concerned with an abnormal and unusual occupation.
Why have I presented the facts in this order, and dealt with the psychological result involved in this change before the change itself? I have adopted this order of treatment because the believer in war justifies his dogmatism for the most part by an appeal to what he alleges is the one dominating fact of the situation—i.e., that human nature is unchanging. Well, as will be seen from the chapter on that subject, that alleged fact does not bear investigation. Human nature is changing out of all recognition. Not only is man fighting less, but he is using all forms of physical compulsion less, and as a very natural result is losing those psychological attributes that go with the employment of physical force. And he is coming to employ physical force less because accumulated evidence is pushing him more and more to the conclusion that he can accomplish more easily that which he strives for by other means.
Few of us realize to what extent economic pressure—and I use that term in its just sense, as meaning, not only the struggle for money, but everything implied therein, well-being, social consideration, and the rest—has replaced physical force in human affairs. The primitive mind could not conceive a world in which everything was not regulated by force: even the great minds of antiquity could not believe the world would be an industrious one unless the great mass were made industrious by the use of physical force—i.e., by slavery. Three-fourths of those who peopled what is now Italy in Rome's palmiest days were slaves, chained in the fields when at work, chained at night in