Waltz, Kenneth, N. (2001): Man, the State and War. A Theoretical Analysis. New York, Columbia University Press, s. 16 – 41. (26 s.)

CHAPTER II.: THE FIRST IMAGE 
International Conflict and
Human Behavior

There is deceit and cunning and from these wars arise.
Confucius

According to the first image of international relations, the locus of the important causes of war is found in the nature and behavior of man. Wars result from selfishness, from misdirected aggressive impulses, from stupidity. Other causes are secondary and have to be interpreted in the light of these factors. If these are the primary causes of war, then the elimination of war must come through uplifting and enlightening men or securing their psychic-social readjustment. This estimate of causes and cures has been dominant in the writings of many serious students of human affairs from Confucius to present-day pacifist. It is the leitmotif of many modern behavioral scientists as well.
Prescriptions associated with first-image analyses need not be identical in content, as a few examples will indicate. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, moved to poetic expression by a visit to the arsenal at Springfield, set, down the following thoughts: Were half the power that fills the world with terror, Were half the wealth bestowed on camps and courts, Given to redeem the human mind from error, There were no need of arsenals or forts.
Implicit in these lines is the idea that the People Insist that the right policies be adopted if only they what the right policies are. Their instincts are good, though their present gullibility may prompt them to follow false leaders. By attributing present difficulties to a defect in knowledge, education becomes the remedy for war. The idea is widespread. Beverly Nichols, a pacifist writing in the l930s, thought that if Norman Angell ''could be made educational dictator of the world, war would vanish like the morning mist, in a single generation.
    In 1920, a conference of Friends, unwilling to rely upon intellectual development alone, called upon the people of the world to replace self-seeking with the spirit of sacrifice, cooperation, and trust. Bertrand Russell, at about the same time and in much the same vein, saw a decline in the possessive instincts as a prerequisite to peace. By others, increasing the chances of peace has been said to require not so much a change in ''instincts'' as a channeling of energies that are presently expended in the destructive folly of war. If there were something that men would rather do than fight, they would cease to fight altogether. Aristophanes saw the point. If the women of Athens would deny themselves to husbands and lovers, their men would have to choose between the pleasures of the couch and the exhilarating experiences of the battle- field. Aristophanes thought he knew the men, and women, of Athens well enough to make the outcome a foregone conclusion. William James was in the same tradition. War, in his view, is rooted in man's bellicose nature, which is the product of centuries-old tradition.
His nature cannot be changed or his drives suppressed, but they can be diverted. As alternatives to military service, James suggests drafting the youth of the world to mine coal and man ships, to build skyscrapers and roads, to wash dishes and clothes. While his estimate of what diversions would be sufficient is at once less realistic and more seriously intended than that of Aristophanes, his remedy is clearly the same in type.
The prescriptions vary, but common to them all is the thought that in order to achieve a more peaceful world men must be changed, whether in their moral-intellectual outlook or in their psychic-social behavior. One may, however, agree with the first-image analysis of causes with- out admitting the possibility of practicable prescriptions for their removal. Among those who accept a first-image explanation of war there are both optimists and pessimists, those who think the possibilities of progress so great that wars will end before the next generation is dead and those who think that wars will continue to occur though by them we may all die. ''Optimist'' and '' pessimist'' are   tricky words, yet it is difficult to find better ones. If they are defined simply according to expectations, which accords with popular usage, it is difficult if not impossible to place a given person in one or the other category. There are degrees of optimism and pessimism, and the same person may be optimistic about some things, pessimistic about others. The philosophic meanings of the terms are clearer and more useful. Pessimism in philosophy is the belief that reality is flawed, a thought expressed by Milton and Malthus in the statements cited in the previous chapter. Momentarily, more or less adequate restraints upon the forces of evil may be contrived, but the expectation a generally and permanently good result is prevented by constant awareness of the vitiating ejects of an essential defect. The optimist, on the other hand, believes that reality is good, society basically harmonious. The difficulties   that have plagued man are superficial and momentary. The difficulties continue, for history is a succession   of moments; but the quality of history can be changed, and the most optimistic believe that this can be done once and for all and  rather easily. One comes back to expectations, but the expectations are rooted in different conceptions of the world.
          It needs to be pointed out that pessimism about the chances of ultimate success, in eliminating war for example, is not identical with a statement that nothing can be done about our present plight. The pessimist may be more hopeful than the optimist about postponing the war that threatens tomorrow; the optimist may believe that nothing is worth doing that falls short of applying the remedy that will supposedly bring final an   complete success. The pessimist deserves the epithet be- cause he believes final success impossible, but the epithet need not then be taken as one of opprobrium.         Within each image there are optimists and pessimists agreeing on definitions of causes and differing on what, if anything, can be done about them. Critical consideration of a given image may, moreover, be an insufficient basis for forming a general set of expectations, for the image itself may be faulty. This will become apparent as we seek to understand successive images. In the present chapter, we consider primarily those who assent to the proposition that to understand the recurrence of war one must look first to the nature and behavior of man doing so, find ineradicable defects by which the evils of the world, including war, can be explained. In the next chapter, we shall consider some of the many who, looking to the same causes, are confident that they can be manipulated or controlled in order to produce if not a final condition of peace at least a notable decrease in the incidence of war.
When Jonathan Dymond, an early nineteenth-century pacifist, wrote that ''whatever can be said in favour of a balance of power, can be said only because we are wicked" he penned a statement to which both optimists and pessimists subscribe. The optimists see a possibility of turning the wicked into the good and ending the wars that result from present balance-of-power politics. The pessimists, while accepting the derivation of the balance of power and war from human nature, see little if any possibility of man righting himself. Instead the balance of power is accorded an honorable position by them, for, to use Dymond's figure, it may truly prevent ''tigers'' from tearing each other apart. And if occasionally it does not, still faulty prophylaxis is better than none at all.
Optimists and pessimists agree in their analysis of cause but, differing on the possibility of altering that cause, be- come each other's bitterest critics. Reinhold Niebuhr, a theologian who in the last twenty-five years has written as many words of wisdom on problems of international politics as have any of the academic specialists in that subject, has criticized utopians, Liberal and Marxist alike, with frequency and telling effect. Political realism, he argues, is impossible without a true insight into man's nature. Everyone, of course, thinks his own theories realistic. The optimists do, and they too think that have based them on a correct view of man. Niebuhr's dissent is based on the thought that they have overlooked the potentiality of evil in all human arts. They have assumed that progress moves in a straight line, ever upward, whereas in fact each advance in knowledge, each innovation in technique, contains within itself the potentiality of evil as well as of good. Man widens his control over nature, but the very instruments that promise security from cold and hunger, a lessening of labor and an increase of leisure, enable some men to enslave or destroy others.
Man, a self-conscious being, senses his limits. They are inherent. Equally inherent is his desire to overcome them.
Man is a finite being with infinite aspirations, a pigmy who thinks himself a giant. Out of his self-interest, he develops economic and political theories and attempts to pass them off as universal systems; he is born and reared in insecurity and seeks to make himself absolutely secure; he is a man but thinks himself a god. The seat of evil is the self, and the quality of evil can be deifined in terms of pride.
  This view is, of course, much older than Niebuhr. Within the Christian tradition, it is stated in classic terms by St. Augustine. Outside that tradition, it is elaborated in the philosophy of Spinoza. In the political writing of the twentieth century, it is reflected most clearly and consistently in the works of Hans Morgenthau. These four writers, despite their numerous differences, unite in basing their political conclusions upon an assumed nature man. St. Augustine and Spinoza can be used to illustrate the process of reasoning by which this is done.
St. Augustine had observed the importance of self- preservation in the hierarchy of human motivations. When we see that even the most wretched ''fear to die, and will rather live in such misfortune than end it by death, is it not obvious enough,'' he asks, ''how nature shrinks from annihilation?''   The desire for self-preservation is, with Augustine, an observed fact. It is not a principle sufficient to explain the whole of man's behavior. For Spinoza, however, the end of every act is the self-preservation of the actor. The laws of nature are simply statements of what this single end requires; natural right, a statement of what it logically permits. The man who lives according to reason will demonstrate both courage and high-mindedness. That is, he will strive to preserve himself in accordance with the dictates of reason, and he will strive to aid other men and unite them to him in friendship. This is not a description of actual behavior; it is a description of behavior that is ideally rational. It is not because they are duties that the man who follows the dictates of reason be- haves with courage and high-mindedness. Instead these characteristics are the necessary result of following reason.
His endeavor to aid others is not unselfish behavior.
Exactly the opposite: regard for others and the desire to cooperate with them result from the realization that mutual assistance, the division of labor, is necessary to his own sustenance and preservation. Logically, as with first-image optimists, this leads to anarchism: ''that all should so in all points agree, that the minds and bodies of all should form, as it were, one single mind and one single body, and that all should, with one consent, as far as they are able, endeavour to preserve their being, and all with one consent seek what is useful to them al1.''   Reason accurately interpreting the true interest of each would lead all people to live harmoniously in society with no need for a political authority to control and direct them.
Rather than being the end of Spinoza's political thought, this is only its beginning. Each man does seek his own interest, but, unfortunately, not according to the dictates of reason. This St. Augustine had explained by original sin, the act that accounts for the fact that human reason and will are both defective. In Spinoza's philosophy this religious explanation becomes a proposition in logic and psychology. He constructs a model of rational behavior: Those act: are rational that lead spontaneously to harmony in cooperative endeavors to perpetuate life. This is not the condition in which we find the world. That men are defective then becomes an empirical datum requiring no explanation from outside; indeed there can be no explanation from outside, for God has become nature. Men are led not by the precepts of pure reason but by their passions. Men, led by passion, are drawn into conflict. Instead of being mutually helpful, they be- have in a manner that is mutually destructive. Each seeks to be just among men and takes more pride in the harm he has done others than in the good he has done himself.
Reason can moderate the passions, but this is so difficult that those who think that men ''can ever be induced to live according to the bare dictate of reason, must be dreaming of the poetic golden age, or of a stage-play.''   Spinoza's explanation of political and social ills is based on the conflict he detects between reason and passion. St. Augustine, Niebuhr, and Morgenthau reject the dualism explicit in Spinoza's thought: the whole man, his mind and his body, are, according to them, defective. Despite this difference, the substratum of agreement remains; for each of them deduces political ills from human defects. Niebuhr, for example, reject Marx's assertion that exploitation of man by man is caused by the division of society into classes, with the comment that both class divisions and exploitation result from a "tendency in the human heart.   And Morgenthau sees ''the ubiquity of evil in human action'' arising from man's ineradicable lust for power and transforming "churches into political organizations . . . revolutions into dictatorships . . . love for country into imperialism''   As the statement by Morg|nthau suggests, the explanation that suffices for domestic ills serves as well to explain frictions and wars among states. Augustine attributes to man's ''love of so many vain and hurtful things'' a long list of human tribulations, ranging from quarrels and robberies to murders and wars. Spinoza, though he pro- claims peace as the end of the state, finds that states are natural enemies and as such must constantly be on guard, one against the other: not because states are never honor- able and peaceful, but because they may at any moment become dishonorable and belligerent; not because cooperation is against their best interests, but because passion often obscures the true interests of states as of men.
And Niebuhr writes simply that war has its origin in ''dark, unconscious sources in the human psyché."   Further reflecting the resemblance between them, pessimists, like optimists, often appear to believe that war could be eliminated if only men could be changed. The thought is indirectly expressed by St. Augustine when out of his world-weary wisdom he writes: ''For though there have never been wanting . . . hostile nations beyond the empire, against whom wars have been and are waged, yet, supposing there were no such nations, the very extent of the empire itself has produced wars of a more obnoxious description"   The idea that political form is but a secondary causal factor is put more directly by Niebuhr.
''The ideal possibility of any historic community" he writes, "is a brotherly relation of life with life, individually within the community and collectively between it and others" But even the internal peace of a community is always partly coercive (and) the external peace between communities is marred by competitive strife.'' Internally an oligarchy is needed to overcome the perils of anarchy; externally power is required to ward of the foreign foe. Both necessities arise from sin and remain as necessities ''because men are not good enough to do what should be done for the commonwealth on a purely voluntary basis."   Where Spinoza juxtaposes reason and the human passions that becloud it, Niebuhr poses love against the sin that overwhelms it. Sin is cause, and love, if it could overcome sin, would be cure. ''Only a forgiving love, grounded in repentance, is adequate to heal the animosities between nations"  

CRITICAL EVALUATION
First-image pessimists accept the relevance of the optimists ideal while rejecting the possibility of achieving it.
Thus Spinoza contemplates the pleasures of the state of peaceful anarchy that would be possible were men truly rational, and Niebuhr accepts the Christian myth of the Garden of Eden or the Stoic myth of the Golden Age as portraying standards of action that remain at once an impossibility in history and a source of inspiration to mortal men. But what is the relevance of an impossible ideal? Clearly if men could agree upon their goals and were perfectly rational in seeking them, they would always figure out and follow the best practicable solution for any given problem. If they were truly loving, they would always be willing to "turn the other cheek'' but would in fact find no occasion for doing so. Neither of these conditional statements describes the actual behavior of men- they are neither perfectly rational nor truly loving, nor, the pessimist adds, will they ever become so. Thus Morgen- thau rejects the assumption of ''the essential goodness and infinite malleability of human nature" and explains political behavior by the sometimes merely blind, sometimes too cleverly egotistic behavior of men, a behavior that is the undeniable and inevitable product of a human nature that ''has not changed since the classical philosophies of China, India, and Greece endeavored to discover'' the laws of politics.
The attribution of political ills to a fixed nature of man, defined in terms of an inherent potentiality for evil as well as for good, is a theme that constantly recurs in the thought of Augustine, Spinoza, Niebuhr, and Morgenthau.
There is an important sense in which the attribution is justified. To say that man act: in ways contrary to his nature is prima facie absurd. The events of world history cannot be divorced from the men who made them. But the importance of human nature as a factor in causal analysis of social events is reduced by the fact that the same nature, however defined has to explain an infinite variety of social events. Anyone can ''prove'' that man is bad simply by pointing to evidence of his viciousness and stupidity. To relate unwanted events, such as crime and war, to this viciousness and stupidity is then a simple task.
Although this is insufficient to establish the validity of the first image, it is nevertheless difficult, if not impossible, to counter such a particular interpretation of an image by trying to check it against events. To try to do so is to bog down in a welter of facts and value judgments. Do such evidences of man's behavior as rapes, murders, and thefts prove that he is bad? What about the counterevidence provided by act of charity, love, and self-sacrifice? Is the amount of crime in a given society proof that the men in it are bad? Or is it amazing that under the circumstances there is not more crime? Maybe we have so little crime and so few wars because men, being good, adjust so amazingly well to circumstances that are inherently difficult! To say, then, that certain things happen because men are stupid or bad is a hypothesis that is accepted or rejected according to the mood of the writer. It is a statement that evidence cannot prove or disprove, for what we make of the evidence depends on the theory we hold. As Emile Durkheim has pointed out, ''the psychological factor is too general to predetermine the course of social phenomena. Since it does not call for one social form rather than another, it cannot explain any of theme".   To attempt to explain social forms on the basis of psychological data is to commit the error of psychologism: the analysis of individual behavior used uncritically to explain group phenomena. 
Without an understanding of man's nature, one is often told, there can be no theory of politics. Applying the dictum, Niebuhr writes that ''political strategies invariably involving ''the balancing of power with power are made necessary by ''the sinful character of man 28 Leaving aside the problem of whether or not one agrees with this statement, we may ask what difference agreement or disagreement would make. Human nature may in some sense have been the cause of war in 1914, but by the same token it was the cause of peace in 1910. In the intervening years many things changed, but human nature did not. Human nature is a cause then only in the sense that if men were somehow entirely different, they would not need political control at all. This calls to mind the runner who, when asked why he lost the race, replied: "I ran too |lowly.'' The answer, though correct, is not very helpful.
A more helpful answer may or may not be possible. One might ask the runner how he trained, what kind of shoes he wore, how well he slept the night before, and whether or not he paced himself properly. Answers to such questions, while not affecting the innate capabilities of the athlete, may provide clues to more impressive performances   in the future. It would be foolish to prescribe a regimen for the athlete without considering his physical characteristics, but dwelling obsessively upon the invariant factors that affect his performance may divert attention from the factors that can be manipulated. Similarly one may label human nature the basic or primary cause of war, but it is, according to those whom we here consider, a cause that human contrivance cannot affect.
Spinoza claimed to explain human behavior by refer- ence to psychological factors. But the search for causes is an attempt to account for differences. If men were always at war, or always at peace, the question of why there is war, or why there is peace, would never arise. What does account for the alternation of periods of war and peace? While human nature no doubt plays a role in bringing about war, it cannot by itself explain both war and peace, except by the simple statement that man's nature is such that sometimes he lights and sometimes he does not. And this statement leads inescapably to the attempt to explain why he fights sometimes and not others.
If human nature is the cause of war and if, as in the systems of the first-image pessimistic human nature is fixed then we can never hope for peace. If human nature is but one of the causes of war, then, even on the assumption that human nature is fixed, we can properly carry on a search for the conditions of peace.
How damaging are these criticisms to the systems erected by first-image pessimists? Very damaging indeed where the pessimists have in fact attempted to derive specific political conclusions directly from an assumed nature of man. This cannot be done, but with their method other and very important things can be. Where Durkheim points out that the psychological factor, since it does not call for specific social forms, cannot explain any of them, one can well imagine Augustine or Niebuhr replying that, on the contrary, the psychological factor explains all of them. ''Caesars and saints,'' Niebuhr has written, ''are made possible by the same structure of human character" Or again, ''Human nature is so complex that it justifies almost every assumption and prejudice with which either a scientific investigation or an ordinary human contact is initiated.''   This admits one part, while denying another part, of Durkheim's critical intention. Human nature may not explain why in one state man is enslaved and in another comparatively free, why in one year there is war, in another comparative peace. It can, however, explain the necessary imperfections of all social and political forms.
Thus Niebuhr admires Marx for exposing the contradicttions of bourgeois democracy and at the same time criticizes the Marxist illusion that a change in forms will give birth to an earthly utopia. And St. Augustine, far from implying that because wars occur within a world state, political organization is irrelevant, intends instead to convey the thought that though political solutions will be imperfect they are nevertheless necessary. The basic assumptions of Augustine and Niebuhr, Spinoza and Morgenthau, are useful in descrying the limits of possible political accomplishment.
  What is valid in Durkheim's criticism is, however, indicated by a set of tendencies displayed by the pessimists: on the one side, to develop a politics and economics with- out content; on the other, to introduce realms of causation that go beyond the psychology of man in order to get content. The first is illustrated by Niebuhr's criticism of Augustine. While Augustine argues that the consequences of original sin make government necessary, he fails to distinguish relative orders of merit among social and political institutions. His keen perception of the consequences of anarchy makes him willing to abide tyranny.
On this point, Niebuhr's criticism is forthright and convincing. Augustinians, he writes, ''saw the dangers of anarchy in the egotism of the citizens but failed to perceive the dangers of tyranny in the selfishness of the ruler.
Therefore they obscured the consequent necessity of placing checks upon the ruler's self-will.''   But Niebuhr himself sometimes betrays a similar habit. For example, his comments on freedom and control in economics and on the relation between economics and politics derive more from his theological position than from a close analysis of economic and political problems and forms. While his general comments are often sound, his specific statements are as often arbitrary-whether one agrees or disagrees, it is difficult to see the basis for them. Niebuhr's concentration on the finitude of man has led to some brilliant insights, as close and constant attention to a single factor often does, but it has also led to judgments that could as easily be reversed. And this could be done on the basis of a similar definition of human nature, quite in the way that Niebuhr disagrees politically with St. Augustine while accepting his view of man.
For understanding the significance of first-image analysis in international relations, the second tendency of the pessimists is more important. Though Spinoza thinks he has been able to explain political phenomena by reference to qualities inherent in man, he also clearly makes the point that under different conditions men behave differently.
When not united, men must constantly be on guard one against the other; when they live within a commonwealth they often enjoy at least a modicum of peace and security.
Without the restraints of government, Augustine points out, men would slaughter each other until man is extinct.
Orderly government may make all the difference between death and the possibility of living to an old age with relative safety and happiness. Augustine and Spinoza recognize the point implicitly, without making explicit admissions. Niebuhr and Morgenthau tackle more directly the problem of relating causes to each other.
Niebuhr explicitly distinguishes primary from secondary causes. ''All purely political or economic solutions of the problem of justice and peace deal with the specific and secondary causes of convict and injustice," he declares.
''A1l purely religious solutions deal with the ultimate and primary causes.'' Although proponents of one kind of  solution often exclude the other, both kinds are necessary.
  Niebuhr makes clear, for example in his criticism of Augustine, that a realistic understanding of Christian tenets requires that men concern themselves with degrees of merit in social and political institutions. None can be perfect, but the imperfections of democracy are infinitely preferable to the imperfections of totalitarianism. Perfect justice being impossible, men become concerned with weighing possible palliatives, with striving for those that promise a little more justice or freedom, security or welfare, and seeking to avoid those that may lead to a little less. For Niebuhr, the impossibility of earthly perfection does not justify the Augustinian unconcern, found in Luther, Hobbes, and Karl Barth, with the comparative qualities of alternate forms and policies.
This intense and practical concern with questions of a little more or a little less has the interesting effect of   moving the "secondary" causes to the center of the stage. One might say that from his basic cause Niebuhr derives one maxim: do not expect too much. From his identification of secondary causes he derives his other conclusions: just what to exact under different conditions which conditions must be changed to minimize unwanted effects and achieve others, and, generally, what the rules of conduct must be for the conscientious citizen or politician.
Too much concern with the ''primary'' cause of conflict leads one away from a realistic analysis of world politics.
The basic cause is the least manipulable of all causes. The causes that in fact explain differences in behavior must be sought somewhere other than in human nature itself.
Niebuhr recognizes this when he writes that the particular plight of modern civilization is in a sense not caused by the sinfulness of human nature or by human greed. The greed of collective man must be taken for granted in the political order".   But power can be organized under   government and the pretensions of one group or state can be checked by the assertions of another. From a correct understanding of secondary causes comes the real chance for peace. The same overbalancing of primary by secondary causes is evident in Morgenthau-war from man's lust for power, he says, peace from world government. And, with world government presently impossible, Morgenthau, like Niebuhr, argues convincingly the inescapable necessity of balance-of-power politics.
Perhaps some circumscribed comments on the persistent debate between the ''realists'' and their critics will make the practical meaning of the comments on first-image pessimists clearer. Since Morgenthau has been slighted somewhat in the previous discussion and since it is around him that the battle rages, we shall concentrate on him and his critics in the succeeding pages.
Morgenthau recognizes that given competition for scarce goods with no one to serve as arbiter a struggle for power will ensue among the competitors, and that consequently the struggle for power can be explained without reference to. the evil born in men. The struggle for power arises simply because men want things, not because there is some evil in their desires. This he labels one of the two roots of conflict but even while discussing it he seems to pull unconsciously toward the ''other root of conflict and concomitant evil'' - "the animus dominandi the desire for power." This is illustrated by a statement such as the following: ''The test of political success is the degree to which one is able to maintain, to increase, or to demonstrate one´s power over others."
          Power appears as an end-in-itself, whereas a greater emphasis on the first root of political discord would credit power as an instrument necessary for success in competitive struggles. Morgenthau, however, often considers the drive for power that inheres in men as a datum more basic than the chance conditions under which struggles for power occur. This is indicated by his statement that ''in a world where power counts, no nation pursuing a rational policy has a choice between renouncing and wanting power; and, if it could, the lust for power for the individual's sake would still confront us with its less spectacular yet no less pressing moral defects.''   We have here two ideas: first, that struggles for preference arise in competitive situations and force is introduced in the absence of an authority that can limit the means used by the competitors; second, that struggles for power arise because men are born seekers of power. What are the implications for international politics of this dual explanation? One who accepts the second idea will define national interest in terms of power, because men naturally seek power. One who accepts the first idea will also define national interest in terms of power, but this time because under certain conditions power is the means necessary to secure the ends of states. In the one instance, power is an end; in the other, an instrument. The lines of analysis are obscured, for if it turns out that power is a necessary means, then power inevitably takes on some of the qualities of an end. Whether one adopts the first or the second explanation, or mixes the two, may then make little difference in the policy conclusions reached. It may, however, confuse the analyst and flummox his critics.
Realists have tended to accept the idea of a neat dichotomy between two schools of thought. This is implicit in Niebuhr's statement, previously cited, that the basis of all political realism is a sophisticated view of man, and in Kennan's definition of the conduct of government as a ''sorry chore . . . devolving upon civilized society, most unfortunately, as a result of man's irrational nature, his selfishness, his obstinacy, his tendency to violence.''   It is explicit in Morgenthau's assertion that modern political thought divides into two schools-the utopians with their optimistic philosophies of man and politics and the realists who see that the world ''is the result of forces which are inherent in human nature." It is evident as well in the distinction of Gerald Stourzh between those who think that the progress of reason and science makes government increasingly unnecessary and ''those who hold that there is an ineradicable element of selfishness, pride, and corruption in human nature'' and who therefore ''refuse to concede to reason and to ´scientific principles' such a paramount role in political things.''   Governments, political manipulations, and balances of power may be necessary in part because of man's passion and irrationality, but they are necessary for other reasons as well. The division of political approaches into two categories is misleading because it is based on an incomplete statement of the causes of conflict and the consequent necessities of politics. The dichotomy is often accepted by the critics of the realists as well. In a review of John Herz's Political Realism and Political Idealism, Quincy Wright comments on the self-styled realists as follows: ''Thus when it is said that states pursue power as their supreme value, the philosophical question is at once raised: Ought power to be the supreme value of states? The ´realists´ answers affirmatively, asserting that states should pursue their national interests and the supreme national interest is the augmentation of the state's power position. They are, however, then asserting not a self- evident axiom but an ethical norm, and an ethical norm which is by no means uncontroversial.''   As a criticism of Morgenthau this can be accepted, but not as a criticism of Herz; and even as a criticism of Morgenthau it commits the error of acquiescing in the confusions he has himself introduced. If one becomes intrigued with statements much as those previously cited in which a power drive rooted in man is asserted to be the primary cause of worldly ills, then it may be fair to say that Morgenthau has made a normative statement that one may accept or reject according to his inclination. According to Herz's analysis, however, states look to their comparative power positions because of the ''security dilemma," born of a condition of, anarchy, that confronts them. Power appears as a possibly useful instrument rather than as a supreme value that men by their very natures are led to   seek. Whether or not power should be ''the supreme value of states'' is then not the question. Rather one must ask when, if ever, it will be a supreme value and when merely a means.
The attempt to derive a philosophy of politics from an assumed nature of man leads one to a concern with the role of ethics in statecraft without providing criteria for distinguishing ethical from unethical behavior. This difficulty is reflected in the comments of a critic who is worried by the problem of giving content to Morgenthau's pro- posed guide for foreign policy, ''the national interesting   Grayson Kirk suggests that ''one source of this difficulty (with content) lies in an unwillingness to admit that many of our policy-makers, during this so-called Utopian period (in the history of American foreign policy), have under- taken to express the national interests of the United States in terms of moral principles, not because they were cop- fused theorists, but because they honestly believed that our best national interests lay in the widest possible acceptance of certain moral and legal principles as guides of international conduct.   Whether or not certain states- men ''honestly believed'' that they were expressing our national interests when they sought ''the widest possible acceptance of certain moral and legal principles as guides of international conduct'' is a matter of personal concern only. It is more important to ask whether or not the conditions of international politics permit statesmen to think and act in terms of the moral and legal principles that may be both serviceable and acceptable in domestic clinics. Everyone is for ''the national interesting No   policy is advanced with the plea that, although this will hurt my country, it will help others. The problems are the evaluative one of deciding which interests are legitimate and the pragmatic one of deciding what policies will best serve them. To solve these problems one needs as much an understanding of politics as an understanding of loan-and the one cannot be derived from the other.
On numerous occasions Morgenthau has displayed admirable sophistication and discernment in his political commentary. He has analyzed skillfully the implications of international anarchy and distinguished action possible internally from action possible externally, but it is not all the fault of his critics that they have had difficulty in conceiving the relation intended by him between his views of man and his theories of politics.

Conclusion
The evilness of men, or their improper behavior, leads to war; individual goodness, if it could be universalized, would mean peace: this is a summary statement of the first image. For the pessimists peace is at once a goal and a utopian dream, but others have taken seriously the presumption that a reform of individuals sufficient to bring lasting peace to the world is possible. Men are good; therefore no social or political problems-is this a true statement? Would the reform of individuals, if realized, cure social and political ills? The difficulty obviously lies in the word ''good.'' How is ''good'' to be denied? ''Those people are good who spontaneously act in perfect harmony with one another." This is a tautological definition, but nevertheless a revealing one. What first-image analysts, optimists and pessimists alike, have done is: (1) to notice conflict (2) to ask themselves why conflict occurs, and (3) to pin the blame on one or a small number of behavior traits.
First-image optimists betray a naiveté in politics that vitiates their efforts to construct a new and better world.
Their lack of success is directly related to a view of man that is simple and pleasing, but wrong. First-image pessimists have expertly dismantled the air castles of the optimists but have had less success in their endeavors to build the serviceable but necessarily uninspiring dwellings that must take their place. They have countered a theory of politics built on an optimistic definition of man's capabilities by pointing out that men are not what most pacifists and many liberals think them. Niebuhr and Morgenthau say to the optimists: You have misunderstood politics because you have misestimated human nature. This is, according to them, the real error of the liberals. Instead it should be called an error of many liberals. A more important error, into which some but by no means all liberals have fallen, is to exaggerate the causal importance of human nature; for, as Niebuhr himself points out in a statement cited earlier, human nature is so complex that it can justify every hypothesis we may entertain. At a minimum, nevertheless, |rst-image pessimists provide a valuable warning, all too frequently ignored in modern history, against expecting too much from the application of reason to social and political problems. And this is an example of a possibly useful result of first-image analysis.
While demonstrating the usefulness of the first-image Augustine and Spinoza, Niebuhr and Morgenthau also help to make clear the limits of its serviceability. To take either the position that men can be made good and then wars will cease to occur or the position that because men are bad wars and similar evils never will end may lead one to a consideration of social and political structure. If changing human nature will solve the problem, then one has to discover how to bring about the change. If man's evil qualities lead to wars, then one has to worry about ways to repress his evilness or to compensate for it. Often with those who expect an improvement in human behavior to bring peace to the world, the influence of social-political institutions is buried under the conviction that individual behavior is determined more by religious-spiritual inspiration than by material circumstance. With those who link war to defects inherent in man, the impetus is more clearly in the opposite direction. To control rapacious men requires more force than exhortation. Social-political   institutions, especially if the writer in question is this-world oriented, tend to move to the center of the stage. The assumption of a fixed human nature, in terms of which all else must be understood, itself helps to shift attention away from human nature-because human nature, by the terms of the assumption, cannot be changed, whereas social-political institutions can be.