se and defense implies already a strong
contrast of feeling between that of individuals of the group toward
one another and that directed toward the outsider. This contrast
developed not merely as a reaction, but as a necessity, for groups in
the beginning must have had to contend against their own feeble social
cohesion, and existed only by reason of strong emotions of fear and
anger felt toward the stranger. Hatred toward all outside the group
must at one stage have been highly useful as a means of cementing the
bonds of the group and maintaining the necessary attitude of defense,
at a time when all outsiders were likely to be dangerous. Feelings of
friendliness toward strangers were dangerous to the life of the group,
and so hatred possessed survival value.

The main root of group antipathy is in all probability fear. Hatred is
an aspect of the aggressive defensive toward the stranger. Hatred is a
part of the aggressive reaction. As an expression of ferocity toward
all who are not known to be friendly, it belongs to the first line of
defense. Hatred is likely to be strong in the female because the
attitude of the female is universally defensive.

In the beginning, as MacCurdy (37) says, the contrasts between groups
were sharp, and these definitely separated groups must have felt
toward one another not only antagonism but a sense of being different
in kind. Intensity of feelings of opposition tends to magnify small
differences into specific differences. This sense of specific
difference is never lost, not even in the consciousness of enlightened
nations in regard to one another, and we may see it to-day displayed
as a mystic belief, on the part of many peoples, in their own
superiority. Nations are always outsiders to one another, and the
sense of strangeness perennially sustains defensive attitudes and
moods of hatred. The friendship of nations can never be very secure,
because the old idea of difference of kind is never quite abandoned.
Some degree of enmity seems always to be felt toward the foreigner;
that is, toward all who are not interested in the protective functions
of the group. MacCurdy thinks the intensity of suspicion and hatred of
peoples toward one another belongs to the pathological field, and that
one expression of this is the peculiarity of the mental processes by
which nations always justify their own cause in war. This, however, is
perhaps an exaggeration, since we can trace these states of mind i