JAMES BOSWELL

On War
Born on October 18, 1740, in Edinburgh, Scotland, James Boswell was a
biographer and diarist, a lawyer and a lord. He preferred the urban lifestyle
and studied law at the University of Edinburgh and the University of
Glasgow before going on to practice in Edinburgh for seventeen years.
Among his literary achievements are The Life of Samuel Johnson, published
in 1791, and his more than seventy essays in the London Magazine.
In “On War,” which he composed in 1777 after viewing the Arsenal in
Venice, Boswell reflects on the “irrationality of war” and how, despite that
lack of reason, humanity continues to “prepare instruments for the
destruction of our species at large.” As you read “On War,” consider the
relevance of this reading today, and what it has to say about the wars we
continue to fight.

While viewing, as travelers usually do, the remarkable objects of curiosity at

Venice, I was conducted through the different departments of the Arsenal;
and as I contemplated the great storehouse of mortal engines, in which there
is not only a large deposit of arms, but men are continually employed in
making more, my thoughts rebounded, if I may use the expression, from
what I beheld; and the effect was, that I was first as it were stunned into a
state of amazement, and when I recovered from that, my mind expanded
itself in reflections upon the horrid irrationality of war.
What those reflections were I do not precisely recollect. But the general
impression dwells upon my memory; and however strange it may seem, my
opinion of the irrationality of war is still associated with the Arsenal of
Venice.
One particular however I well remember. When I saw workingmen
engaged with grave assiduity in fashioning weapons of death, I was struck
with wonder at the shortsightedness, the caecae mentes1 of human beings,
who were thus soberly preparing the instruments of destruction of their own
species. I have since found upon a closer study of man, that my wonder
might have been spared; because there are very few men whose minds are
sufficiently enlarged to comprehend universal or even extensive good. The
views of most individuals are limited to their own happiness; and the
workmen whom I beheld so busy in the Arsenal of Venice saw nothing but
what was good in the labour for which they received such wages as
procured them the comforts of life. That their immediate satisfaction was
not hindered by a view of the remote consequential and contingent evils for
which alone their labours could be at all useful, would not surprise one who
has had a tolerable share of experience in life. We must have the telescope
of philosophy to make us perceive distant ills; nay, we know that there are
individuals of our species to whom the immediate misery of others is
nothing in comparison with their own advantage — for we know that in
every age there have been found men very willing to perform the office of
executioner even for a moderate hire.
To prepare instruments for the destruction of our species at large, is what
I now see may very well be done by ordinary men, without starting, when
they themselves are to run no risk. But I shall never forget, nor cease to
wonder at a most extraordinary instance of thoughtless intrepidity which I
had related to me by a cousin of mine, now a lieutenant-colonel in the
British army, who was upon guard when it happened. A soldier of one of the
regiments in garrison at Minorca, having been found guilty of a capital
crime, was brought out to be hanged. They had neglected to have a rope in
readiness, and the shocking business was at a stand. The fellow, with a spirit
and alertness which in general would, upon a difficult and trying emergency,
have been very great presence of mind and conduct, stript the lace off his
hat, said this will do, and actually made it serve as the fatal chord.
The irrationality of war is, I suppose, admitted by almost all men: I 5
almost say all; because I have met myself with men who attempted seriously
to maintain that it is an agreeable occupation and one of the chief means of
human happiness. I must own that although I use the plural number here, I
should have used the dual, had I been writing in Greek; for I never met with
but two men who supported such a paradox; and one of them was a tragick
poet, and one a Scotch Highlander. The first had his imagination so in a
blaze with heroic sentiments, with the “pride, pomp, and circumstance of
glorious war,” that he did not avert to its miseries, as one dazzled with the
pageantry of a magnificent funeral thinks not of the pangs of dissolution and
the dismal corpse. The second had his attention so eagerly fixed on the
advantage which accrued to his clan from the “trade of war,” that he could
think of it only as a good.
We are told by some writers, who assume the character of philosophers,
that war is necessary to take off the superfluity of the human species, or at
least to rid the world of numbers of idle and profligate men who are a
burden upon every community, and would grow an insupportable burden,
were they to live as long as men do in the usual course of nature. But there
is unquestioningly no reason to fear a superfluity of mankind, when we
know that although perhaps the time “when every rood of land maintain’d
its man” is a poetical exaggeration, yet vigorous and well directed industry
can raise sustenance for such a proportion of people in a certain space of
territory, as is astonishing to us who are accustomed to see only moderate
effects of labour; and when we also know what immense regions of the
terrestrial globe in very good climates are uninhabited. In these there is
room for millions to enjoy existence. In cultivating these, the idle and
profligate, expelled from their original societies, might be employed and
gradually reformed, which would be better surely, than continuing the
practice of periodical destruction, which is also indiscriminate, and involves
the best equally with the worst of men.
I have often thought that if war should cease over all the face of the earth,
for a thousand years, its reality would not be believed at such a distance of
time, notwithstanding the faith of authentick records in every nation. Were
mankind totally free from every tincture of prejudice in favour of those
gallant exertions which could not exist were there not the evil of violence to
combat; had they never seen in their own days, or been told by father or
grandfathers, of battles, and were there no traces of the art of war, I have no
doubt that they would treat as fabulous or allegorical, the accounts in
history, of prodigious armies being formed, of men who engaged themselves
for an unlimited time, under the penalty of immediate death, to obey
implicitly the orders of commanders to whom they were not attached either
by affection or by interest; that these armies were sometimes led with
toilsome expedition over vast tracts of land, sometimes crouded into ships,
and obliged to endure tedious, unhealthy, and perilous voyages; and that the
purpose of all this toil and danger was not to obtain any comfort or pleasure,
but to be in a situation to encounter other armies; and that those opposite
multitudes the individuals of which had no cause to quarrel, no ill-will to
each other, continued for hours engaged with patient and obstinate
perseverance, while thousands were slain, and thousands crushed and
mangled by the diversity of wounds.
We who have from our earliest years had our minds filled with scenes of
war of which we have read in the books that we most revere and most
admire, who have remarked it in every revolving century, and in every
country that has been discovered by navigators, even in the gentle and
benign regions of the southern oceans; we who have seen all the
intelligence, power and ingenuity of our nation employed in war, who have
been accustomed to peruse Gazettes, and have had our friends and relations
killed or sent home to us wretchedly maimed; we cannot without a steady
effort of reflection be sensible of the improbability that rational creatures
should act so irrationally as to unite in deliberate plans, which must
certainly produce the direful effects which war is known to do. But I have
no doubt that if the project for a perpetual peace which the Abbé de St
Pierre sketched, and Rousseau improved, were to take place, the
incredibility of war would after the lapse of some ages be universal.
Were there any good produced by war which could in any degree
compensate its direful effects; were better men to spring up from the ruins
of those who fall in battle, as more beautiful material forms sometimes arise
from the ashes of others; or were those who escape from its destruction to
have an increase of happiness; in short, were there any great beneficial
effect to follow it, the notion of its irrationality would be only the notion of
narrow comprehension. But we find that war is followed by no general good
whatever. The power, the glory, or the wealth of a very few may be
enlarged. But the people in general, upon both sides, after all the sufferings
are passed, pursue their ordinary occupations, with no difference from their
former state. The evils therefore of war, upon a general view of humanity
are as the French say, à pure perte, a mere loss without any advantage,
unless indeed furnishing subjects for history, poetry, and painting. And
although it should be allowed that mankind have gained enjoyment in these
respects, I suppose it will not be seriously said, that the misery is
overbalanced. At any rate, there is already such a store of subjects, that an
addition to them would be dearly purchased by more wars.
 I am none of those who would set up their notions against the opinion 10
of the world; on the contrary, I have such a respect for that authority, as to
doubt of my own judgment when it opposes that of numbers probably as
wise as I am. But when I maintain the irrationality of war, I am not
contradicting the opinion, but the practice of the world. For, as I have
already observed, its irrationality is generally admitted. Horace calls
Hannibal, demens, a madman; and Pope gives the same appellation to
Alexander the Great and Charles XII:
From Macedonia’s madman to the Swede.

How long war will continue to be practised, we have no means of

conjecturing. Civilization, which it might have been expected would have
abolished it, has only refined its savage rudeness. The irrationality remains,
though we have learnt insanire certa ratione modoque, to have a method in
our madness.
That amiable religion which “proclaims peace on earth,” hath not as yet
made war to cease. The furious passions of men, modified as they are by
moral instruction, still operate with much force; and by a perpetual fallacy,
even the conscientious in each contending nation think they may join in war,
because they each believe they are repelling an aggressor. Were the mild and
humane doctrine of those Christians, who are called Quakers, which Mr
Jenyns has lately embellished with his elegant pen, to prevail, human
felicity would gain more than we can well conceive. But perhaps it is
necessary that mankind in this state of existence, the purpose of which is so
mysterious, should ever suffer the woes of war.
To relieve my readers from reflections which they may think too abstract,
I shall conclude this paper with a few observations upon actual war. In
ancient times when a battle was fought man to man, or as somebody has
very well expressed it, was a group of duels, there was an opportunity for
individuals to distinguish themselves by vigour and bravery. One who was a
“robustus acri militia, hardy from keen warfare,” could gratify his ambition
for fame, by the exercise of his own personal qualities. It was therefore
more reasonable then, for individuals to enlist, than it is in modern times;
for, a battle now is truly nothing else than a huge conflict of opposite
engines worked by men, who are themselves as machines directed by a few;
and the event is not so frequently decided by what is actually done, as by
accidents happening in the dreadful confusion. It is as if two towns in
opposite territories should be set on fire at the same time, and victory should
be declared to the inhabitants of that in which the flames were least
destructive. We hear much of the conduct of generals; and Addison himself
has represented the Duke of Marlborough directing an army in battle, as an
“angel riding in a whirlwind and directing the storm.” Nevertheless I much
doubt if upon many occasions the immediate schemes of a commander have
had certain effect; and I believe Sir Callaghan O’Bralachan in Mr Macklin’s
Love A la-mode gives a very just account of modern battle: “There is so
much doing every where that we cannot tell what is doing any where.”

For Discussion and Writing

1. Why does Boswell say that when he thinks of the irrationality of war (par. 2), he always thinks of
the Arsenal of Venice?
2. Reread “On War” and make a list of some of the metaphors Boswell uses. Pick three and explain
how they work — what is being compared to what, to what end (that is, what is Boswell trying to
explain), and to what effect. Why do you think he thought metaphor would be an effective figure
for this essay?
3. connections Boswell at one point imagines how war would look to people who have never seen it
or known anyone who had lived through it (par. 7). Compare the way this passage works to the
way Jonathan Swift makes his subject unfamiliar in “A Modest Proposal” (p. 353). What are
Boswell’s methods and his purpose? What are Swift’s methods and purpose?
4. Share your own thoughts on war. Be, as Boswell says of his own words, both abstract and
concrete in explaining your feelings about warfare. It’s okay if they are mixed — you should by
no means feel that you have to be wholly against it or wholly for it. The idea here is to reflect both
philosophically and personally on this important topic.
5. looking further Based on knowledge you already have and your own research into current events
and the state of the world, what do you imagine Boswell might think if he were able to travel
through time and see contemporary war? Might it further confirm his thoughts? Contradict them?
Add a new layer of complexity?