Bertrand russell why men fight

The subjects are all tied together by the then current crisis, and develop towards the authors ideas about improving society. In hindsight some of his ideas are quite Not an easy read, and probably best to go back to it.

In hindsight some of his ideas are quite basic e. Dec 27, Armagan they-them rated it liked it. Apr 14, Alex Hoeft rated it liked it. I learned I don't care for philosophy. View 1 comment.

Oct 06, Tom Herring rated it it was amazing. One of the best reads ever. Should be required reading for all. Terei que dividir essa resenha, pois tiveram muitas coisas que gostem mesmo a respeito.

Sep 18, Vasja Volin rated it really liked it. It's interesting to see that many of the philosophical ideas of the current century, as well as many of the more abstract social issues we face, were already actively thought about right at the start of it.

Diminishing birth rates, inequality of women and colored people, and education towards obedience rather than creativity and exploratory learning, were already well-known and thought about in Russell's day.

This is a great look at the kind of society Russell was hoping would come about. It is a It's interesting to see that many of the philosophical ideas of the current century, as well as many of the more abstract social issues we face, were already actively thought about right at the start of it. It is also a somewhat sombre read into our current times, as many of these issues still haunt us today, if less so through the veil of total war.

Sep 29, Justin Rose rated it really liked it. Something I enjoyed about Why Men Fight is it offers more solutions than criticisms. Unfortunately those solutions tend to be unfounded conjecture, which history has proven to be false.

It is also interesting how Russell finds the root of war in personal and social issues such as education, family structure, and personal liberty, rather than in things like international relations and weaponry. It makes you wonder if this isn't a sociology work with a belligerent title to sell more books in the G Something I enjoyed about Why Men Fight is it offers more solutions than criticisms. It makes you wonder if this isn't a sociology work with a belligerent title to sell more books in the Great War world of World War I has started and famous philosopher Bertrand Russell tries to tackle the issue of what makes men fight.

Why and for what? He breaks down the reasons in separate chapters which are very in-depth. He speaks on war in general and what drives nations to war; he speaks on education; marriage and love, etc. A very well structured read. May 19, Prakhar Verma rated it it was amazing. He might talk everything other than why we fight but it is one Russell's most poignant and compelling work.

Jun 28, Mir Sanaullah rated it it was amazing. Bertrand Russell predicted so much about the future delivering these lectures in His essay on War, Education, Population and Religion have been eye openers. His elaboration of actions as instinct, mind and spirit connects so many dots. I can't wait to read what he has to say in his later essays.

Clear, concise, informative. Carl Ohlsson rated it really liked it Jul 04, Tim Goodacre rated it really liked it Mar 20, Adrian Diez Martin rated it it was amazing Feb 05, Ronnie Andrade rated it really liked it Jun 10, Ahmad Ahmad rated it really liked it Mar 25, Jelle De boer rated it really liked it Jul 30, Lynn rated it it was amazing Jan 18, M rated it it was amazing Aug 19, Viktor rated it really liked it Jun 15, Efren rated it really liked it Mar 04, Pr0fanus rated it liked it Oct 06, Giorgi rated it it was amazing Jul 23, There are no discussion topics on this book yet.

Be the first to start one ». Readers also enjoyed. About Bertrand Russell. Bertrand Russell. Although he was usually regarded as English, as he spent the majority of his life in England, he was born in Wales, where he also died.

He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in "in recognition of his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought. Books by Bertrand Russell. Related Articles.

The last five years of world history have been nothing if not When living in interesting times, there's nothing better for Read more Trivia About Why Men Fight. No trivia or quizzes yet. Add some now ». Quotes from Why Men Fight. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habits; thought is anarchic and lawless, indifferent to authority, careless of the well-tried wisdom of the ages.

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Configure custom resolver. Principles of Social Reconstruction. Bertrand Russell - - Routledge. Bertrand Russell, the Social Scientist.

Bertrand Russell ed. The First Rule of Fight Club. Nancy Bauer - - In Thomas Wartenberg ed. Freedom and Organization.

Impulse is erratic and anarchical, not easily fitted into a well-regulated system; it may be tolerated in children and artists, but it is not thought proper to men who hope to be taken seriously. Almost all paid work is done from desire, not from impulse: the work itself 12 is more or less irksome, but the payment for it is desired.

In this hardly any one sees an evil, because the place of impulse in a satisfactory existence is not recognized. An impulse, to one who does not share it actually or imaginatively, will always seem to be mad. All impulse is essentially blind, in the sense that it does not spring from any prevision of consequences. The man who does not share the impulse will form a different estimate as to what the consequences will be, and as to whether those that must ensue are desirable.

This difference of opinion will seem to be ethical or intellectual, whereas its real basis is a difference of impulse. No genuine agreement will be reached, in such a case, so long as the difference of impulse persists.

In all men who have any vigorous life, there are strong impulses such as may seem utterly unreasonable to others. Blind impulses sometimes lead to destruction and death, but at other times they lead to the best things the world contains. Blind impulse is the source of war, but it is also the source of 13 science, and art, and love.

It is not the weakening of impulse that is to be desired, but the direction of impulse towards life and growth rather than towards death and decay.

The complete control of impulse by will, which is sometimes preached by moralists, and often enforced by economic necessity, is not really desirable. A life governed by purposes and desires, to the exclusion of impulse, is a tiring life; it exhausts vitality, and leaves a man, in the end, indifferent to the very purposes which he has been trying to achieve. When a whole nation lives in this way, the whole nation tends to become feeble, without enough grasp to recognize and overcome the obstacles to its desires.

Industrialism and organization are constantly forcing civilized nations to live more and more by purpose rather than impulse.

In the long run such a mode of existence, if it does not dry up the springs of life, produces new impulses, not of the kind which the will has been in the habit of controlling or of which thought is conscious. These new impulses are apt to be worse in their effects than those that have been checked. Excessive discipline, especially when it is imposed from without, often issues in impulses of cruelty and destruction; this is one 14 reason why militarism has a bad effect on national character.

Either lack of vitality, or impulses which are oppressive and against life, will almost always result if the spontaneous impulses are not able to find an outlet. The nature of these modifications ought to be studied, and the results of such study ought to be taken account of in judging the good or harm that is done by political and social institutions. The war has grown, in the main, out of the life of impulse, not out of reason or desire. There is an impulse of aggression, and an impulse of resistance to aggression.

Either may, on occasion, be in accordance with reason, but both are operative in many cases in which they are quite contrary to reason. Each impulse produces a whole harvest of attendant beliefs. The beliefs appropriate to the impulse of aggression may be seen in Bernhardi, or in the early Mohammedan conquerors, or, in full perfection, in the Book of Joshua.

In modern politics this attitude is embodied in imperialism. Europe as a whole has this attitude towards Asia and Africa, and many Germans have this attitude towards the rest of Europe. Correlative to the impulse of aggression is the impulse of resistance to aggression. This impulse is exemplified in the attitude of the Israelites to the Philistines or of medieval Europe to the Mohammedans. The beliefs which it produces are beliefs in the peculiar wickedness of those whose aggression is feared, and in the immense value of national customs which they might suppress if they were victorious.

When the war broke out, all the reactionaries in England and France began to speak of the danger to democracy, although until that moment they had opposed democracy with all their strength. They were not insincere in so speaking: the impulse of resistance to Germany made them value whatever was endangered by the German attack.

They loved 16 democracy because they hated Germany; but they thought they hated Germany because they loved democracy. The correlative impulses of aggression and resistance to aggression have both been operative in all the countries engaged in the war. Those who have not been dominated by one or other of these impulses may be roughly divided into three classes. There are, first, men whose national sentiment is antagonistic to the State to which they are subject.

This class includes some Irish, Poles, Finns, Jews, and other members of oppressed nations. From our point of view, these men may be omitted from our consideration, since they have the same impulsive nature as those who fight, and differ merely in external circumstances. The second class of men who have not been part of the force supporting the war have been those whose impulsive nature is more or less atrophied.

Opponents of pacifism suppose that all pacifists belong to this class, except when they are in German pay. It is thought that pacifists are bloodless, men without passions, men who can look on and reason with cold detachment while their brothers are giving their lives for their country.

Among those who are 17 merely passively pacifist, and do no more than abstain from actively taking part in the war, there may be a certain proportion of whom this is true.

I think the supporters of war would be right in decrying such men. In spite of all the destruction which is wrought by the impulses that lead to war, there is more hope for a nation which has these impulses than for a nation in which all impulse is dead. Impulse is the expression of life, and while it exists there is hope of its turning towards life instead of towards death; but lack of impulse is death, and out of death no new life will come.

The active pacifists, however, are not of this class: they are not men without impulsive force but men in whom some impulse to which war is hostile is strong enough to overcome the impulses that lead to war.

It is not the act of a passionless man to throw himself athwart the whole movement of the national life, to urge an outwardly hopeless cause, to incur obloquy and to resist the contagion of collective emotion. The impulse to avoid the hostility of public opinion is one of the strongest in human nature, and can only be overcome by an unusual force of direct and uncalculating impulse; it is not cold reason alone that can prompt such an act. The impulses embodied in the war are among those that make for death.

Any one of the impulses that make for life, if it is strong enough, will lead a man to stand out against the war. Some of these impulses are only strong in highly civilized men; some are part of common humanity. The impulses towards art and science are among the more civilized of those that make for life. Many artists have remained wholly untouched by the passions of the war, not from feebleness of feeling, but because the creative instinct, the pursuit of a vision, makes them critical of the assaults of national passion, and not responsive to the myth in which the impulse of pugnacity clothes itself.

And the few men in whom the scientific impulse is dominant have noticed the rival myths of warring groups, and have been led through understanding to neutrality. But it is not out of such refined impulses that a popular force can be generated which shall be sufficient to transform the world.

There are three forces on the side of life which require no exceptional mental endowment, which are not very rare at present, and might be very common under better social institutions.

All three are checked and enfeebled at present by the conditions under which men live—not only the less outwardly fortunate, but also the majority of the well-to-do. Our institutions rest upon injustice and authority: it is only by closing our hearts against sympathy and our minds against truth that we can endure the oppressions and unfairnesses by which we profit.

The conventional conception of what constitutes success leads most men to live a life in which their most vital impulses are sacrificed, and the joy of life is lost in listless weariness.

Our economic system compels almost all men to carry out the purposes of others rather than their own, making them feel impotent in action and only able to secure a certain modicum of passive pleasure.

All these things destroy the vigor of the community, the expansive affections of individuals, and the power of viewing the world generously. All these things are unnecessary and can be ended by wisdom and courage.

If they were ended, the impulsive life of men would become wholly different, and the human race might travel towards a new happiness and a new vigor. To urge this hope is the purpose of these lectures. So long as this instinctive movement is not thwarted, whatever misfortunes may occur are not fundamental disasters, and do not produce those distortions which result from interference with natural growth.

This intimate center in each human being is what imagination must apprehend if we are to understand him intuitively. It differs from man to man, and determines for each man the type of excellence of which he is capable. The utmost that social institutions can do for a man is to make his own growth free and vigorous: they cannot force him to grow according to the pattern of another man.

There are in men some impulses and desires—for example, those towards drugs—which do not grow out of the central principle; such impulses, when they become strong enough to be harmful, have to be checked by self-discipline.

Other impulses, though they may grow out of the central principle in the individual, may be injurious to the growth of others, and they need to be checked in 21 the interest of others. But in the main, the impulses which are injurious to others tend to result from thwarted growth, and to be least in those who have been unimpeded in their instinctive development.

Men, like trees, require for their growth the right soil and a sufficient freedom from oppression. These can be helped or hindered by political institutions.

And the full growth which may be hoped for cannot be defined or demonstrated; it is subtle and complex, it can only be felt by a delicate intuition and dimly apprehended by imagination and respect. It depends not only or chiefly upon the physical environment, but upon beliefs and affections, upon opportunities for action, and upon the whole life of the community.

The more developed and civilized the type of man the more elaborate are the conditions of his growth, and the more dependent they become upon the general state of the society in which he lives.

If his mind is comprehensive and his imagination 22 vivid, the failures of the community to which he belongs are his failures, and its successes are his successes: according as his community succeeds or fails, his own growth is nourished or impeded.

In the modern world, the principle of growth in most men and women is hampered by institutions inherited from a simpler age. By the progress of thought and knowledge, and by the increase in command over the forces of the physical world, new possibilities of growth have come into existence, and have given rise to new claims which must be satisfied if those who make them are not to be thwarted.

There is less acquiescence in limitations which are no longer unavoidable, and less possibility of a good life while those limitations remain. Institutions which give much greater opportunities to some classes than to others are no longer recognized as just by the less fortunate, though the more fortunate still defend them vehemently.

Hence arises a universal strife, in which tradition and authority are arrayed against liberty and justice. Our professed morality, being traditional, loses its hold upon those who are in revolt. In the fight for freedom, men and women become increasingly unable to break down the walls of the Ego and achieve the growth which comes from a real and vital union. All our institutions have their historic basis in Authority.

The unquestioned authority of the Oriental despot found its religious expression in the omnipotent Creator, whose glory was the sole end of man, and against whom man had no rights. This authority descended to the Emperor and Pope, to the kings of the Middle Ages, to the nobles in the feudal hierarchy, and even to every husband and father in his dealings with his wife and children.

The Church was the direct embodiment of the Divine authority, the State and the law were constituted by the authority of the King, private property in land grew out of the authority of conquering barons, and the family was governed by the authority of the pater-familias.

The institutions of the Middle Ages permitted only a fortunate few to develop freely: the vast majority of mankind existed to minister to the few. But so long as authority was genuinely 24 respected and acknowledged even by its least fortunate subjects, medieval society remained organic and not fundamentally hostile to life, since outward submission was compatible with inward freedom because it was voluntary.

The institutions of Western Christendom embodied a theory which was really believed, as no theory by which our present institutions can be defended is now believed. Under the stress of oppression, when rulers exceeded their theoretical powers, the victims were forced to realize that they themselves also had rights, and need not live merely to increase the glory of the few.

Gradually it came to be seen that if men have power, they are likely to abuse it, and that authority in practice means tyranny. Because the claim to justice was resisted by the holders of power, men became more and more separate units, each fighting for his own rights, not a genuine community bound together by an organic common purpose.

This absence of a common purpose has become a source of unhappiness. One of the reasons which led many men to welcome the outbreak of the present war was 25 that it made each nation again a whole community with a single purpose.

It did this by destroying, for the present, the beginnings of a single purpose in the civilized world as a whole; but these beginnings were as yet so feeble that few were much affected by their destruction. Men rejoiced in the new sense of unity with their compatriots more than they minded the increased separation from their enemies.

The hardening and separation of the individual in the course of the fight for freedom has been inevitable, and is not likely ever to be wholly undone. What is necessary, if an organic society is to grow up, is that our institutions should be so fundamentally changed as to embody that new respect for the individual and his rights which modern feeling demands.

The medieval Empire and Church swept away the individual. There were heretics, but they were massacred relentlessly, without any of the qualms aroused by later persecutions. And they, like their persecutors, were persuaded that there ought to be one universal Church: they differed only as to what its creed should be.

Among a few men of art and letters, the Renaissance undermined the medieval theory, without, however, replacing it by anything but skepticism 26 and confusion. It was in matters of religion that the battle for liberty began, and it is in matters of religion that it has come nearest to a complete victory. The development through extreme individualism to strife, and thence, one hopes, to a new reintegration, is to be seen in almost every department of life. Claims are advanced in the name of justice, and resisted in the name of tradition and prescriptive right.

Each side honestly believes that it deserves to triumph, because two theories of society exist side by side in our thought, and men choose, unconsciously, the theory which fits their case. Because the battle is long and arduous all general theory is gradually forgotten; in the end, nothing remains but self-assertion, and when the oppressed win 27 freedom they are as oppressive as their former masters. This is seen most crudely in the case of what is called nationalism.

In the main this doctrine may be conceded. But in practice the doctrine takes a more personal form. This is an injustice, not only because of the general principle of nationalism, but because nation A is generous, progressive, and civilized, while nation B is oppressive, retrograde, and barbarous.

Because this is so, nation A deserves to prosper, while nation B deserves to be abased. Presently, however, in the course of war, nation A acquires its freedom.

The energy and pride which have achieved freedom generates a momentum which leads on, almost infallibly, to the attempt at foreign conquest, or 28 to the refusal of liberty to some smaller nation. You say that nation C, which forms part of our State, has the same rights against us as we had against nation A? But that is absurd. Nation C is swinish and turbulent, incapable of good government, needing a strong hand if it is not to be a menace and a disturbance to all its neighbors.

In this way nationalism, unobjectionable in theory, leads by a natural movement to oppression and wars of conquest. No sooner was France free from the English, in the fifteenth century, than it embarked upon the conquest of Italy; no sooner was Spain freed from the Moors than it entered into more than a century of conflict with France for the supremacy in Europe.

The case of Germany is very interesting in this respect. At the beginning of the eighteenth century German culture was French: French was the language of the Courts, the language in which Leibnitz wrote his philosophy, the universal 29 language of polite letters and learning. National consciousness hardly existed. Then a series of great men created a self-respect in Germany by their achievements in poetry, music, philosophy, and science.

After centuries during which every disturbance of the peace of Europe began with a French or Swedish or Russian invasion of Germany, the Germans discovered that by sufficient effort and union they could keep foreign armies off their territory. But the effort required had been too great to cease when its purely defensive purpose had been achieved by the defeat of Napoleon.

Now, a hundred years later, they are still engaged in the same movement, which has become one of aggression and conquest. Whether we are now seeing the end of the movement it is not yet possible to guess. If men had any strong sense of a community of nations, nationalism would serve to define the boundaries of the various nations. But because men only feel community within their own nation, nothing but force is able to make them respect the rights of other nations, even when 30 they are asserting exactly similar rights on their own behalf.

Analogous development is to be expected, with the course of time, in the conflict between capital and labor which has existed since the growth of the industrial system, and in the conflict between men and women, which is still in its infancy.

What is wanted, in these various conflicts, is some principle, genuinely believed, which will have justice for its outcome. The tug of war of mutual self-assertion can only result in justice through an accidental equality of force. It is no use to attempt any bolstering up of institutions based on authority, since all such institutions involve injustice, and injustice once realized cannot be perpetuated without fundamental damage both to those who uphold it and to those who resist it.

The damage consists in the hardening of the walls of the Ego, making them a prison instead of a window. All institutions, if they are not to hamper individual growth, must be based as far as possible upon voluntary combination, rather than the force of the law or the traditional authority of the holders of power.

None of our institutions can survive the application of this principle without great and fundamental changes; but these changes are imperatively necessary if the world is to be withheld from dissolving into hard separate units each at war with all the others.

The two chief sources of good relations between individuals are instinctive liking and a common purpose. Of these two, a common purpose might seem more important politically, but, in fact, it is often the outcome, not the cause, of instinctive liking, or of a common instinctive aversion. Biological groups, from the family to the nation, are constituted by a greater or less degree of instinctive liking, and build their common purposes on this foundation.

The extreme form of it is being in love, but its 32 fainter forms, and even the very faintest, have political importance. The presence of a person who is instinctively disliked tends to make any other person more likable.

An anti-Semite will love any fellow-Christian when a Jew is present. In China, or the wilds of Africa, any white man would be welcomed with joy. A common aversion is one of the most frequent causes of mild instinctive liking. Men differ enormously in the frequency and intensity of their instinctive likings, and the same man will differ greatly at different times.

One may take Carlyle and Walt Whitman as opposite poles in this respect. To Carlyle, at any rate in later life, most men and women were repulsive; they inspired an instinctive aversion which made him find pleasure in imagining them under the guillotine or perishing in battle. This led him to belittle most men, finding satisfaction only in those who had been notably destructive of human life—Frederick the Great, Dr.

Francia, and Governor Eyre. His morals and his politics, in later life, were inspired 33 through and through by repugnance to almost the whole human race. Walt Whitman, on the contrary, had a warm, expansive feeling towards the vast majority of men and women. His queer catalogues seemed to him interesting because each item came before his imagination as an object of delight.

The sort of joy which most people feel only in those who are exceptionally beautiful or splendid Walt Whitman felt in almost everybody. Out of this universal liking grew optimism, a belief in democracy, and a conviction that it is easy for men to live together in peace and amity.

There is no objective reason to be given to show that one of these attitudes is essentially more rational than the other. If a man finds people repulsive, no argument can prove to him that they are not so. A world of Walt Whitmans would be happier and more capable of realizing its purposes than a world of Carlyles.

For this reason, we shall desire, if we 34 can, to increase the amount of instinctive liking in the world and diminish the amount of instinctive aversion. This is perhaps the most important of all the effects by which political institutions ought to be judged. The other source of good relations between individuals is a common purpose, especially where that purpose cannot be achieved without knowing its cause.

Economic organizations, such as unions and political parties are constituted almost wholly by a common purpose; whatever instinctive liking may come to be associated with them is the result of the common purpose, not its cause. Economic organizations, such as railway companies, subsist for a purpose, but this purpose need only actually exist in those who direct the organization: the ordinary wage-earner need have no purpose beyond earning his wages.

This is a defect in economic organizations, and ought to be remedied. One of the objects of syndicalism is to remedy this defect. Marriage is or should be based on instinctive liking, but as soon as there are children, or the wish for children, it acquires the additional strength of a common purpose.

It is this chiefly which distinguishes it from an irregular connection not intended to lead to children. Often, in 35 fact, the common purpose survives, and remains a strong tie, after the instinctive liking has faded.

A nation, when it is real and not artificial, is founded upon a faint degree of instinctive liking for compatriots and a common instinctive aversion from foreigners. He is ready to believe that all English people are good souls, while many foreigners are full of designing wickedness.

It is such feelings that make it easy to organize a nation into a governmental unit. And when that has happened, a common purpose is added, as in marriage. Foreigners would like to invade our country and lay it waste, to kill us in battle, to humble our pride.

But common purposes do not constitute the whole source of our love of country: allies, even of long standing, 36 do not call out the same feelings as are called out by our compatriots.

Instinctive liking, resulting largely from similar habits and customs, is an essential element in patriotism, and, indeed, the foundation upon which the whole feeling rests. But when, for whatever reason, his growth is impeded, or he is compelled to grow into some twisted and unnatural shape, his instinct presents the environment as his enemy, and he becomes filled with hatred.

The joy of life abandons him, and malevolence takes the place of friendliness. The malevolence of hunchbacks and cripples is proverbial; and a similar 37 malevolence is to be found in those who have been crippled in less obvious ways.

Real freedom, if it could be brought about, would go a long way towards destroying hatred. There is a not uncommon belief that what is instinctive in us cannot be changed, but must be simply accepted and made the best of.

This is by no means the case. But even the instinctive part of our character is very malleable. It may be changed by beliefs, by material circumstances, by social circumstances, and by institutions.

A Dutchman has probably much the same native disposition as a German, but his instincts in adult life are very different owing to the absence of militarism and of the pride of a Great Power. It is obvious that the instincts of celibates become profoundly different from those of other men and women. Almost any instinct is capable of many different forms according to the nature of the outlets which it finds. The same instinct which leads to artistic or intellectual creativeness may, under other circumstances, lead to love of war.

The fact that an activity or belief is an outcome of 38 instinct is therefore no reason for regarding it as unalterable. It is natural to men, as to other animals, to like some of their species and dislike others; but the proportion of like and dislike depends on circumstances, often on quite trivial circumstances. The defect of punishment, as a means of dealing with impulses which the community wishes to discourage, is that it does nothing to prevent the existence of the impulses, but merely endeavors to check their indulgence by an appeal to self-interest.

This method, since it does not eradicate the impulses, probably only drives them to find other outlets even when it is successful in its immediate object; and if the impulses are strong, mere self-interest is not likely to curb them effectually, since it is not a very powerful motive except with unusually reasonable and rather passionless people. It is thought to be a stronger motive than it is, because our moods make us deceive ourselves as to our interest, and 39 lead us to believe that it is consistent with the actions to which we are prompted by desire or impulse.

Thus the commonplace that human nature cannot be changed is untrue. We all know that our own characters and those of our acquaintance are greatly affected by circumstances; and what is true of individuals is true also of nations.

We may ignore the purely material changes, since these do not much concern the politician. Through the industrial revolution, they have radically altered the daily lives of men; and by creating huge economic organizations, they have altered the whole structure of society. The general beliefs of men, which are, in the main, a product of instinct and circumstance, have become very different from what they were in the eighteenth century.

But our institutions are not yet suited either to the instincts developed by our new circumstances, or 40 to our real beliefs. Institutions have a life of their own, and often outlast the circumstances which made them a fit garment for instinct. This applies, in varying degrees, to almost all the institutions which we have inherited from the past: the State, private property, the patriarchal family, the Churches, armies and navies.

All of these have become in some degree oppressive, in some measures hostile to life. In any serious attempt at political reconstruction, it is necessary to realize what are the vital needs of ordinary men and women.

It is customary, in political thought, to assume that the only needs with which politics is concerned are economic needs. This view is quite inadequate to account for such an event as the present war, since any economic motives that may be assigned for it are to a great extent mythical, and its true causes must be sought for outside the economic sphere. Needs which are normally satisfied without conscious effort remain unrecognized, and this results in a working theory of human needs which is far too simple.

Owing chiefly to industrialism, many needs which were formerly satisfied without effort now remain unsatisfied in most men and women. But the old unduly simple theory of human 41 needs survives, making men overlook the source of the new lack of satisfaction, and invent quite false theories as to why they are dissatisfied.

Socialism as a panacea seems to me to be mistaken in this way, since it is too ready to suppose that better economic conditions will of themselves make men happy. All these things the institutions of the future must help to produce, if our increase of knowledge and power over Nature is to bear its full fruit in bringing about a good life. Under the influence of socialism, most liberal thought in recent years has been in favor of increasing the power of the State, but more or less hostile to the power of private property.

On the other hand, syndicalism has been hostile both to the State and to private property. I believe that syndicalism is more nearly right than socialism in this respect, that both private property and the State, which are the two most powerful institutions of the modern world, have become harmful to life through excess of power, and that both are hastening the loss of vitality from which the civilized world increasingly suffers.

The two institutions are closely connected, but for the present I wish to consider only the State. I shall try to show how great, how unnecessary, how harmful, many of its powers are, and how enormously they might be diminished without loss of what is useful in its activity. But I shall 43 admit that in certain directions its functions ought to be extended rather than curtailed.

Some of the functions of the State, such as the Post Office and elementary education, might be performed by private agencies, and are only undertaken by the State from motives of convenience.

But other matters, such as the law, the police, the Army, and the Navy, belong more essentially to the State: so long as there is a State at all it is difficult to imagine these matters in private hands. The distinction between socialism and individualism turns on the nonessential functions of the State, which the socialist wishes to extend and the individualist to restrict. It is the essential functions, which are admitted by individualists and socialists alike, that I wish to criticize, since the others do not appear to me in themselves objectionable.

The essence of the State is that it is the repository of the collective force of its citizens. This force takes two forms, one internal and one external. The internal form is the law and the police; the external form is the power of waging war, as embodied in the Army and Navy. The State is constituted by the combination of all the inhabitants in a certain area using 44 their united force in accordance with the commands of a Government.

In a civilized State force is only employed against its own citizens in accordance with rules previously laid down, which constitute the criminal law.