the urgency of our situation drives us to such studies and makes us
hasten to apply even an immature sociology and psychology, it ought
not to prejudice our minds and make us, for example, fall into the
error of wanting peace at any price--an ideal which, as a practical
national philosophy, might be even worse than a spirit of militarism.
What we need to know, finally, in order to avoid these errors which at
least we may imagine, is what, in the most fundamental way, progress
may be conceived to be. If we could discover that, and set our minds
to the task of making the social life progressive, we might be willing
to let wars take care of themselves, so to speak, without any radical
philosophy of good and evil. We ought at least to examine war fairly,
and to see what, in the waging of war, man has really desired. A study
of war ought to help us to decide whether we must accept our future,
with its possibility of wars, as a kind of fate, or whether we must
now begin, with a new idea of conscious evolution, to apply our
science and our philosophy and our practical wisdom seriously for the
first time to the work of creating history, and no longer be content
merely to live it.

As to the details of the study of war--we first of all consider the
origin and the biological aspects of war; then war as related to the
development, in the social life and in the life of the individual, of
the motive of power. The instincts that are most concerned in the
development of this motive of power are then considered, and also the
relations of war to the aesthetic impulses and to art. Nationalism,
national honor and patriotism are studied as causes of war. The
various "causes" that are brought forward as the principles fought for
are examined; also the philosophical influences, the moral and
religious motives and the institutional factors among the motives of
war. Finally the economic and political motives and the historical
causes are considered. The conclusion is reached that the motive of
power, as the fundamental principle of behavior at the higher levels,
is the principle of war, but that in so general a form it goes but a
little way toward being an explanation of war. We find the real causes
of war by tracing out the development of this motive of power as it
appears in what we call the "intoxication impulse," and in the idea of
national honor and in the political motives of war. It is in these
aspects of national life that we find the