12 The Philosophy of Force 



sociology has any utilitarian purposes one of these 

 certainly is to diminish or mitigate these horrors. 

 But pure sociology is simply an inquiry into the social 

 facts and conditions and has nothing to do with 

 utilitarian purposes. In making this objective inquiry, 

 it finds that, as a matter of fact, war has been the 

 chief and leading condition of human progress. 



This is perfectly obvious to any one who under- 

 stands the meaning of the struggle of races. When 

 races stop struggling, progress ceases. They want 

 no progress and they have none. For all primitive 

 and early, undeveloped races, certainly, the condition 

 of peace is a condition of social stagnation. We may 

 enlarge to our soul's content on the blessings of peace, 

 but the facts remain as stated, and cannot be success- 

 fully disproved.^ 



The philosophy of force is found not only among 

 the men of science but is widely held by the 

 philosophers in all nations. Thus, in France, 

 Ernest Renan^ has given the doctrine wide 

 currency : 



If the stupidity, the negligence, the laziness, the 

 improvidence of states did not have as a consequence 

 to make them fight, it is difficult to say to what degree 

 of abasement the human species might descend. War 

 is in a way one of the conditions of progress, the cut 

 of the whip which prevents a country from going to 

 sleep, forcing satisfied mediocrity itself to leave its 

 apathy. Man is only sustained by effort and struggle. 

 . . . The day on which humanity becomes a great 



' P. 238. 



' La Reforme Intellectuelle et Morale, Paris, i87i,p iii. 



