Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Essay

Of rational discussion, that a man,

Compounded and made up like other men

Of elements tumultuous, .......

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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.]

[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.]

[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.

[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.]

[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.”

[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.]

[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.]

[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.]

[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.]

[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.