156. Four questions then arise: (1) With what right do the necessities of war override the individual's right of life? (2) In what relation do the rights of states to act for their own interest stand to that right of human society, as such, of which the existence is implied in the possession of right by the individual as a member of that society, irrespectively of the laws of particular states? (3) On what principle is it to be assumed that the individual by a certain conduct of his own forfeits the right of free life, so that the state (at any rate for a time) is entitled to subject him to force; to treat him as an animal or a thing? Is this forfeiture ever so absolute and final that the state is justified in taking away his life? (4) What is the nature and extent of the individual's claim to be enabled to realise that capacity for contributing to a social good, which is the foundation of his right to free life? K. _THE RIGHT OF THE STATE OVER THE INDIVIDUAL IN WAR._ 157. (1) It may be admitted that to describe war as 'multitudinous murder' is a figure of speech. The essence of murder does not lie in the fact that one man takes away the life of another, but that he does this to 'gain his private ends' and with 'malice' against the person killed. I am not here speaking of the legal definition of murder, but of murder as a term of moral reprobation, in which sense it must be used by those who speak of war as 'multitudinous murder.' They cannot mean murder in the legal sense, because in that sense only 'unlawful killing,' which killing in war is not, is murder. When I speak of 'malice,' therefore, I am not using 'malice' in the legal sense. In that sense 'malice' is understood to be the attribute of every 'wrongful act done intentionally without just or lawful excuse,' [1] and is ascribed to acts (such as killing an officer of justice, knowing him to be such, while resisting him in a riot) in which there is no ill-will of the kind which we suppose in murder, when we apply the term in its natural sense as one of moral disapprobation. Of murder in the moral sense the characteristics are those stated, and these are not present in the case of a soldier who kills one on the other side in battle. He has no ill-will to that particular person or to any particular person. He incurs an equal risk with the person whom he kills, and incurs that risk not for the sake of killing him. His object in undergoing it is not private to himself, but a service (or what he supposes to be a service) to his country, a good which is his own no doubt (that is implied in his desiring it), but which he presents to himself as common to him with others. Indeed, those who might speak of war as 'multitudinous murder' would not look upon the soldier as a murderer. If reminded that there cannot be a murder without a murderer, and pressed to say who, when a bloody battle takes place, the murderer or murderers are, they would probably point to the authors of the war. It may be