JX1946 .K 162 : L'wisioQ CTXI946 ✓ Section AND OTHER INTERNATIONAL ESSAYS IMMANUEL KANT 0 TRANSLATED BY W. HASTIE, B.D. WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY EDWIN D. MEAD BOSTON THE WORLD PEACE FOUNDATION 1914 CONTENTS PAGE INTRODUCTION, BY EDWIN D. MEAD. V I. THE NATURAL PRINCIPLE OF THE POLITICAL ORDER ... 1 II. THE PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL RIGHT.27 III. THE PRINCIPLE OF PROGRESS.55 IV. ETERNAL PEACE : A PHILOSOPHICAL ESSAY.67 V. PUBLIC LAW, FROM THE METAPHYSICS OF MORALS ... 129 NOTES TO "ETERNAL PEACE” 169 INTRODUCTION In 1795, during Washington’s administration, just as our great American experiment in self-government had been inaugurated, Immanuel Kant published in Konigsberg liis memorable tractate on " Eternal Peace.” It was in many re¬ spects the most remarkable prophecy and program ever made of the day when the war drum shall throb no longer, and the battle Hags shall be furled in " the parliament of man, the federation of the world.” The prophecy is never for¬ gotten by those who are in earnest about having it fulfilled. The name of Immanuel Kant, greatest of modern philoso¬ phers, is honored in Europe and America alike as that of the preeminent philosopher of the peace movement. But few perhaps remember the words in his immortal essay which seem a special prophecy of the part which our re¬ public seems destined to take in the promotion of the cause in which the great philosopher was a pioneer. ” If happy circumstances bring it about,” wrote Kant, ” that a powerful and enlightened people form themselves into a republic,— which by its very nature must be disposed in favor of per¬ petual peace, — this will furnish a center of federative union for other States to attach, themselves to, and thus to secure the conditions of liberty among all States, according to the idea of the right of nations ; and such a union would extend wider and wider, in the course of time, by the addition of further connections of this kind.” It was a remarkable insight of Kant’s that universal peace could come only with the universal republic. The republican VI ETERNAL PEACE constitution, he said, founded on the principle of the liberty and equality of its citizens and the dependence of all on a common legislation, is “ the only one which arises out of the idea of the original compact upon which all the rightful legislation of a people is founded. As regards public right, the republican principles, therefore, lie originally and essen¬ tially at the basis of the civil constitution in all its forms; and the only question for us now is as to whether it is also the only constitution that can lead to a perpetual peace.” Kant declares that the republican constitution, having its original source in the conception of right, does include the prospect of realizing perpetual peace; and the reason of this, he says, may be stated as follows: "According to the republican constitution, the consent of the citizens as members of the State is required to determine at any time the question whether there shall be war or not. Hence nothing is more natural than that they should be very loath to enter upon so very undesirable an undertak¬ ing ; for in decreeing it they would necessarily be resolving to bring upon themselves all the horrors of war. And in their case this implies such consequences as these: to have to fight in their own persons; to supply the costs of the war out of their own property; to have sorrowfully to re¬ pair the devastation which it leaves behind; and, as a crowning evil, to have to take upon themselves at the end a burden of debt which will go on embittering peace itseif. On the other hand, in a constitution where the subject is not a voting member of the State, resolution to go to war is a matter of the smallest concern in the world. For in this case the ruler, who as such is not a mere citizen, but the owner of the State, need not in the least suffer personally by war, nor has he to sacrifice his pleasures of the table or of the chase, or his palaces. He can therefore resolve for INTRODUCTION Vll war from insignificant reasons, as if it were but a hunting expedition 5 and he may leave the justification of it without concern to the diplomatic body.” It is certainly true that the development of the idea of in¬ ternational arbitration has been coincident with the growth of modern democracy. The peace movement altogether is strong in precisely those nations where freedom obtains and self-government is stable. The founders of our republic, Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, were the most illustrious group of men in their day who condemned the war system and urged its supplanting by the methods of law and peace. The peace movement as an organized movement naturally began here, in 1815. It was no accident which made the United States and England the leaders of the nations in the preaching and the practice of arbitration. With Jay’s Treaty, in 1794, the history of modern arbitration may fairly be said to begin; and it was no accident which brought about the conference at Washington in 1896, looking to a permanent system of arbitration between these two greatest republics in the world. It was the logic of Kant’s philosophy and of the nature of political things. Such a union as it was the object of that memorable Washington conference to bring about should logically extend by the addition, first, of those nations which have advanced farthest in self-government or have become republics in the sense in which Kant uses that term. It was natural for the French republic to unite with Great Britain in the arbitration treaty of 1903, which has prompted so many similar treaties. The contributions of Switzerland, the Netherlands and the Scandinavian repub¬ lics (for republics all are) to the movement for broader arbi¬ tration have been notable; and any baitings on our own part have been at times when imperialist temptations have prejudiced our real democracy. Vlll ETERNAL PEACE Tlie republican constitution of Kant’s thought is not of course to be confounded with the democratic constitution. Self-government is often better realized under monarchical than under democratic forms. ” Republicanism regarded as the constitutive principle of a State is the political severance of the executive power of the government from the legisla¬ tive power. Despotism is in principle the irresponsible ex¬ ecutive administration of the State by laws laid down and enacted by the same power that administers them, the ruler exercising his own private will as if it were the public will. If the mode of government is to conform to the idea of right, it must embody the representative system; for in this system alone is a really republican government possible. Without representation, no government can possibly be any other than despotic and arbitrary.” Great Britain is to-day among the leading nations of the world the truest republic, according to Kant’s definition, after our own republic, if we may venture to claim preeminence, because her people are most truly and completely self-governed. There was never a more conspicuous instance of failure to distinguish between names and realities than that of our Secretary of State’s char¬ acterization of the issue between England and Venezuela, in his correspondence with the English government in 1895, as a collision between monarchical institutions and the prin¬ ciple of self-government. England and the United States, one hemmed and hampered still by the specter of a crown and the social power of a hereditary aristocracy, the other shackled and encumbered in so high degree by a lawless plutocracy and consuming mammonism, nevertheless stand side by side as the leading exemplars of representative government in the modern world; and the logic of history and of the profoundest political philosophy decrees the es¬ tablishment between these republics of a permanent system INTRODUCTION IX of unreserved international arbitration, with the sure pledge and prospect that such a union will extend wider and wider until it eventuates in the ” universal cosmopolitical institu¬ tion ” of Kant’s prophecy. It was in 1784, almost a dozen years before the publi¬ cation of " Eternal Peace,” that Kant used this prophetic term and confidently foretold the end of wars and the reign of international law, in his essay here published under the title of " The Natural Principle of the Political Order, con¬ sidered in connection with the Idea of a Universal Cosmo¬ political History.” It is to be remembered that this essay appeared five years before the outbreak of the French Revolution, and one year after the Treaty of Paris recog¬ nized the success of the American Revolution, in which Kant had taken so deep an interest. " Eternal Peace ” was published just after the peace of Basel had recog- . nized the French Republic, seeming to inaugurate a new era of peace in Europe. The later essay was received with far the greater interest at the time, fifteen hundred copies, we read, being sold in a few weeks, and a second edition appearing the following year; and it is a celebrated essay, while the former essay is but little known save by special students of Kant. Yet this former essay is one of the most remarkable works ever written; and in the revival of interest in political speculation which we are now happily witnessing, it is to be hoped that it will at last receive that attention among ourselves which it deserves. The work is much more than a political essay. It is a work which may be compared, on one important side, with such an American treatise as Fiske’s " Destiny of Man.” It is a survey of the whole movement of nature and of human history, with a view to determine the final end; and its spirit and outcome are singularly like those of Mr. Fiske’s X ETERNAL PEACE treatise, which it preceded by a hundred years. It sees clearly that a serious study of evolution tends to the tele¬ ological principle; a study of the character and destiny of man, to the idea of God. Nothing is more needed at this time than the inculcation of precisely this philosophy in the field of our politics, as well as of our natural science. It is a question whether our modern doctrines of evolution have not in both fields done as much harm as good through hav¬ ing come in predominantly, in Germany as well as in Eng¬ land and America, upon the saddle of a shallow philosophy of secondary cause. The following are the principal of the nine propositions which Kant lays down, and to the unfolding and defense of which his essay is devoted: "All the capacities implanted in a creature by nature are destined to unfold themselves, completely and conformably to their end, in the course of time.” " In man, as the only rational creature on earth, those natural capacities which are directed toward the use of his reason could be completely developed only in the species, and not in the individual.” " The means which nature employs to bring about the development of all the capacities implanted in men is their mutual antagonism in society, but only so far as this antagonism becomes at length the cause of an order among them that is regulated by law.” " The greatest practical problem for the human race, to the solution of which it is compelled by nature, is the establish¬ ment of a civil society universally administering right ac¬ cording to law.” " The problem of the establishment of a perfect civil constitution is dependent on the problem of the regulation of the external relations between the States conformably to law; and without the solution of this latter problem it cannot be solved.” " The history of the human race, viewed as a whole, may be regarded as the realization INTRODUCTION xi of a hidden plan of nature to bring about a political consti¬ tution internally and, for tliis purpose, also externally per¬ fect, as the only status in which all the capacities implanted by her in mankind can be fully developed.” This is a remarkable body of doctrine; and the careful study of this essay is commended to every inquirer for the central philosophical principles of the peace movement, which at bottom is the movement toward the World State, the organization of the family of nations as we have meas¬ urably organized the nation. The essay throughout is in¬ stinct with the principle of progress as the cardinal principle for the interpretation of history, a subject to which Kant a few years afterward devoted a special essay. " The idea of human history,” he says, " viewed as founded upon the assumption of a universal plan in nature, gives us a new ground of hope, opening to us a consoling view of the future, in which the human race appears in the far distance as hav¬ ing worked itself up to a condition in which all the germs implanted in it by nature will be fully developed and its destiny here on earth fulfilled. Such a justifica tion of nature — or rather, let us say, of Providence — is no insignificant motive for choosing a particular point of view in contemplat¬ ing the course of the world. For what avails it to magnify the glory and wisdom of the creation in the irrational do¬ main of nature, and to recommend it to devout contempla¬ tion, if that part of the great display of the supreme wisdom which presents the end of it all in the history of the human race is to be viewed as only furnishing perpetual objections to that glory and wisdom ? The spectacle of history, if thus viewed, would compel us to turn away our eyes from it against our will; and the despair of ever finding a perfect rational purpose in its movement would reduce us to hope for it, if at all, only in another world.” ETERNAL PEACE * • Xll This is precisely in the spirit of the glowing final pages of those most modern books, Mr. Fiske’s " Destiny of Man ” and " The Idea of God,” which proved the precursors of many salutary popular presentations of evolutionary biology and sociology in the terms of a comprehensive and solvent idealism. Kant believes in Providence, in God, in nature and in history informed by divine purpose, in the omnipo¬ tence of the right; he believes that the fact that a thing ought to be is the sure reason that it will be, that " what is valid on rational grounds as a theory is also valid and good for practice,” is the only thing that is ultimately good for prac¬ tice, and is inevitably bound to be reduced to practice in due order. The consideration of the rational law of progress here stated brings Kant, in his essay here published under the title of " The Principle of Progress,” to the idea of inter¬ nationalism. He shows how the lawlessness and caprice of individuals involve evils which alone are sufficient to compel the establishment of the State; " and in like manner,” he says, " the evils arising from constant wars by which the States seek to reduce or subdue each other must bring them at last, even against their will, also to enter into a universal or cosmop o lit leal constitution .” This may not, he held, as¬ sume the form of a universal commonwealth or empire under one head, but of " a federation regulated by law ac¬ cording to the right of nations as concerted in common.” In this essay as powerfully as in the earlier essay on " The Natural Principle of the Political Order ” and in " Eternal Peace ” does he picture the irrationality and monstrosity of war and assure himself that, just so surely as the world becomes republican, so surely will war yield to arbitration and to federation. " When the decision of the question of war falls to the people [it is essentially the same word INTRODUCTION xiii as that already quoted from " Eternal Peace ”], neither will the desire of aggrandizement nor mere verbal injuries be likely to induce them to put themselves in danger of personal privation and want by inflicting upon themselves the calamities of war, which the sovereign in his own per¬ son escapes. And thus posterity, no longer oppressed by undeserved burdens, and owing not to the direct love of others for them, but only to the rational self-love of each age for itself, will be able to make progress in moral rela¬ tions. For each commonwealth, now become unable to injure any other by violence, must maintain itself by right alone; and it may hope on real grounds that the others, being con¬ stituted like itself, will then come, on occasions of need, to its aid.” It was but yesterday, we remember as we read this firm prophecy of a century ago, that Sir Edward Grey predicted the early coming of the time when nations would run to¬ gether to stop a war as readily and naturally as neighbors run to put out a fire; and is not the disarmament of the nations likely to come — Kant’s declaration makes us ask the question with more definite confidence — through some sort of League of Peace between a few great powers insur¬ ing each other against disaster through any possible attack upon any of them as a result of brave and trustful ventures in the reduction of its armaments ? There is no possible remedy against the evils of war, Kant declares, but " a system of international right founded upon public laws conjoined with power, to which every State must submit, according to the analogy of the civil or polit¬ ical right of individuals in any one State.” To all skepti¬ cism about this program and to the allegation that it has always been laughed at by statesmen and still more by sovereigns, as an idea fit only for the schools from which XIV ETERNAL PEACE it takes its rise, Kant answers roundly: "I trust to a theory which is based upon the principle of right as determining what the relation between men and States ought to he , and which lays down to these earthly gods the maxim that they ought so to proceed in their disputes that such a universal International State may be introduced, and to assume it therefore as not only possible in practice, but such as may yet be presented in reality.” Thus everywhere that Kant discusses political relations does the great vision of internationalism and of universal peace secured by law, just as peace is secured in the State because justice is dependent on the court and not on the fist, hover before him. Leaving the essay on " Progress,” we must, before returning to "Eternal Peace,” revert once more to the pages of " The Natural Principle of the Political Order,” for the sake of citing a noteworthy passage already hinted at, following one of Kant’s powerful arraignments of war as wasting so ruthlessly the treasures which might be applied to the advancement of enlightenment and the highest good of the world, as burdening peoples with debts almost impossible to extinguish, and as settling nothing finally and reliably, since might never makes right and every unjust issue in war is the sure seed of future war. Here again, in his consideration of the economic issues of the war system, does he come to the ground given such peculiar attention by the founders of our republic, especially Jefferson and Franklin. So intimate have the political and trade relations of nations become, he urges, — and how vastly truer has the intervening century made it! — that every political disturbance of any State becomes a disturb¬ ance of all, which are thus more and more forced by the common danger to offer themselves as arbiters. " In doing so,” says Kant, with marvelous insight and impressiveness, INTRODUCTION xv " they are beginning to arrange for a great future political body, such as the world has never yet seen. Although this political body may as yet exist only in a rough outline, nevertheless a feeling begins, as it were, to stir in all its members, each of which has a common interest in the main¬ tenance of the whole. And this may well inspire the hope that, after many political revolutions and transformations, the highest purpose of nature will be at last realized in the establishment of a universal cosniopolitical institution, in the bosom of which all the original capacities and endowments of the human race will be unfolded and developed.” Kant’s "Eternal Peace,” which has a somewhat scholastic form, opens with a section containing several preliminary articles of peace between States, such as: " Ko conclusion of peace shall be held to be valid when it has been made with the secret reservation of the material for a future war.” " Standing armies shall be entirely abolished in the course of time.” " No national debts shall be contracted in connec¬ tion with the external affairs of the States.” " No State shall intermeddle by force with the constitution or govern¬ ment of another State.” The reasons for these articles, touching the principal causes of war in his own time as well as in ours, he elaborates at length. As touching especially Kant’s sharp exposure of the men¬ ace of secret treaties and diplomacy, we Americans may dwell with pride upon the spirit and practice which have ever, and with growing influence, marked our own diplo¬ macy, and upon the strong demands for the utmost publicity in international action made by such leaders as President Eliot. The menacing condition following the war of 1894 between China and Japan, with the interposition of the European powers which ensued, illustrated the evil of secrecy which XY1 ETERNAL PEACE Kant condemned, and out of it in some measure grew the war between Japan and Russia ten years later. The Alsace- Lorraine situation, created by the Treaty of Frankfort in 1871, still disturbs Europe. The Treaty of Portsmouth in 1905 contained clauses dangerous to future peace, happily removed by subsequent agreements. The Treaty of Lausanne in 1912 was largely occupied in removing material for future war; and European diplomacy is striving for similar ends in the Balkans to-day. The world’s leaders in statesmanship and finance alike are coming to Kant’s position concerning war loans, to which subject the third Hague Conference is likely to devote more explicit attention than has ever before been given it by an international conference. Kant’s im¬ peachment of treacherous and inhuman practices in war finds impressive and detailed indorsement in the provisions of the Hague conventions regulating war; and in other ways it might strikingly be shown how the theory and practice of nations are gradually catching up with the insight and mo¬ rality of the Konigsberg prophet. Every one of his specific injunctions has either been practically realized or recognized as obligatory in principle by modern international action. But it is in the second section of " Eternal Peace,” devoted to the definitive articles of a perpetual peace between States, That Kant’s three great constructive principles are stated. (T1 lose principles are (1) that the civil constitution of every State shall be republican; (2) that all international right must be grounded upon a federation of free States; and (3) that right between nations must be limited to the conditions of universal hospitality. The balance of the essay is devoted to discussions of the guarantee of perpetual peace, the pres¬ ent discordance between morals and politics, and the accord¬ ance of politics with morals according to the transcendental conception of public right. The guarantee of perpetual peace INTRODUCTION XYll is furnished, Kant maintains, " by no less a power than the great artist Nature herself ”; and he surveys again the course of evolution, with all its struggles and antagonisms, to show that just as individual men, with all their conflicting interests and inclinations, are forced out of a condition of aloofness and lawlessness into the condition of a State, so individual nations are being gradually forced toward arbitration and federation by the sheer dangers and evils of the present disorder, self-interest itself pointing the same way which morality commands. To the objection of the practical poli¬ tician, that great reforms theoretically admirable cannot be realized because men are what they are, Kant wisely answers that many have large knowledge of men without yet truly knowing the nature of man. The process of creation cannot be justified if we assume that the human race never will or can be better. Kant’s cardinal position is that the pure principles of right and justice have objective reality and can be realized in fact, that it is precisely our vocation to proceed about their realization as fast as we apprehend them, and that failure to do this is really opposed to nature and is dangerous politics. "A true political philosophy can¬ not advance a step without first paying homage to the prin¬ ciples of morals. The union of politics with morals cuts in two the knots which politics alone cannot untie.” When men and States once make up their minds to do their clear duty instead of being selfish and specious, then things which seem hard will rapidly become simple. " Seek ye first the kingdom of pure practical reason and its righteousness ,” is Kant’s exhortation, " and then will your object, the benefit of perpetual peace, be added unto you.” Self-government, a federation of free States, universal hos¬ pitality, — these are the features of Kant’s great program. "Every form of government which is not representative,” XV111 ETERNAL PEACE he declares, " is a spurious form of government.” " For States viewed in relation to each other [thus he concludes his discussion of federation] there can be only one way, according to reason, of emerging from that lawless condition which contains nothing but occasions of war. Just as in the case of individual men, reason would drive them to give up their savage, lawless freedom, to accommodate themselves to public coercive laws, and thus to form an ever-growing State of Nations, such as would at last embrace all the nations of the earth.” His final words in the section upon universal hospitality are these: " The social relations between the various peoples of the world have now advanced every¬ where so far that a violation of right in one place of the earth is felt all over it. Hence the idea of a cosmopolitical right of the whole human race is no fantastic or overstrained mode of representing right, but is a necessary completion of the unwritten code which carries national and international right to a consummation in the public law of mankind.” The (British) Peace Society published a translation of " Eternal Peace ” by J. H. Morell some twenty years ago; and later the American Peace Society published a translation of the same by Dr. Benjamin F. Trueblood. In 1891 the essay was translated, along with Kant’s other popular politi¬ cal essays, by W. Hastie of Edinburgh, who had previously translated Kant’s " Philosophy of Law,” and it was issued in a little volume (Edinburgh : T. & T. Clark) entitled Kant’s " Principles of Politics,” with a scholarly and valuable in¬ troduction. Besides " Eternal Peace,” " The Principles of the Political Order,” and " The Principle of Progress,” al¬ ready referred to, this volume also contains the essay on "Principles of Political Right,” written in 1793, which the translator properly characterizes as the philosophical counter¬ part and ultimate expression of the American Declaration of INTRODUCTION xix Independence and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man. " The one thinker,” says Mr. Hastie, " who completely understood the purpose and end of the whole movement [of the eighteenth-century revolutions, viewed as the culmi¬ nation of the political science of the centuries] and who was capable of giving it its profoundest and largest expression was Immanuel Kant.” The obligations of English readers of Kant to Mr. Hastie, who also published a volume of trans¬ lations of Kant’s papers on cosmogony, is very great. The present volume is made up from the translations published in his little volume on Kant’s "Principles of Politics,” to¬ gether with a brief section from his translation of Kant’s " Philosophy of Law.” His titles are sometimes free and pop¬ ular, but have here usually been respected. A few changes have been made in his text; and certain notes, which he did not translate, have been taken from the translation of " Perpetual Peace ” by Miss Mary Campbell Smith (Swan Sonnenschein and Co., 1903), which was the first complete English translation of that famous essay to include all the notes. Miss Smith’s translation is accompanied by an intro¬ duction longer than the essay itself; and this introduction is distinctly worth the attention of the student of Kant and of the peace movement, on account of its careful survey of the advance of that movement in history and the varied factors in evolution which have contributed to it. An entirely new industrial and political status has come in international re¬ lations through the steady development of those forces which Kant outlined. Once war had its profits for victors ; but to¬ day, the writer well emphasizes, "war is death to the indus¬ trial interests of a nation. It is vain to talk, in the language of past centuries, of trade between civilized countries being advanced and markets opened up or enlarged by its means.” Our age sets a higher value upon human life, in this respect XX ETERNAL PEACE coming closer to that "feeling for humanity” which domi¬ nated Kant’s heart and his political philosophy. Interna¬ tional law has developed amazingly since Kant wrote, and the First Hague Conference marked an epoch. " The federa¬ tion of Europe will follow the federation of Germany and of Italy,” because thinkers and bodies of thinkers are more and more being stirred by Kant’s penetrating and pervasive conception of the federation of the world, the imperative of justice, and the unity of mankind. One danger our writer points out — as others in this day have frequently been obliged solemnly to emphasize — which Kant perhaps did not adequately foresee. With the passing of military power from kings to people and the cessation of dynastic wars, something of the passion for war has also passed from kings to people, and repeatedly governments are now found more lawful, self-controlled and just than the populace. " In the people the love of peace is strong, but so too is the love of a fight, the love of victory.” Just here is the field for education in international relations and the prin¬ ciples of peace. It was Kant’s intention to crown his philosophical achievements by a " System of Politics,” worked out in accordance with the general principles of his philosophy; but he was reluctantly compelled in his seventy-seventh year to abandon this long-cherished intention. But the political essays which he wrote, and which Mr. Hastie placed in the hands of the English reader in such admirable form, indicate sufficiently what the lines of his system of politics would have been. It is an impressive fact that the interests of social and political reconstruction were those which in the closing period of his full life chiefly engaged the greatest thinker of the modern world. For that Im¬ manuel Kant was. He revolutionized philosophy. His INTRODUCTION xxi contributions to physical science were hardly less brilliant and fruitful than his contributions to metaphysics. He was one of the greatest mathematicians and astronomers of all time. To him, and not to Laplace, belongs the merit of the origin of the nebular theory. Mr. Hastie is not extravagant in saying that, had he never written anything but his "Uni¬ versal History of Nature and Theory of the Heavens,” he would have ranked as the first of the modern evolutionists and the founder of scientific cosmology. His work in ethics was yet greater and more far-reaching in its results than his work in physics. To quote Mr. Hastie again, referring to Kant’s later, practical works : "In all these works he shows himself to be the universal philosopher of humanity, the greatest of the modern moralists, and the initiator of a new era of political science.” It is to Kant’s greatness on this side that men are now awaking as never before. The philosophers have long been shouting, " Back to Kant! ” This now begins to be the cry of the politician and the humanitarian. " I have not yet lost my feeling for humanity,” were the great philosopher’s last words. It was to humanity, to the State, to the peace and federation of the world, that his last labors were given. " By inclination,” he once said, " I am an inquirer. I feel all the thirst for knowledge and the eager unrest of striving to advance, as well as satisfaction with every kind of prog¬ ress. There was a time when I thought all this could form the glory of mankind; and I despised the rabble who know nothing. Rousseau brought me to the right view. This blinding superiority vanished. I learned to honor men ; and I should regard myself as much more useless than the com¬ mon laborers, did I not believe that this way of thinking could communicate a value to all others in establishing the rights of mankind.” XXII ETERNAL PEACE It is the logic of events, of history and progress, which has now brought the world to the necessity and the deter¬ mination of practically and definitely establishing the reign of peace and international law. But it should be an inspira¬ tion and a reassurance to all who are working for this high end to know that this is the logic, the prophecy and the program of the greatest philosopher of modern times. " England,” says the English translator of these political essays of Kant, " has acted out the principles which Kant has thought out and held up for universal imitation and embodiment; and this holds even more literally of the New England of America. In Kant the student will find the fundamental principles of all the best political and social science of the nineteenth century, the soundest exposition of constitutional government, and the first clear adumbra¬ tion of the great doctrines of federation and universal law, which are now stirring in the hearts of the peoples.” It is because this last is so true, and because the writer was undoubtedly correct in his belief that " the New Eng¬ land of America,”—by which he meant the United States,— had preeminently acted out the political principles of Kant, that this collection of his international writings should here receive a peculiar welcome. The principles of our founders and the principles of our federal organization are alike a prophecy and a preparation for the international polity, the universal peace and order and cooperation, of Kant’s phi¬ losophy. Our family of states anticipates the family of na¬ tions, and the supreme court of our federation anticipates the supreme court of the world. A Congress of Nations to create a Court of the Nations to interpret and administer the law of the nations Avas the program and demand of our American delegates at the great International Peace Con¬ gresses in Europe two generations ago; and this "American INTRODUCTION XXlll way,” as our European friends then popularly called it, simply emphasized thus long in advance the cardinal fea¬ tures of The Hague programs of to-day. But these American international leaders of 1850 knew well their obligations for their doctrine. " The name of Immanuel Kant,” said Eliliu Burritt at the Frankfort Congress in that year, "is identified with it, and it would be an act of injustice to the memory of that remarkable man to ascribe to the American mind a plan which he had presented to the world with such clear¬ ness and force before it was ever mentioned on the other side of the Atlantic.” He cpiotes Kant’s statement as to the kind of world federation which at that writing the great thinker had in mind, however closer and more organic was the " universal cosmopolitical institution ” contemplated in other passages: " What we mean to propose is a General N Congress of Nations of which both the meeting and dura¬ tion are to depend entirely upon the sovereign wills of the League, and not an indissoluble union, like that which ex¬ ists among the several states of North America, founded upon a political covenant. Such a Congress and such a League are the only means of realizing the idea of a true public law, according to which the differences between nations would be determined by civil proceedings, as those between individuals are determined by civil judicature in¬ stead of resorting to war, a means of redress worthy only of barbarians.” % Such a cooperative union of independent and sovereign nations was all that was contemplated in the " American plan” of the second quarter of the last century, the program proposed by Burritt in the European congresses and earlier here by William Ladd; and such only is the form of union we may wisely work for at The Hague to-day, leav¬ ing the future to determine the ultimate organization and XXIV ETERNAL PEACE character of the World State. But whatever the genesis and history, through Kant’s inspiration and all inspirations, the inspirations chiefly of our own free and federal national life, the idea of international federation and the World State is here among ourselves to-day most native, most com¬ mon and most dynamic. Here writings upon world organiza¬ tion and world law multiply fastest; and the doctrine of Kant becomes at last the teaching of our schools. " The World State ” finds place as the closing chapter in one of the most scholarly and popular textbooks of modern history in our schools, showing the youthful student how the long processes, collisions and struggles which crowd the pages of the past find their justification and interpretation only as we see that they have all been informed by the increas¬ ing purpose and have been preparations for the fraternity and cooperation of peoples and a true world order. Such chapters will find place to-morrow in all school histories and in the common books of the people. Germany, with the deeper understanding born of new experience, harking back to her great prophet, will put his truth into her life and into her education, with that thoroughness and power which made her in the age of her sovereign idealism the teacher and inspirer of the nations. In that better and hastening time of trust in justice, vision and the broadening thoughts of men, to-day’s reliance upon materialism and force will appear to all men as the deadly and the futile thing it is, and Immanuel Kant will come into his own. Boston, 1914 EDWIN D. MEAD I THE NATURAL PRINCIPLE OF THE POLITICAL ORDER CONSIDERED IN CONNECTION WITH THE IDEA OF A UNIVERSAL COSMO- POLITICAL HISTORY 1784 I ' . . THE NATURAL PRINCIPLE OF THE POLITICAL ORDER Whatever metaphysical theory may be formed regard¬ ing the freedom of the will, it holds equally true that the manifestations of the will in human actions are de¬ termined, like all other external events, by universal natural laws. Now history is occupied with the narra¬ tion of these manifestations as facts, however deeply their causes may lie concealed. Hence in view of this natural principle of regulation, it may be hoped that when the play of the freedom of the human will is ex¬ amined on the great scale of universal history a regular march will be discovered in its movements; and that, in this way, what appears to be tangled and unregulated in the case of individuals will be recognized in the history of the whole species as a continually advancing, though slow, development of its original capacities and endow¬ ments. Thus marriages, births and deaths appear to be incapable of being reduced to any rule by which their numbers might be calculated beforehand, on account of the great influence which the free will of man exercises upon them; and yet the annual statistics of great coun¬ tries prove that these events take place according to constant natural laws. In this respect they may be com¬ pared with the very inconstant changes of the weather, which cannot be determined beforehand in detail, but 3 4 ETERNAL PEACE which yet, on the whole, do not fail to maintain the growth of plants, the flow of rivers and other natural processes, in a uniform uninterrupted course. Individual men, and even whole nations, little think, while they are pursuing their own purposes—each in his own way and often one in direct opposition to another—that they are advancing unconsciously under the guidance of a pur¬ pose of nature which is unknown to them, and that they are toiling for the realization of an end which, even if it were known to them, might be regarded as of little importance. Men, viewed as a whole, are not guided in their efforts merely by instinct, like the lower animals; nor do they proceed in their actions, like the citizens of a purely rational world, according to a preconcerted plan. And so it appears a§ if no regular systematic history of mankind would be possible, as in the case, for instance, of bees and beavers. Nor can one help feeling a certain repugnance in looking at the conduct of men as it is ex¬ hibited on the great stage of the world. With glimpses of wisdom appearing in individuals here and there, it seems, on examining it externally as if the whole web of human history were woven out of folly and childish vanity and the frenzy of destruction, so that at the end one hardly knows what idea to form of our race, albeit so proud of its prerogatives. In such circumstances there is no resource for the philosopher but, while recognizing the fact that a rational conscious purpose cannot be supposed to determine mankind in the play of their actions as a whole, to try whether he cannot dis¬ cover a universal purpose of nature in this paradoxical movement of human things, and whether in view of this PRINCIPLE OF THE POLITICAL ORDER 5 purpose a history of creatures who proceed without a plan of their own may nevertheless be possible according to a determinate plan of nature. We will accordingly see whether we can succeed in finding a clew to such a history ^ and, in the event of doing so, we shall then leave it to nature to bring forth the man who will be tit to compose it. Thus did she bring forth a Kepler, who, in an unexpected way, reduced the eccentric paths of the planets to definite laws; and then she brought forth a Newton, who explained those laws by a universal natural cause. FIRST PROPOSITION All the capacities implanted in a creature by nature are destined to unfold themselves, completely and con¬ formably to their end, in the course of time. This proposition is established by observation, ex¬ ternal as well as internal or anatomical, in the case of all animals. An or^an which is not to be used, or an arrangement which does not attain its end, is a contra¬ diction in the teleological science of nature. For, if we turn away from that fundamental principle, we have then before us a nature moving without a purpose, and no longer conformable to law; and the cheerless gloom of chance takes the place of the guiding light of reason. I 6 ETERNAL PEACE SECOND PROPOSITION In man, as the only rational creature on earth, those natural capacities which are directed toward the use of his reason could be completely developed only in the species and not in the individual. Reason, in a creature, is a faculty of which it is charac¬ teristic to extend the laws and purposes involved in the use of all its powers far beyond the sphere of natural instinct, . and it knows no limit in its efforts. Reason, however, does not itself work by instin ct, but requires exp eriment s, exercise and instruction in order to advance gradually from one stage of insight to another^Hence each individ¬ ual man would necessarily have to live an enormous length of time in order to learn by himself how to make yi com- •—-plete use of all his natural endowments. Otherwise,/pf nature should have given him but a short lease of life — o as is actually the case — reason would then require the production of an almost inconceivable series of genera¬ tions, the one handing down its enlightenment to the other, in order that her germs, as implanted in our species may be at last unfolded to that stage of development which is completely conformable to her inherent design. And the point of time at which this is to be reached must, at least in idea, form the goal and aim of man’s endeavors, because his natural capacities would otherwise have to be regarded as, for the most part, purposeless and bestowed in vain. But such a view would abolish all our practical principles, and thereby also throw on nature the suspicion of practicing a childish play in the case of man alone, while her wisdom must otherwise be recognized as a funda- mental principle in judging of all other arrangements. PRINCIPLE OF TIIE POLITICAL ORDER THIRD PROPOSITION Nature has willed that man shall produce wholly out of himself all that goes beyond the mechanical structure and arrangement of his animal existence, and that he shall participate in no other happiness or perfection than that which he has procured for himself, apart from instinct, by his own reason. . ^Nature, according to this view, does nothing that is superfluous, and is not prodigal in the use of means for A her ehdsNAs she gave man reason and freedom of will on the basis of reason, this was at once a clear indication of her purpose in respect of his endowments. With such equipment, he was not to be guided by instinct nor fur¬ nished and instructed by innate knowledge; much rather must he produce everything out of himself. The inven¬ tion of his own covering' and shelter from the elements and the means of providing for his external security and defense, — for which nature gave him neither the horns of the bull, nor the claws of the lion, nor the fangs of the dog, — as well as all the sources of delight which could make life agreeable, his very insight and prudence, and even the goodness of his will, all these were to be entirely his own work. Nature seems to have taken pleasure in exercising her utmost parsimony in this case and to have measured her animal equipments very spar¬ ingly. She seems to have exactly fitted them to the most necessitous requirements of the mere beginning of an existence, as if it had been her will that man, when he had at last struggled up from the greatest crudeness of life to the highest capability and to internal perfection in his habit of thought, and thereby also — 8 ETERNAL PEACE iu. Cm f\ AA/> L-fw / "V so far as it is possible on earth — to happiness, should claim the merit of it as all his own and owe it only to himself. It thus looks as if nature had laid more upon his rational self-esteem than upon his mere well-being. For in this movement of human life a great host of toils and troubles wait upon man. It appears, however, that the purpose of nature was not so much that he should have an agreeable life, but that he should carry forward his own self-culture until he made himself worthy of life and well-being. In this connection it is always a subject of wonder that the older generations appear only to pursue their weary toil for the sake of those who come after them, preparing for the latter another stage on which they ynay carry higher the structure which nature has in view# and that it is to be the happy fate of only the latest generations to dwell in the building upon which the long series of their forefathers have labored, without so much as intending it and yet with no possibility of participating in the happiness which they were preparing. Yet, however mysterious this may be, it is as necessary as it is mysterious when we once accept the position that one species of animals was des¬ tined to possess reason, and that, forming a class of rational beings mortal in all the individuals but im¬ mortal in the species, it was yet to attain to a complete development of its capacities. PRINCIPLE OF THE POLITICAL ORDER 9 FOURTH PROPOSITION The means which nature employs to bring about the development of all the capacities implanted in men is their mutual antagonism in society, but only so far as this antagonism becomes at length the cause of an order among them that is regulated by law. a By this antagonism I mean the unsocial sociability of men; that is, their tendency to enter into society, con¬ joined, however, with an accompanying resistance which continually threatens to dissolve this society.^ The dis¬ position for this manifestly lies in human nature. Man has an inclination to socialize himself by associating with others, because in such a state he feels himself more than a natural man, in the development of his natural capaci¬ ties. Me has, moreover, a great tendency to individualize- himself by isolation from others, because he likewise finds in himself the unsocial disposition of wishing to direct everything merely according to his own mind ; and lienee he expects resistance everywhere, just as lie knows with regard to himself that he is inclined on his part to resist others. Now it is this resistance or mutual antagonism that awakens all the powers of man, that drives him to overcome all his propensity to indolence, and that impels him, through the desire of honor or power or wealth, to strive after rank among his fellow men — whom he can neither bear to interfere with himself, nor yet let alone. Then the first real steps are taken from the rudeness of barbarism to the culture of civilization, which particularly lies in the social worth of man. All his talents are now gradually developed, and with the progress of enlighten¬ ment a beeinnino' is made in the institution of a mode of 10 ETERNAL PEACE thinking which can transform the crude natural capacity for moral distinctions, in the course of time, into definite practical principles of action; and thus a pathologically constrained combination into a form of society is devel¬ oped at last to a moral and rational whole. Without those qualities of an unsocial kind out of which this antagonism arises — which viewed by themselves are certainly not amiable but which every one must neces¬ sarily find in the movements of his own selfish propen- . sities — men might have led an Arcadian shepherd life in complete harmony, contentment and mutual love, but in that case all their talents would have forever re¬ mained hidden in their germ. As gentle as the sheep they tended, such men would hardly have won for their existence a higher worth than belonged to their domesti- cated cattle; they would not have filled up with their rational nature the void remaining in the creation, in respect of its final end. Thanks be then to nature for this unsociableness, for this envious jealousy and vanity, for this unsatiable desire of possession or even of power. Without them all the excellent capacities implanted in mankind by nature would slumber eternally undevel- ] oped. Alan wishes concord; but nature knows better what is good for his species, and she will have discord. He wishes to live comfortably and pleasantly; but nature wills that, turning from idleness and inactive content¬ ment, he shall throw himself into toil and suffering even in order to find out remedies against them, and to ex¬ tricate his life prudently from them again.' ^The natural impulses that urge man in this direction, the sources of that unsociableness and general antagonism from which so many evils arise, do yet at the same time impel him PRINCIPLE OF THE POLITICAL ORDER 11 to new exertion of Ins powers, and consequently to fur¬ ther development of his natural capacitieSy Hence they clearly manifest the arrangement of a wise Creator, and do not at all, as is often supposed, betray the hand of a malevolent spirit that has deteriorated His glorious creation, or spoiled it from envy. FIFTH PROPOSITION The greatest practical problem for the human race, to the solution of which it is compelled by nature, \ is the establishment of a civil society, universally administering right according to law. lit is only in a society which possesses the greatest liberty, and which consequently involves a thorough antagonism of its membe rs — with, however, the most exact determination and guarantee of the limits of this liberty in order that it may coexist with the liberty of others — that the highest purpose of nature, which is the development of all her capacities, can be attained in the case of mankind. Now nature also wills that the human race shall attain through itself to this, as to all the other ends for which it was destined. Ilence a society in which liberty under external laws may be found com¬ bined in the greatest possible degree with irresistible power, or a perfectly just civil constitution, is the high¬ est natural problem prescribed to the human species. And this is so because nature can only by means of the solution and fulfillment of this problem realize her other purposes with our race. A certain necessity com¬ pels man, who is otherwise so greatly prepossessed in favor 12 ETERNAL PEACE of unlimited freedom, to enter into this state of coercion and restraint. Indeed, v it i s the greatest necessity of y all that does this; for it is created by men themselves whose inclinations make it impossible for them to exist long beside each other in wild, lawless freedom. But in such a complete growth as the civil union these very inclinations afterward produce the best effects. It is with them as with the trees in a forest; for just because every one strives to deprive the other of air and sun they compel each other to seek them both above, and thus they grow beautiful and straight; whereas those that in freedom and apart from one another shoot out their branches at will grow stunted and crooked and awry. All the culture and art that adorn humanity and the fairest social order are fruits of that unsociable¬ ness which is necessitated of itself to discipline itself and which thus constrains man, by compulsive art, to develop completely the germs of his nature. SIXTH PROPOSITION \j This problem is likewise the most difficult of its kind, and it is the latest to be solved by the human race. The difficulty which the mere idea of this problem f brings into view is that mn is an animal, and if he lives among others of his kind he has need of a master. For he certainly misuses his freedom in relation to his fellow men; and although as a rational creature he jju | desires a law which may set bounds to the freedom of all, yet his own selfish animal inclinations lead him, i \M/ .iL IlaT jj n o^v \wi <***** 11 ^ ^ 'W 13 PRINCIPLE OF THE POLITICAL ORDER H wherever lie can, to except himself from it. He, tliere- " --- 7 --1 ~ --- fore, requires a master to break his self-will and compel him to obey a will that is universally valid, and in rela¬ tion to which every one may be free. Where, then, does he obtain this master? Nowhere but in the human race. But this master is an animal too, and also requires a master. jBegin, then, as he may, it is not easy to see how he can procure a supreme authority over public justice that would be essentially just, whether such an authority may be sought in a single person or in a society of many selected persons. yThe highest authority has to be just in itself, and yet to be a man. This problem is, therefore, the most difficult of its kind; and, indeed, its perfect solution is impossible, j Out of such crooked material as man is made of, nothing can be hammered quite straight. _So it is only an approximation to this L/ r idea that is imposed upon us by nature.* It fur flier follows that this problem—ia^ the last to b e practically worked out, because it requires correct conceptions of tlib'mature of a possible constitution, great experience founded on the practice of ages, and above all a good will prepared for the reception of the solution. But these three conditions could not easily be found to¬ gether ; and if they are found it can only be very late in time, and after many attempts to solve the problem have been made in vain. 5 Ul ^ (M hi * The part that has to he played by man is, therefore, a very artificial one. We do not know how it may he with the inhabitants of other planets or what are the conditions of their nature ; but, if we execute well the commission of nature, we may certainly flatter ourselves to the extent of claiming a not insignificant rank among our neighbors in the universe. It may perhaps he the case that in those other planets every individual com¬ pletely attains his destination in this life. With us it is otherwise; only the species can hope for this. tp J ! tp W*' V ^ YW ?vT, \ i :U/> A H fA iJL lA IK Kv A ci ^ \ jv* 14 ETERNAL PEACE SEVENTH PROPOSITION The problem of the establishment of a perfect civil constitution is dependent on the problem of the regu¬ lation of the external relations between the states conformably to law; and without the solution of this latter problem it cannot be solved. What avails it to labor at the arrangement of a com¬ monwealth as a civil constitution regulated by law among individual men ? The same unsociableness which forced men to it becomes again the cause of each commonwealth’s assuming the attitude of uncontrolled freedom in its ex- 1 AIn a \A OM ternal relations, that is, as one State in relation to other States; and consequently any one State must expect from any other the same sort of evils as oppressed indi¬ vidual men and compelled them to enter into a civil union regulated by law. Nature has accordingly again used the unsociableness of men, and even of great societies • and political bodies, her creatures of this kind, as a means to work out through their mutual antagonism a condition of rest and security. She works through wars, through the strain of never-relaxed preparation for them, and through the necessity which every State is at last com¬ pelled to feel within itself, even in the midst of peace, to begin some imperfect efforts to carry out her purpose. v And, at last, after many devastations, overthrows and even complete internal exhaustion of their powers, the nations are driven forward to the goal which reason might easily have impressed upon them, even without so much sad experience. This is none other than the advance out of the lawless state of savages and the entering into a federation of nations./It is thus brought about that every Q •q O I l/ \lu &y,h CUu ol fUs UTXa I f „ K-ry 0 Ym > (/^ 1) Uc UaxA urm f) „ I s a 1 ) | / 1 ■ ^ (>A f a ^ K Yv U wC? PRINCIPLE OF THE POLITICAL ORDER 15 State, including even the smallest, may rely for its safety and its rights not on its own power or its own judgment of right, hut only on this great international federation (foedus amphictionum ), on its combined power and on the decision of the common will according to laws. However visionary this idea may appear to be — and it has been ridiculed in the way in which it has been pre¬ sented by an Abbe de St. Pierre or Rousseau (perhaps because they believed its realization to be so near) — it is nevertheless the inevitable issue of the necessity in which men involve one another. For this necessity must compel the nations to the very resolution — however hard it may appear —to which the savage in his uncivi¬ lized state was so unwillingly compelled when he had to surrender his brutal liberty and seek rest and security in a constitution regulated by law. ^All wars are, accordingly, so many attempts — not, indeed, in the intention of men, but yet according to the purpose of nature — to bring about new relations between the nations; and by destruction, or at least dismember¬ ment, of them all to form new political corporations,- These new organizations, again, are not capable of being preserved either in themselves or beside one another, and they must therefore pass in turn through similar new revolutions, till at last, partly by the best possible arrangement of the civil constitution within, and partly by common convention and legislation without, a condi¬ tion will be attained, which, in the likeness of a civil commonwealth and after the manner of an automaton, will be able to preserve itself. Three views may be put forward as to the way in which this condition is to be attained. In the first place, 1(3 ETERNAL PEACE it may be held that from an Epicurean concourse of causes in action it is to be expected that the States, like little particles of matter, will try by their fortuitous conjunctions all sorts of formations, which will be again destroyed by new collisions, till at last some one consti¬ tution will by chance succeed in preserving itself in its proper form, — a lucky accident which will hardly ever come about! In the second place, it may rather be maintained that nature here pursues a regular march in carrying our species up from the lower stage of animality to the highest stage of humanity, and that this is done by a compulsive art that is inherent in man, whereby his natural capacities and endowments are developed in per¬ fect regularity through an apparently wild disorder. Or, in the third place, it may even be asserted that out of all these actions and reactions of men as a whole noth¬ ing at all — or at least nothing rational — will ever be produced; that it will be in the future as it has ever been in the past, and that no one will ever be able to say whether the discord which is so natural to our species may not be preparing for us, even in this civilized state of society, a hell of evils at the end; nay, that it is not perhaps advancing even now to annihilate again by barbaric devastation this actual state of society and all the progress hitherto made in civilization, — a fate against which there is no guarantee under a government of blind chance, identical as it is with lawless freedom in action, unless a connecting wisdom is covertly assumed to underlie the system of nature. Now, which of these views is to be adopted depends almost entirely on the question whether it is rational to recognize harmony and design in the parts of the PRINCIPLE OF THE POLITICAL ORDER 17 constitution of nature, and to deny them of the whole. We have glanced at what has been done by the seemingly purposeless state of savages; how it checked for a time all the natural capacities of our species, but at last by the very evils in which it involved mankind it compelled them to pass from this state, and to enter into a civil constitution, in which all the germs of humanity could be unfolded. And, in like manner, the barbarian freedom of the States, when once they were founded, proceeded in the same way of progress. By the expenditure of all the resources of the commonwealth in military preparations against each other, by the devastations occasioned by war, and still more by the necessity of holding themselves con¬ tinually in readiness for it, the full development of the capacities of mankind are undoubtedly retarded in their progress ; out, on the other hand, the very evils which thus arise, compel men to find out means against them. A law of equilibrium is thus discovered for the regula¬ tion of the really wholesome antagonism of contiguous States as it springs up out of their freedom ; and a united power, giving emphasis to this law, is constituted, whereby there is introduced a universal condition of public security among the nations. And that the powers of mankind may not fall asleep, this condition is not entirely free from danger ; but it is at the same time not without a principle which operates, so as to equalize the mutual action and reaction of these powers, that they may not destroy each other. Before the last step of bringing in a universal union of the States is taken — and accordingly when human nature is only halfway in its progress — it lias to endure the hardest evils of all, under the deceptive semblance of outward prosperity; and Rousseau was not so far 18 ETERNAL PEACE wrong when lie preferred the state of the savages, if the last stage which our race has yet to surmount be left out of view. We are cultivated in a high degree by science and art. We are civilized, even to excess, in the way of all sorts of social forms of politeness and elegance. But there is still much to be done before we can be regarded as moralized. The idea of morality certainly belongs to real culture; but an application of this idea which extends no farther than the likeness of morality in the sense of honor and external propriety merely constitutes civiliza¬ tion. So long, however, as States lavish all their resources upon vain and violent schemes of aggrandizement, so long as they continually impede the slow movements of the endeavor to cultivate the newer habits of thought and fy Ol J;\W V \fl' U )n C0 XI A % A/> f\U \[JU: character on the part of the citizens, and even withdraw from them all the means of furthering it, nothing in the way of moral progress can be expected., A long internal process of improvement is thus required in every com¬ monwealth as a condition for the higlier culture of its citizens. But all apparent good that is not grafted upon a morally good disposition is nothing but mere illusion and glittering misery. In this condition the human race will remain until it shall have worked itself, in the way that has been indicated, out of the existing chaos of its political relations. r/ • 11 KM Vi* 0 ri f \r TV* Q PRINCIPLE OF THE POLITICAL ORDER 19 EIGHTH PROPOSITION The history of the human race, viewed as a whole, may be regarded as the realization of a hidden plan of nature to bring about a political constitution, inter¬ nally, and, for this purpose, also externally perfect, as the only state in which all the capacities implanted by her in mankind can be fully developed. This proposition is a corollary from the preceding proposition. We see by it that philosophy may also have its millennial view, but in this case the chiliasm is of such a nature that the very idea of it — although only in a far-off way — may help to further its realiza¬ tion ; and such a prospect is, therefore, anything but visionary. The real question is whether experience dis¬ closes anytlung of such a movement in the purpose of nature. I can only say it does a little; for the move¬ ment in this orbit appears to require such a long time till i t go es full round that the form of its path and the relation of its parts to the whole can hardly be deter¬ mined out of the small portion which the human race has yet passed through in this relation.^ The determina¬ tion of this problem is just as difficult and uncertain as it is to calculate from all previous astronomical observa¬ tions what course our sun, with the whole host of his attendant train, is pursuing in the great system of the fixed stars, although on the ground of the total arrange¬ ment of the structure of the universe and the little that has been observed of it, we may infer, confidently enough, the reality of such a movement. Human nature, how¬ ever, is so constituted that it cannot be indifferent even in regard to the most distant epoch that may affect our 20 ETERNAL PEACE race, if only it can be expected with certainty. And such indifference is the less possible in the case before ns when it appears that we might by our own rational arrange¬ ments hasten the coming of this joyous period for our descendants. Hence the faintest traces of the approach of this period will be very important to ourselves. Now the States are already in the present day involved in such close relations with each other that none of them can pause or slacken in its internal civilization without losing power and influence in relation to the rest; and hence the maintenance, if not the progress, of this end of nature is, in a manner, secured even by the ambitious designs of the States themselves. Further, civil liberty cannot now be easily assailed without inflicting such damage as will be felt in all trades and industries, and especially in commerce ;yand this would entail a diminution of the powers of the State in external relations. This liberty, moreover, gradually advances further. But if the citizen is hindered in seeking his prosperity in any way suitable to himself that is consistent with the liberty of others, the activity of business is checked generally ; and thereby the powers of the whole State are again weakened. s^JHence the restrictions on personal liberty of action are always v/ more and more removed, and universal liberty even in religion comes to be conceded. And thus it is that, not- withstanding the intrusion of many a delusion and caprice, the spirit of enlightenment gradually arises as a great good which the human race must derive even from the selfish purposes of aggrandizement on the part of its rulers, if they understand what is for their own advan¬ tage. This enlightenment, however, and along with it a certain sympathetic interest which the enlightened man 21 PRINCIPLE OF TIIE POLITICAL ORDER cannot avoid taking in the good which he perfectly under¬ stands, must by and by pass up to the throne and exert an influence even upon the principles of government. Thus although our rulers at present have no money to spend on public educational institutions, or in general on all that concerns the highest good of the world —be¬ cause all their resources are already placed to the account of the next war—yet they will certainly find it to be to their own advantage at least not to hinder the people in their own efforts in this direction, however weak and slow these may be. Finally, war itself comes to be regarded as a very hazardous and objectionable undertaking, not only from its being so artificial in itself and so uncertain as regards its issue on both sides, but also from the after- O pains which the State feels in the ever-increasing burdens it entails in the form of national debt — a modern inflic¬ tion— which it becomes almost impossible to extinguish. And to this is to be added the influence which every political disturbance of any State of our continent — linked as it is so closely to others by the connections of trade—exerts upon all the States and which becomes so observable that they are forced by their common danger, although without lawful authority, to offer themselves as arbiters in the troubles of any such State. In doing so, they are beginning to arrange for a great future political body, such as the world has never yet seen. Although this political body may as yet exist only in a rough out¬ line, nevertheless a feeling begins, as it were, to stir in all its members, each of which has a common interest in the maintenance of the whole. ^And this may well inspire the hope that, after many political revolutions and trans¬ formations, the highest purpose of nature will be at last 00 JmJ ETERNAL PEACE realized in tlie establishment of a universal cosmopolitical institution, in the bosom of which all the original .capaci¬ ties and endowments of the human species will be un¬ folded and developed./ NINTH PROPOSITION A philosophical attempt to work out the universal history of the world according to the plan of nature in its aiming at a perfect civil union must be regarded as possible, and as even capable of helping forward the purpose of nature. It seems, at first sight, a strange and even an absurd proposal to suggest tlie composition of a history accord¬ ing to the idea of how the course of the world must pro¬ ceed, if it is to be conformable to certain rational laws. It may well appear that only a romance could be pro¬ duced from such a point of view. However, if it be assumed that nature, even in the play of human free¬ dom, does not proceed without plan and design, the idea may well be regarded as practicable; and, although we are too shortsighted to see through the secret mecha¬ nism of her constitution, yet the idea may be serviceable as a clew to enable us to penetrate the otherwise planless aggregate of human actions as a whole, and to represent them as constituting a system. For the idea may so far be easily verified. Thus, suppose we start from the his¬ tory of Greece, as that by which all the older or con¬ temporaneous history has been preserved, or at least accredited to us.* Then, if we study its influence upon * It is only a learned public which has had an uninterrupted existence from its beginning up to our time that can authenticate ancient history. Beyond it, all is terra incognita; and the history of the peoples who lived PRINCIPLE OF THE POLITICAL ORDER oo ZiO tlie formation and malformation of the political institu¬ tions of the Roman people, which swallowed up the Greek states, and if we further follow the influence of the Roman Empire upon the Barbarians who destroyed it in turn, and continue this investigation down to our own day, conjoining with it episodically the political his¬ tory of other peoples according as the knowledge of them has gradually reached us through these more enlightened nations, we shall discover a regular movement of progress through the political institutions of our continent, which is probably destined to give laws to all other parts of the world. Applying the same method of study everywhere, both to the internal civil constitutions and laws of the States and to their external relations to each other, we se e ho w in both relations the good they contained served for a certain period to elevate and glorify particular na¬ tions, and with themselves their arts and sciences, — until the ( Meets a ttaching to their institutions came in time to cause their overthrow., And yet their very ruin leaves alwa ys a germ of growing enlightenment behind, which, being further developed by every revolution, acts as a preparation for a subsequent higher stage of progress and improvement. Thus, as I believe, we can discover a clue which may serve for more than the explanation of the confused play of human things, or for the art of political prophecy in reference to future changes in States, — a out of its range can only be begun from the date at which they entered within it. In the case of the Jewish people this happened in the time of the Ptolemies through the Greek translation of the Bible, without which little faith would have been given to their isolated accounts of themselves. From that date taken as a beginning, when it has been determined, their records may then be traced upward. And so it is with all other peoples. The first page of Thucydides, says Hume, is the beginning of all true history. 24 ETERNAL PEACE use which has been already made of the history of man¬ kind, even although it was regarded as the incoherent effect of an unregulated freedom! Much more than all this is attained by the idea of human history viewed as founded upon the assumption of a universal plan in nature. For this idea gives us a new ground of hope, as it opens up to us a consoling view of the future, in which the human species is represented in the far distance as having at last worked itself up to a condition in which all the germs implanted in it by nature may be fully developed, and its destination here on earth fulfilled. Such a justification of nature — or rather, let us say, of Providence — is no insignificant motive for choosing a particular point of view in contemplating the course of the world. For what avails it to magnify the glory and wisdom of the creation in the irrational domain of nature, and to recommend it to devout contemplation, if that part of the great display of the supreme wisdom which pre¬ sents the end of it all in the history of the human race is to be viewed as only furnishing perpetual objections j to that glory and wisdom ? • < Tlie spectacle of history if thus viewed would compel us to turn away our ey es from it against our will ; and the despair of ever finding a perfect rational purpose in its movement would reduce us to hope for it, if at all, only in another world.7 This idea of a universal history is no doubt to a cer¬ tain extent of an a priori character, but it would be a misunderstanding of my object were it imagined that I have any wish to supplant the empirical cultivation of 0 history, or the narration of the actual facts of experience. It is only a thought of what a philosophical mind - which, as such, must be thoroughly versed in history PRINCIPLE OF TIIE POLITICAL ORDER on: —might be induced to attempt from another standpoint. Besides, the praiseworthy circumstantiality with which our history is now written may well lead one to raise the question as to how our remote posterity will be able to cope with the burden of history as it will be transmitted to them after a few centuries. They will surely estimate the history of the oldest times, of which the documentary records may have been long lost, only from the point of view of what will interest them; and no doubt this will be what the nations and governments have achieved, or failed to achieve, in the universal world-wide relation. It is well to be giving thought to this relation ; and at the same time to draw the attention of ambitious rulers and their servants to the only means by which they can leave an honorable memorial of themselves to latest times. And this may also form a minor motive for attempting to produce such a philosophical history. II THE PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL RIGHT CONSIDERED IN CONNECTION WITH THE RELATION OF THEORY TO PRACTICE IN NATIONAL LAW 1793 - ' . . THE PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL RIGHT The establishment of a civil constitution in society is one of the most important facts in human history. In the principle on which it is founded this institution dif¬ fers from all the other forms of social union among man¬ kind. Viewed as a compact,* and compared with other modes of compact! by which numbers of men are united into one society,^the formation of a civil constitution has much in common with all other forms of social union in respect of the mode in which it is carried out in practice. But while all such compacts are established for the pur¬ pose of promoting in common some chosen end, the civil union is essentially distinguished from all others by the principle on which it is based. In all social contracts we find a union of a number of persons for the purpose of carrying out some one end which they all have in com¬ mon. But a union of a multitude of men, viewed as an end in itself that every person ought to carry out, and which consequently is a primary and unconditional duty amid all the external relations of men who cannot help exercising a mutual influence on one another, — is at once peculiar and unique of its kind. Such a union is only to be found in a society which, by being formed into a civil state, constitutes a commonwealth. Now the end which in such external relations is itself a duty and even the highest formal condition—the conditio sine qua non — * I 3 act uni unionis civ ills. t Pactum sociale. 30 ETERNAL PEACE of all other external duties, is the realization of the rights of men under public compulsory laws, by which every individual can have what is his own assigned to him and secured against the encroachments or assaults of others. The idea of an external law generally arises wholly out of the idea of human freedom, or liberty, in the ex¬ ternal relations of men to one another. As such, it has nothing specially to do with the realization of happiness as a purpose which all men naturally have, or with pre¬ scribing the means of attaining it; so that therefore such a prescription in any statute must not be confounded with the motive behind the law itself. Law in general may be defined as the limitation of the freedom of any individual to the extent of its agreement with the freedom of all other individuals, in so far as this is possible by a uni¬ versal law. /Public law, again, is the sum of the external laws which make such a complete agreement of freedom in society possible.^ Now as all limitation of freedom by external acts of the will of another is a mode of coercion or compulsion, it follows that the civil constitution is a relation of free men who live under coercive laws, with¬ out otherwise prejudicing their liberty in the whole of their connection with others. For reason itself wills this. By ' reason ’ is here meant the purely innate, law-giving reason which gives no regard to any end that is derived from experience, all of which is comprehended under the general name of happiness. In consideration of such ends and the place each assigns them men think so differently that their wills could not be brought under any common principle, nor, consequently, under any external laws that would be compatible with the liberty of all. THE PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL RIGHT 31 \The civil state, then, regarded merely as a social state tlan is regulated by righteous laws, is founded upon the following rational principles: 1. The liberty of every member of the society as a man; 2. The equality of every member of the society with every other, as a subject; 3. The self-dependency of every member of the com¬ monwealth, as a citizen. These principles arenot so much laws given by the State when it is established as they are fundamental con¬ ditions according to which alone the institution of a State is possible, in conformity with the purely rational princi¬ ples of external human right generally. 1. The liberty of every member of the State as a man is the first principle in the constitution of a rational commonwealth. I would express this principle in the following form: o one has a right to compel me to be happy in the peculiar way in which he may think of the well-being of other men; but every one is entitled to seek his own happiness in the way that seems to him best, if it does not infringe the liberty of others in striv¬ ing after a similar end for themselves when their liberty is capable of consisting with the right of liberty in all others according to possible universal laws.’ A govern¬ ment founded upon the principle of benevolence toward the people — after the analogy of a father to his children, and therefore called a paternal government — would be one in which the subjects would be regarded as children or minors unable to distinguish what is beneficial or in¬ jurious to them. These subjects would be thus com¬ pelled to act in a merely passive way; and they would 32 ETERNAL PEACE be trained to expect all that ought to make them happy, solely from the judgment of the sovereign and just as he might will it, merely out of his goodness. Such a government would be the greatest conceivable despot¬ ism ; for it would present a constitution that would abolish all liberty in the subjects and leave them no rights. It is not a paternal government, but only a patriotic government that is adapted for men who are capable of rights, and at the same time fitted to give scope to the good-will of the ruler^/By ' patriotic ’ is meant that condition of mind in which every one in the State — the head of it not excepted — regards the com¬ monwealth as the maternal bosom, and the country as the paternal soil out of and on which he himself has sprung into being, and which he also must leave to others as a dear inheritance. Thus, and thus only, can he hold himself entitled to protect the rights of his father- land by laws of the common will, but not to subject it to an unconditional purpose of his own at pleasure. This right of liberty thus belongs to him as a man, while he is a member of the commonwealth; or, in point of fact, so far as he is a being capable of rights generally. 2. The equality of every member of the State as a sub¬ ject is the second principle in the constitution of a rational commonwealth. The formula of this principle may be put thus: \' E very member of the commonwealth has rights against every other that may be enforced by compulsory laws, from which only the sovereign or supreme ruler of the State is excepted, because he is regarded not as a mere member of the commonwealth, but as its creator or maintainer; and he alone has the right to compel without being himself subject to compulsory lawd^ All, however, who live under laws in a State are its subjects ; and, consequently, they are subjected to the compulsory law, like all other members of the commonwealth, one only, whether an individual sovereign or a collective body, constituting the supreme head of the State and as such being accepted as the medium through which alone all rightful coercion or compulsion can be exer¬ cised. For, should the head of the State also be subject to compulsion, there would no longer be a supreme head, and the series of members subordinate and superordinate would go on upward ad infinitum. Again, were there in the State two such powers as persons exempt from legal compulsion, neither of them would be subject to com¬ pulsory laws, and as such the one could do no wrong to the other; which is impossible. This thoroughgoing equality of the individual men in a State as its subjects is, however, quite compatible with the greatest inequality in the extent and degrees of their possessions, whether consisting in corporeal or spiritual 34 ETERNAL PEACE be regarded as all equal to one another./ For no one lias a right to compel or coerce any one whomsoever in the State, otherwise than by the public law and through the sovereign or ruler executing it; and any one may resist another thus far, and through the same medium. On the other hand, no one can lose this right, as a title to pro¬ ceed by legal compulsion against others, except by his own fault or a criminal act. Nor can any one divest him¬ self of it voluntarily, or by a compact, so as to bring it about by a supposed act of right, that he should have no rights but only duties toward others; for in so doing he would be depriving himself of the right of making a compact, and consequently the act would annul itself. Out of this idea of the equality of men as subjects in the commonwealth, there arises the following formula: i' Every member of the State should have it made pos¬ sible for him to attain to any position or rank that may belong to any subject to which his talent, his industry or his fortune may be capable of raising him; and his fellow subjects are not entitled to stand in the way by any hereditary prerogative, forming the exclusive privi¬ lege of a certain class, in order to keep him and his posterity forever below tliem.’y For all law consists merely in restriction of the liberty of another to the condition that is consistent with my liberty according to a universal law; and national law in a commonwealth is only the product of actual legis¬ lation conformable to this principle and conjoined with power, in virtue of which all who belong to a nation as its subjects find themselves in a condition constituted and regulated by law (status juridicus). And, as such, this condition is in fact a condition of equality inasmuch 35 TIIE PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL RIGHT as it is determined, by the action and reaction of free wills limiting one another, according to the universal law of freedom; and it thus constitutes the civil state of human society. Hence the inborn right of all individuals in this sphere (that is, considered as being prior to their having actually entered upon juridical action) to bring compul¬ sion to bear upon any others is entirely identical and equal throughout, on the assumption that they are always to remain within the bounds of unanimity and concord . Now birth is not an act on the part of him who is born, and consequently it does not entail upon him any inequality in the state of law, nor any subjection under laws of compulsion other than what is common to him with all others as a subject of the one supreme legislative power; and, therefore, there can be no inborn privilege by way of law in any member of the commonwealth as a subject before another fellow subject./ Nor, consequently, lias any one a right to transmit the privilege or prerogative of the rank which he holds in the commonwealth to his posterity so that they should be, as it were, qualified by birth for the rank of nobility ; nor should they be prevented from attaining by their own merit to the higher stages in the grada¬ tions of social rank. Everything else that partakes of the nature of a thing and does not relate to personality may be bequeathed; and, since such things may be acquired as property, they may also be alienated or conveyed. Hence after a number of generations a considerable inequality in external circumstances may arise among the members of a commonwealth, producing such rela¬ tions as those of master and servant, landlord and ten¬ ant, etc. These circumstances and relations, however, in the mutual use of their liberty 36 ought not to hinder any of the subjects of the State from rising to such positions as their talent, their indus¬ try and their fortune may make it possible for them to fill. For otherwise such a one would be qualified to coerce without being liable to be coerced by the counter action of others in return; and he would rise above the stage of being a fellow subject. Further, no man who lives under the legalized conditions of a commonwealth can fall out of this equality otherwise than by his own crime, and never either by compact or through any military occupancy.* For he cannot by any legal act, whether of himself or of another, cease to be the owner of himself, or enter into the class of domestic cattle, which are used for all sorts of services at will and are maintained in this condition without their consent as long as there is a will to do it, although under the lirni- tation—which is sometimes sanctioned even by religion, as among the Hindus — that they are not to be muti¬ lated or slain. Under any conditions, he is to be regarded as happy who is conscious that it depends only on him¬ self— that is, on his faculty or earnest will — or on cir¬ cumstances which he cannot impute to auy other, and not on the irresistible will of others, that he does not rise to a stage of equality with others who as his fellow subjects have no advantage over him as far as law is concerned. 3. The self-dependency t of a member of the com¬ monwealth as a citizen, or fellow legislator, is the third * Occupatio bellica. t [The term Selbstdndigkeit , here rendered hy ' self-dependency,’ is rep¬ resented by Kant in his text hy the Latin equivalent sibisufficientia. The word 'self-sufficiency,’ however, would he apt to mislead English readers. The term is commonly translated hy ' independence,’ hut' self-dependency ’ has been preferred as more closely indicative of the form and connotation of the German word.— 77\] THE PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL RIGHT 37 principle or condition of law in the State. In the matter of the legislation itself, all are to be regarded as free and equal under the already-existing public laws; but they are not to be all regarded as equal in relation to the right to give or enact these laws^ JThose who are not capable of this right are, notwithstanding,' subjected to the observ¬ ance of the laws as members of the commonweal th and thereby they participate in the protection which is in accordance therewith; They are, however, not to be re¬ garded as citizens but as protected fellow subjects. All right, in fact, depends on laws. A public law, however, which determines for all what is to be legally allowed or not allowed in their regard is the act of a public will, from which all law proceeds and which therefore itself can do no wrong to any one. For this, however, there is no other will competent than that of the whole people, as it is only when all determine about all that each one in consequence determines about him¬ self. For it is only to himself that one can do no wrong. But if it be another will that is in question, then the mere will of any one different from it could determine nothing for it which might not be wrong; and consequently the law of such a will would require another law to limit its legislation. And thus 410 p articular will can be legislative for a commonwealth.. Properly speaking, in order to make out this, the ideas of the external liberty, equality and unity of the will of all are to be taken into account; and for the last of these self-dependency is the condition, since the exercising of a vote is required when the former two ideas are taken along with it. The fundamental law thus indicated, which can only arise out of the universal united will of the people, is what is called the original contract. 38 ETERNAL PEACE l/ Now any one wlio lias the right of voting in this sys¬ tem of legislation is a citizen as distinguished from a burgess; he is a citoyen as distinguished from a bour¬ geois. The quality requisite for this status, in addition to the natural one of not being a child or a woman, is solely this, that the individual is his own master by right (sui juris ) ; and, consequently, that he has some property that supports him, under which may be reckoned any art or handicraft, or any fine art or science. Other¬ wise put, the condition in those cases in which the citizen must acquire from others in order to live is that he ac¬ quires it only by alienation of what is his own, and not by a consent given to others to make use of his powers; and consequently that he serves no one but the common¬ wealth, in the proper sense of the term. In this relation those skilled in the arts and large or small proprietors are all equal to one another as, in fact, each one is entitled to only one vote. As regards proprietors, the question might be considered as to how it may have happened by right that any one has got as his own more land than he can himself use with his own hands (for acquisition by military occupation is not primary acqui¬ sition) ; and how it has happened that many men, who otherwise might have altogether been able to acquire an independent possession, have been brought to the posi¬ tion of merely serving such a one in order to be able to live. But, without entering here upon the consideration of this question, it is manifest that it would at once be contrary to the previous principle of equality if a law were to invest such persons with the privilege of a class so that their descendants should either always continue to be great proprietors of land — in the manner of fiefs THE PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL RIGHT 39 — without such being able to be sold or divided by in¬ heritance, and thus coming to be applied for the use of more of the people; or if, even in carrying out such divisions, that no one but lie who belonged to a certain class, arbitrarily regulated in this connection, could ac¬ quire any part of such land. The great possessor of an estate does in fact annihilate as many smaller owners, and their voices, as might occupy the place he takes up ; lie does not vote in their name, and he has consequently only one vote. It thus must be left to depend merely on the means, the industry and the fortune of each member of the commonwealth that each one may acquire a part of it, and all of its members the whole. But these dis¬ tinctions cannot be brought into consideration in con- nection with a universal legislation; and hence the number of those qualified to have a voice in the legis¬ lation must be reckoned by the heads of those who are in possession and not according to the extent of their possessions. Furthermore, all who have this right of voting must agree in order to realize the laws of public justice, for otherwise there would arise a conflict of right between those who were not in agreement with it and the others who were: and this would give rise to the need of a higher principle of right that the conflict might be de¬ cided. A universal agreement cannot be expected from a whole people; and consequentl y it is only a plurality of yoicgSj and not even of those who immediately vote in a large nation, but only of their delegates as representa¬ tive of the people that c an alone be fores een as pract i- ca lly attai n able. And hence even the principle of making the majority of votes suffice as representing the general 40 ETERNAL PEACE consent will have to be taken as by compact; v and it must thus be regarded as the ultimate basis of the estab¬ lishment of any civil We have next to consider what follows by way of corollary from the principles thus enunciated. We have before us the idea of an original contract as the only / condition upon which a civi l, and ther efore, wholly legal, constitution can be founded among men, and as the only basis upon which a State can be established. But this fundamental condition—-whether called an original contract or a social compact — may be viewed as the coalition of all the private and particular wills of a peo¬ ple into one common and public will, having a purely juridical legislation as its end. But it is not necessary to presuppose this contract or compact to have been actually a fact; nor indeed is it possible as a fact. We have not to deal with it as if it had first to be proved from history that a people into whose rights and obliga¬ tions we have entered as their descendants did actually on a certain occasion execute such a contract, and that a certain evidence or instrument of an oral or written kind regarding it must have been transmitted so as to constitute an obligation that shall be binding in any existing civil constitution. In short, ythis idea is merely an idea of reason; but it has undoubtedly a practical reality^ For^it ought to bind every legislator by the condition that he shall enact such laws as might have arisen from th e unite d will of a whole people; «and it will likewise be binding upon every subject, in so far as he will be a citizen, so that he shall regard the law as if he had consented to it of his own will. This is the test constitution. HI & ur to jlOO rf - &a$a$jjqA ^ CuaA 11 uab^