COMBAT AND DESTRUCTION, THE SOCIAL INSTINCT
We have found that the essential, and we might say, primary
psychological datum of war is a war-mood, that the central motive of
this war-mood is a general impulse which we called the intoxication
motive, and that this intoxication motive, considered generically, and
in regard to its specific meaning is a craving for power and for the
experience of exerting and feeling power. The war-mood is not a mere
collection of instincts; it is a new product, in which instincts and
emotions have a place. There are several reasons, practical and
theoretical, for regarding it as a highly important problem to
discover what the actual content of this war-mood is.
This mood, being
one of the greatest of all powers of good and evil, and one most in
need to-day of education and re-direction, it may be, it will probably
be controlled, if ever, upon the basis of a knowledge of what it means
as a whole, and of what its elements are which appear in the form of
fused, transformed, truncated, generalized and aborted instincts and
feelings.
_Primitive Tendencies_
First of all, the highly complex emotions, moods and impulses we find
in the social consciousness as expressed in the moods of war, do
contain and revert to instincts and feelings that are part of the
primitive equipment of organic life, and are usually identified as
nutritional and reproductive tendencies. The part played in war by
the migratory impulse, the predatory impulse and the like indicates
the connection of the war-moods with the nutritional tendencies; and
the display elements found already in primitive warfare and, as we
have already inferred, in all forms of ecstasy contain factors that
are at bottom sexual. We no longer eat our enemies, and we do not
bring home their heads to our women or practice wife stealing, but it
is easy to observe the remnants of these old feelings and instincts in
war. Trophy hunting continues, and we may suppose that even the moods
of primitive cannibalism have not entirely been lost.
The ready
habituation of soldiers to some of the scenes of the recent war seems
to suggest a lingering trace of this motive, while the looting impulse
which plays such a part in war, and some aspects of the destructive
impulses and the like that are displayed, are, with a high degree of
probability, closely related to instincts that were once specifically
practical and belong to the fundamental nutritional motives. Nor is it
a mere euphemism, perhaps, when we speak of the greed of nations, nor
solely analogical when we compare the ambitions of peoples with
certain adolescent phenomena in the life of the individual. Plainly
the social consciousness, as a collective mood, does not command the
specific reactions connected with sexuality and nutrition, but we may
observe the presence of these instinctive reactions in two phases of
war. We see them in the tendencies of various individuals, who under
the excitements of the war moods are controlled more or less
specifically by instinctive reactions. We see also fragments of
instinctive reactions and primitive feeling woven into the total
states of social consciousness. The hunger motive may, and probably
does, supply some of the elements of the fear and the aggressive moods
of war; just as the sex motive provides some of the elements of anger
and hatred, and some of the qualities of combat itself.
_The Aggressive Instinct_
A natural, but somewhat naïve explanation of war is that it is a
survival of the aggressive instinct that man has brought up with him
from animal life, in which he originated, and that very early in his
career was directed toward his fellow men. This aggressive instinct as
expressed in the modern spirit of war does not need, on this view, to
be thought of as something reverted to. It is still active throughout
the social life. Both the purposes and the methods of it remain. We
have referred to one aspect of this before, and to the objection that
can be made that the ancestry of man does not show us such an
aggressive instinct. The nearest relatives of man are mainly social
rather than aggressive in their habits. Even the habits of hunting
other animals and eating animal food appear to have been acquired
during man's career as man, and he never has had the aggressive temper
that some creatures have had. Man has acquired a very effectual and
very complex adjustment to his environment by piecing together, so to
speak, fragments of his original conduct, and developing mechanisms
that have been produced in the race as a means of satisfying
fundamental needs. Modes of reaction produced originally for one
purpose have apparently been utilized by other motives.
Of course the
more specific animal instincts are not wholly lacking, but it is also
true that man through his social life has produced habits that
resemble or are substitutes for primitive instincts. The love of
combat, especially as it is shown in play indicates the presence of
instinctive roots, but it does not show the existence of a definite
instinct of aggression. This play is in part an off-shoot of the
reproductive motive. These fighting plays of children are in part
sexual plays, and we see them clearly in their true light in some of
the higher mammals most closely related to man.
One aspect of the aggressive habit of man has been too much neglected.
It is highly probable that aggression in man has been far more closely
related to the emotion of fear than to any assumed predatory instinct.
It is a question whether the predatory habit of man, ending in
cannibalism and the hunting of animals for food, did not originate in
the time of the long battle man must have had with animals in which
the animals themselves for the most part played the part of
aggressors. It was not for nothing, at any rate, that our animal
ancestors took to the trees, and it is certain that the fear element
in human nature is very strong and very deeply ingrained. We see
throughout animal life fear expressed by aggressive movements, by the
show of anger, as well as by flight. This is seen especially clearly
in the birds. With all their equipment for the defensive strategy of
flight they express fear instinctively by attacking, and this is
apparently not a result merely of the habit of defending the young.
The great carnivora also attack from fear, and seem normally never to
attack such animals as they do not hunt for prey unless they are
frightened. The charge of the rhinoceros and other great ungulates is
probably always a fear reaction. They appear to have no other
aggressive impulses, certainly none connected with the nutritional
motives since they are herbivorous in habit.
The fear motive is probably much deeper in human nature, both in the
lower and the higher social reactions than is commonly supposed, the
concealment of fear being precisely a part of the strategy of defense.
Fear has created more history than it is usually given credit for. The
aggressive motive alone, in all probability, would never have made
history such a story of battles as it has been. Nations usually
attribute more aggressive intentions and motives to their neighbors
than their neighbors possess, and war is certainly often precipitated
by an accumulation of mutual distrust and suspicion.
Nations are
always watching one another for the least signs of aggression on the
part of their supposed enemies, an attitude which of course is
inspired only by apprehension.
Moods of fear and pessimism we say are deeply implanted in the
consciousness of man, and we must interpret both his optimism, and all
its expressions in philosophy and in religion, and also his aggressive
behavior as in large part the result of a conscious or an unconscious
effort to overcome his fear. The social consciousness is full of marks
of age-long dread and suspicion. Fear of fate, fear of losing identity
as a nation, fear of being overrun by an enemy, fear of internal
disruption, are strong motives in national life. Fear runs like a dark
thread through all the life of nations, and gives to it a quality of
mysticism, and a touch of sadness which is so characteristic of much
of the deepest patriotism of the world.
Fear is one of the most powerful motives of all aggressive warfare in
the world. We find it in every nation, even those which are naturally
most aggressive, and in them perhaps most of all. In the history and
in the war moods of Germany the fear motive is unmistakable. America
is not without it. Nations conceal their fears, presenting a bold
front to the foreigner; but beneath the display one can always detect
suspicion, dread and intense watchfulness. America has in the past
feared Germany, and America fears the Far East; we look furtively
toward Asia, the primeval home of all evils and pestilence, for
something that may arise and engulf us. Small countries fear; large
countries with their sense of distances, have their own characteristic
forms of apprehension. Fear is the motive of preventive wars. It makes
all nations desire to kill their enemies in the egg. It creates the
death wish toward all who thwart our interests or who may in the
future do so.
This fear motive runs through all history. Parsons says that men fight
not because they are warlike, but because they are fearful. Rohrbach
thinks that if Germany and England could each be sure the other would
not be aggressive there would be no war between them. It is this
aspect of the foreign as the unknown that especially plays upon the
motive of fear. This fear is like the child's dread of the dark; it is
not what is seen, but what is not seen that causes apprehension. It is
the stranger whose psychic nature we cannot penetrate, who causes
fear. In small countries having only land borders, this attitude of
suspicion and fear must become an integral part of the whole psychic
structure of the national consciousness. Fear becomes morbid; nations
have illusions and delusions based upon fear. There are reasons for
believing that all aggression contains a pessimistic motive, or
background, and that this pessimistic background is based upon the
emotion of fear. Countries that are most positively aggressive have
such a pessimistic strain. Pessimism is a shadow that lies across the
path of progress of modern Germany. This fear motive, the quality of
the animal that charges when at bay, is to be seen throughout all
German history. Germany's fear of Russia must certainly be blamed for
a great part of the pessimistic strain in the temperament of Germany,
and therefore as an important factor among the causes of the great
war. Every war appears to the people who conduct it as defensive,
precisely because every war is to some extent based upon fear, and
fear in national consciousness is a persistent sense of living by a
defensive strategy. It is existence that nations always think and talk
of fighting for; it is existence about which they have apprehensions.
Beneath all group life there is this sense of fear, since fear itself
was a large factor in creating that life. When people live together,
repress individual desires and participate in a common life we may
know that one of the strongest bonds of this social life is fear. The
need of defense is a more fundamental motive in national life than is
aggression. A "shudder runs through a nation about to go to battle."
The lusts of war are aroused later by the overcoming of fear.
Germany's inclination to preventive wars, her incessant plea of being
about to be attacked, can by no means be interpreted as pure
deception, or as an effort to make political capital.
Germany's army
_was_ primarily for defense, because a defensive strategy is the only
strategy that Germany with her position and her temperament can adopt.
Germany's great army was Germany's compensation, in consciousness, for
the insignificance of her territory. It was for defense.
It was also a
compensation for a feeling of inferiority, in Adler's sense.
Fanaticism, envy, depreciation of others, aggression, morbid and
excessive ambition were all fruits from the same stem.
The gloom which
many have found in German life, and the pessimism in German
philosophy, we may explain in part by the experiences of Germany as
the scene of so many devastating wars. Upon the background of fear, in
our interpretation of aggressive motives, is erected German autocracy,
German ambition and the conception of the absolute State, which may be
interpreted as almost a specific fear reaction. It comes in time to
have other meanings, and like many instinctive reactions, it may be
put to uses for which it was not originally produced, but there is
fear concealed in the heart of it. How action can be both defensive
and strongly aggressive, then, is no mystery if we see that aggression
may be a fear reaction, that even the most ardent imperialism is based
in part upon fear, upon the consciousness at some time of being weak
and inferior.
Fear and suspicion cause aggressive wars even when the fear may be, in
all reason, groundless. There is no more dangerous individual in the
community than the one having delusions of persecution, for his mania
is naturally homicidal. So with nations. Fear is a treacherous and
deceptive passion. We may see this fear, if we choose to look for it,
even in the ecstatic mood of war and the spiritual exaltation of
Germany during the first few weeks or months of the war.
This
exaltation was in part a reaction of fear--or a reaction from fear.
Germany was afraid, feared for her existence, and the exaltation was
in part a sense of taking a terrible plunge into the depths of fate.
Germany was afraid of Russia and afraid of England, and that fear had
to be overcome, because the presence of the fear itself was a matter
of life or death. But the exaltation did not merely succeed the fear.
It contained it. And why should Germany, even with all her
preparedness and her resources not be afraid? An inherited fear is not
so easily exorcised. Germany arrayed against all Russia and all the
British Empire, Germany no larger than our Texas experienced a state
of exaltation, overcoming fear. But it required something more than
courage to overcome the fear; and that other element was mysticism. To
the sense of throwing all into the hands of fate which, by all
physical signs must be adverse, was added, as a compensating element,
Germany's mystical belief in her security as a chosen nation. Fear, by
its intensity and depth may, like physical pain, become ecstatic and
thus be overcome.
_Hatred_
Hatred must be considered both as a cause of war, and as an element in
the war moods. Many authors have called hatred one of the deepest
roots of war. This hatred between nations even Freud says is
mysterious. But Pfister, referring to Adler's theory, says that war
must be understood precisely as we understand enmity among
individuals. A sense of inferiority is insulted, and thus aggressive
feelings are aroused. The nation, like the individual, is spurred on
to make good its claim to greatness. It is a feeling of jealousy based
upon a sense of inferiority that causes hatred. O'Ryan and Anderson
(5), military writers, say there are two causes of war: those based
upon an assumed necessity, and those based upon hatred.
Nusbaum (86)
also finds two causes of war, the expansion impulse and the egoism of
species, which leads to long enmities.
History shows that we must accept hatred as an underlying cause of
war. The reaction of deep anger which may be aroused by a variety of
situations that arise among nations, especially when it is, so to
speak, an outbreak of a long continued hatred, is a proximate cause of
wars. Hatred, the reaction of anger prolonged into a mood, differs as
national or group emotion from the anger of the individual in part by
being subject strongly to group suggestion, and in part because in the
group consciousness there is only rarely a means of expression, on the
part of the individuals of the group, of the feelings of hatred.
Enemies are far away and inaccessible. Therefore hatred may become
deep and chronic.
Hatred between nations is usually based upon a long series of
reprisals and a history of invasions. These invasions are primarily
physical invasions, but later invasions in the sphere of invisible
values, offenses to honor and the like are added. These ideal values
come to be regarded as more vital than material values.
Hatred between
groups becomes chronic and often seems to be groundless because the
values concerned have thus become intangible. The chronic moods of
hatred and dislike become explosive forces, ready to be excited to
action whenever any difference arises. Veblen (97) says wars never
occur except when questions of honor are involved, which is of course
equivalent to saying that the reaction of anger is always required as
an immediate cause of war. Veblen maintains also that emulation is
always involved in the patriotic spirit, that patriotism always
contains the idea of the defeat of an opponent, and is based upon
collective malevolence. The range of these occasions of crisis is so
great, and the feelings of hatred so persistent and volatile, that the
mechanism for the production of war is always present.
These causes
range all the way from violation of property to offense to the most
abstract ideas of national etiquette. Violation of international law,
of moral principles, we see now, may have very far-reaching effects as
infringing the sphere of honor of nations not directly concerned,
since the prestige of all nations as participants in creating law and
becoming upholders of it is affected.
If hatred and its crises are causes of war, they do not fit into the
moods in which warfare is generally conducted. Hatred belongs to the
periods of peace and of strained relations, when the cause of war is
present, but the means of retaliation are not at hand or not in
action. The prevalence and persistence of hatred in war is a sign of
imperfect morale. Hatred cannot remain in the war mood of a nation
acting with full confidence in its powers. Hatred always implies
inferiority or impotent superiority. Dide (20) says that the spirit of
hatred does not fit into the soldier's life. It goes with the desire
for revenge and is strongest among those who stay at home and can do
nothing. Hatred is a phase of apprehension. Hatred is a product of the
fear that cannot be taken up into the optimistic moods, and thus be
transformed. It remains as a foreign body and an inhibition. It arises
when obstacles appear to be too great, when there are reverses, and
the enemy shows signs of being able to maintain a long and stubborn
resistance, or flaunts again the original cause of the disagreement.
Scheler (77) says that revenge, which is a form of hate, is not a
justifiable war motive. We should say also that it is not a normal war
mood, that it has no sustaining force, but causes a rapid expenditure
of energy which may be effectual in brief actions, but is even there
wasteful and interferes with judgment and efficiency.
Morale based
upon hatred is insecure.
Hatred must have been a very early factor in the relations of groups
to one another, and presumably we should need to go back to animal
life and study antipathies there in order fully to understand the
nature of racial and national antagonisms, some of which may be based
upon physiological traits and primitive æsthetic qualities. The very
fact of the existence of groups, segregated and well bound together
for the purposes of offense and defense implies already a strong
contrast of feeling between that of individuals of the group toward
one another and that directed toward the outsider. This contrast
developed not merely as a reaction, but as a necessity, for groups in
the beginning must have had to contend against their own feeble social
cohesion, and existed only by reason of strong emotions of fear and
anger felt toward the stranger. Hatred toward all outside the group
must at one stage have been highly useful as a means of cementing the
bonds of the group and maintaining the necessary attitude of defense,
at a time when all outsiders were likely to be dangerous. Feelings of
friendliness toward strangers were dangerous to the life of the group,
and so hatred possessed survival value.
The main root of group antipathy is in all probability fear. Hatred is
an aspect of the aggressive defensive toward the stranger. Hatred is a
part of the aggressive reaction. As an expression of ferocity toward
all who are not known to be friendly, it belongs to the first line of
defense. Hatred is likely to be strong in the female because the
attitude of the female is universally defensive.
In the beginning, as MacCurdy (37) says, the contrasts between groups
were sharp, and these definitely separated groups must have felt
toward one another not only antagonism but a sense of being different
in kind. Intensity of feelings of opposition tends to magnify small
differences into specific differences. This sense of specific
difference is never lost, not even in the consciousness of enlightened
nations in regard to one another, and we may see it to-day displayed
as a mystic belief, on the part of many peoples, in their own
superiority. Nations are always outsiders to one another, and the
sense of strangeness perennially sustains defensive attitudes and
moods of hatred. The friendship of nations can never be very secure,
because the old idea of difference of kind is never quite abandoned.
Some degree of enmity seems always to be felt toward the foreigner;
that is, toward all who are not interested in the protective functions
of the group. MacCurdy thinks the intensity of suspicion and hatred of
peoples toward one another belongs to the pathological field, and that
one expression of this is the peculiarity of the mental processes by
which nations always justify their own cause in war.
This, however, is
perhaps an exaggeration, since we can trace these states of mind in
all the history of the race.
How deep-seated the enmities and the sense of strangeness among
nations may be is seen in the fact that national groups living in
close proximity to one another tend to become less friendly rather
than to become affiliated. These feelings gradually produce conceptual
entities, which stand for the reality of the foreign.
These concepts
are deposits, so to speak, from a great number of affective reactions,
and they always contain imaginative content based upon enmity and
suspicion. This underlying enmity between neighboring peoples is not
something rare in the world. All foreigners, even in the minds of the
most intelligent of peoples, are reconstructions, caricatures. These
feelings and attitudes are strong and deep and they preve