After all man is no longer an animal, and even the distance between man as a member of the present complex organized society and man as primitive or savage is considerable. The difference is not entirely in the associations themselves but in all that the associations have done, or that they represent, in modifying instincts, which no longer exist in their original form and distinctness. Man is a creature of feeling, but not of instinct we say, and this distinction is important in many ways. All analogies between animal and human life have an element of danger in them. To explain human conduct in terms of herd instincts--instincts of aggression and the like--is misleading, since the instincts that are assumed do not exist as such, and perhaps never did. The psychology of the crowd, and the psychology of war, cannot be contained in the psychology of the herd, however attractive the simplicity of these concepts may be. That primitive instincts may remain as remnants, that the crowd shows some of the characteristics of the herd and the pack cannot be denied, and that in the spirit of war these fragments and traits play a certain part may well be believed. But the synthetic and highly complex mood we call the war spirit, and the causes of war, however archaic some of their elements may be, are very different from any mere sum of instincts. There is no specific craving for combat that we can call a cause of war, or that, in our view, plays any considerable part in the causes of war--combat as apart from practical motives and the complex moods into which, in its modern form, it enters. Some writers appear to be deceived because they assume that war is itself primitive, and do not see that in spite of its conventions and its old forms, it is not far behind civilization, not because civilization has made no progress, or is so insecure, but because war, chaos though it be, in some respects contains all our modern feelings. Kerr says that war is due to a superfluity of animal force that must vent itself, but such explanations of war seem certainly to be very far from the truth. That theory is far from being adequate as an explanation of play. It is much less so as an explanation of war. The other theory of play that is most prevalent and which is offered as a theory of war--that play and war are reversions to primitive instincts, is also insufficient. War is neither an overflow of energy nor a reversion to primitive states. Rather it is caused by and involves all the present and active motives of man and all his essential human qualities. _Social Instincts_