solves no problem and satisfies no desire without thinking of another — as though his very survival lay in this perpetual struggle between sufficiency and increase, contentment and greed. The kind of survival, and its manner, are thus essential to his survival.

And behold: a desire for mastery overwhelms his mind

and his conscience, carrying him out of a brotherhood imposed by natural reality and the common foe into schism and selfishness — into a struggle between man and his brother man for the mastery of the one over the other, after together they had mastered the animals and together subdued the mighty forces of nature.

When the desire for mastery, and for disposing of what belongs to others for his own benefit and not for theirs, had overwhelmed his mind and conscience, his concern turned to thinking of himself alone, and of the ways that would give him power over others and over their goods and lands. So the groups that at first had worked as one began to fight one another and to band together, some against others, in petty states and great ones.

It remains for us to consider here the causes of banding together and its results, and we may gather them under four heads:

1 – The natural factor. 2 – The historical factor. 3 – The social factor. 4 – The military factor.

The military factor. The deep sense of danger and fear, and the insistent desire for survival and mastery, are two primary factors which set the groups before an inescapable military truth, if they wished to remain alive and in some measure of freedom and safety. This drove them to per-petual vigilance and continuous labor to strengthen themselves — for defense against any sudden aggression from without, and for attack whenever they were forced to it or saw in it a necessity for their safety and their life. They were driven likewise to band together and to make alliances so as to complete their strength:

for in their banding is a fusing of forces that, taken singly and working each alone, are simple and limited compared with others, but great and mighty if gathered into a single crucible, becoming a match for any outside power which greed and the lust for mastery might drive to attack them for the sake of their goods.

But a union of this kind does not act by its mere banding — or at least does not last long — if there are no firm general bonds and common conditions to gather them all upon one plane. Naturally, banding together would not have been lasting and possible were it not for those bonds whose ties grew firm with the days in the souls of the groups, and which made their aims and interests common aims and interests, carrying them out of isolation and the philosophy of self-sufficiency. Indeed this military truth is itself only a result of these bonds, and endures only by them.

These bonds gather into three:

The geographic bond, or the geographic reality

which unites the groups spread through a homeland within clear natural borders at its edges — the sea, the mountain, the desert. The effect of these borders is double, embracing both the military and the moral sides of those groups, and distinguishing their conduct, customs, and morals from the nations across the borders. This geographic reality places them, militarily, in safety, since it gives them a natural line of defense and a barrier hard for enemies to cross — above all in the ear-liest ages, when man possessed no means of communication to overcome the breadth of the desert and its heat, the expanse of the sea and its unruliness, the mountains with their jungles, their beasts, and the ruggedness of their paths, or to go beyond his bodily powers and his primitive roads. A condition that makes them feel a mutual attraction among themselves for the ward-ing off of danger, and a need for unity of condition and of destiny.

The social and historical realities

And since these natural barriers were hard to cross, they made mixing between peoples impossi-ble, or at the least very difficult, and stamped the homeland within them with a particular climate and geographic situation, which issued in a particular character and a particular cast for certain groups inhabiting a certain home-land, differing from every other in geographic situation and in the effects of that situation upon man.

From this condition it followed that the groups within the one homeland and the one borders were compelled to band together, to cooperate, and to face events united, for their survival, their ease, and whatever was for their good. So over the passage of the generations they achieved a firm inner unity of morals, customs, methods, and interests, as the result of the one history, the one events, and the one borders.

But it was not long before man, by his mind and his patience, overcame these stubborn natural barriers with the machines he produced, which crossed sea and mountain and desert, so that mixing became possible and easy, and direct, constant contact across the borders a natural thing. Thus the borders vanished in practice; but those national and moral traces they had left in the peoples over the generations did not vanish with them. They remained a fixed natural mark of the different nations in the different homelands — ready for exchange and cooperation, yet fiercely jealous of that inherited national feeling.

Thus, in his historical evolution, man formed an idea that was, and remains, dominant to this very day — but on a wider scale, and in an atmosphere of wretched, stubborn attempts to reconcile the general good with this national heritage the generations have created, and to secure a lasting peace for all peoples, great and small, rich and poor.

The American University of Beirut — Wadih al-Ashqar