PEACE.


An army is a despotism; military service is a bondage; nor can the
passion for arms be reconciled with a true civilization. The
present failure to acknowledge this incompatibility is only
another illustration how the clear light of truth is discolored
and refracted by an atmosphere where the cloud of war still
lingers. Soon must this cloud be dispersed. From war to peace is a
change indeed; but Nature herself testifies to change. Sirius,
brightest of all the fixed stars, was noted by Ptolemy as of
reddish hue, [Footnote: Almagest, ed. et tr. Halma, (Paris, 1816-
20,) Tom. II. pp. 72, 73.] and by Seneca as redder than Mars;
[Footnote: Naturales Quaestiones, Lib. I. Cap. 1.] but since then
it has changed to white. To the morose remark, whether in the
philosophy of Hobbes or the apology of the soldier, that man is a
fighting animal and that war is natural, I reply,--Natural for
savages rejoicing in the tattoo, natural for barbarians rejoicing
in violence, but not natural for man in a true civilization, which
I insist is the natural state to which he tends by a sure
progression. The true state of Nature is not war, but peace. Not
only every war, but every recognition of war as the mode of
determining international differences, is evidence that we are yet
barbarians,--and so also is every ambition for empire founded on
force, and not on the consent of the people. A ghastly, bleeding,
human head was discovered by the early Romans, as they dug the
foundations of that Capitol which finally swayed the world.
[Footnote: Dionysius Halicarnassensis, Antiquitates Romanae, Lib.