1. Palpable ferocity of war
When I endeavour to divest myself of the influence of habit,
and to contemplate a battle with those emotions which it would excite in the mind of a being who had never before heard of human slaughter,
I find that I am impressed only with horror and astonishment – and perhaps, of the two emotions, astonishment is the greater.
That several thousand persons should meet together, and then deliberately begin to kill one another, appears to the understanding a proceeding so preposterous, so monstrous, that I think a being such as I have supposed would inevitably conclude that they were mad.
Nor, if it were attempted to explain to him some motives to such conduct, do I believe that he would be able to comprehend how any possible circumstances could make it reasonable.
The ferocity and prodigious folly of the act would out-balance the weight of every conceivable motive, and he would turn, unsatisfied, away…
“Astonished at the madness of mankind.”
There is an advantage in making suppositions such as these
because, when the mind has been familiarized to a practice however monstrous or inhuman, it loses some of its sagacity of moral perception – profligacy becomes honour and inhumanity becomes spirit.
But if the subject is by some circumstance presented to the mind unconnected with any of its previous associations, we see it with a new judgment and new feelings; and wonder, perhaps, that we have not felt so or thought so before.
And such occasions it is the part of a wise man to seek, since if they never happen to us, it will often be difficult for us accurately to estimate the qualities of human actions,
or to determine whether we approve them from a decision of our judgment, or whether we yield to them only the acquiescence of habit.
It is worthy at least of notice and remembrance that the only being in the creation of Providence which engages in the wholesale destruction of his own species is man;
that being who alone possesses reason to direct his conduct, who alone is required to love his fellows, and who alone hopes in futurity for repose and peace.
All this seems wonderful, and may reasonably humiliate us:
The powers that elevate us above the rest of the creation, we have employed in attaining to pre-eminence of outrage and malignity.