Page:Freud - Reflections on war and death.djvu/46

Rh they never really rose as high as we had believed. The fact that states and races abolished their mutual ethical restrictions not unnaturally incited them to withdraw for a time from the existing pressure of civilization and to sanction a passing gratification of their suppressed impulses. In doing so their relative morality within their own national life probably suffered no rupture.

But we can still further deepen our understanding of the change which this war has brought about in our former compatriots and at the same time take warning not to be unjust to them. For psychic evolution shows a peculiarity which is not found in any other process of development. When a town becomes a city or a child grows into a man, town and child disappear in the city and in the man.