Toward Perpetual Peace

Preface

A Dutch innkeeper once hung out a sign that read To Perpetual Peace, and painted a graveyard on it. Whether the joke was aimed at human beings in general, or at the heads of state in particular, who can never get enough of war, or perhaps only at the philosophers who dream that sweet dream, we can leave undecided. But the author of what follows does ask for one condition. The practical politician likes to look down, with great self-satisfaction, on the political theorist as a schoolroom pedant whose ideas, empty of real content, pose no danger to the state, since the state has to proceed from the lessons of experience; the theorist can be allowed to knock down all eleven pins with a single bowl, in his head where it costs nothing, without the worldly-wise statesman needing to pay the slightest attention. Very well: if the two ever quarrel, the statesman must be consistent and must not scent a danger to the state behind opinions that the theorist has ventured at random and spoken aloud in public. With this saving clause (clausula salvatoria), the author hereby expressly protects himself, in due and proper form, against every malicious interpretation.

Section One: The Preliminary Articles for Perpetual Peace Between States

Preliminary Article 1

"No treaty of peace shall count as a treaty of peace if it was made with a secret reservation of material for a future war."

For then it would be nothing but a truce, a pause in the hostilities, and not peace. Peace means the end of all hostilities, so to attach the word perpetual to it is already a suspicious piece of redundancy. A treaty of peace wipes out every existing cause of a future war, even causes the parties themselves may not yet know about, and however sharp-eyed the snooping that might one day dig them out of the archives. To hold back, in your own mind, old claims that you will think up properly only later — claims that neither side wants to mention now, because both are too exhausted to go on fighting, while one of them is quietly resolved to use the first good opportunity to press them — is a "mental reservation" (reservatio mentalis). That belongs to the hair-splitting moral bookkeeping the Jesuits were notorious for. It is beneath the dignity of a ruler, just as it is beneath the dignity of a ruler's minister to lend himself to that kind of reasoning — if we judge the matter as it really is.

But if, according to the enlightened ideas of modern statecraft, the true honor of a state lies in constantly increasing its power, by whatever means, then this judgment of mine will of course look academic and pedantic.

Preliminary Article 2

"No independent state, large or small (that makes no difference here), shall be acquired by another state through inheritance, exchange, purchase, or gift."

A state is not a piece of property (patrimonium), the way the ground it stands on might be. It is a society of human beings, and no one but the state itself has the right to command it or dispose of it. It has its own roots, like a tree trunk. To graft it onto another state like a cutting is to abolish its existence as a moral person and turn it into a thing. That contradicts the idea of the original contract, without which no right over a people can even be conceived. Everyone knows the danger into which Europe — for the other parts of the world have never heard of such a thing — has been brought, right down to our own day, by the prejudice in favor of this way of acquiring states: the idea that states can marry one another. It has served partly as a new kind of industry, a way to become overwhelmingly powerful through family alliances without spending any effort, and partly as a way to enlarge one's lands. The hiring out of one state's troops to another, against an enemy the two do not share, belongs in the same class. For the subjects are then used and used up like things, to be handled however one pleases.

Footnote: A hereditary kingdom is not a state that can be inherited by another state. What is inherited is only the right to govern it, which passes to another physical person. The state then acquires a ruler; the ruler, as such (that is, as someone who already possesses another kingdom), does not acquire the state.

Preliminary Article 3

"Standing armies (miles perpetuus) shall in time be abolished altogether."

Standing armies constantly threaten other states with war by always appearing ready and equipped for it. They goad states into outdoing one another in the number of armed men, a race that knows no limit. And because the cost of all this eventually makes peace more oppressive than a short war, standing armies themselves become the cause of wars of aggression, fought to get rid of the burden. Besides, to be paid to kill or to be killed seems to involve using human beings as mere machines and tools in the hands of someone else (the state), and that cannot easily be squared with the right of humanity in our own person. It is a completely different matter when citizens voluntarily drill with weapons from time to time, to protect themselves and their country against attack from outside. — Piling up a war chest would have the same effect. Other states would see it as a threat of war and be forced into striking first. (Of the three powers — the power of armies, the power of alliances, and the power of money — money might well be the most reliable instrument of war, if only it were not so hard to find out how much of it another state has.)

Preliminary Article 4

"No national debt shall be contracted in connection with the foreign affairs of the state."

There is nothing suspicious about seeking help, from outside the state or from within it, to improve the country's economy — to repair roads, found new settlements, lay up stores of grain against bad harvests, and so on. But a credit system as a machine the powers turn against one another is something else. Picture debts that grow beyond all measure, yet are always secure against any present demand for repayment (since the creditors will never all ask at once) — the ingenious invention of a trading nation in this century. Such a system is a dangerous money power: a war chest bigger than the treasuries of all other states put together, which can be exhausted only when the tax revenues finally fail — and even that day can be put off for a long time, because the borrowed money livens up trade and so feeds back into industry and earnings. This ease in making war, combined with the inclination of rulers to make it, which seems to be built into human nature, is therefore a great obstacle to perpetual peace. Prohibiting it would have to be a Preliminary Article all the more, because a national bankruptcy, which must come in the end, is bound to drag many other states into the damage through no fault of their own, and that would be a public injury to them. So other states are at least entitled to form an alliance against such a state and its pretensions.

Preliminary Article 5

"No state shall interfere by force in the constitution and government of another state."

For what could give it the right to? The scandal, perhaps, that the other state gives to its subjects? On the contrary, that state can serve as a warning, by the example of the great evils a people has brought on itself through its lawlessness. And in general, the bad example one free person sets another (as a scandalum acceptum, an offense that is taken rather than given) does that other person no injury. — It would be a different case if a state split in two through internal discord, and each part set itself up as a separate state laying claim to the whole. An outside state that gave help to one of them could not then be charged with interfering in the other's constitution, because what exists there is anarchy. But so long as this inner struggle is still undecided, interference by outside powers would violate the rights of a people that depends on no one else and is only wrestling with its own internal illness. It would itself be a scandal given, and it would make the autonomy of every state insecure.

Preliminary Article 6

"No state at war with another shall permit itself acts of hostility that would make mutual trust impossible in a future peace: such as employing assassins (percussores) or poisoners (venefici), breaking the terms of a surrender, inciting treason (perduellio) in the enemy state, and the like."

These are dishonorable stratagems. Some trust in the enemy's way of thinking must remain even in the middle of a war, or no peace could ever be concluded, and the hostilities would turn into a war of extermination (bellum internecinum). War, after all, is only the sad emergency measure, in the state of nature (where there is no court that could judge with legal force), for asserting one's right by violence. In that condition neither side can be declared an unjust enemy (since that would already presuppose a judge's verdict). Instead the outcome of the war decides which side is in the right, much as a so-called "judgment of God" — a trial by ordeal or by combat — was once supposed to. And between states no war of punishment (bellum punitivum) can even be conceived, since between them there is no relation of a superior to a subordinate. — From this it follows that a war of extermination, in which both sides might be destroyed at once and all right along with them, would allow perpetual peace only in the vast graveyard of the human race. Such a war, then, and so also the use of the means that lead to it, must be absolutely forbidden. — And that these means lead to it inevitably is clear from this: once those hellish arts come into use, since they are vile in themselves, they do not stay inside the limits of war. Using spies (uti exploratoribus) is one example; it exploits only the dishonesty of others, which can never be stamped out entirely. But such arts carry over into the state of peace as well, and so would wholly defeat its purpose.

All the laws listed above are, objectively — that is, in the intention of those in power — prohibitive laws (leges prohibitivae). But some of them are of the strict kind, valid regardless of circumstances (leges strictae), which demand that the practice be abolished at once (numbers 1, 5, and 6). Others (numbers 2, 3, and 4) are not exceptions to the rule of right, but in view of how the rule is to be carried out they are, given the circumstances, subjectively broader in what they permit (leges latae). They contain permission to postpone carrying them out, without losing sight of the goal. For instance, the restoration of freedom to certain states that were deprived of it, as described under number 2, must not be put off until a day that never comes (until the Greek calends, ad calendas graecas, as the emperor Augustus used to promise — the Greeks had no calends, so the day never arrives). That would mean not restoring it at all. The delay is permitted only so that the restoration does not happen in a rush and so defeat its own purpose. For the prohibition here applies only to the manner of acquiring a state, which is no longer to be valid, and not to the state of possession. That possession, though it lacks the necessary title in right, was held to be lawful by every state at the time it was acquired (the time of its putative acquisition), according to the public opinion of the day.

Footnote: Whether, besides commands (leges praeceptivae) and prohibitions (leges prohibitivae), there can also be permissive laws (leges permissivae) of pure reason has been doubted until now, and not without reason. For laws in general contain a ground of objective practical necessity, while a permission contains a ground of the practical contingency of certain actions. A permissive law, then, would contain a necessitation to an action — to something one cannot be necessitated to do — and if the object of the law meant the same thing in both respects, that would be a contradiction. — But in the permissive law here, the presupposed prohibition applies only to a future way of acquiring a right (for instance, by inheritance), while the release from this prohibition, that is, the permission, applies to the present state of possession. In the passage from the state of nature into the civil condition, that possession may continue, under a permissive law of natural right, as possession that is unlawful but nonetheless honest (possessio putativa, possession held in good faith). This is so even though putative possession is forbidden in the state of nature as soon as it is recognized for what it is, and even though a similar way of acquiring something is likewise forbidden in the subsequent civil condition (once the passage has been made). The right to continue in possession would not hold if such a supposed acquisition had been made inside the civil condition; for then, as an injury, the possession would have to end the moment its unlawfulness was discovered. I have meant only to draw the attention of teachers of natural right, in passing, to the concept of a lex permissiva, a permissive law, which presents itself of its own accord to any reason that divides things systematically. I do so especially because use is often made of it in civil (statutory) law — with this difference, that there the prohibitive law stands alone, and the permission is not built into that law as a limiting condition (as it ought to be) but is thrown in among the exceptions. — So the law says: this or that is forbidden — unless number 1, number 2, number 3, and so on without end. Permissions are added to the law only by chance, not according to a principle, but by groping around among cases as they come up. Otherwise the conditions would have had to be built into the formula of the prohibitive law itself, and it would then have become a permissive law at the same time. — It is a pity, then, that the ingenious but unsolved prize question set by the wise and acute Count von Windischgrätz, which pressed precisely for this, was so soon dropped. For the possibility of such a formula (one like the formulas of mathematics) is the only true touchstone of legislation that stays consistent; without it, so-called ius certum, certain law, will always remain a pious wish. — Otherwise we will have only general laws (which hold on the whole), but no universal ones (which hold without exception), as the very concept of a law seems to require.

Section Two: The Definitive Articles for Perpetual Peace Between States

A state of peace among human beings who live side by side is not a state of nature (status naturalis). The state of nature is rather a state of war: not always an outbreak of hostilities, but a constant threat of them. A state of peace must therefore be established. For merely refraining from hostilities is no guarantee of peace. And unless one neighbor gives the other that guarantee (which can happen only in a lawful condition), the neighbor who has asked for it may treat the other as an enemy.

Footnote: It is usually assumed that I may not act with hostility toward anyone unless he has already done me an injury by some act; and that is quite right when both of us are living in a civil, lawful condition. For by entering that condition, each gives the other the security he needs (through the government, which has power over both). — But a human being (or a people) in the mere state of nature deprives me of this security, and injures me simply by being in that state next to me. He does not injure me by any act (facto), but by the lawlessness of his condition (statu iniusto), through which he is a constant threat to me. And I can compel him either to enter a shared lawful condition with me or to move out of my neighborhood. — So the postulate underlying all the articles that follow is this: All human beings who can affect one another must belong to some civil constitution. Every constitution of right, as regards the persons who live under it, is one of three kinds: (1) a constitution according to the civil right of human beings within a people (ius civitatis); (2) one according to the right of nations, governing states in their relations with one another (ius gentium); (3) one according to cosmopolitan right, insofar as human beings and states, standing in external relations in which they affect one another, are to be regarded as citizens of a universal state of humankind (ius cosmopoliticum). This division is not arbitrary. It is necessary in relation to the idea of perpetual peace. For if even one of these parties were able to affect another physically, and yet were still in the state of nature with it, a state of war would go along with that — and to be freed from the state of war is exactly the purpose here.

First Definitive Article for Perpetual Peace

"The civil constitution of every state shall be republican."

A constitution established, first, on principles of the freedom of the members of a society (as human beings); second, on principles of the dependence of all on a single common legislation (as subjects); and third, on the law of their equality (as citizens) — this is the republican constitution, the only one that arises from the idea of the original contract on which all rightful legislation of a people must be founded. As far as right is concerned, then, the republican constitution is in itself the one that originally underlies every kind of civil constitution. The only question now is whether it is also the only one that can lead to perpetual peace.

Footnote: Rightful (and so external) freedom cannot be defined, as people often do, as the right "to do whatever you like, so long as you do no one any wrong." For what does a right to do something mean? It means the possibility of an action insofar as you do no one any wrong by it. So the definition would run: "Freedom is the possibility of actions by which you do no one any wrong. You do no one any wrong (do what you like) so long as you do no one any wrong." And so it is an empty tautology. — Rather, my external (rightful) freedom should be defined like this: it is the right to obey no external laws except those I could have given my consent to. — In the same way, external (rightful) equality in a state is that relation among citizens in which no one can put another under a legal obligation without at the same time submitting to the law himself, so that he can be put under obligation by the other in the same way in return. (The principle of rightful dependence needs no explanation, since it is already contained in the concept of a constitution in general.) — The validity of these inborn rights, which belong necessarily to humanity and cannot be given away, is confirmed and raised higher by the principle of a human being's rightful relations even to higher beings (if he thinks there are any). For on the very same principles he can picture himself as a citizen of a supersensible world, a world beyond the senses. — For, as far as my freedom goes, I am under no obligation even with regard to divine laws, which I can know through reason alone, except insofar as I could have given my own consent to them (since it is only through the law of freedom in my own reason that I first form a concept of the divine will). As for the principle of equality with regard to the most exalted being in the world apart from God — whatever I might imagine that to be (a great Aeon, some vast spirit) — there is no reason why, if I do my duty at my post as that Aeon does at his, I should have only the duty to obey and he the right to command. — The reason this principle of equality (unlike the principle of freedom) does not also apply to our relation to God is that God is the one being for whom the concept of duty ceases to apply. As for the right of all citizens to equality as subjects, the question whether a hereditary nobility is permissible turns entirely on this: "Should the rank the state grants (one subject's rank above another's) come before merit, or should merit come before rank?" — Now it is obvious that if rank is tied to birth, it is completely uncertain whether merit (skill in office and loyalty in office) will follow. It is therefore just as if rank were granted to the favored person (the rank of a commander) without any merit at all. And the general will of the people in an original contract (which is, after all, the principle of all rights) would never decide that. For a nobleman is not, by that fact, a noble man. — With the nobility of office (as one might call the rank of a higher magistracy, which must be earned by merit), the rank does not stick to the person as property, but to the post, and equality is not violated. For when the person leaves the office, he lays down the rank with it and goes back among the people.

Now, besides the purity of its origin — it springs from the pure source of the concept of right — the republican constitution also holds out the prospect of the result we are hoping for, namely perpetual peace. Here is why. — If, as cannot be otherwise under this constitution, the consent of the citizens is needed to decide "whether there shall be war or not," nothing is more natural than that they will think very hard before starting so bad a game. For they would have to decide to bring all the miseries of war down on themselves: doing the fighting themselves; paying the costs of the war out of their own pockets; painfully repairing the devastation it leaves behind; and, to crown the evil, taking on a load of debt that sours the peace itself and can never be paid off, because new wars are always coming. In a constitution where the subject is not a citizen, on the other hand — a constitution that is therefore not republican — going to war is the least troubling thing in the world. The head of state is not a fellow member of the state but its owner. War costs him nothing of his banquets, his hunts, his country palaces, his court festivals, and the like. So he can decide on war like a kind of pleasure party, for trivial reasons, and for the sake of appearances leave its justification, with perfect indifference, to the diplomatic corps, which is always ready to supply one.

So that the republican constitution is not confused with the democratic one (as usually happens), the following must be noted. The forms of a state (civitas) can be classified either by the difference in the persons who hold the highest power in the state, or by the way the people is governed by its head, whoever that may be. The first is properly called the form of sovereignty (forma imperii), and only three are possible: either one person, or some persons bound together, or all the persons who make up civil society together hold the ruling power (autocracy, aristocracy, and democracy: the power of a prince, the power of a nobility, and the power of the people). The second is the form of government (forma regiminis). It concerns the way the state, on the basis of its constitution (the act of the general will by which a crowd becomes a people), makes use of its full power, and in this respect it is either republican or despotic. Republicanism is the political principle of separating the executive power (the government) from the legislative power. Despotism is the principle by which the state high-handedly carries out laws it has made itself; it is the public will handled by the ruler as his own private will. — Of the three forms of state, democracy, in the proper sense of the word, is necessarily a despotism. For it sets up an executive power in which all decide about one person and, if need be, against him (when he does not agree) — so that "all" decide who are not in fact all. That is a contradiction of the general will with itself and with freedom.

Any form of government, that is, that is not representative is really a non-form, a deformity. For the lawgiver cannot be, in one and the same person, also the executor of his own will — any more than, in a syllogism, the universal major premise can also be the minor premise that brings the particular case under it. And although the other two forms of state are always faulty insofar as they leave room for such a way of governing, it is at least possible for them to adopt a way of governing that fits the spirit of a representative system — as Frederick the Great at least said that he was merely the highest servant of the state. Democracy, on the other hand, makes this impossible, because in a democracy everyone wants to be master. — We can therefore say: the smaller the staff of the state's power (the number of rulers), and the greater, on the other hand, their representation, the more the constitution agrees with the possibility of republicanism, and the more it can hope to rise to it at last through gradual reforms. For this reason it is already harder in an aristocracy than in a monarchy to arrive at this one perfectly rightful constitution, and in a democracy it is impossible except by violent revolution. But the people cares incomparably more about the way it is governed than about the form of the state (although a great deal also depends on how well or badly the form of state suits that end). If the way of governing is to fit the concept of right, it requires the representative system, in which alone a republican way of governing is possible. Without it, government is despotic and violent, whatever the constitution may be. — None of the so-called republics of the ancient world knew this system, and so they were bound to dissolve into despotism, which under the supreme power of a single person is the most bearable of all.

Footnote: People have often criticized the lofty titles given to rulers (the Lord's Anointed, the steward of the divine will on earth and God's representative there) as crude flattery that turns heads. But it seems to me without reason. — Far from making a ruler proud, these titles ought to humble him in his soul, if he has any sense (which we must assume), and if he reflects that he has taken on an office too great for any human being: to administer the holiest thing God has on earth, the right of human beings. He must always live in fear of having offended in some way against this, the apple of God's eye.

Footnote: Mallet du Pan, in his would-be brilliant but hollow and empty language, boasts that after many years of experience he has at last become convinced of the truth of Pope's well-known saying: "For forms of government let fools contest; whate'er is best administered is best." If that means that the best-administered government is the best administered, then, in Swift's phrase, he has cracked a nut and been rewarded with a maggot. But if it means that the best-administered government is also the best kind of government, that is, the best constitution, then it is fundamentally false. For examples of good governments prove nothing about the form of government. — Who ever governed better than Titus and Marcus Aurelius? Yet one left Domitian as his successor and the other Commodus. That could not have happened under a good constitution, since their unfitness for the post was known early enough, and the ruler had power enough to exclude them.

Second Definitive Article for Perpetual Peace

"The right of nations shall be founded on a federation of free states."

Peoples, as states, can be judged like individual human beings. In their state of nature (that is, when they are independent of external laws) they injure one another simply by existing side by side. Each of them, for the sake of its own security, can and ought to demand that the other enter with it into a constitution like a civil constitution, under which each can be guaranteed its right. This would be a league of nations, but it would not have to be a state of nations. That, indeed, would be a contradiction. Every state involves the relation of a superior (the one who makes the laws) to an inferior (the one who obeys, namely the people). But many peoples in one state would make up only one people. And that contradicts our assumption, since we are considering here the right of peoples against one another, insofar as they make up so many different states and are not to be melted together into one.

Now, we look with deep contempt on the attachment of savages to their lawless freedom — their preference for brawling with one another endlessly rather than submitting to a lawful constraint they would set up themselves, and so their preference for mad freedom over rational freedom. We regard it as crudeness, boorishness, and a brutish degradation of humanity. So, one would think, civilized peoples (each united into a state of its own) would hurry to get out of so degraded a condition, the sooner the better. Instead, every state places its majesty (for "the majesty of the people" is an absurd expression) precisely in not being subject to any external lawful constraint at all. And the glory of its ruler consists in having many thousands at his command, ready to let themselves be sacrificed for a cause that is no concern of theirs, while he himself need not run any risk. The difference between the European savages and the American ones lies chiefly in this: many tribes of the Americans have been eaten outright by their enemies, while the Europeans know a better use for the people they conquer than eating them. They prefer to add them to the number of their subjects, and so to the supply of tools for still more far-reaching wars.

Footnote: So a Bulgarian prince answered the Greek emperor, who good-naturedly proposed to settle their quarrel by single combat: "A smith who has tongs will not pull the red-hot iron out of the coals with his hands."

Given the wickedness of human nature, which shows itself openly in the free relations between peoples (while in the civil, lawful condition it is well veiled by the constraint of government), it is surprising that the word right has not yet been banished from the politics of war altogether as pedantic, and that no state has yet been bold enough to declare publicly that it holds this view. For Hugo Grotius, Pufendorf, Vattel, and the rest (sorry comforters, every one of them) are still faithfully cited to justify an attack. This is so although their code, whether drawn up philosophically or diplomatically, does not have, and cannot have, the slightest legal force (because states as such are not under any common external constraint). And there is not a single example of a state ever being moved to give up its plan by arguments armed with the testimony of such important men. — Still, this homage that every state pays to the concept of right (at least in words) proves that there is a still greater moral capacity in human beings, though it is asleep for now, to master the evil principle in themselves at last (which they cannot deny is there), and to hope that others will do the same. Otherwise the word right would never come into the mouths of states that want to go to war with one another, unless only to mock it, as that Gallic prince did when he declared: "It is the privilege nature has given the stronger over the weaker, that the weaker shall obey him."

The way states pursue their right can never be a lawsuit, as before an external court, but only war. Yet war, and its favorable outcome, victory, does not decide what is right. A treaty of peace does put an end to this particular war, but not to the state of war, in which a new pretext can always be found. (Nor can this state of war simply be declared unjust, since in it each party is the judge in its own case.) At the same time, what natural right says of human beings in a lawless condition — that they "ought to leave this condition" — cannot hold for states under the right of nations. As states, they already have a rightful constitution internally, and so they have outgrown the compulsion of others to bring them, according to those others' ideas of right, under a wider lawful constitution. Meanwhile reason, from the throne of the highest morally lawgiving power, condemns war as a way of settling rights absolutely, and makes the state of peace a direct duty; yet a state of peace cannot be established or secured without a treaty among peoples. — So there must be a league of a special kind, which can be called a league of peace (foedus pacificum). It would differ from a peace treaty (pactum pacis) in this: a peace treaty tries to end merely one war, while a league of peace tries to end all wars forever. This league does not aim at acquiring any of the power of a state. It aims only at preserving and securing the freedom of a state, for itself and at the same time for the other states in the league, without their having to submit, as human beings in the state of nature must, to public laws and to coercion under those laws. — It can be shown that this idea of federation, which is meant to extend gradually over all states and so lead to perpetual peace, can actually be carried out (that it has objective reality). For if fortune so arranges it that a powerful and enlightened people can form itself into a republic (which by its nature must be inclined toward perpetual peace), then this republic provides a center for federal union. Other states can join it, and so secure the condition of freedom among states in accordance with the idea of the right of nations, and the union can spread further and further, little by little, through more alliances of this kind.

That a people should say, "There shall be no war among us; for we mean to form ourselves into a state, that is, to set over ourselves a supreme power to make laws, to govern, and to judge, which will settle our disputes peacefully" — that is understandable. — But when this state says, "There shall be no war between me and other states, although I recognize no supreme lawgiving power that guarantees my right to me and to which I guarantee its right," then it is not at all clear what I am going to base my confidence in my right on — unless it is the substitute for the union of civil society, namely free federation. Reason must necessarily connect free federation with the concept of the right of nations, if there is to be anything left to think in that concept at all.

The right of nations understood as a right to go to war really cannot be thought at all. It would be a right to decide what is right not by universally valid external laws that limit the freedom of each individual, but by one-sided maxims, through force. Unless what is meant is this: that it serves people of that mind exactly right if they destroy one another, and so find perpetual peace in the wide grave that covers all the horrors of violence together with those who committed them. — For states in their relations with one another, reason allows no other way out of the lawless condition, which is nothing but war, than this: just like individual human beings, they must give up their savage (lawless) freedom, accept public coercive laws, and so form a state of nations (civitas gentium), which would of course keep growing until at last it took in all the peoples of the earth. But this is exactly what they do not want, given their idea of the right of nations; so they reject in practice what is right in principle (they reject in hypothesi what is correct in thesi). Therefore, if all is not to be lost, in place of the positive idea of a world republic there can only be the negative substitute: a league that wards off war, endures, and keeps expanding. Such a league can hold back the current of the hostile inclination that shies away from right, though with a constant danger that it will break out. As Virgil says of the god of war in chains: Furor impius intus — fremit horridus ore cruento — "Within, unholy Rage roars horribly with bloody mouth."

Footnote: When a war has ended and peace is concluded, it might not be unfitting for a people to proclaim a day of repentance after the day of thanksgiving. On it they would call on heaven, in the name of the state, for mercy for the great sin the human race still keeps committing: refusing to submit to any lawful constitution in its relations with other peoples, and preferring instead, proud of its independence, to use the barbaric means of war (by which, after all, the thing sought — the right of each state — is not settled). — The thanksgiving services held during a war for a victory won, the hymns sung (in good ancient Israelite style) to the Lord of Hosts, stand in no less glaring contrast to the moral idea of the Father of humankind. Besides showing indifference to the way peoples seek their rights against one another (which is sad enough), they add rejoicing at having destroyed a great many people, or their happiness.

Third Definitive Article for Perpetual Peace

"Cosmopolitan right shall be limited to the conditions of universal hospitality."

Here, as in the preceding articles, we are talking not about philanthropy but about right. And here hospitality means the right of a stranger not to be treated as an enemy by another people because he has arrived on their land. They can turn him away, if this can be done without causing his death; but so long as he behaves peacefully where he is, they may not treat him with hostility. What the stranger can claim is not a right to be a guest (for that, a special charitable agreement would be needed, making him a member of the household for a certain time). It is a right to visit, a right that belongs to all human beings: the right to present themselves to the society of others. It belongs to them by virtue of their right to the common possession of the surface of the earth. Since the earth is a sphere, people cannot scatter across it without end, but must in the end put up with living next to one another; and originally no one had more right than anyone else to be in any particular place on earth. — Uninhabitable parts of this surface, the sea and the sandy deserts, divide this community, but in such a way that the ship, or the camel (the ship of the desert), makes it possible for people to approach one another across these regions that belong to no one, and to use the right to the earth's surface, which belongs to the human race in common, for possible contact. The inhospitality of sea coasts (for instance, the Barbary Coast), where ships in nearby waters are robbed or stranded sailors are made slaves, or of sandy deserts (the Arab Bedouins), where coming near the nomadic tribes is treated as giving them a right to plunder, is therefore contrary to natural right. But this right of hospitality — that is, the right of foreign arrivals — extends no further than the conditions that make it possible to attempt contact with the native inhabitants. — In this way distant parts of the world can enter into peaceful relations with one another, relations that may eventually become publicly lawful, and so the human race can be brought ever closer at last to a cosmopolitan constitution.

Compare with this the inhospitable conduct of the civilized states of our part of the world, especially the trading states, and the injustice they show in visiting foreign lands and peoples (which to them means the same as conquering them) goes to terrifying lengths. America, the lands of Black Africa, the Spice Islands, the Cape, and so on were, when they were discovered, lands that belonged to no one, as far as the discoverers were concerned; for they counted the inhabitants as nothing. In the East Indies (Hindustan), under the pretext of merely intending to set up trading posts, they brought in foreign troops, and with them the oppression of the natives, the stirring up of the various states there into far-reaching wars, famine, rebellion, treachery, and the whole litany of evils that weigh on the human race, however it goes on.

China and Japan (Nippon), having tried such guests, have therefore wisely restricted them. China has allowed them to come to its shores but not to enter the country. Japan has allowed even the first only to a single European people, the Dutch, and even they are kept like prisoners, shut off from any contact with the natives. The worst of it (or, from the standpoint of a moral judge, the best) is that the trading states do not even get any joy out of this violence. All these trading companies are on the verge of collapse. The sugar islands, that seat of the cruelest and most calculated slavery, yield no real profit. They serve only indirectly, and for a not very praiseworthy purpose: they train sailors for navies, and so serve once more to carry on wars in Europe. And this is done by powers that make a great show of piety and, while they drink injustice like water, want to be thought of as the elect in true belief.

Footnote: To write the name of this great empire as it names itself (that is, China, not Sina or some similar sound), one need only consult Georgi's Alphabetum Tibetanum, pages 651 to 654, especially note b at the bottom. — Strictly speaking, according to the observation of Professor Fischer of St. Petersburg, it has no fixed name for itself. The most common is still the word Kin, meaning gold (which the Tibetans express as Ser), and so the emperor is called King of Gold (of the most splendid land in the world). In the empire itself the word may well sound like Chin, but the Italian missionaries may have pronounced it Kin (because of the guttural letter). — From this we can see that the land the Romans called the land of the Seres was China, and that silk was brought to Europe across Greater Tibet (probably through Lesser Tibet and Bukhara, by way of Persia, and so on). This leads to a number of reflections on the antiquity of this astonishing state, compared with that of Hindustan, through its connection with Tibet and, through Tibet, with Japan. The name Sina or Tschina, on the other hand, which the neighboring peoples are said to give the country, leads nowhere. — Perhaps the very ancient, though never well understood, contact between Europe and Tibet can also be explained by something Hesychius, the old Greek lexicographer, preserved for us: the cry Konx Ompax that the high priest called out in the Eleusinian Mysteries (see The Travels of the Younger Anacharsis, part 5, page 447 and following). — For according to Georgi's Alphabetum Tibetanum, the word Concioa means God, which is strikingly like Konx. Pah-cio (ibid., page 520), which the Greeks could easily have pronounced as pax, means promulgator legis, the one who proclaims the law: the deity spread throughout the whole of nature (also called Cenresi, page 177). — Om, which La Croze translates as benedictus, blessed, can hardly mean anything, when applied to the deity, but the one called blessed (page 507). Now Father Francesco Orazio often asked the Tibetan lamas what they meant by God (Concioa), and always got the answer: "It is the assembly of all the saints" — that is, of the blessed souls who, after many wanderings through all kinds of bodies by Lamaist rebirth, have at last returned into the deity and been transformed into Burkhans, beings worthy of worship (page 223). So that mysterious phrase Konx Ompax probably means the holy (Konx), blessed (Om), and wise (Pax) supreme being spread everywhere through the world (nature personified). Used in the Greek mysteries, it probably signified monotheism for the initiates, as opposed to the polytheism of the common people — although Father Orazio (in the place cited) scented atheism in it. — How that mysterious phrase came to the Greeks by way of Tibet can be explained in the way just described; and in turn this makes it probable that Europe had early contact with China by way of Tibet (perhaps even earlier than with Hindustan).

The community among the peoples of the earth, narrower or wider, has now gone so far everywhere that a violation of right in one place on earth is felt in all of them. So the idea of a cosmopolitan right is not a fantastic or exaggerated way of thinking about right. It is a necessary completion of the unwritten code of both civil right and the right of nations, turning them into the public right of human beings in general, and so a completion necessary for perpetual peace. Only under this condition may we flatter ourselves that we are continually drawing closer to it.

First Supplement: On the Guarantee of Perpetual Peace

What provides this guarantee is nothing less than the great artist Nature herself (natura daedala rerum, "nature, the maker of things," as Lucretius calls her). In her mechanical course a purpose plainly shines through: to let harmony grow out of human discord, even against human will. Seen as the compulsion of a cause whose laws of operation we do not know, this is called fate. Seen in light of the purposiveness it shows in the course of the world, as the deep wisdom of a higher cause directed at the objective final end of the human race and determining the course of the world in advance, it is called Providence. We do not, strictly speaking, recognize Providence in these artful arrangements of nature, or even infer it from them. We can only, and must, add it in thought (as with every relation of the form of things to purposes in general), in order to form some concept of how such arrangements are possible, on the analogy of human works of art. To picture how they relate and agree with the purpose that reason prescribes to us directly (the moral one) is an idea that goes beyond all bounds for theoretical purposes. For practical purposes, though — for instance, with regard to the duty of perpetual peace, and of using that mechanism of nature to achieve it — it is dogmatic, and its reality is well founded. — When, as here, the subject is only theory (and not religion), the word nature is also more fitting for the limits of human reason (which must keep within the bounds of possible experience when it comes to the relation of effects to their causes). It is also more modest than talking of a Providence we can know, which means presumptuously strapping on wings like Icarus to get closer to the secret of its unfathomable purpose.

Footnote: In the mechanism of nature, to which human beings (as creatures of the senses) also belong, there appears a form that already underlies its existence, and that we can make intelligible to ourselves only by attributing to it the purpose of an author of the world who determined it in advance. We call his determining in advance (divine) Providence in general. Insofar as it is placed at the beginning of the world, we call it founding Providence (providentia conditrix: semel iussit, semper parent, "he commanded once, and they obey forever," as Augustine says). In the course of nature, maintaining it according to universal laws of purposiveness, we call it governing Providence (providentia gubernatrix). Directed further at particular purposes, which human beings cannot foresee but only guess at from the outcome, we call it guiding Providence (providentia directrix). And finally, with regard to single events taken as divine purposes, we call it no longer Providence but dispensation (directio extraordinaria). But to want to recognize such dispensations as such (since they point in fact to miracles, though the events are not called that) is a foolish presumption on the part of human beings. To infer from a single event a special principle in its efficient cause (that this event is a purpose, and not merely a side effect of nature's mechanism following from some other purpose wholly unknown to us) is absurd and full of conceit, however pious and humble the language in which it is put. — In the same way, dividing Providence (considered materially, according to the objects in the world it concerns) into general and particular is false and contradicts itself (as when people say, for example, that it takes care to preserve the species of creatures but leaves the individuals to chance). For it is called general precisely so that no single thing will be thought of as excepted from it. — What people probably meant here is a division of Providence (considered formally) according to the way it carries out its purpose: into ordinary Providence (for example, the yearly dying and reviving of nature with the change of the seasons) and extraordinary Providence (for example, the way ocean currents bring wood to the icy coasts, where it cannot grow, for the people who live there and could not live without it). Even though we can explain the physical and mechanical cause of these appearances perfectly well (for instance, by the wooded riverbanks of the temperate lands, into whose rivers those trees fall, to be carried farther by something like the Gulf Stream), we must not overlook the teleological cause either — the explanation by purpose, which points to the foresight of a wisdom that rules over nature. — Only the concept, common in the schools, of a divine assistance or cooperation (concursus) in producing an effect in the world of the senses must be dropped. For to try to pair things that do not belong together (gryphes iungere equis, "to yoke griffins with horses," as Virgil puts it), and to have the one who is himself the complete cause of the changes in the world supplement his own predetermining Providence during the course of the world (which would mean it had been deficient) — to say, for example, that after God it was the doctor who cured the patient, as though the doctor had been there as an assistant — is, first, self-contradictory in itself. For causa solitaria non iuvat: a cause that acts alone does not need help. God is the author of the doctor together with all his remedies, and so the effect must be ascribed entirely to God, if we insist on climbing up to the highest ultimate ground, which theoretically we cannot grasp. Or it can be ascribed entirely to the doctor, insofar as we follow this event through the chain of causes in the world as something explicable by the order of nature. Second, such a way of thinking takes away all definite principles for judging an effect. But for moral and practical purposes (which are directed entirely at the supersensible), the concept of the divine concursus is quite fitting, and even necessary — for instance, in the faith that God will make up for the lack of our own righteousness, so long as our intention was genuine, even by means we cannot understand, so that we should never slacken in our striving for the good. It goes without saying, though, that no one should try to explain a good action (as an event in the world) in this way. That would be a supposed theoretical knowledge of the supersensible, and so absurd.

Before we define this guarantee more closely, we will first need to look into the situation that nature has arranged for the actors on her great stage, the situation that in the end makes her guarantee of peace necessary. — Only then can we look at the way she provides it.

Her provisional arrangement consists in this: (1) she has taken care that human beings can live in every region of the earth; (2) she has driven them everywhere by means of war, even into the most inhospitable regions, in order to populate them; (3) by that same means she has forced them to enter into relations that are more or less lawful. — It is wonderful enough that in the cold wastes by the Arctic Ocean the moss still grows that the reindeer scrapes out from under the snow, so that the reindeer can itself become food, or pull the sled of the Ostyak or the Samoyed; or that even the salty sandy deserts still hold the camel, which seems to have been created, as it were, for traveling through them, so that they will not go unused. But the purpose shines out still more clearly when we notice how, besides the fur-bearing animals on the shores of the Arctic Ocean, seals, walruses, and whales give the people living there food from their flesh and fuel from their oil. Most wonderful of all, though, is nature's care in bringing driftwood (no one quite knows where from) to these treeless regions. Without this material the inhabitants could make neither their boats and weapons nor the huts they live in. There they have enough to do with their war against the animals that they live peacefully among themselves. — But what drove them there was probably nothing other than war. The first instrument of war, among all the animals that human beings learned to tame and domesticate during the time when the earth was being populated, was the horse (for the elephant belongs to a later time, the time of the luxury of states already established). In the same way, the art of growing certain kinds of grass, called grain, whose original nature we can no longer even recognize, and the multiplication and refinement of fruits by transplanting and grafting (in Europe perhaps from only two species, the crab apple and the wild pear), could arise only in the condition of states already established, where landed property was secure. This came after human beings had previously made their way, in lawless freedom, from the hunting, fishing, and herding life to the farming life; and after salt and iron were discovered. These were perhaps the first articles to be sought far and wide in trade between different peoples, and through them peoples were first brought into a peaceful relation with one another, and so into understanding, community, and peaceful relations even with peoples far away.

Footnote: Of all ways of life, the hunting life is without doubt the most opposed to a civilized constitution. For the families, which must live apart, soon become strangers to one another and, scattered through vast forests, soon hostile as well, since each needs a great deal of room to get its food and clothing. — The prohibition of blood given to Noah (Genesis 9:4–6) — which was often repeated, and which the Jewish Christians later even made a condition for newly converted Christians from among the pagans, though for a different reason (Acts 15:20, 21:25) — seems originally to have been nothing other than a prohibition of the hunting life. For in the hunting life one must often eat meat raw, and so forbidding the second meant forbidding the first along with it.

Having taken care that human beings could live everywhere on earth, nature at the same time despotically willed that they should live everywhere, even against their inclination — and without this "should" presupposing a concept of duty that would bind them to it by means of a moral law. Instead, to reach this purpose of hers, she chose war. — We see peoples whose shared language shows their shared descent, like the Samoyeds on the Arctic Ocean on one side and, on the other, a people with a similar language some nine hundred miles away in the Altai Mountains. Between them another people, a Mongol people on horseback and therefore warlike, pushed in, and so scattered that part of the stock far away from the rest, into the most inhospitable icy regions, where they would certainly not have spread of their own accord. It is the same with the Finns in the northernmost part of Europe, called Lapps, who are separated from the Hungarians, now just as far away but related to them in language, by Gothic and Sarmatian peoples who pushed in between. And what else could have driven the Eskimos in the north of America (perhaps very ancient European adventurers, a race quite different from all other Americans) and the Pesherais in the south, all the way to Tierra del Fuego, but war — which nature uses as a means to populate the earth everywhere? War itself, though, needs no special motive. It seems to be grafted onto human nature, and even to count as something noble, which human beings are inspired to by the love of honor, without selfish motives. So courage in war is judged (by American savages as much as by Europeans in the age of chivalry) to be of great value in itself — not only when there is war (as is fair), but also that there should be war. And war is often started merely to show that courage, so that an inner dignity is placed in war itself. Even philosophers sometimes deliver eulogies on war as a kind of ennobling of humanity, forgetting the saying of that Greek: "War is bad in that it makes more wicked people than it takes away." — So much for what nature does for her own purpose with regard to the human race as a class of animals.

Footnote: One might ask: if nature willed that these icy coasts should not remain uninhabited, what will become of their inhabitants if one day (as is to be expected) she no longer brings them driftwood? For it is likely that, as civilization advances, the people of the temperate zones will make better use of the wood that grows along the banks of their rivers, and will not let it fall into the rivers and be washed out to sea. I answer: the people living along the Ob, the Yenisei, the Lena, and so on will bring it to them by trade, and get in return the animal products in which the sea along the icy coasts is so rich — once nature has first forced peace among them.

Now comes the question that concerns what is essential in our aim of perpetual peace: "What does nature do toward this aim, with respect to the purpose that a human being's own reason makes his duty, and so to further his moral purpose? And how does she guarantee that what human beings ought to do under the laws of freedom, but do not do, they will do — secured, without harm to that freedom, by a compulsion of nature as well — and this in all three relations of public right: civil right, the right of nations, and cosmopolitan right?" — When I say of nature that she wills that this or that should happen, that does not mean she imposes on us a duty to do it (only practical reason, free of compulsion, can do that). It means that she does it herself, whether we want it or not (fata volentem ducunt, nolentem trahunt: "the fates lead the willing and drag the unwilling," as Seneca put it).

1. Even if a people were not forced by internal discord to submit to the constraint of public laws, war from outside would force it to. For, by the arrangement of nature just described, every people finds itself next to another people pressing on it, against which it must form itself internally into a state, so as to be armed as a power against it. Now the republican constitution is the only one perfectly suited to the right of human beings. But it is also the hardest to establish, and harder still to keep — so hard that many people maintain it would have to be a state of angels, since human beings, with their selfish inclinations, are incapable of a constitution of so sublime a form. But now nature comes to the aid of the general will grounded in reason — revered, but powerless in practice — and she does it precisely through those selfish inclinations. All that is needed is a good organization of the state (which certainly is within human power), directing those forces against one another so that one holds back the destructive effects of the others or cancels them out. The result, for reason, is then the same as if they were not there at all, and so a human being is forced to be a good citizen, even if not a morally good person. The problem of setting up a state, hard as it may sound, can be solved even for a nation of devils (if only they have understanding). It goes like this: "Given a multitude of rational beings who all want general laws for their own preservation, but each of whom is secretly inclined to exempt himself from them, so order them and so arrange their constitution that, although their private attitudes work against one another, these attitudes hold one another in check, so that in their public conduct the result is just the same as if they had no such evil attitudes." Such a problem must be solvable. For it does not demand the moral improvement of human beings. It demands only to know how the mechanism of nature can be used on human beings, so as to direct the conflict of their unpeaceful attitudes within a people in such a way that they force one another to submit to coercive laws, and so must bring about the state of peace in which laws have force. We can see this in the states that actually exist, still very imperfectly organized: in their outward conduct they already come very close to what the idea of right prescribes, even though inner morality is certainly not the cause of it. (Indeed, we should not expect a good constitution to come from morality; rather the reverse: we should first expect a people's good moral formation to come from a good constitution.) So the mechanism of nature, working through selfish inclinations that naturally oppose one another outwardly as well, can be used by reason as a means of making room for its own purpose, the precept of right, and so, as far as the state itself can, of promoting and securing both internal and external peace. — Here, then, it holds true that nature wills irresistibly that right should win supreme power in the end. What we neglect to do here will in the end come about by itself, though with a great deal of discomfort. — As the poet Bouterwek puts it: "Bend the reed too hard and it will break; and he who wants too much wants nothing."

2. The idea of the right of nations presupposes the separate existence of many neighboring states independent of one another. And although such a condition is in itself already a state of war (unless a federal union among them prevents hostilities from breaking out), even this condition is better, according to the idea of reason, than their being melted together by one power that outgrows the rest and turns into a universal monarchy. For laws lose more and more of their force as the reach of government grows larger, and a soulless despotism, after it has rooted out the seeds of good, finally falls into anarchy anyway. Nevertheless it is the desire of every state (or of its head) to put itself in a lasting state of peace in this way — by ruling the whole world, if possible. But nature wills otherwise. — She uses two means to keep peoples from mixing and to keep them apart: the difference of languages and of religions. These do bring with them a tendency toward mutual hatred and pretexts for war. But as civilization grows and human beings gradually come closer to one another in their principles, they lead to agreement in a peace that is produced and secured not, like that despotism (in the graveyard of freedom), by weakening all forces, but by their balance, in the liveliest competition among them.

Footnote: Difference of religions: an odd expression! Just as if one were to speak of different moralities. There may well be different kinds of historical faith — belonging not to religion but to the history of the means used to promote it, which falls in the field of scholarship — and in the same way different religious books (the Zend-Avesta, the Vedas, the Koran, and so on). But there is only one religion, valid for all human beings and at all times. Those others, then, can contain nothing but the vehicle of religion, which is accidental and can differ with differences of time and place.

3. Just as nature wisely separates the peoples that the will of every state, even on grounds of the right of nations, would like to unite under itself by cunning or force, so on the other hand she unites, through their mutual self-interest, peoples whom the concept of cosmopolitan right would not have protected against violence and war. It is the spirit of commerce, which cannot coexist with war, and which sooner or later takes hold of every people. For of all the powers (means) at the disposal of a state, the power of money is probably the most reliable, and so states find themselves driven (certainly not by moral motives) to promote the noble cause of peace, and, wherever in the world war threatens to break out, to head it off by mediation, just as if they were in a permanent alliance for that purpose. For great alliances for war, by the nature of the case, can come about only very rarely, and succeed still more rarely. — In this way nature guarantees perpetual peace through the mechanism of human inclinations themselves. The certainty is not, of course, enough to predict its future (theoretically). But it is enough for practical purposes, and it makes it a duty to work toward this goal, which is not merely a fantasy.

Second Supplement: A Secret Article for Perpetual Peace

A secret article in negotiations of public right is, objectively — that is, considered by its content — a contradiction. Subjectively, though, judged by the character of the person who dictates it, there may well be a secret in it: that person may find it beneath their dignity to announce publicly that they are its author.

The only article of this kind is contained in this sentence: The maxims of philosophers on the conditions that make public peace possible shall be consulted by states armed for war.

Yet it seems humiliating for the lawgiving authority of a state, to which we naturally have to ascribe the greatest wisdom, to seek instruction from its subjects (the philosophers) about the principles of its conduct toward other states. And yet it is very advisable to do so. So the state will invite the philosophers tacitly (that is, by making a secret of it). That amounts to saying: it will let them speak freely and publicly about the universal maxims of waging war and making peace (for they will do that on their own, so long as no one forbids them). And no special agreement among states is needed for them to come to an understanding on this point; it lies already in the obligation laid on them by universal human reason, which gives the moral law. — This does not mean that the state must give the principles of the philosopher precedence over the rulings of the lawyer (who represents the power of the state). It means only that the philosopher should be heard. The lawyer has taken as his symbol the scales of right and, alongside them, the sword of justice. He usually uses the sword not merely to keep all outside influences away from the scales, but, when one pan will not sink, to throw the sword into it — vae victis, "woe to the conquered," as the Gallic chief said when he tossed his sword onto the scales where the Romans were weighing out their ransom. A lawyer who is not also a philosopher (in morality as well) is under the greatest temptation to do this. For his office is only to apply existing laws, not to examine whether those laws themselves might need improving. And he counts this rank of his faculty, which is in fact the lower one, among the higher ones, because it comes with power (as is the case with the other two faculties as well, theology and medicine). — Philosophy stands on a very low rung beneath this allied power. So it is said of philosophy, for instance, that she is the handmaid of theology (and the same is said with respect to the other two). — But it is not quite clear "whether she carries the torch in front of her gracious ladies or the train behind them."

That kings should philosophize, or philosophers become kings, is not to be expected, and not to be wished for either, because the possession of power inevitably corrupts the free judgment of reason. But that kings, or kingly peoples (peoples who rule themselves by laws of equality), should not let the class of philosophers disappear or fall silent, but let them speak publicly, is indispensable to both, to throw light on their business. And because this class, by its very nature, is incapable of forming gangs and political clubs, it is above suspicion of being accused of spreading propaganda.

Appendix One: On the Disagreement Between Morality and Politics with Regard to Perpetual Peace

Morality is already, in itself, a practice in the objective sense: it is the sum of unconditionally commanding laws by which we ought to act. And once we have granted this concept of duty its authority, it is plainly absurd to go on to say that we cannot do what it commands. For then the concept would drop out of morality of its own accord (ultra posse nemo obligatur: no one is obliged to do more than he can). So there can be no conflict between politics, as the applied doctrine of right, and morality, as the theoretical doctrine of right — and so no conflict between practice and theory. Unless, that is, by "theory" we mean a general doctrine of prudence: a theory of the maxims for choosing the most suitable means to one's own intentions, calculated for advantage. And that would amount to denying that there is any such thing as morality at all.

Politics says, "Be wise as serpents." Morality adds (as a limiting condition), "and innocent as doves." If the two cannot stand together in one command, then there really is a conflict between politics and morality. But if they absolutely must be united, then the idea that they are opposed is absurd, and the question of how to settle the conflict cannot even be posed as a problem. The proposition Honesty is the best policy contains a theory that practice, alas, very often contradicts. But the equally theoretical proposition Honesty is better than any policy is infinitely above all objection; indeed, it is the indispensable condition of all policy. The Romans told how Terminus, the god of boundary stones, refused to make way even for Jupiter. Just so, the boundary god of morality does not give way to Jupiter, the boundary god of force — for even Jupiter is still subject to fate. That is, reason is not enlightened enough to survey the whole series of predetermining causes that would let it predict with certainty, according to the mechanism of nature, whether what human beings do or leave undone will turn out well or badly (though it may hope for the outcome it wishes). But what we must do to stay on the track of duty (according to rules of wisdom), and so to reach the final end — that reason lights up for us clearly enough everywhere.

Now the practical man (for whom morality is mere theory) bases his bleak dismissal of our good-natured hope (even after granting that we ought to and can) really on this: he claims to foresee, from human nature, that human beings will never want what is required to bring about the goal that leads to perpetual peace. — It is true that the will of every individual to live under a lawful constitution according to principles of freedom (the distributive unity of the will of all) is not enough for this goal. What is needed in addition is that all together should will this condition (the collective unity of the united will). This is the solution of a hard problem, and it is required so that civil society can become a whole. And since a uniting cause must be added on top of the differences among everyone's particular wills, to produce a common will — which none of them can do alone — we cannot count, in carrying out that idea (in practice), on any other beginning of the condition of right than one made by force; and public right is afterward founded on its coercion. This of course leads us to expect, in advance, great departures in real experience from that idea (the theory). For we can hardly count on the moral disposition of the lawgiver here: we cannot expect that, once he has united a wild crowd into a people, he will then leave it to the people to bring about a rightful constitution through their common will.

So people say: whoever once has power in his hands will not let the people dictate laws to him. A state that is once in possession of not standing under any external laws will not make itself dependent on the judgment seat of other states in the way it seeks its right against them. And even a whole continent, if it feels itself superior to another that is not otherwise in its way, will not leave unused the means of strengthening its power by plundering it or even ruling it. And so all the plans of theory for civil right, the right of nations, and cosmopolitan right melt away into empty, unworkable ideals. Only a practice founded on empirical principles of human nature — a practice that does not think it beneath itself to draw lessons for its maxims from the way the world actually goes — can hope to find a sure foundation for its edifice of political prudence.

Certainly, if there is no freedom, and no moral law founded on it, but everything that happens or can happen is mere mechanism of nature, then politics (as the art of using this mechanism to govern human beings) is the whole of practical wisdom, and the concept of right is an empty thought. But if we find it absolutely necessary to join this concept with politics, and even to raise it to the limiting condition of politics, then we must admit that the two can be reconciled. Now I can certainly conceive of a moral politician — one who takes the principles of political prudence in such a way that they can coexist with morality. But I cannot conceive of a political moralist — one who forges himself a morality to suit whatever the statesman finds to his advantage.

The moral politician will make this his principle: once defects are found in the constitution of a state or in the relations between states, defects that could not be prevented, it is a duty, above all for heads of state, to consider how they can be corrected as soon as possible and brought into line with natural right, as it stands before our eyes as a model in the idea of reason — even if it costs them sacrifices of their self-interest. Now, tearing apart a bond of civil or cosmopolitan union before a better constitution is ready to take its place runs against all political prudence that agrees with morality here. So it would be absurd to demand that the defect be changed at once and violently. But it can be demanded of whoever holds power that at least the maxim that such a change is necessary should be deeply rooted in him, so that he keeps drawing steadily closer to the goal (the constitution that is best according to laws of right). A state can already govern itself in a republican way even if, under its present constitution, it still has despotic sovereign power, until the people gradually becomes capable of being moved by the mere idea of the authority of law (as if that idea had physical force), and so is found fit to make its own laws (which is what is originally founded on right). Even if the violence of a revolution, produced by a bad constitution, had won by unlawful means a constitution more in keeping with law, it would then no longer be thought permissible to lead the people back to the old one — although during the revolution anyone who took part in it by violence or cunning would rightly have been subject to the penalties for rebellion. As for the external relations between states, a state cannot be required to give up its constitution, even a despotic one (which is, after all, the stronger one with regard to external enemies), so long as it runs the risk of being swallowed up at once by other states. So in that resolution, too, delay in carrying it out must be permitted until a better opportunity comes.

Footnote: These are permissive laws of reason: to let a condition of public right that is tainted with injustice continue until everything is ripe for complete transformation, either by itself or brought close to ripeness by peaceful means. For some rightful constitution, even one that is lawful only to a small degree, is better than none at all — and none at all (anarchy) is the fate that a hasty reform would bring about. — Political wisdom, then, in the condition things are in now, will make it a duty to carry out reforms that fit the ideal of public right. But where nature itself brings revolutions about, political wisdom will use them not to excuse still greater oppression, but as a call from nature to bring about, through thorough reform, a lawful constitution founded on principles of freedom, the only kind that lasts.

So it may well be that despotizing moralists (those who fail in the carrying out) offend against political prudence in many ways (by measures adopted or recommended in haste). Yet experience must gradually bring them onto a better track when they offend against nature in this way. The moralizing politicians, on the other hand, gloss over principles of state that are contrary to right, on the pretext that human nature is not capable of the good as reason prescribes it in the idea. And so, as far as it lies with them, they make improvement impossible and make the violation of right permanent.

Instead of the practice these politically clever men boast of, they deal in practices — in tricks. All they care about is flattering the power that rules at the moment (so as not to miss their own private advantage), and so selling out the people and, if possible, the whole world. They behave like true lawyers (lawyers by trade, not lawgivers) when lawyers climb up into politics. For since it is not their business to reason about legislation itself, but to carry out the present commands of the law of the land, every lawful constitution now in existence must always seem the best to them — and when it is changed higher up, the one that follows will seem the best. Then everything is in its proper mechanical order. But this skill at fitting any saddle may fill them with the delusion that they can also judge the principles of a constitution in general according to concepts of right (and so a priori, from reason, not empirically). They may boast that they know people (which is to be expected, since they deal with a great many), without knowing human beings and what can be made of them (which requires a higher standpoint of anthropological observation). If, armed with these ideas, they then go on to civil right and the right of nations as reason prescribes them, they can make this step only in a spirit of chicanery. They follow their usual procedure (a mechanism of coercive laws given despotically) even where the concepts of reason want a coercion grounded only in principles of freedom, the only coercion that makes possible a constitution of lasting right. The would-be practical man believes he can solve this problem while passing that idea by — empirically, from experience of how the constitutions that have so far lasted best were set up, though most of them were contrary to right. — The maxims he uses for this (though he does not say them out loud) come down roughly to the following sophistical maxims.

1. Fac et excusa: act first, and make excuses afterward. Seize any favorable opportunity to take possession high-handedly (either of a right of the state over its own people or over a neighboring people). The justification can be presented much more easily and elegantly after the deed, and the violence glossed over (especially in the first case, where the supreme power at home is at once also the lawgiving authority, which must be obeyed without arguing). It is much harder if you first try to think up convincing reasons and then wait for the counterarguments. This boldness itself gives a certain appearance of inner conviction that the deed was lawful, and the god Bonus Eventus, the god of the happy outcome, is afterward the best advocate.

2. Si fecisti, nega: if you did it, deny it. Whatever you have done wrong yourself — for instance, to drive your people to despair and so into rebellion — deny that it is your fault. Claim instead that it is the fault of your subjects' stubbornness; or, when you have seized a neighboring people, that it is the fault of human nature, since if a man does not get in first with force against the other, he can be sure the other will get in first against him and seize him.

3. Divide et impera: divide and rule. That is: if there are certain privileged leading men among your people who have merely chosen you as their head (primus inter pares, first among equals), set them at odds with one another and set them against the people. Then take the people's side, holding out the prospect of greater freedom, and everything will depend on your unconditional will. Or if it is a matter of foreign states, then stirring up discord among them is a fairly sure way of subjugating them one after another, while appearing to help the weaker.

No one, to be sure, is deceived by these political maxims, for they are all already universally known. Nor do they have to be ashamed of them, as if the injustice were far too obvious. For great powers are never ashamed before the judgment of the common crowd, but only before one another. And as for these principles, it is not their being made public but only their failing that can put the powers to shame (since on the morality of the maxims they all agree with one another). So they always have political honor left, which they can count on: the honor of increasing their power, by whatever route it was gained.

Footnote: There may still be doubt whether a certain wickedness rooted in human nature is found in human beings who live together in a state. One might, with some plausibility, give as the cause of the lawless expressions of their way of thinking a lack of culture that has not yet advanced far enough (their crudeness). But in the external relations of states to one another, this wickedness strikes the eye quite openly and undeniably. Inside each state it is veiled by the constraint of civil laws. For the inclination of citizens to violence against one another is powerfully opposed by a greater force, the force of the government. This not only gives the whole a moral coloring (causae non causae, causes that are not really causes), but also, because a bolt is shot across the outbreak of lawless inclinations, the development of the moral capacity for direct respect for right is really made much easier. — For everyone now believes of himself that he would hold the concept of right sacred and follow it faithfully, if only he could expect the same from everyone else; and the government partly assures him of that. And so a great step is taken toward morality (though not yet a moral step): toward being attached to this concept of duty for its own sake, without regard to whether others return it. — But since everyone, with his good opinion of himself, assumes an evil disposition in everyone else, they pass judgment on one another mutually: that, as far as the fact goes, they are all worth very little. (Where this comes from, since it cannot be blamed on the nature of a human being as a free being, may remain undiscussed.) Yet respect for the concept of right, which a human being simply cannot shake off, also sanctions in the most solemn way the theory that we are able to live up to it. And so everyone sees that he, for his part, must act in accordance with it, whatever others may do.

From all these serpentine twists of an immoral doctrine of prudence, which tries to bring about the state of peace among human beings out of the warlike state of nature, at least this much is clear: human beings can no more escape the concept of right in their private relations than in their public ones. They do not dare to found politics openly on mere tricks of prudence, and so to renounce all obedience to the concept of public right (which is especially striking in the concept of the right of nations). On the contrary, they pay it all the honor it is due in itself, even if they think up a hundred evasions and disguises to dodge it in practice, and to credit cunning force with the authority of being the origin and the bond of all right. — To put an end to this sophistry (if not to the injustice it glosses over), and to bring the false representatives of the mighty of the earth to confess that it is not right but force they speak for — force, whose tone they take on as if they themselves had something to command here — it will be good to expose the illusion by which people deceive themselves and others. We need to find the supreme principle from which the aim of perpetual peace sets out, and to show that all the evil standing in its way comes from this: the political moralist begins where the moral politician rightly ends, and, by subordinating principles to the end (that is, by putting the horses behind the cart), he defeats his own purpose of bringing politics into agreement with morality.

To make practical philosophy agree with itself, we must first decide this question: in problems of practical reason, must we begin with its material principle, the end (the object chosen by the will), or with its formal principle, the one based only on freedom in external relations, which says: act so that you can will that your maxim should become a universal law (whatever the end may be)?

Without any doubt the formal principle must come first. For as the principle of right it has unconditional necessity, whereas the material principle compels only on the presupposition of empirical conditions of the end proposed, namely the conditions for achieving it. And even if this end (for instance, perpetual peace) were also a duty, that duty itself would still have to be derived from the formal principle of the maxims for acting externally. — Now the first principle, that of the political moralist (the problem of civil right, the right of nations, and cosmopolitan right), is a mere technical problem (problema technicum). The second, on the other hand, the principle of the moral politician, for whom it is a moral problem (problema morale), is worlds apart from the first in its procedure for bringing about perpetual peace, which we now wish for not merely as a physical good but also as a condition that arises from acknowledging our duty.

Solving the first problem — the problem of political prudence — requires a great deal of knowledge of nature, in order to use its mechanism for the end in view; and yet all of it is uncertain in its result as far as perpetual peace is concerned, whichever of the three branches of public right we take. Whether a people can best be kept obedient and at the same time prosperous internally, and for a long time, by severity or by the bait of vanity, by the supreme power of one person or by the union of several heads, perhaps simply by a nobility of service or by the power of the people — that is uncertain. History has examples of the opposite for every form of government (except the one genuinely republican form, which can occur only to a moral politician). — Even more uncertain is a right of nations supposedly set up by statutes according to the plans of ministers. In fact it is only a word without a thing behind it, and it rests on treaties that contain, in the very act of being concluded, a secret reservation to break them. — The solution of the second problem, on the other hand — the problem of political wisdom — presses itself on us, so to speak, all by itself. It is obvious to everyone, puts all artful contrivance to shame, and leads straight to the goal; only with prudence's reminder not to drag the goal in hastily by force, but to approach it steadily as favorable circumstances allow.

So it says: "Seek first the kingdom of pure practical reason and its righteousness, and your end (the blessing of perpetual peace) will be added to you of its own accord." For morality has this peculiar feature, specifically in its principles of public right (and so with respect to a politics that can be known a priori): the less it makes conduct depend on the end proposed, the advantage aimed at, whether physical or moral, the more it nevertheless agrees with that end on the whole. This is because it is precisely the general will given a priori (in one people, or in the relations of different peoples to one another) that alone determines what is right among human beings. And this union of the will of all, if only it is carried out consistently, can at the same time, even by the mechanism of nature, be the cause that produces the intended effect and gives the concept of right its effect. — It is, for example, a principle of moral politics that a people should unite into a state according to the concepts of right alone, freedom and equality; and this principle is founded not on prudence but on duty. Political moralists may argue as much as they like against it, about the natural mechanism of a crowd of human beings entering society, which would weaken those principles and defeat their purpose; or they may try to prove their claim against it with examples of badly organized constitutions of ancient and modern times (for instance, democracies without a system of representation). They deserve no hearing — above all because such a pernicious theory may itself bring about the evil it predicts. For it throws human beings into one class with all the other living machines, which would then need only the awareness that they are not free beings to make them, in their own judgment, the most wretched of all creatures in the world.

The proposition fiat iustitia, pereat mundus, "let justice be done, though the world perish" — or, in plain English, "let justice rule, even if all the scoundrels in the world perish because of it" — sounds rather swaggering, and it has become a proverb; but it is true. It is a sturdy principle of right, which cuts off all the crooked paths marked out by cunning or force. Only it must not be misunderstood — say, as permission to use one's own right with the greatest severity (which would conflict with ethical duty). It must be understood as the obligation of those in power not to refuse anyone his right, or cut it down, out of disfavor or out of sympathy for others. And for that what is needed above all is an internal constitution of the state set up according to pure principles of right, and then also the union of the state with other states, neighboring or distant, for a lawful settlement of their disputes (something analogous to a universal state). — This proposition means nothing more than this: political maxims must not start from the welfare and happiness of each state that is to be expected from following them — not from the end each state makes its object (from what it wants) as the supreme (but empirical) principle of political wisdom. They must start from the pure concept of the duty of right (from what it ought to do, whose principle is given a priori by pure reason), whatever the physical consequences may be. The world will certainly not perish because there are fewer wicked people in it. Moral evil has a property inseparable from its nature: in its purposes (especially in relation to others of the same mind) it contradicts and destroys itself, and so makes room for the (moral) principle of the good, even if only by slow progress.

Objectively, then (in theory), there is no conflict at all between morality and politics. Subjectively, on the other hand (in the selfish tendency of human beings, which, since it is not founded on maxims of reason, should not yet be called practice), the conflict will and may always remain, because it serves as the whetstone of virtue. The true courage of virtue (according to the principle tu ne cede malis, sed contra audentior ito, "do not yield to evils, but go against them all the more boldly," as the Sibyl tells Aeneas) consists in the present case not so much in standing up with firm resolve to the evils and sacrifices that must be taken on here. It consists in looking in the eye the far more dangerous evil principle in ourselves — lying, treacherous, yet given to arguing, always holding up the weakness of human nature as the justification for every transgression — and in defeating its cunning.

In fact the political moralist can say: ruler and people, or people and people, do one another no wrong when they feud with one another by violence or treachery — although they do wrong in general by refusing all respect to the concept of right, which alone could found peace forever. For since each violates his duty toward the other, who is just as unlawfully disposed toward him, it serves them both perfectly right if they wear one another down — but in such a way that enough of this breed always remains to keep the game going into the most distant ages, so that a late posterity may one day take them as a warning example. Providence is justified in the course of the world by this. For the moral principle in human beings is never extinguished, and reason, which pragmatically is fit to carry out the ideas of right according to that principle, also grows steadily through ever-advancing culture — and with it grows the guilt of those transgressions. Creation alone — the fact that such a race of corrupt beings should have been put on earth at all — seems impossible to justify by any theodicy, any defense of God's goodness (if we assume that things will never be, and can never be, any better with the human race). But this standpoint of judgment is far too high for us to be able to attribute our concepts (of wisdom), for theoretical purposes, to the supreme power that is beyond our understanding. — We are driven inevitably to such desperate conclusions unless we assume that the pure principles of right have objective reality — that is, that they can be carried out — and that the people within a state, and further the states in their relations with one another, must act accordingly, whatever empirical politics may object. True politics, then, cannot take a single step without first paying homage to morality. And although politics by itself is a difficult art, uniting it with morality is no art at all. For morality cuts the knot in two that politics cannot untie, as soon as the two conflict. — The right of human beings must be held sacred, however great the sacrifice it may cost the ruling power. Here we cannot split the difference and devise a halfway thing, a pragmatically conditioned right (something between right and advantage). All politics must bend its knee before right; but in return it can hope to reach, though slowly, the stage where it will shine steadily.

Appendix Two: On the Agreement of Politics with Morality According to the Transcendental Concept of Public Right

Suppose I set aside all the matter of public right, as legal scholars usually think of it (the various relations, given by experience, of human beings within a state or of states with one another). What I still have left is the form of publicity. Every claim of right contains the possibility of being made public, because without publicity there could be no justice (which can only be thought of as something that can be publicly announced), and so no right either, since right is conferred only by justice.

Every claim of right must be capable of publicity. And since it is quite easy to judge whether this is so in a given case — that is, whether publicity can be squared with the principles of the person acting — it can provide a criterion that is easy to use and is found a priori in reason. Where publicity cannot be squared with those principles, we can recognize at once, as if by an experiment of pure reason, that the claim in question (praetensio iuris, the claim to a right) is false, that is, contrary to right.

Once we have set aside in this way everything empirical that the concept of civil right and the right of nations contains (such as the wickedness of human nature, which makes coercion necessary), we can call the following proposition the transcendental formula of public right — "transcendental" because it holds prior to all experience:

"All actions relating to the rights of other human beings are wrong if their maxim is incompatible with publicity."

This principle should be regarded not only as ethical (belonging to the doctrine of virtue) but also as juridical (concerning the rights of human beings). For take a maxim that I cannot let be heard without thereby defeating my own purpose, a maxim that must be kept entirely secret if it is to succeed, and that I cannot publicly acknowledge without inevitably provoking everyone's resistance to my plan. This necessary and universal resistance of everyone against me, which can be seen a priori, can come from nowhere else than the injustice with which the maxim threatens everyone. — Further, the principle is merely negative: it serves only to recognize, by means of it, what is not right toward others. — Like an axiom, it is certain without proof, and it is also easy to apply, as can be seen from the following examples from public right.

1. As regards civil right (ius civitatis), that is, right within a state: here the question arises — one that many think hard to answer, and that the transcendental principle of publicity answers quite easily — "Is rebellion a legitimate means for a people to throw off the oppressive power of a so-called tyrant (non titulo sed exercitio talis: a tyrant not by title but by the way he uses his power)?" The people's rights have been violated, and the tyrant suffers no wrong by being dethroned; there is no doubt about that. Nevertheless, it is wrong in the highest degree for the subjects to seek their right in this way, and they can just as little complain of injustice if they were defeated in this struggle and afterward had to suffer the harshest punishment for it.

A great deal can be argued for and against here, if we try to settle the matter by a dogmatic deduction of the grounds of right. But the transcendental principle of the publicity of public right can spare itself all this long-windedness. By this principle, the people asks itself, before the civil contract is made, whether it would dare to make public the maxim of intending to rise up when occasion offers. It is easy to see that if, in founding a constitution, the people wanted to make it a condition that force might be used against the head of state in certain cases, the people would have to claim a lawful power over him. But then he would not be the head of state; or, if both were made conditions of setting up the state, no state at all would be possible — and setting one up was the people's purpose. The wrongness of rebellion is therefore clear from this: its maxim, if openly acknowledged, would make its own purpose impossible. So it would necessarily have to be kept secret. — But keeping it secret would not be necessary on the part of the head of state. He can say quite openly that he will punish every rebellion with the death of its ringleaders, even if they believe he was the first to break the fundamental law. For if he knows that he holds irresistible supreme power (which must be assumed in every civil constitution, since one who does not have power enough to protect each person in the people against every other also does not have the right to command him), then he need not worry that making his maxim known will defeat his own purpose. It fits perfectly well with this that, if the people's rebellion succeeded, the former head of state would return to the position of a subject, and would likewise have no right to start a rebellion to win his throne back — but would also have nothing to fear from being called to account for his earlier conduct of the state.

2. As regards the right of nations. — We can speak of a right of nations only on the assumption of some condition of right (that is, the external condition under which a right can actually be secured to a human being). For as a public right, the right of nations already contains in its very concept the public announcement of a general will that determines what belongs to each. And this status iuridicus, this condition of right, must come from some contract — one that need not, like the contract from which a state arises, be founded on coercive laws, but may be at most that of a continuing free association, like the federation of different states mentioned above. For without some condition of right actively binding the various persons (physical or moral) together — that is, in the state of nature — there can be nothing but private right. — Here, too, a conflict arises between politics and morality (morality taken as the doctrine of right). And here too the criterion of the publicity of maxims is easy to apply, though only on this condition: that the contract binds the states only for the purpose of keeping peace among themselves and together against other states, and by no means for making acquisitions. — The following cases of contradiction between politics and morality now arise, and with each its solution.

a) "If one of these states has promised the other something — help, or the cession of certain lands, or subsidies, or the like — the question is whether, in a case on which the welfare of the state depends, it can release itself from keeping its word by having itself regarded as a double person. First, it is sovereign, answerable to no one in its state; but then again it is merely the highest official of the state, who must give an account to the state. The conclusion is then that what it bound itself to in the first capacity, it is released from in the second." — But if a state (or its head) let this maxim of his be heard, then naturally every other state would either avoid it or unite with others to resist its pretensions. This proves that politics, with all its cunning, would on this footing (of openness) defeat its own purpose, and so that maxim must be wrong.

b) "If a neighboring power has grown to a terrifying size (potentia tremenda) and arouses alarm, may we assume that because it can oppress, it also will? And does that give the less powerful a right to attack it (together), even without any prior offense?" — A state that wanted to announce its maxim in the affirmative here would only bring on the evil more surely and more quickly. For the greater power would strike first against the smaller ones; and as for the smaller ones uniting, that is only a weak reed against anyone who knows how to use divide et impera, divide and rule. — This maxim of political prudence, publicly declared, therefore necessarily defeats its own purpose, and is consequently unjust.

c) "If a smaller state, by its position, cuts through the territory of a larger state that needs to be connected for its own preservation, is the larger state not entitled to subjugate the smaller one and unite it with its own?" — It is easy to see that the larger state must certainly not let such a maxim be heard beforehand. For either the smaller states would unite in good time, or other powerful states would fight over this prey. So openness makes the maxim unworkable — a sign that it is unjust, and possibly unjust to a very high degree. For a small object of injustice does not prevent the injustice shown in seizing it from being very great.

3. As regards cosmopolitan right, I pass over it here in silence. Because it is analogous to the right of nations, its maxims are easy to state and to judge.

In the principle that the maxims of the right of nations are incompatible with publicity, we now have a good mark of the disagreement of politics with morality (as the doctrine of right). But we also need to be taught the condition under which the maxims of politics agree with the right of nations. For we cannot conclude the other way around, that whatever maxims are compatible with publicity are therefore also just — because whoever has decisive superior power has no need to keep his maxims secret. — The condition that makes any right of nations possible at all is that a condition of right exist first. For without it there is no public right; all right that one might think of outside it (in the state of nature) is merely private right. Now we saw above that a federative condition of states, aimed solely at keeping war away, is the only condition of right compatible with their freedom. So politics can agree with morality only in a federative union (which is therefore given and necessary a priori, according to principles of right). And all political prudence has as its rightful basis the establishment of such a union, in the widest possible scope; without that end, all its cleverness is folly and veiled injustice. — Now this pseudo-politics has its own casuistry, worthy of the best Jesuit school. There is the reservatio mentalis, the mental reservation: drawing up public treaties in terms one can interpret to one's advantage whenever one likes (for instance, the distinction between the status quo de fait, the actual state of affairs, and de droit, the state of affairs in right). There is probabilism: inventing evil intentions in others, or making the probability that they might gain the upper hand a legal ground for undermining other, peaceful states. And finally there is the peccatum philosophicum (the peccatillum, the trifle): treating it as a small, easily forgiven matter to swallow up a small state, if a much larger one gains by it, for what is supposed to be the greater good of the world.

Footnote: Evidence for such maxims can be found in Privy Councillor Garve's essay On the Connection of Morality with Politics (1788). This worthy scholar admits at the very beginning that he cannot give a satisfactory answer to this question. But to approve of the maxims anyway, while confessing that he cannot fully dispose of the objections raised against them, seems to grant more indulgence to those who are very much inclined to abuse them than would be advisable.

What gives politics its opening here is its double-tongued way with morality: using one branch of morality or the other for its own purposes. — Both love of humanity and respect for the rights of human beings are duties. But the first is only a conditional duty, while the second is an unconditional, absolutely commanding duty. Anyone who wants to give himself over to the sweet feeling of doing good must first be fully certain that he has not violated it. Politics easily agrees with morality in the first sense (as ethics), in order to hand over the rights of human beings to their superiors. But with morality in the second sense (as the doctrine of right), before which it would have to bend its knee, politics finds it advisable not to negotiate at all. It prefers to deny morality all reality and to reinterpret all duties as mere benevolence. This cunning of a politics that shuns the light could easily be defeated by philosophy, through making those maxims of politics public — if politics would only dare to allow philosophers the publicity of their own maxims.

With this in mind, I propose another transcendental and affirmative principle of public right, whose formula would be this:

"All maxims that need publicity (in order not to fail in their purpose) agree with right and politics combined."

For if they can reach their purpose only through publicity, they must fit the general purpose of the public (happiness), and the proper task of politics is to agree with that purpose (to make the public content with its condition). But if this purpose can be reached only through publicity, that is, by removing all distrust of the maxims of politics, then these maxims must also be in harmony with the right of the public; for only in this right is it possible to unite the purposes of all. — I must put off the further development and discussion of this principle to another occasion. That it is a transcendental formula, though, can be seen from the fact that all empirical conditions (the doctrine of happiness) have been removed as the matter of the law, and that it looks only to the form of universal lawfulness.

If it is a duty, and if at the same time there is well-founded hope, to make a condition of public right real, even if only by an approach that goes on forever, then perpetual peace, which will follow what have until now been falsely called treaties of peace (really only truces), is no empty idea. It is a task that, solved little by little, comes steadily closer to its goal — since the times in which equal progress is made will, we hope, keep getting shorter.