454. However, as terrestrial man has had war as an absolutely inevitable condition of life, and thereby his very highest moral basis throughout an existence of millions of years including his passage through the stages of carnivorous plants, through ordinary animal-like activities in seas and over continents and now lastly in his beginning human existence, then it is obvious that this way of life for millions of years will stamp the individual's thoughts, mental life and organic structure and will set such a profound mark that it is not to be removed in a moment, even by the biblical Sermon on the Mount, whose words of beauty are the greatest and most true and thus the most significant which ever could be stated in this world. And the result must necessarily be the fact by which terrestrial man has now already lived many incarnations – that he constitutes a being in whom this warlike way of life over millions of years has become a dominating habit of consciousness, and is only opposed, as yet, by a few individual fragile, new-born faculties directed towards creating a diametrically opposite way of life, that is to say, one of humanity and love.
      That this way of life is a newly-born one cannot be disputed, considering the evolutionary panorama we now have before us. It is of little significance that the first feeble omens or predictions of the initial elementary forms for the start of that human way of life can be traced back a few thousands years in the panorama just mentioned, when the pattern of life in war, murder and violence in the beings' universal genealogical table goes right back to their manifestation as meat-eating plants. The humane thought-climate, whether it shows itself as Buddhism, Christianity or any other type of human religious feeling, is as yet only as noticeable as a tiny new-born star in the immeasurable skies of that time-panorama. In other words, terrestrial man's morals concerning war and the powers of war represent millions of years of earthly existence, while the morals concerning peace and humaneness represent but a few thousand years of that same existence. No wonder, then, that war can still rage over the Earth when upheld by such an overwhelming majority, and that mankind's humane tendencies and sympathetic leanings are still so weak and hesitant that in all threatening circumstances they can in no way compete on account of the immensely superior and immensely ancient warlike habits of consciousness which immediately and automatically start to function in such a situation. It is only in a few exceptional cases that a being, like Christ, ventures to use compassionate qualities in the service of defence by turning the right cheek when struck on the left. Generally speaking, the millions of years of animal powers in the individual are so dominating and such a matter of course in comparison with the far younger humane tendencies, that the I has actually no choice. It has, thus, two weapons of defence; one consists of the regular forces of killing and destruction and the other of the weak, new-born beginnings of humane and intellectual tendencies in this panorama. But as these latter tendencies only represent a few thousand years, they thus constitute – within the enormously wide expanse of terrestrial mankind's mentality – still only "A knowledge", while the tendencies towards war and killing with their millions of years of tradition, have long become "C knowledge" throughout the whole mentality of that same mankind. This again means that, in reality, the warlike tendencies constitute the beings' natural inborn predisposition, inherited from the past, which automatically begin functioning whenever the necessary releasing factors are present, quite regardless of whether the beings wish it or not.
      The essence of these warlike forces are released in those outbursts we call "fits of rage" or "hot temper". Such attacks constitute the culmination of "animal" mentality. They are therefore merits at those stages of evolution where they are a condition of life, such as in those beings we call "beasts of prey". They constitute the automatic mobilization of all the killing and destructive talents in a being which assist it in overcoming an opponent or a victim which it is a condition of life to vanquish. The greater the being's ability to mobilize those forces – at that stage so necessary for existence – the better able it will be to assert itself in that zone. And so, at that stage, as we have said, the outburst can only be a merit.