Now daring, morally controlled, is the virtue of courage; and so it comes about that the fighting-instinct, called into play by curiosity and daring, is closely associated with this heroic virtue of courage. In the thick of the fray, the fighters know no fear; they ignore danger; they hurl themselves against the bayonets of the enemy; they rush recklessly into the open swept by murderous shell-fire; they worm themselves along, half underground, to place the explosives by which they themselves, as well as the enemy’s barricades, will be blown to fragments. And because pugnacity gives impetus and scope to heroic courage, therefore the fighting instinct will ever be glorified by men.
A more hesitating estimate will be placed on the very frequent coalition between pugnacity and the instinct of acquisitiveness, in its two forms, getting and hoarding. This is the instinct illustrated, at its extremes, by the squirrel who fills the hollows of the trees with nuts and by the financier who first makes and then prudently invests his money. Everybody knows that pugnacity is far more often excited by balked acquisitiveness than by thwarted daring. The dog fights to get and then to defend his bone; the militia is called out to protect mill or mine; the nation fights to extend or to defend its boundary, its prestige, or its trade. And here, again, pugnacity is estimated not for itself but according to the moral value of the instinct which excites it and to which it lends its support. The individual or nation which fights gallantly for an object rightly gained and rightly held is known as a heroic defender; whereas the attack on property or rights possessed by other men is condemned as burglary or piracy.
Pugnacity, in the third place, is as all biologists know very often the outgrowth of fear. Fear, like pugnacity, is a primitive reaction in the face of danger. It is one of the earliest and most compelling of the instincts—shown by all animals, early observed in babies, directed toward objects, animate or inanimate, of the most varied sorts, and manifesting itself in the sharply contrasted forms of flight and immobility. Fear is, therefore, absolutely in-
