578 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



In like manner, though war, by bringing about social consolida- 

 tions, indirectly favors industrial progress and all its civilizing conse- 

 quences, yet the direct effect of war on industrial progress is repres- 

 sive. It is repressive as necessitating the abstraction of men and ma- 

 terials that would otherwise go to industrial growth ; it is repressive 

 as deranging the complex interdependencies among multitudinous, 

 productive, and distributive agencies ; it is repressive as draughting 

 off much administrative and constructive ability, which would else 

 have gone to improve the industrial arts and the industrial organiza- 

 tion. And if we contrast the absolutely-military Spartans with the 

 partially-military Athenians in their respective attitudes toward cul- 

 ture of every kind, or call to mind the contempt shown for the pursuit 

 of knowledge in purely-military times like those of feudalism, we can- 

 not fail to see that predominant warlike activity is at variance not 

 only with industrial development, but also with the higher intellectual 

 developments that aid it and are aided by it. 



So, too, with the effects wrought on the moral nature. While war, 

 by the discipline it gives soldiers, directly cultivates the habit of sub- 

 ordination, and does the like indirectly by establishing strong and 

 permanent governments ; and while in so far it cultivates attributes 

 that are not only temporarily essential, but are steps toward attributes 

 that are permanently essential ; yet it does this at the cost of main- 

 taining, and sometimes increasing, detrimental attributes attributes 

 intrinsically antisocial. The aggressions which selfishness prompts 

 aggressions which, in a society, have to be restrained by some power 

 that is strong in proportion as the selfishness is intense, can diminish 

 only as fast as selfishness is held in check by sympathy ; and perpetual 

 warlike activities repress sympathy : nay, they do worse they culti- 

 vate aggressiveness to the extent of making it a pleasure to inflict 

 injury. The citizen made callous by the killing and wounding of 

 enemies, inevitably brings his callousness with him into society. Fel- 

 low-feeling, habitually trampled out in military conflicts, cannot at the 

 same time be active in the relations of civil life. In proportion as the 

 giving pain to others is made a habit during war, it will remain a 

 habit during peace : inevitably producing, in the behavior of citizens 

 to one another, antagonisms, crimes of violence, and multitudinous 

 aggressions of minor kinds, tending toward a disorder that calls for a 

 coercive government. Nothing like a high type of social life is pos- 

 sible without a type of human character in which the promptings of 

 egoism are duly restrained by regard for others. The necessities of 

 war imply absolute self-regard and absolute disregard of certain 

 others. Inevitably, therefore, the civilizing discipline of social life is 

 antagonized by the uncivilizing discipline of the life war involves. So 

 that, beyond the direct mortality and miseries entailed by war, it en- 

 tails other mortality and miseries by maintaining antisocial sentiments 

 in citizens. 



