222 The Morality of Nature 



ship. Aggression is essentially individual conduct; and its 

 organizations are extensions and magnifications of individual 

 power enlarged by the blind obedience of accessory energy. 

 Even when soldiers voluntarily enter military service, it is, 

 of necessity, service ; and they subject themselves to arbitrary 

 direction and surrender all individuality of motive, until 

 especially directed to resume it for certain acts. And it is 

 to be seen that apart from reversions, such as the military 

 organization, there are mingled with the voluntary conduct, 

 various persistent phases of individual conduct, which re- 

 main embedded in human nature and are necessarily destruc- 

 tive to the end. The continued presence of injurious and 

 unintelligent life in lower organisms — the vermin, and 

 disease-breeding creatures — cannot be received with any 

 other conduct than unforgiving hostility. And higher 

 species, even including humanity, still produce creatures of 

 this naturally predatory type, whose manner of living oper- 

 ates in such fundamental difference that it cannot be recon- 

 ciled, and must needs be overpowered. So that from day 

 to day even the best intentioned men are called upon to pre- 

 vent, or to help to prevent, wrong doing, by force. And 

 for such purposes the most pacific communities are obliged 

 to exercise a certain amount of interference, and to main- 

 tain a sufficient armed force. 



It appears that this persistence of oflfense, and the neces- 

 sity of meeting it by force, is made the chief excuse for the 

 persistence of governmental leadership and control, at times 

 when all evidences of superior governmental wisdom have 

 vanished; but the force which a nation maintains for its 

 own defense against enemies external and internal, is neces- 



