but the mere preservation of the State against others, has the larger claim upon its time and energies. The ordering of social relations is not, as is too often assumed, the work of reason; rather is it the work of the passions. We have gone either too far or not far enough; we have done either too much or too little. Society is so organized that each of us is a fellow-citizen with the members of his own State, and yet is in a state of nature toward all the rest of mankind. In other words, men have prevented the lesser wars only to kindle wars that are greater and a thousand-fold more terrible. They have made particular unions among themselves and in so doing have really become enemies of the human race.
These are dangerous contradictions in the ordering of the affairs of men and the world. If there be any means of removing them, perhaps it is only through some form of federal government by which peoples may be united by ties similar to those which unite individuals; by which peoples not less than individuals are rendered subject to laws.[1] This government, moreover, has this superiority over all others, that it combines the advantages of large and small States: it will be formidable without, owing to its power; laws will be enforced; it alone among Governments will contain at once subjects, persons in authority, and foreigners. In certain respects it is a new form of government. But it was not unknown to the ancients.[2] The ancient confederations, however, were inferior in wisdom to the Germanic and the Helvetic and to the States-General. Such confederations are still few and they are far from perfection. But that only shows that in politics as in ethics the
