(I have omitted his notes. The full text can be found at
The Sexual Cycle of Human Warfare by Norman Walter_text
PDF (ia902502.us.archive.org)
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Our contention is that since the cell or nucleus is the unit of the individual man, it is ipso facto a unit of any community of individual men: just as a city of brick-built houses is itself built of bricks. This fact is surely incontestable. It is equally logical to say that society is built of molecules or atoms. Our theory is unique only in that it strives to trace the causation of certain broad movements occurring at the level of the society of human individuals to mechanisms in the cells of which these individuals are indubitably composed. The emphasis in the last sentence is on the word broad. There is nothing to be said against this way of looking at things, except that our minds have not yet become adjusted to it. Consider the matter in this light: sexuality, first manifested in the behaviour of the unicells, is widespread in all the higher forms of life, including individual man himself.
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In cellular aggregates, whether vegetable or animal, we find complex structural adaptations, or behaviour, which we unhesitatingly associate with the sexual process. In man, it is beyond doubt that sexuality in its general sense profoundly affects the most intimate structure and behaviour of the individual. Now, since human society is simply an aggregate of sexual individuals, it is eminently reasonable to suppose that sexuality will not only affect the individual in society, but will also affect the structure and behaviour of society as a whole. For example, if society came to consist of sexless individuals who propagated entirely by vegetative fission, it cannot be denied that the structure and behaviour of the family group, and therefore of society as a whole, would undergo an almost unimaginable alteration. Therefore, the present structure and behaviour of society is determined, in part at least, by the existence of a sexual process in its constituent human individuals. But the sexual process, in a finer analysis, is a function of the cells or nuclei of which these human individuals are composed. Therefore, the structure and behaviour of society is in part determined by the existence of a sexual process in its constituent cells.
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We start, then, from the indisputable fact that our cells are units of society as a whole. As we gaze at the bewildering variety of forms assumed by animal life in the course of evolution, we note and isolate certain processes common to all. Sexuality is one such common process, and one to which we might almost give the central position in the mechanisms of life, so important is it. As Goldschmidt says: “ There is scarcely an example of which we can say with certainty that its only means of reproduction is asexual. Early or late there comes, for all animal organisms, a moment when a sexual act of some kind takes place.” Now, a community of animals is itself an organism, a body, however low its level of individuation. That is to say, such a statement does not in the least require us to postulate any marked degree of individuality for the community as a whole. A primitive algal coenobium, such as Pandorina, is legitimately regarded as an organic body, although it possesses only the rudiments of individuation. In the individual cells there is a definite rhythm of sexuality, which, for convenience, we regard as a rhythm of sexuality in the coenobium as a whole.
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Let us for the moment try to picture the human group as an organism, as a larger body. For the use that we shall make of this illustration, we need to postulate little, if any, individuality for the group. Next, let us abstract that quality of each human individual which consists in his or her being a multiplicity of cells or nuclei. Let us further clear our minds by excluding from the picture all human “outlines” and characteristics, and all the cultural and psychological aspects of society. We are not forgetting what we have excluded, or minimising its importance. We have only laid these things aside for the moment, and for a limited purpose. And so we have now before our eyes, not the human group as we commonly visualize it, but a vast aggregation of microscopic cells, being the cells into which the human members of the group have been dissolved. The question now arises: what is there in this larger body of cells as a whole that corresponds to a sexual process? These are animal cells; and the fact that a sexual process of some sort does invariably occur in all bodies of animal cells, gives us the right to expect such a process in that larger organism which is our own society. The human group lies upon one level of integration; beneath it, there are two other levels: the multicellular and the cellular itself. On both these lower levels, inside the human group, sexuality is plainly in evidence. This endorses our right to expect a sexual process on the uppermost level, that is, one pertaining to the group as a whole; for sexuality, to be a feature of the whole, must also be a feature of the part. In every animal organism in which a sexual process has been established, this process is found not as an insignificant phenomenon, but as one occupying a prominent position in the life-cycle, and modifying considerably the structure and behaviour of the organism as a whole. When searching for a sexual process in the larger body of our own society, therefore, we shall look first for some conspicuous phenomenon in the life of the group, for some movement, in other words, that is collective in relation to the human individual.
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Having posed the question: What is there in the larger organism of the human group that corresponds to a sexual process pertaining to the whole? we shall proceed to answer it with another question: If what we term “ warfare ” does not meet the requirements exactly of such a larger sexual process, then in what other collective movement of human individuals is such a process to be found? We have abstracted the human group as a multiplicity of cells; we have induced a sexual process into this larger organic body as a whole; and we have picked on war as the phenomenon most nearly corresponding to such a larger sexual process. Let us now see what evidence of correspondence we can adduce in support of this conclusion.
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1. Sexual processes tend to be periodic, and to alternate with vegetative states. A sexual process pertaining to the human group should therefore conform to this condition. Consider warfare: active hostilities, involving the outpouring of potent males, do, in fact, alternate with periods of warlike preparation. In many organisms on the metazoan level, the vegetative period is also a period of gametic replenishment; one gamogony is followed by sexual preparation for another. And after one human war, there follows a period of replenishment of living material for the next. As far as our normal rationalizations of war are concerned, there is no adequate reason why open hostilities, in a less exhausting form, should not be incessant. Nor, indeed, from the normal viewpoint, is there any reason why hostilities need come about at all. If we can live at peace at one moment, why not at the next? What happens in the inter-wars, to bring our wars about? The answer can only be: the accumulation of living material to be outpoured in war. And in fact, the alternation of war and peace is a universal characteristic of the life of groups. As to an inherent periodicity in human warfare, that is, a periodicity linked up with sexual periodicities on the lower levels of integration inside the human group, we cannot speak with absolute certitude until we have unravelled the mechanism fully. It is almost certain, however, that such an inherent periodicity exists, and we have made a first rough attempt to establish it in a previous chapter of this work under the head of “ Political Deductions”. The reader is referred back to that chapter. While we are on this point, it is interesting to note that Ernest Jones, the Psycho-Analytic writer, believes that wars are bound to occur periodically as the result of accumulated tensions, in this case psychological tensions. It is, of course, a fact that psychological states run parallel in many cases to biological transactions, the former being epiphenomenal to the latter. This is particularly true in the case of sexual mechanisms. It is most significant that Ernest Jones, approaching our subject from quite a different direction, should verge so closely on our own position, even to the extent of employing terms that are applicable to sexual movements. He writes (the italics are our own):
“ The question arises whether there is not in the human mind some… set of recurrently acting agents which tends to… find or create pretexts for wars whatever the external situation may be [and] that man cannot live for more than a certain period without indulging his warlike impulses . . . Another possibility . . . is that man tends to prefer the solution of various socio-political problems by means of war to their solution in any other way . It might be very plausibly argued that what happens historically is a periodic outburst of warlike impulses followed by a revulsion against war .. . which is again succeeded by a forgetting of the horrors involved and a gradually accumulating tension that once again leads to an explosion.”
It should be quite clear that the viewpoint expressed in the above quotation is in no way repugnant to our own. On the contrary, we have here a remarkable convergence of the bio-logical and psychological angles of approach to reach the same truth by widely different paths. Ernest Jones is dealing with the psychological aspects of a periodicity which we believe is also, on a more fundamental plane, biological. And the use of such expressions as “ revulsion”, which is followed by a “gradually accumulating tension”, that once again leads to an “explosion ”, is most significant when related to our own hypothesis. It will already have struck the reader that these expressions could be applied exactly to states of sexuality in the individual body. It surely needs no great stretch of the imagination to see in the revulsion which follows an over-costly war an enormous counterpart of the revulsion which follows excessive sexual activity in the individual. In the pacifist wave, in the mood of “Never again!” we can only too readily draw the parallel. We note that after the second world war, which was far less costly than the first, there has been no pacifist wave such as we witnessed in the ’30’s. Pacifism is at a discount. “Realism” and “ scepticism” are the fashionable moods of the hour. All the talk is eagerly for the third world war into which we are now rapidly drifting. Here again we can draw the parallel with individual sexuality. The whole trouble with this theory, which will most hinder its acceptance, is that it fits the facts too closely, corresponds too perfectly with experience. It is too sound and sensible. Men have a decided preference for unreal and fantastic modes of thought; they love excessive and artificial complications, and hate the sweeping simplicity of truth. That, however, is beside the point. We have included this quotation from Ernest Jones to anticipate the objection that the sexual theory of war excludes psychological considerations. War is obviously a psycho-biological phenomenon, and this theory opens up a fresh and fertile field for the psychologist.
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2. A second normal feature of the sexual process is the extrusion from the organism of specialized sexual cells, or gametes. How far does war conform to this condition? It is clear that the bulk of the combatants extruded from the nation in its cyclic wars are males in whom the production of sexual cells, or microgametes, is at its height. War makes comparatively little combatant use of males before their production of gametes has begun, or when their sexuality is on the wane. War can thus legitimately be regarded as an extrusion from the group of active gametes, carried within the active somata of the combatants. This, in any case, is what we should expect to find in a sexual process on the social level of integration. We have the same thing in the case of the social insects, where the drone, himself a larger “gamete”, is a winged vehicle for disseminating the microscopic gametes of the hive. In our own case, we can gain a vivid insight into the warlike situation if we exclude from the picture everything but the gametes which lie hidden in the bodies of human individuals. If we note the categories of these gametes, and which categories move across the map in war, and how they unite with other gametes at a distance from their point of origin, we see that on this level of integration, war is unmistakably a sexual process. Once we have obtained that glimpse into reality, the explanations of war which we hear on the upper levels of integration become so much somnambulistic chatter. Of course, the fact that the sexually potent males are physically the most able to endure the rigours of war provides the normal explanation of their combatant employment. This explanation need not deter us here. The fact remains that war is accompanied by the extrusion from the social organism of active sexual cells. Thus it conforms to the second condition of a sexual process.
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3. A third normal feature of the sexual process is genetical recombination. How far does war conform to this condition? There is a well-known tendency for living organisms, when isolated, to develop divergent variations. The fact that mankind is an interbreeding whole is due in part to our incessant migrations since palaeolithic times. But it is also attributable to the fact that human communities, latterly much expanded and pressed together, have waged war upon and interbred with one another. We need only ask the reader what part was played by war in producing genetical recombination in the British Islands, for example, or in the plains of northern India. Man’s transition from a scarce migrating species to his numerous and localized condition of today is clearly reflected in his collective sexual movements. His migrant interbreeding in palaeolithic times was analogous to the chance encounters of small, drifting, unstable coenobia on a lower level of integration. His warlike interbreeding of today is comparable to the concerted and co-ordinated sexual commerce of larger rooted organisms.
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In so far as one can read utility into living mechanisms, one of the uses of war to our species is hybridization in its broadest sense. The popular belief that perpetual peace would lead to degeneration, finds some slight corroboration in the fact that sexuality, by throwing up useful variations, leads in a certain sense to the invigoration of the species. There can, of course, be no doubt that war leads, through collective sexual selection, to the dissemination of the war-like character, which is, by exceedingly unpleasant standards, more “vigorous” than the peaceful character. These facts do not rule out the possibility that recombination could be more accurately and economically achieved without recourse to war; but in the present biological condition of our race such a rational possibility is unhappily remote. The fact that war tends to lead to physical intercrossing may have some bearing on the superstition of racial superiority which appears in some form or other in every human group. Although the idea of a distinctive “racial” purity and excellence receives little scientific corroboration, the scientist would be ill-advised to ignore the attraction which this superstition possesses for vast masses of unthinking people. To put the matter metaphorically, but with perhaps a more literal truth than might at first sight appear, it is almost as though the national spermatozoa, speaking through the mouths of the ignorant masses and their witless leaders, were advertising their own excellence to the alien ova in which presently they intended to imbed their heads. It is remarkable how closely the Fascist leaders, in their hysterical pseudo-scientific outpourings, verged upon the sexual character of war. Perhaps that is why that sort of thing, in one form or another, is so immensely popular in every country. Because it forms a distorted reflection of the truth. But we digress. War, then, conforms to the third condition of a sexual process in that it very definitely results in genetical recombination.
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It may, of course, be objected that the actual amount of genetical recombination achieved by modern war and conquest is not commensurate with the size of the disturbance. The upheaval, that is to say, would seem to be too vast to be aimed, even unconsciously, at such a small result. Leaving aside the probability that there is more warlike interbreeding, even nowadays, than we are commonly aware of, we can deal with this objection by drawing the obvious parallel between war and other sexual mechanisms. Although every animal body and plant throws out an immense store of germ-cells, few of these may effect a conjugation, and sometimes none at all. Here, it could equally well be argued that scale of the sexual disturbance in the plant or animal is too great to be commensurate with the small amount of recombination achieved. But Nature is always wasteful in her sexual mechanisms. She is quite prepared to provoke a prodigious convulsion in her sexual organisms on the chance of a few gametes winning through. And so it is with war: Nature hopefully explodes the human group; fate or hazard decides the recombinative result.
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I am reminded of the traditional rule of inheritance in the Middle Ages. The eldest son would inherit the estate, the second son would join the priesthood (intended to be celibate – a human ‘drone’) while the youngest son was sent off to the Crusades. (My own note – A.H.)
For more links click The Sexual Cycle of Human Warfare
This last link takes one to various posts concerned with the intercourse of Ares with Aphrodite – which initially inspired many of my eyes-shut drawings.
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