Page:Mary Whiton Calkins - Militant Pacifism (International Journal of Ethics, 1917-10-01).pdf/4

Rh with pugnacity since no animal can at one and the same time shrink back and make attack, feel afraid and feel angry. And yet it is plain matter of observation that fear incites to pugnacity, and in two ways. On the one hand, the fleeing animal, brought to bay, turns on its pursuers and the desperately frightened child suddenly attacks his tormenter and thus the instinct of fear suddenly gives way to anger. And, on the other hand, fear may stimulate the deliberate and premeditated creation of the machinery of attack.

Pugnacity, finally, may be excited in an altogether different way and may reinforce instincts of an entirely different character. Men and animals alike sometimes fight not through balked courage, or thwarted acquisitiveness, or in swift reaction against paralyzing fear but to protect or succor others, that is, because their social and sympathetic instincts are violated. The neglect, even the denial, of these social instincts was one of the unfortunate results of the superficial popularization of Darwinian teaching. But every biologist recognizes, approach in its social form, the basal instinct which crowds animals into herds and is manifested in the flight of birds in flocks, protectiveness, the instinctive attitude of parent to offspring, and imitation, the instinctive attitude toward leaders or parents, as primitive endowments of animal and of human selves. In their higher manifestations these developed social instincts are directed toward ever widening groups of persons and are transmuted into the virtues of generosity and sacrifice on the one hand, into loyalty and obedience on the other. We are here concerned with the abundantly established fact that the fighting instinct normally lends force and vigor to these social instincts. No battles for private ends are so fierce as those which the animal or human mother wages to protect her young; and the glory of war is the lavish sacrifice of life and love and work for the beloved fatherland.

At their surface value these considerations seem to support the theory of those who disparage the war against war.