by the
social mood of comradeship. This spirit of comradeship becomes one of
the most conspicuous qualities of the social life in time of war.
Comradeship in arms is of course the highest point of this social
solidarity. The mass action, the close physical relationship,
subjection to the same narrow routine and the common experiences of
danger, induce social states that represent the most complete
expression of pure social feeling, and excite moods which, upon
occasion may reach the highest degree of ecstasy or intoxication and
lead to acts of the most exalted heroism.

These changes in the social life in time of war are striking and
fundamental. To explain them would mean to explain social feeling
itself. We may say that these phenomena of the social life are
precisely the _herd reactions_ the biological writers speak of, but to
do so would mean, from our point of view, to ignore some very
significant aspects of human social life. It would ignore first of all
the ecstatic quality of the higher social life, which is indeed the
essential quality of the social spirit of war. Instead of saying that
this intensity of feeling is merely a reflex of an instinctive
reaction, we should say that it is the expression of, and in part the
satisfaction of, desires that are fulfilled in the social experience
of war. The intense social life is craved, not as an instinctive
reaction, but as a complex state expressing explicit desires. The
craving for this social solidarity and ecstasy of social feeling is a
factor in the causes of war. What we experience socially in times of
peace is a society in which social feeling is narrow and provincial,
in which we are conscious of many antagonistic motives. This social
life fails to satisfy the desires which are seeking expression in the
social life. That war is in part a creation of the social impulse
seeking expression may be assumed from the nature of the social
feelings that are excited in war. That such social feeling is a
creation in the sense that it is desired, we see if in no other way in
the fact that social ecstasy is the most universal form of
satisfaction of all those impulses which fuse in the intoxication
impulse, where we recognize it as the craving for an abundant or real
life. Life is most real in its intensely dramatic social forms. Social
ecstasy is in part a conscious adaptation. It is something that is
desired and induced, and artificially cultivated in various ways,
espec