degree of
probability, closely related to instincts that were once specifically
practical and belong to the fundamental nutritional motives. Nor is it
a mere euphemism, perhaps, when we speak of the greed of nations, nor
solely analogical when we compare the ambitions of peoples with
certain adolescent phenomena in the life of the individual. Plainly
the social consciousness, as a collective mood, does not command the
specific reactions connected with sexuality and nutrition, but we may
observe the presence of these instinctive reactions in two phases of
war. We see them in the tendencies of various individuals, who under
the excitements of the war moods are controlled more or less
specifically by instinctive reactions. We see also fragments of
instinctive reactions and primitive feeling woven into the total
states of social consciousness. The hunger motive may, and probably
does, supply some of the elements of the fear and the aggressive moods
of war; just as the sex motive provides some of the elements of anger
and hatred, and some of the qualities of combat itself.

_The Aggressive Instinct_

A natural, but somewhat naive explanation of war is that it is a
survival of the aggressive instinct that man has brought up with him
from animal life, in which he originated, and that very early in his
career was directed toward his fellow men. This aggressive instinct as
expressed in the modern spirit of war does not need, on this view, to
be thought of as something reverted to. It is still active throughout
the social life. Both the purposes and the methods of it remain. We
have referred to one aspect of this before, and to the objection that
can be made that the ancestry of man does not show us such an
aggressive instinct. The nearest relatives of man are mainly social
rather than aggressive in their habits. Even the habits of hunting
other animals and eating animal food appear to have been acquired
during man's career as man, and he never has had the aggressive temper
that some creatures have had. Man has acquired a very effectual and
very complex adjustment to his environment by piecing together, so to
speak, fragments of his original conduct, and developing mechanisms
that have been produced in the race as a means of satisfying
fundamental needs. Modes of reaction produced originally for one
purpose have apparently been utilized by other motives. Of course the
more specific animal instincts are not wholly lacking, bu