Page:Karl Kautsky - Ethics and The Materialist Conception of History - tr. J. B. Askew (1906).pdf/107

 own kind themselves: struggles, often more bloody than those with the leopard and the panther, which at least the bigger apes understand very well how to defend themselves against when united in greater numbers.

Nothing is more fallacious than the idea that the progress of culture and increase of knowledge necessarily bring also higher humanity with them. We could far better say, the ape is more human, therefore more human than man. Murder and slaughter of members of his species from economic notions are products of culture of technic in arms. And up to now the perfection of these has ranked as a great part of the intellectual labour of mankind.

Only under special circumstances and in special classes will there be produced in the farther progress of culture what we call the refinement of manners. The progress in division of labour ascribes the task of killing animals and men to certain classes—hunters, butchers, executioners, soldiers, etc.—who then occupy themselves with brutality or cruelty either as a sport or as a business within the boundaries of civilisation. Other classes are entirely relieved of the necessity, nay, even the possibility of shedding blood. As, for instance, the vegetarian peasants in the river valleys of India, who are prevented by nature from keeping great herds of animals, and for whom the ox is too costly as a beast of burden, or the cow as the giver of milk, for them to be in a position to kill them. Even the majority of the town inhabitants of the European States, since the decay of the town republics and the rise of paid armies as well as the rise of a special class of butchers, are relieved of the necessity to take life. Especially the intellectuals have been for centuries unused to the spilling of blood, which they ascribe to their higher intelligence, which roused milder feelings in them. But in the last century the increased military service has become again a general institution of most European States, and wars have again become the wars of peoples, and with that the refinement of manners among our intellectuals has reached its end.