Charles Sumner: his complete works, volume 02 (of 20)Sumner, Charles
History
Charles Sumner: his complete works, volume 02 (of 20)
Sumner, Charles
Slavery -- United States; Speeches, addresses, etc., American
The cause of Saint-Pierre and Rousseau was not without champions in
Germany. In 1763 we meet at Göttingen the work of Totze, entitled
"Permanent and Universal Peace, according to the Plan of Henry the
Fourth";[343] and in 1767, at Leipsic, an ample and mature treatise by
Lilienfeld, under the name of "New Constitution for States."[344] Truth
often appears contemporaneously to different minds having no concert
with each other; and the latter work, though in remarkable harmony with
Saint-Pierre and Rousseau, is said to have been composed without any
knowledge of their labors. Lilienfeld exposes the causes and calamities
of War, the waste of armaments in time of Peace, and the miserable
chances of the battle-field, where, in defiance of all justice,
controversies are determined as by the throw of dice; and he urges
submission to Arbitrators, unless, in their wisdom, nations establish a
Supreme Tribunal with the combined power of the Confederacy to enforce
its decrees.
[343] Ewiger und Allgemeiner Friede nach der Entwurf Heinrichs IV.
[344] Neues Staatsgebäude.
It was the glory of another German, in intellectual preëminence
the successor of Leibnitz, to illustrate this cause by special and
repeated labors. At Königsberg, in a retired corner of Prussia, away
from the great lines of travel, Immanuel Kant consecrated his days
to the pursuit of truth. During a long, virtuous, and disinterested
life, stretching beyond the period appointed for man,--from 1724 to
1804,--in retirement, undisturbed by shock of revolution or war, never
drawn by temptation of travel more than seven German miles from the
place of his birth, he assiduously studied books, men, and things.
Among the fruits of his ripened powers was that system of philosophy
known as the "Critique of Pure Reason," by which he was at once
established as a master-mind of his country. His words became the text
for writers without number, who vied with each other in expounding,
illustrating, or opposing his principles. At this period, after an
unprecedented triumph in philosophy, when his name had become familiar
wherever his mother-tongue was spoken, and while his rare faculties
were yet untouched by decay, in the Indian Summer of life, the great
thinker published a work "On Perpetual Peace."[345] Interest in the
author, or in the cause, was attested by prompt translations into the
French, Danish, and Dutch languages. In an earlier work, entitled
"Idea for a General History in a Cosmopolitan View,"[346] he espoused
the same cause, and at a later day, in his "Metaphysical Elements of
Jurisprudence,"[347] he renewed his testimony. In the lapse of time
the speculations of the philosopher have lost much of their original
attraction; other systems, with other names, have taken their place.
But these early and faithful labors for Perpetual Peace cannot be
forgotten. Perhaps through these the fame of the applauded philosopher
of Königsberg may yet be preserved.
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