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Title: Perpetual Peace - A Philosophical Essay
Author: Kant, Immanuel
Language: English
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PERPETUAL PEACE
[Illustration]
“For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see,
Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be;
Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails,
Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales;
Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rain’d a ghastly dew
From the nations’ airy navies grappling in the central blue;
Far along the world-wide whisper of the south-wind rushing warm,
With the standards of the peoples plunging thro’ the thunder-storm;
Till the war-drum throbb’d no longer, and the battle-flags were furl’d
In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world.
There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe,
And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law.”
TENNYSON: _Locksley Hall_.
PERPETUAL PEACE
A PHILOSOPHICAL ESSAY
BY
IMMANUEL KANT
1795
TRANSLATED WITH INTRODUCTION
AND NOTES BY
M. CAMPBELL SMITH, M.A.
_WITH A PREFACE BY PROFESSOR LATTA_
LONDON: GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD.
RUSKIN HOUSE 40 MUSEUM STREET, W.C.
NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
_First Edition, 1903_
_Second Impression, February 1915_
_Third ” February 1917_
PREFACE
This translation of Kant’s essay on _Perpetual Peace_ was undertaken
by Miss Mary Campbell Smith at the suggestion of the late Professor
Ritchie of St. Andrews, who had promised to write for it a preface,
indicating the value of Kant’s work in relation to recent discussions
regarding the possibility of “making wars to cease.” In view of the
general interest which these discussions have aroused and of the
vague thinking and aspiration which have too often characterised
them, it seemed to Professor Ritchie that a translation of this wise
and sagacious essay would be both opportune and valuable.[1] His
untimely death has prevented the fulfilment of his promise, and I
have been asked, in his stead, to introduce the translator’s work.
[1] Cf. his _Studies in Political and Social Ethics_, pp. 169,
170.
This is, I think, the only complete translation into English of
Kant’s essay, including all the notes as well as the text, and the
translator has added a full historical Introduction, along with
numerous notes of her own, so as (in Professor Ritchie’s words)
“to meet the needs (1) of the student of Political Science who
wishes to understand the relation of Kant’s theories to those of
Grotius, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau etc., and (2) of the general reader
who wishes to understand the significance of Kant’s proposals
in connection with the ideals of Peace Congresses, and with the
development of International Law from the end of the Middle Ages to
the Hague Conference.”
Although it is more than 100 years since Kant’s essay was written,
its substantial value is practically unimpaired. Anyone who is
acquainted with the general character of the mind of Kant will
expect to find in him sound common-sense, clear recognition of the
essential facts of the case and a remarkable power of analytically
exhibiting the conditions on which the facts necessarily depend.
These characteristics are manifest in the essay on _Perpetual Peace_.
Kant is not pessimist enough to believe that a perpetual peace is an
unrealisable dream or a consummation devoutly to be feared, nor is
he optimist enough to fancy that it is an ideal which could easily
be realised if men would but turn their hearts to one another. For
Kant perpetual peace is an ideal, not merely as a speculative Utopian
idea, with which in fancy we may play, but as a moral principle,
which ought to be, and therefore can be, realised. Yet he makes it
perfectly clear that we cannot hope to approach the realisation of
it unless we honestly face political facts and get a firm grasp of
the indispensable conditions of a lasting peace. To strive after the
ideal in contempt or in ignorance of these conditions is a labour
that must inevitably be either fruitless or destructive of its own
ends. Thus Kant demonstrates the hopelessness of any attempt to
secure perpetual peace between independent nations. Such nations may
make treaties; but these are binding only for so long as it is not
to the interest of either party to denounce them. To enforce them
is impossible while the nations remain independent. “There is,” as
Professor Ritchie put it (_Studies in Political and Social Ethics_,
p. 169), “only one way in which war between independent nations can
be prevented; and that is by the nations ceasing to be independent.”
But this does not necessarily mean the establishment of a despotism,
whether autocratic or democratic. On the other hand, Kant maintains
that just as peace between individuals within a state can only be
permanently secured by the institution of a “republican” (that is
to say, a representative) government, so the only real guarantee
of a permanent peace between nations is the establishment of a
federation of free “republican” states. Such a federation he regards
as practically possible. “For if Fortune ordains that a powerful
and enlightened people should form a republic—which by its very
nature is inclined to perpetual peace—this would serve as a centre
of federal union for other states wishing to join, and thus secure
conditions of freedom among the states in accordance with the idea of
the law of nations. Gradually, through different unions of this kind,
the federation would extend further and further.”
Readers who are acquainted with the general philosophy of Kant
will find many traces of its influence in the essay on _Perpetual
Peace_. Those who have no knowledge of his philosophy may find some
of his forms of statement rather difficult to understand, and it
may therefore not be out of place for me to indicate very briefly
the meaning of some terms which he frequently uses, especially in
the Supplements and Appendices. Thus at the beginning of the First
Supplement, Kant draws a distinction between the mechanical and the
teleological view of things, between “nature” and “Providence”,
which depends upon his main philosophical position. According to
Kant, pure reason has two aspects, theoretical and practical. As
concerning knowledge, strictly so called, the _a priori_ principles
of reason (_e.g._ substance and attribute, cause and effect etc.)
are valid only within the realm of possible sense-experience. Such
ideas, for instance, cannot be extended to God, since He is not a
possible object of sense-experience. They are limited to the world
of phenomena. This world of phenomena (“nature” or the world of
sense-experience) is a purely mechanical system. But in order to
understand fully the phenomenal world, the pure theoretical reason
must postulate certain ideas (the ideas of the soul, the world and
God), the objects of which transcend sense-experience. These ideas
are not theoretically valid, but their validity is practically
established by the pure practical reason, which does not yield
speculative truth, but prescribes its principles “dogmatically” in
the form of imperatives to the will. The will is itself practical
reason, and thus it imposes its imperatives upon itself. The
fundamental imperative of the practical reason is stated by Kant in
Appendix I. (p. 175):—“Act so that thou canst will that thy maxim
should be a universal law, be the end of thy action what it will.”
If the end of perpetual peace is a duty, it must be necessarily
deduced from this general law. And Kant does regard it as a duty. “We
must desire perpetual peace not only as a material good, but also
as a state of things resulting from our recognition of the precepts
of duty” (_loc. cit._). This is further expressed in the maxim (p.
177):—“Seek ye first the kingdom of pure practical reason and its
righteousness, and the object of your endeavour, the blessing of
perpetual peace, will be added unto you.” The distinction between
the moral politician and the political moralist, which is developed
in Appendix I., is an application of the general distinction
between duty and expediency, which is a prominent feature of the
Kantian ethics. Methods of expediency, omitting all reference to
the pure practical reason, can only bring about re-arrangements of
circumstances in the mechanical course of nature. They can never
guarantee the attainment of their end: they can never make it more
than a speculative ideal, which may or may not be practicable. But
if the end can be shown to be a duty, we have, from Kant’s point
of view, the only reasonable ground for a conviction that it is
realisable. We cannot, indeed, theoretically _know_ that it is
realisable. “Reason is not sufficiently enlightened to survey the
series of predetermining causes which would make it possible for us
to predict with certainty the good or bad results of human action,
as they follow from the mechanical laws of nature; although we may
hope that things will turn out as we should desire” (p. 163). On the
other hand, since the idea of perpetual peace is a moral ideal, an
“idea of duty”, we are entitled to believe that it is practicable.
“Nature guarantees the coming of perpetual peace, through the natural
course of human propensities; not indeed with sufficient certainty to
enable us to prophesy the future of this ideal theoretically, but yet
clearly enough for practical purposes” (p. 157). One might extend
this discussion indefinitely; but what has been said may suffice for
general guidance.
The “wise and sagacious” thought of Kant is not expressed in a
simple style, and the translation has consequently been a very
difficult piece of work. But the translator has shown great skill in
manipulating the involutions, parentheses and prodigious sentences
of the original. In this she has had the valuable help of Mr. David
Morrison, M.A., who revised the whole translation with the greatest
care and to whom she owes the solution of a number of difficulties.
Her work will have its fitting reward if it succeeds in familiarising
the English-speaking student of politics with a political essay of
enduring value, written by one of the master thinkers of modern times.
R. LATTA.
_University of Glasgow_, May 1903.
CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFACE BY PROFESSOR LATTA v
TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION 1
PERPETUAL PEACE 106
FIRST SECTION CONTAINING THE PRELIMINARY ARTICLES OF
PERPETUAL PEACE BETWEEN STATES 107
SECOND SECTION CONTAINING THE DEFINITIVE ARTICLES OF
PERPETUAL PEACE BETWEEN STATES 117
FIRST SUPPLEMENT CONCERNING THE GUARANTEE OF PERPETUAL
PEACE 143
SECOND SUPPLEMENT—A SECRET ARTICLE FOR PERPETUAL PEACE 158
APPENDIX I.—ON THE DISAGREEMENT BETWEEN MORALS AND POLITICS
WITH REFERENCE TO PERPETUAL PEACE 161
APPENDIX II.—CONCERNING THE HARMONY OF POLITICS WITH MORALS
ACCORDING TO THE TRANSCENDENTAL IDEA OF PUBLIC RIGHT 184
INDEX 197
TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION
This is an age of unions. Not merely in the economic sphere, in
the working world of unworthy ends and few ideals do we find
great practical organizations; but law, medicine, science, art,
trade, commerce, politics and political economy—we might add
philanthropy—standing institutions, mighty forces in our social
and intellectual life, all have helped to swell the number of our
nineteenth century Conferences and Congresses. It is an age of
Peace Movements and Peace Societies, of peace-loving monarchs and
peace-seeking diplomats. This is not to say that we are preparing
for the millennium. Men are working together, there is a newborn
solidarity of interest, but rivalries between nation and nation, the
bitternesses and hatreds inseparable from competition are not less
keen; prejudice and misunderstanding not less frequent; subordinate
conflicting interests are not fewer, are perhaps, in view of changing
political conditions and an ever-growing international commerce,
multiplying with every year. The talisman is, perhaps, self-interest,
but, none the less, the spirit of union is there; it is impossible to
ignore a clearly marked tendency towards international federation,
towards political peace. This slow movement was not born with Peace
Societies; its consummation lies perhaps far off in the ages to come.
History at best moves slowly. But something of its past progress
we shall do well to know. No political idea seems to have so great
a future before it as this idea of a federation of the world. It
is bound to realise itself some day; let us consider what are the
chances that this day come quickly, what that it be long delayed.
What obstacles lie in the way, and how may they be removed? What
historical grounds have we for hoping that they may ever be removed?
What, in a word, is the origin and history of the idea of a perpetual
peace between nations, and what would be the advantage, what is the
prospect of realising it?
The international relations of states find their expression, we are
told, in war and peace. What has been the part played by these great
counteracting forces in the history of nations? What has it been in
prehistoric times, in the life of man in what is called the “state
of nature”? “It is no easy enterprise,” says Rousseau, in more than
usually careful language, “to disentangle that which is original from
that which is artificial in the actual state of man, and to make
ourselves well acquainted with a state which no longer exists, which
perhaps never has existed and which probably never will exist in the
future.” (Preface to the _Discourse on the Causes of Inequality_,
1753, publ. 1754.) This is a difficulty which Rousseau surmounts only
too easily. A knowledge of history, a scientific spirit may fail him:
an imagination ever ready to pour forth detail never does. Man lived,
says he, “without industry, without speech, without habitation,
without war, without connection of any kind, without any need of
his fellows or without any desire to harm them ... sufficing to
himself.”[2] (_Discourse on the Sciences and Arts_, 1750.) Nothing,
we are now certain, is less probable. We cannot paint the life of
man at this stage of his development with any definiteness, but the
conclusion is forced upon us that our race had no golden age,[3] no
peaceful beginning, that this early state was indeed, as Hobbes
held, a state of war, of incessant war between individuals, families
and, finally, tribes.
[2] For the inconsistency between the views expressed by Rousseau
on this subject in the _Discourses_ and in the _Contrat Social_
(Cf. I. Chs. VI., VIII.) see Ritchie’s _Natural Right_, Ch.
III., pp. 48, 49; Caird’s essay on Rousseau in his _Essays on
Literature and Philosophy_, Vol. I.; and Morley’s _Rousseau_,
Vol. I., Ch. V.; Vol. II., Ch. XII.
[3] The theory that the golden age was identical with the
state of nature, Professor D. G. Ritchie ascribes to Locke
(see _Natural Right_, Ch. II., p. 42). Locke, he says, “has an
idea of a golden age” existing even after government has come
into existence—a time when people did not need “to examine the
original and rights of government.” [_Civil Government_, II., §
111.] A little confusion on the part of his readers (perhaps in
his own mind) makes it possible to regard the state of nature as
itself the golden age, and the way is prepared for the favourite
theory of the eighteenth century:—
“Nor think in nature’s state they blindly trod;
The state of nature was the reign of God:
Self-love and social at her birth began,
Union the bond of all things and of man.
Pride then was not, nor arts that pride to aid;
Man walk’d with beast, joint tenant of the shade;
The same his table, and the same his bed;
No murder cloath’d him, and no murder fed.”
[_Essay on Man_, III., 147 _seq._]
In these lines of Pope’s the state of nature is identified with
the golden age of the Greek and Latin poets; and “the reign of
God” is an equivalent for Locke’s words, “has a law of nature to
govern it.”
_The Early Conditions of Society._
For the barbarian, war is the rule; peace the exception. His gods,
like those of Greece, are warlike gods; his spirit, at death, flees
to some Valhalla. For him life is one long battle; his arms go with
him even to the grave. Food and the means of existence he seeks
through plunder and violence. Here right is with might; the battle is
to the strong. Nature has given all an equal claim to all things, but
not everyone can have them. This state of fearful insecurity is bound
to come to an end. “Government,” says Locke, (_On Civil Government_,
Chap. VIII., § 105) “is hardly to be avoided amongst men that live
together.”[4] A constant dread of attack and a growing consciousness
of the necessity of presenting a united front against it result in
the choice of some leader—the head of a family perhaps—who acts,
it may be, only as captain of the hosts, as did Joshua in Israel,
or who may discharge the simple duties of a primitive governor or
king.[5] Peace within is found to be strength without. The civil
state is established, so that “if there needs must be war, it may
not yet be against all men, nor yet without some helps.” (Hobbes:
_On Liberty_, Chap. I., § 13.) This foundation of the state is the
first establishment in history of a peace institution. It changes the
character of warfare, it gives it method and system; but it does not
bring peace in its train. We have now, indeed, no longer a wholesale
war of all against all, a constant irregular raid and plunder of one
individual by another; but we have the systematic, deliberate war of
community against community, of nation against nation.[6]
[4] Cf. _Republic_, II. 369. “A state,” says Socrates, “arises
out of the needs of mankind: no one is self-sufficing, but all of
us have many wants.”
[5] See Hume’s account of the origin of government (_Treatise_,
III., Part II., Sect. VIII.). There are, he says, American
tribes “where men live in concord and amity among themselves
without any established government; and never pay submission
to any of their fellows, except in time of war, when their
captain enjoys a shadow of authority, which he loses after their
return from the field, and the establishment of peace with the
neighbouring tribes. This authority, however, instructs them in
the advantages of government, and teaches them to have recourse
to it, when either by the pillage of war, by commerce, or by any
fortuitous inventions, their riches and possessions have become
so considerable as to make them forget, on every emergence, the
interest they have in the preservation of peace and justice....
Camps are the true mothers of cities; and as war cannot be
administered, by reason of the suddenness of every exigency,
without some authority in a single person, the same kind of
authority naturally takes place in that civil government, which
succeeds the military.”
Cf. Cowper: _The Winter Morning Walk_:—
“. . . . . . . . . . . . . . and ere long,
When man was multiplied and spread abroad
In tribes and clans, and had begun to call
These meadows and that range of hills his own,
The tasted sweets of property begat
Desire of more; . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Thus wars began on earth. These fought for spoil,
And those in self-defence. Savage at first
The onset, and irregular. At length
One eminent above the rest, for strength,
For stratagem, or courage, or for all,
Was chosen leader. Him they served in war,
And him in peace for sake of warlike deeds
Rev’renced no less. . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Thus kings were first invented.”
[6] “Among uncivilised nations, there is but one profession
honourable, that of arms. All the ingenuity and vigour of the
human mind are exerted in acquiring military skill or address.”
Cf. Robertson’s _History of Charles V._, (_Works_, 1813, vol. V.)
Sect. I. vii.
_War in Classical Times._
In early times, there were no friendly neighbouring nations: beyond
the boundaries of every nation’s territory, lay the land of a
deadly foe. This was the way of thinking, even of so highly cultured
a people as the Greeks, who believed that a law of nature had made
every outsider, every barbarian their inferior and their enemy.[7]
Their treaties of peace, at the time of the Persian War, were frankly
of the kind denounced by Kant, mere armistices concluded for the
purpose of renewing their fighting strength. The ancient world is a
world of perpetual war in which defeat meant annihilation. In the
East no right was recognised in the enemy; and even in Greece and
Rome the fate of the unarmed was death or slavery.[8] The barbaric
or non-Grecian states had, according to Plato and Aristotle, no claim
upon humanity, no rights in fact of any kind. Among the Romans
things were little better. According to Mr. T. J. Lawrence—see his
_Principles of International Law_, III., §§ 21, 22—they were worse.
For Rome stood alone in the world: she was bound by ties of kinship
to no other state. She was, in other words, free from a sense of
obligation to other races. War, according to Roman ideas, was made
by the gods, apart altogether from the quarrels of rulers or races.
To disobey the sacred command, expressed in signs and auguries would
have been to hold in disrespect the law and religion of the land.
When, in the hour of victory, the Romans refrained from pressing
their rights against the conquered—rights recognised by all Roman
jurists—it was from no spirit of leniency, but in the pursuit of
a prudent and far-sighted policy, aiming at the growth of Roman
supremacy and the establishment of a world-embracing empire, shutting
out all war as it blotted out natural boundaries, reducing all rights
to the one right of imperial citizenship. There was no real _jus
belli_, even here in the cradle of international law; the only limits
to the fury of war were of a religious character.
[7] Similarly we find that the original meaning of the Latin word
“_hostis_” was “a stranger.”
[8] In Aristotle we find the high-water mark of Greek thinking
on this subject. “The object of military training,” says he,
(_Politics_, Bk. IV. Ch. XIV., Welldon’s translation—in older
editions Bk. VII.) “should be not to enslave persons who do
not deserve slavery, but firstly to secure ourselves against
becoming the slaves of others; secondly, to seek imperial power
not with a view to a universal despotic authority, but for the
benefit of the subjects whom we rule, and thirdly, to exercise
despotic power over those who are deserving to be slaves. That
the legislator should rather make it his object so to order his
legislation upon military and other matters as to promote leisure
and peace is a theory borne out by the facts of history.” ...
(_loc. cit._ Ch. XV.). “War, as we have remarked several times,
has its end in peace.”
Aristotle strongly condemns the Lacedæmonians and Cretans for
regarding war and conquest as the sole ends to which all law and
education should be directed. Also in non-Greek tribes like the
Scythians, Persians, Thracians and Celts he says, only military
power is admired by the people and encouraged by the state.
“There was formerly too a law in Macedonia that any one who had
never slain an enemy should wear the halter about his neck.”
Among the Iberians too, a military people, “it is the custom to
set around the tomb of a deceased warrior a number of obelisks
corresponding to the number of enemies he has killed.... Yet
... it may well appear to be a startling paradox that it should
be the function of a Statesman to succeed in devising the means
of rule and mastery over neighbouring peoples whether with or
against their own will. How can such action be worthy of a
statesman or legislator, when it has not even the sanction of
law?” (_op. cit._, IV. Ch. 2.)
We see that Aristotle disapproves of a glorification of war for
its own sake, and regards it as justifiable only in certain
circumstances. Methods of warfare adopted and proved in the East
would not have been possible in Greece. An act of treachery,
for example, such as that of Jael, (_Judges_ IV. 17) which was
extolled in songs of praise by the Jews, (_loc. cit._ V. 24) the
Greek people would have been inclined to repudiate. The stories
of Roman history, the behaviour of Fabricius, for instance,
or Regulus and the honourable conduct of prisoners on various
occasions released on parole, show that this consciousness of
certain principles of honour in warfare was still more highly
developed in Rome.
Socrates in the _Republic_ (V. 469, 470) gives expression to a
feeling which was gradually gaining ground in Greece, that war
between Hellenic tribes was much more serious than war between
Greeks and barbarians. In such civil warfare, he considered,
the defeated ought not to be reduced to slavery, nor the slain
despoiled, nor Hellenic territory devastated. For any difference
between Greek and Greek is to “be regarded by them as discord
only—a quarrel among friends, which is not to be called war”....
“Our citizens [_i.e._ in the ideal republic] should thus deal
with their Hellenic enemies; and with barbarians as the Hellenes
now deal with one another.” (V. 471.)
The views of Plato and Aristotle on this and other questions were
in advance of the custom and practice of their time.
The treatment of a defeated enemy among the Jews rested upon a
similar religious foundation. In the East, we find a special cruelty
in the conduct of war. The wars of the Jews and Assyrians were wars
of extermination. The whole of the _Old Testament_, it has been said,
resounds with the clash of arms.[9] “An eye for an eye, a tooth for
a tooth!” was the command of Jehovah to his chosen people. Vengeance
was bound up in their very idea of the Creator. The Jews, unlike the
followers of Mahomet, attempted, and were commanded to attempt no
violent conversion[10]; they were then too weak a nation; but they
fought, and fought with success against the heathen of neighbouring
lands, the Lord of Hosts leading them forth to battle. The God of
Israel stood to his chosen people in a unique and peculiarly logical
relation. He had made a covenant with them; and, in return for their
obedience and allegiance, cared for their interests and advanced
their national prosperity. The blood of this elect people could
not be suffered to intermix with that of idolaters. Canaan must be
cleared of the heathen, on the coming of the children of Israel to
their promised land; and mercy to the conquered enemy, even to women,
children or animals was held by the Hebrew prophets to be treachery
to Jehovah. (_Sam._ XV.; _Josh._ VI. 21.)
[9] “The Lord is a man of war,” said Moses (_Exodus_ XV. 3). Cf.
_Psalms_ XXIV. 8. He is “mighty in battle.”
[10] This was bound up with the very essence of Islam; the devout
Mussulman could suffer the existence of no unbeliever. Tolerance
or indifference was an attitude which his faith made impossible.
“When ye encounter the unbelievers,” quoth the prophet (_Koran_,
ch. 47), “strike off their heads, until ye have made a great
slaughter among them.... Verily if God pleased he could take
vengeance on them without your assistance; but he commandeth you
to fight his battles.”
The propagation of the faith by the sword was not only commanded
by the Mohammedan religion: it was that religion itself.
Hence the attitude of the Jews to neighbouring nations[11] was still
more hostile than that of the Greeks. The cause of this difference
is bound up with the transition from polytheism to monotheism. The
most devout worshipper of the national gods of ancient times could
endure to see other gods than his worshipped in the next town or by
a neighbouring nation. There was no reason why all should not exist
side by side. Religious conflicts in polytheistic countries, when
they arose, were due not to the rivalry of conflicting faiths, but to
an occasional attempt to put one god above the others in importance.
There could be no interest here in the propagation of belief through
the sword. But, under the Jews, these relations were entirely
altered. Jehovah, their Creator, became the one invisible God. Such
an one can suffer no others near him; their existence is a continual
insult to him. Monotheism is, in its very nature, a religion of
intolerance. Its spirit among the Jews was warlike: it commanded
the subjugation of other nations, but its instrument was rather
extermination than conversion.
[11] See _Acts_ X. 28:—“Ye know that it is an unlawful thing for
a man that is a Jew to keep company, or come unto one of another
nation.”
_The Attitude of Christianity and the Early Church to War._
From the standpoint of the peace of nations, we may say that the
Christian faith, compared with other prominent monotheistic religious
systems, occupies an intermediate position between two extremes—the
fanaticism of Islam, and to a less extent of Judaism, and the
relatively passive attitude of the Buddhist who thought himself
bound to propagate his religion, but held himself justified only
in the employment of peaceful means. Christianity, on the other
hand, contains no warlike principles: it can in no sense be called
a religion of the sword, but circumstances gave the history of the
Church, after the first few centuries of its existence, a character
which cannot be called peace-loving.
This apparent contradiction between the spirit of the new religion
and its practical attitude to war has led to some difference of
opinion as to the actual teaching of Christ. The _New Testament_
seems, at a superficial glance, to furnish support as readily to the
champions of war as to its denouncers. The Messiah is the Prince
of Peace (_Is._ IX. 6, 7; _Heb._ VI.), and here lies the way of
righteousness (_Rom._ III. 19): but Christ came not to bring peace,
but a sword (_Matth._ X. 34). Such statements may be given the
meaning which we wish them to bear—the quoting of Scripture is ever
an unsatisfactory form of evidence; but there is no direct statement
in the _New Testament_ in favour of war, no saying of Christ which,
fairly interpreted, could be understood too regard this proof of
human imperfection as less condemnable than any other.[12] When men
shall be without sin, nation shall rise up against nation no more.
But man the individual can attain peace only when he has overcome the
world, when, in the struggle with his lower self, he has come forth
victorious. This is the spiritual sword which Christ brought into
the world—strife, not with the unbeliever, but with the lower self:
meekness and the spirit of the Word of God are the weapons with which
man must fight for the Faith.
[12] Neither, however, is there any which regards the soldier as
a murderer.
An elect people there was no longer: Israel had rejected its Messiah.
Instead there was a complete brotherhood of all men, the bond and
the free, as children of one God. The aim of the Church was a
world-empire, bound together by a universal religion. In this sense,
as sowing the first seeds of a universal peace, we may speak of
Christianity as a re-establishment of peace among mankind.
The later attitude of Christians to war, however, by no means
corresponds to the earliest tenets of the Church. Without doubt,
certain sects, from the beginning of our era and through the ages
up to the present time, held, like the Mennonites and Quakers
in our day, that the divine command, “Love your enemies,” could
not be reconciled with the profession of a soldier. The early
Christians were reproached under the Roman Emperors, before the
time of Constantine, with avoiding the citizen’s duty of military
service.[13] “To those enemies of our faith,” wrote Origen (_Contra
Celsum_, VIII., Ch. LXXIII., Anti-Nicene Christian Library), “who
require us to bear arms for the commonwealth, and to slay men, we
can reply: ‘Do not those who are priests at certain shrines, and
those who attend on certain gods, as you account them, keep their
hands free from blood, that they may with hands unstained and free
from human blood offer the appointed sacrifices to your gods; and
even when war is upon you, you never enlist the priests in the army.
If that, then, is a laudable custom, how much more so, that while
others are engaged in battle, these too should engage as the priests
and ministers of God, keeping their hands pure, and wrestling in
prayers to God on behalf of those who are fighting in a righteous
cause, and for the king who reigns righteously, that whatever is
opposed to those who act righteously may be destroyed!’ ... And we do
take our part in public affairs, when along with righteous prayers
we join self-denying exercises and meditations, which teach us to
despise pleasures, and not to be led away by them. And none fight
better for the king than we do. We do not indeed fight under him,
although he require it; but we fight on his behalf, forming a special
army—an army of piety—by offering our prayers to God.” The Fathers
of the Church, Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian,
Ambrose and the rest gave the same testimony against war. The pagan
rites connected with the taking of the military oath had no doubt
some influence in determining the feeling of the pious with regard
to this life of bloodshed; but the reasons lay deeper. “Shall it be
held lawful,” asked Tertullian, (_De Corona_, p. 347) “to make an
occupation of the sword, when the Lord proclaims that he who uses the
sword shall perish by the sword? And shall the son of peace take
part in the battle when it does not become him even to sue at law?
And shall he apply the chain, and the prison, and the torture, and
the punishment, who is not the avenger even of his own wrongs?”
[13] In the early centuries of our era Christians seem to
have occasionally refused to serve in the army from religious
scruples. But soldiers were not always required to change their
profession after baptism. And in _Acts_ X., for example, nothing
is said to indicate that the centurion, Cornelius, would have to
leave the Roman army. See Tertullian: _De Corona_ (Anti-Nicene
Christian Library), p. 348.
The doctrine of the Church developed early in the opposite direction.
It was its fighting spirit and not a love of peace that made
Christianity a state religion under Constantine. Nor was Augustine
the first of the Church Fathers to regard military service as
permissible. To come to a later time, this change of attitude has
been ascribed partly to the rise of Mahometan power and the wave of
fanaticism which broke over Europe. To destroy these unbelievers with
fire and sword was regarded as a deed of piety pleasing to God. Hence
the wars of the Crusades against the infidel were holy wars, and
appear as a new element in the history of civilisation. The nations
of ancient times had known only civil and foreign war.[14] They had
rebelled at home, and they had fought mainly for material interests
abroad. In the Middle Ages there were, besides, religious wars and,
with the rise of Feudalism, private war:[15] among all the powers
of the Dark Ages and for centuries later, none was more aggressive
than the Catholic Church, nor a more active and untiring defender of
its rights and claims, spiritual or temporal. It was in some respects
a more warlike institution than the states of Greece and Rome. It
struggled through centuries with the Emperor:[16] it pronounced its
ban against disobedient states and disloyal cities: it pursued with
its vengeance each heretical or rebellious prince: unmindful of its
early traditions about peace, it showed in every crisis a fiercely
military spirit.[17]
[14] There were so-called “Sacred Wars” in Greece, but these were
due mainly to disputes caused by the Amphictyonic League. They
were not religious, in the sense in which we apply the epithet to
the Thirty Years’ war.
[15] “The administration of justice among rude illiterate people,
was not so accurate, or decisive, or uniform, as to induce men
to submit implicitly to its determinations. Every offended baron
buckled on his armour, and sought redress at the head of his
vassals. His adversary met him in like hostile array. Neither
of them appealed to impotent laws which could afford them no
protection. Neither of them would submit points, in which their
honour and their passions were warmly interested, to the slow
determination of a judicial inquiry. Both trusted to their swords
for the decision of the contest.” Robertson’s _History of Charles
V._, (_Works_, vol. V.) Sect. I., p. 38.
[16] Erasmus in the “Ἰχθυοφαγία” (_Colloquies_, Bailey’s ed.,
Vol. II., pp. 55, 56) puts forward the suggestion that a general
peace might be obtained in the Christian world, if the Emperor
would remit something of his right and the Pope some part of his.
[17] Cf. Robertson, _op. cit._, Sect. III., p. 106, _seq._
For more than a thousand years the Church counted fighting
clergy[18] among its most active supporters. This strange anomaly
was, it must be said, at first rather suffered in deference to public
opinion than encouraged by ecclesiastical canons and councils, but it
gave rise to great discontent at the time of the Reformation.[19] The
whole question of the lawfulness of military service for Christians
was then raised again. “If there be anything in the affairs of
mortals,” wrote Erasmus at this time (_Opera_, II., _Prov._, 951
C) “which it becomes us deliberately to attack, which we ought
indeed to shun by every possible means, to avert and to abolish,
it is certainly war, than which there is nothing more wicked, more
mischievous or more widely destructive in its effects, nothing harder
to be rid of, or more horrible and, in a word, more unworthy of a
man, not to say of a Christian.”[20] The mediæval Church indeed
succeeded, by the establishment of such institutions as the Truce
of God, in setting some limits to the fury of the soldier: but its
endeavours (and it made several to promote peace)[21] were only to
a trifling extent successful. Perhaps custom and public opinion in
feudal Europe were too strong, perhaps the Church showed a certain
apathy in denouncing the evils of a military society: no doubt the
theoretical tenets of its doctrine did less to hinder war than its
own strongly military tendency, its lust for power and the force of
its example did to encourage it.
[18] Robertson (_op. cit._, Note XXI., p. 483) quotes the
following statement: “flamma, ferro, caede, possessiones
ecclesiarum praelati defendebant.” (Guido Abbas ap. Du Cange, p.
179.)
[19] J. A. Farrar, in a pamphlet, (reprinted from the
_Gentleman’s Magazine_, vol. 257, 1884) on _War and
Christianity_, quotes the following passage from Wycliffe in
which he protests against this blot upon the Church and Christian
professions.—“Friars now say that bishops can fight best of all
men, and that it falleth most properly to them, since they are
lords of all this world. They say Christ bade His disciples sell
their coats, and buy them swords; but whereto, if not to fight?
Thus friars make a great array, and stir up many men to fight.
But Christ taught not His apostles to fight with a sword of iron,
but with the sword of God’s Word, and which standeth in meekness
of heart and in the prudence of man’s tongue.... If man-slaying
in others be odious to God, much more in priests, who should be
vicars of Christ.” See also the passage where Erasmus points
out that King David was not permitted to build a temple to God,
because he was a man of blood. “Nolo clericos ullo sanguine
contaminari. Gravis impietas!” (_Opera_, IX., 370 B.)
This question had already been considered by Thomas Aquinas, who
decided that the clergy ought not to be allowed to fight, because
the practices of warfare, although right and meritorious in
themselves, were not in accordance with a holy calling. (_Summa_,
II. 2: Qu. 40.)
Aquinas held that war—excluding private war—is justifiable in a
just cause. So too did Luther, (cf. his pamphlet: _Ob Kriegsleute
auch in seligem Stande sein können?_) Calvin and Zwingli, the
last of whom died sword in hand.
With regard to the question of a fighting clergy, the passage
quoted from Origen (pp. 14, 15, above) has considerable interest,
Origen looks upon the active participation of priests in warfare
as something which everyone would admit to be impossible.
[20] See also the _Querela Pacis_, 630 B., (_Opera_,
IV.):—“Whosoever preaches Christ, preaches peace.” Erasmus even
goes the length of saying that the most iniquitous peace is
better than the most just war (_op. cit._, 636 C).
[21] Cf. Robertson, _op. cit._, Note XXI. p. 483 and Sect. I., p.
39.
Hence, in spite of Christianity and its early vision of a brotherhood
of men, the history of the Middle Ages came nearer to a realization
of the idea of perpetual war than was possible in ancient times.
The tendency of the growth of Roman supremacy was to diminish the
number of wars, along with the number of possible causes of racial
friction. It united many nations in one great whole, and gave them,
to a certain extent, a common culture and common interests; even,
when this seemed prudent, a common right of citizenship. The fewer
the number of boundaries, the less the likelihood of war. The
establishment of great empires is of necessity a force, and a great
and permanent force working on the side of peace. With the fall of
Rome this guarantee was removed.
_The Development of the New Science of International Law._
Out of the ruins of the old feudal system arose the modern state
as a free independent unity. Private war between individuals or
classes of society was now branded as a breach of the peace: it
became the exclusive right of kings to appeal to force. War, wrote
Gentilis[22] towards the end of sixteenth century, is the just or
unjust conflict between states. Peace was now regarded as the normal
condition of society. As a result of these great developments in
which the name “state” acquired new meaning, jurisprudence freed
itself from the trammelling conditions of mediæval Scholasticism. Men
began to consider the problem of the rightfulness or wrongfulness of
war, to question even the possibility of a war on rightful grounds.
Out of theses new ideas—partly too as one of the fruits of the
Reformation,[23]—arose the first consciously formulated principles of
the science of international law, whose fuller, but not yet complete,
development belongs to modern times.
[22] It is uncertain in what year the _De Jure Belli_ of Gentilis
was published—a work to which Grotius acknowledges considerable
indebtedness. Whewell, in the preface to his translation of
Grotius, gives the date 1598, but some writers suppose it to have
been ten years earlier.
[23] This came about in two ways. The Church of Rome discouraged
the growth of national sentiment. At the Reformation the
independence and unity of the different nations were for the
first time recognised. That is to say, the Reformation laid the
foundation for a science of international law. But, from another
point of view, it not only made such a code of rules possible,
it made it necessary. The effect of the Reformation was not to
diminish the number of wars in which religious belief could play
a part. Moreover, it displaced the Pope from his former position
as arbiter in Europe without setting up any judicial tribunal in
his stead.
From the beginning of history every age, every people has something
to show here, be it only a rudimentary sense of justice in their
dealings with one another. We may instance the Amphictyonic League
in Greece which, while it had a merely Hellenic basis and was
mainly a religious survival, shows the germ of some attempt at
arbitration between Greek states. Among the Romans we have the _jus
feciale_[24] and the _jus gentium_, as distinguished from the civil
law of Rome, and certain military regulations about the taking of
booty in war. Ambassadors were held inviolate in both countries;
the formal declaration of war was never omitted. Many Roman writers
held the necessity of a just cause for war. But nowhere do these
considerations form the subject matter of a special science.
[24] Cf. Cicero: _De Officiis_, I. xi. “Belli quidem aequitas
sanctissime feciali populi Romani jure perscripta est.” (See the
reference to Lawrence’s comments on this subject, p. 9 above.)
“Wars,” says Cicero, “are to be undertaken for this end,
that we may live in peace without being injured; but when we
obtain the victory, we must preserve those enemies who behaved
without cruelty or inhumanity during the war: for example,
our forefathers received, even as members of their state, the
Tuscans, the Æqui, the Volscians, the Sabines and the Hernici,
but utterly destroyed Carthage and Numantia.... And, while
we are bound to exercise consideration toward those whom we
have conquered by force, so those should be received into
our protection who throw themselves upon the honour of our
general, and lay down their arms,” (_op. cit._, I. xi., Bohn’s
Translation).... “In engaging in war we ought to make it appear
that we have no other view but peace.” (_op. cit._, I. xxiii.)
In fulfilling a treaty we must not sacrifice the spirit to the
letter (_De Officiis_, I. x). “There are also rights of war, and
the faith of an oath is often to be kept with an enemy.” (_op.
cit._, III. xxix.)
This is the first statement by a classical writer in which the
idea of justice being due to an enemy appears. Cicero goes
further. Particular states, he says, (_De Legibus_, I. i.) are
only members of a whole governed by reason.
In the Middle Ages the development of these ideas received little
encouragement. All laws are silent in the time of war,[25] and this
was a period of war, both bloody and constant. There was no time
to think of the right or wrong of anything. Moreover, the Church
emphasised the lack of rights in unbelievers, and gave her blessing
on their annihilation.[26] The whole Christian world was filled with
the idea of a spiritual universal monarchy. Not such as that in
the minds of Greek and Jew and Roman who had been able to picture
international peace only under the form of a great national and
exclusive empire. In this great Christian state there were to be no
distinctions between nations; its sphere was bounded by the universe.
But, here, there was no room or recognition for independent national
states with equal and personal rights. This recognition, opposed
by the Roman Church, is the real basis of international law. The
Reformation was the means by which the personality of the peoples,
the unity and independence of the state were first openly admitted.
On this foundation, mainly at first in Protestant countries, the new
science developed rapidly. Like the civil state and the Christian
religion, international law may be called a peace institution.
[25] The saying is attributed to Pompey:—“Shall I, when I am
preparing for war, think of the laws?”
[26] This implied, however, the idea of a united Christendom as
against the infidel, with which we may compare the idea of a
united Hellas against Persia. In such things we have the germ not
only of international law, but of the ideal of federation.
_Grotius, Puffendorf and Vattel._
In the beginning of the seventeenth century, Grotius laid the
foundations of a code of universal law (_De Jure Belli et Pacis_,
1625) independent of differences of religion, in the hope that its
recognition might simplify the intercourse between the newly formed
nations. The primary object of this great work, written during the
misery and horrors of the Thirty Years’ war, was expressly to draw
attention to these evils and suggest some methods by which the
severity of warfare might be mitigated. Grotius originally meant to
explain only one chapter of the law of nations:[27] his book was
to be called _De Jure Belli_, but there is scarcely any subject of
international law which he leaves untouched. He obtained, moreover,
a general recognition for the doctrine of the Law of Nature which
exerted so strong an influence upon succeeding centuries; indeed,
between these two sciences, as between international law and
ethics, he draws no very sharp line of demarcation, although, on
the whole, in spite of an unscientific, scholastic use of quotation
from authorities, his treatment of the new field is clear and
comprehensive. Grotius made the attempt to set up an ethical
principle of right, in the stead of such doctrines of self-interest
as had been held by many of the ancient writers. There was a law, he
held, established in each state purely with a view to the interests
of that state, but, besides this, there was another higher law in
the interest of the whole society of nations. Its origin was divine;
the reason of man commanded his obedience. This was what we call
international law.[28]
[27] See Maine’s _Ancient Law_, pp. 50-53: pp. 96-101. Grotius
wrongly understood “Jus Gentium,” (“a collection of rules
and principles, determined by observation to be common to
the institutions which prevailed among the various Italian
tribes”) to mean “Jus _inter_ gentes.” The Roman expression for
International Law was not “Jus Gentium,” but “Jus Feciale.”
“Having adopted from the Antonine jurisconsults,” says Maine,
“the position that the Jus Gentium and the Jus Naturæ were
identical, Grotius, with his immediate predecessors and his
immediate successors, attributed to the Law of Nature an
authority which would never perhaps have been claimed for it,
if “Law of Nations” had not in that age been an ambiguous
expression. They laid down unreservedly that Natural Law is the
code of states, and thus put in operation a process which has
continued almost down to our own day, the process of engrafting
on the international system rules which are supposed to have
been evolved from the unassisted contemplation of the conception
of Nature. There is, too, one consequence of immense practical
importance to mankind which, though not unknown during the early
modern history of Europe, was never clearly or universally
acknowledged till the doctrines of the Grotian school had
prevailed. If the society of nations is governed by Natural
Law, the atoms which compose it must be absolutely equal. Men
under the sceptre of Nature are all equal, and accordingly
commonwealths are equal if the international state be one of
nature. The proposition that independent communities, however
different in size and power, are all equal in the view of the Law
of Nations, has largely contributed to the happiness of mankind,
though it is constantly threatened by the political tendencies
of each successive age. It is a doctrine which probably would
never have obtained a secure footing at all if International Law
had not been entirely derived from the majestic claims of Nature
by the Publicists who wrote after the revival of letters.” (_Op.
cit._, p. 100.)
[28] The name “International Law” was first given to the law of
nations by Bentham. (_Principles of Morals and Legislation, XIX._
§ xxv.)
Grotius distinctly holds, like Kant and Rousseau, and unlike Hobbes,
that the state can never be regarded as a unity or institution
separable from the people; the terms _civitas_, _communitas_,
_coetus_, _populus_, he uses indiscriminately. But these nations,
these independent units of society cannot live together side by side
just as they like; they must recognise one another as members of a
European society of states.[29] Law, he said, stands above force
even in war, “which may only be begun to pursue the right;” and the
beginning and manner of conduct of war rests on fixed laws and can be
justified only in certain cases. War is not to be done away with:
Grotius accepts it as fact,[30] (as Hobbes did later) as the natural
method for settling the disputes which were bound constantly to
arise between so many independent and sovereign nations. A terrible
scourge it must ever remain, but as the only available form of legal
procedure, it is sanctioned by the practice of states and not less by
the law of nature and of nations. Grotius did not advance beyond this
position. Every violation of the law of nations can be settled but in
one way—by war, the force of the stronger.
[29] In the Peace of Westphalia, 1648, the balance of power in
Europe was recognised on the basis of terms such as these.
[30] Grotius, however, is a painstaking student of Scripture, and
is willing to say something in favour of peace—not a permanent
peace, that is to say, the idea of which would scarcely be
likely to occur to anyone in the early years of the seventeenth
century—but a plea for fewer, shorter wars. “If therefore,”
he says, “a peace sufficiently safe can be had, it is not
ill secured by the condonation of offenses, and damages, and
expenses: especially among Christians, to whom the Lord has given
his peace as his legacy. And so St. Paul, his best interpreter,
exhorts us to live at peace with all men.... May God write these
lessons—He who alone can—on the hearts of all those who have
the affairs of Christendom in their hands.” (_De Jure Belli et
Pacis_, III. Ch. XXV., Whewell’s translation.)
See also _op. cit._, II., Ch. XXIII., Sect. VIII., where
Grotius recommends that Congresses of Christian Powers should
be held with a view to the peaceful settlement of international
differences.
The necessary distinction between law and ethics was drawn by
Puffendorf,[31] a successor of Grotius who gave an outwardly
systematic form to the doctrine of the great jurist, without adding
to it either strength or completeness. His views, when they were
not based upon the system of Grotius, were strongly influenced by
the speculation of Hobbes, his chronological predecessor, to whom we
shall have later occasion to refer. In the works of Vattel,[32] who
was, next to Rousseau, the most celebrated of Swiss publicists, we
find the theory of the customs and practice in war widely developed,
and the necessity for humanising its methods and limiting its
destructive effects upon neutral countries strongly emphasised.
Grotius and Puffendorf, while they recommend acts of mercy, hold that
there is legally no right which requires that a conquered enemy shall
be spared. This is a matter of humanity alone. It is to the praise
of Vattel that he did much to popularise among the highest and most
powerful classes of society, ideas of humanity in warfare, and of
the rights and obligations of nations. He is, moreover, the first to
make a clear separation between this science and the Law of Nature.
What, he asks, is international law as distinguished from the Law
of Nature? What are the powers of a state and the duties of nations
to one another? What are the causes of quarrel among nations, and
what the means by which they can be settled without any sacrifice of
dignity?
[31] Puffendorf’s best known work, _De Jure Naturæ et Gentium_,
was published in 1672.
[32] _Le Droit des Gens_ was published in 1758 and translated
into English by Joseph Chitty in 1797, (2nd ed., 1834).
They are, in the first place, a friendly conciliatory attitude; and
secondly, such means of settlement as mediation, arbitration and
Peace Congresses. These are the refuges of a peace-loving nation, in
cases where vital interests are not at stake. “Nature gives us no
right to use force, except where mild and conciliatory measures are
useless.” (_Law of Nations_, II. Ch. xviii. § 331.) “Every power owes
it in this matter to the happiness of human society to show itself
ready for every means of reconciliation, in cases where the interests
at stake are neither vital nor important.” (_ibid._ § 332.) At the
same time, it is never advisable that a nation should forgive an
insult which it has not the power to resent.
_The Dream of a Perpetual Peace._
But side by side with this development and gradual popularisation
of the new science of International Law, ideas of a less practical,
but not less fruitful kind had been steadily making their way and
obtaining a strong hold upon the popular mind. The Decree of Eternal
Pacification of 1495 had abolished private war, one of the heavy
curses of the Middle Ages. Why should it not be extended to banish
warfare between states as well? Gradually one proposal after another
was made to attain this end, or, at least, to smooth the way for
its future realisation. The first of these in point of time is to
be found in a somewhat bare, vague form in Sully’s _Memoirs_,[33]
said to have been published in 1634. Half a century later the Quaker
William Penn suggested an international tribunal of arbitration in
the interests of peace.[34] But it was by the French Abbé St. Pierre
that the problem of perpetual peace was fairly introduced into
political literature: and this, in an age of cabinet and dynastic
wars, while the dreary cost of the war of the Spanish succession was
yet unpaid. St. Pierre was the first who really clearly realised and
endeavoured to prove that the establishment of a permanent state of
peace is not only in the interest of the weaker, but is required
by the European society of nations and by the reason of man. From
the beginning of the history of humanity, poets and prophets had
cherished the “sweet dream” of a peaceful civilisation: it is in the
form of a practical project that this idea is new.
[33] _Mémoires ou Œconomies Royales D’Estat, Domestiques,
Politiques et Militaires de Henri le Grand, par Maximilian de
Bethune, Duc de Sully._
[34] See _International Tribunals_ (1899), p. 20 _seq._ Penn’s
_Essay towards the Present and Future Peace of Europe_ was
written about 1693, but is not included in all editions of his
works.
The ancient world actually represented a state of what was almost
perpetual war. This was the reality which confronted man, his
inevitable doom, it seemed, as it had been pronounced to the fallen
sinners of Eden. Peace was something which man had enjoyed once, but
forfeited. The myth- and poetry-loving Greeks, and, later, the poets
of Rome delighted to paint a state of eternal peace, not as something
to whose coming they could look forward in the future, but as a
golden age of purity whose records lay buried in the past, a paradise
which had been, but which was no more. Voices, more scientific, were
raised even in Greece in attempts, such as Aristotle’s, to show
that the evolution of man had been not a course of degeneration
from perfection, but of continual progress upwards from barbarism
to civilisation and culture. But the change in popular thinking on
this matter was due less to the arguments of philosophy than to a
practical experience of the causes which operate in the interests
of peace. The foundation of a universal empire under Alexander the
Great gave temporary rest to nations heretofore incessantly at war.
Here was a proof that the Divine Will had not decreed that man was
to work out his punishment under unchanging conditions of perpetual
warfare. This idea of a universal empire became the Greek ideal of a
perpetual peace. Such an empire was, in the language of the Stoics, a
world-state in which all men had rights of citizenship, in which all
other nations were absorbed.
Parallel to this ideal among the Greeks, we find the hope in Israel
of a Messiah whose coming was to bring peace, not only to the Jewish
race, but to all the nations of the earth. This idea stands out
in the sharpest contrast to the early nationalism of the Hebrew
people, who regarded every stranger as an idolater and an enemy.
The prophecies of Judaism, combined with the cosmopolitan ideas
of Greece, were the source of the idea, which is expressed in the
teaching of Christ, of a spiritual world-empire, an empire held
together solely by the tie of a common religion.
This hope of peace did not actually die during the first thousand
years of our era, nor even under the morally stagnating influences
of the Middle Ages. When feudalism and private war were abolished
in Europe, it wakened to a new life. Not merely in the mouths of
poets and religious enthusiasts was the cry raised against war, but
by scholars like Thomas More and Erasmus, jurists like Gentilis
and Grotius, men high in the state and in the eyes of Europe like
Henry IV. of France and the Duc de Sully or the Abbé de St. Pierre
whose _Projet de Paix Perpétuelle_ (1713)[35] obtained immediate
popularity and wide-spread fame. The first half of the eighteenth
century was already prepared to receive and mature a plan of this
kind.
[35] _Projet de traité pour rendre la paix perpétuelle entre les
souverains chrétiens._ The first two volumes of this work were
published in 1713 (trans. London, 1714); a third volume followed
in 1717.
_Henry IV. and St. Pierre._
The _Grand Dessein_ of Henry IV. is supposed to have been formed by
that monarch and reproduced in Sully’s _Memoirs_, written in 1634 and
discovered nearly a century later by St. Pierre. The story goes that
the Abbé found the book buried in an old garden. It has been shewn,
however, that there is little likelihood that this project actually
originated with the king, who probably corresponded fairly well to
Voltaire’s picture of him as war hero of the _Henriade_. The plan was
more likely conceived by Sully, and ascribed to the popular king for
the sake of the better hearing and greater influence it might in this
way be likely to have, and also because, thereby, it might be less
likely to create offence in political circles. St. Pierre himself may
or may not have been acquainted with the facts.
The so-called _Grand Dessein_ of Henry IV. was, shortly, as
follows.[36] It proposed to divide Europe between fifteen
Powers,[37] in such a manner that the balance of power should be
established and preserved. These were to form a Christian republic
on the basis of the freedom and equality of its members, the armed
forces of the federation being supported by fixed contribution. A
general council, consisting of representatives from the fifteen
states, was to make all laws necessary for cementing the union thus
formed and for maintaining the order once established. It would also
be the business of this senate to “deliberate on questions that might
arise, to occupy themselves with discussing different interests, to
settle quarrels amicably, to throw light upon and arrange all the
civil, political and religious affairs of Europe, whether internal or
foreign.” (_Mémoires_, vol. VI., p. 129 _seq._)
[36] The main articles of this and other peace projects are to
be found in _International Tribunals_, published by the Peace
Society.
[37] Professor Lorimer points out that Prussia, then the Duchy
of Brandenburg, is not mentioned. (_Institutes of the Law of
Nations_, II. Ch. VII., p. 219.)
This scheme of the king or his minister was expanded with great
thoroughness and clear-sightedness by the Abbé St. Pierre: none of
the many later plans for a perpetual peace has been so perfect in
details. He proposes that there should be a permanent and perpetual
union between, if possible, all Christian sovereigns—of whom he
suggests nineteen, excluding the Czar—“to preserve unbroken peace in
Europe,” and that a permanent Congress or senate should be formed
by deputies of the federated states. The union should protect weak
sovereigns, minors during a regency, and so on, and should banish
civil as well as international war—it should “render prompt and
adequate assistance to rulers and chief magistrates against seditious
persons and rebels.” All warfare henceforth is to be waged between
the troops of the federation—each nation contributing an equal
number—and the enemies of European security, whether outsiders or
rebellious members of the union. Otherwise, where it is possible,
all disputes occurring within the union are to be settled by the
arbitration of the senate, and the combined military force of the
federation is to be applied to drive the Turks out of Europe. There
is to be a rational rearrangement of boundaries, but after this no
change is to be permitted in the map of Europe. The union should bind
itself to tolerate the different forms of faith.
The objections to St. Pierre’s scheme are, many of them, obvious. He
himself produces sixty-two arguments likely to be raised against his
plan, and he examines these in turn with acuteness and eloquence.
But there are other criticisms which he was less likely to be able
to forestall. Of the nineteen states he names as a basis of the
federation, some have disappeared and the governments of others
have completely changed. Indeed St. Pierre’s scheme did not look
far beyond the present. But it has besides a too strongly political
character.[38] From this point of view, the Abbé’s plan amounts
practically to a European coalition against the Ottoman Empire.
Moreover, we notice with a smile that the French statesman and
patriot is not lost in the cosmopolitan political reformer. “The
kingdom of Spain shall not go out of the House of Bourbon!”[39]
France is to enjoy more than the privileges of honour; she is to reap
distinct material and political advantages from the union. Humanity
is to be a brotherhood, but, in the federation of nations, France is
to stand first.[40] We see that these “rêves d’un homme de bien,”
as Cardinal Dubois called them, are not without their practical
element. But the great mistake of St. Pierre is this: he actually
thought that his plan could be put into execution in the near future,
that an ideal of this kind was realisable at once.[41] “I, myself,
form’d it,” he says in the preface, “in full expectation to see it
one Day executed.” As Hobbes, says, “there can be nothing so absurd,
but may be found in the books of philosophers.”[42] St. Pierre was
not content to make his influence felt on the statesmen of his time
and prepare the way for the abolition of all arbitrary forms of
government. This was the flaw which drew down upon the good Abbé
Voltaire’s sneering epigram[43] and the irony of Leibniz.[44] Here,
above all, in this unpractical enthusiasm his scheme differs from
that of Kant.
[38] The same objection was raised by Leibniz (see his
_Observations_ on St. Pierre’s _Projet_) to the scheme of Henry
IV., who, says Leibniz, thought more of overthrowing the house of
Austria than of establishing a society of sovereigns.
[39] _Project_, Art. VI., Eng. trans. (1714), p. 119.
[40] St. Pierre was not blind to this aspect of the question.
Among the critical objections which he anticipates to his plan is
this,—that it promises too great an increase of strength to the
house of France, and that therefore the author would have been
wiser to conceal his nationality.
[41] St. Pierre, in what may be called an apology for the wording
of the title of his book (above, p. 32, _note_), justifies his
confidence in these words:—“The Pilot who himself seems uncertain
of the Success of his Voyage is not likely to persuade the
Passenger to embark.... I am persuaded, that it is not impossible
to find out Means sufficient and practicable to settle an
Everlasting Peace among Christians; and even believe, that the
Means which I have thought of are of that Nature.” (Preface to
_Project_, Eng. trans., 1714.)
[42] _Leviathan_, I. Ch. V.
[43] See too Voltaire’s allusion to St. Pierre in his
_Dictionary_, under “Religion.”
[44] Leibniz regarded the project of St. Pierre with an
indifference, somewhat tinged with contempt. In a letter to
Grimarest, (_Leibnit. Opera_, Dutens’ ed., 1768, Vol. V., pp.
65, 66: in _Epist._, ed. Kortholt., Vol. III., p. 327) he
writes:—“I have seen something of M. de St. Pierre’s plan for
maintaining perpetual peace in Europe. It reminds me of an
inscription outside of a churchyard which ran, ‘_Pax Perpetua_.
For the dead, it is true, fight no more. But the living, are of
another mind, and the mightiest among them have little respect
for tribunals.’” This is followed by the ironical suggestion
that a court of arbitration should be established at Rome of
which the Pope should be made president; while at the same time
the old spiritual authority should be restored to the Church,
and excommunication be the punishment of non-compliance with the
arbitral decree. “Such plans,” he adds, “are as likely to succeed
as that of M. de St. Pierre. But as we are allowed to write
novels, why should we find fault with fiction which would bring
back the golden age?” But see also _Observations sur le Projet
d’une Paix Perpétuelle de M. l’Abbé de St. Pierre_ (Dutens, V.,
esp. p. 56) and the letter to Remond de Montmort (_ibid._ pp. 20,
21) where Leibniz considers this project rather more seriously.
_Rousseau’s Criticism of St. Pierre._
Rousseau took St. Pierre’s project[45] much more seriously than
either Leibniz or Voltaire. But sovereigns, he thought, are deaf to
the voice of justice; the absolutism of princely power would never
allow a king to submit to a tribunal of nations. Moreover war was,
according to Rousseau’s experience, a matter not between nations, but
between princes and cabinets. It was one of the ordinary pleasures of
royal existence and one not likely to be voluntarily given up.[46] We
know that history has not supported Rousseau’s contention. Dynastic
wars are now no more. The Great Powers have shown themselves able
to impose their own conditions, where the welfare and security of
Europe have seemed to demand it. Such a development seemed impossible
enough in the eighteenth century. In the military organisation
of the nations of Europe and in the necessity of making their
internal development subordinate to the care for their external
security, Rousseau saw the cause of all the defects in their
administration.[47] The formation of unions on the model of the Swiss
Confederation or the German _Bund_ would, he thought, be in the
interest of all rulers. But great obstacles seemed to him to lie in
the way of the realisation of such a project as that of St. Pierre.
“Without doubt,” says Rousseau in conclusion, “the proposal of a
perpetual peace is at present an absurd one.... It can only be put
into effect by methods which are violent in themselves and dangerous
to humanity. One cannot conceive of the possibility of a federative
union being established, except by a revolution. And, that granted,
who among us would venture to say whether this European federation is
to be desired or to be feared? It would work, perhaps, more harm in a
moment than it would prevent in the course of centuries.” (_Jugement
sur la Paix Perpétuelle._)
[45] “C’est un livre solide et sensé,” says Rousseau (_Jugement
sur la Paix Perpétuelle_), “et il est très important qu’il
existe.” [This _Jugement_ is appended to Rousseau’s _Extrait du
Projet de Paix Perpétuelle de Monsieur l’Abbé de Saint-Pierre_,
1761.]
[46] Cf. Cowper: _The Winter Morning Walk_:—
“Great princes have great playthings. Some have play’d
At hewing mountains into men, and some
At building human wonders mountain high.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Some seek diversion in the tented field,
And make the sorrows of mankind their sport.
But war’s a game, which, were their subjects wise,
Kings should not play at. Nations would do well
T’extort their truncheons from the puny hands
Of heroes, whose infirm and baby minds
Are gratified with mischief, and who spoil,
Because men suffer it, their toy the world.”
[47] “Les troupes réglées, peste et dépopulation de l’Europe,
ne sont bonnes qu’a deux fins: ou pour attaquer et conquérir
les voisins, ou pour enchâiner et asservir les citoyens.”
(_Gouvernement de Pologne_, Ch. XII.)
_The Position of Hobbes._
The most profound and searching analysis of this problem comes
from Immanuel Kant, whose indebtedness in the sphere of politics
to Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu and Rousseau it is difficult to
overestimate. Kant’s doctrine of the sovereignty of the people comes
to him from Locke through Rousseau. His explanation of the origin
of society is practically that of Hobbes. The direct influence on
politics of this philosopher, apart from his share in moulding the
Kantian theory of the state, is one we cannot afford to neglect. His
was a great influence on the new science just thrown on the world
by Grotius, and his the first clear and systematic statement we
have of the nature of society and the establishment of the state.
The natural state of man, says Hobbes, is a state of war,[48] a
_bellum omnium contra omnes_, where all struggle for honour and for
preferment and the prizes to which every individual is by natural
right equally entitled, but which can of necessity fall only to the
few, the foremost in the race. Men hate and fear the society of their
kind, but through this desire to excel are forced to seek it: only
where there are many can there be a first. This state of things, this
apparent sociability which is brought about by and coupled with the
least sociable of instincts, becomes unendurable. “It is necessary to
peace,” writes Hobbes (_On Dominion_, Ch. VI. 3) “that a man be so
far forth protected against the violence of others, that he may live
securely; that is, that he may have no just cause to fear others, so
long as he doth them no injury. Indeed, to make men altogether safe
from mutual harms, so as they cannot be hurt or injuriously killed,
is impossible; and, therefore, comes not within deliberation.” But to
protect them so far as is possible the state is formed. Hobbes has no
great faith in human contracts or promises. Man’s nature is malicious
and untrustworthy. A coercive power is necessary to guarantee this
long-desired security within the community. “We must therefore,” he
adds, “provide for our security, not by compacts, but by punishments;
and there is then sufficient provision made, when there are so great
punishments appointed for every injury, as apparently it prove a
greater evil to have done it, than not to have done it. For all men,
by a necessity of nature, choose that which to them appears to be the
less evil.” (_Op. cit._, Ch. VI. 4.)
[48] Hobbes realises clearly that there probably never was such a
state of war all over the world nor a state of nature conforming
to a common type. The case is parallel to the use of the term
“original contract” as an explanation of the manner in which the
civil state came to be formed. (Cf. p. 52, _note_.)
See also Hume (_Inquiry concerning the Principles of Morals,_
Sect. III. Part I.). “This _poetical_ fiction of the _golden age_
is, in some respects, of a piece with the _philosophical_ fiction
of the _state of nature_; only that the former is represented
as the most charming and most peaceable condition, which can
possibly be imagined; whereas the latter is painted out as a
state of mutual war and violence, attended with the most extreme
necessity.” This fiction of a state of nature as a state of war,
says Hume, (in a note to this passage) is not the invention of
Hobbes. Plato (_Republic_, II. III. IV.) refutes a hypothesis
very like it, and Cicero (_Pro Sext._ l. 42) regards it as a fact
universally acknowledged.
Cf. also Spinoza (_Tract. Pol._ c. ii. § 14): “Homines ex natura
hostes.” And (c. v. § 2): “Homines civiles non nascuntur sed
fiunt.” These expressions are to be understood, says Bluntschli
(_Theory of the State_, IV. Ch. vi., p. 284, _note_ a), “rather
as a logical statement of what _would be_ the condition of
man apart from civil society, than as distinctly implying a
historical theory.”
While starting from the same premises, Spinoza carries Hobbes’
political theories to their logical conclusion. If we admit that
right lies with might, then right is with the people in any
revolution successfully carried out. (But see Hobbes’ Preface to
the _Philosophical Rudiments_ and Kant’s _Perpetual Peace_, p.
188, _note_.) Spinoza, in a letter, thus alludes to this point of
difference:—“As regards political theories, the difference which
you inquire about between Hobbes and myself, consists in this,
that I always preserve natural right intact, and only allot to
the chief magistrates in every state a right over their subjects
commensurate with the excess of their power over the power of
the subjects. This is what always takes place in the state of
nature.” (Epistle 50, _Works_, Bohn’s ed., Vol. II.)
These precautions secure that relative peace within the state which
is one of the conditions of the safety of the people. But it is,
besides, the duty of a sovereign to guarantee an adequate protection
to his subjects against foreign enemies. A state of defence as
complete and perfect as possible is not only a national duty, but an
absolute necessity. The following statement of the relation of the
state to other states shows how closely Hobbes has been followed by
Kant. “There are two things necessary,” says Hobbes, (_On Dominion_,
Ch. XIII. 7) “for the people’s defence; to be warned and to be
forearmed. _For the state of commonwealths considered in themselves,
is natural, that is to say, hostile._[49] Neither, if they cease from
fighting, is it therefore to be called peace; but rather a breathing
time, in which one enemy observing the motion and countenance of the
other, values his security not according to pacts, but the forces and
counsels of his adversary.”
[49] The italics are mine.—[Tr.]
Hobbes is a practical philosopher: no man was less a dreamer, a
follower after ideals than he. He is, moreover, a pessimist, and
his doctrine of the state is a political absolutism,[50] the form
of government which above all has been, and is, favourable to war.
He would no doubt have ridiculed the idea of a perpetual peace
between nations, had such a project as that of St. Pierre—a practical
project, counting upon a realisation in the near future—been brought
before him. He might not even have accepted it in the very much
modified form which Kant adopts, that of an ideal—an unattainable
ideal—towards which humanity could not do better than work. He
expected the worst possible from man the individual. _Homo homini
lupus._ The strictest absolutism, amounting almost to despotism,
was required to keep the vicious propensities of the human animal
in check. States he looked upon as units of the same kind, members
also of a society. They had, and openly exhibited, the same faults
as individual men. They too might be driven with a strong enough
coercive force behind them, but not without it; and such a coercive
force as this did not exist in a society of nations. Federation and
federal troops are terms which represent ideas of comparatively
recent origin. Without something of this kind, any enduring peace
was not to be counted upon. International relations were and
must remain at least potentially warlike in character. Under no
circumstances could ideal conditions be possible either between the
members of a state or between the states themselves. Human nature
could form no satisfactory basis for a counsel of perfection.
[50] Professor Paulsen (_Immanuel Kant_, 2nd ed., 1899, p.
359—Eng. trans., p. 353) points out that pessimism and absolutism
usually go together in the doctrines of philosophers. He gives as
instances Hobbes, Kant and Schopenhauer.
Hobbes (_On Dominion_, Ch. X. 3, _seq._) regarded an absolute
monarchy as the only proper form of government, while in the
opinion of Locke, (_On Civil Government_, II. Ch. VII. §§ 90,
91) it was no better than a state of nature. Kant would not have
gone quite so far. As a philosopher, he upheld the sovereignty
of the people and rejected a monarchy which was not governed in
accordance with republican principles; as a citizen, he denied
the right of resistance to authority. (Cf. _Perpetual Peace_, pp.
126, 188, _note_.)
Hence Hobbes never thought of questioning the necessity of war.
It was in his eyes the natural condition of European society; but
certain rules were necessary both for its conduct and, where this
was compatible with a nation’s dignity and prosperity, for its
prevention. He held that international law was only a part of the
Law of Nature, and that this Law of Nature laid certain obligations
upon nations and their kings. Mediation must be employed between
disputants as much as possible, the person of the mediators of
peace being held inviolate; an umpire ought to be chosen to decide
a controversy, to whose judgment the parties in dispute agree to
submit themselves; such an arbiter must be impartial. These are all
what Hobbes calls precepts of the Law of Nature. And he appeals to
the Scriptures in confirmation of his assertion that peace is the
way of righteousness and that the laws of nature of which these are
a few are also laws of the heavenly kingdom. But peace is like the
straight path of Christian endeavour, difficult to find and difficult
to keep. We must seek after it where it may be found; but, having
done this and sought in vain, we have no alternative but to fall back
upon war. Reason requires “that every man ought to endeavour peace,”
(_Lev._ I. Ch. XIV.) “as far as he has hope of obtaining it; and
when he cannot obtain it, that he may seek, and use, all helps, and
advantages of war.”[51] This, says Hobbes elsewhere, (_On Liberty_,
Ch. I. 15) is the dictate of right reason, the first and fundamental
law of nature.
[51] We find the same rule laid down as early as the time of
Dante. Cf. _De Monarchia_, Bk. II. 9:—“When two nations quarrel
they are bound to try in every possible way to arrange the
quarrel by means of discussion: it is only when this is hopeless
that they may declare war.”
_Kant’s Idea of a Perpetual Peace._
With regard to the problems of international law, Kant is of course
a hundred and fifty years ahead of Hobbes. But he starts from the
same point: his theory of the beginning of society is practically
identical with that of the older philosopher. Men are by nature
imperfect creatures, unsociable and untrustworthy, cursed by a love
of glory, of possession, and of power, passions which make happiness
something for ever unattainable by them. Hobbes is content to leave
them here with their imperfections, and let a strong government
help them out as it may. But not so Kant. He looks beyond man
the individual, developing slowly by stages scarcely measurable,
progressing at one moment, and the next, as it seems, falling behind:
he looks beyond the individual, struggling and never attaining, to
the race. Here Kant is no pessimist. The capacities implanted in
man by nature are not all for evil: they are, he says, “destined to
unfold themselves completely in the course of time, and in accordance
with the end to which they are adapted.” (_Idea of a Universal
History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View_, 1784. Prop. 1.) This
end of humanity is the evolution of man from the stage of mere
self-satisfied animalism to a high state of civilisation. Through
his own reason man is to attain a perfect culture, intellectual and
moral. In this long period of struggle, the potential faculties
which nature or Providence has bestowed upon him reach their full
development. The process in which this evolution takes place is what
we call history.
To man nature has given none of the perfect animal equipments for
self-preservation and self-defence which she has bestowed on others
of her creatures. But she has given to him reason and freedom of
will, and has determined that through these faculties and without the
aid of instinct he shall win for himself a complete development of
his capacities and natural endowments. It is, says Kant, no happy
life that nature has marked out for man. He is filled with desires
which he can never satisfy. His life is one of endeavour and not of
attainment: not even the consciousness of the well-fought battle is
his, for the struggle is more or less an unconscious one, the end
unseen. Only in the race, and not in the individual, can the natural
capacities of the human species reach full development. Reason, says
Kant, (Prop. 2, _op. cit._) “does not itself work by instinct, but
requires experiments, exercise and instruction in order to advance
gradually from one stage of insight to another. Hence each individual
man would necessarily have to live an enormous length of time, in
order to learn by himself how to make a complete use of all his
natural endowments. Or, if nature should have given him but a short
lease of life, as is actually the case, reason would then require an
almost interminable series of generations, the one handing down its
enlightenment to the other, in order that the seeds she has sown in
our species may be brought at last to a stage of development which
is in perfect accordance with her design.” Man the individual shall
travel towards the land of promise and fight for its possession, but
not he, nor his children, nor his children’s children shall inherit
the land. “Only the latest comers can have the good fortune of
inhabiting the dwelling which the long series of their predecessors
have toiled—though,” adds Kant, “without any conscious intent—to
build up without even the possibility of participating in the
happiness which they were preparing.” (Proposition 3.)
The means which nature employs to bring about this development of
all the capacities implanted in men is their mutual antagonism in
society—what Kant calls the “unsocial sociableness of men, that is to
say, their inclination to enter into society, an inclination which
yet is bound up at every point with a resistance which threatens
continually to break up the society so formed.” (Proposition 4.) Man
hates society, and yet there alone he can develop his capacities; he
cannot live there peaceably, and yet cannot live without it. It is
the resistance which others offer to his inclinations and will—which
he, on his part, shows likewise to the desires of others—that awakens
all the latent powers of his nature and the determination to conquer
his natural propensity to indolence and love of material comfort
and to struggle for the first place among his fellow-creatures, to
satisfy, in outstripping them, his love of glory and possession and
power. “Without those, in themselves by no means lovely, qualities
which set man in social opposition to man, so that each finds his
selfish claims resisted by the selfishness of all the others, men
would have lived on in an Arcadian shepherd life, in perfect
harmony, contentment, and mutual love; but all their talents would
forever have remained hidden and undeveloped. Thus, kindly as the
sheep they tended, they would scarcely have given to their existence
a greater value than that of their cattle. And the place among the
ends of creation which was left for the development of rational
beings would not have been filled. Thanks be to nature for the
unsociableness, for the spiteful competition of vanity, for the
insatiate desires of gain and power! Without these, all the excellent
natural capacities of humanity would have slumbered undeveloped.
Man’s will is for harmony; but nature knows better what is good for
his species: her will is for dissension. He would like a life of
comfort and satisfaction, but nature wills that he should be dragged
out of idleness and inactive content and plunged into labour and
trouble, in order that he may be made to seek in his own prudence
for the means of again delivering himself from them. The natural
impulses which prompt this effort,—the causes of unsociableness and
mutual conflict, out of which so many evils spring,—are also in turn
the spurs which drive him to the development of his powers. Thus,
they really betray the providence of a wise Creator, and not the
interference of some evil spirit which has meddled with the world
which God has nobly planned, and enviously overturned its order.”
(Proposition 4: Caird’s translation in _The Critical Philosophy of
Kant_, Vol. II., pp. 550, 551.)
The problem now arises, How shall men live together, each free to
work out his own development, without at the same time interfering
with a like liberty on the part of his neighbour? The solution
of this problem is the state. Here the liberty of each member is
guaranteed and its limits strictly defined. A perfectly just civil
constitution, administered according to the principles of right,
would be that under which the greatest possible amount of liberty
was left to each citizen within these limits. This is the ideal
of Kant, and here lies the greatest practical problem which has
presented itself to humanity. An ideal of this kind is difficult of
realisation. But nature imposes no such duty upon us. “Out of such
crooked material as man is made,” says Kant, “nothing can be hammered
quite straight.” (Proposition 6.) We must make our constitution as
good as we can and, with that, rest content.
The direct cause of this transition from a state of nature and
conditions of unlimited freedom to civil society with its coercive
and restraining forces is found in the evils of that state of nature
as they are painted by Hobbes. A wild lawless freedom becomes
impossible for man: he is compelled to seek the protection of a
civil society. He lives in uncertainty and insecurity: his liberty
is so far worthless that he cannot peacefully enjoy it. For this
peace he voluntarily yields up some part of his independence. The
establishment of the state is in the interest of his development to
a higher civilisation. It is more—the guarantee of his existence
and self-preservation. This is the sense, says Professor Paulsen,
in which Kant like Hobbes regards the state as “resting on a
contract,”[52] that is to say, on the free will of all.[53] _Volenti
non fit injuria._ Only, adds Paulsen, we must remember that this
contract is not a historical fact, as it seemed to some writers of
the eighteenth century, but an “idea of reason”: we are speaking here
not of the history of the establishment of the state, but of the
reason of its existence. (Paulsen’s _Kant_, p. 354.)[54]
[52] Rousseau (_Contrat Social_: I. vi.) regards the social
contract as tacitly implied in every actual society: its articles
“are the same everywhere, and are everywhere tacitly admitted
and recognised, even though they may never have found formal
expression” in any constitution. In the same way he speaks of
a state of nature “which no longer exists, which perhaps never
has existed.” (Preface to the _Discourse on the Causes of
Inequality_.) But Rousseau’s interpretation of these terms is, on
the whole, literal in spite of these single passages. He speaks
throughout the _Contrat Social_, as if history could actually
record the signing and drawing up of such documents. Hobbes,
Hooker, (_Ecclesiastical Polity_, I. sect. 10—see also Ritchie:
_Darwin and Hegel_, p. 210 _seq._) Hume and Kant use more careful
language. “It cannot be denied,” writes Hume, (_Of the Original
Contract_) “that all government is, at first, founded on a
contract and that the most ancient rude combinations of mankind
were formed chiefly by that principle. In vain are we asked in
what records this charter of our liberties is registered. It was
not written on parchment, nor yet on leaves or barks of trees. It
preceded the use of writing and all the other civilised arts of
life. But we trace it plainly in the nature of man, and in the
equality, or something approaching equality, which we find in all
the individuals of that species.”
This fine passage expresses admirably the views of Kant on this
point. Cf. _Werke_, (Rosenkranz) IX. 160. The original contract
is merely an idea of reason, one of those ideas which we think
into things in order to explain them.
Hobbes does not professedly make the contract historical, but in
Locke’s _Civil Government_ (II. Ch. VIII. § 102) there is some
attempt made to give it a historical basis.—By consent all were
equal, “till by the same consent they set rulers over themselves.
So that their politic societies all began from a voluntary union,
and the mutual agreement of men freely acting in the choice of
their governors, and forms of government.”
Bluntschli points out (_Theory of the State_, IV. ix., p. 294
and _note_) that the same theory of contract on which Hobbes’
doctrine of an absolute government was based was made the
justification of violent resistance to the government at the time
of the French Revolution. The theory was differently applied by
Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau. According to the first, men leave
the “state of nature” when they surrender their rights to a
sovereign, and return to that state during revolution. But, for
Rousseau, this sovereign authority is the people: a revolution
would be only a change of ministry. (See _Cont. Soc._, III. Ch.
xviii.) Again Locke holds revolution to be justifiable in all
cases where the governments have not fulfilled the trust reposed
by the people in them. (Cf. Kant’s _Perpetual Peace_, p. 188,
_note_).
[53] “If you unite many men,” writes Rousseau, (_Cont. Soc._, IV.
I.) “and consider them as one body, they will have but one will;
and that will must be to promote the common safety and general
well-being of all.” This _volonté générale_, the common element
of all particular wills, cannot be in conflict with any of them.
(_Op. cit._, II. iii.)
[54] In Eng. trans., see p. 348.
In this civil union, self-sought, yet sought reluctantly, man is able
to turn his most unlovable qualities to a profitable use. They bind
this society together. They are the instrument by which he wins for
himself self-culture. It is here with men, says Kant, as it is with
the trees in a forest: “just because each one strives to deprive the
other of air and sun, they compel each other to seek both above,
and thus they grow beautiful and straight. Whereas those that, in
freedom and isolation from one another, shoot out their branches at
will, grow stunted and crooked and awry.” (Proposition 5, _op. cit._)
Culture, art, and all that is best in the social order are the fruits
of that self-loving unsociableness in man.
The problem of the establishment of a perfect civil constitution
cannot be solved, says this treatise (_Idea for a Universal
History_), until the external relations of states are regulated
in accordance with principles of right. For, even if the ideal
internal constitution were attained, what end would it serve in the
evolution of humanity, if commonwealths themselves were to remain
like individuals in a state of nature, each existing in uncontrolled
freedom, a law unto himself? This condition of things again cannot
be permanent. Nature uses the same means as before to bring about a
state of law and order. War, present or near at hand, the strain
of constant preparation for a possible future campaign or the heavy
burden of debt and devastation left by the last,—these are the evils
which must drive states to leave a lawless, savage state of nature,
hostile to man’s inward development, and seek in union the end of
nature, peace. All wars are the attempts nature makes to bring about
new political relations between nations, relations which, in their
very nature, cannot be, and are not desired to be, permanent. These
combinations will go on succeeding each other, until at last a
federation of all powers is formed for the establishment of perpetual
peace. This is the end of humanity, demanded by reason. Justice
will reign, not only in the state, but in the whole human race when
perpetual peace exists between the nations of the world.
This is the point of view of the _Idea for a Universal History_. But
equally, we may say, law and justice will reign between nations,
when a legally and morally perfect constitution adorns the state.
External perpetual peace presupposes internal peace—peace civil,
social, economic, religious. Now, when men are perfect—and what
would this be but perfection—how can there be war? Cardinal Fleury’s
only objection—no light one—to St. Pierre’s project was that, as
even the most peace-loving could not avoid war, all men must first
be men of noble character. This seems to be what is required in
the treatise on _Perpetual Peace_. Kant demands, to a certain
extent, the moral regeneration of man. There must be perfect honesty
in international dealings, good faith in the interpretation and
fulfilment of treaties and so on (Art. 1)[55]: and again, every state
must have a republican constitution—a term by which Kant understands
a constitution as nearly as possible in accordance with the spirit
of right. (Art. 1.)[56] This is to say that we have to start with
our reformation at home, look first to the culture and education
and morals of our citizens, then to our foreign relations. This is
a question of self-interest as well as of ethics. On the civil and
religious liberty of a state depends its commercial success. Kant
saw the day coming, when industrial superiority was to be identified
with political pre-eminence. The state which does not look to the
enlightenment and liberty of its subjects must fail in the race. But
the advantages of a high state of civilisation are not all negative.
The more highly developed the individuals who form a state, the more
highly developed is its consciousness of its obligations to other
nations. In the ignorance and barbarism of races lies the great
obstacle to a reign of law among states. Uncivilised states cannot
be conceived as members of a federation of Europe. First, the
perfect civil constitution according to right: then the federation of
these law-abiding Powers. This is the path which reason marks out.
The treatise on _Perpetual Peace_ seems to be in this respect more
practical than the _Idea for a Universal History_. But it matters
little which way we take it. The point of view is the same in both
cases: the end remains the development of man towards good, the order
of his steps in this direction is indifferent.
[55] See p. 107.
[56] See p. 120.
_The Political and Social Conditions of Kant’s Time._
The history of the human race, viewed as a whole, Kant regards
as the realisation of a hidden plan of nature to bring about a
political constitution internally and externally perfect—the only
condition under which the faculties of man can be fully developed.
Does experience support this theory? Kant thought that, to a certain
degree, it did. This conviction was not, however, a fruit of his
experience of citizenship in Prussia, an absolute dynastic state,
a military monarchy waging perpetual dynastic wars of the kind he
most hotly condemned. Kant had no feeling of love to Prussia,[57]
and little of a citizen’s patriotic pride, or even interest, in its
political achievements. This was partly because of his sympathy with
republican doctrines: partly due to his love of justice and peculiar
hatred of war,[58] a hatred based, no doubt, not less on principle
than on a close personal experience of the wretchedness it brings
with it. It was not the political and social conditions in which he
lived which fostered Kant’s love of liberty and gave him inspiration,
unless in the sense in which the mind reacts upon surrounding
influences. Looking beyond Prussia to America, in whose struggle
for independence he took a keen interest, and looking to France
where the old dynastic monarchy had been succeeded by a republican
state, Kant seemed to see the signs of a coming democratisation of
the old monarchical society of Europe. In this growing influence on
the state of the mass of the people who had everything to lose in
war and little to gain by victory, he saw the guarantee of a future
perpetual peace. Other forces too were at work to bring about this
consummation. There was a growing consciousness that war, this costly
means of settling a dispute, is not even a satisfactory method of
settlement. Hazardous and destructive in its effect, it is also
uncertain in its results. Victory is not always gain; it no longer
signifies a land to be plundered, a people to be sold to slavery. It
brings fresh responsibilities to a nation, at a time when it is not
always strong enough to bear them. But, above all, Kant saw, even at
the end of the eighteenth century, the nations of Europe so closely
bound together by commercial interests that a war—and especially a
maritime war where the scene of conflict cannot be to the same extent
localised as on land—between any two of them could not but seriously
affect the prosperity of the others.[59] He clearly realised that
the spirit of commerce was the strongest force in the service of the
maintenance of peace, and that in it lay a guarantee of future union.
[57] Unlike Hegel whose ideal was the Prussian state, as it was
under Frederick the Great. An enthusiastic supporter of the power
of monarchy, he showed himself comparatively indifferent to the
progress of constitutional liberty.
[58] Isolated passages are sometimes quoted from Kant in support
of a theory that the present treatise is at least half ironical[A]
and that his views on the question of perpetual peace did not
essentially differ from those of Leibniz. “Even war,” he says,
(_Kritik d. Urteilskraft_, I. Book ii. § 28.) “when conducted in
an orderly way and with reverence for the rights of citizens has
something of the sublime about it, and the more dangers a nation
which wages war in this manner is exposed to and can courageously
overcome, the nobler does its character grow. While, on the other
hand, a prolonged peace usually has the effect of giving free
play to a purely commercial spirit, and side by side with this,
to an ignoble self-seeking, to cowardice and effeminacy; and the
result of this is generally a degradation of national character.”
[A] Cf. K. v. Stengel: _Der Ewige Friede_, Munich, 1899; also
Vaihinger: _Kantstudien_, Vol. IV., p. 58.
This is certainly an admission that war which does not violate
the Law of Nations has a good side as well as a bad. We could
look for no less in so clear-sighted and unprejudiced a thinker.
Kant would have been the first to admit that under certain
conditions a nation can have no higher duty than to wage war.
War is necessary, but it is in contradiction to reason and the
spirit of right. The “scourge of mankind,” “making more bad men
than it takes away,” the “destroyer of every good,” Kant calls it
elsewhere. (_Theory of Ethics_, Abbott’s trans., 4th ed., p. 341,
_note_.)
[59] Cf. _Idea for a Universal History_, Prop. 8; _Perpetual
Peace_, pp. 142, 157.
This scheme of a federation of the nations of the world, in
accordance with principles which would put an end to war between
them, was one whose interest for Kant seemed to increase during the
last twenty years of his life.[60] It was according to him an idea
of reason, and, in his first essay on the subject—that of 1784—we
see the place this ideal of a perpetual peace held in the Kantian
system of philosophy. Its realisation is the realisation of the
highest good—the ethical and political _summum bonum_, for here the
aims of morals and politics coincide: only in a perfect development
of his faculties in culture and in morals can man at last find true
happiness. History is working towards the consummation of this end. A
moral obligation lies on man to strive to establish conditions which
bring its realisation nearer. It is the duty of statesmen to form a
federative union as it was formerly the duty of individuals to enter
the state. The moral law points the way here as clearly as in the
sphere of pure ethics:—“Thou can’st, therefore thou ought’st.”
[60] The immediate stimulus to Kant’s active interest in this
subject as a practical question was the Peace of Basle (1795)
which ended the first stage in the series of wars which followed
the French Revolution.
Let us be under no misapprehension as to Kant’s attitude to the
problem of perpetual peace. It is an ideal. He states plainly that he
so regards it[61] and that as such it is unattainable. But this is
the essence of all ideals: they have not the less value in shaping
the life and character of men and nations on that account. They are
not ends to be realised but ideas according to which we must live,
regulative principles. We cannot, says Kant, shape our life better
than in acting as if such ideas of reason have objective validity and
there be an immortal life in which man shall live according to the
laws of reason, in peace with his neighbour and in freedom from the
trammels of sense.
[61] It is _eine unausführbare Idee_. See the passage quoted from
the _Rechtslehre_, p. 129, _note_.
Hence we are concerned here, not with an end, but with the means by
which we might best set about attaining it, if it were attainable.
This is the subject matter of the _Treatise on Perpetual Peace_
(1795), a less eloquent and less purely philosophical essay than that
of 1784, but throughout more systematic and practical. We have to do,
not with the favourite dream of philanthropists like St. Pierre and
Rousseau, but with a statement of the conditions on the fulfilment of
which the transition to a reign of peace and law depends.
_The Conditions of the Realisation of the Kantian Ideal._
These means are of two kinds. In the first place, what evils must
we set about removing? What are the negative conditions? And,
secondly, what are the general positive conditions which will make
the realisation of this idea possible and guarantee the permanence
of an international peace once attained? These negative and
positive conditions Kant calls Preliminary and Definitive Articles
respectively, the whole essay being carefully thrown into the form of
a treaty. The Preliminary Articles of a treaty for perpetual peace
are based on the principle that anything that hinders or threatens
the peaceful co-existence of nations must be abolished. These
conditions have been classified by Kuno Fischer. Kant, he points
out,[62] examines the principles of right governing the different
sets of circumstances in which nations find themselves—namely, (_a_)
while they are actually at war; (_b_) when the time comes to conclude
a treaty of peace; (_c_) when they are living in a state of peace.
The six Preliminary Articles fall naturally into these groups. War
must not be conducted in such a manner as to increase national
hatred and embitter a future peace. (Art. 6.)[63] The treaty which
brings hostilities to an end must be concluded in an honest desire
for peace. (Art. 1.)[64] Again a nation, when in a state of peace,
must do nothing to threaten the political independence of another
nation or endanger its existence, thereby giving the strongest of
all motives for a fresh war. A nation may commit this injury in
two ways: (1) indirectly, by causing danger to others through the
growth of its standing army (Art. 3)[65]—always a menace to the
state of peace—or by any unusual war preparations: and (2) through
too great a supremacy of another kind, by amassing money, the
most powerful of all weapons in warfare. The National Debt (Art.
4)[66] is another standing danger to the peaceful co-existence of
nations. But, besides, we have the danger of actual attack. There
is no right of intervention between nations. (Art. 5.)[67] Nor can
states be inherited or conquered (Art. 2),[68] or in any way treated
in a manner subversive of their independence and sovereignty as
individuals. For a similar reason, armed troops cannot be hired and
sold as things.
[62] _Geschichte der neueren Philosophie_, (4th ed., 1899), Vol.
V., I. Ch. 12, p. 168 _seq._
[63] See p. 114.
[64] See p. 107.
[65] See p. 110.
[66] See p. 111.
[67] See p. 112.
[68] See p. 108.
These then are the negative conditions of peace.[69] There are,
besides, three positive conditions:
[69] A large part of Kant’s requirements as they are expressed in
these Preliminary Articles has already been fulfilled. The first
(Art. 1) is recognised in theory at least by modern international
law. More cannot be said. A treaty of this kind is of necessity
more or less forced by the stronger on the weaker. The formal
ratification of peace in 1871 did not prevent France from longing
for the day when she might win back Alsace-Lorraine and be
revenged on Prussia. Not the treaty nor a consciousness of defeat
has kept the peace west of the Rhine, but a reluctant respect for
the fortress of Metz and the mighty army of united Germany.
Articles 2 and 6 are already commonplaces of international
law. Article 2 refers to practices which have not survived the
gradual disappearance of dynastic war. Art. 6 is the basis of
our modern law of war. Art. 3 has been fulfilled in the literal
sense that the standing armies composed of mercenary troops to
which Kant alludes exist no longer. But it is to be feared that
Kant would not think that we have made things much better, nor
regard our present system of progressive armaments as a step in
the direction of perpetual peace. Art. 4 is not likely to be
fulfilled in the near future. It is long since Cobden denounced
the institution of National Debts—an institution which, as Kant
points out, owes its origin to the English, the “commercial
people” referred to in the text. Art. 5 no doubt came to Kant
through Vattel. “No nation,” says the Swiss publicist, (_Law of
Nations_, II. Ch. iv. § 54) “has the least right to interfere
with the government of another,” unless, he adds, (Ch. v. §
70) in a case of anarchy or where the well-being of the human
race demands it. This is a recognised principle of modern
international law. Intervention is held to be justifiable only
where the obligation to respect another’s freedom of action comes
into conflict with the duty of self-preservation.
Puffendorf leaves much more room for the exercise of benevolence.
The natural affinity and kinship between men is, says he, (_Les
Devoirs de l’homme et du citoien_, II. Ch. xvi. § xi.) “a
sufficient reason to authorise us to take up defence of every
person whom one sees unjustly oppressed, when he implores our
aid _and when we can do it conveniently_.” (The italics are
mine.—[Tr.])
(_a_) The intercourse of nations is to be confined to a right of
hospitality. (Art. 3.)[70] There is nothing new to us in this
assertion of a right of way. The right to free means of international
communication has in the last hundred years become a commonplace of
law. And the change has been brought about, as Kant anticipated,
not through an abstract respect for the idea of right, but through
the pressure of purely commercial interests. Since Kant’s time
the nations of Europe have all been more or less transformed from
agricultural to commercial states whose interests run mainly in the
same direction, whose existence and development depend necessarily
upon “conditions of universal hospitality.” Commerce depends upon
this freedom of international intercourse, and on commerce mainly
depends our hope of peace.
[70] See p. 137. The main principle involved in this passage
comes from Vattel (_op. cit._, II. Ch. viii. §§ 104, 105: Ch. ix.
§§ 123, 125). A sovereign, he says, cannot object to a stranger
entering his state who at the same time respects its laws. No one
can be quite deprived of the right of way which has been handed
down from the time when the whole earth was common to all men.
(_b_) The first Definitive Article[71] requires that the constitution
of every state should be republican. What Kant understands by this
term is that, in the state, law should rule above force and that
its constitution should be a representative one, guaranteeing
public justice and based on the freedom and equality of its members
and their mutual dependence on a common legislature. Kant’s demand
is independent of the _form_ of the government. A constitutional
monarchy like that of Prussia in the time of Frederick the Great,
who regarded himself as the first servant of the state and ruled
with the wisdom and forethought which the nation would have had
the right to demand from such an one—such a monarchy is not in
contradiction to the idea of a true republic. That the state should
have a constitution in accordance with the principles of right is
the essential point.[72] To make this possible, the law-giving
power must lie with the representatives of the people: there must be
a complete separation, such as Locke and Rousseau demand, between
the legislature and executive. Otherwise we have despotism. Hence,
while Kant admitted absolutism under certain conditions, he rejected
democracy where, in his opinion, the mass of the people was despot.
[71] See p. 120.
[72] Kant believed that, in the newly formed constitution of the
United States, his ideal with regard to the external forms of
the state as conforming to the spirit of justice was most nearly
realised. Professor Paulsen draws attention, in the following
passage, to the fact that Kant held the English government of
the eighteenth century in very low esteem. (_Kant_, p. 357,
_note_. See Eng. trans., p. 352, _note_.) It was not the English
state, he says, which furnished Kant with an illustration of
his theory:—“Rather in it he sees a form of despotism only
slightly veiled, not Parliamentary despotism, as some people
have thought, but monarchical despotism. Through bribery of the
Commons and the Press, the King had actually absolute power, as
was evident, above all, from the fact that he had often waged war
without, and in defiance of, the will of the people. Kant has
a very unfavourable opinion of the English state in every way.
Among the collected notes written by him in the last ten years
of the century and published by Reicke (_Lose Blätter_, I. 129)
the following appears:—‘The English nation (_gens_) regarded as
a people (_populus_) and looked upon side by side with other
races is, as a collection of individuals, of all mankind the
most highly to be esteemed. But as a state, compared with other
states, it is the most destructive, high-handed and tyrannical,
and the most provocative of war among them all.’”
Kuno Fischer (_op. cit._, Vol. V., I. Ch. 11, pp. 150, 151) to
whom Professor Paulsen’s reference may here perhaps allude,
states that Kant’s objection to the English constitution is that
it was an oligarchy, Parliament being not only a legislative
body, but through its ministers also executive in the interests
of the ruling party or even of private individuals in that party.
It seems more likely that what most offended a keen observer of
the course of the American War of Independence was the arbitrary
and ill-directed power of the king. But see the passage quoted
by Fischer (pp. 152, 153) from the _Rechtslehre_ (Part II. Sect.
I.) which is, he says, unmistakeably directed against the English
constitution and certain temporary conditions in the political
history of the country.
An internal constitution, firmly established on the principles of
right, would not only serve to kill the seeds of national hatred and
diminish the likelihood of foreign war. It would do more: it would
destroy sources of revolution and discontent within the state. Kant,
like many writers on this subject, does not directly allude to civil
war[73] and the means by which it may be prevented or abolished.
Actually to achieve this would be impossible: it is beyond the
power of either arbitration or disarmament. But in a representative
government and the liberty of a people lie the greatest safeguards
against internal discontent. Civil peace and international peace must
to a certain extent go hand in hand.
[73] St. Pierre actually thought that his federation would
prevent civil war. See _Project_ (1714), p. 16.
We come now to the central idea of the treatise: (_c_) the law of
nations must be based upon a federation of free states. (Art. 2.)[74]
This must be regarded as the end to which mankind is advancing. The
problem here is not out of many nations to make one. This would
be perhaps the surest way to attain peace, but it is scarcely
practicable, and, in certain forms, it is undesirable. Kant is
inclined to approve of the separation of nations by language and
religion, by historical and social tradition and physical boundaries:
nature seems to condemn the idea of a universal monarchy.[75] The
only footing on which a thorough-going, indubitable system of
international law is in practice possible is that of the society
of nations: not the world-republic[76] the Greeks dreamt of, but a
federation of states. Such a union in the interests of perpetual
peace between nations would be the “highest political good.” The
relation of the federated states to one another and to the whole
would be fixed by cosmopolitan law: the link of self-interest which
would bind them would again be the spirit of commerce.
[74] See p. 128.
[75] This was the ideal of Dante. Cf. _De Monarchia_, Bk. I.
54:—“We shall not find at any time except under the divine
monarch Augustus, when a perfect monarchy existed, that the world
was everywhere quiet.”
Bluntschli (_Theory of the State_, I. Ch. ii., p. 26 _seq._)
gives an admirable account of the different attempts made to
realise a universal empire in the past—the Empire of Alexander
the Great, based upon a plan of uniting the races of east and
west; the Roman Empire which sought vainly to stamp its national
character upon mankind; the Frankish Monarchy; the Holy Roman
Empire which fell to pieces through the want of a central
power strong enough to overcome the tendency to separation and
nationalisation; and finally the attempt of Napoleon I., whose
mistake was the same as that which wrecked the Roman Empire—a
neglect of the strength of foreign national sentiment.
[76] Reason requires a State of nations. This is the ideal,
and Kant’s proposal of a federation of states is a practical
substitute from which we may work to higher things. Kant, like
Fichte, (_Werke_, VII. 467) strongly disapproves of a universal
monarchy such as that of which Dante dreamed—a modern Roman
Empire. The force of necessity, he says, will bring nations at
last to become members of a cosmopolitan state, “or if such a
state of universal peace proves (as has often been the case
with too great states) a greater danger to freedom from another
point of view, in that it introduces despotism of the most
terrible kind, then this same necessity must compel the nations
to enter a state which indeed has the form not of a cosmopolitan
commonwealth under one sovereign, but of a federation
regulated by legal principles determined by a common code of
international law.” (_Das mag in d. Theorie richtig sein_,
_Werke_, (Rosenkranz) VII., p. 225). Cf. also _Theory of Ethics_,
(Abbott), p. 341, _note_; _Perpetual Peace_, pp. 155, 156.
This scheme of a perpetual peace had not escaped ridicule in the
eighteenth century: the name of Kant protected it henceforth.
The facts of history, even more conclusively than the voices of
philosophers, soldiers and princes, show how great has been the
progress of this idea in recent years. But it has not gained its
present hold upon the popular mind without great and lasting
opposition. Indeed we have here what must still be regarded as a
controversial question. There have been, and are still, men who
regard perpetual peace as a state of things as undesirable as
it is unattainable. For such persons, war is a necessity of our
civilisation: it is impossible that it should ever cease to exist.
All that we can do, and there is no harm, nor any contradiction in
the attempt, is to make wars shorter, fewer and more humane: the
whole question, beyond this, is without practical significance.
Others, on the other hand,—and these perhaps more thoughtful—regard
war as hostile to culture, an evil of the worst kind, although a
necessary evil. In peace, for them, lies the true ideal of humanity,
although in any perfect form this cannot be realised in the near
future. The extreme forms of these views are to be sought in what has
been called in Germany “the philosophy of the barracks” which comes
forward with a glorification of war for its own sake, and in the
attitude of modern Peace Societies which denounce all war wholesale,
without respect of causes or conditions.
_Hegel, Schiller and Moltke._
Hegel, the greatest of the champions of war, would have nothing
to do with Kant’s federation of nations formed in the interests
of peace. The welfare of a state, he held, is its own highest
law; and he refused to admit that this welfare was to be sought
in an international peace. Hegel lived in an age when all power
and order seemed to lie with the sword. Something of the charm of
Napoleonism seems to hang over him. He does not go the length of
writers like Joseph de Maistre, who see in war the finger of God or
an arrangement for the survival of the fittest—a theory, as far as
regards individuals, quite in contradiction with the real facts,
which show that it is precisely the physically unfit whom war, as a
method of extermination, cannot reach. But, like Schiller and Moltke,
Hegel sees in war an educative instrument, developing virtues in a
nation which could not be fully developed otherwise, (much as pain
and suffering bring patience and resignation and other such qualities
into play in the individual), and drawing the nation together, making
each citizen conscious of his citizenship, as no other influence can.
War, he holds, leaves a nation always stronger than it was before;
it buries causes of inner dissension, and consolidates the internal
power of the state.[77] No other trial can, in the same way, show
what is the real strength and weakness of a nation, what it _is_, not
merely materially, but physically, intellectually and morally.
[77] See the _Philosophie d. Rechts_, (_Werke_, Vol. VIII.) Part
iii. § 324 and appendix.
With this last statement most people will be inclined to agree. There
is only a part of the truth in Napoleon’s dictum that “God is on
the side of the biggest battalions”; or in the old saying that war
requires three necessaries—in the first place, money; in the second
place, money; and in the third, money. Money is a great deal: it is a
necessity; but what we call national back-bone and character is more.
So far we are with Hegel. But he goes further. In peace, says he,
mankind would grow effeminate and degenerate in luxury. This opinion
was expressed in forcible language in his own time by Schiller,[78]
and in more recent years by Count Moltke. “Perpetual peace,” says
a letter of the great general,[79] “is a dream and not a beautiful
dream either: war is part of the divine order of the world. During
war are developed the noblest virtues which belong to man—courage
and self-denial, fidelity to duty and the spirit of self-sacrifice:
the soldier is called upon to risk his life. Without war the world
would sink in materialism.”[80] “Want and misery, disease, suffering
and war,” he says elsewhere, “are all given elements in the Divine
order of the universe.” Moltke’s eulogy of war, however, is somewhat
modified by his additional statement that “the greatest kindness in
war lies in its being quickly ended.” (Letter to Bluntschli, 11th
Dec., 1880.)[81] The great forces which we recognise as factors
in the moral regeneration of mankind are always slow of action as
they are sure. War, if too quickly over, could not have the great
moral influence which has been attributed to it. The explanation
may be that it is not all that it naturally appears to a great and
successful general. Hegel, Moltke, Trendelenburg, Treitschke[82]
and the others—not Schiller[83] who was able to sing the blessings
of peace as eloquently as of war—were apt to forget that war is as
efficient a school for forming vices as virtues; and that, moreover,
those virtues which military life is said to cultivate—courage,
self-sacrifice and the rest—can be at least as perfectly developed in
other trials. There are in human life dangers every day bravely met
and overcome which are not less terrible than those which face the
soldier, in whom patriotism may be less a sentiment than a duty, and
whose cowardice must be dearly paid.
[78] Cf. _Die Braut von Messina_:—
“Denn der Mensch verkümmert im Frieden,
Müssige Ruh’ ist das Grab des Muths.
Das Gesetz ist der Freund des Schwachen,
Alles will es nur eben machen,
Möchte gerne die Welt verflachen;
Aber der Krieg lässt die Kraft erscheinen,
Alles erhebt er zum Ungemeinen,
Selber dem Feigen erzeugt er den Muth.”
This passage perhaps scarcely gives a fair representation of
Schiller’s views on the question, which, if we judge from
_Wilhelm Tell_, must have been very moderate. War, he says, in
this oft-quoted passage, is sometimes a necessity. There is
a limit to the power of tyranny and, when the burden becomes
unbearable, an appeal to Heaven and the sword.
_Wilhelm Tell_: Act. II. Sc. 2.
“Nein, eine Grenze hat Tyrannenmacht.
Wenn der Gedrückte nirgends Recht kann finden,
Wenn unerträglich wird die Last greift er
Hinauf getrosten Muthes in den Himmel
Und holt herunter seine ew’gen Rechte,
Die droben hangen unveräusserlich
Und unzerbrechlich, wie die Sterne selbst—
Der alte Urstand der Natur kehrt wieder,
Wo Mensch dem Menschen gegenüber steht—
Zum letzten Mittel, wenn kein andres mehr
Verfangen will, ist ihm das Schwert gegeben.”
[79] Letter to Bluntschli, dated Berlin, 11th Dec., 1880
(published in Bluntschli’s _Gesammelte Kleine Schriften_, Vol.
II., p. 271).
[80] Cf. Tennyson’s _Maud_: Part I., vi. and xiii.
“Why do they prate of the blessings of Peace? we have made them a curse,
Pickpockets, each hand lusting for all that is not its own;
And lust of gain, in the spirit of Cain, is it better or worse
Than the heart of the citizen hissing in war on his own hearthstone?
For I trust if an enemy’s fleet came yonder round by the hill,
And the rushing battle-bolt sang from the three-decker out of the foam,
That the smooth-faced snub-nosed rogue would leap from his counter and till,
And strike, if he could, were it but with his cheating yardwand, home.”
See too Part III., ii. and iv.
“And it was but a dream, yet it lighten’d my despair
When I thought that a war would arise in defence of the right,
That an iron tyranny now should bend or cease,
The glory of manhood stand on his ancient height,
Nor Britain’s one sole God be the millionaire:
No more shall commerce be all in all, and Peace
Pipe on her pastoral hillock a languid note,
And watch her harvest ripen, her herd increase,
Nor the cannon-bullet rest on a slothful shore,
And the cobweb woven across the cannon’s throat
Shall shake its threaded tears in the wind no more.
Let it go or stay, so I wake to the higher aims
Of a land that has lost for a little her lust of gold,
And love of a peace that was full of wrongs and shames,
Horrible, hateful, monstrous, not to be told;
And hail once more to the banner of battle unroll’d!
Tho’ many a light shall darken, and many shall weep
For those that are crush’d in the clash of jarring claims,
For God’s just wrath shall be wreak’d on a giant liar;
And many a darkness into the light shall leap,
And shine in the sudden making of splendid names,
And noble thought be freer under the sun,
And the heart of a people beat with one desire.”
[81] Moltke strangely enough was, at an earlier period, of the
opinion that war, even when it is successful, is a national
misfortune. Cf. Kehrbach’s preface to Kant’s essay, _Zum Ewigen
Frieden_, p. XVII.
[82] See his discussion on constitutional monarchy in Germany.
(_Hist. u. Pol. Aufsätze_, Bd. III., p. 533 _seq._)
[83] See _Die Piccolomini_: Act. I. Sc. 4.
_War under Altered Conditions._
The Peace Societies of our century, untiring supporters of a point of
view diametrically opposite to that of Hegel, owe their existence
in the first place to new ideas on the subject of the relative
advantages and disadvantages of war, which again were partly due to
changes in the character of war itself, partly to a new theory that
the warfare of the future should be a war of free competition for
industrial interests, or, in Herbert Spencer’s language, that the
warlike type of mankind should make room for an industrial type.
This theory, amounting in the minds of some thinkers to a fervid
conviction, and itself, in a sense, the source of what has been
contemptuously styled our British “shopkeeper’s policy” in Europe,
was based on something more solid than mere enthusiasm. The years of
peace which followed the downfall of Napoleon had brought immense
increase in material wealth to countries like France and Britain.
Something of the glamour had fallen away from the sword of the great
Emperor. The illusive excitement of a desire for conquest had died:
the glory of war had faded with it, but the burden still remained:
its cost was still there, something to be calmly reckoned up and not
soon to be forgotten. Europe was seen to be actually moving towards
ruin. “We shall have to get rid of war in all civilised countries,”
said Louis Philippe in 1843. “Soon no nation will be able to afford
it.” War was not only becoming more costly. New conditions had
altered it in other directions. With the development of technical
science and its application to the perfecting of methods and
instruments of destruction every new war was found to be bloodier
than the last; and the day seemed to be in sight, when this very
development would make war (with instruments of extermination)
impossible altogether. The romance and picturesqueness with which
it was invested in the days of hand-to-hand combat was gone. But,
above all, war was now waged for questions fewer and more important
than in the time of Kant. Napoleon’s successful appeal to the masses
had suggested to Prussia the idea of consciously nationalising the
army. Our modern national wars exact a sacrifice, necessarily much
more heavy, much more reluctantly made than those of the past which
were fought with mercenary troops. Such wars have not only greater
dignity: they are more earnest, and their issue, as in a sense the
issue of conflict between higher and lower types of civilisation, is
speedier and more decisive.
In the hundred years since Kant’s death, much that he prophesied
has come to pass, although sometimes by different paths than he
anticipated. The strides made in recent years by commerce and the
growing power of the people in every state have had much of the
influence which he foretold. There is a greater reluctance to wage
war.[84] But, unfortunately, as Professor Paulsen points out, the
progress of democracy and the nationalisation of war have not worked
merely in the direction of progress towards peace. War has now become
popular for the first time. “The progress of democracy in states,”
he says, (_Kant_, p. 364[85]) “has not only not done away with war,
but has very greatly changed the feeling of people towards it. With
the universal military service, introduced by the Revolution, war
has become the people’s affair and popular, as it could not be in
the case of dynastic wars carried on with mercenary troops.” In the
people the love of peace is strong, but so too is the love of a
fight, the love of victory.
[84] An admirable short account of popular feeling on this matter
is to be found in Lawrence’s _Principles of International Law_, §
240.
[85] The first Peace Society was founded in London in 1816, and
the first International Peace Congress held in 1843.
It is in the contemplation of facts and conflicting tendencies like
these that Peace Societies[86] have been formed. The peace party is,
we may say, an eclectic body: it embraces many different sections
of political opinion. There are those who hold, for instance, that
peace is to be established on a basis of communism of property.
There are others who insist on the establishment throughout Europe
of a republican form of government, or again, on a redistribution
of European territory in which Alsace-Lorraine is restored to
France—changes of which at least the last two would be difficult to
carry out, unless through international warfare. But these are not
the fundamental general principles of peace workers. The members
of this party agree in rejecting the principle of intervention, in
demanding a complete or partial disarmament of the nations of Europe,
and in requiring that all disputes between nations—and they admit the
prospects of dispute—should be settled by means of arbitration. In
how far are these principles useful or practicable?
[86] In Eng. trans. see p. 358.
_The Value of Arbitration._
There is a strong feeling in favour of arbitration on the part of all
classes of society. It is cheaper under all circumstances than war.
It is a judgment at once more certain and more complete, excluding
as far as possible the element of chance, leaving irritation perhaps
behind it, but none of the lasting bitterness which is the legacy
of every war. Arbitration has an important place in all peace
projects except that of Kant, whose federal union would naturally
fulfil the function of a tribunal of arbitration. St. Pierre,
Jeremy Bentham,[87] Bluntschli[88] the German publicist, Professor
Lorimer[89] and others among political writers,[90] and among rulers,
Louis Napoleon and the Emperor Alexander I. of Russia, have all made
proposals more or less ineffectual for the peaceful settlement of
international disputes. A number of cases have already been decided
by this means. But let us examine the questions which have been
at issue. Of a hundred and thirty matters of dispute settled by
arbitration since 1815 (cf. _International Tribunals_, published
by the Peace Society, 1899) it will be seen that all, with the
exception of one or two trifling cases of doubt as to the succession
to certain titles or principalities, can be classified roughly
under two heads—disputes as to the determination of boundaries or
the possession of certain territory, and questions of claims for
compensation and indemnities due either to individuals or states,
arising from the seizure of fleets or merchant vessels, the insult
or injury to private persons and so on—briefly, questions of money
or of territory. These may fairly be said to be trifling causes,
not touching national honour or great political questions. That they
should have been settled in this way, however, shows a great advance.
Smaller causes than these have made some of the bloodiest wars in
history. That arbitration should have been the means of preventing
even one war which would otherwise have been waged is a strong reason
why we should fully examine its claims. “Quand l’institution d’une
haute cour,” writes Laveleye, (_Des causes actuelles de guerre en
Europe et de l’arbitrage_) “n’éviterait qu’une guerre sur vingt,
il vaudrait encore la peine de l’établir.” But history shows us
that there is no single instance of a supreme conflict having been
settled otherwise than by war. Arbitration is a method admirably
adapted to certain cases: to those we have named, where it has been
successfully applied, to the interpretation of contracts, to offences
against the Law of Nations—some writers say to trivial questions of
honour—in all cases where the use of armed force would be impossible,
as, for instance, in any quarrel in which neutralised countries[91]
like Belgium or Luxembourg should take a principal part, or in a
difference between two nations, such as (to take an extreme case)
the United States and Switzerland, which could not easily engage in
actual combat. These cases, which we cannot too carefully examine,
show that what is here essential is that it should be possible to
formulate a juridical statement of the conflicting claims. In Germany
the _Bundestag_ had only power to decide questions of law. Other
disputes were left to be fought out. Questions on which the existence
and vital honour of a state depend—any question which nearly concerns
the disputants—cannot be reduced to any cut and dry legal formula
of right and wrong. We may pass over the consideration that in some
cases (as in the Franco-Prussian War) the delay caused by seeking
mediation of any kind would deprive a nation of the advantage its
state of military preparation deserved. And we may neglect the
problem of finding an impartial judge on some questions of dispute,
although its solution might be a matter of extreme difficulty,
so closely are the interests of modern nations bound up in one
another. How could the Eastern Question, for example, be settled by
arbitration? It is impossible that such a means should be sufficient
for every case. Arbitration in other words may prevent war, but can
never be a substitute for war. We cannot wonder that this is so. So
numerous and conflicting are the interests of states, so various
are the grades of civilisation to which they have attained and the
directions along which they are developing, that differences of the
most vital kind are bound to occur and these can never be settled
by any peaceful means at present known to Europe. This is above all
true where the self-preservation[92] or independence of a people are
concerned. Here the “good-will” of the nations who disagree would
necessarily be wanting: there could be no question of the arbitration
of an outsider.
[87] See “A Plan for a Universal and Perpetual Peace” in the
_Principles of International Law_ (_Works_, Vol. II). One of
the main principles advocated by Bentham in this essay (written
between 1787 and 1789) is that every state should give up its
colonies.
[88] See his _Kleine Schriften_.
[89] _Institutes of the Law of Nations_ (1884), Vol. II., Ch. XIV.
[90] John Stuart Mill holds that the multiplication of federal
unions would be a benefit to the world. [See his _Considerations
on Representative Government_ (1865), Ch. XVII., where he
discusses the conditions necessary to render such unions
successful.] But the Peace Society is scarcely justified, on the
strength of what is here, in including Mill among writers who
have made definite proposals of peace or federation. (See _Inter.
Trib._)
[91] See what Lawrence says (_op. cit._, § 241) of neutralisation
and the limits of its usefulness as a remedy for war.
[92] Montesquieu: _Esprit des Lois_, X. Ch. 2. “The life of
governments is like that of man. The latter has a right to kill
in case of natural defence: the former have a right to wage war
for their own preservation.”
See also Vattel (_Law of Nations_, II. Ch. XVIII. § 332):—“But
if anyone would rob a nation of one of her essential rights, or
a right without which she could not hope to support her national
existence,—if an ambitious neighbour threatens the liberty of a
republic, if he attempts to subjugate and enslave her,—she will
take counsel only from her own courage. She will not even attempt
the method of conferences, in the case of a contention so odious
as this. She will, in such a quarrel, exert her utmost efforts,
exhaust every resource and lavish her blood to the last drop if
necessary. To listen to the slightest proposal in a matter of
this kind is to risk everything.”
But, indeed, looking away from questions so vital and on which there
can be little difference of opinion, we are apt to forget, when we
allow ourselves to talk extravagantly of the future of arbitration,
that every nation thinks, or at least pretends to think, that it
is in the right in every dispute in which it appears (cf. Kant:
_Perpetual Peace_, p. 120.): and, as a matter of history, there has
never been a conflict between civilised states in which an appeal to
this “right” on the part of each has not been made. We talk glibly
of the right and wrong of this question or of that, of the justice
of this war, the iniquity of that. But what do these terms really
mean? _Do_ we know, in spite of the labour which has been spent on
this question by the older publicists, which are the causes that
justify a war? Is it not true that the same war might be just in one
set of circumstances and unjust in another? Practically all writers
on this subject, exclusive of those who apply the biblical doctrine
of non-resistance, agree in admitting that a nation is justified in
defending its own existence or independence, that this is even a
moral duty as it is a fundamental right of a state. Many, especially
the older writers, make the confident assertion that all wars of
defence are just. But will this serve as a standard? Gibbon tells us
somewhere, that Livy asserts that the Romans conquered the world in
self-defence. The distinction between wars of aggression and defence
is one very difficult to draw. The cause of a nation which waits
to be actually attacked is often lost: the critical moment in its
defence may be past. The essence of a state’s defensive power may
lie in a readiness to strike the first blow, or its whole interests
may be bound up in the necessity of fighting the matter out in its
enemy’s country, rather than at home. It is not in the strictly
military interpretation of the term “defensive”, but in its wider
ethical and political sense that we can speak of wars of defence as
just. But, indeed, we cannot judge these questions abstractly. Where
a war is necessary, it matters very little whether it is just or not.
Only the judgment of history can finally decide; and generally it
seems at the time that both parties have something of right on their
side, something perhaps too of wrong.[93]
[93] The difficulties in the way of hard and fast judgments on a
complicated problem of this kind are convincingly demonstrated in
a recent essay by Professor D. G. Ritchie (_Studies in Political
and Social Ethics_, Sonnenschein, 1902). Professor Ritchie
considers in detail a number of concrete cases which occurred
in the century between 1770 and 1870. “Let any one take the
judgments he would pass on these or any similarly varied cases,
and I think he will find that we do not restrict our approval
to wars of self-defence, that we do not approve self-defence
under all circumstances, that there are some cases in which we
approve of absorption of smaller states by larger, that there
are cases in which we excuse intervention of third parties in
quarrels with which at first they had nothing to do, and that
we sometimes approve war even when begun without the authority
of any already existing sovereign. Can any principles be found
underlying such judgments? In the first place we ought not to
disguise from ourselves the fact that our judgments after the
result are based largely on success. ... I think it will be
found that our judgments on the wars of the century from 1770 to
1870 turn very largely on the question, Which of the conflicting
forces was making for constitutional government and for social
progress? or, to put it in wider terms, Which represented the
higher civilisation? And thus it is that we may sometimes approve
the rise of a new state and sometimes the absorption of an old.”
(_Op. cit._, pp. 152, 155.)
A consideration of difficulties like these brings us to a realisation
of the fact that the chances are small that a nation, in the heat of
a dispute, will admit the likelihood of its being in the wrong. To
refuse to admit this is generally tantamount to a refusal to submit
the difficulty to arbitration. And neither international law, nor the
moral force of public opinion can induce a state to act contrary to
what it believes to be its own interest. Moreover, as international
law now stands, it is not a duty to have recourse to arbitration.
This was made quite clear in the proceedings of the Peace Conference
at the Hague in 1899.[94] It was strongly recommended that
arbitration should be sought wherever it was possible, but, at the
same time definitely stated, that this course could in no case be
compulsory. In this respect things have not advanced beyond the
position of the Paris Congress of 1856.[95] The wars waged in Europe
subsequent to that date, have all been begun without previous attempt
at mediation.
[94] See Fred. W. Holls: _The Peace Conference at the Hague_,
Macmillan, 1900.
[95] The feeling of the Congress expressed itself thus
cautiously:—“Messieurs les plénipotentiaires n’hésitent pas à
exprimer, au nom de leur gouvernements, le voeu, que les Etats
entre lesquels s’éléverait un dissentiment sérieux, avant d’en
appeler aux armes, eussent recours, en tant que les circonstances
l’admettraient, aux bons offices d’une puissance amie.”
But the work of the peace party regarding the humaner methods of
settlement is not to be neglected. The popular feeling which they
have been partly the means of stimulating has no doubt done something
to influence the action of statesmen towards extreme caution in
the treatment of questions likely to arouse national passions and
prejudices. Arbitration has undoubtedly made headway in recent
years. Britain and America, the two nations whose names naturally
suggest themselves to us as future centres of federative union, both
countries whose industrial interests are numerous and complicated,
have most readily, as they have most frequently, settled disputes
in this practical manner. It has shown itself to be a policy as
economical as it is business-like. Its value, in its proper place,
cannot be overrated by any Peace Congress or by any peace pamphlet;
but we have endeavoured to make it clear that this sphere is but a
limited one. The “good-will” may not be there when it ought perhaps
to appear: it will certainly not be there when any vital interest
is at stake. But, even if this were not so and arbitration were
the natural sequence of every dispute, no coercive force exists
to enforce the decree of the court. The moral restraint of public
opinion is here a poor substitute. Treaties, it is often said,
are in the same position; but treaties have been broken, and will
no doubt be broken again. We are moved to the conclusion that a
thoroughly logical peace programme cannot stop short of the principle
of federation. Federal troops are necessary to carry out the decrees
of a tribunal of arbitration, if that court is not to run a risk
of being held feeble and ineffectual. Except on some such basis,
arbitration, as a substitute for war, stands on but a weak footing.
_Disarmament._
The efforts of the Peace Society are directed with even less hope
of complete success against another evil of our time, the crushing
burden of modern armaments. We have peace at this moment, but at
a daily increasing cost. The Peace Society is rightly concerned
in pressing this point. It is not enough to keep off actual war:
there is a limit to the price we can afford to pay even for peace.
Probably no principle has cost Europe so much in the last century as
that handed down from Rome:—“Si vis pacem, para bellum.” It is now
a hundred and fifty years since Montesquieu[96] protested against
this “new distemper” which was spreading itself over Europe; but
never, in time of peace, has complaint been so loud or so general
as now: and this, not only against the universal burden of taxation
which weighs upon all nations alike, but, in continental countries,
against the waste of productive force due to compulsory military
service, a discontent which seems to strike at the very foundations
of society. Vattel relates that in early times a treaty of peace
generally stipulated that both parties should afterwards disarm. And
there is no doubt that Kant was right in regarding standing armies
as a danger to peace, not only as openly expressing the rivalry and
distrust between nation and nation which Hobbes regards as the basis
of international relations, but also as putting a power into the
hand of a nation which it may some day have the temptation to abuse.
A war-loving, overbearing spirit in a people thrives none the worse
for a consciousness that its army or navy can hold its own with any
other in Europe. Were it not the case that the essence of armed peace
is that a high state of efficiency should be general, the danger to
peace would be very great indeed. No doubt it is due to this fact
that France has kept quietly to her side of the Rhine during the last
thirty years. The annexation of Alsace-Lorraine was an immediate
stimulus to the increase of armaments; but otherwise, just because of
this greater efficiency and the slightly stronger military position
of Germany, it has been an influence on the side of peace.
[96] _Esprit des Lois_, XIII. Chap. 17. “A new distemper has
spread itself over Europe: it has infected our princes, and
induces them to keep up an exorbitant number of troops. It has
its redoublings, and of necessity becomes contagious. For as
soon as one prince augments what he calls his troops, the rest
of course do the same: so that nothing is gained thereby but the
public ruin. Each monarch keeps as many armies on foot as if his
people were in danger of being exterminated: and they give the
name of Peace to this general effort of all against all.”
Montesquieu is of course writing in the days of mercenary troops;
but the cost to the nation of our modern armies, both in time of
peace and of war, is incomparably greater.
The Czar’s Rescript of 1898 gave a new stimulus to an interest in
this question which the subsequent conference at the Hague was
unable fully to satisfy. We are compelled to consider carefully
how a process of simultaneous disarmament can actually be carried
out, and what results might be anticipated from this step, with a
view not only to the present but the future. Can this be done in
accordance with the principles of justice? Organisations like a great
navy or a highly disciplined army have been built up, in the course
of centuries, at great cost and at much sacrifice to the nation.
They are the fruit of years of wise government and a high record
of national industry. Are such visible tokens of the culture and
character and worth of a people to be swept away and Britain, France,
Germany, Italy, Spain, Turkey to stand on the same level? And, even
if no such ethical considerations should arise, on what method are
we to proceed? The standard as well as the nature of armament depends
in every state on its geographical conditions and its historical
position. An ocean-bound empire like Britain is comparatively immune
from the danger of invasion: her army can be safely despatched to
the colonies, her fleet protects her at home, her position is one of
natural defence. But Germany and Austria find themselves in exactly
opposite circumstances, with the hard necessity imposed upon them of
guarding their frontiers on every side. The safety of a nation like
Germany is in the hands of its army: its military strength lies in an
almost perfect mastery of the science of attack.
The Peace Society has hitherto made no attempt to face the
difficulties inseparable from any attempt to apply a uniform method
of treatment to peculiarities and conditions so conflicting and
various as these. Those who have been more conscientious have not
been very successful in solving them. Indeed, so constantly is
military technique changing that it is difficult to prophesy wherein
will lie, a few years hence, the essence of a state’s defensive power
or what part the modern navy will play in this defence. No careful
thinker would suggest, in the face of dangers threatening from the
East,[97] a complete disarmament. The simplest of many suggestions
made—but this on the basis of universal conscription—seems to be
that the number of years or months of compulsory military service
should be reduced to some fixed period. But this does not touch the
difficulty of colonial empires[98] like Britain which might to a
certain extent disarm, like their neighbours, in Europe, but would
be compelled to keep an army for the defence of their colonies
elsewhere. It is, in the meantime, inevitable that Europe should keep
up a high standard of armament—this is, (and even if we had European
federation, would remain) an absolute necessity as a protection
against the yellow races, and in Europe itself there are at present
elements hostile to the cause of peace. Alsace-Lorraine, Polish
Prussia, Russian Poland and Finland are still, to a considerable
degree, sources of discontent and dissatisfaction. But in Russia
itself lies the great obstacle to a future European peace or
European federation: we can scarcely picture Russia as a reliable
member of such a union. That Russia should disarm is scarcely
feasible, in view of its own interest: it has always to face the
danger of rebellion in Poland and anarchy at home. But that Europe
should disarm, before Russia has attained a higher civilisation, a
consciousness of its great future as a north-eastern, inter-oceanic
empire, and a government more favourable to the diffusion of liberty,
is still less practicable.[99] We have here to fall back upon
federation again. It is not impossible that, in the course of time,
this problem may be solved and that the contribution to the federal
troops of a European union may be regulated upon some equitable basis
the form of which we cannot now well prophesy.
[97] Even St. Pierre was alive to this danger (_Projet_,
Art. VIII: in the English translation of 1714, p. 160):—“The
_European_ Union shall endeavour to obtain in _Asia_, a
_permanent_ society like that of _Europe_, that Peace may be
maintain’d There also; and especially that it may have no cause
to fear any _Asiatic_ Sovereign, either as to its tranquillity,
or its Commerce in _Asia_.”
[98] Bentham’s suggestion would be useful here! See above, p. 79,
_note_.
[99] The best thing for Europe might be that Russia (perhaps
including China) should be regarded as a serious danger by all
the civilised powers of the West. _That_ would bring us nearer to
the United States of Europe _and_ America (for the United States,
America, is Russia’s neighbour on the East) than anything else.
European federation would likewise meet all difficulties where
a risk might be likely to occur of one nation intervening to
protect another. As we have said (above, p. 64, _note_) nations
are now-a-days slow to intervene in the interests of humanity:
they are in general constrained to do so only by strong motives
of self-interest, and when these are not at hand they are said to
refrain from respect for another’s right of independent action.
Actually a state which is actuated by less selfish impulses is apt to
lose considerably more than it gains, and the feeling of the people
expresses itself strongly against any quixotic or sentimental policy.
It is not impossible that the Powers may have yet to intervene to
protect Turkey against Russia. Such a step might well be dictated
purely by a proper care for the security of Europe; but wars of this
kind seem not likely to play an important part in the near future.
We have said that the causes of difference which may be expected
to disturb the peace of Europe are now fewer. A modern sovereign
no longer spends his leisure time in the excitement of slaying or
seeing slain. He could not, if he would. His honour and his vanity
are protected by other means: they play no longer an important part
in the affairs of nations. The causes of war can no more be either
trifling or personal. Some crises there are, which are ever likely to
be fatal to peace. There present themselves, in the lives of nations,
ideal ends for which everything must be sacrificed: there are rights
which must at all cost be defended. The question of civil war we
may neglect: liberty and wise government are the only medicine for
social discontent, and much may be hoped from that in the future.
But now, looking beyond the state to the great family of civilised
nations, we may say that the one certain cause of war between them
or of rebellion within a future federated union will be a menace to
the sovereign rights, the independence and existence of any member
of that federation. Other causes of quarrel offer a more hopeful
prospect. Some questions have been seen to be specially fitted for
the legal procedure of a tribunal of arbitration, others to be such
as a federal court would quickly settle. The preservation of the
balance of power which Frederick the Great regarded as the talisman
of peace in Europe—a judgment surely not borne out by experience—is
happily one of the causes of war which are of the past. Wars of
colonisation, such as would be an attempt on the part of Russia to
conquer India, seem scarcely likely to recur except between higher
and lower races. The cost is now-a-days too great. Political wars,
wars for national union and unity, of which there were so many
during the past century, seem at present not to be near at hand; and
the integration of European nations—what may be called the great
mission of war—is, for the moment, practically complete; for it is
highly improbable that either Alsace-Lorraine or Poland—still less
Finland—will be the cause of a war of this kind.
Our hope lies in a federated Europe. Its troops would serve to
preserve law and order in the country from which they were drawn and
to protect its colonies abroad; but their higher function would
be to keep peace in Europe, to protect the weaker members of the
Federation and to enforce the decision of the majority, either, if
necessary, by actual war, or by the mere threatening demonstrations
of fleets, such as have before proved effectual.
We have carefully considered what has been attempted by peace
workers, and we have now to take note that all the results of the
last fifty years are not to be attributed to their conscientious
but often ill-directed labour. The diminution of the causes of war
is to be traced less to the efforts of the Peace Society, (except
indirectly, in so far as they have influenced the minds of the
masses) than to the increasing power of the people themselves.
The various classes of society are opposed to violent methods of
settlement, not in the main from a conviction as to the wrongfulness
of war or from any fanatical enthusiasm for a brotherhood of nations,
but from self-interest. War is death to the industrial interests of
a nation. It is vain to talk, in the language of past centuries,
of trade between civilised countries being advanced and markets
opened up or enlarged by this means.[100] Kings give up the dream
of military glory and accept instead the certainty of peaceful
labour and industrial progress, and all this (for we may believe
that to some monarchs it is much) from no enthusiastic appreciation
of the efforts of Peace Societies, from no careful examination of
the New Testament nor inspired interpretation of its teaching. It
is self-interest, the prosperity of the country—patriotism, if you
will—that seems better than war.
[100] Trade in barbarous or savage countries is still increased
by war, especially on the French and German plan which leaves no
open door to other nations. Here the trade follows the flag. And
war, of course, among civilised races causes small nations to
disappear and their tariffs with them. _This_ is beneficial to
trade, but to a degree so trifling that it may here be neglected.
_What may be expected from Federation._
Federation and federation alone can help out the programme
of the Peace Society. It cannot be pretended that it will do
everything. To state the worst at once, it will not prevent war.
Even the federations of the states of Germany and America, bound
together by ties of blood and language and, in the latter case, of
sentiment, were not strong enough within to keep out dissension and
disunion.[101] Wars would not cease, but they would become much less
frequent. “Why is there no longer war between England and Scotland?
Why did Prussian and Hanoverian fight side by side in 1870, though
they had fought against each other only four years before?... If
we wish to know how war is to cease, we should ask ourselves how it
_has_ ceased” (Professor D. G. Ritchie, _op. cit._, p. 169). Wars
between different grades of civilisation are bound to exist as long
as civilisation itself exists. The history of culture and of progress
has been more or less a history of war. A calm acceptance of this
position may mean to certain short-sighted, enthusiastic theorists
an impossible sacrifice of the ideal; but, the sacrifice once made,
we stand on a better footing with regard to at least one class of
arguments against a federation of the world. Such a union will lead,
it is said, to an equality in culture, a sameness of interests fatal
to progress; all struggle and conflict will be cast out of the
state itself; national characteristics and individuality will be
obliterated; the lamb and the wolf will lie down together: stagnation
will result, intellectual progress will be at an end, politics will
be no more, history will stand still. This is a sweeping assertion,
an alarming prophecy. But a little thought will assure us that there
is small cause for apprehension. There can be no such standstill,
no millennium in human affairs. A gradual smoothing down of sharply
accentuated national characteristics there might be: this is a result
which a freer, more friendly intercourse between nations would be
very likely to produce. But conflicting interests, keen rivalry
in their pursuit, difference of culture and natural aptitude, and
all or much of the individuality which language and literature,
historical and religious traditions, even climatic and physical
conditions produce are bound to survive until the coming of some more
overwhelming and far-spreading revolution than this. It would not
be well if it were otherwise, if those “unconscious and invisible
peculiarities” in which Fichte sees the hand of God and the guarantee
of a nation’s future dignity, virtue and merit should be swept away.
(_Reden an die deutsche Nation_,[102] 1807.) Nor is stagnation to be
feared. “Strife,” said the old philosopher, “is the father of all
things.” There can be no lasting peace in the processes of nature and
existence. It has been in the constant rivalry between classes within
themselves, and in the struggle for existence with other races that
great nations have reached the highwater mark of their development.
A perpetual peace in international relations we may—nay, surely
will—one day have, but eternity will not see the end to the feverish
unrest within the state and the jealous competition and distrust
between individuals, groups and classes of society. Here there must
ever be perpetual war.
[101] Cf. also the civil war of 1847 in Switzerland.
[102] See _Werke_, VII., p. 467.
It was only of this political peace between civilised nations that
Kant thought.[103] In this form it is bound to come. The federation
of Europe will follow the federation of Germany and of Italy, not
only because it offers a solution of many problems which have long
taxed Europe, but because great men and careful thinkers believe in
it.[104] It may not come quickly, but such men can afford to wait.
“If I were legislator,” cried Jean Jacques Rousseau, “I should not
say what ought to be done, but I would do it.” This is the attitude
of the unthinking, unpractical enthusiast. The wish is not enough:
the will is not enough. The mills of God must take their own time: no
hope or faith of ours, no struggle or labour even can hurry them.
[103] The other he knew was impossible. Peace within the state
meant decay and death. In the antagonism of nations, he saw
nature’s means of educating the race: it was a law of existence,
a law of progress, and, as such, eternal.
[104] For a vivid picture of the material advantages offered by
such a union and of the dismal future that may lie before an
unfederated Europe, we cannot do better than read Mr. Andrew
Carnegie’s recent Rectorial Address to the students of St.
Andrews University (Oct 1902). Unfortunately, Mr. Carnegie’s
enthusiasm stops here: he does not tell us by what means the
difficulties at present in the way of a federation, industrial or
political, are to be overcome.
It is a misfortune that the Peace Society has identified itself
with so narrow and uncritical an attitude towards war, and that the
copious eloquence of its members is not based upon a consideration
of the practical difficulties of the case. This well-meaning, hard
working and enthusiastic body would like to do what is impossible
by an impossible method. The end which it sets for itself is an
unattainable one. But this need not be so. To make unjustifiable
aggression difficult, to banish unworthy pretexts for making war
might be a high enough ideal for any enthusiasm and offer scope wide
enough for the labours of any society. But the Peace Society has not
contented itself with this great work. Through its over-estimation
of the value of peace,[105] its cause has been injured and much of
its influence has been weakened or lost. Our age is one which sets
a high value upon human life; and to this change of thinking may be
traced our modern reform in the methods of war and all that has been
done for the alleviation of suffering by the great Conventions of
recent years. For the eyes of most people war is merely a hideous
spectacle of bloodshed and deliberate destruction of life: this is
its obvious side. But it is possible to exaggerate this confessedly
great evil. Peace has its sacrifices as well as war: the progress of
humanity requires that the individual should often be put aside for
the sake of lasting advantage to the whole. An opposite view can only
be reckoned individualistic, perhaps materialistic. “The reverence
for human life,” says Martineau, (_Studies of Christianity_, pp. 352,
354) “is carried to an immoral idolatry, when it is held more sacred
than justice and right, and when the spectacle of blood becomes
more horrible than the sight of desolating tyrannies and triumphant
hypocrisies.... We have, therefore, no more doubt that a war may be
right, than that a policeman may be a security for justice, and we
object to a fortress as little as to a handcuff.”
[105] Professor D. G. Ritchie remarks that it is less an
over-estimation of the value of peace than a too easy-going
acceptance of abstract and unanalysed phrases about the rights of
nations that injures the work of the Peace Society. Cf. his note
on the principles of the Peace Congresses (_op. cit._, p. 172).
The Peace Society are not of this opinion: they greatly doubt that a
war may be right, and they rarely fail to take their doubts to the
tribunal of Scripture. Their efforts are well meant, this piety may
be genuine enough; but a text is rarely a proof of anything, and in
any case serves one man in as good stead as another. We remember that
“the devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.” This unscientific
method of proof or persuasion has ever been widely popular. It is
a serious examination of the question that we want, a more careful
study of its actual history and of the possibilities of human nature;
less vague, exaggerated language about what ought to be done, and a
realisation of what has been actually achieved; above all, a clear
perception of what may fairly be asked from the future.
It used to be said—is perhaps asserted still by the war-lovers—that
there was no path to civilisation which had not been beaten by the
force of arms, no height to which the sword had not led the way. The
inspiration of war was upon the great arts of civilisation: its hand
was upon the greatest of the sciences. These obligations extended
even to commerce. War not only created new branches of industry, it
opened new markets and enlarged the old. These are great claims,
according to which war might be called the moving principle of
history. If we keep our eyes fixed upon the history of the past, they
seem not only plausible: they are in a great sense true. Progress
did tread at the heels of the great Alexander’s army: the advance of
European culture stands in the closest connection with the Crusades.
But was this happy compensation for a miserable state of affairs not
due to the peculiarly unsocial conditions of early times and the
absence of every facility for the interchange of ideas or material
advantages? It is inconceivable that now-a-days[106] any aid to the
development of thought in Europe should come from war. The old
adage, in more than a literal sense, has but too often been proved
true:—“Inter arma, Musae silent.” Peace is for us the real promoter
of culture.
[106] The day is past, when a nation could enjoy the exclusive
advantages of its own inventions. Vattel naively recommends that
we should keep the knowledge of certain kinds of trade, the
building of war-ships and the like, to ourselves. Prudence, he
says, prevents us from making an enemy stronger and the care of
our own safety forbids it. (_Law of Nations_, II. Ch. I. § 16.)
We have to endeavour to take an intermediate course between
uncritical praise and wholesale condemnation, between extravagant
expectation and unjustifiable pessimism. War used to be the rule: it
is now an overwhelming and terrible exception—an interruption to the
peaceful prosperous course of things, inflicting unlimited suffering
and temporary or lasting loss. Its evils are on the surface, apparent
to the most unthinking observer. The day may yet dawn, when Europeans
will have learned to regard the force of arms as an instrument for
the civilisation of savage or half-savage races, and war within
their continent as civil war, necessary and justifiable sometimes
perhaps, but still a blot upon their civilisation and brotherhood as
men. Such a suggestion rings strangely. But the great changes, which
the roll of centuries has marked, once came upon the world not less
unexpectedly. How far off must the idea of a civil peace have seemed
to small towns and states of Europe in the fifteenth century! How
strange, only a century ago, would the idea of applying steam power
or electrical force have seemed to ourselves! Let us not despair. War
has played a great part in the history of the world: it has been ever
the great architect of nations, the true mother of cities. It has
justified itself to-day in the union of kindred peoples, the making
of great empires. It may be that one decisive war may yet be required
to unite Europe. May Europe survive that struggle and go forward
fearlessly to her great future! A peaceful future that may not be. It
must never be forgotten that war is sometimes a moral duty, that it
is ever the natural sequence of human passion and human prejudice. An
unbroken peace we cannot and do not expect; but it is this that we
must work for. As Kant says, we must keep it before us as an ideal.
TRANSLATION[107]
“PERPETUAL PEACE”[108]
[107] The text used in this translation is that edited by
Kehrbach. [Tr.]
[108] I have seen something of M. de St. Pierre’s plan for
maintaining perpetual peace in Europe. It reminds me of an
inscription outside of a churchyard, which ran “_Pax Perpetua._
For the dead, it is true, fight no more. But the living are of
another mind, and the mightiest among them have little respect
for tribunals.” (Leibniz: _Letter to Grimarest_, quoted above, p.
37, note 44.) [Tr.]
We need not try to decide whether this satirical inscription, (once
found on a Dutch innkeeper’s sign-board above the picture of a
churchyard) is aimed at mankind in general, or at the rulers of
states in particular, unwearying in their love of war, or perhaps
only at the philosophers who cherish the sweet dream of perpetual
peace. The author of the present sketch would make one stipulation,
however. The practical politician stands upon a definite footing with
the theorist: with great self-complacency he looks down upon him as
a mere pedant whose empty ideas can threaten no danger to the state
(starting as it does from principles derived from experience), and
who may always be permitted to knock down his eleven skittles at
once without a worldly-wise statesman needing to disturb himself.
Hence, in the event of a quarrel arising between the two, the
practical statesman must always act consistently, and not scent
danger to the state behind opinions ventured by the theoretical
politician at random and publicly expressed. With which saving clause
(_clausula salvatoria_) the author will herewith consider himself
duly and expressly protected against all malicious misinterpretation.
_FIRST SECTION_
CONTAINING THE PRELIMINARY ARTICLES OF PERPETUAL PEACE BETWEEN STATES
1.—“No treaty of peace shall be regarded as valid, if made with the
secret reservation of material for a future war.”
For then it would be a mere truce, a mere suspension of hostilities,
not peace. A peace signifies the end of all hostilities and to attach
to it the epithet “eternal” is not only a verbal pleonasm, but
matter of suspicion. The causes of a future war existing, although
perhaps not yet known to the high contracting parties themselves, are
entirely annihilated by the conclusion of peace, however acutely
they may be ferreted out of documents in the public archives. There
may be a mental reservation of old claims to be thought out at a
future time, which are, none of them, mentioned at this stage,
because both parties are too much exhausted to continue the war,
while the evil intention remains of using the first favourable
opportunity for further hostilities. Diplomacy of this kind only
Jesuitical casuistry can justify: it is beneath the dignity of a
ruler, just as acquiescence in such processes of reasoning is beneath
the dignity of his minister, if one judges the facts as they really
are.[109]
[109] On the honourable interpretation of treaties, see Vattel
(_op. cit._, II. Ch. XVII., esp. §§ 263-296, 291). See also what
he says of the validity of treaties and the necessity for holding
them sacred (II. Ch. XII. §§ 157, 158: II. Ch. XV). [Tr.]
If, however, according to present enlightened ideas of political
wisdom, the true glory of a state lies in the uninterrupted
development of its power by every possible means, this judgment must
certainly strike one as scholastic and pedantic.
2.—“No state having an independent existence—whether it be great or
small—shall be acquired by another through inheritance, exchange,
purchase or donation.”[110]
[110] “Even the smoothest way,” says Hume, (_Of the Original
Contract_) “by which a nation may receive a foreign master, by
marriage or a will, is not extremely honourable for the people;
but supposes them to be disposed of, like a dowry or a legacy,
according to the pleasure or interest of their rulers.” [Tr.]
For a state is not a property (_patrimonium_), as may be the ground
on which its people are settled. It is a society of human beings
over whom no one but itself has the right to rule and to dispose.
Like the trunk of a tree, it has its own roots, and to graft it on
to another state is to do away with its existence as a moral person,
and to make of it a thing. Hence it is in contradiction to the idea
of the original contract without which no right over a people is
thinkable.[111] Everyone knows to what danger the bias in favour of
these modes of acquisition has brought Europe (in other parts of
the world it has never been known). The custom of marriage between
states, as if they were individuals, has survived even up to the most
recent times,[112] and is regarded partly as a new kind of industry
by which ascendency may be acquired through family alliances, without
any expenditure of strength; partly as a device for territorial
expansion. Moreover, the hiring out of the troops of one state to
another to fight against an enemy not at war with their native
country is to be reckoned in this connection; for the subjects are in
this way used and abused at will as personal property.
[111] An hereditary kingdom is not a state which can be inherited
by another state, but one whose sovereign power can be inherited
by another physical person. The state then acquires a ruler, not
the ruler as such (that is, as one already possessing another
realm) the state.
[112] This has been one of the causes of the extraordinary
admixture of races in the modern Austrian empire. Cf. the lines
of Matthias Corvinus of Hungary (quoted in Sir W. Stirling
Maxwell’s _Cloister Life of Charles the Fifth_, Ch. I., _note_):—
“Bella gerant alii, tu, felix Austria, nube!
Nam quae Mars aliis, dat tibi regna Venus.” [Tr.]
3.—“Standing armies (_miles perpetuus_) shall be abolished in course
of time.”
For they are always threatening other states with war by appearing
to be in constant readiness to fight. They incite the various states
to outrival one another in the number of their soldiers, and to this
number no limit can be set. Now, since owing to the sums devoted
to this purpose, peace at last becomes even more oppressive than a
short war, these standing armies are themselves the cause of wars of
aggression, undertaken in order to get rid of this burden. To which
we must add that the practice of hiring men to kill or to be killed
seems to imply a use of them as mere machines and instruments in the
hand of another (namely, the state) which cannot easily be reconciled
with the right of humanity in our own person.[113] The matter stands
quite differently in the case of voluntary periodical military
exercise on the part of citizens of the state, who thereby seek to
secure themselves and their country against attack from without.
[113] A Bulgarian Prince thus answered the Greek Emperor who
magnanimously offered to settle a quarrel with him, not by
shedding the blood of his subjects, but by a duel:—“A smith who
has tongs will not take the red-hot iron from the fire with his
hands.”
(This note is a-wanting in the second Edition of 1796. It is
repeated in Art. II., see p. 130.) [Tr.]
The accumulation of treasure in a state would in the same way be
regarded by other states as a menace of war, and might compel them to
anticipate this by striking the first blow. For of the three forces,
the power of arms, the power of alliance and the power of money, the
last might well become the most reliable instrument of war, did not
the difficulty of ascertaining the amount stand in the way.
4.—“No national debts shall be contracted in connection with the
external affairs of the state.”
This source of help is above suspicion, where assistance is sought
outside or within the state, on behalf of the economic administration
of the country (for instance, the improvement of the roads, the
settlement and support of new colonies, the establishment of
granaries to provide against seasons of scarcity, and so on). But,
as a common weapon used by the Powers against one another, a credit
system under which debts go on indefinitely increasing and are yet
always assured against immediate claims (because all the creditors
do not put in their claim at once) is a dangerous money power. This
ingenious invention of a commercial people in the present century
is, in other words, a treasure for the carrying on of war which may
exceed the treasures of all the other states taken together, and
can only be exhausted by a threatening deficiency in the taxes—an
event, however, which will long be kept off by the very briskness
of commerce resulting from the reaction of this system on industry
and trade. The ease, then, with which war may be waged, coupled with
the inclination of rulers towards it—an inclination which seems
to be implanted in human nature—is a great obstacle in the way of
perpetual peace. The prohibition of this system must be laid down as
a preliminary article of perpetual peace, all the more necessarily
because the final inevitable bankruptcy of the state in question
must involve in the loss many who are innocent; and this would be
a public injury to these states. Therefore other nations are at
least justified in uniting themselves against such an one and its
pretensions.
5.—“No state shall violently interfere with the constitution and
administration of another.”
For what can justify it in so doing? The scandal which is here
presented to the subjects of another state? The erring state can
much more serve as a warning by exemplifying the great evils which a
nation draws down on itself through its own lawlessness. Moreover,
the bad example which one free person gives another, (as _scandalum
acceptum_) does no injury to the latter. In this connection, it is
true, we cannot count the case of a state which has become split up
through internal corruption into two parts, each of them representing
by itself an individual state which lays claim to the whole. Here
the yielding of assistance to one faction could not be reckoned as
interference on the part of a foreign state with the constitution of
another, for here anarchy prevails. So long, however, as the inner
strife has not yet reached this stage the interference of other
powers would be a violation of the rights of an independent nation
which is only struggling with internal disease.[114] It would
therefore itself cause a scandal, and make the autonomy of all states
insecure.
[114] See Vattel: _Law of Nations_, II. Ch. IV. § 55. No
foreign power, he says, has a right to judge the conduct and
administration of any sovereign or oblige him to alter it. “If
he loads his subjects with taxes, or if he treats them with
severity, the nation alone is concerned; and no other is called
upon to offer redress for his behaviour, or oblige him to follow
more wise and equitable maxims.... But (_loc. cit._ § 56) when
the bands of the political society are broken, or at least
suspended, between the sovereign and his people, the contending
parties may then be considered at two distinct powers; and, since
they are both equally independent of all foreign authority,
nobody has a right to judge them. Either may be in the right; and
each of those who grant their assistance may imagine that he is
giving his support to the better cause.” [Tr.]
6.—“No state at war with another shall countenance such modes of
hostility as would make mutual confidence impossible in a subsequent
state of peace: such are the employment of assassins (_percussores_)
or of poisoners (_venefici_), breaches of capitulation, the
instigating and making use of treachery (_perduellio_) in the hostile
state.”
These are dishonourable stratagems. For some kind of confidence in
the disposition of the enemy must exist even in the midst of war,
as otherwise peace could not be concluded, and the hostilities
would pass into a war of extermination (_bellum internecinum_).
War, however, is only our wretched expedient of asserting a right
by force, an expedient adopted in the state of nature, where no
court of justice exists which could settle the matter in dispute. In
circumstances like these, neither of the two parties can be called
an unjust enemy, because this form of speech presupposes a legal
decision: the issue of the conflict—just as in the case of the
so-called judgments of God—decides on which side right is. Between
states, however, no punitive war (_bellum punitivum_) is thinkable,
because between them a relation of superior and inferior does not
exist. Whence it follows that a war of extermination, where the
process of annihilation would strike both parties at once and all
right as well, would bring about perpetual peace only in the great
graveyard of the human race. Such a war then, and therefore also the
use of all means which lead to it, must be absolutely forbidden.
That the methods just mentioned do inevitably lead to this result
is obvious from the fact that these infernal arts, already vile in
themselves, on coming into use, are not long confined to the sphere
of war. Take, for example, the use of spies (_uti exploratoribus_).
Here only the dishonesty of others is made use of; but vices such
as these, when once encouraged, cannot in the nature of things be
stamped out and would be carried over into the state of peace, where
their presence would be utterly destructive to the purpose of that
state.
Although the laws stated are, objectively regarded, (_i.e._ in so far
as they affect the action of rulers) purely prohibitive laws (_leges
prohibitivæ_), some of them (_leges strictæ_) are strictly valid
without regard to circumstances and urgently require to be enforced.
Such are Nos. 1, 5, 6. Others, again, (like Nos. 2, 3, 4) although
not indeed exceptions to the maxims of law, yet in respect of the
practical application of these maxims allow subjectively of a certain
latitude to suit particular circumstances. The enforcement of these
_leges latæ_ may be legitimately put off, so long as we do not lose
sight of the ends at which they aim. This purpose of reform does not
permit of the deferment of an act of restitution (as, for example,
the restoration to certain states of freedom of which they have been
deprived in the manner described in article 2) to an infinitely
distant date—as Augustus used to say, to the “Greek Kalends”, a day
that will never come. This would be to sanction non-restitution.
Delay is permitted only with the intention that restitution should
not be made too precipitately and so defeat the purpose we have
in view. For the prohibition refers here only to the _mode of
acquisition_ which is to be no longer valid, and not to the _fact of
possession_ which, although indeed it has not the necessary title of
right, yet at the time of so-called acquisition was held legal by all
states, in accordance with the public opinion of the time.[115]
[115] It has been hitherto doubted, not without reason, whether
there can be laws of permission (_leges permissivæ_) of pure
reason as well as commands (_leges præceptivæ_) and prohibitions
(_leges prohibitivæ_). For law in general has a basis of
objective practical necessity: permission, on the other hand, is
based upon the contingency of certain actions in practice. It
follows that a law of permission would enforce what cannot be
enforced; and this would involve a contradiction, if the object
of the law should be the same in both cases. Here, however,
in the present case of a law of permission, the presupposed
prohibition is aimed merely at the future manner of acquisition
of a right—for example, acquisition through inheritance: the
exemption from this prohibition (_i.e._ the permission) refers
to the present state of possession. In the transition from a
state of nature to the civil state, this holding of property can
continue as a _bona fide_, if usurpatory, ownership, under the
new social conditions, in accordance with a permission of the Law
of Nature. Ownership of this kind, as soon as its true nature
becomes known, is seen to be mere nominal possession (_possessio
putativa_) sanctioned by opinion and customs in a natural state
of society. After the transition stage is passed, such modes of
acquisition are likewise forbidden in the subsequently evolved
civil state: and this power to remain in possession would not
be admitted if the supposed acquisition had taken place in the
civilized community. It would be bound to come to an end as an
injury to the right of others, the moment its illegality became
patent.
I have wished here only by the way to draw the attention of
teachers of the Law of Nature to the idea of a _lex permissiva_
which presents itself spontaneously in any system of rational
classification. I do so chiefly because use is often made of
this concept in civil law with reference to statutes; with this
difference, that the law of prohibition stands alone by itself,
while permission is not, as it ought to be, introduced into that
law as a limiting clause, but is thrown among the exceptions.
Thus “this or that is forbidden”,—say, Nos. 1, 2, 3, and so on
in an infinite progression,—while permissions are only added to
the law incidentally: they are not reached by the application of
some principle, but only by groping about among cases which have
actually occurred. Were this not so, qualifications would have
had to be brought into the formula of laws of prohibition which
would have immediately transformed them into laws of permission.
Count von Windischgrätz, a man whose wisdom was equal to his
discrimination, urged this very point in the form of a question
propounded by him for a prize essay. One must therefore regret
that this ingenious problem has been so soon neglected and left
unsolved. For the possibility of a formula similar to those of
mathematics is the sole real test of a legislation that would be
consistent. Without this, the so-called _jus certum_ will remain
forever a mere pious wish: we can have only general laws valid
on the whole; no general laws possessing the universal validity
which the concept law seems to demand.
_SECOND SECTION_
CONTAINING THE DEFINITIVE ARTICLES OF A PERPETUAL PEACE BETWEEN STATES
A state of peace among men who live side by side is not the natural
state (_status naturalis_), which is rather to be described as a
state of war:[116] that is to say, although there is not perhaps
always actual open hostility, yet there is a constant threatening
that an outbreak may occur. Thus the state of peace must be
_established_.[117] For the mere cessation of hostilities is no
guarantee of continued peaceful relations, and unless this guarantee
is given by every individual to his neighbour—which can only be done
in a state of society regulated by law—one man is at liberty to
challenge another and treat him as an enemy.[118]
[116] “From this diffidence of one another, there is no way for
any man to secure himself, so reasonable, as anticipation; that
is, by force, or wiles, to master the persons of all men he can,
so long, till he see no other power great enough to endanger him:
and this is no more than his own conservation requireth, and is
generally allowed.” (Hobbes: _Lev._ I. Ch. XIII.) [Tr.]
[117] Hobbes thus describes the establishment of the state. “A
_commonwealth_ is said to be _instituted_, when a _multitude_
of men do agree, and _covenant, every one, with every one_,
that to whatsoever _man_, or _assembly of men_, shall be given
by the major part, the _right_ to _present_ the person of them
all, that is to say, to be their _representative_; everyone,
as well he that _voted for it_, as he that _voted against it_,
shall _authorize_ all the actions and judgments, of that man, or
assembly of men, in the same manner, as if they were his own, to
the end, to live peaceably amongst themselves, and be protected
against other men.” (_Lev._ II. Ch. XVIII.)
There is a covenant between them, “as if every man should say to
every man, _I authorise and give up my right of governing myself,
to this man, or to this assembly of men, on this condition, that
thou give up thy right to him, and authorize all his actions in
like manner_.” (_Lev._ II. Ch. XVII.) [Tr.]
[118] It is usually accepted that a man may not take hostile
steps against any one, unless the latter has already injured
him by act. This is quite accurate, if both are citizens of a
law-governed state. For, in becoming a member of this community,
each gives the other the security he demands against injury, by
means of the supreme authority exercising control over them both.
The individual, however, (or nation) who remains in a mere state
of nature deprives me of this security and does me injury, by
mere proximity. There is perhaps no active (_facto_) molestation,
but there is a state of lawlessness, (_status injustus_) which,
by its very existence, offers a continual menace to me. I can
therefore compel him, either to enter into relations with me
under which we are both subject to law, or to withdraw from my
neighbourhood. So that the postulate upon which the following
articles are based is:—“All men who have the power to exert
a mutual influence upon one another must be under a civil
government of some kind.”
A legal constitution is, according to the nature of the
individuals who compose the state:—
(1) A constitution formed in accordance with the right of
citizenship of the individuals who constitute a nation (_jus
civitatis_).
(2) A constitution whose principle is international law which
determines the relations of states (_jus gentium_).
(3) A constitution formed in accordance with cosmopolitan law,
in as far as individuals and states, standing in an external
relation of mutual reaction, may be regarded as citizens of one
world-state (_jus cosmopoliticum_).
This classification is not an arbitrary one, but is necessary
with reference to the idea of perpetual peace. For, if even
one of these units of society were in a position physically to
influence another, while yet remaining a member of a primitive
order of society, then a state of war would be joined with these
primitive conditions; and from this it is our present purpose to
free ourselves.
FIRST DEFINITIVE ARTICLE OF PERPETUAL PEACE
I.—“The civil constitution of each state shall be republican.”
The only constitution which has its origin in the idea of the
original contract, upon which the lawful legislation of every nation
must be based, is the republican.[119] It is a constitution, in the
first place, founded in accordance with the principle of the freedom
of the members of society as human beings: secondly, in accordance
with the principle of the dependence of all, as subjects, on a common
legislation: and, thirdly, in accordance with the law of the equality
of the members as citizens. It is then, looking at the question of
right, the only constitution whose fundamental principles lie at the
basis of every form of civil constitution. And the only question for
us now is, whether it is also the one constitution which can lead to
perpetual peace.
[119] Lawful, that is to say, external freedom cannot be defined,
as it so often is, as the right [_Befugniss_] “to do whatever one
likes, so long as this does not wrong anyone else.”[B] For what
is this right? It is the possibility of actions which do not lead
to the injury of others. So the explanation of a “right” would be
something like this:—“Freedom is the possibility of actions which
do not injure anyone. A man does not wrong another—whatever his
action—if he does not wrong another”: which is empty tautology.
My external (lawful) freedom is rather to be explained in
this way: it is the right through which I require not to obey
any external laws except those to which I could have given my
consent. In exactly the same way, external (legal) equality in a
state is that relation of the subjects in consequence of which
no individual can legally bind or oblige another to anything,
without at the same time submitting himself to the law which
ensures that he can, in his turn, be bound and obliged in like
manner by this other.
[B] Hobbes’ definition of freedom is interesting. See _Lev._ II.
Ch. XXI.:—“A FREEMAN, _is he, that in those things, which by his
strength and wit he is able to do, is not hindered to do what he
has a will to_.” [Tr.]
The principle of lawful independence requires no explanation,
as it is involved in the general concept of a constitution.
The validity of this hereditary and inalienable right, which
belongs of necessity to mankind, is affirmed and ennobled by the
principle of a lawful relation between man himself and higher
beings, if indeed he believes in such beings. This is so, because
he thinks of himself, in accordance with these very principles,
as a citizen of a transcendental world as well as of the world
of sense. For, as far as my freedom goes, I am bound by no
obligation even with regard to Divine Laws—which are apprehended
by me only through my reason—except in so far as I could have
given my assent to them; for it is through the law of freedom
of my own reason that I first form for myself a concept of a
Divine Will. As for the principle of equality, in so far as it
applies to the most sublime being in the universe next to God—a
being I might perhaps figure to myself as a mighty emanation of
the Divine spirit,—there is no reason why, if I perform my duty
in the sphere in which I am placed, as that aeon does in his,
the duty of obedience alone should fall to my share, the right
to command to him. That this principle of equality, (unlike the
principle of freedom), does not apply to our relation to God is
due to the fact that, to this Being alone, the idea of duty does
not belong.
As for the right to equality which belongs to all citizens as
subjects, the solution of the problem of the admissibility of
an hereditary nobility hinges on the following question:—“Does
social rank—acknowledged by the state to be higher in the case
of one subject than another—stand above desert, or does merit
take precedence of social standing?” Now it is obvious that, if
high position is combined with good family, it is quite uncertain
whether merit, that is to say, skill and fidelity in office, will
follow as well. This amounts to granting the favoured individual
a commanding position without any question of desert; and to
that, the universal will of the people—expressed in an original
contract which is the fundamental principle of all right—would
never consent. For it does not follow that a nobleman is a man
of noble character. In the case of the official nobility, as one
might term the rank of higher magistracy—which one must acquire
by merit—the social position is not attached like property to the
person but to his office, and equality is not thereby disturbed;
for, if a man gives up office, he lays down with it his official
rank and falls back into the rank of his fellows.
Now the republican constitution apart from the soundness of its
origin, since it arose from the pure source of the concept of right,
has also the prospect of attaining the desired result, namely,
perpetual peace. And the reason is this. If, as must be so under this
constitution, the consent of the subjects is required to determine
whether there shall be war or not, nothing is more natural than that
they should weigh the matter well, before undertaking such a bad
business. For in decreeing war, they would of necessity be resolving
to bring down the miseries of war upon their country. This implies:
they must fight themselves; they must hand over the costs of the war
out of their own property; they must do their poor best to make good
the devastation which it leaves behind; and finally, as a crowning
ill, they have to accept a burden of debt which will embitter even
peace itself, and which they can never pay off on account of the new
wars which are always impending. On the other hand, in a government
where the subject is not a citizen holding a vote, (_i.e._ in a
constitution which is not republican), the plunging into war is the
least serious thing in the world. For the ruler is not a citizen,
but the owner of the state, and does not lose a whit by the war,
while he goes on enjoying the delights of his table or sport, or
of his pleasure palaces and gala days. He can therefore decide on
war for the most trifling reasons, as if it were a kind of pleasure
party.[120] Any justification of it that is necessary for the sake of
decency he can leave without concern to the diplomatic corps who are
always only too ready with their services.
[120] Cf. Cowper: _The Winter Morning Walk_:—
“But is it fit, or can it bear the shock
Of rational discussion, that a man,
Compounded and made up like other men
Of elements tumultuous, . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Should when he pleases, and on whom he will,
Wage war, with any or with no pretence
Of provocation giv’n or wrong sustain’d,
And force the beggarly last doit, by means
That his own humour dictates, from the clutch
Of poverty, that thus he may procure
His thousands, weary of penurious life,
A splendid opportunity to die?”
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
“He deems a thousand or ten thousand lives
Spent in the purchase of renown for him,
An easy reckoning.” [Tr.]
* * * * *
The following remarks must be made in order that we may not fall into
the common error of confusing the republican with the democratic
constitution. The forms of the state (_civitas_)[121] may be
classified according to either of two principles of division:—the
difference of the persons who hold the supreme authority in the
state, and the manner in which the people are governed by their
ruler whoever he may be. The first is properly called the form
of sovereignty (_forma imperii_), and there can be only three
constitutions differing in this respect: where, namely, the supreme
authority belongs to only one, to several individuals working
together, or to the whole people constituting the civil society. Thus
we have autocracy or the sovereignty of a monarch, aristocracy or
the sovereignty of the nobility, and democracy or the sovereignty
of the people. The second principle of division is the form of
government (_forma regiminis_), and refers to the way in which the
state makes use of its supreme power: for the manner of government
is based on the constitution, itself the act of that universal will
which transforms a multitude into a nation. In this respect the form
of government is either republican or despotic. Republicanism is the
political principle of severing the executive power of the government
from the legislature. Despotism is that principle in pursuance of
which the state arbitrarily puts into effect laws which it has itself
made: consequently it is the administration of the public will, but
this is identical with the private will of the ruler. Of these three
forms of a state, democracy, in the proper sense of the word, is
of necessity despotism, because it establishes an executive power,
since all decree regarding—and, if need be, against—any individual
who dissents from them. Therefore the “whole people”, so-called, who
carry their measure are really not all, but only a majority: so that
here the universal will is in contradiction with itself and with the
principle of freedom.
[121] Cf. Hobbes: _On Dominion_, Ch. VII. § 1. “As for the
difference of cities, it is taken from the difference of the
persons to whom the supreme power is committed. This power is
committed either to _one man_, or _council_, or some _one court_
consisting of many men.” [Tr.]
Every form of government in fact which is not representative is
really no true constitution at all, because a law-giver may no more
be, in one and the same person, the administrator of his own will,
than the universal major premise of a syllogism may be, at the same
time, the subsumption under itself of the particulars contained
in the minor premise. And, although the other two constitutions,
autocracy and aristocracy, are always defective in so far as
they leave the way open for such a form of government, yet there
is at least always a possibility in these cases, that they may
take the form of a government in accordance with the spirit of a
representative system. Thus Frederick the Great used at least to
_say_ that he was “merely the highest servant of the state.”[122] The
democratic constitution, on the other hand, makes this impossible,
because under such a government every one wishes to be master. We
may therefore say that the smaller the staff of the executive—that
is to say, the number of rulers—and the more real, on the other
hand, their representation of the people, so much the more is the
government of the state in accordance with a possible republicanism;
and it may hope by gradual reforms to raise itself to that standard.
For this reason, it is more difficult under an aristocracy than
under a monarchy—while under a democracy it is impossible except by
a violent revolution—to attain to this, the one perfectly lawful
constitution. The kind of government,[123] however, is of infinitely
more importance to the people than the kind of constitution,
although the greater or less aptitude of a people for this ideal
greatly depends upon such external form. The form of government,
however, if it is to be in accordance with the idea of right, must
embody the representative system in which alone a republican form
of administration is possible and without which it is despotic
and violent, be the constitution what it may. None of the ancient
so-called republics were aware of this, and they necessarily slipped
into absolute despotism which, of all despotisms, is most endurable
under the sovereignty of one individual.
[122] The lofty appellations which are often given to a
ruler—such as the Lord’s Anointed, the Administrator of the
Divine Will upon earth and Vicar of God—have been many times
censured as flattery gross enough to make one giddy. But it
seems to me without cause. Far from making a prince arrogant,
names like these must rather make him humble at heart, if he has
any intelligence—which we take for granted he has—and reflects
that he has undertaken an office which is too great for any
human being. For, indeed, it is the holiest which God has on
earth—namely, the right of ruling mankind: and he must ever live
in fear of injuring this treasure of God in some respect or other.
[123] Mallet du Pan boasts in his seemingly brilliant but shallow
and superficial language that, after many years experience, he
has come at last to be convinced of the truth of the well known
saying of Pope [_Essay on Man_, III. 303]:—
“For Forms of Government let fools contest;
Whate’er is best administered is best.”
If this means that the best administered government is best
administered, then, in Swift’s phrase, he has cracked a nut to
find a worm in it. If it means, however, that the best conducted
government is also the best kind of government,—that is, the
best form of political constitution,—then it is utterly false:
for examples of wise administration are no proof of the kind of
government. Who ever ruled better than Titus and Marcus Aurelius,
and yet the one left Domitian, the other Commodus, as his
successor? This could not have happened where the constitution
was a good one, for their absolute unfitness for the position was
early enough known, and the power of the emperor was sufficiently
great to exclude them.
SECOND DEFINITIVE ARTICLE OF PERPETUAL PEACE
II.—“The law of nations shall be founded on a federation of free
states.”
Nations, as states, may be judged like individuals who, living in the
natural state of society—that is to say, uncontrolled by external
law—injure one another through their very proximity.[124] Every
state, for the sake of its own security, may—and ought to—demand
that its neighbour should submit itself to conditions, similar to
those of the civil society where the right of every individual is
guaranteed. This would give rise to a federation of nations which,
however, would not have to be a State of nations.[125] That would
involve a contradiction. For the term “state” implies the relation of
one who rules to those who obey—that is to say, of law-giver to the
subject people: and many nations in one state would constitute only
one nation, which contradicts our hypothesis, since here we have to
consider the right of one nation against another, in so far as they
are so many separate states and are not to be fused into one.
[124] “For as amongst masterless men, there is perpetual war, of
every man against his neighbour; no inheritance, to transmit to
the son, nor to expect from the father; no propriety of goods,
or lands; no security; but a full and absolute liberty in every
particular man: so in states, and commonwealths not dependent on
one another, every commonwealth, not every man, has an absolute
liberty, to do what it shall judge, that is to say, what that
man, or assembly that representeth it, shall judge most conducing
to their benefit. But withal, they live in the condition of
a perpetual war, and upon the confines of battle, with their
frontiers armed, and cannons planted against their neighbours
round about.” (Hobbes: _Leviathan_, II. Ch. XXI.) [Tr.]
[125] But see p. 136, where Kant seems to speak of a State of
nations as the ideal. Kant expresses himself, on this point, more
clearly in the _Rechtslehre_, Part. II. § 61:—“The natural state
of nations,” he says here, “like that of individual men, is a
condition which must be abandoned, in order that they may enter a
state regulated by law. Hence, before this can take place, every
right possessed by these nations and every external “mine” and
“thine” [_id est_, symbol of possession] which states acquire or
preserve through war are merely _provisional_, and can become
_peremptorily_ valid and constitute a true state of peace only
in a universal _union of states_, by a process analogous to that
through which a people becomes a state. Since, however, the too
great extension of such a State of nations over vast territories
must, in the long run, make the government of that union—and
therefore the protection of each of its members—impossible, a
multitude of such corporations will lead again to a state of war.
So that _perpetual peace_, the final goal of international law
as a whole, is really an impracticable idea [_eine unausführbare
Idee_]. The political principles, however, which are directed
towards this end, (that is to say, towards the establishment of
such unions of states as may serve as a continual approximation
to that ideal), are not impracticable; on the contrary, as this
approximation is required by duty and is therefore founded also
upon the rights of men and of states, these principles are,
without doubt, capable of practical realization.” [Tr.]
The attachment of savages to their lawless liberty, the fact
that they would rather be at hopeless variance with one another
than submit themselves to a legal authority constituted by
themselves, that they therefore prefer their senseless freedom to a
reason-governed liberty, is regarded by us with profound contempt as
barbarism and uncivilisation and the brutal degradation of humanity.
So one would think that civilised races, each formed into a state by
itself, must come out of such an abandoned condition as soon as they
possibly can. On the contrary, however, every state thinks rather
that its majesty (the “majesty” of a people is an absurd expression)
lies just in the very fact that it is subject to no external legal
authority; and the glory of the ruler consists in this, that, without
his requiring to expose himself to danger, thousands stand at his
command ready to let themselves be sacrificed for a matter of no
concern to them.[126] The difference between the savages of Europe
and those of America lies chiefly in this, that, while many tribes of
the latter have been entirely devoured by their enemies, Europeans
know a better way of using the vanquished than by eating them; and
they prefer to increase through them the number of their subjects,
and so the number of instruments at their command for still more
widely spread war.
[126] A Greek Emperor who magnanimously volunteered to settle by
a duel his quarrel with a Bulgarian Prince, got the following
answer:—“A smith who has tongs will not pluck the glowing iron
from the fire with his hands.”
The depravity of human nature[127] shows itself without disguise
in the unrestrained relations of nations to each other, while in
the law-governed civil state much of this is hidden by the check
of government. This being so, it is astonishing that the word
“right” has not yet been entirely banished from the politics of
war as pedantic, and that no state has yet ventured to publicly
advocate this point of view. For Hugo Grotius, Puffendorf, Vattel
and others—Job’s comforters, all of them—are always quoted in good
faith to justify an attack, although their codes, whether couched
in philosophical or diplomatic terms, have not—nor can have—the
slightest legal force, because states, as such, are under no common
external authority; and there is no instance of a state having ever
been moved by argument to desist from its purpose, even when this
was backed up by the testimony of such great men. This homage which
every state renders—in words at least—to the idea of right, proves
that, although it may be slumbering, there is, notwithstanding, to
be found in man a still higher natural moral capacity by the aid of
which he will in time gain the mastery over the evil principle in his
nature, the existence of which he is unable to deny. And he hopes the
same of others; for otherwise the word “right” would never be uttered
by states who wish to wage war, unless to deride it like the Gallic
Prince who declared:—“The privilege which nature gives the strong is
that the weak must obey them.”[128]
[127] “Both sayings are very true: that _man to man is a kind of
God_; and that _man to man is an arrant wolf_. The first is true,
if we compare citizens amongst themselves; and the second, if we
compare cities. In the one, there is some analogy of similitude
with the Deity; to wit, justice and charity, the twin sisters
of peace. But in the other, good men must defend themselves by
taking to them for a sanctuary the two daughters of war, deceit
and violence: that is, in plain terms, a mere brutal rapacity.”
(Hobbes: Epistle Dedicatory to the _Philosophical Rudiments
concerning Government and Society_.) [Tr.]
[128] “The strongest are still never sufficiently strong to
ensure them the continual mastership, unless they find means of
transforming force into right, and obedience into duty.
From the right of the strongest, right takes an ironical
appearance, and is rarely established as a principle.” (_Contrat
Social_, I. Ch. III.) [Tr.]
The method by which states prosecute their rights can never be by
process of law—as it is where there is an external tribunal—but
only by war. Through this means, however, and its favourable issue,
victory, the question of right is never decided. A treaty of peace
makes, it may be, an end to the war of the moment, but not to the
conditions of war which at any time may afford a new pretext
for opening hostilities; and this we cannot exactly condemn as
unjust, because under these conditions everyone is his own judge.
Notwithstanding, not quite the same rule applies to states according
to the law of nations as holds good of individuals in a lawless
condition according to the law of nature, namely, “that they ought
to advance out of this condition.” This is so, because, as states,
they have already within themselves a legal constitution, and have
therefore advanced beyond the stage at which others, in accordance
with their ideas of right, can force them to come under a wider
legal constitution. Meanwhile, however, reason, from her throne of
the supreme law-giving moral power, absolutely condemns war[129] as
a morally lawful proceeding, and makes a state of peace, on the
other hand, an immediate duty. Without a compact between the nations,
however, this state of peace cannot be established or assured. Hence
there must be an alliance of a particular kind which we may call a
covenant of peace (_foedus pacificum_), which would differ from a
treaty of peace (_pactum pacis_) in this respect, that the latter
merely puts an end to one war, while the former would seek to put
an end to war for ever. This alliance does not aim at the gain of
any power whatsoever of the state, but merely at the preservation
and security of the freedom of the state for itself and of other
allied states at the same time.[130] The latter do not, however,
require, for this reason, to submit themselves like individuals in
the state of nature to public laws and coercion. The practicability
or objective reality of this idea of federation which is to extend
gradually over all states and so lead to perpetual peace can be
shewn. For, if Fortune ordains that a powerful and enlightened people
should form a republic,—which by its very nature is inclined to
perpetual peace—this would serve as a centre of federal union for
other states wishing to join, and thus secure conditions of freedom
among the states in accordance with the idea of the law of nations.
Gradually, through different unions of this kind, the federation
would extend further and further.
[129] “The natural state,” says Hobbes, (_On Dominion_, Ch. VII.
§ 18) “hath the same proportion to the civil, (I mean, liberty to
subjection), which passion hath to reason, or a beast to a man.”
Locke speaks thus of man, when he puts himself into the state of
war with another:—“having quitted reason, which God hath given
to be the rule betwixt man and man, and the common bond whereby
human kind is united into one fellowship and society; and having
renounced the way of peace which that teaches, and made use of
the force of war, to compass his unjust ends upon another, where
he has no right; and so revolting from his own kind to that of
beasts, by making force, which is theirs, to be his rule of
right, he renders himself liable to be destroyed by the injured
person, and the rest of mankind that will join with him in the
execution of justice, as any other wild beast, or noxious brute,
with whom mankind can have neither society nor security.” (_Civil
Government_, Ch. XV. § 172.) [Tr.]
[130] Cf. Rousseau: _Gouvernement de Pologne_, Ch. V. Federate
government is “the only one which unites in itself all the
advantages of great and small states.” [Tr.]
It is quite comprehensible that a people should say:—“There shall be
no war among us, for we shall form ourselves into a state, that is to
say, constitute for ourselves a supreme legislative, administrative
and judicial power which will settle our disputes peaceably.” But if
this state says:—“There shall be no war between me and other states,
although I recognise no supreme law-giving power which will secure
me my rights and whose rights I will guarantee;” then it is not at
all clear upon what grounds I could base my confidence in my right,
unless it were the substitute for that compact on which civil society
is based—namely, free federation which reason must necessarily
connect with the idea of the law of nations, if indeed any meaning is
to be left in that concept at all.
There is no intelligible meaning in the idea of the law of nations
as giving a right to make war; for that must be a right to decide
what is just, not in accordance with universal, external laws
limiting the freedom of each individual, but by means of one-sided
maxims applied by force. We must then understand by this that men of
such ways of thinking are quite justly served, when they destroy
one another, and thus find perpetual peace in the wide grave which
covers all the abominations of acts of violence as well as the
authors of such deeds. For states, in their relation to one another,
there can be, according to reason, no other way of advancing from
that lawless condition which unceasing war implies, than by giving
up their savage lawless freedom, just as individual men have done,
and yielding to the coercion of public laws. Thus they can form
a State of nations (_civitas gentium_), one, too, which will be
ever increasing and would finally embrace all the peoples of the
earth. States, however, in accordance with their understanding of
the law of nations, by no means desire this, and therefore reject
_in hypothesi_ what is correct _in thesi_. Hence, instead of the
positive idea of a world-republic, if all is not to be lost, only the
negative substitute for it, a federation averting war, maintaining
its ground and ever extending over the world may stop the current
of this tendency to war and shrinking from the control of law. But
even then there will be a constant danger that this propensity may
break out.[131] “Furor impius intus—fremit horridus ore cruento.”
(Virgil.)[132]
[131] On the conclusion of peace at the end of a war, it might
not be unseemly for a nation to appoint a day of humiliation,
after the festival of thanksgiving, on which to invoke the
mercy of Heaven for the terrible sin which the human race are
guilty of, in their continued unwillingness to submit (in their
relations with other states) to a law-governed constitution,
preferring rather in the pride of their independence to use the
barbarous method of war, which after all does not really settle
what is wanted, namely, the right of each state in a quarrel. The
feasts of thanksgiving during a war for a victorious battle, the
hymns which are sung—to use the Jewish expression—“to the Lord
of Hosts” are not in less strong contrast to the ethical idea
of a father of mankind; for, apart from the indifference these
customs show to the way in which nations seek to establish their
rights—sad enough as it is—these rejoicings bring in an element
of exultation that a great number of lives, or at least the
happiness of many, has been destroyed.
[132] Cf. _Aeneidos_, I. 294 _seq._
“Furor impius intus,
Saeva sedens super arma, et centum vinctus aënis
Post tergum nodis, fremet horridus ore cruento.” [Tr.]
THIRD DEFINITIVE ARTICLE OF PERPETUAL PEACE
III.—“The rights of men, as citizens of the world, shall be limited
to the conditions of universal hospitality.”
We are speaking here, as in the previous articles, not of
philanthropy, but of right; and in this sphere hospitality signifies
the claim of a stranger entering foreign territory to be treated by
its owner without hostility. The latter may send him away again,
if this can be done without causing his death; but, so long as he
conducts himself peaceably, he must not be treated as an enemy.
It is not a right to be treated as a guest to which the stranger
can lay claim—a special friendly compact on his behalf would be
required to make him for a given time an actual inmate—but he has
a right of visitation. This right[133] to present themselves to
society belongs to all mankind in virtue of our common right of
possession on the surface of the earth on which, as it is a globe,
we cannot be infinitely scattered, and must in the end reconcile
ourselves to existence side by side: at the same time, originally
no one individual had more right than another to live in any one
particular spot. Uninhabitable portions of the surface, ocean and
desert, split up the human community, but in such a way that ships
and camels—“the ship of the desert”—make it possible for men to come
into touch with one another across these unappropriated regions
and to take advantage of our common claim to the face of the earth
with a view to a possible intercommunication. The inhospitality of
the inhabitants of certain sea coasts—as, for example, the coast of
Barbary—in plundering ships in neighbouring seas or making slaves
of shipwrecked mariners; or the behaviour of the Arab Bedouins in
the deserts, who think that proximity to nomadic tribes constitutes
a right to rob, is thus contrary to the law of nature. This right
to hospitality, however—that is to say, the privilege of strangers
arriving on foreign soil—does not amount to more than what is implied
in a permission to make an attempt at intercourse with the original
inhabitants. In this way far distant territories may enter into
peaceful relations with one another. These relations may at last
come under the public control of law, and thus the human race may be
brought nearer the realisation of a cosmopolitan constitution.
[133] Cf. Vattel (_op. cit._, II. ch. IX. § 123):—“The right of
passage is also a remnant of the primitive state of communion,
in which the entire earth was common to all mankind, and the
passage was everywhere free to each individual according to his
necessities. Nobody can be entirely deprived of this right.” See
also above, p. 65, _note_. [Tr.]
Let us look now, for the sake of comparison, at the inhospitable
behaviour of the civilised nations, especially the commercial
states of our continent. The injustice which they exhibit on
visiting foreign lands and races—this being equivalent in their
eyes to conquest—is such as to fill us with horror. America, the
negro countries, the Spice Islands, the Cape etc. were, on being
discovered, looked upon as countries which belonged to nobody; for
the native inhabitants were reckoned as nothing. In Hindustan, under
the pretext of intending to establish merely commercial depots, the
Europeans introduced foreign troops; and, as a result, the different
states of Hindustan were stirred up to far-spreading wars. Oppression
of the natives followed, famine, insurrection, perfidy and all the
rest of the litany of evils which can afflict mankind.
China[134] and Japan (Nipon) which had made an attempt at receiving
guests of this kind, have now taken a prudent step. Only to a single
European people, the Dutch, has China given the right of access to
her shores (but not of entrance into the country), while Japan has
granted both these concessions; but at the same time they exclude the
Dutch who enter, as if they were prisoners, from social intercourse
with the inhabitants. The worst, or from the standpoint of ethical
judgment the best, of all this is that no satisfaction is derived
from all this violence, that all these trading companies stand on
the verge of ruin, that the Sugar Islands, that seat of the most
horrible and deliberate slavery, yield no real profit, but only have
their use indirectly and for no very praiseworthy object—namely, that
of furnishing men to be trained as sailors for the men-of-war and
thereby contributing to the carrying on of war in Europe. And this
has been done by nations who make a great ado about their piety, and
who, while they are quite ready to commit injustice, would like, in
their orthodoxy, to be considered among the elect.
[134] In order to call this great empire by the name which
it gives itself—namely, China, not Sina or a word of similar
sound—we have only to look at Georgii: _Alphab. Tibet._, pp.
651-654, particularly _note_ b., below. According to the
observation of Professor Fischer of St. Petersburg, there is
really no particular name which it always goes by: the most
usual is the word _Kin_, _i.e._ gold, which the inhabitants of
Tibet call _Ser_. Hence the emperor is called the king of gold,
_i.e._ the king of the most splendid country in the world. This
word _Kin_ may probably be _Chin_ in the empire itself, but
be pronounced _Kin_ by the Italian missionaries on account of
the gutturals. Thus we see that the country of the Seres, so
often mentioned by the Romans, was China: the silk, however,
was despatched to Europe across Greater Tibet, probably through
Smaller Tibet and Bucharia, through Persia and then on. This
leads to many reflections as to the antiquity of this wonderful
state, as compared with Hindustan, at the time of its union with
Tibet and thence with Japan. On the other hand, the name Sina or
Tschina which is said to be given to this land by neighbouring
peoples leads to nothing.
Perhaps we can explain the ancient intercourse of Europe with
Tibet—a fact at no time widely known—by looking at what Hesychius
has preserved on the matter. I refer to the shout, Κουξ Ομπαξ
(_Konx Ompax_), the cry of the Hierophants in the Eleusinian
mysteries (cf. _Travels of Anacharsis the Younger_, Part V., p.
447, _seq._). For, according to Georgii _Alph. Tibet._, the word
_Concioa_ which bears a striking resemblance to _Konx_ means
God. _Pak-cio_ (_ib._ p. 520) which might easily be pronounced
by the Greeks like _pax_ means _promulgator legis_, the divine
principle permeating nature (called also, on p. 177, _Cencresi_).
_Om_, however, which La Croze translates by _benedictus_,
_i.e._ blessed, can when applied to the Deity mean nothing but
beatified (p. 507). Now P. Franc. Horatius, when he asked the
Lhamas of Tibet, as he often did, what they understood by God
(_Concioa_) always got the answer:—“it is the assembly of all the
saints,” _i.e._ the assembly of those blessed ones who have been
born again according to the faith of the Lama and, after many
wanderings in changing forms, have at last returned to God, to
Burchane: that is to say, they are beings to be worshipped, souls
which have undergone transmigration (p. 223). So the mysterious
expression _Konx Ompax_ ought probably to mean the holy (_Konx_),
blessed, (_Om_) and wise (_Pax_) supreme Being pervading the
universe, the personification of nature. Its use in the Greek
mysteries probably signified monotheism for the Epoptes, in
distinction from the polytheism of the people, although elsewhere
P. Horatius scented atheism here. How that mysterious word
came by way of Tibet to the Greeks may be explained as above;
and, on the other hand, in this way is made probable an early
intercourse of Europe with China across Tibet, earlier perhaps
than the communication with Hindustan. (There is some difference
of opinion as to the meaning of the words κόγξ ὄμπαξ—according
to Liddell and Scott, a corruption of κόγξ, ὁμοίως πάξ. Kant’s
inferences here seem to be more than far-fetched. Lobeck, in his
_Aglaophamus_ (p. 775), gives a quite different interpretation
which has, he says, been approved by scholars. And Whately
(_Historic Doubts relative to Napoleon Bonaparte_, 3rd. ed.,
Postscript) uses Konx Ompax as a pseudonym. [Tr.])
The intercourse, more or less close, which has been everywhere
steadily increasing between the nations of the earth, has now
extended so enormously that a violation of right in one part of the
world is felt all over it. Hence the idea of a cosmopolitan right
is no fantastical, high-flown notion of right, but a complement of
the unwritten code of law—constitutional as well as international
law—necessary for the public rights of mankind in general and thus
for the realisation of perpetual peace. For only by endeavouring
to fulfil the conditions laid down by this cosmopolitan law can we
flatter ourselves that we are gradually approaching that ideal.
FIRST SUPPLEMENT
CONCERNING THE GUARANTEE OF PERPETUAL PEACE
This guarantee is given by no less a power than the great artist
nature (_natura dædala rerum_) in whose mechanical course is clearly
exhibited a predetermined design to make harmony spring from human
discord, even against the will of man. Now this design, although
called Fate when looked upon as the compelling force of a cause, the
laws of whose operation are unknown to us, is, when considered as the
purpose manifested in the course of nature, called Providence,[135]
as the deep-lying wisdom of a Higher Cause, directing itself towards
the ultimate practical end of the human race and predetermining the
course of things with a view to its realisation. This Providence
we do not, it is true, perceive in the cunning contrivances
[_Kunstanstalten_] of nature; nor can we even conclude from the
fact of their existence that it is there; but, as in every relation
between the form of things and their final cause, we can, and must,
supply the thought of a Higher Wisdom, in order that we may be able
to form an idea of the possible existence of these products after
the analogy of human works of art [_Kunsthandlungen_].[136] The
representation to ourselves of the relation and agreement of these
formations of nature to the moral purpose for which they were made
and which reason directly prescribes to us, is an Idea, it is true,
which is in theory superfluous; but in practice it is dogmatic, and
its objective reality is well established.[137] Thus we see, for
example, with regard to the ideal [_Pflichtbegriff_] of perpetual
peace, that it is our duty to make use of the mechanism of nature
for the realisation of that end. Moreover, in a case like this where
we are interested merely in the theory and not in the religious
question, the use of the word “nature” is more appropriate than that
of “providence”, in view of the limitations of human reason, which,
in considering the relation of effects to their causes, must keep
within the limits of possible experience. And the term “nature” is
also less presumptuous than the other. To speak of a Providence
knowable by us would be boldly to put on the wings of Icarus in order
to draw near to the mystery of its unfathomable purpose.
[135] In the mechanical system of nature to which man belongs as
a sentient being, there appears, as the underlying ground of its
existence, a certain _form_ which we cannot make intelligible
to ourselves except by thinking into the physical world the
idea of an end preconceived by the Author of the universe: this
predetermination of nature on the part of God we generally call
Divine Providence. In so far as this providence appears in the
origin of the universe, we speak of Providence as founder of the
world (_providentia conditrix; semel jussit, semper parent._
Augustine). As it maintains the course of nature, however,
according to universal laws of adaptation to preconceived ends,
[_i.e._ teleological laws] we call it a ruling providence
(_providentia gubernatrix_). Further, we name it the guiding
providence (_providentia directrix_), as it appears in the
world for special ends, which we could not foresee, but suspect
only from the result. Finally, regarding particular events
as divine purposes, we speak no longer of providence, but of
dispensation (_directio extraordinaria_). As this term, however,
really suggests the idea of miracles, although the events are
not spoken of by this name, the desire to fathom dispensation,
as such, is a foolish presumption in men. For, from one single
occurrence, to jump at the conclusion that there is a particular
principle of efficient causes and that this event is an end and
not merely the natural [_naturmechanische_] sequence of a
design quite unknown to us is absurd and presumptuous, in however
pious and humble a spirit we may speak of it. In the same way to
distinguish between a universal and a particular providence when
regarding it _materialiter_, in its relation to actual objects
in the world (to say, for instance, that there may be, indeed,
a providence for the preservation of the different species of
creation, but that individuals are left to chance) is false and
contradictory. For providence is called universal for the very
reason that no single thing may be thought of as shut out from
its care. Probably the distinction of two kinds of providence,
_formaliter_ or subjectively considered, had reference to the
manner in which its purposes are fulfilled. So that we have
ordinary providence (_e.g._ the yearly decay and awakening to
new life in nature with change of season) and what we may call
unusual or special providence (_e.g._ the bringing of timber
by ocean currents to Arctic shores where it does not grow, and
where without this aid the inhabitants could not live). Here,
although we can quite well explain the physico-mechanical cause
of these phenomena—in this case, for example, the banks of the
rivers in temperate countries are over-grown with trees, some of
which fall into the water and are carried along, probably by the
Gulf Stream—we must not overlook the teleological cause which
points to the providential care of a ruling wisdom above nature.
But the concept, commonly used in the schools of philosophy,
of a co-operation on the part of the Deity or a concurrence
(_concursus_) in the operations going on in the world of sense,
must be dropped. For it is, firstly, self-contradictory to couple
the like and the unlike together (_gryphes jungere equis_) and
to let Him who is Himself the entire cause of the changes in the
universe make good any shortcomings in His own predetermining
providence (which to require this must be defective) during the
course of the world; for example, to say that the physician has
restored the sick with the help of God—that is to say that He
has been present as a support. For _causa solitaria non juvat_.
God created the physician as well as his means of healing; and
we must ascribe the result wholly to Him, if we will go back
to the supreme First Cause which, theoretically, is beyond our
comprehension. Or we can ascribe the result entirely to the
physician, in so far as we follow up this event, as explicable in
the chain of physical causes, according to the order of nature.
Secondly, moreover, such a way of looking at this question
destroys all the fixed principles by which we judge an effect.
But, from the ethico-practical point of view which looks entirely
to the transcendental side of things, the idea of a divine
concurrence is quite proper and even necessary: for example,
in the faith that God will make good the imperfection of our
human justice, if only our feelings and intentions are sincere;
and that He will do this by means beyond our comprehension,
and therefore we should not slacken our efforts after what is
good. Whence it follows, as a matter of course, that no one must
attempt to explain a good action as a mere event in time by this
_concursus_; for that would be to pretend a theoretical knowledge
of the supersensible and hence be absurd.
[136] _Id est_, which we cannot dissever from the idea of a
creative skill capable of producing them. [Tr.]
[137] See preface, p. ix. above.
Before we determine the surety given by nature more exactly, we
must first look at what ultimately makes this guarantee of peace
necessary—the circumstances in which nature has carefully placed the
actors in her great theatre. In the next place, we shall proceed to
consider the manner in which she gives this surety.
The provisions she has made are as follow: (1) she has taken
care that men _can_ live in all parts of the world; (2) she has
scattered them by means of war in all directions, even into the most
inhospitable regions, so that these too might be populated; (3) by
this very means she has forced them to enter into relations more or
less controlled by law. It is surely wonderful that, on the cold
wastes round the Arctic Ocean, there is always to be found moss
for the reindeer to scrape out from under the snow, the reindeer
itself either serving as food or to draw the sledge of the Ostiak or
Samoyedes. And salt deserts which would otherwise be left unutilised
have the camel, which seems as if created for travelling in such
lands. This evidence of design in things, however, is still more
clear when we come to know that, besides the fur-clad animals of the
shores of the Arctic Ocean, there are seals, walruses and whales
whose flesh furnishes food and whose oil fire for the dwellers in
these regions. But the providential care of nature excites our wonder
above all, when we hear of the driftwood which is carried—whence
no one knows—to these treeless shores: for without the aid of
this material the natives could neither construct their craft, nor
weapons, nor huts for shelter. Here too they have so much to do,
making war against wild animals, that they live at peace with one
another. But what drove them originally into these regions was
probably nothing but war.
Of animals, used by us as instruments of war, the horse was the first
which man learned to tame and domesticate during the period of the
peopling of the earth; the elephant belongs to the later period of
the luxury of states already established. In the same way, the art
of cultivating certain grasses called cereals—no longer known to us
in their original form—and also the multiplication and improvement,
by transplanting and grafting, of the original kinds of fruit—in
Europe, probably only two species, the crab-apple and wild pear—could
only originate under the conditions accompanying established states
where the rights of property are assured. That is to say it would be
after man, hitherto existing in lawless liberty, had advanced beyond
the occupations of a hunter,[138] a fisherman or a shepherd to the
life of a tiller of the soil, when salt and iron were discovered,—to
become, perhaps, the first articles of commerce between different
peoples,—and were sought far and near. In this way the peoples would
be at first brought into peaceful relation with one another, and so
come to an understanding and the enjoyment of friendly intercourse,
even with their most distant neighbours.
[138] Of all modes of livelihood the life of the hunter is
undoubtedly most incompatible with a civilised condition of
society. Because, to live by hunting, families must isolate
themselves from their neighbours, soon becoming estranged and
spread over widely scattered forests, to be before long on terms
of hostility, since each requires a great deal of space to obtain
food and raiment.
God’s command to Noah not to shed blood (I. _Genesis_, IX. 4-6)
[4. “But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood
thereof, shall ye not eat.
5. And surely your blood of your lives will I require; at
the hand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand
of man; at the hand of every man’s brother will I require
the life of man.
6. Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be
shed: for in the image of God made he man.”]
is frequently quoted, and was afterwards—in another connection it
is true—made by the baptised Jews a condition to which Christians,
newly converted from heathendom, had to conform. Cf. _Acts_ XV. 20;
XXI. 25. This command seems originally to have been nothing else
than a prohibition of the life of the hunter; for here the
possibility of eating raw flesh must often occur, and, in
forbidding the one custom, we condemn the other.
Now while nature provided that men could live on all parts of
the earth, she also at the same time despotically willed that
they _should_ live everywhere on it, although against their own
inclination and even although this imperative did not presuppose an
idea of duty which would compel obedience to nature with the force
of a moral law. But, to attain this end, she has chosen war. So we
see certain peoples, widely separated, whose common descent is made
evident by affinity in their languages. Thus, for instance, we find
the Samoyedes on the Arctic Ocean, and again a people speaking a
similar language on the Altai Mts., 200 miles [_Meilen_][139] off,
between whom has pressed in a mounted tribe, warlike in character
and of Mongolian origin, which has driven one branch of the race
far from the other, into the most inhospitable regions where their
own inclination would certainly not have carried them.[140] In the
same way, through the intrusion of the Gothic and Sarmatian tribes,
the Finns in the most northerly regions of Europe, whom we call
Laplanders, have been separated by as great a distance from the
Hungarians, with whose language their own is allied. And what but war
can have brought the Esquimos to the north of America, a race quite
distinct from those of that country and probably European adventurers
of prehistoric times? And war too, nature’s method of populating
the earth, must have driven the Pescherais[141] in South America
as far as Patagonia. War itself, however, is in need of no special
stimulating cause, but seems engrafted in human nature, and is even
regarded as something noble in itself to which man is inspired by the
love of glory apart from motives of self-interest. Hence, among the
savages of America as well as those of Europe in the age of chivalry,
martial courage is looked upon as of great value itself, not merely
when a war is going on, as is reasonable enough, but in order that
there should be war: and thus war is often entered upon merely to
exhibit this quality. So that an intrinsic dignity is held to attach
to war in itself, and even philosophers eulogise it as an ennobling,
refining influence on humanity, unmindful of the Greek proverb, “War
is evil, in so far as it makes more bad people than it takes away.”
[139] About 1000 English miles.
[140] The question might be put:—“If it is nature’s will that
these Arctic shores should not remain unpopulated, what will
become of their inhabitants, if, as is to be expected, at some
time or other no more driftwood should be brought to them? For
we may believe that, with the advance of civilisation, the
inhabitants of temperate zones will utilise better the wood which
grows on the banks of their rivers, and not let it fall into the
stream and so be swept away.” I answer: the inhabitants of the
shores of the River Obi, the Yenisei, the Lena will supply them
with it through trade, and take in exchange the animal produce in
which the seas of Arctic shores are so rich—that is, if nature
has first of all brought about peace among them.
[141] Cf. _Enc. Brit._ (9th ed.), art. “Indians”, in which there
is an allusion to “Fuegians, the _Pescherais_” of some writers.
[Tr.]
So much, then, of what nature does for her own ends with regard
to the human race as members of the animal world. Now comes the
question which touches the essential points in this design of a
perpetual peace:—“What does nature do in this respect with reference
to the end which man’s own reason sets before him as a duty? and
consequently what does she do to further the realisation of his
moral purpose? How does she guarantee that what man, by the laws of
freedom, ought to do and yet fails to do, he will do, without any
infringement of his freedom by the compulsion of nature and that,
moreover, this shall be done in accordance with the three forms of
public right—constitutional or political law, international law and
cosmopolitan law?” When I say of nature that she _wills_ that this or
that should take place, I do not mean that she imposes upon us the
duty to do it—for only the free, unrestrained, practical reason can
do that—but that she does it herself, whether we will or not. “_Fata
volentem ducunt, nolentem trahunt._”
1. Even if a people were not compelled through internal discord
to submit to the restraint of public laws, war would bring this
about, working from without. For, according to the contrivance of
nature which we have mentioned, every people finds another tribe
in its neighbourhood, pressing upon it in such a manner that it
is compelled to form itself internally into a state to be able to
defend itself as a power should. Now the republican constitution
is the only one which is perfectly adapted to the rights of man,
but it is also the most difficult to establish and still more to
maintain. So generally is this recognised that people often say
the members of a republican state would require to be angels,[142]
because men, with their self-seeking propensities, are not fit for
a constitution of so sublime a form. But now nature comes to the
aid of the universal, reason-derived will which, much as we honour
it, is in practice powerless. And this she does, by means of these
very self-seeking propensities, so that it only depends—and so much
lies within the power of man—on a good organisation of the state
for their forces to be so pitted against one another, that the one
may check the destructive activity of the other or neutralise its
effect. And hence, from the standpoint of reason, the result will
be the same as if both forces did not exist, and each individual
is compelled to be, if not a morally good man, yet at least a good
citizen. The problem of the formation of the state, hard as it may
sound, is not insoluble, even for a race of devils, granted that
they have intelligence. It may be put thus:—“Given a multitude of
rational beings who, in a body, require general laws for their
own preservation, but each of whom, as an individual, is secretly
inclined to exempt himself from this restraint: how are we to order
their affairs and how establish for them a constitution such that,
although their private dispositions may be really antagonistic,
they may yet so act as a check upon one another, that, in their
public relations, the effect is the same as if they had no such evil
sentiments.” Such a problem must be capable of solution. For it
deals, not with the moral reformation of mankind, but only with the
mechanism of nature; and the problem is to learn how this mechanism
of nature can be applied to men, in order so to regulate the
antagonism of conflicting interests in a people that they may even
compel one another to submit to compulsory laws and thus necessarily
bring about the state of peace in which laws have force. We can see,
in states actually existing, although very imperfectly organised,
that, in externals, they already approximate very nearly to what
the Idea of right prescribes, although the principle of morality is
certainly not the cause. A good political constitution, however, is
not to be expected as a result of progress in morality; but rather,
conversely, the good moral condition of a nation is to be looked
for, as one of the first fruits of such a constitution. Hence the
mechanism of nature, working through the self-seeking propensities
of man (which of course counteract one another in their external
effects), may be used by reason as a means of making way for the
realisation of her own purpose, the empire of right, and, as far
as is in the power of the state, to promote and secure in this way
internal as well as external peace. We may say, then, that it is
the irresistible will of nature that right shall at last get the
supremacy. What one here fails to do will be accomplished in the long
run, although perhaps with much inconvenience to us. As Bouterwek
says, “If you bend the reed too much it breaks: he who would do too
much does nothing.”
[142] Rousseau uses these terms in speaking of democracy. (_Cont.
Soc._, III. Ch. 4.) “If there were a nation of Gods, they might
be governed by a democracy: but so perfect a government will not
agree with men.”
But he writes elsewhere of republican governments (_op. cit._,
II. Ch. 6):—“All lawful governments are republican.” And in a
footnote to this passage:—“I do not by the word ‘republic’ mean
an aristocracy or democracy only, but in general all governments
directed by the public will which is the law. If a government
is to be lawful, it must not be confused with the sovereign
power, but be considered as the administrator of that power: and
then monarchy itself is a republic.” This language has a close
affinity with that used by Kant. (Cf. above, p. 126.) [Tr.]
2. The idea of international law presupposes the separate existence
of a number of neighbouring and independent states; and, although
such a condition of things is in itself already a state of war, (if
a federative union of these nations does not prevent the outbreak of
hostilities) yet, according to the Idea of reason, this is better
than that all the states should be merged into one under a power
which has gained the ascendency over its neighbours and gradually
become a universal monarchy.[143] For the wider the sphere of their
jurisdiction, the more laws lose in force; and soulless despotism,
when it has choked the seeds of good, at last sinks into anarchy.
Nevertheless it is the desire of every state, or of its ruler, to
attain to a permanent condition of peace in this very way; that is to
say, by subjecting the whole world as far as possible to its sway.
But nature wills it otherwise. She employs two means to separate
nations, and prevent them from intermixing: namely, the differences
of language and of religion.[144] These differences bring with them a
tendency to mutual hatred, and furnish pretexts for waging war. But,
none the less, with the growth of culture and the gradual advance
of men to greater unanimity of principle, they lead to concord in a
state of peace which, unlike the despotism we have spoken of, (the
churchyard of freedom) does not arise from the weakening of all
forces, but is brought into being and secured through the equilibrium
of these forces in their most active rivalry.
[143] See above, p. 69, _note_, esp. reference to _Theory of
Ethics_. [Tr.]
[144] Difference of religion! A strange expression, as if one
were to speak of different kinds of morality. There may indeed be
different historical forms of belief,—that is to say, the various
means which have been used in the course of time to promote
religion,—but they are mere subjects of learned investigation,
and do not really lie within the sphere of religion. In the same
way there are many religious works—the _Zendavesta_, _Veda_,
_Koran_ etc.—but there is only one religion, binding for all
men and for all times. These books are each no more than the
accidental mouthpiece of religion, and may be different according
to differences in time and place.
3. As nature wisely separates nations which the will of each state,
sanctioned even by the principles of international law, would
gladly unite under its own sway by stratagem or force; in the same
way, on the other hand, she unites nations whom the principle of a
cosmopolitan right would not have secured against violence and war.
And this union she brings about through an appeal to their mutual
interests. The commercial spirit cannot co-exist with war, and sooner
or later it takes possession of every nation. For, of all the forces
which lie at the command of a state, the power of money is probably
the most reliable. Hence states find themselves compelled—not, it is
true, exactly from motives of morality—to further the noble end of
peace and to avert war, by means of mediation, wherever it threatens
to break out, just as if they had made a permanent league for this
purpose. For great alliances with a view to war can, from the nature
of things, only very rarely occur, and still more seldom succeed.
In this way nature guarantees the coming of perpetual peace, through
the natural course of human propensities: not indeed with sufficient
certainty to enable us to prophesy the future of this ideal
theoretically, but yet clearly enough for practical purposes. And
thus this guarantee of nature makes it a duty that we should labour
for this end, an end which is no mere chimera.
SECOND SUPPLEMENT
A SECRET ARTICLE FOR PERPETUAL PEACE
A secret article in negotiations concerning public right is, when
looked at objectively or with regard to the meaning of the term,
a contradiction. When we view it, however, from the subjective
standpoint, with regard to the character and condition of the person
who dictates it, we see that it might quite well involve some private
consideration, so that he would regard it as hazardous to his dignity
to acknowledge such an article as originating from him.
The only article of this kind is contained in the following
proposition:—“The opinions of philosophers, with regard to the
conditions of the possibility of a public peace, shall be taken into
consideration by states armed for war.”
It seems, however, to be derogatory to the dignity of the legislative
authority of a state—to which we must of course attribute all
wisdom—to ask advice from subjects (among whom stand philosophers)
about the rules of its behaviour to other states. At the same time,
it is very advisable that this should be done. Hence the state will
silently invite suggestion for this purpose, while at the same time
keeping the fact secret. This amounts to saying that the state will
allow philosophers to discuss freely and publicly the universal
principles governing the conduct of war and establishment of peace;
for they will do this of their own accord, if no prohibition is laid
upon them.[145] The arrangement between states, on this point, does
not require that a special agreement should be made, merely for
this purpose; for it is already involved in the obligation imposed
by the universal reason of man which gives the moral law. We would
not be understood to say that the state must give a preference to
the principles of the philosopher, rather than to the opinions of
the jurist, the representative of state authority; but only that he
should be heard. The latter, who has chosen for a symbol the scales
of right and the sword of justice,[146] generally uses that sword not
merely to keep off all outside influences from the scales; for, when
one pan of the balance will not go down, he throws his sword into it;
and then _Væ victis_! The jurist, not being a moral philosopher, is
under the greatest temptation to do this, because it is his business
only to apply existing laws and not to investigate whether these
are not themselves in need of improvement; and this actually lower
function of his profession he looks upon as the nobler, because it
is linked to power (as is the case also in both the other faculties,
theology and medicine). Philosophy occupies a very low position
compared with this combined power. So that it is said, for example,
that she is the handmaid of theology; and the same has been said of
her position with regard to law and medicine. It is not quite clear,
however, “whether she bears the torch before these gracious ladies,
or carries the train.”
[145] Montesquieu speaks thus in praise of the English state:—“As
the enjoyment of liberty, and even its support and preservation,
consists in every man’s being allowed to speak his thoughts and
to lay open his sentiments, a citizen in this state will say or
write whatever the laws do not expressly forbid to be said or
written.” (_Esprit des Lois_, XIX. Ch. 27.) Hobbes is opposed to
all free discussion of political questions and to freedom as a
source of danger to the state. [Tr.]
[146] Kant is thinking here not of the sword of justice, in the
moral sense, but of a sword which is symbolical of the executive
power of the actual law. [Tr.]
That kings should philosophise, or philosophers become kings, is not
to be expected. But neither is it to be desired; for the possession
of power is inevitably fatal to the free exercise of reason. But
it is absolutely indispensable, for their enlightenment as to the
full significance of their vocations, that both kings and sovereign
nations, which rule themselves in accordance with laws of equality,
should not allow the class of philosophers to disappear, nor forbid
the expression of their opinions, but should allow them to speak
openly. And since this class of men, by their very nature, are
incapable of instigating rebellion or forming unions for purposes of
political agitation, they should not be suspected of propagandism.
APPENDIX I
ON THE DISAGREEMENT BETWEEN MORALS AND POLITICS WITH REFERENCE TO
PERPETUAL PEACE
In an objective sense, morals is a practical science, as the sum of
laws exacting unconditional obedience, in accordance with which we
_ought_ to act. Now, once we have admitted the authority of this
idea of duty, it is evidently inconsistent that we should think of
saying that we _cannot_ act thus. For, in this case, the idea of duty
falls to the ground of itself; “_ultra posse nemo obligatur_.” Hence
there can be no quarrel between politics, as the practical science of
right, and morals, which is also a science of right, but theoretical.
That is, theory cannot come into conflict with practice. For, in that
case, we would need to understand under the term “ethics” or “morals”
a universal doctrine of expediency, or, in other words, a theory of
precepts which may guide us in choosing the best means for attaining
ends calculated for our advantage. This is to deny that a science of
morals exists.
Politics says, “Be wise as serpents”; morals adds the limiting
condition, “and guileless as doves.” If these precepts cannot stand
together in one command, then there is a real quarrel between
politics and morals.[147] But if they can be completely brought into
accord, then the idea of any antagonism between them is absurd,
and the question of how best to make a compromise between the two
points of view ceases to be even raised. Although the saying,
“Honesty is the best policy,” expresses a theory which, alas, is
often contradicted in practice, yet the likewise theoretical maxim,
“Honesty is better than any policy,” is exalted high above every
possible objection, is indeed the necessary condition of all politics.
[147] Cf. Aristotle: _Politics_, (Welldon’s trans.) IV. Ch. XIV.
“The same principles of morality are best both for individuals
and States.”
Among the ancients the connection between politics and morals
was never questioned, although there were differences of opinion
as to which science stood first in importance. Thus, while Plato
put politics second to morals, Aristotle regarded politics as the
chief science and ethics as a part of politics. This connection
between the sciences was denied by Machiavelli, who lays down
the dictum that, in the relations of sovereigns and states, the
ordinary rules of morality do not apply. See _The Prince_, Ch.
XVIII. “A Prince,” he says, “and most of all a new Prince, cannot
observe all those rules of conduct in respect of which men are
accounted good, being frequently obliged, in order to preserve
his Princedom, to act in opposition to good faith, charity,
humanity, and religion. He must therefore keep his mind ready
to shift as the winds and tides of Fortune turn, and, as I have
already said, he ought not to quit good courses if he can help
it, but should know how to follow evil courses if he must.”
Hume thought that laxer principles might be allowed to govern
states than private persons, because intercourse between them
was not so “necessary and advantageous” as between individuals.
“There is a system of morals,” he says, “calculated for princes,
much more free than that which ought to govern private persons,”
(_Treatise_, III., Part II., Sect. IX.) [Tr.]
The Terminus of morals does not yield to Jupiter, the Terminus of
force; for the latter remains beneath the sway of Fate. In other
words, reason is not sufficiently enlightened to survey the series
of predetermining causes which would make it possible for us to
predict with certainty the good or bad results of human action, as
they follow from the mechanical laws of nature; although we may hope
that things will turn out as we should desire. But what we have to
do, in order to remain in the path of duty guided by the rules of
wisdom, reason makes everywhere perfectly clear, and does this for
the purpose of furthering her ultimate ends.
The practical man, however, for whom morals is mere theory, even
while admitting that what ought to be can be, bases his dreary
verdict against our well-meant hopes really on this: he pretends
that he can foresee from his observation of human nature, that men
will never be willing to do what is required in order to bring
about the wished-for results leading to perpetual peace. It is
true that the will of all individual men to live under a legal
constitution according to the principles of liberty—that is to
say, the distributive unity of the wills of all—is not sufficient
to attain this end. We must have the collective unity of their
united will: all as a body must determine these new conditions. The
solution of this difficult problem is required in order that civil
society should be a whole. To all this diversity of individual wills
there must come a uniting cause, in order to produce a common will
which no distributive will is able to give. Hence, in the practical
realisation of that idea, no other beginning of a law-governed
society can be counted upon than one that is brought about by force:
upon this force, too, public law afterwards rests. This state of
things certainly prepares us to meet considerable deviation in actual
experience from the theoretical idea of perpetual peace, since we
cannot take into account the moral character and disposition of a
law-giver in this connection, or expect that, after he has united a
wild multitude into one people, he will leave it to them to bring
about a legal constitution by their common will.
It amounts to this. Any ruler who has once got the power in his
hands will not let the people dictate laws for him. A state which
enjoys an independence of the control of external law will not
submit to the judgment of the tribunals of other states, when it
has to consider how to obtain its rights against them. And even a
continent, when it feels its superiority to another, whether this be
in its way or not, will not fail to take advantage of an opportunity
offered of strengthening its power by the spoliation or even conquest
of this territory. Hence all theoretical schemes, connected with
constitutional, international or cosmopolitan law, crumble away into
empty impracticable ideals. While, on the other hand, a practical
science, based on the empirical principles of human nature, which
does not disdain to model its maxims on an observation of actual
life, can alone hope to find a sure foundation on which to build up a
system of national policy.
Now certainly, if there is neither freedom nor a moral law founded
upon it, and every actual or possible event happens in the mere
mechanical course of nature, then politics, as the art of making
use of this physical necessity in things for the government of
men, is the whole of practical wisdom and the idea of right is an
empty concept. If, on the other hand, we find that this idea of
right is necessarily to be conjoined with politics and even to be
raised to the position of a limiting condition of that science, then
the possibility of reconciling them must be admitted. I can thus
imagine a moral politician, that is to say, one who understands the
principles of statesmanship to be such as do not conflict with
morals; but I cannot conceive of a political moralist who fashions
for himself such a system of ethics as may serve the interest of
statesmen.
The moral politician will always act upon the following
principle:—“If certain defects which could not have been avoided
are found in the political constitution or foreign relations of a
state, it is a duty for all, especially for the rulers of the state,
to apply their whole energy to correcting them as soon as possible,
and to bringing the constitution and political relations on these
points into conformity with the Law of Nature, as it is held up as a
model before us in the idea of reason; and this they should do even
at a sacrifice of their own interest.” Now it is contrary to all
politics—which is, in this particular, in agreement with morals—to
dissever any of the links binding citizens together in the state
or nations in cosmopolitan union, before a better constitution is
there to take the place of what has been thus destroyed. And hence
it would be absurd indeed to demand that every imperfection in
political matters must be violently altered on the spot. But, at the
same time, it may be required of a ruler at least that he should
earnestly keep the maxim in mind which points to the necessity of
such a change; so that he may go on constantly approaching the end
to be realised, namely, the best possible constitution according to
the laws of right. Even although it is still under despotic rule,
in accordance with its constitution as then existing, a state may
govern itself on republican lines, until the people gradually become
capable of being influenced by the mere idea of the authority of law,
just as if it had physical power. And they become accordingly capable
of self-legislation, their faculty for which is founded on original
right. But if, through the violence of revolution, the product of
a bad government, a constitution more in accord with the spirit of
law were attained even by unlawful means, it should no longer be
held justifiable to bring the people back to the old constitution,
although, while the revolution was going on, every one who took part
in it by use of force or stratagem, may have been justly punished
as a rebel. As regards the external relations of nations, a state
cannot be asked to give up its constitution, even although that be
a despotism (which is, at the same time, the strongest constitution
where foreign enemies are concerned), so long as it runs the risk of
being immediately swallowed up by other states. Hence, when such a
proposal is made, the state whose constitution is in question must
at least be allowed to defer acting upon it until a more convenient
time.[148]
[148] These are _permissive_ laws of reason which allow us to
leave a system of public law, when it is tainted by injustice, to
remain just as it is, until everything is entirely revolutionised
through an internal development, either spontaneous, or fostered
and matured by peaceful influences. For any legal constitution
whatsoever, even although it conforms only slightly with the
spirit of law is better than none at all—that is to say, anarchy,
which is the fate of a precipitate reform. Hence, as things now
are, the wise politician will look upon it as his duty to make
reforms on the lines marked out by the ideal of public law. He
will not use revolutions, when these have been brought about
by natural causes, to extenuate still greater oppression than
caused them, but will regard them as the voice of nature, calling
upon him to make such thorough reforms as will bring about the
only lasting constitution, a lawful constitution based on the
principles of freedom.
It is always possible that moralists who rule despotically, and are
at a loss in practical matters, will come into collision with the
rules of political wisdom in many ways, by adopting measures without
sufficient deliberation which show themselves afterwards to have been
overestimated. When they thus offend against nature, experience must
gradually lead them into a better track. But, instead of this being
the case, politicians who are fond of moralising do all they can to
make moral improvement impossible and to perpetuate violations of
law, by extenuating political principles which are antagonistic to
the idea of right, on the pretext that human nature is not capable of
good, in the sense of the ideal which reason prescribes.
These politicians, instead of adopting an open, straightforward way
of doing things (as they boast), mix themselves up in intrigue. They
get at the authorities in power and say what will please them;
their sole bent is to sacrifice the nation, or even, if they can,
the whole world, with the one end in view that their own private
interest may be forwarded. This is the manner of regular jurists (I
mean the journeyman lawyer not the legislator), when they aspire to
politics. For, as it is not their business to reason too nicely over
legislation, but only to enforce the laws of the country, every legal
constitution in its existing form and, when this is changed by the
proper authorities, the one which takes its place, will always seem
to them the best possible. And the consequence is that everything
is purely mechanical. But this adroitness in suiting themselves
to any circumstances may lead them to the delusion that they are
also capable of giving an opinion about the principles of political
constitutions in general, in so far as they conform to ideas of
right, and are therefore not empirical, but _a priori_. And they may
therefore brag about their knowledge of men,—which indeed one expects
to find, since they have to deal with so many—without really knowing
the nature of man and what can be made of it, to gain which knowledge
a higher standpoint of anthropological observation than theirs is
required. Filled with ideas of this kind, if they trespass outside
their own sphere on the boundaries of political and international
law, looked upon as ideals which reason holds before us, they can
do so only in the spirit of chicanery. For they will follow their
usual method of making everything conform mechanically to compulsory
laws despotically made and enforced, even here, where the ideas of
reason recognise the validity of a legal compulsory force, only when
it is in accordance with the principles of freedom through which a
permanently valid constitution becomes first of all possible. The
would-be practical man, leaving out of account this idea of reason,
thinks that he can solve this problem empirically by looking to the
way in which those constitutions which have best survived the test
of time were established, even although the spirit of these may have
been generally contrary to the idea of right. The principles which
he makes use of here, although indeed he does not make them public,
amount pretty much to the following sophistical maxims.
1. =Fac et excusa.= Seize the most favourable opportunity for
arbitrary usurpation—either of the authority of the state over its
own people or over a neighbouring people; the justification of the
act and extenuation of the use of force will come much more easily
and gracefully, when the deed is done, than if one has to think out
convincing reasons for taking this step and first hear through all
the objections which can be made against it. This is especially
true in the first case mentioned, where the supreme power in the
state also controls the legislature which we must obey without any
reasoning about it. Besides, this show of audacity in a statesman
even lends him a certain semblance of inward conviction of the
justice of his action; and once he has got so far the god of success
(_bonus eventus_) is his best advocate.
2. =Si fecisti, nega.= As for any crime you have committed, such
as has, for instance, brought your people to despair and thence
to insurrection, deny that it has happened owing to any fault of
yours. Say rather that it is all caused by the insubordination of
your subjects, or, in the case of your having usurped a neighbouring
state, that human nature is to blame; for, if a man is not ready to
use force and steal a march upon his neighbour, he may certainly
count on the latter forestalling him and taking him prisoner.
3. =Divide et impera.= That is to say, if there are certain
privileged persons, holding authority among the people, who have
merely chosen you for their sovereign as _primus inter pares_, bring
about a quarrel among them, and make mischief between them and the
people. Now back up the people with a dazzling promise of greater
freedom; everything will now depend unconditionally on your will. Or
again, if there is a difficulty with foreign states, then to stir
up dissension among them is a pretty sure means of subjecting first
one and then the other to your sway, under the pretext of aiding the
weaker.
It is true that now-a-days no body is taken in by these political
maxims, for they are all familiar to everyone. Moreover, there is
no need of being ashamed of them, as if their injustice were too
patent. For the great Powers never feel shame before the judgment of
the common herd, but only before one another; so that as far as this
matter goes, it is not the revelation of these guiding principles of
policy that can make rulers ashamed, but only the unsuccessful use
of them. For as to the morality of these maxims, politicians are all
agreed. Hence there is always left political prestige on which they
can safely count; and this means the glory of increasing their power
by any means that offer.[149]
[149] It is still sometimes denied that we find, in members of
a civilised community, a certain depravity rooted in the nature
of man;[C] and it might, indeed, be alleged with some show of
truth that not an innate corruptness in human nature, but the
barbarism of men, the defect of a not yet sufficiently developed
culture, is the cause of the evident antipathy to law which
their attitude indicates. In the external relations of states,
however, human wickedness shows itself incontestably, without any
attempt at concealment. Within the state, it is covered over by
the compelling authority of civil laws. For, working against the
tendency every citizen has to commit acts of violence against his
neighbour, there is the much stronger force of the government
which not only gives an appearance of morality to the whole
state (_causae non causae_), but, by checking the outbreak of
lawless propensities, actually aids the moral qualities of men
considerably, in their development of a direct respect for the
law. For every individual thinks that he himself would hold the
idea of right sacred and follow faithfully what it prescribes,
if only he could expect that everyone else would do the same.
This guarantee is in part given to him by the government; and
a great advance is made by this step which is not deliberately
moral, towards the ideal of fidelity to the concept of duty
for its own sake without thought of return. As, however, every
man’s good opinion of himself presupposes an evil disposition in
everyone else, we have an expression of their mutual judgment
of one another, namely, that when it comes to hard facts, none
of them are worth much; but whence this judgment comes remains
unexplained, as we cannot lay the blame on the nature of man,
since he is a being in the possession of freedom. The respect for
the idea of right, of which it is absolutely impossible for man
to divest himself, sanctions in the most solemn manner the theory
of our power to conform to its dictates. And hence every man sees
himself obliged to act in accordance with what the idea of right
prescribes, whether his neighbours fulfil their obligation or not.
[C] This depravity of human nature is denied by Rousseau, who held
that the mind of man was naturally inclined to virtue, and that
good civil and social institutions are all that is required.
(_Discourse on the Sciences and Arts_, 1750.) Kant here takes
sides with Hobbes against Rousseau. See Kant’s _Theory of Ethics_,
Abbott’s trans. (4th ed., 1889), p. 339 _seq._—esp. p. 341 and
_note_. Cf. also Hooker’s _Ecclesiastical Polity_, I. § 10:—“Laws
politic, ordained for external order and regiment amongst men, are
never framed as they should be, unless presuming the will of man
to be inwardly obstinate, rebellious, and averse from all obedience
to the sacred laws of his nature; in a word, unless presuming man
to be, in regard of his depraved mind, little better than a wild
beast, they do accordingly provide, notwithstanding, so to frame
his outward actions, that they be no hindrance unto the common
good, for which societies are instituted.” [Tr.]
* * * * *
In all these twistings and turnings of an immoral doctrine of
expediency which aims at substituting a state of peace for the
warlike conditions in which men are placed by nature, so much at
least is clear;—that men cannot get away from the idea of right in
their private any more than in their public relations; and that they
do not dare (this is indeed most strikingly seen in the concept of
an international law) to base politics merely on the manipulations
of expediency and therefore to refuse all obedience to the idea of
a public right. On the contrary, they pay all fitting honour to the
idea of right in itself, even although they should, at the same time,
devise a hundred subterfuges and excuses to avoid it in practice, and
should regard force, backed up by cunning, as having the authority
which comes from being the source and unifying principle of all
right. It will be well to put an end to this sophistry, if not to
the injustice it extenuates, and to bring the false advocates of the
mighty of the earth to confess that it is not right but might in
whose interest they speak, and that it is the worship of might from
which they take their cue, as if in this matter they had a right to
command. In order to do this, we must first expose the delusion by
which they deceive themselves and others; then discover the ultimate
principle from which their plans for a perpetual peace proceed;
and thence show that all the evil which stands in the way of the
realisation of that ideal springs from the fact that the political
moralist begins where the moral politician rightly ends and that, by
subordinating principles to an end or putting the cart before the
horse, he defeats his intention of bringing politics into harmony
with morals.
In order to make practical philosophy consistent with itself, we must
first decide the following question:—In dealing with the problems of
practical reason must we begin from its material principle—the end as
the object of free choice—or from its formal principle which is based
merely on freedom in its external relation?—from which comes the
following law:—“Act so that thou canst will that thy maxim should be
a universal law, be the end of thy action what it will.”[150]
[150] With regard to the meaning of the moral law and its
significance in the Kantian system of ethics, see Abbott’s
translation of the _Theory of Ethics_ (1889), pp. 38, 45, 54, 55,
119, 282. [Tr.]
Without doubt, the latter determining principle of action must
stand first; for, as a principle of right, it carries unconditional
necessity with it, whereas the former is obligatory only if we assume
the empirical conditions of the end set before us,—that is to say,
that it is an end capable of being practically realised. And if
this end—as, for example, the end of perpetual peace—should be also
a duty, this same duty must necessarily have been deduced from the
formal principle governing the maxims which guide external action.
Now the first principle is the principle of the political moralist;
the problems of constitutional, international and cosmopolitan law
are mere technical problems (_problema technicum_). The second or
formal principle, on the other hand, as the principle of the moral
politician who regards it as a moral problem (_problema morale_),
differs widely from the other principle in its methods of bringing
about perpetual peace, which we desire not only as a material good,
but also as a state of things resulting from our recognition of the
precepts of duty.[151]
[151] See Abbott’s trans., pp. 33, 34. [Tr.]
To solve the first problem—that, namely, of political expediency—much
knowledge of nature is required, that her mechanical laws may be
employed for the end in view. And yet the result of all knowledge
of this kind is uncertain, as far as perpetual peace is concerned.
This we find to be so, whichever of the three departments of public
law we take. It is uncertain whether a people could be better kept
in obedience and at the same time prosperity by severity or by baits
held out to their vanity; whether they would be better governed
under the sovereignty of a single individual or by the authority of
several acting together; whether the combined authority might be
better secured merely, say, by an official nobility or by the power
of the people within the state; and, finally, whether such conditions
could be long maintained. There are examples to the contrary in
history in the case of all forms of government, with the exception
of the only true republican constitution, the idea of which can
occur only to a moral politician. Still more uncertain is a law of
nations, ostensibly established upon statutes devised by ministers;
for this amounts in fact to mere empty words, and rests on treaties
which, in the very act of ratification, contain a secret reservation
of the right to violate them. On the other hand, the solution of the
second problem—the problem of political wisdom—forces itself, we may
say, upon us; it is quite obvious to every one, and puts all crooked
dealings to shame; it leads, too, straight to the desired end, while
at the same time, discretion warns us not to drag in the conditions
of perpetual peace by force, but to take time and approach this ideal
gradually as favourable circumstances permit.
This may be expressed in the following maxim:—“Seek ye first the
kingdom of pure practical reason and its righteousness, and the
object of your endeavour, the blessing of perpetual peace, will
be added unto you.” For the science of morals generally has this
peculiarity,—and it has it also with regard to the moral principles
of public law, and therefore with regard to a science of politics
knowable _a priori_,—that the less it makes a man’s conduct depend
on the end he has set before him, his purposed material or moral
gain, so much the more, nevertheless, does it conform in general
to this end. The reason for this is that it is just the universal
will, given _a priori_, which exists in a people or in the relation
of different peoples to one another, that alone determines what is
lawful among men. This union of individual wills, however, if we
proceed consistently in practice, in observance of the mechanical
laws of nature, may be at the same time the cause of bringing about
the result intended and practically realizing the idea of right.
Hence it is, for example, a principle of moral politics that a people
should unite into a state according to the only valid concepts of
right, the ideas of freedom and equality; and this principle is not
based on expediency, but upon duty. Political moralists, however,
do not deserve a hearing, much and sophistically as they may reason
about the existence, in a multitude of men forming a society, of
certain natural tendencies which would weaken those principles and
defeat their intention. They may endeavour to prove their assertion
by giving instances of badly organised constitutions, chosen both
from ancient and modern times, (as, for example, democracies without
a representative system); but such arguments are to be treated with
contempt, all the more, because a pernicious theory of this kind
may perhaps even bring about the evil which it prophesies. For, in
accordance with such reasoning, man is thrown into a class with all
other living machines which only require the consciousness that they
are not free creatures to make them in their own judgment the most
miserable of all beings.
_Fiat justitia, pereat mundus._ This saying has become proverbial,
and although it savours a little of boastfulness, is also true. We
may translate it thus:—“Let justice rule on earth, although all the
rogues in the world should go to the bottom.” It is a good, honest
principle of right cutting off all the crooked ways made by knavery
or violence. It must not, however, be misunderstood as allowing
anyone to exercise his own rights with the utmost severity, a course
in contradiction to our moral duty; but we must take it to signify
an obligation, binding upon rulers, to refrain from refusing to
yield anyone his rights or from curtailing them, out of personal
feeling or sympathy for others. For this end, in particular, we
require, firstly, that a state should have an internal political
constitution, established according to the pure principles of
right; secondly, that a union should be formed between this state
and neighbouring or distant nations for a legal settlement of
their differences, after the analogy of the universal state. This
proposition means nothing more than this:—Political maxims must not
start from the idea of a prosperity and happiness which are to be
expected from observance of such precepts in every state; that is,
not from the end which each nation makes the object of its will
as the highest empirical principle of political wisdom; but they
must set out from the pure concept of the duty of right, from the
“_ought_” whose principle is given _a priori_ through pure reason.
This is the law, whatever the material consequences may be. The world
will certainly not perish by any means, because the number of wicked
people in it is becoming fewer. The morally bad has one peculiarity,
inseparable from its nature;—in its purposes, especially in relation
to other evil influences, it is in contradiction with itself, and
counteracts its own natural effect, and thus makes room for the moral
principle of good, although advance in this direction may be slow.
Hence objectively, in theory, there is no quarrel between morals
and politics. But subjectively, in the self-seeking tendencies of
men (which we cannot actually call their morality, as we would a
course of action based on maxims of reason,) this disagreement in
principle exists and may always survive; for it serves as a whetstone
to virtue. According to the principle, _Tu ne cede malis, sed contra
audentior ito_, the true courage of virtue in the present case lies
not so much in facing the evils and self-sacrifices which must be met
here as in firmly confronting the evil principle in our own nature
and conquering its wiles. For this is a principle far more dangerous,
false, treacherous and sophistical which puts forward the weakness in
human nature as a justification for every transgression.
In fact the political moralist may say that a ruler and people, or
nation and nation do _one another_ no wrong, when they enter on a war
with violence or cunning, although they do wrong, generally speaking,
in refusing to respect the idea of right which alone could establish
peace for all time. For, as both are equally wrongly disposed to one
another, each transgressing the duty he owes to his neighbour, they
are both quite rightly served, when they are thus destroyed in war.
This mutual destruction stops short at the point of extermination,
so that there are always enough of the race left to keep this game
going on through all the ages, and a far-off posterity may take
warning by them. The Providence that orders the course of the world
is hereby justified. For the moral principle in mankind never becomes
extinguished, and human reason, fitted for the practical realisation
of ideas of right according to that principle, grows continually in
fitness for that purpose with the ever advancing march of culture;
while at the same time, it must be said, the guilt of transgression
increases as well. But it seems that, by no theodicy or vindication
of the justice of God, can we justify Creation in putting such a
race of corrupt creatures into the world at all, if, that is, we
assume that the human race neither will nor can ever be in a happier
condition than it is now. This standpoint, however, is too high a
one for us to judge from, or to theorise, with the limited concepts
we have at our command, about the wisdom of that supreme Power which
is unknowable by us. We are inevitably driven to such despairing
conclusions as these, if we do not admit that the pure principles of
right have objective reality—that is to say, are capable of being
practically realised—and consequently that action must be taken on
the part of the people of a state and, further, by states in relation
to one another, whatever arguments empirical politics may bring
forward against this course. Politics in the real sense cannot take
a step forward without first paying homage to the principles of
morals. And, although politics, _per se_, is a difficult art,[152]
in its union with morals no art is required; for in the case of a
conflict arising between the two sciences, the moralist can cut
asunder the knot which politics is unable to untie. Right must be
held sacred by man, however great the cost and sacrifice to the
ruling power. Here is no half-and-half course. We cannot devise a
happy medium between right and expediency, a right pragmatically
conditioned. But all politics must bend the knee to the principle of
right, and may, in that way, hope to reach, although slowly perhaps,
a level whence it may shine upon men for all time.
[152] Matthew Arnold defines politics somewhere as the art of
“making reason and the will of God prevail”—an art, one would
say, difficult enough. [Tr.]
APPENDIX II
CONCERNING THE HARMONY OF POLITICS WITH MORALS ACCORDING TO THE
TRANSCENDENTAL IDEA OF PUBLIC RIGHT
If I look at public right from the point of view of most professors
of law, and abstract from its _matter_ or its empirical elements,
varying according to the circumstances given in our experience of
individuals in a state or of states among themselves, then there
remains the _form_ of publicity. The possibility of this publicity,
every legal title implies. For without it there could be no justice,
which can only be thought as before the eyes of men; and, without
justice, there would be no right, for, from justice only, right can
come.
This characteristic of publicity must belong to every legal title.
Hence, as, in any particular case that occurs, there is no difficulty
in deciding whether this essential attribute is present or not,
(whether, that is, it is reconcilable with the principles of the
agent or not), it furnishes an easily applied criterion which is to
be found _a priori_ in the reason, so that in the particular case we
can at once recognise the falsity or illegality of a proposed claim
(_praetensio juris_), as it were by an experiment of pure reason.
Having thus, as it were, abstracted from all the empirical elements
contained in the concept of a political and international law, such
as, for instance, the evil tendency in human nature which makes
compulsion necessary, we may give the following proposition as the
_transcendental formula_ of public right:—“All actions relating to
the rights of other men are wrong, if the maxims from which they
follow are inconsistent with publicity.”
This principle must be regarded not merely as ethical, as belonging
to the doctrine of virtue, but also as juridical, referring to the
rights of men. For there is something wrong in a maxim of conduct
which I cannot divulge without at once defeating my purpose, a maxim
which must therefore be kept secret, if it is to succeed, and which
I could not publicly acknowledge without infallibly stirring up the
opposition of everyone. This necessary and universal resistance with
which everyone meets me, a resistance therefore evident _a priori_,
can be due to no other cause than the injustice with which such a
maxim threatens everyone. Further, this testing principle is merely
negative; that is, it serves only as a means by which we may know
when an action is unjust to others. Like axioms, it has a certainty
incapable of demonstration; it is besides easy of application as
appears from the following examples of public right.
1.—=Constitutional Law.= Let us take in the first place the public
law of the state (_jus civitatis_), particularly in its application
to matters within the state. Here a question arises which many think
difficult to answer, but which the transcendental principle of
publicity solves quite readily:—“Is revolution a legitimate means for
a people to adopt, for the purpose of throwing off the oppressive
yoke of a so-called tyrant (_non titulo, sed exercitio talis_)?”
The rights of a nation are violated in a government of this kind,
and no wrong is done to the tyrant in dethroning him. Of this there
is no doubt. None the less, it is in the highest degree wrong of
the subjects to prosecute their rights in this way; and they would
be just as little justified in complaining, if they happened to be
defeated in their attempt and had to endure the severest punishment
in consequence.
A great many reasons for and against both sides of this question
may be given, if we seek to settle it by a dogmatic deduction
of the principles of right. But the transcendental principle
of the publicity of public right can spare itself this diffuse
argumentation. For, according to that principle, the people would
ask themselves, before the civil contract was made, whether they
could venture to publish maxims, proposing insurrection when a
favourable opportunity should present itself. It is quite clear
that if, when a constitution is established, it were made a
condition that force may be exercised against the sovereign under
certain circumstances, the people would be obliged to claim a
lawful authority higher than his. But in that case, the so-called
sovereign would be no longer sovereign: or, if both powers, that of
the sovereign and that of the people, were made a condition of the
constitution of the state, then its establishment (which was the aim
of the people) would be impossible. The wrongfulness of revolution is
quite obvious from the fact that openly to acknowledge maxims which
justify this step would make attainment of the end at which they aim
impossible. We are obliged to keep them secret. But this secrecy
would not be necessary on the part of the head of the state. He may
say quite plainly that the ringleaders of every rebellion will be
punished by death, even although they may hold that it was he who
first transgressed the fundamental law. For, if a ruler is conscious
of possessing irresistible sovereign power (and this must be assumed
in every civil constitution, because a sovereign who has not power to
protect any individual member of the nation against his neighbour
has also not the right to exercise authority over him), then he need
have no fear that making known the maxims which guide him will cause
the defeat of his plans. And it is quite consistent with this view
to hold that, if the people are successful in their insurrection,
the sovereign must return to the rank of a subject, and refrain from
inciting rebellion with a view to regaining his lost sovereignty. At
the same time he need have no fear of being called to account for his
former administration.[153]
[153] “When a king has dethroned himself,” says Locke, (_On Civil
Government_, Ch. XIX. § 239) “and put himself in a state of war
with his people, what shall hinder them from prosecuting him who
is no king, as they would any other man, who has put himself into
a state of war with them?” ... “The legislative being only a
fiduciary power to act for certain ends, there remains still _in
the people a supreme power to remove or alter the legislative_.”
(_Op. cit._, Ch. XIII. § 149.) And again, (_op. cit._, Ch. XI. §
134.) we find the words, “... over whom [_i.e._ society] no body
can have a power to make laws, but by their own consent, and by
authority received from them.” Cf. also Ch. XIX. § 228 _seq._
Hobbes represents the opposite point of view. “How many kings,”
he wrote, (Preface to the _Philosophical Rudiments concerning
Government and Society_) “and those good men too, hath this one
error, that a tyrant king might lawfully be put to death, been
the slaughter of! How many throats hath this false position
cut, that a prince for some causes may by some certain men be
deposed! And what bloodshed hath not this erroneous doctrine
caused, that kings are not superiors to, but administrators for
the multitude!” This “erroneous doctrine” Kant received from
Locke through Rousseau. He advocated, or at least practised
as a citizen, a doctrine of passive obedience to the state. A
free press, he held, offered the only lawful outlet for protest
against tyranny. But, in theory, he was an enemy to absolute
monarchy. [Tr.]
2.—=International Law.= There can be no question of an international
law, except on the assumption of some kind of a law-governed
state of things, the external condition under which any right can
belong to man. For the very idea of international law, as public
right, implies the publication of a universal will determining the
rights and property of each individual nation; and this _status
juridicus_ must spring out of a contract of some sort which may not,
like the contract to which the state owes its origin, be founded
upon compulsory laws, but may be, at the most, the agreement of a
permanent free association such as the federation of the different
states, to which we have alluded above. For, without the control
of law to some extent, to serve as an active bond of union among
different merely natural or moral individuals,—that is to say, in
a state of nature,—there can only be private law. And here we find
a disagreement between morals, regarded as the science of right,
and politics. The criterion, obtained by observing the effect of
publicity on maxims, is just as easily applied, but only when we
understand that this agreement binds the contracting states solely
with the object that peace may be preserved among them, and between
them and other states; in no sense with a view to the acquisition of
new territory or power. The following instances of antinomy occur
between politics and morals, which are given here with the solution
in each case.
_a._ “When either of these states has promised something to another,
(as, for instance, assistance, or a relinquishment of certain
territory, or subsidies and such like), the question may arise
whether, in a case where the safety of the state thus bound depends
on its evading the fulfilment of this promise, it can do so by
maintaining a right to be regarded as a double person:—firstly,
as sovereign and accountable to no one in the state of which that
sovereign power is head; and, secondly, merely as the highest
official in the service of that state, who is obliged to answer to
the state for every action. And the result of this is that the state
is acquitted in its second capacity of any obligation to which it has
committed itself in the first.” But, if a nation or its sovereign
proclaimed these maxims, the natural consequence would be that every
other would flee from it, or unite with other states to oppose such
pretensions. And this is a proof that politics, with all its cunning,
defeats its own ends, if the test of making principles of action
public, which we have indicated, be applied. Hence the maxim we have
quoted must be wrong.
_b._ “If a state which has increased its power to a formidable extent
(_potentia tremenda_) excites anxiety in its neighbours, is it right
to assume that, since it has the means, it will also have the will
to oppress others; and does that give less powerful states a right
to unite and attack the greater nation without any definite cause of
offence?” A state which would here answer openly in the affirmative
would only bring the evil about more surely and speedily. For the
greater power would forestall those smaller nations, and their union
would be but a weak reed of defence against a state which knew how
to apply the maxim, _divide et impera_. This maxim of political
expediency then, when openly acknowledged, necessarily defeats the
end at which it aims, and is therefore wrong.
_c._ “If a smaller state by its geographical position breaks up
the territory of a greater, so as to prevent a unity necessary to
the preservation of that state, is the latter not justified in
subjugating its less powerful neighbour and uniting the territory in
question with its own?” We can easily see that the greater state dare
not publish such a maxim beforehand; for either all smaller states
would without loss of time unite against it, or other powers would
contend for this booty. Hence the impracticability of such a maxim
becomes evident under the light of publicity. And this is a sign
that it is wrong, and that in a very great degree; for, although the
victim of an act of injustice may be of small account, that does not
prevent the injustice done from being very great.
3.—=Cosmopolitan Law.= We may pass over this department of right in
silence, for, owing to its analogy with international law, its maxims
are easily specified and estimated.
* * * * *
In this principle of the incompatibility of the maxims of
international law with their publicity, we have a good indication
of the non-agreement between politics and morals, regarded as a
science of right. Now we require to know under what conditions these
maxims do agree with the law of nations. For we cannot conclude that
the converse holds, and that all maxims which can bear publicity
are therefore just. For anyone who has a decided supremacy has no
need to make any secret about his maxims. The condition of a law of
nations being possible at all is that, in the first place, there
should be a law-governed state of things. If this is not so, there
can be no public right, and all right which we can think of outside
the law-governed state,—that is to say, in the state of nature,—is
mere private right. Now we have seen above that something of the
nature of a federation between nations, for the sole purpose of doing
away with war, is the only rightful condition of things reconcilable
with their individual freedom. Hence the agreement of politics and
morals is only possible in a federative union, a union which is
necessarily given _a priori_, according to the principles of right.
And the lawful basis of all politics can only be the establishment
of this union in its widest possible extent. Apart from this end,
all political sophistry is folly and veiled injustice. Now this sham
politics has a casuistry, not to be excelled in the best Jesuit
school. It has its mental reservation (_reservatio mentalis_): as
in the drawing up of a public treaty in such terms as we can, if we
will, interpret when occasion serves to our advantage; for example,
the distinction between the _status quo_ in fact (_de fait_) and
in right (_de droit_). Secondly, it has its probabilism; when it
pretends to discover evil intentions in another, or makes, the
probability of their possible future ascendency a lawful reason for
bringing about the destruction of other peaceful states. Finally, it
has its philosophical sin (_peccatum philosophicum_, _peccatillum_,
_baggatelle_) which is that of holding it a trifle easily pardoned
that a smaller state should be swallowed up, if this be to the gain
of a nation much more powerful; for such an increase in power is
supposed to tend to the greater prosperity of the whole world.[154]
[154] We can find the voucher for maxims such as these in Herr
Hofrichter Garve’s essay, _On the Connection of Morals with
Politics_, 1788. This worthy scholar confesses at the very
beginning that he is unable to give a satisfactory answer to this
question. But his sanction of such maxims, even when coupled with
the admission that he cannot altogether clear away the arguments
raised against them, seems to be a greater concession in favour
of those who shew considerable inclination to abuse them, than it
might perhaps be wise to admit.
Duplicity gives politics the advantage of using one branch or
the other of morals, just as suits its own ends. The love of our
fellowmen is a duty: so too is respect for their rights. But the
former is only conditional: the latter, on the other hand, an
unconditional, absolutely imperative duty; and anyone who would
give himself up to the sweet consciousness of well-doing must be
first perfectly assured that he has not transgressed its commands.
Politics has no difficulty in agreeing with morals in the first sense
of the term, as ethics, to secure that men should give to superiors
their rights. But when it comes to morals, in its second aspect,
as the science of right before which politics must bow the knee,
the politician finds it prudent to have nothing to do with compacts
and rather to deny all reality to morals in this sense, and reduce
all duty to mere benevolence. Philosophy could easily frustrate
the artifices of a politics like this, which shuns the light of
criticism, by publishing its maxims, if only statesmen would have the
courage to grant philosophers the right to ventilate their opinions.
With this end in view, I propose another principle of public right,
which is at once transcendental and affirmative. Its formula would be
as follows:—“All maxims which require publicity, in order that they
may not fail to attain their end, are in agreement both with right
and politics.”
For, if these maxims can only attain the end at which they aim by
being published, they must be in harmony with the universal end of
mankind, which is happiness; and to be in sympathy with this (to
make the people contented with their lot) is the real business of
politics. Now, if this end should be attainable only by publicity, or
in other words, through the removal of all distrust of the maxims of
politics, these must be in harmony with the right of the people; for
a union of the ends of all is only possible in a harmony with this
right.
I must postpone the further development and discussion of this
principle till another opportunity. That it is a transcendental
formula is quite evident from the fact that all the empirical
conditions of a doctrine of happiness, or the _matter_ of law, are
absent, and that it has regard only to the _form_ of universal
conformity to law.
* * * * *
If it is our duty to realise a state of public right, if at the same
time there are good grounds for hope that this ideal may be realised,
although only by an approximation advancing _ad infinitum_, then
perpetual peace, following hitherto falsely so-called conclusions of
peace, which have been in reality mere cessations of hostilities, is
no mere empty idea. But rather we have here a problem which gradually
works out its own solution and, as the periods in which a given
advance takes place towards the realisation of the ideal of perpetual
peace will, we hope, become with the passing of time shorter and
shorter, we must approach ever nearer to this goal.
INDEX
A
Absolutism; of Hobbes, 43, 44;
of Schopenhauer, 43;
according to Kant, 43, 44, 125-128;
to Locke, 44.
Alexander I. of Russia; 80.
Alexander the Great; 31, 103.
Alsace-Lorraine; annexation of, 90, 92, 95.
Ambrose, Saint; 15.
Amphictyonic League; 16, 22.
Aquinas, Thomas; on fighting clergy, 18;
on war, 18, 19.
Arbitration; as a substitute for war, 79, 81, 87;
difficulties settled by, 80;
where it is useless, 82, 83, 86.
Aristotle; on war, 7, 8;
and rights of an enemy, _ib._; 31;
on the relation between politics and ethics, 162.
Assyrians; war among the, 9.
Augustine, Saint; 16.
B
Balance of power; 26, 95.
Bentham, Jeremy; 26, 79, 92.
Bluntschli, J. K.; 41, 73, 74, 80.
C
Caird, Edward; 3, 51.
Calvin, John; 19.
Carnegie, Andrew; 100.
China; a danger to Europe, 92, 93, 140, 141.
Cicero; on the conduct of war, 22, 41.
Clement of Alexandria; 15.
Clergy, fighting; Origen on, 14, 15;
Wycliffe, 18;
Erasmus, _ib._;
Aquinas, _ib._
Cobden, Richard; 64.
Corvinus, Matthias; 109.
Cowper, William; 5, 38, 123.
Crusades, wars of the; 16, 103.
D
Dante, Alighieri; on mediation, 46;
on universal monarchy, 68, 69.
Disarmament; 88-93;
Czar’s proposal of, 90;
practicability of, 90-93.
Dubois, Cardinal; 36.
E
Empire; of Rome, 9, 20, 68;
world-, spiritual, 23, 32, 69;
of Alexander the Great, 31, 68;
Frankish, 69;
Holy Roman 69;
of Napoleon I., 69.
Erasmus, Desiderius; and European peace, 17;
on war, 18, 19;
on fighting clergy, 18, 32.
F
Farrar, J. A.; 18.
Federation; Kant’s idea of, 60, 68, 69, 128-137; 88, 92, 93, 95, 97;
probable results of, 98, 99, 100, 134.
Fichte, J. G.; 69, 99.
Finland; 92, 95.
Fischer, Kuno; 62, 67.
Fleury, Cardinal; 55.
Frederick the Great; 66, 126.
G
Gentilis, Albericus; 21, 32.
Golden Age; 3, 41.
Government; origin of, according to Plato, 5;
according to Hume, 5, 52;
to Cowper, 5, 6;
to Hobbes, 40-42, 118, 119;
to Kant, 51-54, 152-154;
to Rousseau, 52;
to Locke, 53;
representative, 65-68, 120, 121, 124-128.
Greeks; their attitude to other nations, 7;
to an enemy, _ib._;
their Sacred Wars, 16;
the Amphictyonic League, 16.
Grotius, Hugo; his _De Jure Belli et Pacis_, 24-27;
and the _Jus Gentium_, 24, 25;
and the Law of Nature, 25;
on peace, 27, 32, 40, 131.
H
Hague Conference (1899); 86, 90.
Hegel, G. W. F.; 57;
on war, 71, 72, 75.
Henry IV. of France; 30, 32, 33, 36.
Hobbes, Thomas; his theory of the state of nature and origin of
government, 4, 40-42, 51, 118, 119, 133; 6, 26, 27, 28, 37;
his influence on Kant, 40, 46;
his views on revolution, 41, 188;
of the relations between states, 43-46, 128, 131;
on the conduct of war, 45, 89, 120, 124, 159.
Holls, Fred. W.; 86.
Hooker, Richard; 52;
on the depravity of man, 173.
Hume, David; on the origin of government, 5, 52;
on the state of nature, 40, 41;
on the original contract, 52, 108, 109, 162.
I
International Law; the development of, 20-24;
its connection with the Reformation, 21, 24;
in Greece and Rome, 22, 23.
Intervention; 64, 93, 94, 112, 113.
J
Jews; war among the, 9-11;
their dream of peace, 32.
Justin; 15.
K
Kant, Immanuel; 26, 37;
his indebtedness to earlier political writers, 40, 46;
his theory of human development, 47-49;
and how this is possible, 49-51, 54;
on the foundation of the state, 51-54, 152-154;
the relations between states and individuals, 54, 55, 117-120,
128, 173, 174;
the necessity for reform within the state, 55, 56, 168;
the political and social conditions of his time, 57-59;
his attitude to war, 58, 133, 135, 136, 137, 149-151;
on the growing power of commerce, 59, 65, 142, 157;
his idea of federation, 60, 68, 69, 128-137, 192;
and ideal of perpetual peace, 61, 129, 196;
the conditions of its realization, 62-69;
on representative and other constitutions, 65-68, 120-128, 152,
153, 167;
his opinion of the English constitution, 66;
his disapproval of universal monarchy, 68, 69, 155, 156; 79, 83,
89, 100, 105;
on the right of way, 137-142;
on nature’s guarantee of a perpetual peace, 143-157;
on the relation between politics and morals, 161-196;
on revolution, 167, 168, 186-188.
L
Laveleye, Émile de; 81.
Lawrence, T. J.; 9, 78, 81.
Leibniz, Gottfried W.; 36;
his criticism of St. Pierre, 37, 38, 58, 106.
Locke, John; and the golden age, 3, 4;
on the original contract, 53;
on revolution, 53, 188; 67, 133.
Lorimer, James; 34, 80.
Louis Philippe; 76.
Luther, Martin; on war, 19.
M
Machiavelli, Nicolo; 162.
Maine, Henry; on Grotius and the _Jus Gentium_, 24, 25.
Maistre, Joseph de; 71.
Martineau, James; 102.
Mennonites; and war, 14.
Military service; of Christians, 14, 16, 18, 19;
compulsory, 89;
voluntary, 111.
Mill, John Stuart; 80.
Moltke, Graf von; 71, 73-75.
Monarchy, universal; the ideal of Dante, 68, 69;
disapproved by Kant, 68, 69, 155, 156;
and Fichte, 69.
Montesquieu, Baron de; on self-preservation, 83;
on armed peace, 88, 159.
More, Thomas; 32.
Morley, John; 3.
N
Napoleon Bonaparte; Empire of, 69, 71, 72, 76, 77.
Napoleon, Louis; 80.
National Debt; 63, 64, 111, 112.
O
Origen; on military service, 14, 15.
Original Contract; 40;
as understood by Rousseau, 52;
by Hobbes, 52, 53;
by Hooker, 52;
by Hume, _ib._;
by Kant, _ib._;
by Locke, 53.
P
Paris Congress (1856); 86.
Paulsen, Friedrich; 43, 52, 53, 66, 78.
Peace, perpetual; the dream of, 29-33;
projects of, by Penn, 30;
by Henry IV., 30, 33, 34;
by St. Pierre, 30, 32, 34-37;
Rousseau’s attitude to, 38-40, 106;
for Kant an ideal, 61, 129;
the articles of, 62-69, 107-142, 158-160;
the guarantee of, 143-157.
Peace Societies; 70, 75, 78, 79, 80, 86, 87;
and disarmament, 88, 96, 97, 100, 101, 102.
Penn, William; 30.
Plato; on the origin of the state, 5;
on war, 8, 41;
on the relation between ethics and politics, 162.
Poland; 92, 93, 95.
Politics; and morals, according to Kant, 161-196;
to Plato, 162;
to Aristotle, _ib._;
to Hume, _ib._;
sophistical maxims of, 170-172.
Pope, Alexander; 4, 127.
Puffendorf, Samuel; 27;
on intervention, 64, 131.
Q
Quakers; and war, 14.
R
Reformation; and military service, 18;
and international law, 21, 24.
Religion; Roman, and war, 9;
Jewish, 9-11;
Mohammedan, 10;
Buddhist, and conversion, 12;
Christian, and war, 12-20.
Revolution, right of; according to Hobbes, 41, 53;
and Spinoza, 41;
according to Locke, 53;
to Rousseau, _ib._;
to Kant, 167, 186-188.
Right of way; Vattel on, 65, 138;
Kant on, 65, 137-142.
Ritchie, D. G.; on Rousseau, 3;
on Locke and the golden age, _ib._, 52, 85, 98.
Robertson, William; 6, 17, 18, 19.
Romans; and war, 7, 8, 9, 22, 23;
and international law, 22, 23.
Rousseau, J. J.; and the state of nature, 2, 3, 52; 26, 28;
his criticism of St. Pierre, 38-40;
his views on militarism, 39;
on the original contract, 52;
on revolution, 53, 188; 61, 67, 100, 132, 134;
on democratic and republican governments, 153;
on the depravity of man, 173.
Russia; Alexander I. of, 80;
the Czar of, 90;
the backward civilization of, 92, 93, 94, 95.
S
Schiller, Friedrich von; on war and peace, 71, 72, 73, 75.
Schopenhauer, Arthur; 43.
Spencer, Herbert; 76.
Spinoza, Benedict; on the state of nature, 41;
and revolution, _ib._
Standing armies; 63, 64, 89, 110.
State of nature; according to Rousseau, 2, 3;
and the golden age, 3;
Hobbes’ theory of, 4, 40, 41, 118;
according to Hume a philosophical fiction, 41;
according to Kant, 117-120.
States; transference of, 63, 108, 109;
marriage between, 109.
St. Pierre, Castel de; 30, 32, 33;
his _Projet_, 34-37;
and Leibniz, 37, 38;
and Rousseau, 38-40; 61, 67, 79, 92, 106.
Sully, Duke of; 30, 32, 33.
T
Tennyson, Lord; 73, 74.
Tertullian; 14, 15.
Treaties of peace; in Greece, 7, 63, 64, 107, 108.
Treitschke, H. von; 75.
Trendelenburg, F. A.; 75.
V
Vattel, Emerich; his _Droit des Gens_, 28, 29;
on intervention, 64, 113, 114;
on the right of way, 65;
of self-preservation, 83, 89, 103;
on treaties, 108; 131.
Voltaire, François de; 33, 37, 38.
W
War; religious, 16;
private, 17, 20, 29;
dynastic, 38, 57, 123;
Kant’s attitude to, 58, 133, 135, 136, 137, 149-151;
its influence on progress, 70, 96, 103;
views of Hegel on, 71, 72, 75;
of Schiller, 71, 72, 73, 75;
of Moltke, 71, 73, 74, 75;
under altered conditions, 76, 77, 78;
when just, 84, 85;
future probable causes of, 94, 95;
honorable conduct of, 114, 115.
Wycliffe, John; and fighting clergy, 18.
Z
Zwingli, Huldreich, 19.
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