ABSTRACT
The spirit of modern war emerged at that point in history when ultimate and sublime values first differentiated themselves from and were deemed superior to their material form of appearance. In Chapter 3 we identified that point generally as the point when Jesus’ wounds were denied entrance into heaven, when his true Body and Blood were denied a real presence in the bread and wine of the Holy Eucharist, and when the Virgin Mary’s sensuous body was transformed into an angelic soul. But, as we soon discovered, these instances of disembodiment were only illustrations of a much broader and more complex set of circumstances set in motion by the harnessing of human bodies engaged in productive activity to the abstract units of time marched out by mechanical clocks. A more graphic illustration of wholesale disembodiment and disenchantment might be the increasing readiness of political and religious leaders to commit the bodies of their subjects to death in officially sanctioned mortal combat and the willingness of their subjects to offer their bodies as sacrifices to that wholly new political abstraction, the nation. Although admittedly circumstantial, the evidence is nevertheless compelling.
