8

SIGMUND FREUD

Vienna, September, 1932.

Dear Professor Einstein,

WHEN I learnt 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 to-day, 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) in-
competence ; for this struck me as being a matter
of practical politics, the statesman’s proper study.
But then I realised that you did not raise the ques-
tion 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 suc-
couring homeless and starving victims of the World
War. And, next, I reminded myself that I was not
being called on to formulate practical proposals,

9

SIGMUND FREUD

but, rather, to explain how this question of prevent-
ing 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 con-
clusions, 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 enquiry. But, for the term “might,”
I would substitute a tougher and more telling word:
“violence.” In right and violence we have to-day
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 occa-
sion, 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, brute 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
 

10

implemented, then replaced, by the use of various
adjuncts; he proved the victor whose weapon was
the better, or handled the more skilfully. 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 definitively 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 follow-
ing his example. Moreover, the slaughter of a foe
gratifies an instinctive craving–a point to which
we shall revert hereafter. However, another con-
sideration 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 sub-
jugation. 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

11

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 what-
ever 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'être 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 organised; it must enact
rules to meet the risk of possible revolts; must set
up machinery ensuring that its rules–the laws–
are observed and that such acts of violence as the
laws demand are duly carried out. This recogni-
tion 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

12

glosses. Now the position is simple enough so long
as the community consists of a number of equipol-
lent 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 ensure 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 out-
come 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 reckon with the new developments,
the result being insurrections and civil wars, a
period when law is in abeyance and force once

13

more the arbiter, followed by a new régime 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 com-
munity ; this factor, however, is of a different order
and can 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 favour 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 com-
munity 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 down-
fall of the loser. No single all-embracing judg-
ment can be passed on these wars of aggrandise-
ment. 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 régime determined all dis-
putes. Thus the Roman conquests brought that
boon, the pax romana, to the Mediterranean lands.
The French kings’ lust for aggrandisement created
a new France, flourishing in peace and unity. Para-
doxical as it sounds, we must admit that warfare

14

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 war-
fare 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, more-
over, such conquests have only led to aggregations
which, for all their magnitude, had limits, and dis-
putes 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 to-day the same conclu-
sion 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 un-
availing. Obviously the League of Nations, acting
as a Supreme Court, fulfils the first condition; it
does not fulfil 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

15

be taking a very short-sighted 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 on the posses-
sion 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 signi-
ficant 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 neighbours, which found expression in
the Amphictyonies, the Oracles and Games, was
strong enough to humanise the methods of war-
fare 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

16

WHY WAR ?

times, we look in vain for some such unifying
notion whose authority would be unquestioned. It
is all too clear that the nationalistic ideas, para-
mount to-day 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 to-day
needs violence to maintain it.

I now can comment on another of your state-
ments. 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 destruc-
tion, 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 connexion 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

17

and Hate, transformed into theoretical entities ;
they are, perhaps, another aspect of those eternal
polarities, attraction and repulsion, which fall with-
in your province. But we must be chary of pass-
ing over-hastily to the notions of good and evil.
Each of these instincts is every whit as indispens-
able 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 isola-
tion; 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 ends this very instinct necessitates aggres-
sive action. In the same way the love-instinct,
when directed to a specific object, calls for an ad-
mixture 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 recognising them.

If you will travel with me a little further on this
road, you will find that human affairs are com-
plicated 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 de-
structiveness. As a rule several motives of similar
composition concur to bring about the act. This
fact was duly noted by a colleague of yours, Pro-
fessor G. C. Lichtenberg, sometime Professor of
Physics at Göttingen ; he was perhaps even more

18

eminent as a psychologist than as a physical scientist.
He evolved the notion of a “Compass-card of
Motives” and wrote: “The efficient motives im-
pelling man to act can be classified like the 32
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 aggres-
sion 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
facilitates 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
lust 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 in-
stincts submerged in the unconscious. Both inter-
pretations 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

19

the “death-instinct”; whereas the erotic instincts
vouch for the struggle to live on. The death in-
stinct becomes an impulse to destruction when, with
the aid of certain organs, it directs its action out-
wards, against external objects. The living being,
that is to say, defends its own existence by destroy-
ing 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 intro-
version 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 im-
pulse towards the external world must have bene-
ficial effects. Here is then the biological justifica-
tion for all those vile, pernicious propensities which
we now are 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 a species of mythology and a
gloomy one at that! But does not every natural
science lead ultimately to this–a sort of mytho-
logy? Is it otherwise to-day with your physical
science?

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

20

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 ensuring the satisfaction of
material needs and enforcing equality between
man and man. To me this hope seems vain. Mean-
while they busily perfect their armaments, and
their hatred of outsiders is not the least of the factors
of cohesion amongst 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 towards a beloved
object, void though they be of sexual intent. The
psychoanalyst need feel no compunction in men-
tioning “love” in this connexion ; religion uses the
same language : Love thy neighbour 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 feel-
 

21

ing 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 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 contacts, on

22

WHY WAR?

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 an other, 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 to-day would mean the sheer extermina-
tion 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 con-
sent.

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 con-
demned; so long as there are nations and empires,
each prepared callously to exterminate its rival, all

23

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 develop-
ment of mankind (some, I know, prefer to call it
civilisation) 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 ob-
scure, its issue is uncertain, but some of its charac-
teristics 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 to-day
the uncivilised 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 be-
come 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 distinctive reactions. Sensations
which delighted our forefathers have become

WHY WAR ?

neutral or unbearable to us ; and, if our ethical and
æsthetic ideals have undergone a change, the causes
of this are ultimately organic. On the psycho-
logical side two of the most important phenomena
of culture are, firstly, a strengthening of the intel-
lect, which tends to master our instinctive life,
and, secondly, an introversion of the aggres-
sive 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 re-
sent 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 æsthetic 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 by-ways this will come about,
we cannot guess. Meanwhile we may rest on the
assurance that whatever makes for cultural develop-
ment is working also against war.

With kindest regards and, should this exposé
prove a disappointment to you, my sincere regrets,

Yours,

SIGMUND FREUD.

The Walthamstow Press, Ltd. (T.U.), Guardian House, Forest Road, E.17.