162 THE CLASS STRUGGLE FORMING WAR PSYCHOSIS 163 But the crown and head of creation has an intellect. It can function socially. Essentially reason cannot harbor contradictions. In a mathematical or geometric problem reason is at its best. In these domains its non contradictory nature is manifest. In social life it would operate as well but. Parasitism has a selective action as to the basis on which he would desire society to be built. He exercises a selective action as to the implements he uses to create public opinion.
rages what the brilliant Tarde would call a logical duel for the possession of that psychic confirmation or lack of it.
With this the war would have been either inevitable or not inevitable, according as the Parasite figured on the consent of the masses to fight for him.
Obviously any discussion on the modus operandi of capturing public opinion should begin with a statement of the psychic elements of the individual that can be called on to induce him to carry on a war as the present, or to make him refuse to enter into it as the Socialists have tried to make him do.
In an article of this length justice cannot be done to the subject except in a very general way. Yet we can gain some insight into the problems that have arisen within the international movement, for the so called failure and breakdown of the movement; we can find how it is that the Parasite has succeeded in creating a war psychosis; what innovations have come into being recently in the line of psychic phenomena of warfare, and to what extent Parasites can succeed; these and many problems can be rationally explained by an investigation of the most general laws governing human action, based as these are on the existence of the three general aspects of the mental process.
These are the Instincts, the Feelings, the Intellect. How these have functioned psychological sociology has quite well investigated. Tarde, Le Bon, Durkheim, Ratzenhoffer, Ross, Giddings, etc. are some of the illustrious who rescued sociology from the biologic schools based on analogy. Yet they suffer from the non recognition of the perversions of these categories in the hands of the Parasite. True, social life is not rational. But is there any other reason for this than the ones advanced by the sociologists? Fundamentally society rests on psychic bases, true.
Instinct of gregariousness has clustered primitive men together, not reason; the sex and parental instinct held together man and woman and their offspring; the instinct of acquisition and construction has prompted men to create and achieve; the instinct of pugnacity prompted them to defend their creations and their group; those and other instincts did operate to create the synthetic product, society.
Reason stands convicted and condemned by the Parasite as a means to induce the masses to fight. Ask a rational question on the meaning of Democracy or Kultur or no annexations and no indemnities except reparation! As William Graham Sumner said, it would ruin a doctrine to define it. And to define it opens it to analysis, criticism, rational treatment. Reasoning to be sure, does exist which is a species of reason. But the method and spirit of Reason, the inqui attitude of mind, the contradiction perceiving attribute of intellect is avoided by the Parasite. Were space at our disposal a thousand and one incidents of the World War would be culled to illustrate the principle. Consistency in a democracy at war against autocracy is as rare as pigeon milk, and as impossible.
Yet Reason is always there as a foe to parasitic action. It will out at times in revolution and uprising. But in the main it can be controlled by its controller. The wish father to the thought. Control the Feeling and you control the higher centres.
What applies to Feelings also holds for the Instincts. Reason is suppressed, any attempt to analyze aims and motives is sat upon by thought controller or mailed fist. This is the course taken in all parasitic wars. Instinct and Feeling are appealed to and these force action, spite of Reason.
But apologetic psychology today masks the true facts. Prof.
Dewey not long ago in the New Republic claimed that the American people have a novel psychosis in which all the older methods of stimulation to war are discarded. He claims that the Zeppelin that a newspaper man prayed for to boost up recruiting, and such like old fogie methods do not apply to America with