The Instinctive Bases of Pacifism

FREDERIC LYMAN WELLS

THE pen is mightier than the sword, when the sword has drawn the ink; the dollar is sometimes mightier than either, but might does not make right. Convictions of pacifism are daily torn from our breasts, not by arguments, but by facts, like the skepticism of Jean-Pierre Bacadou. No mistake is fully corrected unless we understand what caused it to be made. The many reasons why pacifism should not be, deserve careful thought of why it is.

Pacifism and militarism exist, not because they are reasonable, but as outgrowths of instincts more or less common to all animals. Reason is not the master of our instincts, but their mistress. We find reason ineffective against militarism or pacifism, because they are not based on reason but on instincts. Just as modern militarism is the outgrowth of instincts like selfprotection, self-assertion, and self-display, so is pacifism the outgrowth of other instinctive processes. But the processes underlying pacifism are less fundamental than those underlying militarism; hence the greater tendency of pacifism to take support from rationalizations. (Good examples have been given to Atlantic readers by Bertrand Russell, in ‘War and Non-resistance’; August, 1915.)

If a wild animal is threatened, it tries, according to its powers, to destroy or escape from its enemy. Whether in combat, flight, or death-shamming, the end of the animal’s conduct is the avoidance of injury; passive acceptance of evil is not compatible with survival in nature. But among animals more subjugated by man, we see definite beginnings of non-resistance. The ‘cat that walked by himself’ shows very little; the dog, who cowers under the blows of his master, and even licks the hand that gives them, shows a good deal. Non-resistance to evil is brought out in animals, either by excessive abuse that ‘breaks their spirits,’ or by excessive coddling that develops habits contrary to the combative tendencies that usually predominate. I remember a dog reared in the latter way who ran from a chicken. He would cower at a threatening gesture from his master, who did not physically ill-treat him.

Among men these simple beginnings have had larger growth. Not only do we meet with passive endurance of suffering, but this is extolled as virtuous. Instinctive desires are selfdenied, and sufferings self-inflicted. Characteristic reasons for self-denial and self-torture are given. Such conduct being clearly unsuited to present life, ‘other-worldliness’ looms large in the rationalizations of it. The ascetic spurns the normal satisfactions of this world on the ground that to do so brings greater satisfactions in the next.

Now, the conduct of the ascetic is the pacifism of the individual toward the conflict of life. Both asceticism and pacifism are characterized by not wanting normal objects of life enough to undertake struggle with others who want them too. When it is said that we get what we truly want, the meaning is that we do not get what we do not want enough. And the ‘ overwhelming need to think we are acting rationally ’ is never so overwhelming as when we are acting against the normal wants of human nature. So the ascetic must see in his unnatural conduct a path to heaven. Weakness must rationalize cowardice by taking literally the hyperboles of the Sermon on the Mount.²

This shirking of responsibility for action in life is well covered by one of the instincts formulated by the British psychologist McDougall, and termed by him the instinct of self-abasement. The cowering dog is also McDougall’s prototype of it. Self-abasement is the mental trend upon which the rationalizations of extreme pacifism are built. This human instinct, which is now against the most essential strivings of the individual, looks like a distorted vestige of flight, concealment, and death-shamming instincts. The instinctive character of this trend is best shown in a desire for suffering pain and humiliation which the specialist calls masochism. In its original sense, this term applies to a great desire for pain and humiliation in love at the hands of the loved one. It is sometimes carried to grotesque extremes. The hen-pecked husband presents it in mild degree. Masochism is the greatest flowering of the self-abasing tendency, and shows it in its most purely instinctive character, uncomplicated with moral or economic rationalizations. Another instinctive reaction tending this way is exemplified in the curious indifference to immediate danger that is proverbially ascribed to men in the clutches of wild beasts. In the face of imminent destruction, the sense of its horror is abolished. So does the remoter aspect of national peril strike unstable emotions with a terror paralysis. The peril seems indifferent and unreal, and this view of it is defended with appropriate rationalizations.

Especially from this instinct of selfabasement grows the pacifism of the doctrinaire. The man of affairs would respond little to such a trend of thought, were it not powerfully reinforced by a better understood, but still instinctive factor. In order that a man may best enjoy his pleasures, make money, found a family, and rear children, he tends to give all his energies to the following of these personal instincts. He does not do this so well if group interests, of which strength for war is one, make their demands upon his energies. Personal and group instincts thus come into fundamental conflict. Pacifism expresses the outcome of this conflict, when personal instincts get the upper hand of group instincts. The rationalizations of pacifism do not then take on such an other-worldly character as when they spring chiefly from the trend of self-abasement. War is opposed rather because it dulls one’s ‘finer’ sensibilities, because it interferes with property, because it endangers the continuity of the family.

Because war does these things, it arouses, as Professor Cannon points out, hostility against itself. As with increasing civilization there is more personal pleasure to be got out of life, men conform less to conditions that may make them part with it. The anthropologist observes that the death-fear is far greater among the enlightened than among savages. Those living under the freest social conditions can get the most personal satisfaction out of life. The recent experiences of England illustrate that men so situated are less ready to make personal sacrifices for group motives.

The instinctive bases of pacifism are therefore two. First, the instinct of self-abasement, which inhibits the supreme combative efforts that war demands. This instinct of self-abasement (here conceived in harmony with the régression of Professor Ribot) opposes the instinct of self-preservation with pacifism, as it opposes the sexual instincts with prudery, and economic instincts with glorifications of poverty. Second, the various pleasure-seeking, familial and economic instincts conflict with and block the instincts that involve self-sacrifice for the group. The continuity of tribe or nation has always demanded this sacrifice of individual motives to group motives, and the nations surviving have been those in which this sacrifice was made. With the security of the group assured, selfish motives have time to grow. Gradually they become stronger than the group motives, and this is the first cause of the decay of nations. Without discipline inside the group, there is no strength against rival groups. Such might may not make right, but it makes history.