Internal conflict

“ It is frequently observed, that the complete discharge of the obligations pressing upon us as moral agents is attended with conflict and difficulty. Frequently, therefore, we address ourselves to the discharge of these obligations with some measure of resistance, perhaps with obstinacy, and I may add, indeed, with unwillingness. ”

“ Throughout the history of civilisation, wherever we can trace the feelings and ideas which have prevailed on this matter and the resultant conduct, the problem has existed, often to produce discord, conflict, and misery. ”

“ Again, the tendency of the organic point of view is to minimize the significance of specific conflicts. Since the individual and the state or social institution are but two sides of the same reality, since they are already reconciled in principle and conception, the conflict in any particular case can be but apparent. ”

“ These things loom large in the beginning, but the incidents of the quarrels disappear when the decisions shine in their results, and the wisest course is to believe that every honest conflict of interests is inspired by generous emulation. ”

“ Professor Carver begins his analysis with a discussion of the conflict of human interests. Originally all conflicts were settled on the basis of might. But conflicts between persons who are beginning to think, sometimes lead one or each of the contending parties to a consideration of adjusting the conflict by other than physical strife. ”

“ In that terrible conflict they had learned the supreme and overwhelming importance of conduct, the necessity for those who would survive of fighting manfully for their lives and making a stand against the hostile powers around; the weakness and uselessness of solitary and selfish efforts, the necessity for a man who would be a man to lose his poor single personality in the being of a greater and nobler combatant—the nation. ”

“ But the conflict of patterns involved in institutions which are inharmonious with one another is already producing great changes. The significant point is not whether modifications shall continue to occur, but whether they shall be characterized chiefly by uneasiness, discontent and blind antagonistic struggles, or whether intelligent direction may modulate the harshness of conflict, and turn the elements of disintegration into a constructive synthesis. ”

“ What is wanted, in these various conflicts, is some principle, genuinely believed, which will have justice for its outcome. The tug of war of mutual self-assertion can only result in justice through an accidental equality of force. ”

“ Perhaps it is only those that are themselves engaged in the thick of the struggle and conflict that rightly can cheer on, or fitly can admonish, their fellows, or to any good purpose assume the high moral tone. ”

“ In this opuscule he points out that modern society is passing through a great crisis, due to the conflict of two opposing movements,—the first, a disorganising movement owing to the break-up of old institutions and beliefs ”

“ In these times of profound peace and unexampled prosperity, there is little danger in executing this duty, and little temptation to violate it; but human affairs change like the clouds of heaven; another year may find us, or may leave us, in all the perils and bitterness of internal dissension; and upon one of you may devolve the defence of some accused person, the object of men's hopes and fears, the single point on which the eyes of a whole people are bent. ”

“ The energies of the rarely wastes itself in disputes people, great as [43] the territory about domestic grievances. For all they inhabit, are rarely wasted in internal evils, how great soever, internal disputes. ”

“ Whether in the form of the adversarial structure of civil government, the advocacy principle informing most of civil law, a glorification of the struggle between classes and other social groups, or the competitive spirit dominating so much of modern life, conflict is accepted as the mainspring of human interaction. It represents yet another expression in social organization of the materialistic interpretation of life that has progressively consolidated itself over the past two centuries. ”

“ How long is chaos and confusion to reign amongst men? How long will discord agitate the face of society? The winds of despair are, alas, blowing from every direction, and the strife that divideth and afflicteth the human race is daily increasing. ”

“ We ask enemies to plead all they know against it. We challenge the whole world of ideas, and the great deep of human interests to come up upon anything that belongs, or is to belong, to public affairs. ”

“ All large societies that have had their day and have fallen from their zenith by internal dissolution or outward attack have been given their impulse to expansion by leadership and have depended on it for their moral power. ”

“ They feel themselves to a certain extent discharged from the necessity of recognising the tremendous conflict in the region of belief that goes on around them, just as if they were purely civil administrators, concerned only with the maintenance of the present order. ”

“ It was a battle of principles rather than of nations—the last great struggle between reason and force—the fight between the instinct of some men to rule other men and the contrary instinct, implanted more or less in all men, that they shall hold up their heads and rule themselves. ”

“ The parties of the old regime see the day of this inevitable conflict approaching, and strive to prepare for it by half-hearted plots and counterplots, jesuitical, monarchical and military, but without energy, without hope and without combination in which alone there is strength. ”

“ They can see intestine discords, our government disorganized, our wrongs aggravated, multiplied, and un-redressed, peace with dishonor, or war without justice, union, or resources, in 'the calm lights of mild philosophy.' ... ”

“ And to judge by any analogy which is known to us, it appears inevitable that when one moral organisation strips as it were to another moral organisation, that a fight, a victory and a defeat will be the result. ”

“ Why aggression upon a State does not correspond to aggression upon an individual—Our changing conception of collective responsibility—Psychological progress in this connection—Recent growth of factors breaking down the homogeneous personality of States. ”

“ There are ambitions, interests, customs, prejudices, conventionalities, and a thousand intangible forms of social force, that all react upon the individual man like so many conflicting winds and currents. ”

“ What question is there in human affairs so weak or so strong that it cannot be approached by argument and reason? This country will, in every emergency, appeal to its enlightened judgment and its spirit of union and harmony, and the appeal will not be unsuccessful. ”

“ Having thus considered every kind of civil society in itself, we shall compare them, so as to note their relations one with another; great and small, strong and weak, attacking one another, insulting one another, destroying one another; and in this perpetual action and reaction causing more misery and loss of life than if men had preserved their original freedom. ”

“ What we have consequently before us are definite ends individualized in living personalities and situations pregnant with conflict; we see these as they are asserted and maintained, as they work in co-operation or opposition—all in a momentary and kaleidoscopic interchange of expression—and along with this, too, the final result presupposed and issuing from the entirety of this interthreading and conflicting skein of human life, movement, and accomplishment, which has none the less to work out its tranquil resolution. ”

“ And, at the same time that, to carry on external aggression or resistance, the ruling power in each group sacrificed the personal claims of its members, the function of defending its members from one another was in but small degree discharged by it: they were left to defend themselves. ”

“ Every decision made, every conflict resolved, is a step in the further organization of the individual. It may be a step in a good direction, or in a bad direction, but it is a step in organizing the individual's reaction-tendencies into what we call his character--the more or less organized sum total of his native and acquired tendencies to reaction, with emphasis on those reactions that affect his life and social relations in a broad way. ”

“ And this chaos in the character and conduct of individuals has made a yet greater chaos in all the proceedings of society: and, in consequence, man is now opposing man, and nation opposing nation, all over the earth. ”

“ What the wealthy of every nation refuse to understand, or even to consider, is that material force engenders vanity, individualism, rivalry and envy. All manifestations of force contain an element of disintegration. ”

“ From the dawn of the age of polished stone to the achievement of the Peace of the World, man's dealings were chiefly with himself and his fellow man, trading, bargaining, law-making, propitiating, enslaving, conquering, exterminating, and every little increment in Power, he turned at once and always turns to the purposes of this confused elaborate struggle to socialise. ”

“ We have overworked the self-interest of the individual. The line of conflict between individual and social is a progressive one of the discovery of point after point in which the two are identical. Society thus passes from conflict to harmony, and on to another conflict. ”

“ The struggle, which, when some great principle of politics or morals is the subject of the strife, ennobles in our eyes the unflinching combatants, only degrades when the violence and the rancour result from the soreness of wounded vanity, or the malice of blighted anticipation. ”

“ We may choose whether or not we will act; but the consequences, and they may be most deadly,—the consequences of our action or our no-action we cannot escape. They may fall upon us with a crushing power at our very firesides, and ruin our private and domestic peace for ever. ”

“ While in this conflict grave and responsible leaders grow factious—while men of purpose forget their march onward in side-skirmishes—while reformers lose sight of the imperishable quality of{78} their cause, and talk of hopeless corruption and inevitable destruction—how do affairs appear to us, in virtue merely of our being out of the strife? ”

“ Will you be the thoughtless, patient, unresisting victims of two enraged parties, who while they are bent on the pursuit of their own desperate purposes, would sacrifice you in their deadly strife? Or will you interpose with that manly spirit which becomes you, and that weight which your situation gives you, to check them in their intemperate and blind career, and save yourselves, and save your country? ”

“ The insiders in a we-group are in a relation of peace, order, law, government, and industry, to each other. Their relation to all outsiders, or others-groups, is one of war and plunder, except so far as agreements have modified it. ”

“ To break away from your own set, from the comrades of your campaign, to upset their plans, and counsel those in power to a course diametrically opposed to theirs, is one of the most difficult of social duties. ”

“ The division of men into two castes, as well as the use of force in government and war, are opposed to every moral principle professed by our modern society. Yet the cultivated and advanced men of the day seem not to see it. ”

“ In human life some sort of a clash arises fairly often, as for instance between domestic duties and the call of the country or the cause, or between the claim of the country and the good of humanity or some larger religious or moral principle. ”

“ That discord breeds malignant, treacherous, and violent tempers to fill the magistracy. Are men, rendered miserable, by such evil moral qualities, the best agents for rendering a nation virtuous and happy? ”

“ Let us then accept political and all other distraction that chooses to come; because what is disorder and wrath and contention on the surface is sure to be the greatest peace at the centre, working its way thus to a surface that shall never be disorderly. ”

“ While none had the courage to go to an extreme either in aggression or in conciliation, there was a multitude of counsel vehemently wrangling over the wisdom of little concessions and little aggressions. ”

“ For that reason, we urge the publication of these truths, that the struggle may no longer be waged in ignorance and doubt and confusion.”
“Does ‘massed forces of destructive purpose’ imply some combination, or co-operation, or co-ordination, among disintegrating forces?” Mary K. was asked, at another time.
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“Yes, they combine every appealing force, as we do. One man may answer to doubt, fear, cupidity, and envy. Another to malice, doubt, and lust. Any forces that can reach him mass themselves in attack and call on their purposes in him to respond.” ”

“ Certain stages of this process will be in the nature of crisis according to the strength of the opposition encountered in the personal moral struggle, and in opposing social conditions. Nothing but calamity can forestall this progressive moral adjustment to the whole world. ”

“ The same disregard of consequences that hazarded all for all, in battle or for duty, broke through the barriers within which prudence, reputation, decency, or even weakness and cowardice, confine the actions of lesser men. ”

“ They are, or should be, subordinates; and though over a long period their insubordination may be a necessary condition of human progress, yet during all such time they are at war with each other and with the central Will; the man is torn and tormented, and is not happy. ”