civilization. This means that war is a socially unconscious phenomenon. As distinguished from the conscious and concerted, that is to say, artificial, action of society in the promotion of its own well-being, it is a purely natural phenomenon, and socially considered belongs in exactly the same class as earthquakes, floods, famine and pestilence.
To this point we come, then, that war has nothing to do with social progress, except in an incidental way. It is a mode of collective action whose incidental effect may be progress or regress. It is, as De Greef has well said, the best example of a socially unconscious phenomenon. He says:
La guerre est le phénomenène social ineonscient par excellence; la preuve, c'est qu'elle finit toujours par où on aurait dû commencer, si l'on avait été capable d'établir la balance exacte des forces hostiles, c'est-à-dire par des traites.[1]
"But," it will be said, "it can not be denied that war has sometimes resulted in progress." Certainly not; nor can it be denied that it has sometimes resulted in regress. As a result of war states have been founded, and as a result of war states have been destroyed. War has initiated civilizations, and war has overthrown them. And always the effect on social progress has been incidental, unforseen and unintended.
The social effects of war, then, and hence its influence upon progress, are exactly parallel to the effects of the undirected forces of nature. These in their blind action produce results sometimes progressive and sometimes the opposite, but always with absolute disregard of the effects produced and of the amount of energy expended. War, it may be said, belongs to the economy of nature and not to the economy of mind.
Now the common characteristic of the phenomena of nature as distinguished from the phenomena of mind, so far as they are related to the achievement of the ends desired by human beings, is waste. Nature is notoriously prodigal. Progress achieved by it is uncertain, slow and expensive. War, therefore, being from the social viewpoint a natural phenomenon should be expected to exhibit this common characteristic. And so it does. It is perhaps the superlative example of social waste.
Now waste, whether it result from individual or social action, is an evidence of unintelligence. The function of intelligence is to promote economy of time, means and energy in the realization of a given end. Social intelligence, therefore, when it is directed to the promotion of social progress, can not countenance war because of its wastefulness, to say nothing of the uncertainty of its results. Social progress, after the dawn of social intelligence, is really equivalent to the development of such intelligence. The general progress of society must therefore necessarily lead to the social prevention of war. Continuous progress with the continuance of war is a contradiction in terms.
- ↑ Op. cit., p. 434.
