company, three is a crowd" suggests how easily the social
equilibrium is disturbed by the entrance of a new factor in a social
situation. The delicate nuances and grades of attention given to
different individuals moving in the same social circle are the
superficial reflections of rivalries and conflicts beneath the smooth
and decorous surfaces of polite society.

In general, we may say that competition determines the position of the
individual in the community; conflict fixes his place in society.
Location, position, ecological interdependence--these are the
characteristics of the community. Status, subordination and
superordination, control--these are the distinctive marks of a society.

The notion of conflict, like the fact, has its roots deep in human
interest. Mars has always held a high rank in the hierarchy of the gods.
Whenever and wherever struggle has taken the form of conflict, whether
of races, of nations, or of individual men, it has invariably captured
and held the attention of spectators. And these spectators, when they
did not take part in the fight, always took sides. It was this conflict
of the non-combatants that made public opinion, and public opinion has
always played an important role in the struggles of men. It is this that
has raised war from a mere play of physical forces and given it the
tragic significance of a moral struggle, a conflict of good and evil.

The result is that war tends to assume the character of litigation, a
judicial procedure, in which custom determines the method of procedure,
and the issue of the struggle is accepted as a judgment in the case.

The duello, as distinguished from the wager of battle, although it never
had the character of a judicial procedure, developed a strict code which
made it morally binding upon the individual to seek redress for wrongs,
and determined in advance the methods of procedure by which such redress
could and should be obtained. The penalty was a loss of status in the
particular group of which the individual was a member.

It was the presence of the public, the ceremonial character of the
proceedings, and the conviction that the invisible powers were on the
side of truth and justice that gave the trial by ordeal and the trial by
battle a significance that neither the duello nor any other form of
private vengeance ever had.

It is interesting in this connection, also, that political and judicial
forms of procedure are conducted on a confli