[40] Haz. Coll. Stat.
Pap.
It was the opinion of that poetical philosopher, Lucretius,
that war was the original state of man, whom he described
as being, primitively, a savage beast of prey, engaged
in a constant state of hostility with his own species,
and that this ferocious spirit was tamed and ameliorated
by society. The same opinion has been advocated
by Hobbes;[41] nor have there been wanting many other
philosophers to admit and defend it.
For my part, though prodigiously fond of these valuable
speculations, so complimentary to human nature, yet,
in this instance, I am inclined to take the proposition
by halves, believing with Horace,[42] that though war
may have been originally the favorite amusement and
industrious employment of our progenitors, yet, like
many other excellent habits, so far from being ameliorated,
it has been cultivated and confirmed by refinement
and civilization, and increases in exact proportion
as we approach towards that state of perfection which
is the ne plus ultra of modern philosophy.
The first conflict between man and man was the mere
exertion of physical force, unaided by auxiliary weapons—his
arm was his buckler, his fist was his mace, and a
broken head the catastrophe of his encounters.
The battle of unassisted strength was succeeded by
the more rugged one of stones and clubs, and war assumed
a sanguinary aspect. As man advanced in refinement,
as his faculties expanded, and as his sensibilities
became more exquisite, he grew rapidly more ingenious
and experienced in the art of murdering his fellow
beings. He invented a thousand devices to defend
and to assault—the helmet, the cuirass,
and the buckler, the sword, the dart, and the javelin,
prepared him to elude the wound as well as to launch
the blow. Still urging on, in the career of philanthropic
invention, he enlarges and heightens his powers of
defense and injury. The aries, the scorpio, the
balista, and the catapulta, give a horror and sublimity
to war, and magnify its glory, by increasing its desolation.
Still insatiable, though armed with machinery that
seemed to reach the limits of destructive invention,
and to yield a power of injury commensurate even with
the desires of revenge—still deeper researches
must be made in the diabolical arcana. With furious
zeal he dives into the bowels of the earth; he toils
midst poisonous minerals, and deadly salts—the
sublime discovery of gunpowder blazes upon the world;
and finally, the dreadful art of fighting by proclamation
seems to endow the demon of war with ubiquity and
omnipotence!
