THE
INTOXICATION MOTIVE
There are several interesting theories of the causes of war, now in
the field, most of them inspired by our recent great conflict, all of
which (but no one perhaps completely or quite justly) may be described
as based upon the view that war is an outbreak of, or reversion to,
instincts and modes of activity which as primitive tendencies remain
in the individual or in the social life and which, from time to time,
with or without social cause, may break loose, so to speak, and hurl
man back into savagery. These theories of war show us, in some cases,
human character in the form of double personality, or liken
civilization to a thin and insecure incrustation upon the surface of
life, beneath which all that is animal-like and barbaric still remains
smoldering. Some of these theories we need to review briefly here.
Bertrand Russell, in answer to the question, "Why do men fight?" which
is the title of his book dealing with the causes of war, says, in
substance, that men fight because they are controlled by instinct (and
also by authority), rather than by reason. Men will cease fighting
when reason controls instinct, and men think for themselves rather
than allow their thinking to be done for them. This view does not
explicitly state that war is a reversion, for man may be at no point
better or more advanced than a creature of instinct, but it lays the
blame for war upon the original nature of man. Man has instincts which
presumably he has brought with him from his pre-human stage, and some
of these instincts are, on their motor side, the reactions of
fighting.
Le Bon (42) speaks of a conscious and an unconscious will in nations,
and says that the motives behind great national movements may be
beneath all conscious intentions, and may anticipate them. The
Englishman in particular lives, in a sense, a divided life, since
there is a manifest inconsistency between what he really is and what
he thinks. What these instincts are, Le Bon does not specify;
presumably they may be either better or worse than the conscious
motives.
Trotter (82) and also Murray (90) consider war from a biological
standpoint, regarding it as a herd phenomenon. Trotter's view,
especially his interpretation of Germany, which we are not to consider
here, is original and important. War is a result of the action of a
_herd instinct_, a specific instinct which is peculiar in one respect,
in that it acts upon other instincts but has no definite motor
reactions of its own. War is the result of the action of the herd
instinct in man upon the old instinct of aggression. At least
aggressive war is. Men in all their social relations show the play of
these instincts; in war it is the old aggressive instinct, the old
passion of the pack, that dominates them; and it is the ancestral
herd-fears that overcome them in their panics. It is the herd instinct
that makes men in groups so highly sensitive to the leader, whose
relations to the herd or pack are always dependent upon their
recognizing him as one of the group; that is, as acting in accordance
with the desires of the herd.
It is by the union of the herd, Murray says, or through the herd
instinct, that suppressed unconscious impulses are given an
opportunity to operate; when the human herd is excited by any external
stimulus, the old types of reaction are brought into play. Curiously,
in such times, leadership may be assumed by eccentric and even
abnormal members of the group--by those who are governed by perverted
instincts; by men who are touched with the mania of suspicion, or who
even suffer from homicidal mania.
The essential point of these biological views is that, when the human
herd is subjected to any influences that tend to arouse the herd
instinct--that is, to unite the herd in any common emotion or action,
the old instinctive forms of response are likely to be brought to the
front. Whatever the stimulus, the tendency is for the herd to fixate
its attention upon some external object, which at once is reacted to
with deep emotion. Plainly, if this be true, if herd instinct does
throw human society from time to time and from various causes into
attitudes of defense and offense with the appropriate emotional
reactions, and if in such times leaders are likely to appear, having
exaggerated instinctive tendencies, there is always close at hand and
ready a mechanism by which war can be produced, war being precisely of
the type of mass action, under strong emotion, of a group closely
united under spectacular leadership, with attention cramped upon some
external object hated or feared.
Nicolai (79), who believes strongly that war is wholly useless,
compares it to the play we turn to when the actions performed in the
play are no longer in themselves practical. War is a great debauch,
perhaps now the last the race will experience. War is like wine: in it
nations renew their youth. It is not the war itself, but the mood it
produces that we crave, and this mood is longed for because in it old
and sacred feelings of patriotism are aroused, and these feelings are
themselves survivals, something romantic, archaic, no longer needed in
the present stage of social life.
Novicow (83) says something very similar to this. War is a survival,
like the classical languages, for example. Men begin to find beauty
and glory in these things only after the activities they represent are
useless. The principle of their survival is nothing more or less than
that of habit. It is habit that keeps war alive; wars are a concession
to our forebears, a following in the footsteps of a dead past.
We are presenting these views in a somewhat loose and illogical order,
but let us look at still a few more of them. Patrick thinks of war as
precisely a plunge into the primeval. War is a reaction, a regression,
but still it is something more than a mere slipping of the machinery
of life. It is _craved_; and it is craved because it offers relief
from the tension of modern life. It is not quite clear whether it is
because we are tired and want rest for our over-worked functions, or
are merely dull and need renewed life, but in any case, when the
desire has accumulated enough, back we fall into the primeval. Then
all the tensions and inhibitions of civilized society disappear.
Society, relieved of its cross-tensions, is resolved and organized
into an harmonious and freely acting whole, seeking a definite object.
Life is simplified, and becomes again primitive. Old and vigorous
movements take the place of the cramped thinking of our civilized
life. All that keeps us modern and evolved is relaxed.
Naturally the Freudians have their own explanation of war in terms of
subconscious wishes, repressed feelings and instincts.
Freud (78)
himself says that war is a recrudescence (and a mastery over us) of a
more primitive life than our own. The child and the primitive man, as
we have long known them in the Freudian theories, live still in us and
are indestructible. We have supposed ourselves to have overcome these
primitive impulses, but we are far from being so civilized as we
thought. The evil impulses, as we call them, which we supposed had at
least been transformed are changed only in the sense that they have
been influenced by the erotic motive, or have been repressed by an
outer restraint, an educational factor, the demands of what we call
civilized environment. But let us not deceive ourselves; the old
impulses are still alive; the number of people who have been
transformed by civilization is less than we supposed.
All society is
at heart barbaric. Judged by our unconscious wishes, we are a band of
murderers, for the primitive wish is to kill all who oppose our
self-interests, and war is precisely a reversion to the method of free
expression of our desires in action. Society and the authority of
government have suppressed these primitive reactions in the
individual, but instead of eliminating them altogether from human
nature (which, of course, no legislation can do in any case),
government and society as a whole have appropriated all these
primitive actions to their own use.
Jones (37), the Freudian, distinguishes two quite different groups of
causes of war: the conscious causes, all expressed in the feeling of
patriotism; and the unconscious causes, which grow out of the desire
to release certain original passions--the passions of cruelty,
destruction, loot and lust.
The central thought of all these views, it is plain, is that war
belongs to the past. It is a return to something that, in a
significant sense, is the natural man--is his instinctive and
unguarded self. It is also plainly implied in these views, here and
there, that modern man, by thus lapsing into war, is renewing his
stock of primitive nature. The modern man is in unstable equilibrium,
and whatever upsets that equilibrium sends him back through the ages.
MacCurdy (37), having Jones and Freud in mind, protests against these
views to this extent: he says that the present state of man, rather
than the past, is the natural state, and that at least in reverting to
the primitive state man becomes unnatural.
The question upon which our discussion of this aspect of war is going
to hinge is whether, or in what sense, the activities and the feelings
aroused in war are reversions. Wars, beyond a doubt, do involve to a
greater extent than peaceful life certain instinctive reactions. Wars
are so impulsive and so persistent that we must suppose very deep
motives to be engaged in war; and the fact that in all wars, and on
both sides of every war, the feelings and the reactions are
fundamentally the same, indicates that war is something less
differentiated than the peaceful life. But that war can be explained
in terms of instinct as such, or that war can be disposed of as a mere
recrudescence of old impulses and types of conduct buried beneath
civilization, is very much to be doubted. War, in the first place, in
its moods and passions, appears to be too complex, too synthetic a
process to be quite what this view would imply. It is too intimately
related to everything that occurs and exists in present day society.
It means too much, concretely and with reference to objects
specifically desired for the future. War is related to the past, but
to a great extent, it may be, wars represent and contain the present
and look toward the future. The distinctions and differences in the
interpretation of war thus implied, and the conflicting understanding
of facts about society and individual life cannot be very clear at
this point, but that there are involved fundamental problems of
psychology, and perhaps divergent ways of thinking of history and
society, and of such principles of philosophy at least as are
implicated in æsthetics, and finally of the practical questions that
are of most interest in these fields to-day, may begin to be evident.
There is one aspect of war, or one question about war, that seems to
suggest that its problems are more subtle and less simple than the
instinct-theories imply. War has been, and still is, the great story
of the world, the center of all that is dramatic and heroic in life.
Its mood--and that is the essential thing in it, whatever else war may
have been, and in spite of all its horrors--is _ecstatic_. War
produces, or is produced by, states of mind that affiliate it with all
the other ecstasies--of love, religion, intoxication, art. We may well
doubt whether any explanation of war can ever be satisfactory that
does not take this quality of it fully into account. One may say, of
course, that war is ecstatic just because it does satisfy instincts,
that the satisfaction of all instincts is pleasant, or that pleasure
_is_ the satisfaction of instincts. But there is more in the problem
than that. Love, the source of the other great romance of the world,
is not exhausted by calling it a gratification of the sexual instinct,
or a primitive tendency of all organic life. It is at the other end of
the process of development of it, so to speak, its place as a present
motive in life, that it is most significant, and it is by no means
explained by calling it a product of sexuality.
So with war. Made out of instincts, it may be, but it is not explained
as the sum of instinctive reactions. _That, at least, is our thesis._
It is the fact that war is a great ecstasy of the social life, that it
holds a high place in art, that history--our selective way of reacting
upon human experience--is in a large measure the story of war, that
its representations in dramatic forms are almost endless in variety;
it is such facts that give us our clew to the nature of the problems
of war, and also to the practical questions of its future.
Hirschfeld (98), in a short study of war, has enumerated and briefly
described some of the forms in which the ecstasy of war appears, or
some of the ecstasies that appear in war. He speaks of the ecstasy of
heroism, and the ecstatic sense that accompanies the taking part in
great events, the consciousness of making history. On a little lower
plane there is the excitement of adventure and of travel that gives
allurement to the idea of war in the mind of the soldier, and which
also glorifies the soldier; the sensation hunger; the _cupidus rerum
novarum_; the ecstasies of nature and freedom, suggested by the very
term "in the field." Add to these the ecstasies of battle and of
victory, the _Kampfsrausch_ and the _Siegestrunkenheit_, and the mood
of war in which acts unlawful for the individual become not only
lawful but highly honorable when done collectively.
There is also in
the mood of war the social intoxication, the feeling on the part of
the individual of being a part of a body and the sense of being lost
in a greater whole. The lusts of conquest, and of looting, and of
combat, all contribute to this spirit of war. And finally, summing up
all the other ecstasies, the strong inner movement of the soul
expressing itself in strong external movements, and in the sense of
living and dying in the midst of vivid and real life.
Hirschfeld's analysis of the ecstasy of war discloses deep and
powerful motives in the individual mind and the social life. We can
find this ecstasy everywhere in the history of war, sometimes as a
national exaltation, sometimes as a more restricted phenomenon.
Villard (54), speaking of the first days of the war, says that in
Germany then one could see "the psychology of the crowd at its noblest
height." The exaltation of a people, whatever its content, or its
purpose, is an awe-inspiring spectacle. There can be no greater
display of the sources of human power. In this particular time of
exaltation we can see in action religious ecstasy, the cult of valor,
and the stirring of more fundamental and more primitive feelings. This
exaltation has its imaginative side. There is a dream of empire in it.
There is an exhibition of the forms of royalty, its display, its color
and its dramatic moments. There is the spirit of militarism and of
great adventure, the excitement of chance, of throwing all into the
hands of fate, the æsthetic and the play motives which are never
separated from the practical passions in times of great exaltation.
This mood of war differs, of course, at different times under
different circumstances. The French people certainly went into the
great war with no such exaltation. We should have to look elsewhere in
French history for the ecstatic war spirit, when the French are moved
by the motives of glory and prestige, or by the vanity and eroticism
which Reuthe thinks are the essential qualities of the spirit of
France. But taking history as a whole there is no lack of ecstasy in
the spirit of war. We find in this ecstasy exalted social feeling, joy
of overcoming the pain of death, the exultation of sacrifice, love of
display, feeling of tragedy, the ecstasy of exerting the utmost of
power, love of danger, the gambling motive, the love of battle, love
of all the dramatic elements of military life. These separate
ecstasies, taken all together, make up the exalted mood of war. They
represent war in its most significant moments.
In this mood of war instincts are exhibited, but they seem to be in
some way transformed, so that the whole has a meaning different from
the parts. The mood of war is not a mere effect, a reaction to events.
It is a longing--plastic and indefinite it may be--but looking toward
the future. It is a craving, not for the release of definite
instincts, but is rather a force or a desire which, however misguided
the expression of this mood or this energy may be, is the essence of
what individuals and society to-day _are_. We may find in this mood,
upon superficial examination, mere emotions, but in a final and deeper
analysis, we may suppose, its content and its meaning will be found to
be specific--purposes which constitute what is deepest and most
continuous in the individual and in society, but which at the same
time give to this mood its generality of direction and of form.
It is the war-mood, then, that must be explained, if we wish to
understand the motives and causes of war. And this war mood, so it
appears, is related to all the other great ecstasies--of art,
religion, intoxication, love. It is, of course, then, a psychological
problem, and one having many radiations and deep roots.
The view that
we are going to take is that in the mood of war we have to do
essentially with what, relying upon previous studies of the principles
of art and of the motives that are at work in society that produce the
phenomena of intemperance we may call the _intoxication motive_. That
this intoxication motive is a plastic force, a mood containing desires
and impulses that may be satisfied in a variety of ways, since as a
sum of desires it is no longer specific and instinctive, is the main
implication of this view. It is this generic quality and compositeness
of the purpose of the individual and of the spirit of society that
obscures the meaning of history and often makes individual lives so
enigmatical, and which also makes these purposes of individuals and
nations so persistent, sometimes so terribly forceful and insatiable.
As contrasted with instincts, the motive of intoxication we say, is
plastic, and its object--and this is one of its most significant
characteristics--is to produce exalted states of consciousness mainly
for their own sake. At least this experience of exaltation is the main
or central thing sought. It is a tendency to seek exalted states, but
at the same time, we should say, specific instincts gain some kind of
satisfaction, although not at all necessarily by the performance of
the external movements appropriate to them. They may obtain a certain
vicarious satisfaction. The mood gives conduct a general direction, it
provides a motive and the power, it is the source of interest and of
desire, but its objects may be indefinite and variable.
Some general aspects of the moods that we have to consider have
already come to light, and these may prove to be valuable clews to a
psychological analysis of their content. There is the ecstatic state,
and the craving to experience it, the love of excitement, the desire
to have a sense of reality, the impulse to seek an abundant life, the
love of power and of the feeling of power. These are all related, and
at least they have something in common, but it is the last mentioned,
the motive of power, that seems to be the most definite and to have
the clearest biological meaning and implications. Indeed this motive
of power (and we must here again depend upon previous studies of the
æsthetic motives and other aspects of ecstasy), appears to be
fundamental in art, in religion, and in history. It is a concept that
gives us a vantage ground for the interpretation of some of the most
significant parts of life. The idea of power and the craving for power
as a general motive, but also containing and exploiting specific
purposes and desires, runs through all the history of art and religion
and also through history itself. Religion is based upon the desire to
exert and to feel power, and it is the manifest and indeed the
expressly acknowledged purpose of all primitive art, and is concealed
and implied in all later art. Art is practical, an effort to realize a
sense of power, to become a god (just as in his motive of play the
child desires more than anything else to realize himself as a man), to
influence people, or objects, or gods, to exert magic somewhere in the
world. In the feeling of power which the ecstatic state produces, the
belief in the power of art is established, and at the same time deep
and hidden impulses are exploited. On the feeling side, and indeed in
every way, this ought to explain how art, religion, and all states of
intoxication have a common element, if they are not primitively the
same.
A psychology of the war moods must undertake to trace the history of
the motive of power, considering its beginnings as the desire and
sense of satisfaction connected with the performance of definite
instinctive acts, and with their physiological results, with the
exertion of power and the production of effects upon objects. It is in
the performance of instinctive acts, in which superiority is inborn,
that animal and man obtain their original sense of power or
superiority. As capacities are differentiated and multiplied, the
experiences of achievement generate a mood and a more general impulse,
a desire to exert power for its own sake. The sensory or organic
elements tend to predominate in this generalized motive, simply
because the specific actions in which the sense of power is obtained
cannot so readily, or cannot at all, be generalized.
Such an
organization of actions and states in consciousness demands nothing
new in principle, implies nothing different from that found on the
intellectual side when concepts are formed from concrete experiences.
The associative processes and the selective principles everywhere
present in mental action are all that are necessary to be assumed
here. We may take advantage, however, of the special investigations of
affective logic, and the like, as giving evidence in support of such
a conception of the formation of moods as is here being worked out. We
are likely to make the mistake of thinking the specific instincts and
the impulses and pleasure states that we find in human experiences,
such as ecstasy, as the whole of these experiences, and to overlook
the constant process of generalization that goes on in all the mental
activity of the individual. For example, we may think of various plays
which involve instinctive actions as being wholly explained by, or to
be made up of, these instinctive acts alone, whereas in most plays
that take the form of excitement, abandon or ecstasy, there are being
employed processes which are general in the sense of reënforcing all
the specific acts alike, and a