Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 27, 1916.djvu/45

Rh pologists may undertake to throw light on a problem of practical morals, let us proceed to examine that strife of principles which is now agitating Europe, from our own strictly limited point of view.

That a strife of principles of some sort is involved in the present war between the European Powers will, I suppose, hardly be denied. Moreover, if any one were to contend that the principles thus brought into violent conflict were of the purely political order, and did not implicate certain moral and spiritual issues, he might surely be set aside as a superficial observer. The political aspect of the struggle is, doubtless, of no little importance. Democracy is at death-grips with the militant state. But more is at stake than this or that type of social organization. Is it to be a reign of freedom or a reign of force? The moral ideas behind the rival organizations are themselves at war. The more vital question for us, then, is whether anthropology can show which moral idea is likely to defeat the other, whether in the near future or at any rate in the end.

Some philosophers, indeed, would be loth to admit that a war between moral principles is conceivable at all. I am not referring to those thinkers who would simply declare that whatever conflicted with their own moral principles is neither moral nor a principle at all. I am speaking, not of the jingoes of the speculative world, but rather of the pacificists, who would reconcile all contradictions in some higher, if vaguer, unity. It is easy to parody this notion of a formal all-inclusiveness. Thus, once it is assumed that the perfect animal must be omnivorous in the sense of eating nothing in particular, there can be no difficulty in showing how the carnivorous lion and the herbivorous lamb, when fully evolved, may lie down and be happy together. But it is better to allow that, discreetly used, such a philosophic method can do much to promote the harmony of the world, by showing half-truths to be com-