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of
instinctive safeguards against the killing of con-specifics -- members
of his own species. The 'Law of the Jungle' knows only one legitimate
motive for killing: the feeding drive, and only on condition that predator
and prey belong to different species. Within the same species competition
and conflict between individuals or groups are settled by symbolic
threat-behaviour or ritualized duels which end with the flight or
surrender-gesture of one of the opponents, and hardly ever involves lethal
injury. The inhibitory forces -- instinctive taboos -- against killing
or seriously injuring con-specifics are as powerful in most animals --
including the primates -- as the drives of hunger, sex or fear. Man is
alone (apart from some controversial phenomena among rats and ants)
in practising intra-specific murder on an individual and collective
scale, in spontaneous or organized fashion, for motives ranging from
sexual jealousy to quibbles about metaphysical doctrines. Intra-specific
warfare in permanence is a central feature of the human condition. It
is embellished by the infliction of torture in its various forms, from
crucifixion to electric shocks.*
* Torture today is so widespread an instrument of political repression
     that we can speak of the existence of 'Torture States' as a political
     reality of our times. The malignancy has become epidemic and knows no
     ideological, racial or economic boundaries. In over thirty countries,
     torture is systematically applied to extract confessions, elicit
     information, penalise dissent and deter opposition to repressive
     governmental policy. Torture has been institutionalised . . .'
     (Victor Jokel, Director, British Amnesty, in 'Epidemic: Torture',
     Amnesty International, London n.d., c. 197S).

3. The third symptom is closely linked to the two previous ones:
it is manifested in the chronic, quasi-schizophrenic split between reason
and emotion, between man's rational faculties and his irrational,
affect-bound beliefs.

4. Finally, there is the striking disparity, already mentioned, between
the growth-curves of science and technology on the one hand and of ethical
conduct on the other; or, to put it differently, between the powers of
the human intellect when applied to mastering the environment and its
inability to maintain harmonious relationships within the family, the
nation and the species at large. Roughly two and a half millennia ago, in
the sixth century B.C., the Greeks embarked on the scientific adventure
which eventually carried us to the moon; that surely is an impressive
growth-curve. But the sixth century B.C. also saw the rise of Taoism,
Confucianism and Buddhism -- the twentieth of Hitlerism, Stalinism and
Maoism: there is no discernible growth-curve. As von Bertalanffy has
put it:
What is called human progress is a purely intellectual affair . . .
    not much development, however, is seen on the moral side. It is
    doubtful whether the methods of modern warfare are preferable
    to the big stones used for cracking the skull of the fellow --
    Neanderthaler. It is rather obvious that the moral standards of Laotse
    and Buddha were not inferior to ours. The human cortex contains
    some ten billion neurons that have made possible the progress from
    stone axe to airplanes and atomic bombs, from primitive mythology
    to quantum theory. There is no corresponding development on the
    instinctive side that would cause man to mend his ways. For this
    reason, moral exhortations, as proffered through the centuries by
    the founders of religion and great leaders of humanity, have proved
    disconcertingly ineffective. [3]

The list of symptoms could be extended. But I think that those I have
mentioned indicate the essence of the human predicament. They are
of course inter-dependent; thus human sacrifice can be regarded as a
sub-category of the schizophrenic split between reason and emotion,
and the contrast between the growth-curves of technological and moral
achievement can be regarded as a