WAR
and intoxicants, with soldiering or the slaughter of animals.
Alone of all the great world religions, Buddhism made its
way without persecution, censorship or inquisition. In all
these respects its record is enormously superior to that of
Christianity, which made its way among people wedded to
militarism and which was able to justify the bloodthirsty
tendencies of its adherents by an appeal to the savage
Bronze-Age literature of the Old Testament. For Bud-
dhists, anger is always and unconditionally disgraceful. For
Christians, brought up to identify Jehovah with God, there
is such a thing as * righteous indignation.5 Thanks to this
possibility of indignation being righteous, Christians have
always felt themselves justified in making war and commit-
ting the most hideous atrocities.
The fact that it should have been possible for the three
principal civilizations of the world to adopt three distinct
philosophic attitudes towards war is encouraging; for it
proves that there is nothing * natural* about our present
situation in relation to war. The existence of war and of
our political and theological justifications of war is no
more * natural' than were the sanguinary manifestations of
sexual jealousy, so common in Europe up to the beginning
of last century and now of such rare occurrence. To
murder one's unfaithful wife, or the lover of one's sister
or mother, was something that used to be *done/ Being
socially correct, it was regarded as inevitable, a manifestation
of unchanging * human nature/ Such murders are no longer
fashionable among the best people, therefore no longer seem
to us * natural/ The malleability of human nature is such
that there is no reason why, if we so desire and set to
work in the right way, we should not rid ourselves of war
as we have freed ourselves from the weary necessity of
committing a crime passiorwel every time a wife, mistress
or female relative gets herself seduced. War is not a law
of nature, nor even a law of human nature. * It exists
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