[1]
The letter which Einstein addressed to Freud, concerning
the projectcd organization of intellectual leaders, was sent
in 1931, or possibly 1932, and read as follows:
- I greatly admire your passion to ascertain the truth--a passion
that has come to dominate all else in your thinking. You have
shown with irresistible lucidity how inseparably the aggressive
and destructive instincts are bound up in the human psyche with
those of love and the lust for life. At the same time, your
convincing arguments make manifest your deep devotion to the
great goal of the internal and external liberation of man from
the evils of war. This was the profound hope of all those who
have been revered as moral and spiritual leaders beyond the
limits of their own time and country, from Jesus to Goethe and
Kant. Is it not significant that such men have been universally
recognized as leaders, even though their desire to affect the
course of human affairs was quite ineffective?
[2]
- I am convinced that almost all great men who, because of their
accomplishments, are recognized as leaders even of small groups
share the same ideals. But they have little influence on the
course of political events. It would almost appear that the
very domain of human activity most crucial to the fate of nations
is inescapably in the hands of wholly irresponsible political
rulers.
[3]
- Political leaders or governments owe their power either to
the use of force or to their election by the masses. They cannot
be regarded as representative of the superior moral or intellectual
elements in a nation. In our time, the intellectual elite does
not exercise any direct influence on the history of the world;
the very fact of its division into many factions makes it impossible
for its members to co-operate in the solution of today's problems.
Do you not share the feeling that a change could be brought
about by a free association of men whose previous work and achievements
offer a guarantee of their ability and integrity? Such a group
of international scope, whose members would have to keep contact
with each other through constant interchange of opinions, might
gain a significant and wholesome moral influence on the solution
of political problems if its own attitudes, backed by the signatures
of its concurring members, were made public through the press.
Such an association would, of course, suffer from all the defects
that have so often led to degeneration in learned societies;
the danger that such a degeneration may develop is, unfortunately,
ever present in view of the imperfections of human nature. However,
and despite those dangers, should we not make at least an attempt
to form such an association in spite of all dangers? It seems
to me nothing less than an imperative duty!
[4]
- Once such an association of intellectuals--men of real stature--has
come into being, it might then make an energetic effort to en-list
religious groups in the fight against war. The association would
give moral power for action to many personalities whose good
intentions are today paralyzed by an attitude of painful resignation.
I also believe that such an association of men, who are highly
respected for their personal accomplishments, would provide
important moral support to those elements in the League of Nations
who actively support the great objective for which that institution
was created.
[5]
- I offer these suggestions to you, rather than to anyone else
in the world, because your sense of reality is less clouded
by wishful thinking than is the case with other people and since
you combine the qualities of critical judgment, earnestness
and responsibility.
The high point in the relationship between Einstein
and Freud came in the summer of 1932 when, under the auspices
of the International Institute of Intellectual Co-operation,
Einstein initiated a public debate with Freud about the causes
and cure of wars. Einstein's official letter is dated July
30, 1932; it was accompanied by the following private note
of the same date:
[6]
- I should like to use this opportunity to send you warm personal
regards and to thank you for many a pleasant hour which I had
in reading your works. It is always amusing for me to observe
that even those who do not believe in your theories find it
so difficult to resist your ideas that they use your terminology
in their thoughts and speech when they are off guard.
This is Einstein's open letter to Freud, which, strangely
enough, has never become widely known:
[7]
Dear Mr. Freud:
- The proposal of the League of Nations and its International
Institute of Intellectual Co-operation at Paris that I should
invite a person, to be chosen by myself, to a frank exchange
of views on any problem that I might select affords me a very
welcome opportunity of conferring with you upon a question which,
as things now are, seems the most insistent of all the problems
civilization has to face. This is the problem: Is there any
way of delivering mankind from the menace of war? It is common
knowledge that, with the advance of modern science, this issue
has come to mean a matter of life and death for Civilization
as we know it; nevertheless, for all the zeal displayed, every
attempt at its solution has ended in a lamentable breakdown.
[8]
- I believe, moreover, that those whose duty it is to tackle
the problem professionally and practically are growing only
too aware of their impotence to deal with it, and have now a
very lively desire to learn the views of men who, absorbed in
the pursuit of science, can see world problems in the perspective
distance lends. As for me, the normal objective of my thought
affords no insight into the dark places of human will and feeling.
Thus, in the inquiry now proposed, I can do little more than
to seek to clarify the question at issue and, clearing the ground
of the more obvious solutions, enable you to bring the light
of your far-reaching knowledge of man's instinctive life to
bear upon the problem. There are certain psychological obstacles
whose existence a layman in the mental sciences may dimly surmise,
but whose interrelations and vagaries he is incompetent to fathom;
you, I am convinced, will be able to suggest educative methods,
lying more or less outside the scope of politics, which will
eliminate these obstacles.
[9]
- As one immune from nationalist bias, I personally see a simple
way of dealing with the superficial (i.e., administrative) aspect
of the problem: the setting up, by international consent, of
a legislative and judicial body to settle every conflict arising
between nations. Each nation would undertake to abide by the
orders issued by this legislative body, to invoke its decision
in every dispute, to accept its judgments unreservedly and to
carry out every measure the tribunal deems necessary for the
execution of its decrees. But here, at the outset, I come up
against a difficulty; a tribunal is a human institution which,
in proportion as the power at its disposal is inadequate to
enforce its verdicts, is all the more prone to suffer these
to be deflected by extrajudicial pressure. This is a fact with
which we have to reckon; law and might inevitably go hand in
hand, and juridical decisions approach more nearly the ideal
justice demanded by the community (in whose name and interests
these verdicts are pronounced) insofar as the community has
effective power to compel respect of its juridical ideal. But
at present we are far from possessing any supranational organization
competent to render verdicts of incontestable authority and
enforce absolute submission to the execution of its verdicts.
Thus I am led to my first axiom: The quest of international
security involves the unconditional surrender by every nation,
in a certain measure, of its liberty of action--its sovereignty
that is to say--and it is clear beyond all doubt that no other
road can lead to such security.
[10]
- The ill success, despite their obvious sincerity, of all the
efforts made during the last decade to reach this goal leaves
us no room to doubt that strong psychological factors are at
work which paralyze these efforts. Some of these factors are
not far to seek. The craving for power which characterizes the
governing class in every nation is hostile to any limitation
of the national sovereignty. This political power hunger is
often supported by the activities of another group, whose aspirations
are on purely mercenary, economic lines. I have especially in
mind that small but determined group, active in every nation,
composed of individuals who, indifferent to social considerations
and restraints, regard warfare, the manufacture and sale of
arms, simply as an occasion to advance their personal interests
and enlarge their personal authority.
[11]
- But recognition of this obvious fact is merely the first step
toward an appreciation of the actual state of affairs. Another
question follows hard upon it: How is it possible for this small
clique to bend the will of the majority, who stand to lose and
suffer by a state of war, to the service of their ambitions.
(*) An obvious answer to this
question would seem to be that the minority, the ruling class
at present, has the schools and press, usually the Church as
well, under its thumb. This enables it to organize and sway
the emotions of the masses, and makes its tool of them.
[12]
- Yet even this answer does not provide a complete solution.
Another question arises from it: How is it that these devices
succeed so well in rousing men to such wild enthusiasm, even
to sacrifice their lives? Only one answer is possible. Because
man has within him a lust for hatred and destruction. In normal
times this passion exists in a latent state, it emerges only
in unusual circumstances; but it is a comparatively easy task
to call it into play and raise it to the power of a collective
psychosis. Here lies, perhaps, the crux of all the complex factors
we are considering, an enigma that only the expert in the lore
of human instincts can resolve.
[13]
- And so we come to our last question. Is it possible to control
man's mental evolution so as to make him proof against the psychosis
of hate and destructiveness? Here I am thinking by no means
only of the so-called uncultured masses. Experience proves that
it is rather the so-called "intelligentsia" that is
most apt to yield to these disastrous collective suggestions,
since the intellectual has no direct contact with life in the
raw but encounters it in its easiest, synthetic form--upon the
printed page.
[14]
- To conclude: I have so far been speaking only of wars between
nations; what are known as international conflicts. But I am
well aware that the aggressive instinct operates under other
forms and in other circumstances. (I am thinking of civil wars,
for instance, due in earlier days to religious zeal, but nowadays
to social factors; or, again, the persecution of racial minorities.)
But my insistence on what is the most typical, most cruel and
extravagant form of conflict between man and man was deliberate,
for here we have the best occasion of discovering ways and means
to render all armed conflicts impossible.
[15]
- I know that in your writings we may find answers, explicit
or implied, to all the issues of this urgent and absorbing problem.
But it would be of the greatest service to us all were you to
present the problem of world peace in the light of your most
recent discoveries, for such a presentation well might blaze
the trail for new and fruitful modes of action.
Yours very sincerely,
A. Einstein
Leon Steinig, a League of Nations official who did
much to inspire this correspondence, wrote Einstein on September
12, 1932:
[16]
- . . . When I visited Professor Freud in Vienna, he asked me
to thank you for your kind words and to tell you that he would
do his best to explore the thorny problem of preventing war.
He will have his answer ready by early October and he rather
thinks that what he has to say will not be very encouraging.
"All my life I have had to tell people truths that were
difficult to swallow. Now that I am old, I certainly do not
want to fool them." He was even doubtful whether [Henri]
Bonnet [Director of the Institute of Intellectual Co-operation
in Paris] would want to publish his pessimistic reply. . . .
Einstein replied to Steinig four days later saying
that even if Freud's reply would be neither cheerful nor optimistic,
it would certainly be interesting and psychologically effective.
Freud's reply, dated Vienna, September 1932, has also never
been given the attention it deserved:
[17]
Dear Mr. Einstein:
- When I learned 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 today, 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) incompetence; for this
struck me as being a matter of practical politics, the statesman's
proper study. But then I realized that you did not raise the
question 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 succoring homeless and starving
victims of the World War. And, next, I reminded myself that
I was not being called on to formulate practical proposals but,
rather, to explain how this question of preventing wars strikes
a psychologist.
[18]
- 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 conclusions,
which, however, I propose to amplify to the best of my knowledge
or surmise.
[19]
- You begin with the relations between might and right, and
this is assuredly the proper starting point for our inquiry.
But, for the term might, I would substitute a tougher and more
telling word: violence. In right and violence we have today
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.
[20]
- 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 occasion,
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, group 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 implemented, then replaced, by the use of various
adjuncts; he proved the victor whose weapon was the better,
or handled the more skillfully. 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 definitely 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 following his example. Moreover,
the slaughter of a foe gratifies an instinctive craving--a point
to which we shall revert hereafter. However, another consideration
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 subjugation. 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.
[21]
- 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 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 whatever 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'etre 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 organized; it must enact rules to meet
the risk of possible revolts; must set up machinery insuring
that its rules--the laws--are observed and that such acts of
violence as the laws demand are duly carried out. This recognition
of a community of interests engenders among the members of the
group a sentiment of unity and fraternal solidarity which constitutes
its real strength.
[22]
- 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 glosses.
Now the position is simple enough so long as the community consists
of a number of equipollent 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 insure 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 outcome 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 rush in with the new developments,
the result being insurrections and civil wars, a period when
law is in abeyance and force once more the arbiter, followed
by a new regime 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 community; this factor,
however, is of a different order and an only be dealt with later.
[23]
- 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 favor 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 community
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
downfall of the loser. No single all-embracing judgment can
be passed on these wars of aggrandizement. 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 regime determined
all disputes. Thus the Roman conquest brought that boon, the
pax Romana, to the Mediterranean lands. The French kings'
lust for aggrandizement created a new France, flourishing in
peace and unity. Paradoxical as its sounds, we must admit that
warfare 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 warfare 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, moreover, such conquests have only led
to aggregations which, for all their magnitude, had limits,
and disputes 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.
[24]
- Regarding the world of today the same conclusion 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 unavailing.
Obviously the League of Nations, acting as a Supreme Court,
fulfills the first condition; it does not fulfill 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 be taking
a very shortsighted 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 in the possession 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 significant 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 neighbors, which found expression in the Amphictyonies,
the Oracles and Games, was strong enough to humanize the methods
of warfare 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 times, we look in vain for
some such unifying notion whose authority would be unquestioned.
It is all too clear that the nationalistic ideas, paramount
today 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 today
needs violence to maintain it.
[25]
- I now can comment on another of your statements. 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
destruction, 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
connection 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 and Hate, transformed
into theoretical entities; they are, perhaps, another aspect
of those eternal polarities, attraction and repulsion, which
fall within your province. But we must be chary of passing overhastily
to the notions of good and evil. Each of these instincts is
every whit as indispensable 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 isolation; 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 end this very
instinct necessitates aggressive action. In the same way the
love instinct, when directed to a specific object, calls for
an admixture 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 recognizing them.
[26]
- If you will travel with me a little further on this road,
you will find that human affairs are complicated 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 destructiveness. As a rule several motives of similar composition
concur to bring about the act. This fact was duly noted by a
colleague of yours, Professor G. C. Lichtenberg, sometime Professor
of Physics at Gottingen; he was perhaps even more eminent as
a psychologist than as a physical scientist. He evolved the
notion of a "Compass-card of Motives" and wrote: "The
efficient motives impelling man to act can be classified like
the thirty-two 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 aggression
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 facilitate 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 dust 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 instincts submerged in the unconscious. Both
interpretationsare feasible.
[26]
- 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 longeron 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 the "death instinct";
whereas the erotic instincts vouch for the struggle to live
on. The death instinct becomes an impulse to destruction when,
with the aid of certain organs, it directs its action outward,
against external objects. The living being, that is to say,
defends its own existence by destroying 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 introversion 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 impulse toward the external world must have
beneficial effects. Here is then the biological justification
for all those vile, pernicious propensities which we are nowcombating.
We can but own that they are really more akin to nature than
this ourstand against them, which, in fact, remains to be accounted
for.
[27]
- All this may give you the impression that our theories amount
to species of mythology and a gloomy one at that! But does not
every natural science lead ultimately to this--a sort of mythology?
Is it otherwise today with your physicalsciences?
[28]
- 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 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 insuring the satisfaction of material needs and enforcing
equality between man and man. To me this hope seems vain. Meanwhile
they busily perfect their armaments, and their hatred of outsiders
is not the least of the factors of cohesion among 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.
[29]
- 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 toward a beloved object, void though they
be of sexual intent. The psychoanalyst need feel no compunction
in mentioning "love" in this connection; religion
uses the same language: Love thy neighbor 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 feeling of community, identification, whereon is founded,
in large measure, the whole edifice of human society.
[30]
- 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 the 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.
[31]
- As you see, little good comes of consulting a theoretician,
aloof from worldly contact, on 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 another, 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 today would
mean the sheer extermination 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 consent. 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 condemned; so long as there
are nations and empires, each prepared callously to exterminate
its rival, all 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.
[32]
- This point, however, calls for elucidation. Here is the way
in which Isee it. The cultural development of mankind (some,
I know, prefer to call itcivilization) 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 obscure, its
issue is uncertain, but some of its characteristics 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 today the uncivilized 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 become 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 instinctive reactions. Sensations which delighted our
forefathers have become neutral or unbearable to us; and, if
our ethical and aesthetic ideals have undergone a change, the
causes of this are ultimately organic. On the psychological
side two of the most important phenomena of culture are, firstly,
a strengthening of the intellect, which tends to master our
instinctive life, and, secondly, an introversion of the aggressive
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 resent
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 aesthetic ignominies of warfare
play almost as large a part in this repugnance as war's atrocities.
[33]
- 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 byways this
will come about, we cannot guess. Meanwhile we may rest on the
assurance that whatever makes for cultural development is working
also against war.
[34]
- With kindest regards and, should this expose prove a disappointment
to you, my sincere regrets,
Yours,
SIGMUND FREUD
Einstein was apparently not disappointed when Freud's
reply was received.He addressed the following letter to Freud
on December 3, 1932:
[35]
- You have made a most gratifying gift to the League of Nations
and myself with your truly classic reply. When I wrote you I
was thoroughly convinced of the insignificance of my role, which
was only meant to document my good will, with me as the bait
on the hoof; to tempt the marvelous fish into nibbling. You
have given in return something altogether magnificent. We cannot
know what may grow from such seed, as the effect upon man of
any action or event is always incalculable. This is not within
our power and we do not need to worry aboutit.
[36]
- You have earned my gratitude and the gratitude of all men
for havingdevoted all your strength to the search for truth
and for having shown the rarestcourage in professing your convictions
all your life. . . . By the time the exchange between
Einstein and Freud was published in 1933, under the title Why
War?, Hitler, who was to drive both men into exile, was
already in power, and the letters never achieved the wide circulation
intended for them. Indeed, the first German edition of the pamphlet
is reported to have been limited to only 2,000 copies, as was
also the original English edition.
Besides the four major projects in 1932 that were just recorded,
some of the messages, replies to inquiries, and similar statements
which Einstein prepared during that same period give evidence
of the increasing political tensions of those days. On April
20, 1932, he submitted to the Russian-language journal Nord-Ost,
published in Riga, Latvia (then still an independentcountry),
a contribution to a symposium on "Europe and the Coming
War":
[37]
- As long as all international conflicts are not subject to
arbitration and the enforcement of decisions arrived at by arbitration
is not guaranteed, and as long as war production is not prohibited
we may be sure that war will follow upon war. Unless our civilization
achieves the moral strength to overcome this evil, it is bound
to share the fate of former civilizations: decline and decay.
To Arnold Kalisch, editor of the magazine Die Friedensfront,
who asked him to sponsor a book against war by a Czechoslovakian
physician, Einstein wrote on April 26, 1932:
[38]
- No doubt you know how anxious I am to support anything that
could effectively help combat the militaristic orientation of
the public. But I have reservations . . . about this book. If
war psychosis could be regarded as anillness like, say, paranoia,
then any panic in a meeting would likewise have tobe considered
a sickness. It appears to be quite normal for people to raiselittle
resistance to the emotional attitude of their fellow human beings.
. . . In the case of war, to describe the psychosis that may
then exist as an illness does not bring us one single step closer
to solving the problem of wars. . . .
* (In speaking of the majority I do not
exclude soldiers of every rank who have chosen war as their
profession, in the belief that they are serving to defend
thehighest interests of their race, and that attack is often
the best method of defense.) back to text
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