which are thus to
be regarded as the cause of war.

War is, first of all, a natural expression of the social life, resting
primarily upon the fact of the existence, universally, of groups of
individuals acting as units. But here cause and effect are lost in one
another. Conflict cements the group, and the existence of the group,
again, is the cause of conflict. War is an aspect of the social
solidarity of the group acting under certain conditions, and these
conditions are the presence of deep desires that can, in general, be
satisfied only by the exertion of force on the part of communities
acting as wholes.

These primitive motives and moods of war that we find in the nature of
the social group itself, emerge finally in three aspects of the life
of nations, and it is these aspects of the life of nations that appear
to us as the causes of war. They are not separate and independent
features of the social life, and it is in part only for the sake of
convenience that they are sharply separated at all. They are all at
bottom manifestations of the motive of power that runs through all
history, and all the social and individual life. On one side this
motive appears in moods and impulses that we called the "intoxication"
moods and impulses. National honor was found to be another effect of
it. The political motives of war are its concrete expression. These
motives all together--all being but phases of a deep, powerful energy
and purpose, are the source of the main movement in history out of
which war comes. In this movement all the motives of the social life
are always present and active at the same time. The good and the bad
of national life are phases of a single purpose and are not two
contrasted principles or moments. The past is always contained in the
present.

War, then, is the result of certain motives which are fundamental to
the group life. It is a natural form in which, given a certain degree
of intelligence and of complexity of the social life, these motives
express themselves. All the motives and forms of expression are
present in germ at least from the beginning of the development of the
social life. Considering the whole history of war we see that it is a
part of a very complex movement in human society, and yet that no war
appears to be the final term of a process of inexorable logic. Taking
history as a whole, we see that the natural laws involved and the
nature of the social consciousness make a state of