Page:Freud - Reflections on war and death.djvu/31

Rh aspiration to power, which the individual is then supposed to sanction out of patriotism.

Let the reader not object that the state cannot abstain from the use of injustice because it would thereby put itself at a disadvantage. For the individual, too, obedience to moral standards and abstinence from brutal acts of violence are as a rule very disadvantageous, and the state but rarely proves itself capable of indemnifying the individual for the sacrifice it demands of him. Nor is it to be wondered at that the loosening of moral ties between the large human units has had a pronounced effect upon the morality of the individual, for our conscience is not the inexorable judge that teachers of ethics say it is; it has its origin in nothing but "social fear." Wherever the community