If this means that the best administered government is best administered, then, in Swift’s phrase, he has cracked a nut to find a worm in it. If it means, however, that the best conducted government is also the best kind of government,—that is, the best form of political constitution,—then it is utterly false: for examples of wise administration are no proof of the kind of government. Who ever ruled better than Titus and Marcus Aurelius, and yet the one left Domitian, the other Commodus, as his successor? This could not have happened where the constitution was a good one, for their absolute unfitness for the position was early enough known, and the power of the emperor was sufficiently great to exclude them.
[124] “For as amongst masterless men, there is perpetual war, of every man against his neighbour; no inheritance, to transmit to the son, nor to expect from the father; no propriety of goods, or lands; no security; but a full and absolute liberty in every particular man: so in states, and commonwealths not dependent on one another, every commonwealth, not every man, has an absolute liberty, to do what it shall judge, that is to say, what that man, or assembly that representeth it, shall judge most conducing to their benefit. But withal, they live in the condition of a perpetual war, and upon the confines of battle, with their frontiers armed, and cannons planted against their neighbours round about.” (Hobbes: Leviathan, II. Ch. XXI.) [Tr.]
[125] But see [p. 136], where Kant seems to speak of a State of nations as the ideal. Kant expresses himself, on this point, more clearly in the Rechtslehre, Part. II. § 61:—“The natural state of nations,” he says here, “like that of individual men, is a condition which must be abandoned, in order that they may enter a state regulated by law. Hence, before this can take place, every right possessed by these nations and every external “mine” and “thine” [id est, symbol of possession] which states acquire or preserve through war are merely provisional, and can become peremptorily valid and constitute a true state of peace only in a universal union of states, by a process analogous to that through which a people becomes a state. Since, however, the too great extension of such a State of nations over vast territories must, in the long run, make the government of that union—and therefore the protection of each of its members—impossible, a multitude of such corporations will lead again to a state of war. So that perpetual peace, the final goal of international law as a whole, is really an impracticable idea [eine unausführbare Idee]. The political principles, however, which are directed towards this end, (that is to say, towards the establishment of such unions of states as may serve as a continual approximation to that ideal), are not impracticable; on the contrary, as this approximation is required by duty and is therefore founded also upon the rights of men and of states, these principles are, without doubt, capable of practical realization.” [Tr.]
[126] A Greek Emperor who magnanimously volunteered to settle by a duel his quarrel with a Bulgarian Prince, got the following answer:—“A smith who has tongs will not pluck the glowing iron from the fire with his hands.”
[127] “Both sayings are very true: that man to man is a kind of God; and that man to man is an arrant wolf. The first is true, if we compare citizens amongst themselves; and the second, if we compare cities. In the one, there is some analogy of similitude with the Deity; to wit, justice and charity, the twin sisters of peace. But in the other, good men must defend themselves by taking to them for a sanctuary the two daughters of war, deceit and violence: that is, in plain terms, a mere brutal rapacity.” (Hobbes: Epistle Dedicatory to the Philosophical Rudiments concerning Government and Society.) [Tr.]
[128] “The strongest are still never sufficiently strong to ensure them the continual mastership, unless they find means of transforming force into right, and obedience into duty.
From the right of the strongest, right takes an ironical appearance, and is rarely established as a principle.” (Contrat Social, I. Ch. III.) [Tr.]
[129] “The natural state,” says Hobbes, (On Dominion, Ch. VII. § 18) “hath the same proportion to the civil, (I mean, liberty to subjection), which passion hath to reason, or a beast to a man.”
Locke speaks thus of man, when he puts himself into the state of war with another:—“having quitted reason, which God hath given to be the rule betwixt man and man, and the common bond whereby human kind is united into one fellowship and society; and having renounced the way of peace which that teaches, and made use of the force of war, to compass his unjust ends upon another, where he has no right; and so revolting from his own kind to that of beasts, by making force, which is theirs, to be his rule of right, he renders himself liable to be destroyed by the injured person, and the rest of mankind that will join with him in the execution of justice, as any other wild beast, or noxious brute, with whom mankind can have neither society nor security.” (Civil Government, Ch. XV. § 172.) [Tr.]
[130] Cf. Rousseau: Gouvernement de Pologne, Ch. V. Federate government is “the only one which unites in itself all the advantages of great and small states.” [Tr.]