The Guarantee Of Perpetual Peace

This guarantee from Providence.

This design is called Fate when looked upon as the compelling force of a cause.

It is the deep-lying wisdom of a Higher Cause.

It directs itself towards the ultimate practical end of the human race and predetermining the course of things with a view to its realisation.

We do not perceive this Providence in the cunning contrivances of nature.

We cannot even prove its existence.

But in every cause and effect, we can add the idea of a Higher Wisdom so that we can have an idea of the ultimate goal of the human race.

In this case, we are interested in the theory, not in the religious question.

So we replace “providence” with “nature”.

The provisions of Nature are:

1. She has taken care that men can live in all parts of the world.

2. She has scattered them even to the most inhospitable regions by warfare, so that these too might be populated

3. She has forced them to enter into relations more or less controlled by law.

On the cold wastes round the Arctic Ocean:

• there is always moss for the reindeer to scrape out.
• the reindeer itself will be food of the Ostiak or Samoyedes

Driftwood is naturally carried to the treeless shores of the natives who can use them.

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[p. 149] 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.

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[p. 150] 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[p. 151] 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.”

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.”