Bodily changes in pain, hunger, fear, and rage : $b an account of recent researches into the function of emotional excitementCannon, Walter B. (Walter Bradford)
Science
Bodily changes in pain, hunger, fear, and rage : $b an account of recent researches into the function of emotional excitement
Cannon, Walter B. (Walter Bradford)
Emotions; Mental health; Mind and body
“We must make new energies and hardihoods continue the manliness
to which the military mind so faithfully clings. Martial virtues
must be the enduring cement; intrepidity, contempt of softness,
surrender of private interest, obedience to command, must still
remain the rock upon which states are built.” Thus wrote William
James[227] in proposing a “moral equivalent for war.” This, he
suggested, should consist of such required service in the hard
and difficult occupations as would take the childishness and
superciliousness out of our youth and give them soberer ideas and
healthier sympathies with their fellow-men. He conceived that by
proper direction of its education a people should become as proud
of the attainment by the nation of superiority in any ideal respect
as it would be if the nation were victorious in war. “The martial
type of character,” he declared, “can be bred without war. Strenuous
honor and disinterestedness abound elsewhere. Priests and medical
men are in a fashion educated to it, and we should all feel some
degree of it imperative if we were conscious of our work as an
obligatory service to the state. We should be _owned_, as soldiers
are by the army, and our pride would rise accordingly. We could
be poor, then, without humiliation, as army officers now are. The
only thing needed henceforth is to inflame the civic temper as
past history has inflamed the military temper.”
Similar ideas have been expressed by others.[228] It has been pointed
out that the great war of mankind is that against pain, disease,
poverty and sin; that the real heroes are not those who squander
human strength and courage in fighting one another, but those who
fight for man against these his eternal foes. War of man against
man, in this view, becomes dissension in the ranks, permitting the
common enemies to strike their most telling blows.
These moral considerations, however, are apart from the main intent
of our discussion. Our earlier inquiry confirmed the belief that the
fighting emotions are firmly rooted in our natures, and showed that
these emotions are intimately associated with provisions for physical
exertion. It is particularly in this aspect of the discussion of
substitutes for war that these studies have significance.
Physical Substitutes for Warfare
The idealization of the state and the devotion of service to social
welfare, which have been suggested as moral substitutes for military
loyalty, leave unanswered the claims of the militarists that in
war and in preparations for war opportunities are offered which
are peculiarly favorable to the development of important physical
qualities--bodily vigor, sturdiness, and ability to withstand all
manner of hardships.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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