“. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 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.