WAR AND THE PROGRESS OF SOCIETY 199 



civilization. This means that war is a socially unconscious phenome- 

 non. As distinguished from the conscious and concerted, that is to 

 say, artificial, action of society in the promotion of its own well-being, 

 it is a purely natural phenomenon, and socially considered belongs in 

 exactly the same class as earthquakes, floods, famine and pestilence. 



To this point we come, then, that war has nothing to do with social 

 progress, except in an incidental way. It is a mode of collective action 

 whose incidental effect may be progress or regress. It is, as De Greef 

 has well said, the best example of a socially unconscious phenomenon. 

 He says: 



La guerre est le phenomenene social ineonscient par excellence; la preuve, 

 c'est qu'elle finit toujours par ou on aurait du commencer, si l'on avait ete 

 capable d'etablir la balance exacte des forces hostiles, c'est-a-dire par des 

 traites.* 



" But," it will be said, " it can not be denied that war has sometimes 

 resulted in progress." Certainly not; nor can it be denied that it has 

 sometimes resulted in regress. As a result of war states have been 

 founded, and as a result of war states have been destroyed. War has 

 initiated civilizations, and war has overthrown them. x\nd always the 

 effect on social progress has been incidental, unforseen and unintended. 



The social effects of war, then, and hence its influence upon progress, 

 are exactly parallel to the effects of the undirected forces of nature. 

 These in their blind action produce results sometimes progressive and 

 sometimes the opposite, but always with absolute disregard of the effects 

 produced and of the amount of energy expended. War, it may be said, 

 belongs to the economy of nature and not to the economy of mind. 



Now the common characteristic of the phenomena of nature as dis- 

 tinguished from the phenomena of mind, so far as they are related to 

 the achievement of the ends desired by human beings, is waste. Nature 

 is notoriously prodigal. Progress achieved by it is uncertain, slow and 

 expensive. War, therefore, being from the social viewpoint a natural 

 phenomenon should be expected to exhibit this common characteristic. 

 And so it does. It is perhaps the superlative example of social waste. 



Now waste, whether it result from individual or social action, is an 

 evidence of unintelligence. The function of intelligence is to promote 

 economy of time, means and energy in the realization of a given end. 

 Social intelligence, therefore, when it is directed to the promotion of 

 social progress, can not countenance war because of its wastefulness, to 

 say nothing of the uncertainty of its results. Social progress, after the 

 dawn of social intelligence, is really equivalent to the development of 

 such intelligence. The general progress of society must therefore nec- 

 essarily lead to the social prevention of war. Continuous progress with 

 the continuance of war is a contradiction in terms. 

 4 Op. tit., p. 434. 



