war, 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.

There are many kinds of aggressions, though the sanction of them is one and the same—­the magazine rifle of the latest pattern.  In preparation for or against that form of action the States of Europe are spending now such moments of uneasy leisure as they can snatch from the labours of factory and counting-house.

Never before has war received so much homage at the lips of men, and reigned with less disputed sway in their minds.  It has harnessed science to its gun-carriages, it has enriched a few respectable manufacturers, scattered doles of food and raiment amongst a few thousand skilled workmen, devoured the first youth of whole generations, and reaped its harvest of countless corpses.  It has perverted the intelligence of men, women, and children, and has made the speeches of Emperors, Kings, Presidents, and Ministers monotonous with ardent protestations of fidelity to peace.  Indeed, war has made peace altogether its own, it has modelled it on its own image:  a martial, overbearing, war-lord