MR. RUSSELL AND THE RECONSTRUCTION OF SOCIETY 485
than for a nation in which all impulse is dead. Impulse is the expression of life and while it exists, there is hope of its turning towards life instead of towards death ; but lack of impulse is death, and out of death no new life will come.” [6] He further acknowledges that “a great many of the impulses which now lead nations to go to war are themselves essential to any vigorous or progressive life. Without imagination and love of adventure a society becomes stagnant and begins to decay. Conflict, provided it is not destructive and brutal, is necessary in order to stimulate men’s activities and to secure the victory of what is living over what is dead and merely traditional. The wish for the triumph of one’s cause, the sense of solidarity with large bodies of men, are not things which a wise man will wish to destroy. It is only the outcome in death and destruction and hatred that is evil. The problem is to keep these impulses without making war the outlet for them.” [7]
The gist of it all is that activity is the condition of growth. Mr. Russell, it must be emphasized, is against war but is not for quieticism ; for, according to him, activity leads to growth and quieticism is but another name for death. To express it in the language of Professor Dewey he is only against “force as violence” but is all for “force as energy.” It must be remembered by those who are opposed to force that without the use of it all ideals will remain empty just as without some ideal or purpose (conscious or otherwise) all activity will be no more than mere fruitless fooling. Ends and means (= force in operation) are therefore concomitants and the common adage that the end justifies the means contains a profound truth which is perverted simply because it is misunderstood. For if the end does not justify the means what else will? The difficulty is that we do not sufficiently control the operations of the means once employed for the achieving of some end. For a means when once employed liberates many ends—a fact scarcely recognised—and not the one only we wish it to produce. However, in our fanaticism for achievement we attach the article “the” to the end we cherish and pay no heed to the ends simultaneously liberated. Of course for the exigencies of an eminently practical life we must set an absolute value on some one end. But in doing this we must take precaution that the other ends involved are not sacrificed. Thus, the problem is that if we are to use force, as we must, to achieve something, we must see that while working for one end we do not destroy, in the process, other ends equally worthy of maintenance. Applying this to the present war, no justification. I think, is needed for the use of force. What needs to the justified is the destructive violence. The justification must satisfy the world that the ends given prominence to by one or other of
Principles of Social Reconstruction, p. 21.
Ibid., p. 93.