Now, historically speaking, for the vast majority of mankind, the belief-system which they accepted, for which they were prepared to live or die, was not of their own choice, but imposed on them by the hazards of the social environment, just as their tribal or ethnic identity was determined by the hazards of birth. Critical reasoning played, if any, only a subordinate part in the process of accepting the imprint of a credo. If the tenets of the credo were too offensive to the critical faculties, schizophysiology provided the modus vivendi which permitted the hostile forces of faith and reason to coexist in a universe of doublethink - to use Orwell's term.
Thus one of the central features of the human predicament is this overwhelming capacity and need for identification with a social group and/or a system of beliefs which is indifferent to reason, indifferent to self-interest and even to the claims of self-preservation. Extreme manifestations of this self-transcending tendency - as one might call it - are the hypnotic rapport, a variety of trance-like or ecstatic states, the phenomena of individual and collective suggestibility which dominate life in primitive and not so primitive societies, culminating in mass hysteria in its overt and latent form. One need not march in a crowd to become a victim of crowd-mentality - the true believer is its captive all the time.
We are thus driven to the unfashionable and uncomfortable conclusion that the trouble with our species is not an overdose of self-asserting aggression, but an excess of self-transcending devotion. Even a cursory glance at history should convince one that individual crimes committed for selfish motives play a quite insignificant role in the human tragedy compared with the numbers massacred in unselfish love of one's tribe, nation, dynasty, church or ideology. The emphasis is on unselfish. Excepting a small minority of mercenary or sadistic disposition, wars are not fought for personal gain, but out of loyalty and devotion to king, country or cause.
Homicide committed for personal reasons is a statistical rarity in all cultures, including our own. Homicide for unselfish reasons, at the risk of one's own life, is the dominant phenomenon in history. Even the members of the Mafia feel compelled to rationalize their motives into an ideology, the Cosa Nostra, 'our cause'.
The theory that wars are caused by pent-up aggressive drives which can find no other outlet has no foundation either in history or in psychology. Anybody who has served in the ranks of an army can testify that aggressive feelings towards the so-called enemy hardly playa part in the dreary routine of waging war: boredom and discomfort, not hatred; homesickness, sex-starvation and longing for peace dominate the mind of the anonymous soldier. The invisible enemy is not an individual on whom aggression could focus; he is not a person but an abstract entity, a common denominator, a collective portrait. Soldiers fight the invisible, impersonal enemy either because they have no other choice, or out loyalty to king and country, the true religion, the righteous cause. They are motivated not by aggression, but devotion.
I am equally unconvinced by the fashionable theory that the philogenetic origin of war is to be found in the so-call ‘territorial imperative'. The wars of man, with rare exceptions, were not fought for individual ownership of bits space. The man who goes to war actually leaves the home which he is supposed to defend, and engages in combat hundreds or thousands of miles away from it; and what makes him fight is not the biological urge to defend personal acreage of farmland or meadows, but - to say once more - his loyalty to symbols and slogans derived from tribal lore, divine commandments or political ideologies. Wars are fought for words. They are motivated not aggression, but by love.
We have seen on the screen the radiant love of the Fuhrer on the faces of the Hitler Youth. We have seen the same expression on the faces of little Chinese boys reciting words of the Chairman. They are transfixed with love monks in ecstasy on religious paintings. The sound of nation's anthem, the sight of its proud flag, makes you feel part of a wonderfully loving community.
Thus, in opposition to Lorenz, Ardrey and their follow, I would suggest that the trouble with our species is not excess of aggression, but an excess of devotion. The fanatic prepared to lay down his life for the object of his worship the lover is prepared to die for his idol. He is equally I pared to kill anybody who represents a supposed threat that idol. Here we come to a point of central important. You watch a film version of the Moor of Venice. You in love with Desdemona and identify yourself with Othello (or the other way round); as a result the perfidious Iago makes your blood boil. Yet the psychological process which causes the boiling is quite different from facing a real opponent. You know that the people on the screen are merely