[69] A large part of Kant’s requirements as they are expressed in these Preliminary Articles has already been fulfilled. The first (Art. 1) is recognised in theory at least by modern international law. More cannot be said. A treaty of this kind is of necessity more or less forced by the stronger on the weaker. The formal ratification of peace in 1871 did not prevent France from longing for the day when she might win back Alsace-Lorraine and be revenged on Prussia. Not the treaty nor a consciousness of defeat has kept the peace west of the Rhine, but a reluctant respect for the fortress of Metz and the mighty army of united Germany.

Articles 2 and 6 are already commonplaces of international law. Article 2 refers to practices which have not survived the gradual disappearance of dynastic war. Art. 6 is the basis of our modern law of war. Art. 3 has been fulfilled in the literal sense that the standing armies composed of mercenary troops to which Kant alludes exist no longer. But it is to be feared that Kant would not think that we have made things much better, nor regard our present system of progressive armaments as a step in the direction of perpetual peace. Art. 4 is not likely to be fulfilled in the near future. It is long since Cobden denounced the institution of National Debts—an institution which, as Kant points out, owes its origin to the English, the “commercial people” referred to in the text. Art. 5 no doubt came to Kant through Vattel. “No nation,” says the Swiss publicist, (Law of Nations, II. Ch. iv. § 54) “has the least right to interfere with the government of another,” unless, he adds, (Ch. v. § 70) in a case of anarchy or where the well-being of the human race demands it. This is a recognised principle of modern international law. Intervention is held to be justifiable only where the obligation to respect another’s freedom of action comes into conflict with the duty of self-preservation.

Puffendorf leaves much more room for the exercise of benevolence. The natural affinity and kinship between men is, says he, (Les Devoirs de l’homme et du citoien, II. Ch. xvi. § xi.) “a sufficient reason to authorise us to take up defence of every person whom one sees unjustly oppressed, when he implores our aid and when we can do it conveniently.” (The italics are mine.—[Tr.])

[70] See p. 137. The main principle involved in this passage comes from Vattel (op. cit., II. Ch. viii. §§ 104, 105: Ch. ix. §§ 123, 125). A sovereign, he says, cannot object to a stranger entering his state who at the same time respects its laws. No one can be quite deprived of the right of way which has been handed down from the time when the whole earth was common to all men.

[71] See p. 120.

[72] Kant believed that, in the newly formed constitution of the United States, his ideal with regard to the external forms of the state as conforming to the spirit of justice was most nearly realised. Professor Paulsen draws attention, in the following passage, to the fact that Kant held the English government of the eighteenth century in very low esteem. (Kant, p. 357, note. See Eng. trans., p. 352, note.) It was not the English state, he says, which furnished Kant with an illustration of his theory:—“Rather in it he sees a form of despotism only slightly veiled, not Parliamentary despotism, as some people have thought, but monarchical despotism. Through bribery of the Commons and the Press, the King had actually absolute power, as was evident, above all, from the fact that he had often waged war without, and in defiance of, the will of the people. Kant has a very unfavourable opinion of the English state in every way. Among the collected notes written by him in the last ten years of the century and published by Reicke (Lose Blätter, I. 129) the following appears:—‘The English nation (gens) regarded as a people (populus) and looked upon side by side with other races is, as a collection of individuals, of all mankind the most highly to be esteemed. But as a state, compared with other states, it is the most destructive, high-handed and tyrannical, and the most provocative of war among them all.’”

Kuno Fischer (op. cit., Vol. V., I. Ch. 11, pp. 150, 151) to whom Professor Paulsen’s reference may here perhaps allude, states that Kant’s objection to the English constitution is that it was an oligarchy, Parliament being not only a legislative body, but through its ministers also executive in the interests of the ruling party or even of private individuals in that party. It seems more likely that what most offended a keen observer of the course of the American War of Independence was the arbitrary and ill-directed power of the king. But see the passage quoted by Fischer (pp. 152, 153) from the Rechtslehre (Part II. Sect. I.) which is, he says, unmistakeably directed against the English constitution and certain temporary conditions in the political history of the country.

[73] St. Pierre actually thought that his federation would prevent civil war. See Project (1714), p. 16.

[74] See p. 128.

[75] This was the ideal of Dante. Cf. De Monarchia, Bk. I. 54:—“We shall not find at any time except under the divine monarch Augustus, when a perfect monarchy existed, that the world was everywhere quiet.”

Bluntschli (Theory of the State, I. Ch. ii., p. 26 seq.) gives an admirable account of the different attempts made to realise a universal empire in the past—the Empire of Alexander the Great, based upon a plan of uniting the races of east and west; the Roman Empire which sought vainly to stamp its national character upon mankind; the Frankish Monarchy; the Holy Roman Empire which fell to pieces through the want of a central power strong enough to overcome the tendency to separation and nationalisation; and finally the attempt of Napoleon I., whose mistake was the same as that which wrecked the Roman Empire—a neglect of the strength of foreign national sentiment.

[76] Reason requires a State of nations. This is the ideal, and Kant’s proposal of a federation of states is a practical substitute from which we may work to higher things. Kant, like Fichte, (Werke, VII. 467) strongly disapproves of a universal monarchy such as that of which Dante dreamed—a modern Roman Empire. The force of necessity, he says, will bring nations at last to become members of a cosmopolitan state, “or if such a state of universal peace proves (as has often been the case with too great states) a greater danger to freedom from another point of view, in that it introduces despotism of the most terrible kind, then this same necessity must compel the nations to enter a state which indeed has the form not of a cosmopolitan commonwealth under one sovereign, but of a federation regulated by legal principles determined by a common code of international law.” (Das mag in d. Theorie richtig sein, Werke, (Rosenkranz) VII., p. 225). Cf. also Theory of Ethics, (Abbott), p. 341, note; Perpetual Peace, pp. 155, 156.

[77] See the Philosophie d. Rechts, (Werke, Vol. VIII.) Part iii. § 324 and appendix.

[78] Cf. Die Braut von Messina:—

This passage perhaps scarcely gives a fair representation of Schiller’s views on the question, which, if we judge from Wilhelm Tell, must have been very moderate. War, he says, in this oft-quoted passage, is sometimes a necessity. There is a limit to the power of tyranny and, when the burden becomes unbearable, an appeal to Heaven and the sword.

Wilhelm Tell: Act. II. Sc. 2.

[79] Letter to Bluntschli, dated Berlin, 11th Dec., 1880 (published in Bluntschli’s Gesammelte Kleine Schriften, Vol. II., p. 271).

[80] Cf. Tennyson’s Maud: Part I., vi. and xiii.

See too Part III., ii. and iv.

[81] Moltke strangely enough was, at an earlier period, of the opinion that war, even when it is successful, is a national misfortune. Cf. Kehrbach’s preface to Kant’s essay, Zum Ewigen Frieden, p. XVII.

[82] See his discussion on constitutional monarchy in Germany. (Hist. u. Pol. Aufsätze, Bd. III., p. 533 seq.)

[83] See Die Piccolomini: Act. I. Sc. 4.

[84] An admirable short account of popular feeling on this matter is to be found in Lawrence’s Principles of International Law, § 240.

[85] The first Peace Society was founded in London in 1816, and the first International Peace Congress held in 1843.

[86] In Eng. trans. see p. 358.

[87] See “A Plan for a Universal and Perpetual Peace” in the Principles of International Law (Works, Vol. II). One of the main principles advocated by Bentham in this essay (written between 1787 and 1789) is that every state should give up its colonies.

[88] See his Kleine Schriften.

[89] Institutes of the Law of Nations (1884), Vol. II., Ch. XIV.

[90] John Stuart Mill holds that the multiplication of federal unions would be a benefit to the world. [See his Considerations on Representative Government (1865), Ch. XVII., where he discusses the conditions necessary to render such unions successful.] But the Peace Society is scarcely justified, on the strength of what is here, in including Mill among writers who have made definite proposals of peace or federation. (See Inter. Trib.)

[91] See what Lawrence says (op. cit., § 241) of neutralisation and the limits of its usefulness as a remedy for war.

[92] Montesquieu: Esprit des Lois, X. Ch. 2. “The life of governments is like that of man. The latter has a right to kill in case of natural defence: the former have a right to wage war for their own preservation.”

See also Vattel (Law of Nations, II. Ch. XVIII. § 332):—“But if anyone would rob a nation of one of her essential rights, or a right without which she could not hope to support her national existence,—if an ambitious neighbour threatens the liberty of a republic, if he attempts to subjugate and enslave her,—she will take counsel only from her own courage. She will not even attempt the method of conferences, in the case of a contention so odious as this. She will, in such a quarrel, exert her utmost efforts, exhaust every resource and lavish her blood to the last drop if necessary. To listen to the slightest proposal in a matter of this kind is to risk everything.”

[93] The difficulties in the way of hard and fast judgments on a complicated problem of this kind are convincingly demonstrated in a recent essay by Professor D. G. Ritchie (Studies in Political and Social Ethics, Sonnenschein, 1902). Professor Ritchie considers in detail a number of concrete cases which occurred in the century between 1770 and 1870. “Let any one take the judgments he would pass on these or any similarly varied cases, and I think he will find that we do not restrict our approval to wars of self-defence, that we do not approve self-defence under all circumstances, that there are some cases in which we approve of absorption of smaller states by larger, that there are cases in which we excuse intervention of third parties in quarrels with which at first they had nothing to do, and that we sometimes approve war even when begun without the authority of any already existing sovereign. Can any principles be found underlying such judgments? In the first place we ought not to disguise from ourselves the fact that our judgments after the result are based largely on success. ... I think it will be found that our judgments on the wars of the century from 1770 to 1870 turn very largely on the question, Which of the conflicting forces was making for constitutional government and for social progress? or, to put it in wider terms, Which represented the higher civilisation? And thus it is that we may sometimes approve the rise of a new state and sometimes the absorption of an old.” (Op. cit., pp. 152, 155.)

[94] See Fred. W. Holls: The Peace Conference at the Hague, Macmillan, 1900.

[95] The feeling of the Congress expressed itself thus cautiously:—“Messieurs les plénipotentiaires n’hésitent pas à exprimer, au nom de leur gouvernements, le voeu, que les Etats entre lesquels s’éléverait un dissentiment sérieux, avant d’en appeler aux armes, eussent recours, en tant que les circonstances l’admettraient, aux bons offices d’une puissance amie.”

[96] Esprit des Lois, XIII. Chap. 17. “A new distemper has spread itself over Europe: it has infected our princes, and induces them to keep up an exorbitant number of troops. It has its redoublings, and of necessity becomes contagious. For as soon as one prince augments what he calls his troops, the rest of course do the same: so that nothing is gained thereby but the public ruin. Each monarch keeps as many armies on foot as if his people were in danger of being exterminated: and they give the name of Peace to this general effort of all against all.”

Montesquieu is of course writing in the days of mercenary troops; but the cost to the nation of our modern armies, both in time of peace and of war, is incomparably greater.

[97] Even St. Pierre was alive to this danger (Projet, Art. VIII: in the English translation of 1714, p. 160):—“The European Union shall endeavour to obtain in Asia, a permanent society like that of Europe, that Peace may be maintain’d There also; and especially that it may have no cause to fear any Asiatic Sovereign, either as to its tranquillity, or its Commerce in Asia.”

[98] Bentham’s suggestion would be useful here! See above, p. 79, note.

[99] The best thing for Europe might be that Russia (perhaps including China) should be regarded as a serious danger by all the civilised powers of the West. That would bring us nearer to the United States of Europe and America (for the United States, America, is Russia’s neighbour on the East) than anything else.

[100] Trade in barbarous or savage countries is still increased by war, especially on the French and German plan which leaves no open door to other nations. Here the trade follows the flag. And war, of course, among civilised races causes small nations to disappear and their tariffs with them. This is beneficial to trade, but to a degree so trifling that it may here be neglected.

[101] Cf. also the civil war of 1847 in Switzerland.

[102] See Werke, VII., p. 467.

[103] The other he knew was impossible. Peace within the state meant decay and death. In the antagonism of nations, he saw nature’s means of educating the race: it was a law of existence, a law of progress, and, as such, eternal.

[104] For a vivid picture of the material advantages offered by such a union and of the dismal future that may lie before an unfederated Europe, we cannot do better than read Mr. Andrew Carnegie’s recent Rectorial Address to the students of St. Andrews University (Oct 1902). Unfortunately, Mr. Carnegie’s enthusiasm stops here: he does not tell us by what means the difficulties at present in the way of a federation, industrial or political, are to be overcome.

[105] Professor D. G. Ritchie remarks that it is less an over-estimation of the value of peace than a too easy-going acceptance of abstract and unanalysed phrases about the rights of nations that injures the work of the Peace Society. Cf. his note on the principles of the Peace Congresses (op. cit., p. 172).

[106] The day is past, when a nation could enjoy the exclusive advantages of its own inventions. Vattel naively recommends that we should keep the knowledge of certain kinds of trade, the building of war-ships and the like, to ourselves. Prudence, he says, prevents us from making an enemy stronger and the care of our own safety forbids it. (Law of Nations, II. Ch. I. § 16.)

[107] The text used in this translation is that edited by Kehrbach. [Tr.]

[108] I have seen something of M. de St. Pierre’s plan for maintaining perpetual peace in Europe. It reminds me of an inscription outside of a churchyard, which ran “Pax Perpetua. For the dead, it is true, fight no more. But the living are of another mind, and the mightiest among them have little respect for tribunals.” (Leibniz: Letter to Grimarest, quoted above, p. 37, note 44.) [Tr.]

[109] On the honourable interpretation of treaties, see Vattel (op. cit., II. Ch. XVII., esp. §§ 263-296, 291). See also what he says of the validity of treaties and the necessity for holding them sacred (II. Ch. XII. §§ 157, 158: II. Ch. XV). [Tr.]

[110] “Even the smoothest way,” says Hume, (Of the Original Contract) “by which a nation may receive a foreign master, by marriage or a will, is not extremely honourable for the people; but supposes them to be disposed of, like a dowry or a legacy, according to the pleasure or interest of their rulers.” [Tr.]

[111] An hereditary kingdom is not a state which can be inherited by another state, but one whose sovereign power can be inherited by another physical person. The state then acquires a ruler, not the ruler as such (that is, as one already possessing another realm) the state.

[112] This has been one of the causes of the extraordinary admixture of races in the modern Austrian empire. Cf. the lines of Matthias Corvinus of Hungary (quoted in Sir W. Stirling Maxwell’s Cloister Life of Charles the Fifth, Ch. I., note):—

[113] A Bulgarian Prince thus answered the Greek Emperor who magnanimously offered to settle a quarrel with him, not by shedding the blood of his subjects, but by a duel:—“A smith who has tongs will not take the red-hot iron from the fire with his hands.”

(This note is a-wanting in the second Edition of 1796. It is repeated in Art. II., see p. 130.) [Tr.]

[114] See Vattel: Law of Nations, II. Ch. IV. § 55. No foreign power, he says, has a right to judge the conduct and administration of any sovereign or oblige him to alter it. “If he loads his subjects with taxes, or if he treats them with severity, the nation alone is concerned; and no other is called upon to offer redress for his behaviour, or oblige him to follow more wise and equitable maxims.... But (loc. cit. § 56) when the bands of the political society are broken, or at least suspended, between the sovereign and his people, the contending parties may then be considered at two distinct powers; and, since they are both equally independent of all foreign authority, nobody has a right to judge them. Either may be in the right; and each of those who grant their assistance may imagine that he is giving his support to the better cause.” [Tr.]

[115] It has been hitherto doubted, not without reason, whether there can be laws of permission (leges permissivæ) of pure reason as well as commands (leges præceptivæ) and prohibitions (leges prohibitivæ). For law in general has a basis of objective practical necessity: permission, on the other hand, is based upon the contingency of certain actions in practice. It follows that a law of permission would enforce what cannot be enforced; and this would involve a contradiction, if the object of the law should be the same in both cases. Here, however, in the present case of a law of permission, the presupposed prohibition is aimed merely at the future manner of acquisition of a right—for example, acquisition through inheritance: the exemption from this prohibition (i.e. the permission) refers to the present state of possession. In the transition from a state of nature to the civil state, this holding of property can continue as a bona fide, if usurpatory, ownership, under the new social conditions, in accordance with a permission of the Law of Nature. Ownership of this kind, as soon as its true nature becomes known, is seen to be mere nominal possession (possessio putativa) sanctioned by opinion and customs in a natural state of society. After the transition stage is passed, such modes of acquisition are likewise forbidden in the subsequently evolved civil state: and this power to remain in possession would not be admitted if the supposed acquisition had taken place in the civilized community. It would be bound to come to an end as an injury to the right of others, the moment its illegality became patent.

I have wished here only by the way to draw the attention of teachers of the Law of Nature to the idea of a lex permissiva which presents itself spontaneously in any system of rational classification. I do so chiefly because use is often made of this concept in civil law with reference to statutes; with this difference, that the law of prohibition stands alone by itself, while permission is not, as it ought to be, introduced into that law as a limiting clause, but is thrown among the exceptions. Thus “this or that is forbidden”,—say, Nos. 1, 2, 3, and so on in an infinite progression,—while permissions are only added to the law incidentally: they are not reached by the application of some principle, but only by groping about among cases which have actually occurred. Were this not so, qualifications would have had to be brought into the formula of laws of prohibition which would have immediately transformed them into laws of permission. Count von Windischgrätz, a man whose wisdom was equal to his discrimination, urged this very point in the form of a question propounded by him for a prize essay. One must therefore regret that this ingenious problem has been so soon neglected and left unsolved. For the possibility of a formula similar to those of mathematics is the sole real test of a legislation that would be consistent. Without this, the so-called jus certum will remain forever a mere pious wish: we can have only general laws valid on the whole; no general laws possessing the universal validity which the concept law seems to demand.

[116] “From this diffidence of one another, there is no way for any man to secure himself, so reasonable, as anticipation; that is, by force, or wiles, to master the persons of all men he can, so long, till he see no other power great enough to endanger him: and this is no more than his own conservation requireth, and is generally allowed.” (Hobbes: Lev. I. Ch. XIII.) [Tr.]

[117] Hobbes thus describes the establishment of the state. “A commonwealth is said to be instituted, when a multitude of men do agree, and covenant, every one, with every one, that to whatsoever man, or assembly of men, shall be given by the major part, the right to present the person of them all, that is to say, to be their representative; everyone, as well he that voted for it, as he that voted against it, shall authorize all the actions and judgments, of that man, or assembly of men, in the same manner, as if they were his own, to the end, to live peaceably amongst themselves, and be protected against other men.” (Lev. II. Ch. XVIII.)

There is a covenant between them, “as if every man should say to every man, I authorise and give up my right of governing myself, to this man, or to this assembly of men, on this condition, that thou give up thy right to him, and authorize all his actions in like manner.” (Lev. II. Ch. XVII.) [Tr.]

[118] It is usually accepted that a man may not take hostile steps against any one, unless the latter has already injured him by act. This is quite accurate, if both are citizens of a law-governed state. For, in becoming a member of this community, each gives the other the security he demands against injury, by means of the supreme authority exercising control over them both. The individual, however, (or nation) who remains in a mere state of nature deprives me of this security and does me injury, by mere proximity. There is perhaps no active (facto) molestation, but there is a state of lawlessness, (status injustus) which, by its very existence, offers a continual menace to me. I can therefore compel him, either to enter into relations with me under which we are both subject to law, or to withdraw from my neighbourhood. So that the postulate upon which the following articles are based is:—“All men who have the power to exert a mutual influence upon one another must be under a civil government of some kind.”

A legal constitution is, according to the nature of the individuals who compose the state:—

(1) A constitution formed in accordance with the right of citizenship of the individuals who constitute a nation (jus civitatis).

(2) A constitution whose principle is international law which determines the relations of states (jus gentium).

(3) A constitution formed in accordance with cosmopolitan law, in as far as individuals and states, standing in an external relation of mutual reaction, may be regarded as citizens of one world-state (jus cosmopoliticum).

This classification is not an arbitrary one, but is necessary with reference to the idea of perpetual peace. For, if even one of these units of society were in a position physically to influence another, while yet remaining a member of a primitive order of society, then a state of war would be joined with these primitive conditions; and from this it is our present purpose to free ourselves.

[119] Lawful, that is to say, external freedom cannot be defined, as it so often is, as the right [Befugniss] “to do whatever one likes, so long as this does not wrong anyone else.”[B] For what is this right? It is the possibility of actions which do not lead to the injury of others. So the explanation of a “right” would be something like this:—“Freedom is the possibility of actions which do not injure anyone. A man does not wrong another—whatever his action—if he does not wrong another”: which is empty tautology. My external (lawful) freedom is rather to be explained in this way: it is the right through which I require not to obey any external laws except those to which I could have given my consent. In exactly the same way, external (legal) equality in a state is that relation of the subjects in consequence of which no individual can legally bind or oblige another to anything, without at the same time submitting himself to the law which ensures that he can, in his turn, be bound and obliged in like manner by this other.

The principle of lawful independence requires no explanation, as it is involved in the general concept of a constitution. The validity of this hereditary and inalienable right, which belongs of necessity to mankind, is affirmed and ennobled by the principle of a lawful relation between man himself and higher beings, if indeed he believes in such beings. This is so, because he thinks of himself, in accordance with these very principles, as a citizen of a transcendental world as well as of the world of sense. For, as far as my freedom goes, I am bound by no obligation even with regard to Divine Laws—which are apprehended by me only through my reason—except in so far as I could have given my assent to them; for it is through the law of freedom of my own reason that I first form for myself a concept of a Divine Will. As for the principle of equality, in so far as it applies to the most sublime being in the universe next to God—a being I might perhaps figure to myself as a mighty emanation of the Divine spirit,—there is no reason why, if I perform my duty in the sphere in which I am placed, as that aeon does in his, the duty of obedience alone should fall to my share, the right to command to him. That this principle of equality, (unlike the principle of freedom), does not apply to our relation to God is due to the fact that, to this Being alone, the idea of duty does not belong.

As for the right to equality which belongs to all citizens as subjects, the solution of the problem of the admissibility of an hereditary nobility hinges on the following question:—“Does social rank—acknowledged by the state to be higher in the case of one subject than another—stand above desert, or does merit take precedence of social standing?” Now it is obvious that, if high position is combined with good family, it is quite uncertain whether merit, that is to say, skill and fidelity in office, will follow as well. This amounts to granting the favoured individual a commanding position without any question of desert; and to that, the universal will of the people—expressed in an original contract which is the fundamental principle of all right—would never consent. For it does not follow that a nobleman is a man of noble character. In the case of the official nobility, as one might term the rank of higher magistracy—which one must acquire by merit—the social position is not attached like property to the person but to his office, and equality is not thereby disturbed; for, if a man gives up office, he lays down with it his official rank and falls back into the rank of his fellows.

[B] Hobbes’ definition of freedom is interesting. See Lev. II. Ch. XXI.:—“A Freeman, is he, that in those things, which by his strength and wit he is able to do, is not hindered to do what he has a will to.” [Tr.]

[120] Cf. Cowper: The Winter Morning Walk:—

[121] Cf. Hobbes: On Dominion, Ch. VII. § 1. “As for the difference of cities, it is taken from the difference of the persons to whom the supreme power is committed. This power is committed either to one man, or council, or some one court consisting of many men.” [Tr.]

[122] The lofty appellations which are often given to a ruler—such as the Lord’s Anointed, the Administrator of the Divine Will upon earth and Vicar of God—have been many times censured as flattery gross enough to make one giddy. But it seems to me without cause. Far from making a prince arrogant, names like these must rather make him humble at heart, if he has any intelligence—which we take for granted he has—and reflects that he has undertaken an office which is too great for any human being. For, indeed, it is the holiest which God has on earth—namely, the right of ruling mankind: and he must ever live in fear of injuring this treasure of God in some respect or other.

[123] Mallet du Pan boasts in his seemingly brilliant but shallow and superficial language that, after many years experience, he has come at last to be convinced of the truth of the well known saying of Pope [Essay on Man, III. 303]:—

If this means that the best administered government is best administered, then, in Swift’s phrase, he has cracked a nut to find a worm in it. If it means, however, that the best conducted government is also the best kind of government,—that is, the best form of political constitution,—then it is utterly false: for examples of wise administration are no proof of the kind of government. Who ever ruled better than Titus and Marcus Aurelius, and yet the one left Domitian, the other Commodus, as his successor? This could not have happened where the constitution was a good one, for their absolute unfitness for the position was early enough known, and the power of the emperor was sufficiently great to exclude them.

[124] “For as amongst masterless men, there is perpetual war, of every man against his neighbour; no inheritance, to transmit to the son, nor to expect from the father; no propriety of goods, or lands; no security; but a full and absolute liberty in every particular man: so in states, and commonwealths not dependent on one another, every commonwealth, not every man, has an absolute liberty, to do what it shall judge, that is to say, what that man, or assembly that representeth it, shall judge most conducing to their benefit. But withal, they live in the condition of a perpetual war, and upon the confines of battle, with their frontiers armed, and cannons planted against their neighbours round about.” (Hobbes: Leviathan, II. Ch. XXI.) [Tr.]