Page:Georges Sorel, Reflections On Violence (1915).djvu/202

188 opposite systems of ideas, so that quite contradictory things can be said about it, all based on incontestable facts.

War may be considered from its noble side, i.e. as it has been considered by poets celebrating armies which have been particularly illustrious; proceeding thus we find in war:

(1) The idea that the profession of arms cannot compare to any other profession;—that it puts the man who adopts this profession in a class which is superior to the ordinary conditions of life,—that history is based entirely on the adventures of warriors, so that the economic life only existed to maintain them.

(2) The sentiment of glory which Renan so justly looked upon as one of the most singular and the most powerful creations of human genius, and which has been of such incomparable value in history.

(3) The ardent desire to try one's strength in great battles, to submit to the test which gives the military calling its claim to superiority, and to conquer glory at the peril of one's life.

There is no need for me to insist on these features of war at any great length; my readers will understand the part played in ancient Greece by this conception of war. The whole of classical history is dominated by the idea of war conceived heroically: in their origin, the institutions of the Greek republics had as their basis the organisation of armies of citizens; Greek art reached its apex in the citadels; philosophers conceived of no other possible form of education than that which fostered in youth the heroic tradition, and they endeavoured to keep the study and practice of music within bounds, because they wished to prevent the development of sentiments foreign to this discipline; social Utopias were created with a view to maintaining a nucleus of homeric warriors in the cities,