pestilence, and famine, as it is found in the litanies of the Roman
Catholic Church; they have dragged the scourge down from the skies and
have made it into a calm and regulated institution. At first sight the
change does not seem for the better. Jove's thunderbolt looks a most
dangerous plaything in the hands of the people. But a solemnly
established institution begins to grow old at once in the discussion,
abuse, worship, and execration of men. It grows obsolete, odious, and
intolerable; it stands fatally condemned to an unhonoured old age.

Therein lies the best hope of advanced thought, and the best way to help
its prospects is to provide in the fullest, frankest way for the
conditions of the present day. War is one of its conditions; it is its
principal condition. It lies at the heart of every question agitating
the fears and hopes of a humanity divided against itself. The succeeding
ages have changed nothing except the watchwords of the armies. The
intellectual stage of mankind being as yet in its infancy, and States,
like most individuals, having but a feeble and imperfect consciousness of
the worth and force of the inner life, the need of making their existence
manifest to themselves is determined in the direction of physical
activity. The idea of ceasing to grow in territory, in strength, in
wealth, in influence--in anything but wisdom and self-knowledge--is
odious to them as the omen of the end. Action, in which is to be found
the illusion of a mastered destiny, can alone satisfy our uneasy vanity
and lay to rest the haunting fear of the future--a sentiment concealed,
indeed, but proving its existence by the force it has, when invoked, to
stir the passions of a nation. It will be long before we have learned
that in the great darkness before us there is nothing that we need fear.
Let us act lest we perish--is the cry. And the only form of action open
to a State can be of no other than aggressive nature.