Page:Freud - Reflections on war and death.djvu/86

Rh inclined to kill the stranger, and just as divided, or ambivalent towards the persons we love as was primitive man. But how far we are removed from this primitive state in our conventionally civilized attitude towards death!

It is easy to see how war enters into this disunity. War strips off the later deposits of civilization and allows the primitive man in us to reappear. It forces us again to be heroes who cannot believe in their own death, it stamps all strangers as enemies whose death we ought to cause or wish; it counsels us to rise above the death of those whom we love. But war cannot be abolished; as long as the conditions of existence among races are so varied and the repulsions between them are so vehement, there will have to be wars. The question then arises whether