t as time goes on individuals discover that
they can only preserve themselves by associating with others, and that
they must defend society if they want to defend themselves. They thus
form a habit of defending society; and this habit becomes in time a
second instinct, and an instinct so strong that it even overrides
the primary one from which it was derived; till at last you get
individuals sacrificing in defence of the community those very lives
which they originally entered the community to preserve."

"What a charming paradox!" cried Ellis. "And so it is really true that
every soldier who dies on the field of battle does so only by virtue
of a miscalculation? And if he could but pull himself up and remember
that, after all, the preservation of his life was the only motive that
induced him to endanger it, he would run away like a sensible man, and
try some other device to achieve his end, the device of society having
evidently broken down, so far as he is concerned."

"There you are again," said Parry, "with your crude rationalism! The
point is that the social habit has now become an instinct, and has
therefore, as I say, imperative authority! No operations of the reason
touch it in the least"

"Well," rejoined Ellis, "I must say that it seems to me very hard that
a man can't rectify such an important error. The imposition is simply
monstrous! Here are a number of fellows shut up in society on the
distinct understanding, to begin with, that society was to help them
to preserve their lives; instead of which, it starves them and hangs
them and sends them to be shot in battle, and they aren't allowed
to raise a word of protest or even to perceive what a fraud is being
perpetrated upon them!"

"I don't see that it's hard at all," replied Parry; "it seems to me
a beautiful device of nature to ensure the predominance of the better
instincts."

"The better instincts!" I cried, "but there is the point! These
instincts of yours, it seems, conflict; in battle, for example, the
instinct to run away conflicts with the instinct to stay and fight?"

"No doubt," he admitted.

"And sometimes one prevails and sometimes the other?"

"Yes."

"And in the one case we say that the man does right, when he stays and
fights; and in the other that he does wrong, when he runs away?"

"I suppose so."

"Well, then, how does your theory of instincts help us to know what is
Good? For it seems that after all we have to choose between