see them always, in
war, taken up, transformed, absorbed in moods which are at once more
practical, and more exalted and which, as complex processes, can be
sustained over long periods of time. But these primitive reactions of
anger and fear enter into the ecstatic moods, become associated with
or induce aesthetic and religious states of consciousness, gain moral
justification or religious exploitation, become aspects of directive
and dynamic moods and so give force and efficiency to morale and
strategy.

War appears as a breakdown of certain modes of volition. Certain types
of conflict are abandoned, and aggressive activities become more
simple and powerful, but war is no reversion to primitive instinct, or
to any number of instincts. The resulting states of mind are too
rational as means, and too exalted and ideal to be thus primitive. New
content is introduced into social consciousness and new purposes come
to light in these ecstasies, even though the consciously sought
objectives may be archaic and conventional and the mental states
traceable to more elementary states, and the conduct be similar in
purpose and type to the simpler forms of conduct we find in the animal
world What we are trying to impress here is the well known truth that
the whole of a thing is not necessarily contained in its parts. It is
the meaning of the war-mood as a whole, as a summation of many factors
of the mental life, and as a direction of social consciousness as a
whole that is its most important characteristic.

CHAPTER IV

AESTHETIC ELEMENTS IN THE MOODS AND IMPULSES OF WAR

That experiences and motives which belong to the field of the
aesthetic play an important part in war can hardly be doubted. The
whole history of war shows this, and even in the beginning war seems
to be an activity carried on in part for its own sake, and not
entirely for its practical results, and thus has qualities which later
are explicitly aesthetic. We cannot of course separate sharply the
aesthetic motive from everything else in studying so highly complex an
object as war, but that war does partake of the nature of what we call
the _beautiful_, and that the craving for the beautiful is a factor in
the causes of war seem to be certain. The relation of art to war is of
course no new theme. War has often been praised because of its
aesthetic nature, and its dramatic features. It is called a beautiful
adventure. It is reproduced in pictorial art, re