War appears as a breakdown of certain modes of volition. Certain types of conflict are abandoned, and aggressive activities become more simple and powerful, but war is no reversion to primitive instinct, or to any number of instincts. The resulting states of mind are too rational as means, and too exalted and ideal to be thus primitive. New content is introduced into social consciousness and new purposes come to light in these ecstasies, even though the consciously sought objectives may be archaic and conventional and the mental states traceable to more elementary states, and the conduct be similar in purpose and type to the simpler forms of conduct we find in the animal world What we are trying to impress here is the well known truth that the whole of a thing is not necessarily contained in its parts. It is the meaning of the war-mood as a whole, as a summation of many factors of the mental life, and as a direction of social consciousness as a whole that is its most important characteristic. CHAPTER IV AESTHETIC ELEMENTS IN THE MOODS AND IMPULSES OF WAR That experiences and motives which belong to the field of the aesthetic play an important part in war can hardly be doubted. The whole history of war shows this, and even in the beginning war seems to be an activity carried on in part for its own sake, and not entirely for its practical results, and thus has qualities which later are explicitly aesthetic. We cannot of course separate sharply the aesthetic motive from everything else in studying so highly complex an object as war, but that war does partake of the nature of what we call the _beautiful_, and that the craving for the beautiful is a factor in the causes of war seem to be certain. The relation of art to war is of course no new theme. War has often been praised because of its aesthetic nature, and its dramatic features. It is called a beautiful adventure. It is reproduced in pictorial art, represented in music, and thus glorified and adorned, showing at least that it can readily be made to appear beautiful if it does not in itself possess beauty. Those who think of war as related to play also connect it with art. Nicolai (79), who condemns war, says that it is when war as an instinctive action is no longer useful, but is performed for its own sake that it becomes beautiful.