Study of the _intoxication motive_ in the individual and as a social phenomenon shows that it is not an expression of the need of relaxation from strain, or a reversion, or something that occurs by a mere release of primitive instincts. It occurs in the great periods of history, and in the strong years of the life of the individual, rather than in times of weakness. It is always a spirit of the times rather than of some past reverted to. It may occur in times of disorder or of repression, but it is an experience in which energy and power are expressed. We see it most dominant when life is most abundant, when there is also a craving to make life more abundant still, when there is already power and more power is longed for. It is true, however, that two opposite conditions may produce the strongest manifestations of this intoxication motive. Something analogous to these conditions we see in the lives of individuals, in the phenomena of intemperance, which belong in general to the virile years. Social ecstasy is produced in times when there is already a free expression of energy, but also under conditions that cause pain, disorder and repression. Under the latter conditions we think of it not as desire for relief from strain but desire to be released from obstacles that impede the expression of the growth force. If all this be true, we see war in a somewhat different light from that in which it is ordinarily regarded. It is not, in its typical forms, a reversion to barbarism, and it is not a political mishap. It is rather a readjustment of tendencies or forces and an expression and product of the living and progressive forces of society--not necessarily a good or even a normal expression of them, but an awakening and a realization of such desires as are to-day at work in everything we do--forces which for the moment are raised to a white heat, so to speak, in which purposes are for the moment fused and it may be confused--but still an expression of what, for better or for worse we _are_, not of what in some remote past time we _were_. We cannot explain war or excuse ourselves for waging wars by saying that we lapse for a time into barbarism, but on the other hand the heroism we suddenly find in ourselves as nations or as individuals, is not so different from that of ordinary life as we may have supposed. We have perhaps no right to say that all war is thus to be characterized. War is a very complex and a widely variable phenomenon, but this is the explanation of that aspect of the motive of history which in general produces war. War may have its abnormalities, if we may speak of a worse in that which is already bad enough. War may satisfy the desperate mind; it may, on occasion, be a narcotic to cover up worse pain, or an evidence of decadence; or even be what those who think of it as a reversion believe. But all these aspects of war, if our view be sound, are the eccentricities rather than the essence of war.