Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/523

 THE SOCIOLOGY OF CONFLICT 505

If now there exists in men a formal impulse of hostility as the counterpart of the sympathetic impulse, it seems to me that historically it springs from one of those processes of distillation in the soul by which subjective motions, evoked by definite and manifold contents, finally leave behind in the soul the form com- mon to them all, as an independent impulse. Interests of every sort impel so often to conflict over goods, to opposition against persons, that as a residuum of them a condition of irritability, impelling spontaneously toward antagonistic demonstrations, may quite easily have passed over into the inventory of the transmis- sible traits of our species. The reciprocal relationship of primi- tive groups is notoriously, and for reasons frequently discussed, almost invariably, one of hostility. The decisive illustration is furnished perhaps by the Indians, among whom every tribe on gen- eral principles was supposed to be on a war footing toward every other tribe with which it had no express treaty of peace. It is, however, not to be forgotten that in early stages of culture war constitutes almost the only form in which contact with an alien group occurs. So long as inter-territorial trade was undevel- oped, individual journeys unknown, and intellectual community did not extend beyond the group boundaries, there was, out- side of war, no sociological relationship whatever between the various groups. In this case the relationship of the elements of the group to each other and that of the primitive groups to each other present completely contrasted forms. Within the closed circle hostility signifies, as a rule, the severing of relation- ships, voluntary isolation, and the avoidance of contact. Along with these negative phenomena there will also appear the phe- nomena of the passionate reaction of open struggle. On the other hand, the characteristic group as a whole remains indiffer- ently side by side with similar groups so long as peace exists, and these groups become significant for each other only when war breaks out. On this account the very same impulse of expansion and enterprise which within the group promotes absolute peace, as the condition of the interaction and unhindered reciprocity of interests, may in its operation between groups operate as an instigator of war. That the impulse of hostility, considered also