This war, in
its final relations to human history, is an encounter between opposing
tendencies in man,--between the beast-of-prey that is in him and is
always seeking brute domination, on the one hand, and the rational and
moral elements of manhood, which ever urge toward the lawful supremacy,
on the other. This is a conflict as old as the world, and perhaps one
that, in some shape, will continue while the world lasts; and I have
tried in vain to think of a single recorded instance wherein the issue
was more simple, or the collision more direct, than in our own country
to-day.
That principle in nature which makes the tiger tiger passes obviously
into man in virtue of the fact that he is on one side, on the side of
body and temperament, cousin to the tiger, as comparative anatomy shows.
This presence in man of a tiger-principle does not occur by a mistake,
for it is an admirable fuel or fire, an admirable generator of force,
which the higher powers may first master and then use. But at first it
assumes place in man wholly untamed and seemingly tameless, indisposed
for aught but sovereignty. Of course, having place in man, it passes,
and in the same crude state, into society. And thus it happens, that,
when the unconquerable affinities of men bring them together, this
principle arises in its brutal might, and strives to make itself central
and supreme.
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