THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 573 



being purposely made heavy that they may inflict greater damage. 

 So, too, it may be well that boys should all in turn be subject to the 

 tender mercies of elder boys, with whose thrashings and kickings the 

 masters decline to interfere ; even though they are sometimes carried 

 to the extent of maiming for life. Possibly, too, it is needful that 

 each boy should be disciplined in submission to any tyrant who may 

 be set over him, by finding that appeal brings additional evils. "That 

 each should be made callous, morally as well as physically, by the 

 bearing of frequent wrongs, and should be made yet more callous 

 when, comino- into power, he inflicts punishments as whim or spite 

 prompts, may also be desirable. Nor, perhaps, can we wholly regret 

 that confusion of moral ideas which results when breaches of conven- 

 tional rules bring penalties as severe as are brought by acts morally 

 wron"-. For war does not consist with keen sensitiveness, physical or 

 moral. Reluctance to inflict injury, and reluctance to risk injury, 

 would equally render it impossible. Scruples of conscience respecting 

 the rectitude of their cause would paralyze officers and soldiers. So 

 that a certain brutalization has to be maintained during our passing 

 phase of civilization. It may, indeed, be that "the Public School 

 spirit," which, as truly said, is carried into our public life, is not the 

 most desirable for a free country. It may be that early subjection to 

 despotism, and early exercise of uncontrolled power, are not the best 

 possible preparations for legislators. It may be that those, who, on 

 the magistrate's bench, have to maintain right against might, could 

 be better trained than by submission to violence and subsequent exer- 

 cise of violence. And it may be that some other discipline than that 

 of the stick would be desirable for men who officer the press and 

 guide public opinion on questions of equity. But, doubtless, while 

 national antagonisms continue strong and national defence a necessity, 

 there is a fitness in this semi-military discipline, with pains and bruises 

 to uphold it. And a duly-adapted code of honor has the like defence. 

 Here, however, if we are to free ourselves from transitory senti- 

 ments and ideas, so as to be capable of framing scientific conceptions, 

 we must ask what warrant there is for this exaltation of the destruc- 

 tive activities and of the qualities implied by them ? We must ask 

 how it is possible for men rightly to pride themselves on attributes 

 possessed in a higher degree by creatures so much lower ? "We must 

 consider whether, in the absence of a religious justification, there is 

 any ethical justification for the idea that the most noble traits are 

 such as cannot be displayed without the infliction of pain and death. 

 When we do this, we are obliged to admit that the religion of enmity 

 in its unqualified form is as indefensible as the religion of amity in 

 its unqualified form. Each proves itself to be one of those insane 

 extremes out of which there comes a sane mean by union with its 

 opposite. The two religions stand respectively for the claims of self 

 and the claims of others. The one religion holds it glorious to resist 



