New York
B.W. HUEBSCH
1919
All rights reserved
Copyright, 1917.
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Published April, 1917:
Reprinted August, 1917.
New edition published by
B.W. HUEBSCH.
January, 1919.
[Pg vii]
It is now some 122 years since Kant wrote the essay, Zum ewigenFrieden. Many things have happened since then, although the Peace towhich he looked forward with a doubtful hope has not been among them.But many things have happened which the great critical philosopher, andno less critical spectator of human events, would have seen withinterest. To Kant the quest of an enduring peace presented itself as anintrinsic human duty, rather than as a promising enterprise. Yet throughall his analysis of its premises and of the terms on which it may berealised there runs a tenacious persuasion that, in the end, the régimeof peace at large will be installed. Not as a deliberate achievement ofhuman wisdom, so much as a work of Nature the Designer ofthings—Natura daedala rerum.
To any attentive reader of Kant's memorable essay it will be apparentthat the title of the following inquiry—On the nature of peace and theterms of its perpetuation—is a descriptive translation of the captionunder which he wrote. That such should be the case will not, it ishoped, be accounted either an unseemly presumption or an undueinclination to work under a borrowed light. The aim and compass of anydisinterested inquiry in these premises is still the same as it was inKant's time; such, indeed, as he in great part made it,—viz., asystematic knowledge of things as they are. Nor is the light of Kant'sleading to be dispensed with as touches[Pg viii] the ways and means ofsystematic knowledge, wherever the human realities are in question.
Meantime, many things have also changed since the date of Kant's essay.Among other changes are those that affect the direction of inquiry andthe terms of systematic formulation. Natura daedala rerum is no longerallowed to go on her own recognizances, without divulging the ways andmeans of her workmanship. And it is such a line of extension that ishere attempted, into a field of inquiry which in Kant's time still layover the horizon of the future.
The quest of perpetual peace at large is no less a paramount andintrinsic human duty today than it was, nor is it at all certain thatits final accomplishment is nearer. But the question of its pursuit andof the conditions to be met in seeking this goal lies in a differentshape today; and it is this question that concerns the inquiry which ishere undertaken,—What are the terms on which peace at large mayhopefully be installed and maintained? What, if anything, is there inthe present situation that visibly makes for a realisation of thesenecessary terms within the calculable future? And what are theconsequences presumably due to follow in the nearer future from theinstallation of such a peace at large? And the answer to these questionsis here sought not in terms of what ought dutifully to be done towardthe desired consummation, but rather in terms of those known factors ofhuman behaviour that can be shown by analysis of experience to controlthe conduct of nations in conjunctures of this kind.
February 1917[Pg ix]