| CHAPTER I THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CASE FOR WAR |
| The non-economic motives of war—Moral and psychological—The importance of these pleas—English, German, and American exponents—The biological plea | 155–167 |
| CHAPTER II THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CASE FOR PEACE |
| The shifting ground of pro-war arguments—The narrowing gulf between the material and moral ideals—The non-rational causes of war—False biological analogies—The real law of man's struggles: struggle with Nature, not with other men—Outline sketch of man's advance and main operating factor therein—The progress towards elimination of physical force—Co-operation across frontiers and its psychological result—Impossible to fix limits of community—Such limits irresistibly expanding—Break-up of State homogeneity—State limits no longer coinciding with real conflicts between men | 168–197 |
| CHAPTER III UNCHANGING HUMAN NATURE |
| The progress from cannibalism to Herbert Spencer—The disappearance of religious oppression by Government—Disappearance of the duel—The Crusaders and the Holy Sepulchre—The wail of militarist writers at man's drift away from militancy | 198–221 |
| CHAPTER IV DO THE WARLIKE NATIONS INHERIT THE EARTH? |
| The confident dogmatism of militarist writers on this subject—The facts—The lessons of Spanish America—How conquest makes for the survival of the unfit—Spanish method and English method in the New World—The virtues of military training—The Dreyfus case—The threatened Germanization of England—"The war which made Germany great and Germans small" | 222–260 |
| CHAPTER V THE DIMINISHING FACTOR OF PHYSICAL FORCE: PSYCHOLOGICAL RESULTS |
| Diminishing factor of physical force—Though diminishing, physical force has always had an important rôle in human affairs—What is underlying principle, determining advantageous and disadvantageous use of physical force?—Force that aids co-operation in accord with law of man's advance: force that is exercised for parasitism in conflict with such law and disadvantageous for both parties—Historical process of the abandonment of physical force—The Khan and the London tradesman—Ancient Rome and modern Britain—The sentimental defence of war as the purifier of human life—The facts—The redirection of human pugnacity | 261–295 |
| CHAPTER VI THE STATE AS A PERSON: A FALSE ANALOGY AND ITS CONSEQUENCES |
| Why aggression upon a State does not correspond to aggression upon an individual—Our changing conception of collective responsibility—Psychological progress in this connection—Recent growth of factors breaking down the homogeneous personality of States | 296–325 |
