Pg.118
"Man is not willingly a political animal. The human male associates with his fellows less by desire than by habit, imitation, and the compulsion of circumstance; he does not love society so much as he fears solitude. He combines with other men because isolation endangers him, and because there are many things that can be done better together than alone; in his heart he is a solitary individual, pitted heroically against the world. If the average man had had his way there would probably never have been any state. Even today he resents it, classes death with taxes, and yearns for that government which governs least. If he asks for many laws it is only because he is sure that his neighbor needs them; privately he is an unphilosophical anarchist, and thinks laws in his own case superfluous."
Will Durant, Story of Civilization, Vol.1: Our Oriental Heritage, Ch.3, Pt.I, 1935
"It is war that makes the chief, the king and the state, just as it is these that make war. [...] Societies are ruled by two powers: in peace by the word, in crises by the sword; force is used only when indoctrination fails.Law and myth have gone hand in hand throughout the centuries, cooperating or taking turns in the management of mankind; until our own day no state dared separate them, and perhaps tomorrow they will be united again.
How did war lead to the state? It is not that men were naturally inclined to war. Some lowly peoples are quite peaceful[. ...] Nevertheless, primitive life was incarnadined with intermittent war. Hunters fought for happy hunting grounds still rich in prey, herders fought for new pastures for their flocks, tillers fought for virgin soil; all of them, at times, fought to avenge a murder, or to harden and discipline their youth, or to interrupt the monotony of life, or for simple plunder and rape; very rarely for religion. There were institutions and customs for the limitations of slaughter, as among ourselves -- certain hours, days, weeks, or months during which no gentlemen savage would kill; certain functionaries who were inviolable, certain roads neutralized, certain markets and asylums set aside for peace; and the League of the Iroquois maintained the "Great Peace" for three hundred years. But for the most part war was the favorite instrument of natural selection among primitive nations and groups."
Will Durant, Story of Civilization, Vol.1: Our Oriental Heritage, Ch.3, Pt.I, 1935
"[War's] results were endless. It acted as a ruthless eliminator of weak peoples, and raised the level of the race in courage, violence, cruelty, intelligence and skill. It stimulated invention, made weapons that became useful tools, and arts of war that became arts of peace. [...] Above all, war dissolved primitive communism and anarchism, introduced organization and discipline, and led to the enslavement of prisoners, the subordination of classes, and the growth of government. Property was the mother, war was the father, of the state."
Will Durant, Story of Civilization, Vol.1: Our Oriental Heritage, Ch.3, Pt.I, 1935
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