I am only a philosopher, and there is only one thing that a philosopher
can be relied on to do, and that is, to contradict other philosophers.
In ancient times philosophers defined man as the rational animal; and
philosophers since then have always found much more to say about the
rational than about the animal part of the definition. But looked at
candidly, reason bears about the same proportion to the rest of human
nature that we in this hall bear to the rest of America, Europe, Asia,
Africa and Polynesia. Reason is one of the very feeblest of nature's
forces, if you take it at only one spot and moment. It is only in the
very long run that its effects become perceptible. Reason assumes to
settle things by weighing them against each other without prejudice,
partiality or excitement; but what affairs in the concrete are settled
by is, and always will be, just prejudices, partialities, cupidities
and excitements. Appealing to reason as we do, we are in a sort of
forlorn-hope situation, like a small sandbank in the midst of a hungry
sea ready to wash it out of existence. But sand-banks grow when the
conditions favor; and weak as reason is, it has this unique advantage
over its antagonists that its activity never lets up and that it
presses always in one direction, while men's prejudices vary, their
passions ebb and flow, and their excitements are intermittent. Our
sand-bank, I absolutely believe, is bound to grow. Bit by bit it will
get dyked and breakwatered. But sitting as we do in this warm room,
with music and lights and smiling faces, it is easy to get too sanguine
about our task; and since I am called to speak, I feel as if it might
not be out of place to say a word about the strength.
Our permanent enemy is the rooted bellicosity of human nature. Man,
biologically considered, and whatever else he may be into the bargain,
is the most formidable of all beasts of prey, and, indeed, the only one
that preys systematically on his own species. We are once for all
adapted to the military status. A millennium of peace would not breed
the fighting disposition out of our bone and marrow, and a function so
ingrained and vital will never consent to die without resistance, and
will always find impassioned apologists and idealizers.
Not only men born to be soldiers, but non-combatants by trade and
nature, historians in their studies, and clergymen in their pulpits,
have been war's idealizers. They have talked of war as of God's court
of justice. And, indeed, if we think how many things beside the
frontiers of states the wars of history have decided, we must feel some
respectful awe, in spite of all the horrors. Our actual civilization,
good and bad alike, has had past wars for its determining condition.
Great mindedness among the tribes of men has always meant the will
to prevail, and all the more, so if prevailing included slaughtering
and being slaughtered. Rome, Paris, England, Brandenburg,
Piedmont,--possibly soon Japan,--along with their arms have their
traits of character and habits of thought prevail among their conquered
neighbors. The blessings we actually enjoy, such as they are, have
grown up in the shadow of the wars of antiquity. The various ideals
were backed by fighting wills, and when neither would give way, the God
of battles had to be the arbiter. A shallow view this, truly; for who
can say what might have prevailed if man had ever been a reasoning and
not a fighting animal? Like dead men, dead causes tell no tales, and
the ideals that went under in the past, along with all the tribes that
represented them, find to-day no recorder, no explainer, no defender.
But apart from theoretic defenders, and apart from every soldierly
individual straining at the leash and clamoring for opportunity, war
has an omnipotent support in the form of our imagination. Man lives
_by_ habits indeed, but what he lives _for_ is thrills and excitements.
The only relief from habit's tediousness is periodical excitement.
From time immemorial wars have been, especially for non-combatants, the
supremely thrilling excitement. Heavy and dragging at its end, at its
outset every war means an explosion of imaginative energy. The dams of
routine burst, and boundless prospects open. The remotest spectators
share the fascination of that awful struggle now in process on the
confines of the world. There is not a man in this room, I suppose, who
doesn't buy both an evening and a morning paper, and first of all
pounce on the war column.
A deadly listlessness would come over most men's imagination of the
future if they could seriously be brought to believe that never again
in _soecula soeculorum_ would a war trouble human history. In such a
stagnant summer afternoon of a world, where would be the zest or
interest?
This is the constitution of human nature which we have to work against.
The plain truth is that people _want_ war. They want it anyhow; for
itself, and apart from each and every possible consequence. It is the
final bouquet of life's fireworks. The born soldiers want it hot and
actual. The non-combatants want it in the background, and always as an
open possibility, to feed imagination on and keep excitement going.
Its clerical and historical defenders fool themselves when they talk as
they do about it. What moves them is not the blessings it has won for
us, but a vague religious exaltation. War is human nature at its
uttermost. We are here to do our uttermost. It is a sacrament.
Society would rot without the mystical blood-payment.
We do ill, I think, therefore, to talk much of universal peace or of a
general disarmament. We must go in for preventive medicine, not for
radical cure. We must cheat our foe, circumvent him in detail, not try
to change his nature. In one respect war is like love, though in no
other. Both leave us intervals of rest; and in the intervals life goes
on perfectly well without them, though the imagination still dallies
with their possibility. Equally insane when once aroused and under
headway, whether they shall be aroused or not depends on accidental
circumstances. How are old maids and old bachelors made? Not by
deliberate vows of celibacy, but by sliding on from year to year with
no sufficient matrimonial provocation. So of the nations with their
wars. Let the general possibility of war be left open, in Heaven's
name, for the imagination to dally with. Let the soldiers dream of
killing, as the old maids dream of marrying.
But organize in every conceivable way the practical machinery for
making each successive chance of war abortive. Put peace men in power;
educate the editors and statesmen to responsibility. How beautifully
did their trained responsibility in England make the Venezuela incident
abortive! Seize every pretext, however small, for arbitration methods,
and multiply the precedents; foster rival excitements, and invent new
outlets for heroic energy; and from one generation to another the
chances are that irritation will grow less acute and states of strain
less dangerous among the nations. Armies and navies will continue, of
course, and fire the minds of populations with their potentialities of
greatness. But their officers will find that somehow or other, with no
deliberate intention on any one's part, each successive "incident" has
managed to evaporate and to lead nowhere, and that the thought of what
might have been remains their only consolation.
The last weak runnings of the war spirit will be "punitive
expeditions." A country that turns its arms only against uncivilized
foes is, I think, wrongly taunted as degenerate. Of course it has
ceased to be heroic in the old grand style. But I verily believe that
this is because it now sees something better. It has a conscience. It
will still perpetrate peccadillos. But it is afraid, afraid in the
good sense, to engage in absolute crimes against civilization.
[1] Published in the Official Report of the Universal Peace Congress,
held in Boston in 1904, and in the _Atlantic Monthly_, December, 1904.