It is easy to see how war enters into this disunity. War strips off the later deposits of civilization and allows the primitive man in us to reappear. It forces us again to be heroes who cannot believe in their own death, it stamps all strangers as enemies whose death we ought to cause or wish; it counsels us to rise above the death of those whom we love. But war cannot be abolished; as long as the conditions of existence among races are so varied and the repulsions between them are so vehement, there will have to be wars. The question then arises whether we shall be the ones to yield and adapt ourselves to it. Shall we not admit that in our civilized attitude towards death we have again lived psychologically beyond our means? Shall we not turn around and avow the truth? Were it not better to give death the place to which it is entitled both in reality and in our thoughts and to reveal a little more of our unconscious attitude towards death which up to now we have so carefully suppressed? This may not appear a very high achievement and in some respects rather a step backwards, a kind of regression, but at least it has the advantage of taking the truth into account a little more and of making life more bearable again. To bear life remains, after all, the first duty of the living. The illusion becomes worthless if it disturbs us in this. We remember the old saying: _Si vis pacem, para bellum._ If you wish peace, prepare for war. The times call for a paraphrase: _Si vis vitam, para mortem._ If you wish life, prepare for death. FOOTNOTES: [1] Compare Heine's poem, "Der Asra," Louis Untermeyer's translation, p. 269, Henry Holt & Co., 1917. [2] Totem and Taboo, translated by Dr. A. A. Brill, Moffat, Yard & Co., 1918. [3] Totem and Taboo, Chapter IV. [4] Totem and Taboo, Chapter IV. [5] See Totem and Taboo, Chapter III. End of Project Gutenberg's Reflections on War and Death, by Sigmund Freud