War in Ancient India c4.s6.1

c4.s6.1

Wars are attributed to certain psychological causes. Students of psychology and especially social psychology know that society is regarded as a vast group mind and that an individual is a part thereof, drawing his thoughts and purposes from it and contributing new thoughts and new purposes to it. Society is generally studied from three points of view⁶: firstly, it is limited by eternal and physical forces, as is seen from the social groupings and activities of primitive peoples; secondly, society is bound down by the forces and laws of organic life, as is seen in the tendencies of ancient peoples, not quite primitive, to form larger groups instead of the unorganized and isolated family groups; and, thirdly, society is subject to the laws of the mind, a stage in which ‘the conditions of mind shall be the chief determinants of progress’. It is only with this last phase that we are concerned here. The compelling factors which guide and control the life and activity of society are instinct and habit. The characteristic of all instinct is feeling and we detect no thought-processes in it. But in habit we detect thought-processes. Both instinct and habit have their own value, not to speak of the dangers peculiar to each. With the broadening of the factor of intelligence, the value of instinct goes on diminishing and the value of habit goes on increasing. But it is to be observed that too much habit sometimes retards the