Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Essay
in it by use of force or stratagem, may have been justly punished
as a rebel. As regards the external relations of nations, a state
cannot be asked to give up its constitution, even although that be
a despotism (which is, at the same time, the strongest constitution
where foreign enemies are concerned), so long as it runs the risk of
being immediately swallowed up by other states. Hence, when such a
proposal is made, the state whose constitution is in question must
at least be allowed to defer acting upon it until a more convenient
time.[148]
[148] These are _permissive_ laws of reason which allow us to
leave a system of public law, when it is tainted by injustice, to
remain just as it is, until everything is entirely revolutionised
through an internal development, either spontaneous, or fostered
and matured by peaceful influences. For any legal constitution
whatsoever, even although it conforms only slightly with the
spirit of law is better than none at all—that is to say, anarchy,
which is the fate of a precipitate reform. Hence, as things now
are, the wise politician will look upon it as his duty to make
reforms on the lines marked out by the ideal of public law. He
will not use revolutions, when these have been brought about
by natural causes, to extenuate still greater oppression than
caused them, but will regard them as the voice of nature, calling
upon him to make such thorough reforms as will bring about the
only lasting constitution, a lawful constitution based on the
principles of freedom.
It is always possible that moralists who rule despotically, and are
at a loss in practical matters, will come into collision with the
rules of political wisdom in many ways, by adopting measures without
sufficient deliberation which show themselves afterwards to have been
overestimated. When they thus offend against nature, experience must
gradually lead them into a better track. But, instead of this being
the case, politicians who are fond of moralising do all they can to
make moral improvement impossible and to perpetuate violations of
law, by extenuating political principles which are antagonistic to
the idea of right, on the pretext that human nature is not capable of
good, in the sense of the ideal which reason prescribes.
These politicians, instead of adopting an open, straightforward way
of doing things (as they boast), mix themselves up in intrigue. They
get at the authorities in power and say what will please them;
their sole bent is to sacrifice the nation, or even, if they can,
the whole world, with the one end in view that their own private
interest may be forwarded. This is the manner of regular jurists (I
mean the journeyman lawyer not the legislator), when they aspire to
politics. For, as it is not their business to reason too nicely over
legislation, but only to enforce the laws of the country, every legal
constitution in its existing form and, when this is changed by the
proper authorities, the one which takes its place, will always seem
to them the best possible. And the consequence is that everything
is purely mechanical. But this adroitness in suiting themselves
to any circumstances may lead them to the delusion that they are
also capable of giving an opinion about the principles of political
constitutions in general, in so far as they conform to ideas of
right, and are therefore not empirical, but _a priori_. And they may
therefore brag about their knowledge of men,—which indeed one expects
to find, since they have to deal with so many—without really knowing
the nature of man and what can be made of it, to gain which knowledge
a higher standpoint of anthropological observation than theirs is
required. Filled with ideas of this kind, if they trespass outside
their own sphere on the boundaries of political and international
law, looked upon as ideals which reason holds before us, they can
do so only in the spirit of chicanery. For they will follow their
usual method of making everything conform mechanically to compulsory
laws despotically made and enforced, even here, where the ideas of
reason recognise the validity of a legal compulsory force, only when
it is in accordance with the principles of freedom through which a
permanently valid constitution becomes first of all possible. The
would-be practical man, leaving out of account this idea of reason,
thinks that he can solve this problem empirically by looking to the
way in which those constitutions which have best survived the test
of time were established, even although the spirit of these may have
been generally contrary to the idea of right. The principles which
he makes use of here, although indeed he does not make them public,
amount pretty much to the following sophistical maxims.
1. =Fac et excusa.= Seize the most favourable opportunity for
arbitrary usurpation—either of the authority of the state over its
own people or over a neighbouring people; the justification of the
act and extenuation of the use of force will come much more easily
and gracefully, when the deed is done, than if one has to think out
convincing reasons for taking this step and first hear through all
the objections which can be made against it. This is especially
true in the first case mentioned, where the supreme power in the
state also controls the legislature which we must obey without any
reasoning about it. Besides, this show of audacity in a statesman
even lends him a certain semblance of inward conviction of the
justice of his action; and once he has got so far the god of success
(_bonus eventus_) is his best advocate.
2. =Si fecisti, nega.= As for any crime you have committed, such
as has, for instance, brought your people to despair and thence
to insurrection, deny that it has happened owing to any fault of
yours. Say rather that it is all caused by the insubordination of
your subjects, or, in the case of your having usurped a neighbouring
state, that human nature is to blame; for, if a man is not ready to
use force and steal a march upon his neighbour, he may certainly
count on the latter forestalling him and taking him prisoner.
3. =Divide et impera.= That is to say, if there are certain
privileged persons, holding authority among the people, who have
merely chosen you for their sovereign as _primus inter pares_, bring
about a quarrel among them, and make mischief between them and the
people. Now back up the people with a dazzling promise of greater
freedom; everything will now depend unconditionally on your will. Or
again, if there is a difficulty with foreign states, then to stir
up dissension among them is a pretty sure means of subjecting first
one and then the other to your sway, under the pretext of aiding the
weaker.
It is true that now-a-days no body is taken in by these political
maxims, for they are all familiar to everyone. Moreover, there is
no need of being ashamed of them, as if their injustice were too
patent. For the great Powers never feel shame before the judgment of
the common herd, but only before one another; so that as far as this
matter goes, it is not the revelation of these guiding principles of
policy that can make rulers ashamed, but only the unsuccessful use
of them. For as to the morality of these maxims, politicians are all
agreed. Hence there is always left political prestige on which they
can safely count; and this means the glory of increasing their power
by any means that offer.[149]
[149] It is still sometimes denied that we find, in members of
a civilised community, a certain depravity rooted in the nature
of man;[C] and it might, indeed, be alleged with some show of
truth that not an innate corruptness in human nature, but the
barbarism of men, the defect of a not yet sufficiently developed
culture, is the cause of the evident antipathy to law which
their attitude indicates. In the external relations of states,
however, human wickedness shows itself incontestably, without any
attempt at concealment. Within the state, it is covered over by
the compelling authority of civil laws. For, working against the
tendency every citizen has to commit acts of violence against his
neighbour, there is the much stronger force of the government
which not only gives an appearance of morality to the whole
state (_causae non causae_), but, by checking the outbreak of
lawless propensities, actually aids the moral qualities of men
considerably, in their development of a direct respect for the
law. For every individual thinks that he himself would hold the
idea of right sacred and follow faithfully what it prescribes,
if only he could expect that everyone else would do the same.
This guarantee is in part given to him by the government; and
a great advance is made by this step which is not deliberately
moral, towards the ideal of fidelity to the concept of duty
for its own sake without thought of return. As, however, every
man’s good opinion of himself presupposes an evil disposition in
everyone else, we have an expression of their mutual judgment
of one another, namely, that when it comes to hard facts, none
of them are worth much; but whence this judgment comes remains
unexplained, as we cannot lay the blame on the nature of man,
since he is a being in the possession of freedom. The respect for
the idea of right, of which it is absolutely impossible for man
to divest himself, sanctions in the most solemn manner the theory
of our power to conform to its dictates. And hence every man sees
himself obliged to act in accordance with what the idea of right
prescribes, whether his neighbours fulfil their obligation or not.
[C] This depravity of human nature is denied by Rousseau, who held
that the mind of man was naturally inclined to virtue, and that
good civil and social institutions are all that is required.
(_Discourse on the Sciences and Arts_, 1750.) Kant here takes
sides with Hobbes against Rousseau. See Kant’s _Theory of Ethics_,
Abbott’s trans. (4th ed., 1889), p. 339 _seq._—esp. p. 341 and
_note_. Cf. also Hooker’s _Ecclesiastical Polity_, I. § 10:—“Laws
politic, ordained for external order and regiment amongst men, are
never framed as they should be, unless presuming the will of man
to be inwardly obstinate, rebellious, and averse from all obedience
to the sacred laws of his nature; in a word, unless presuming man
to be, in regard of his depraved mind, little better than a wild
beast, they do accordingly provide, notwithstanding, so to frame
his outward actions, that they be no hindrance unto the common
good, for which societies are instituted.” [Tr.]
* * * * *
In all these twistings and turnings of an immoral doctrine of
expediency which aims at substituting a state of peace for the
warlike conditions in which men are placed by nature, so much at
least is clear;—that men cannot get away from the idea of right in
their private any more than in their public relations; and that they
do not dare (this is indeed most strikingly seen in the concept of
an international law) to base politics merely on the manipulations
of expediency and therefore to refuse all obedience to the idea of
a public right. On the contrary, they pay all fitting honour to the
idea of right in itself, even although they should, at the same time,
devise a hundred subterfuges and excuses to avoid it in practice, and
should regard force, backed up by cunning, as having the authority
which comes from being the source and unifying principle of all
right. It will be well to put an end to this sophistry, if not to
the injustice it extenuates, and to bring the false advocates of the
mighty of the earth to confess that it is not right but might in