"Do you mean to say, then," said Leslie, "that because this instinct
is so strong therefore it is always good to follow it?"

"I should say so, generally speaking."

"How is it, then, that you consider it disgraceful that a man should
run away in battle?"

"Ah!" replied Parry, "that is a very interesting point! There you get
a superposition of the social upon the merely individual instinct."

"And how does that come about?"

"That may be a matter of some dispute; but it has been ingeniously
explained as follows. We start with the primary instinct of
self-preservation. This means, at first, that each individual strives
to preserve himself. But as time goes on individuals discover that
they can only preserve themselves by associating with others, and that
they must defend society if they want to defend themselves. They thus
form a habit of defending society; and this habit becomes in time a
second instinct, and an instinct so strong that it even overrides
the primary one from which it was derived; till at last you get
individuals sacrificing in defence of the community those very lives
which they originally entered the community to preserve."

"What a charming paradox!" cried Ellis. "And so it is really true that
every soldier who dies on the field of battle does so only by virtue
of a miscalculation? And if he could but pull himself up and remember
that, after all, the preservation of his life was the only motive that