Page:Mary Whiton Calkins - Militant Pacifism (International Journal of Ethics, 1917-10-01).pdf/1

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HE one thing which unites the world to-day is the desire for the end of the Great War. The larger desire which animates many men is the passionate longing for an end of all war. But checking this desire, strangling this hope, are two widespread dogmas: the psychological dogma that man is inevitably a fighter and the ethical dogma that through war, and through war alone, he can rise to the supreme height of self-sacrifice. This paper proposes to subject these teachings to a brief examination.

It is unquestionably true that those who dare to hope and to work for the end of war must meet the protest of the critics who hold that this instinct is irrepressible and that war is, therefore, ineradicable. It is vain, these critics insist, to hope, to plan, to work for a league of nations, a world-state, a reign of perpetual peace. Such dreams belonged to the prophets of Israel who foretold swords beaten into ploughshares and to Roman poets who sang of a returning golden age of peace. But we moderns, it is urged, with our scientific training—we, alas, know that we are very much lower than the angels and only a little higher than the beasts who must prey upon each other in the fierce struggle for survival on which depends the development of living beings. The hopeless ideal of abolishing war should, therefore, make way for the intelligent purpose of replacing unjust, cruel, and dishonorable fighting by just, humane, and honorable warfare. To estimate properly the argument from the nature of instinct to the dogma of perpetual war it is necessary to study in some detail the instincts lying at the heart of war and, in particular, pugnacity. By instincts are meant feelings and bodily reactions reappearing in every generation, either born in individuals or else arising at a definite period of their