Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/519

 THE SOCIOLOGY OF CONFLICT 501

struggle itself, will on general principles be colored by the fact that every end is to be reached by various means. The desire for a given possession, as well as for the subjugation, or even the annihilation, of an enemy, maybe satisfied by other combinations and through other occurrences than fighting. Where struggle is merely a means determined by its terminus ad quern, there exists no ground for not limiting or omitting it, if with equal success another means can be used. To be sure, the most effective pre- supposition for preventing struggle, the exact knowledge of the comparative strength of the two parties, is very often only to be attained by the actual fighting out of the conflict. In case, however, the conflict is determined exclusively by the subjective terminus a quo, where inner energies are present which can be satisfied only by struggle as such, there is no possible alternative. Struggle is in that case its own end and purpose, and consequently is utterly free from admixture of any other form. Such a strug- gle for struggle's sake seems to have its natural basis in a certain formal impulse of hostility, which forces itself sometimes upon psychological observation, and in various forms. In the first place, it appears as that natural enmity between man and man which is often emphasized by skeptical moralists. The argument is : Since there is something not wholly displeasing to us in the misfortune of our best friends, and, since the presupposition excludes, in this instance, conflict of material interests, the phenomenon must be traced back to an a priori hostility, to that homo homini lupus, as the frequently veiled, but perhaps never inoperative, basis of all our relationships. The completely contrasted tendency in moral philosophy which derives ethical altruism from the transcendental foundations of our nature does not thereby, however, separate itself so very far from the former pess'imism. It admits that within the circuit of our experience and our knowledge of voli- tions devotion to the alter is not to be discovered. Empirically, so far as our knowledge goes, man is accordingly a simple egoist, and every variation from this natural fact must occur, not by virtue of nature itself, but only because of a metaphysical reality which somehow or other breaks through the rationally conceivable. That we are inclined, however, to oppose to this radical egoism,