Remarks at the Peace Banquet

 　　I am only a philosopher, and there is only one thing that a philosopher can be relied on to do. You know that the function of statistics has been ingeniously described as being the refutation of other statistics. Well, a philosopher can always contradict other philosophers. In ancient times philosophers defined man as the rational animal; and philosophers since then have always found much more to say about the rational than about the animal part of the definition. But looked at candidly 1, reason bears about the same proportion to the rest of human nature that we in this hall bear to the rest of America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Polynesia. Reason is one of the very feeblest of Nature's forces, if you take it at any one spot and moment. It is only in the very long run that its effects become perceptible. Reason assumes to settle things by weighing them against one another without prejudice, partiality, or excitement; but what affairs in the concrete are settled by is and always will be just prejudices, partialities, cupidities, and excitements. Appealing to reason as we do, we are in a sort of a forlorn hope situation, like a small sand-bank in the midst of a hungry sea ready to wash it out of existence. But sand-banks grow when the conditions favor; and weak as reason is, it has the unique advantage over its antagonists 2 that its activity never lets up and that it presses always in one direction, while men's prejudices vary, their passions ebb 3 and flow, and their excitements are intermittent 4. Our sand-bank, I absolutely believe, is bound to grow, -- bit by bit it will get dyked and breakwatered. But sitting as we do in this warm room, with music and lights and the flowing bowl and smiling faces, it is easy to get too sanguine 5 about our task, and since I am called to speak, I feel as if it might not be out of place to say a word about the strength of our enemy.

　　Our permanent enemy is the noted 6 bellicosity 7 of human nature. Man, biologically considered, and whatever else he may be in the bargain, is simply the most formidable of all beasts of prey 8, and, indeed, the only one that preys 9 systematically 10 on its own species. We are once for all adapted to the military status. A millennium 11 of peace would not breed the fighting disposition 12 out of our bone and marrow 13, and a function so ingrained and vital will never consent to die without resistance, and will always find impassioned apologists and idealizers.
　　Not only are men born to be soldiers, but non-combatants by trade and nature, historians in their studies, and clergymen in their pulpits, have been war's idealizers. They have talked of war as of God's court of justice. And, indeed, if we think how many things beside the frontiers of states the wars of history have decided 14, we must feel some respectful awe 15, in spite of all the horrors. Our actual civilization, good and bad alike, has had past war for its determining condition. Great-mindedness among the tribes of men has always meant the will to prevail, and all the more so if prevailing 16 included slaughtering 17 and being slaughtered 18. Rome, Paris, England, Brandenburg, Piedmont, -- soon, let us hope, Japan, -- along with their arms have made their traits of character and habits of thought prevail among their conquered neighbors. The blessings 19 we actually enjoy, such as they are, have grown up in the shadow of the wars of antiquity 20. The various ideals were backed by fighting wills, and where neither would give way, the God of battles had to be the arbiter 21. A shallow view, this, truly; for who can say what might have prevailed if man had ever been a reasoning and not a fighting animal? Like dead men, dead causes tell no tales, and the ideals that went under in the past, along with all the tribes that represented them, find to-day no recorder, no explainer, no defender 22.
　　But apart from theoretic defenders 23, and apart from every soldierly individual straining at the leash 24, and clamoring for opportunity, war has an omnipotent 25 support in the form of our imagination. Man lives by habits, indeed, but what he lives for is thrills and excitements. The only relief from Habit's tediousness is periodical excitement. From time immemorial wars have been, especially for non-combatants, the supremely 26 thrilling excitement. Heavy and dragging at its end, at its outset every war means an explosion of imaginative energy. The dams of routine burst, and boundless 27 prospects 28 open. The remotest spectators share the fascination 29. With that awful struggle now in progress on the confines of the world, there is not a man in this room, I suppose, who doesn't buy both an evening and a morning paper, and first of all pounce 30 on the war column.
　　A deadly listlessness would come over most men's imagination of the future if they could seriously be brought to believe that never again in saecula saeculorum would a war trouble human history. In such a stagnant 31 summer afternoon of a world, where would be the zest 32 or interest ?
　　This is the constitution of human nature which we have to work against. The plain truth is that people want war. They want it anyhow; for itself; and apart from each and every possible consequence. It is the final bouquet 33 of life's fireworks. The born soldiers want it hot and actual. The non-combatants want it in the background, and always as an open possibility, to feed imagination on and keep excitement going. Its clerical and historical defenders fool themselves when they talk as they do about it. What moves them is not the blessings it has won for us, but a vague religious exaltation. War, they feel, is human nature at its uttermost. We are here to do our uttermost. It is a sacrament. Society would rot, they think, without the mystical blood-payment.
　　We do ill, I fancy, to talk much of universal peace or of a general disarmament. We must go in for preventive medicine not for radical 34 cure. We must cheat our foe 35, politically circumvent 36 his action, not try to change his nature. In one respect war is like love, though in no other. Both leave us intervals 37 of rest; and in the intervals life goes on perfectly 38 well without them, though the imagination still dallies 39 with their possibility. Equally insane when once aroused and under headway, whether they shall be aroused or not depends on accidental circumstances. How are old maids and old bachelors made? Not by deliberate vows 40 of celibacy 41, but by sliding on from year to year with no sufficient matrimonial provocation 42. So of the nations with their wars. Let the general possibility of war be left open, in Heaven's name, for the imagination to dally 43 with. Let the soldiers dream of killing 44, as the old maids dream of marrying. But organize in every conceivable way the practical machinery 45 for making each successive chance of war abortive 46. Put peace-men in power; educate the editors and statesmen to responsibility; -- how beautifully did their trained responsibility in England make the Venezuela incident abortive! Seize every pretext 47, however small, for arbitration 48 methods, and multiply the precedents 49; foster rival excitements and invent new outlets 50 for heroic energy; and from one generation to another, the chances are that irritations 51 will grow less acute and states of strain less dangerous among the nations. Armies and navies will continue, of course, and will fire the minds of populations with their potentialities of greatness. But their officers will find that somehow or other, with no deliberate intention on any one's part, each successive "incident" has managed to evaporate and to lead nowhere, and that the thought of what might have been remains 52 their only consolation 53.
　　The last weak runnings of the war spirit will be "punitive 54 expeditions." A country that turns its arms only against uncivilized foes 56 is, I think, wrongly taunted 57 as degenerate 58. Of course it has ceased to be heroic in the old grand style. But I verily believe that this is because it now sees something better. It has a conscience. It knows that between civilized 55 countries a war is a crime against civilization. It will still perpetrate peccadillos, to be sure. But it is afraid, afraid in the good sense of the word, to engage in absolute crimes against civilization.