ertainly
does not foster. The insensibility to human suffering, which is so
striking a fact in the world as it stood when history first reveals it,
is doubtless due to the warlike origin of the old civilisation. Bred in
war, and nursed in war, it could not revolt from the things of war, and
one of the principal of these is human pain. Since war has ceased to be
the moving force in the world, men have become more tender one to
another, and shrink from what they used to inflict without caring; and
this not so much because men are improved (which may or may not be in
various cases), but because they have no longer the daily habit of
war--have no longer formed their notions upon war, and therefore are
guided by thoughts and feelings which soldiers as such--soldiers
educated simply by their trade--are too hard to understand.

Very like this is the contempt for physical weakness and for women
which marks early society too. The non-combatant population is sure to
fare ill during the ages of combat. But these defects, too, are cured
or lessened; women have now marvellous means of winning their way in
the world; and mind without muscle has far greater force than muscle
without mind. These are some of the after-changes in the interior of
nations, of which the causes must be scrutinised, and I now mention
them only to bring out how many softer growths have now half-hidden the
old and harsh civilisation which war made. But it is very dubious
whether the spirit of war does not still colour our morality far too
much. Metaphors from law and metaphors from war make most of our
current moral phrases, and a nice examination would easily explain that
both rather vitiate what both often illustrate. The military habit
makes man think far too much of definite action, and far too little of
brooding meditation. Life is not a set campaign, but an irregular work,
and the main forces in it are not overt resolutions, but latent and
half-involuntary promptings. The mistake of military ethics is to
exaggerate the conception of discipline, and so to present the moral
force of the will in a barer form than it ever ought to take. Military
morals can direct the axe to cut down the tree, but it knows nothing of
the quiet force by which the forest grows. What has been said is
enough, I hope, to bring out that there are many qualities and many
institutions of the most various sort which give nations an advantage
in military competition; that most of these