEN FIGHT
Europe in general has more vital energy than
Africa, but it has used its energy to drain
Africa, through industrialism, of even such life
as the negroes possessed. The vitality of
southeastern Europe is being drained to supply
cheap labor for the enterprise of American mil-
lionaires. The vitality of men has been in the
past a hindrance to the development of women,
and it is possible that in the near future women
may become a similar hindrance to men. For
such reasons the principle of reverence, though
not in itself sufficient, is of very great impor-
tance, and is able to indicate many of the po-
litical changes that the world requires.
In order that both principles may be capable
of being satisfied, what is needed is a unifying
or integration, first of our individual lives, then
of the life of the community and of the world,
without sacrifice of individuality. The life of
an individual, the life of a community, and even
the life of mankind, ought to be, not a number
of separate fragments but in some sense a
whole. When this is the case, the growth of
the individual is fostered, and is not incompat-
ible with the growth of other individuals. In
this way the two principles are brought into
harmony.
WHAT WE CAN DO 251
What integrates an individual life is a con-
sistent creative purpose or unconscious direc-
tion. Instinct alone will not suffice to give unity
to the life of a civilized man or woman: there
must be some dominant object, an ambition, a
desire for scientific or artistic creation, a reli-
gious principle, or strong and lasting affections.
Unity of life is very difficult for a man or
woman who has suffered a certain kind of de-
feat, the kind by which what should have been
the dominant impulse is checked and made abor-
tive. Most professions inflict this kind of de-
feat upon a man at the very outset. If a man
becomes a journalist, he probably has to write
for a newspaper whose politics he dislikes ; this
kills his pride in work and his sense of inde-
pendence. Most medical men find it very hard
to succeed without humbug, by which whatever
scientific conscience they may have had is de-
stroyed. Politicians are obliged, not only to
swallow the party program but to pretend
to be saints, in order to conciliate religious sup-
porters ; hardly any man can enter Parliament
without hypocrisy. In no profession is there
any respect for the native pride without which
a man cannot remain whole; the world ruth-
lessly crushes it out, because it implies inde-
252 WHY MEN FIGHT
pendence, and men desire to enslave others
more than they desire to be free themselves.
Inward freedom is infinitely precious, and a so-
ciety which will preserve it is immeasurably to
be desired.
The principle of growth in a man is not
crushed necessarily by preventing him from
doing some definite thing, but it is often crushed
by persuading him to do something else. The
things that crush growth are those that produce
a sense of impotence in the directions in which
the vital impulse wishes to be effective. The
worst things are those to which the will assents.
Often, chiefly from failure of self-knowledge,
a man's will is on a lower level than his im-
pulse : his impulse is towards some kind of cre-
ation, while his will is towards a conventional
career, with a sufficient income and the respect
of his contemporaries. The stereotyped illus-
tration is the artist who produces shoddy work
to please the public. But something of the ar-
tist's definiteness of impulse exists in very
many men who are not artists. Because the
impulse is deep and dumb, because what is
called common sense is often against it, because
a young man can only follow it if he is willing
to set up his own obscure feelings against the
WHAT WE CAN DO 253
wisdom and prudent maxims of elders and
friends, it hapjDens in ninety-nine cases out of
a hundred that the creative impulse, out of
which a free and vigorous life might have
sprung, is checked and thwarted at the very-
outset: the young man consents to become a
tool, not an independent workman; a mere
means to the fulfilment of others, not the arti-
ficer of what his own nature feels to be good.
In the moment when he makes this act of con-
sent something dies within him. He can never
again become a whole man, never again have
the undamaged self-respect, the upright pride,
which might have kept him happy in his soul in
spite of all outward troubles and difficulties —
except, indeed, through conversion and a funda-
mental change in his way of life.
Outward prohibitions, to which the will gives
no assent, are far less harmful than the subtler
inducements which seduce the will. A serious
disappointment in love may cause the most
poignant pain, but to a vigorous man it will not
do the same inward damage as is done by mar-
rying for money. The achievement of this or
that special desire is not what is essential : what
is essential is the direction, the kind of effec-
tiveness which is sought. When the fundamen-
254 WHY MEN FIGHT
tal impulse is opposed by will, it is made to feel
helpless : it Las no longer enough hope to be
powerful as a motive. Outward compulsion
does not do the same damage unless it produces
the same sense of impotence; and it will not
produce the same sense of impotence if the im-
pulse is strong and courageous. Some thwart-
ing of special desires in unavoidable even in
the best imaginable community, since some
men's desires, unchecked, lead to the oppres-
sion or destruction of others. In a good com-
munity Napoleon could not have been allowed
the profession of his choice, but he might have
found happiness as a pioneer in Western Amer-
ica. He could not have found happiness as a
City clerk, and no tolerable organization of so-
ciety would compel him to become a City clerk.
The integration of an individual life requires
that it should embody whatever creative impulse
a man may possess, and that his education
should have been such as to elicit and fortify
this impulse. The integration of a community
requires that the different creative impulses of
different men and women should work together
towards some common life, some common pur-
pose, not necessarily conscious, in which all the
members of the community find a help to their
WHAT WE CAN DO 255
individual fulfilment. Most of the activities
that spring from vital impulses consist of two
parts: one creative, which furthers one's own
life and that of others with the same kind of
impulse or circumstances, and one possessive,
which hinders the life of some group with a dif-
ferent kind of impulse or circumstances. For
this reason, much of what is in itself most vital
may nevertheless work against life, as, for ex-
ample, seventeenth-century Puritanism did in
England, or as nationalism does throughout
Europe at the present day. Vitality easily
leads to strife or oppression, and so to loss of
vitality. War, at its outset, integrates the life
of a nation, but it disintegrates the life of the
world, and in the long run the life of a nation
too, when it is as severe as the present war.
The war has, made it clear that it is impos-
sible to produce a secure^kitegration of the life
of a single community wnile the relations be-
tween civilized countries are governed by ag-
gressiveness and suspicion. For this reason
any really powerful movement of reform will
have to be international. A merely national
movement is sure to fail through fear of dan-
ger from without. Those who desire a better
world, or even a radical improvement in their
256 WHY MEN FIGHT
own country, will have to cooperate with those
who have similar desires in other countries, and
to devote much of their energy to overcoming
that blind hostility which the war has intensi-
fied. It is not in partial integrations, such as
patriotism alone can produce, that any ultimate
hope is to be found. The problem is, in na-
tional and international questions as in the in-
dividual life, to keep what is creative in vital
impulses, and at the same time to turn into
other channels the part which is at present de-
structive.
Men's impulses and desires may be divided
into those that are creative and those that are
possessive. Some of our activities are directed
to creating what would not otherwise exist, oth-
ers are directed towards acquiring or retaining
what exists already. The tj^ical creative im-
pulse is that of the artist; the tj^pical posses-
sive impulse is that of property. The best life
is that in which creative impulses play the larg-
est part and possessive impulses the smallest.
The best institutions are those which produce
the greatest possible creativeness and the least
possessiveness compatible with self-preserva-
tion. Possessiveness may be defensive or ag-
gressive : in the criminal law it is defensive, and
WHAT WE CAN DO 257
in criminals it is aggressive. It may perhaps
be admitted that the criminal law is less abom-
inable than the criminal, and that defensive pos-
sessiveness is unavoidable so long as aggressive
possessiveness exists. But not even the most
purely defensive forms of possessiveness are
in themselves admirable; indeed, as soon as
they are strong they become hostile to the crea-
tive impulses. "Take no thought, saying.
What shall we eat? or What shall we drink, or
Wherewithal shall we be clothed?" Whoever
has known a strong creative impulse has known
the value of this precept in its exact and literal
sense: it is preoccupation with possessions,
more than anything else, that prevents men
from living freely and nobly. The State and
Property are the great embodiments of posses-
siveness; it is for this reason that they are
against life, and that they issue in war. Pos-
session means taking or keeping some good
thing which another is prevented from enjoy-
ing; creation means putting into the world a
good thing which otherwise no one would be
able to enjoy. Since the material goods of the
world must be divided among the population,
ancTsince some men are by nature brigands,
there must be defensive possession, which will
258 WHY MEN FIGHT
be regulated, in a good community, by some
principle of impersonal justice. But all this
is only the preface to a good life or good po-
litical institutions, in which creation will alto-
gether outweigh possession, and distributive
justice will exist as an uninteresting matter of
course.
The supreme principle, both in politics and
in private life, should be to promote all that is
creative, and so to diminish the impulses and
desires that center round possession. The
State at present is very largely an embodiment
of possessive impulses: internally, it protects
the rich against the poor; externally, it uses
force for the exploitation of inferior races, and •
for competition with other States. Our whole
economic system is concerned exclusively with
possession; yet the production of goods is a
form of creation, and except in so far as it is
irredeemably mechanical and monotonous, it
might afford a vehicle for creative impulses.
A great deal might be achieved towards this
end by forming the producers of a certain kind
of commodity into an autonomous democracy,
subject to State control as regards the price of
their commodity but not as to the manner of its
production.
WHAT WE CAN DO 259
Education, marriage, and religion are essen-
tially creative, yet all three have been vitiated
by the intrusion of possessive motives. Edu-
cation is usually treated as a means of prolong-
^g the status quo by instilling prejudices,
rather than of creating free thought and a noble
outlook by the example of generous feeling and
the stimulus of mental adventure. In mar-
riage, love, which is creative, is kept in chains
by jealousy, which is possessive. Religion,
which should set free the creative vision of the
spirit, is usually more concerned to repress the
life of instinct and to combat the subversiveness
of thought. In all these ways the fear that
grows out of precarious possession has replaced
the hope inspired by creative force. The wish
to plunder others is recognized, in theory, to
be bad ; but the fear of being plundered is little
better. Yet these two motives between them
dominate nine-tenths of politics and private life.
The creative impulses in different men are
essentially harmonious, since what one man
creates cannot be a hindrance to what another
is wishing to create. It is the possessive im-
pulses that involve conflict. Although, morally
and politically, the creative and possessive im-
pulses are opposites, yet psychologically either
260 WHY MEN FIGHT
passes easily into the other, according to the
accidents of circumstance and opportunity.
The genesis of impulses and the causes which
make them change ought to be studied; educa^
tion and social institutions ought to be ma(^^
such as to strengthen the impulses which har-
monize in different men, and to weaken those
that involve conflict. I have no doubt that what
might be accomplished in this way is almost un-
limited.
It is rather through impulse than through will
that individual lives and the life of the com-
munity can derive the strength unity of a
single direction. Will is of two kinds, of which
one is directed outward and the other inward.
The first, which is directed outward, is called
into play by external obstacles, eitner the op-
position of others or the technical difficulties
of an undertaking. This kind of will is an ex-
pression of strong impulse or desire, whenever
instant success is impossible; it exists in all
whose life is vigorous, and only decays when
their vital force is enfeebled. It is necessary
to success in any difficult enterprise, and with-
out it great achievement is very rare. But the
will which is directed inward is only necessary
in so far as there is an inner conflict of im-
i
WHAT WE CAN DO 261
pulses or desires; a perfectly harmonious na-
ture would have no occasion for inward will.
Such perfect harmony is of course a scarcely
realizable ideal : in all men impulses arise which
Ipre incompatible with their central purpose,
and which must be checked if their life as a
whole is not to be a failure. But this will hap-
pen least with those whose central impulses are
strongest ; and it will happen less often in a so-
ciety which aims at freedom than in a so-
ciety like ours, which is full of artificial incom-
patibilities created by antiquated institutions
and a tj^rannous public opinion. The power to
exert inward will when the occasion arises must
always be needed by those who wish their lives
to embody some central purpose, but with bet-
ter institutions the occasions when inward will
is necessary might be made fewer and less im-
portant. This result is very much to be de-
sired, because when will checks impulses which
are only accidentally harmful, it diverts a force
which might be spent on overcoming outward
obstacles, and if the impulses checked are
strong and serious, it actually diminishes the
vital force available. A life full of inhibitions
is likely not to remain a very vigorous life but
to become listless and without zest. Impulse
262 WHY MEN FIGHT
tends to die when it is constantly held in check /
and if it does not die, it is apt to work under-
ground, and issue in some form much worse
than that in which it has been checked. For
these reasons the necessity for using inward*
will ought to be avoided as much as possible,
and consistency of action ought to spring rather
from consistency of impulse than from control
of impulse by will.
The unifying of life ought not to demand the
suppression of the casual desires that make
amusement and play; on the contrary, every-
thing ought to be done to make it easy to com-
bine the main purposes of life with all kinds of
pleasure that are not in their nature harmful.
Such things as habitual drunkenness, drugs,
cruel sports, or pleasure in inflicting pain are
essentially harmful, but most of the amusements
that civilized men naturally enjoy are either not
harmful at all or only accidentally harmful
through some effect which might be avoided in
a better society. What is needed is, not asceti-
cism or a drab Puritanism, but capacity for
strong impulses and desires directed towards
large creative ends. When such impulses and
desires are vigorous, they bring with them, of
themselves, what is needed to make a good life.
^
WHAT Wl^ CAN DO 263
But although amusement and adventure
ought to have their share, it is impossible to
create a good life if they are what is mainly
desired. Subjectivism, the habit of directing
thought and desire to our own states of mind
rather than to something objective, inevitably
makes life fragmentary and unprogressive.
The man to whom amusement is the end of life
tends to lose interest gradually in the things
out of which he has been in the habit of obtain-
ing amusement, since he does not value these
things on their own account, but on account of
the feelings which they arouse in him. When
they are no longer amusing, boredom drives
him to seek some new stimulus, which fails him
in its turn. Amusement consists in a series of
moments without any essential continuity; a
purpose which unifies life is one which requires
some prolonged activity, and is like building a
monument rather than a child's castle in the
sand.
Subjectivism has other forms beside the
mere pursuit of amusement. Many men, when
they are in love, are more interested in their
own emotion than in the object of their love;
such love does not lead to any essential union,
but leaves fundamental separateness undimin-
264 WHY MEN FIGHT
ished. As soon as the emotion grows less vivid
the experience has served its purpose, and
there seems no motive for prolonging it. In
another way, the same evil of subjectivism was
fostered by Protestant religion and morality,
since they directed attention to sin and the state
of the soul rather than to the outer w^orld and
our relations with it None of these forms of
subjectivism can prevent a man's life from
being fragmentary and isolated. Only a life
which springs out of dominant impulses directed
to objective ends can be a satisfactory whole,
or be intimately united with the lives of others.
The pursuit of pleasure and the pursuit of
virtue alike suffer from subjectivism: Epi-
cureanism and Stoicism are infected with the
same taint. Marcus Aurelius, enacting good
laws in order that he might be virtuous, is not
an attractive figure. Subjectivism is a natural
outcome of a life in which there is much more
thought than action: while outer things are be-
ing remembered or desired, not actually experi-
enced, they seem to become mere ideas. What
they are in themselves becomes less interesting
to us than the effects which they produce in our
own minds. Such a result tends to be brought
about by increasing civilization, because in-
WHAT WE CAN DO 265
creasing civilization continually diminishes the
need for vivid action and enhances the opportu-
nities for thought. But thought will not have
this bad result if it is active thought, directed
towards achieving some purpose ; it is only pas-
sive thought that leads to subjectivism. What
is needed is to keep thought in intimate union
with impulses and desires, making it always it-
self an activity with an objective purpose.
Otherwise, thought and impulse become ene-
mies, to the great detriment of both.
In order to make the lives of average men
and women less fragmentary and separate, and
to give greater opportunity for carrying out
creative impulses, it is not enough to know the
goal we wish to reach, or to proclaim the ex-
cellence of what we desire to achieve. It is
necessary to understand the effect of institu-
tions and beliefs upon the life of impulse, and
to discover ways of improving this effect by a
change in institutions. And when this intellec-
tual work has been done, our thought will still
remain barren unless we can bring it into rela-
tion with some powerful political force. The
only powerful political force from which any
help is to be expected in bringing about
such changes as seem needed is Labor. The
266 WHY MEN FIGHT
changes required are very largely such as La-
bor may be expected to welcome, especially dur-
ing the time of hardship after the war. When
the war is over, labor discontent is sure to be
very prevalent throughout Europe, and to con-
stitute a political force by means of which a
great and sweeping reconstruction may be ef-
fected.
The civilized world has need of fundamental
change if it is to be saved from decay — change
both in its economic structure and in its philos-
ophy of life. Those of us who feel the need
of change must not sit still in dull despair : we
can, if we choose, profoundly influence the fu-
ture. We can discover and preach the kind of
change that is required — the kind that pre-
serves what is positive in the vital beliefs of
our time, and, by eliminating what is negative
and inessential, produces a synthesis to which
all that is not purely reactionary can give alle-
giance. As soon as it has become clear what
kind of change is required, it will be possible
to work out its parts in more detail. But until
the war is ended there is little use in detail,
since we do not know what kind of world the
war will leave. The only thing that seems in-
dubitable is that much new thought will be re-
WHAT WE CAN DO 267
quired in the new world produced by the war.
Traditional views will give little help. It is
clear that men's most important actions are not
guided by the sort of motives that are empha-
sized in traditional political philosophies. The
impulses by which the war has been produced
and sustained come out of a deeper region than
that of most political argument. And the op-
position to the war on the part of those few
who have opposed it comes from the same deep
region. A political theory, if it is to hold in
times of stress, must take account of the im-
pulses that underlie explicit thought; it must
appeal to them, and it must discover how to
make them fruitful rather than destructive.
Economic systems have a great influence in
promoting or destroying life. Except slavery,
the present industrial system is the most de-
structive of life that has ever existed. Machin-
ery and large-scale production are ineradicable,
and must survive in any better system which
is to replace the one under which we live. In-
dustrial federal democracy is probably the best
direction for reform to take.
Philosophies of life, when they are widely be-
lieved, also have a very great influence on the
vitality of a community. The most widely ac-
268 WHY MEN FIGHT
cepted philosophy of life at present is that what
matters most to a man's happiness is his in-
come. This philosophy, apart from other de-
merits, is harmful because it leads men to aim
at a result rather than an activity, an enjoy-
ment of material goods in which men are not
differentiated, rather than a creative impulse
which embodies each man's individuality.
More refined philosophies, such as are instilled
by higher education, are too apt to fix attention
on the past rather than the future, and on cor-
rect behavior rather than effective action. It
is not in such philosophies that men will find
the energy to bear lightly the weight of tradi-
tion and of ever-accumulating knowledge.
The world has need of a philosophy, or a re-
ligion, which will promote life. But in order to
promote life it is necessary to value something
other than mere life. Life devoted only to life
is animal without any real human value, inca-
pable of preserving men permanently from
weariness and the feeling that all is vanity. If
life is to be fully human it must serve some end
which seems, in some sense, outside human life,
some end which is impersonal and above man-
kind, such as God or truth or beauty. Those
who best promote life do not have life for their
WHAT WE CAN DO 269
purpose. They aim rather at what seems like
a gradual incarnation, a bringing into our hu-
man existence of something eternal, something
that appears to imagination to live in a heaven
remote from strife and failure and the devour-
ing jaws of Time. Contact with this eternal
world — even if it be only a world of our imagin-
ing — brings a strength and a fundamental peace
which cannot be wholly destroyed by the strug-
gles and apparent failures of our temporal life.
It is this happy contemplation of what is eter-
nal that Spinoza calls the intellectual love of
God. To those who have once known it, it is
the key of wisdom.
What we have to do practically is different
for each one of us, according to our capacities
and opportunities. But if we have the life of
the spirit within us, what we must do and what
we must avoid will become apparent to us.
By contact with what is eternal, by devoting
our life to bringing something of the Divine
into this troubled world, we can make our own
lives creative even now, even in the midst of the
cruelty and strife and hatred that surround us
on every hand. To make the individual life cre-
ative is far harder in a community based on
possession than it would be in such a commun-
270 WHY MEN FIGHT
ity as human effort may be able to build up in
the future. Those who are to begin the regen-
eration of the world must face loneliness, op-
position, poverty, obloquy. They must be able
to live by truth and love, with a rational un-
conquerable hope ; they must be honest and wise,
fearless, and guided by a consistent purpose.
A body of men and women so inspired will con-
quer — first the difficulties and perplexities of
their individual lives, then, in time, though per-
haps only in a long time, the outer world. Wis-
dom and hope are what the world needs; and
though it fights against them, it gives its respect
to them in the end.
When the Goths sacked Rome, St. Augustine
wrote the ''City of God," putting a spiritual
hope in place of the material reality that had
been destroyed. Throughout the centuries that
followed St. Augustine's hope lived and gave
life, while Rome sank to a village of hovels.
For us, too, it is necessary to create a new hope,
to build up by our thought a better world than
the one which is hurling itself into ruin. Be-
cause the times are bad, more is required of us
than would be required in normal times. Only
a supreme fire of thought and spirit can save
future generations from the death that has be-
WHAT WE CAN DO 271
fallen the generation which we knew and loved.
It has been my good fortune to come in con-
tact as a teacher with young men of many dif-
ferent nations — young men in whom hope was
alive, in whom the creative energy existed that
would have realized in the world some part at
least of the imagined beauty by which they
lived. They have been swept into the war, some
on one side, some on the other. Some are still
lighting, some are maimed for life, some are
dead ; of those who survive it is to be feared that
many will have lost the life of the spirit, that
hope will have died, that energy will be spent,
and that the years to come will be only a weary
journey towards the grave. Of all this tragedy,
not a few of those who teach seem to have no
feeling: with ruthless logic, they prove that
these young men have been sacrificed unavoid-
ably for some coldly abstract end ; undisturbed
themselves, they lapse quickly into comfort
after any momentary assault of feeling. In
such men the life of the spirit is dead. If it
were living, it would go out to meet the spirit
in the young, with a love as poignant as the love
of father or mother. It would be unaware of
the bounds of self; their tragedy would be its
own. Something would cry out: ''No, this is
272 WHY MEN FIGHT
not right; this is not good; this is not a holy
cause, in which the brightness of youth is de-
stroyed and dimmed. It is we, the old, who
have sinned; we have sent these young men to
the battlefield for our evil passions, our spiritual
death, our failure to live generously out of the
warmth of the heart and out of the living vision
of the spirit. Let us come out of this death,
for it is we who are dead, not the young men
who have died through our fear of life. Their
very ghosts have more life than we : they hold
us up for ever to the shame and obloquy of all
the ages to come. Out of their ghosts must
eome life, and it is we whom they must vivify. ' '
THE END
f^lLiDKAnrt^jr
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY
Los Angeles
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