The Horror of War in “The War Of The Worlds.”
Write an essay on THE WAR OF THE WORLDS by H. G WELLS.
Write on The Horror of War in THE WAR OF THE WORLDS and you must use the file I attached ( Why War? by FREUD) and this specific book:
Wells, H. G. The War of the Worlds. London, England: Penguin, 2005. Print.
Freud’s reply, dated Vienna, September 1932, has also never been given the attention it deserved:
Dear Mr. Einstein:
When I learned of your intention to invite me to a mutual exchange of views upon a
subject which not only interested you personally but seemed deserving, too, of public
interest, I cordially assented. I expected you to choose a problem lying on the borderland
of the knowable, as it stands today, a theme which each of us, physicist and psychologist,
might approach from his own angle, to meet at last on common ground, though setting
out from different premises. Thus the question which you put me–what is to be done to
rid mankind of the war menace?–took me by surprise. And, next, I was dumbfounded by
the thought of my (of our, I almost wrote) incompetence; for this struck me as being a
matter of practical politics, the statesman’s proper study. But then I realized that you did
not raise the question in your capacity of scientist or physicist, but as a lover of his fellow
men, who responded to the call of the League of Nations much as Fridtjof Nansen, the
polar explorer, took on himself the task of succoring homeless and starving victims of the
World War. And, next, I reminded myself that I was not being called on to formulate
practical proposals but, rather, to explain how this question of preventing wars strikes a
psychologist.
But here, too, you have stated the gist of the matter in your letter–and taken the wind out
of my sails! Still, I will gladly follow in your wake and content myself with endorsing
your conclusions, which, however, I propose to amplify to the best of my knowledge or
surmise.
You begin with the relations between might and right, and this is assuredly the proper
starting point for our inquiry. But, for the term might, I would substitute a tougher and
more telling word: violence. In right and violence we have today an obvious antinomy. It
is easy to prove that one has evolved from the other and, when we go back to origins and
examine primitive conditions, the solution of the problem follows easily enough. I must
crave your indulgence if in what follows I speak of well-known, admitted facts as though
they were new data; the context necessitates this method.
Conflicts of interest between man and man are resolved, in principle, by the recourse to
violence. It is the same in the animal kingdom, from which man cannot claim exclusion;
nevertheless, men are also prone to conflicts of opinion, touching, on occasion, the
loftiest peaks of abstract thought, which seem to call for settlement by quite another
method. This refinement is, however, a late development. To start with, group force was
the factor which, in small communities, decided points of ownership and the question
which man’s will was to prevail. Very soon physical force was implemented, then
replaced, by the use of various adjuncts; he proved the victor whose weapon was the
better, or handled the more skillfully. Now, for the first time, with the coming of
weapons, superior brains began to oust brute force, but the object of the conflict remained
the same: one party was to be constrained, by the injury done him or impairment of his
strength, to retract a claim or a refusal. This end is most effectively gained when the
opponent is definitely put out of action–in other words, is killed. This procedure has two
advantages: the enemy cannot renew hostilities, and, secondly, his fate deters others from
following his example. Moreover, the slaughter of a foe gratifies an instinctive craving–a
point to which we shall revert hereafter. However, another consideration may be set off
against this will to kill: the possibility of using an enemy for servile tasks if< his spirit be
broken and his life spared. Here violence finds an outlet not in slaughter but in
subjugation. Hence springs the practice of giving quarter; but the victor, having from now
on to reckon with the craving for revenge that rankles in his victim, forfeits to some
extent his personal security.
Thus, under primitive conditions, it is superior force–brute violence, or violence backed
by arms– that lords it everywhere. We know that in the course of evolution this state of
things was modified, a path was traced that led away from violence to law. But what was
this path? Surely it issued from a single verity: that the superiority of one strong man can
be overborne by an alliance of many weaklings, that l’union fait la force. Brute force is
overcome by union; the allied might of scattered units makes good its right against the
isolated giant. Thus we may define “right” (i.e., law) as the might of a community. Yet it,
too, is nothing else than violence, quick to attack whatever individual stands in its path,
and it employs the selfsame methods, follows like ends, with but one difference: it is the
communal, not individual, violence that has its way. But, for the transition from crude
violence to the reign of law, a certain psychological condition must first obtain. The
union of the majority must be stable and enduring. If its sole raison d’etre be the
discomfiture of some overweening individual and, after his downfall, it be dissolved, it
leads to nothing. Some other man, trusting to his superior power, will seek to reinstate the
rule of violence, and the cycle will repeat itself unendingly. Thus the union of the people
must be permanent and well organized; it must enact rules to meet the risk of possible
revolts; must set up machinery insuring that its rules–the laws–are observed and that
such acts of violence as the laws demand are duly carried out. This recognition of a
community of interests engenders among the members of the group a sentiment of unity
and fraternal solidarity which constitutes its real strength.
So far I have set out what seems to me the kernel of the matter: the suppression of brute
force by the transfer of power to a larger combination, founded on the community of
sentiments linking up its members. All the rest is mere tautology and glosses. Now the
position is simple enough so long as the community consists of a number of equipollent
individuals. The laws of such a group can determine to what extent the individual must
forfeit his personal freedom, the right of using personal force as an instrument of
violence, to insure the safety of the group. But such a combination is only theoretically
possible; in practice the situation is always complicated by the fact that, from the outset,
the group includes elements of unequal power, men and women, elders and children, and,
very soon, as a result of war and conquest, victors and the vanquished–i.e., masters and
slaves–as well. From this time on the common law takes notice of these inequalities of
power, laws are made by and for the rulers, giving the servile classes fewer rights.
Thenceforward there exist within the state two factors making for legal instability, but
legislative evolution, too: first, the attempts by members of the ruling class to set
themselves above the law’s restrictions and, secondly, the constant struggle of the ruled to
extend their rights and see each gain embodied in the code, replacing legal disabilities by
equal laws for all. The second of these tendencies will be particularly marked when there
takes place a positive mutation of the balance of power within the community, the
frequent outcome of certain historical conditions. In such cases the laws may gradually be
adjusted to the changed conditions or (as more usually ensues) the ruling class is loath to
rush in with the new developments, the result being insurrections and civil wars, a period
when law is in abeyance and force once more the arbiter, followed by a new regime of
law. There is another factor of constitutional change, which operates in a wholly pacific
manner, viz.: the cultural evolution of the mass of the community; this factor, however, is
of a different order and an only be dealt with later.
Thus we see that, even within the group itself, the exercise of violence cannot be avoided
when conflicting interests are at stake. But the common needs and habits of men who live
in fellowship under the same sky favor a speedy issue of such conflicts and, this being so,
the possibilities of peaceful solutions make steady progress. Yet the most casual glance at
world history will show an unending series of conflicts between one community and
another or a group of others, between large and smaller units, between cities, countries,
races, tribes and kingdoms, almost all of which were settled by the ordeal of war. Such
war ends either in pillage or in conquest and its fruits, the downfall of the loser. No single
all-embracing judgment can be passed on these wars of aggrandizement. Some, like the
war between the Mongols and the Turks, have led to unmitigated misery; others,
however, have furthered the transition from violence to law, since they brought larger
units into being, within whose limits a recourse to violence was banned and a new regime
determined all disputes. Thus the Roman conquest brought that boon, the pax Romana, to
the Mediterranean lands. The French kings’ lust for aggrandizement created a new
France, flourishing in peace and unity. Paradoxical as its sounds, we must admit that
warfare well might serve to pave the way to that unbroken peace we so desire, for it is
war that brings vast empires into being, within whose frontiers all warfare is proscribed
by a strong central power. In practice, however, this end is not attained, for as a rule the
fruits of victory are but short-lived, the new-created unit falls asunder once again,
generally because there can be no true cohesion between the parts that violence has
welded. Hitherto, moreover, such conquests have only led to aggregations which, for all
their magnitude, had limits, and disputes between these units could be resolved only by
recourse to arms. For humanity at large the sole result of all these military enterprises was
that, instead of frequent, not to say incessant, little wars, they had now to face great wars
which, for all they came less often, were so much the more destructive.
Regarding the world of today the same conclusion holds good, and you, too, have
reached it, though by a shorter path. There is but one sure way of ending war and that is
the establishment, by common consent, of a central control which shall have the last word
in every conflict of interests. For this, two things are needed: first, the creation of such a
supreme court of judicature; secondly, its investment with adequate executive force.
Unless this second requirement be fulfilled, the first is unavailing. Obviously the League
of Nations, acting as a Supreme Court, fulfills the first condition; it does not fulfill the
second. It has no force at its disposal and can only get it if the members of the new body,
its constituent nations, furnish it. And, as things are, this is a forlorn hope. Still we should
be taking a very shortsighted view of the League of Nations were we to ignore the fact
that here is an experiment the like of which has rarely–never before, perhaps, on such a
scale–been attempted in the course of history. It is an attempt to acquire the authority (in
other words, coercive influence), which hitherto reposed exclusively in the possession of
power, by calling into play certain idealistic attitudes of mind. We have seen that there
are two factors of cohesion in a community: violent compulsion and ties of sentiment
(“identifications,” in technical parlance) between the members of the group. If one of
these factors becomes inoperative, the other may still suffice to hold the group together.
Obviously such notions as these can only be significant when they are the expression of a
deeply rooted sense of unity, shared by all. It is necessary, therefore, to gauge the
efficacy of such sentiments. History tells us that, on occasion, they have been effective.
For example, the Panhellenic conception, the Greeks’ awareness of superiority over their
barbarian neighbors, which found expression in the Amphictyonies, the Oracles and
Games, was strong enough to humanize the methods of warfare as between Greeks,
though inevitably it failed to prevent conflicts between different elements of the Hellenic
race or even to deter a city or group of cities from joining forces with their racial foe, the
Persians, for the discomfiture of a rival. The solidarity of Christendom in the Renaissance
age was no more effective, despite its vast authority, in hindering Christian nations, large
and small alike, from calling in the Sultan to their aid. And, in our times, we look in vain
for some such unifying notion whose authority would be unquestioned. It is all too clear
that the nationalistic ideas, paramount today in every country, operate in quite a contrary
direction. Some there are who hold that the Bolshevist conceptions may make an end of
war, but, as things are, that goal lies very far away and, perhaps, could only be attained
after a spell of brutal internecine warfare. Thus it would seem that any effort to replace
brute force by the might of an ideal is, under present conditions, doomed to fail. Our
logic is at fault if we ignore the fact that right is founded on brute force and even today
needs violence to maintain it.
I now can comment on another of your statements. You are amazed that it is so easy to
infect men with the war fever, and you surmise that man has in him an active instinct for
hatred and destruction, amenable to such stimulations. I entirely agree with you. I believe
in the existence of this instinct and have been recently at pains to study its manifestations.
In this connection may I set out a fragment of that knowledge of the instincts, which we
psychoanalysts, after so many tentative essays and gropings in the dark, have compassed?
We assume that human instincts are of two kinds: those that conserve and unify, which
we call “erotic” (in the meaning Plato gives to Eros in his Symposium), or else “sexual”
(explicitly extending the popular connotation of “sex”); and, secondly, the instincts to
destroy and kill, which we assimilate as the aggressive or destructive instincts. These are,
as you perceive, the well known opposites, Love and Hate, transformed into theoretical
entities; they are, perhaps, another aspect of those eternal polarities, attraction and
repulsion, which fall within your province. But we must be chary of passing overhastily
to the notions of good and evil. Each of these instincts is every whit as indispensable as
its opposite, and all the phenomena of life derive from their activity, whether they work
in concert or in opposition. It seems that an instinct of either category can operate but
rarely in isolation; it is always blended (“alloyed,” as we say) with a certain dosage of its
opposite, which modifies its aim or even, in certain circumstances, is a prime condition of
its attainment. Thus the instinct of self-preservation is certainly of an erotic nature, but to
gain its end this very instinct necessitates aggressive action. In the same way the love
instinct, when directed to a specific object, calls for an admixture of the acquisitive
instinct if it is to enter into effective possession of that object. It is the difficulty of
isolating the two kinds of instinct in their manifestations that has so long prevented us
from recognizing them.
If you will travel with me a little further on this road, you will find that human affairs are
complicated in yet another way. Only exceptionally does an action follow on the stimulus
of a single instinct, which is per se a blend of Eros and destructiveness. As a rule several
motives of similar composition concur to bring about the act. This fact was duly noted by
a colleague of yours, Professor G. C. Lichtenberg, sometime Professor of Physics at
Gottingen; he was perhaps even more eminent as a psychologist than as a physical
scientist. He evolved the notion of a “Compass-card of Motives” and wrote: “The
efficient motives impelling man to act can be classified like the thirty-two winds and
described in the same manner; e.g., Food-Food-Fame or Fame-Fame-Food.” Thus, when
a nation is summoned to engage in war, a whole gamut of human motives may respond to
this appeal–high and low motives, some openly avowed, others slurred over. The lust for
aggression and destruction is certainly included; the innumerable cruelties of history and
man’s daily life confirm its prevalence and strength. The stimulation of these destructive
impulses by appeals to idealism and the erotic instinct naturally facilitate their release.
Musing on the atrocities recorded on history’s page, we feel that the ideal motive has
often served as a camouflage for the dust of destruction; sometimes, as with the cruelties
of the Inquisition, it seems that, while the ideal motives occupied the foreground of
consciousness, they drew their strength from the destructive instincts submerged in the
unconscious. Both interpretations are feasible.
You are interested, I know, in the prevention of war, not in our theories, and I keep this
fact in mind. Yet I would like to dwell a little longer on this destructive instinct which is
seldom given the attention that its importance warrants. With the least of speculative
efforts we are led to conclude that this instinct functions in every living being, striving to
work its ruin and reduce life to its primal state of inert matter. Indeed, it might well be
called the “death instinct”; whereas the erotic instincts vouch for the struggle to live on.
The death instinct becomes an impulse to destruction when, with the aid of certain
organs, it directs its action outward, against external objects. The living being, that is to
say, defends its own existence by destroying foreign bodies. But, in one of its activities,
the death instinct is operative within the living being and we have sought to trace back a
number of normal and pathological phenomena to this introversion of the destructive
instinct. We have even committed the heresy of explaining the origin of human
conscience by some such “turning inward” of the aggressive impulse. Obviously when
this internal tendency operates on too large a scale, it is no trivial matter; rather, a
positively morbid state of things; whereas the diversion of the destructive impulse toward
the external world must have beneficial effects. Here is then the biological justification
for all those vile, pernicious propensities which we are now combating. We can but own
that they are really more akin to nature than this our stand against them, which, in fact,
remains to be accounted for.
All this may give you the impression that our theories amount to species of mythology
and a gloomy one at that! But does not every natural science lead ultimately to this–a sort
of mythology? Is it otherwise today with your physical sciences?
The upshot of these observations, as bearing on the subject in hand, is that there is no
likelihood of our being able to suppress humanity’s aggressive tendencies. In some happy
corners of the earth, they say, where nature brings forth abundantly whatever man
desires, there flourish races whose lives go gently by; unknowing of aggression or
constraint. This I can hardly credit; I would like further details about these happy folk.
The Bolshevists, too, aspire to do away with human aggressiveness by insuring the
satisfaction of material needs and enforcing equality between man and man. To me this
hope seems vain. Meanwhile they busily perfect their armaments, and their hatred of
outsiders is not the least of the factors of cohesion among themselves. In any case, as you
too have observed, complete suppression of man’s aggressive tendencies is not in issue;
what we may try is to divert it into a channel other than that of warfare.
From our “mythology” of the instincts we may easily deduce a formula for an indirect
method of eliminating war. If the propensity for war be due to the destructive instinct, we
have always its counter-agent, Eros, to our hand. All that produces ties of sentiment
between man and man must serve us as war’s antidote. These ties are of two kinds. First,
such relations as those toward a beloved object, void though they be of sexual intent. The
psychoanalyst need feel no compunction in mentioning “love” in this connection; religion
uses the same language: Love thy neighbor as thyself. A pious injunction, easy to
enounce, but hard to carry out! The other bond of sentiment is by way of identification.
All that brings out the significant resemblances between men calls into play this feeling
of community, identification, whereon is founded, in large measure, the whole edifice of
human society.
In your strictures on the abuse of authority I find another suggestion for an indirect attack
on the war impulse. That men are divided into the leaders and the led is but another
manifestation of their inborn and irremediable inequality. The second class constitutes the
vast majority; they need a high command to make decisions for them, to which decisions
they usually bow without demur. In this context we would point out that men should be at
greater pains than heretofore to form a superior class of independent thinkers,
unamenable to intimidation and fervent in the quest of truth, whose function it would be
to guide the masses dependent on their lead. There is no need to point out how little the
rule of politicians and the Church’s ban on liberty of thought encourage such a new
creation. The ideal conditions would obviously be found in a community where every
man subordinated his instinctive life to the dictates of reason. Nothing less than this could
bring about so thorough and so durable a union between men, even if this involved the
severance of mutual ties of sentiment. But surely such a hope is utterly utopian, as things
are. The other indirect methods of preventing war are certainly more feasible, but entail
no quick results. They conjure up an ugly picture of mills that grind so slowly that, before
the flour is ready, men are dead of hunger.
As you see, little good comes of consulting a theoretician, aloof from worldly contact, on
practical and urgent problems! Better it were to tackle each successive crisis with means
that we have ready to our hands. However, I would like to deal with a question which,
though it is not mooted in your letter, interests me greatly. Why do we, you and I and
many another, protest so vehemently against war, instead of just accepting it as another of
life’s odious importunities? For it seems a natural thing enough, biologically sound and
practically unavoidable. I trust you will not be shocked by my raising such a question.
For the better conduct of an inquiry it may be well to don a mask of feigned aloofness.
The answer to my query may run as follows: Because every man has a right over his own
life and war destroys lives that were full of promise; it forces the individual into
situations that shame his manhood, obliging him to murder fellow men, against his will; it
ravages material amenities, the fruits of human toil, and much besides. Moreover, wars,
as now conducted, afford no scope for acts of heroism according to the old ideals and,
given the high perfection of modern arms, war today would mean the sheer extermination
of one of the combatants, if not of both. This is so true, so obvious, that we can but
wonder why the conduct of war is not banned by general consent. Doubtless either of the
points I have just made is open to debate. It may be asked if the community, in its turn,
cannot claim a right over the individual lives of its members. Moreover, all forms of war
cannot be indiscriminately condemned; so long as there are nations and empires, each
prepared callously to exterminate its rival, all alike must be equipped for war. But we will
not dwell on any of these problems; they lie outside the debate to which you have invited
me. I pass on to another point, the basis, as it strikes me, of our common hatred of war. It
is this: We cannot do otherwise than hate it. Pacifists we are, since our organic nature
wills us thus to be. Hence it comes easy to us to find arguments that justify our
standpoint.
This point, however, calls for elucidation. Here is the way in which I see it. The cultural
development of mankind (some, I know, prefer to call it civilization) has been in progress
since immemorial antiquity. To this processus we owe all that is best in our composition,
but also much that makes for human suffering. Its origins and causes are obscure, its
issue is uncertain, but some of its characteristics are easy to perceive. It well may lead to
the extinction of mankind, for it impairs the sexual function in more than one respect, and
even today the uncivilized races and the backward classes of all nations are multiplying
more rapidly than the cultured elements. This process may, perhaps, be likened to the
effects of domestication on certain animals–it clearly involves physical changes of
structure–but the view that cultural development is an organic process of this order has
not yet become generally familiar. The psychic changes which accompany this process of
cultural change are striking, and not to be gainsaid. They consist in the progressive
rejection of instinctive ends and a scaling down of instinctive reactions. Sensations which
delighted our forefathers have become neutral or unbearable to us; and, if our ethical and
aesthetic ideals have undergone a change, the causes of this are ultimately organic. On
the psychological side two of the most important phenomena of culture are, firstly, a
strengthening of the intellect, which tends to master our instinctive life, and, secondly, an
introversion of the aggressive impulse, with all its consequent benefits and perils. Now
war runs most emphatically counter to the psychic disposition imposed on us by the
growth of culture; we are therefore bound to resent war, to find it utterly intolerable. With
pacifists like us it is not merely an intellectual and affective repulsion, but a constitutional
intolerance, an idiosyncrasy in its most drastic form. And it would seem that the aesthetic
ignominies of warfare play almost as large a part in this repugnance as war’s atrocities.
How long have we to wait before the rest of men turn pacifist? Impossible to say, and yet
perhaps our hope that these two factors–man’s cultural disposition and a well-founded
dread of the form that future wars will take–may serve to put an end to war in the near
future, is not chimerical. But by what ways or byways this will come about, we cannot
guess. Meanwhile we may rest on the assurance that whatever makes for cultural
development is working also against war.
With kindest regards and, should this expose prove a disappointment to you, my sincere
regrets,
Yours,
SIGMUND FREUD
Einstein was apparently not disappointed when Freud’s reply was received. He addressed the following
letter to Freud on December 3, 1932:
You have made a most gratifying gift to the League of Nations and myself with your
truly classic reply. When I wrote you I was thoroughly convinced of the insignificance of
my role, which was only meant to document my good will, with me as the bait on the
hoof; to tempt the marvelous fish into nibbling. You have given in return something
altogether magnificent. We cannot know what may grow from such seed, as the effect
upon man of any action or event is always incalculable. This is not within our power and
we do not need to worry about it.
You have earned my gratitude and the gratitude of all men for having devoted all your
strength to the search for truth and for having shown the rarest courage in professing your
convictions all your life. . . .
By the time the exchange between Einstein and Freud was published in 1933, under the title Why War?,
Hitler, who was to drive both men into exile, was already in power, and the letters never achieved the wide
circulation intended for them. Indeed, the first German edition of the pamphlet is reported to have been
limited to only 2,000 copies, as was also the original English edition.