Struggle for Existence in Society 5 



At a given stage of political development in 

 Germany, German rulers urged that in order to 

 protect the moral and intellectual heritage of 

 Germany, such and such measures had to be 

 taken. They were taken and then developed. 

 It was then seen that their use and development 

 made it necessary to discard or sacrifice the moral 

 and intellectual possessions which it had been the 

 original object of the measures to protect. 



I am not discussing for the moment whether 

 the tool used was good or bad ; I am only pointing 

 out that its use — whether for good or ill — trans- 

 forms all social and moral values, even the most 

 fundamental. I want to make clear that force is 

 not merely a tool — that it is a root of moral ideas, 

 that its use colours all human values and deter- 

 mines the nature of society. 



The importance therefore which any social 

 instrument may assume makes it necessary to 

 submit it to close scrutiny. What follows is an 

 attempt to submit one such instrimient — force — 

 which mankind has used in the process of evolu- 

 tion, to critical examination; to probe scientifi- 

 cally the philosophy upon which the use of this 

 tool is based. 



The philosophy of force is the theory of society 

 which is based on the belief in the effectiveness and 

 inevitability of the use of force in human relation- 

 ships to advance those ends, economic, social, and 

 moral, for which men live and strive. In inter- 

 national relations its modern name is militarism. 



7 



