Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 37.djvu/41

Rh kindred actions by other individuals, who have similarly to receive such normal results good and bad. And vaguely, if not definitely, this is seen to constitute what is called justice.

We saw that among inferior gregarious creatures, justice in its universal simple form, besides being qualified by the self-subordination which parenthood implies, and in some measure by the self-restraint necessitated by association, is in a few cases further qualified in a small degree by the partial or complete sacrifice of individuals made in defense of the species. And now in the highest gregarious creature we see that this further qualification of primitive justice assumes large proportions.

No longer as among inferior beings demanded only by the need for defense against enemies of other kinds, this further self-subordination is, among human beings, also demanded by the need for defense against enemies of the same kind. Having become the predominant inhabitants of the Earth, and having spread wherever there is food, men have come to be everywhere in one another's way; and the mutual enmities hence resulting, have made the sacrifices entailed by wars between groups, far greater than the sacrifices made in defense of the groups against inferior animals. It is doubtless true with the human race, as with lower races, that destruction of the group or the variety does not imply destruction of the species; and it therefore follows that such obligation as exists for self-subordination in the interests of the group or the variety, is an obligation of lower degree than is that of sustentation of offspring, without fulfillment of which the species must disappear, and of lower degree than the obligation to restrain actions within the limits imposed by social conditions, without fulfillment of which the group will dissolve. Still, it must be regarded as an obligation to the extent to which the maintenance of the species is subserved by the maintenance of each of its groups.

But the self-subordination thus justified, and in a sense rendered obligatory, is limited to that which is required for defensive war. Only because the preservation of the group as a whole conduces to preservation of its members' lives and their ability to pursue the objects of life, is there a reason for the sacrifice of some of its members; and this reason no longer exists when war is offensive instead of defensive.

It may, indeed, be contended that since offensive wars initiate those struggles between groups which end in the destruction of the weaker, offensive wars, furthering the peopling of the Earth by the stronger, subserve the interests of the race. But even supposing that the conquered groups always consisted of men having smaller mental or bodily fitness for war (which they do not; for