or the sake of some object
the achievement of which is profoundly desired by him. If a man, for
instance, puts his hand into the fire in order to pick out something
that has dropped among the burning coals, we naturally assume that this
something is of the utmost value and importance to him. We measure the
value which a man places on the object by the desperate character of the
means which he will take to gain it; and Mr. Harrison jumps to the
conclusion that what holds good in ordinary life will hold equally good
on the field of battle also. Hence he argues--for this is his special
point--that the willingness of the soldier to die fighting on behalf of
his country shows how individuals of no unusual kind value their
country's welfare more than their own lives, and how readily, such being
the case, devotion to a particular country may be enlarged into a
religious devotion to Humanity taken as a whole. Now, there are
occasions, no doubt, in which, a country being in desperate straits, the
soldier's valour is heightened by devotion to the cause he fights for;
but that ideal devotion like this affords no sufficient explanation of
the peculiar character of military activity generally; and that there
must be some deeper and more general cause at the back of it, is shown
by the fact that some of the most reckless soldiers known to us have
been mercenaries who would fight as willingly for one country as for
another. And this deeper and more general cause, when we look for it, is
sufficiently obvious. It consists of the fact that, owing to the
millions of years of struggle to which was due, in the first place, the
evolution of man as a species, and, in the second place, the races of
men in their existing stages of civilisation, the fighting instinct is,
in the strongest of these races, inherent after a fashion in which the
industrial instincts are not; and will always prompt numbers to do, for
the smallest wage or none, what they could hardly, in its absence, be
induced to do for the highest. This instinct, no doubt, is more
controlled than formerly, and is not so often roused; but it is still
there. It is ready to quicken at the mere sound of military music; and
the sight of regiments marching stirs the most apathetic crowd.
High-spirited boys will, for the mere pleasure of fighting, run the risk
of having their noses broken, while they will wince at getting up in the
cold for the sake of learning their lessons, and would certai