ains they have just missed. The glint of anger is roused in
our eye by an insolent stare, an ironic comment, or an impertinent
retort. The "boiling point" varies in different individuals
and races, and pugnacity is generally more readily roused
in men than in women. There are some persons, like the proverbial
Irishman, who, seeing the slightest opportunity for a
fight, "want to know whether it is private, or whether anybody
can get in." In most men pugnacity is more intense
when it is provoked by persons; except for a moment, one does
not try to fight a chair struck in the dark.

Under the conditions of civilized life the primitive expression
of pugnacity in physical combat has been outlawed and
made unnecessary by law and custom. Individuals are prevented
by the fear of punishment, besides their early training
and habits, from settling disputes by physical force. But as
the instinct itself remains strong, it must find some other
outlet. This it secures in more refined forms of rivalry, in
business and sport, or, all through human history, in fighting
between groups, from the squabbling and perpetual raids and
killings, and the extermination of whole villages and tribes
in Central Borneo, to the wars between nations throughout
European history.

PUGNACITY A MENACE WHEN UNCONTROLLED. The strength and
persistency of this human tendency, when uncontrolled or
when fostered between groups, make it a very serious menace.
Like all the other instincts, and more than most, it is
frustrated and continually checked in the normal peace-time
pursuits of contemporary civilization. Participation,
imaginative at least, in a great collective combat undoubtedly holds
some fascination for the citizens of modern industrial society,
despite the large-scale horror which war is in itself, and the
desolation it leaves in its wake. During peace the fighting
instinct for most men receives satisfaction on a small scale,
sometimes in nothing more important than small bickerings
and peevishness, or in seeing at first hand or on the ticker a
championship prize-fight. The pessimism which many writers
have expressed at the possibility of perpetual peace rests
in part on their perception of the easy excitability and deep
persistence of this impulse, especially among the vigorous and
young.

Not only may the fighting instinct be aroused by the possibility
of international wars, but it may be used by fomenters
and agitators to add a sense of inte