VI. On the State of Hostility

The state of hostility is a theme which requires no research to illustrate it. It is a fact too familiar to require demonstration. If war is a lamentable feature of human life, it is not quite so ugly among savages as when waged by civilized men. In proportion to their masses and the weight of the interests at stake, the advanced nations are perhaps quite as frequently embroiled as the most barbarous; also in their case the natural beneficence—if we may so call it—of the impulse to feud is not always apparent. In the lower stages of society we recognise war as a condition of the rise of governments, of the subordination of classes, of civility—its agonies as the growing pains of civil society; in the higher it appears too often as a mere scourge of mankind, deforming and impairing, if not destroying, the precious results and accumulations of long periods of peace and industry.

If the wars of savages are petty, they are habitual. While the domestic affections are little pronounced, the social are confined to the smallest fraction of humanity. Whoever is foreign to a group is hostile to it. Even in comparatively advanced stages of savagery, groups rarely combine for common purposes; when they do—the object of the combination being accomplished—they return to their isolated independence. And when tribes have combined in nations, and the nations have become polite, it is yet some time before a distinction is drawn between strangers and enemies. No wonder if the distinction be not made by savages. Whoever is not with them is against them—a rival in the competition for food, a possible plunderer of their camp and ravisher of their women. Lay out the map of the world, and wherever you find populations unrestrained by the strong hand of government there you will find perpetual feud, tribe against tribe, and family against family.

It would be superfluous to select particular districts from which to illustrate this truth, exemplifications of which we have already, in so many instances, had occasion to see. The state of hostility is the normal state of the race in early times. It is incidental to the separation and independence of men in small communities; and, while the arts are as yet in their infancy, small communities are a necessary result of the conditions of subsistence. Thus Lot separates from Abraham. Jacob goes one way and Esau goes another. And with separation comes estrangement—differences of language and habits—hostility. Till in a short time blood relations are as much apart—as foreign to one another—as people of different races and states.