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According to Bacon, we should collect our facts before we start to theorize. But facts are so numerous that the pure Baconian would never get beyond the collecting stage. In practice we all start with a theory and look for facts to fit it, and are sufficiently scientific if we are prepared to modify the theory every time they fail to do so. In other words, we proceed by a series of approximations.
As far as conscious motives of war are concerned, many theories have been suggested. In the first place, it has been attributed to necessity and the struggle for existence, that is, to the pressure of the population upon the food supply. And those who hold this view usually accept it as the common lot of animals as well as men. But among rabbits, over-population brings starvation and disease, not war - and biologically this may be more beneficial to the species. Even the higher carnivores do not, so far as I know, prey upon their own species when food is short. Man, of course, does fight for food and land to grow it in; but he fights quite as often for other causes, or for no sound cause at all. Indeed, I imagine it would be true to say that primitive man fights most readily when all his economic needs are satisfied. The season of plenty is the time of war. Mars was a god of spring as well as battle - and significantly enough of marriage too.