brings fresh responsibilities to a nation, at a time when it is not always strong enough to bear them. But, above all, Kant saw, even at the end of the eighteenth century, the nations of Europe so closely bound together by commercial interests that a war—and especially a maritime war where the scene of conflict cannot be to the same extent localised as on land—between any two of them could not but seriously affect the prosperity of the others.[59] He clearly realised that the spirit of commerce was the strongest force in the service of the maintenance of peace, and that in it lay a guarantee of future union. [57] Unlike Hegel whose ideal was the Prussian state, as it was under Frederick the Great. An enthusiastic supporter of the power of monarchy, he showed himself comparatively indifferent to the progress of constitutional liberty. [58] Isolated passages are sometimes quoted from Kant in support of a theory that the present treatise is at least half ironical[A] and that his views on the question of perpetual peace did not essentially differ from those of Leibniz. “Even war,” he says, (_Kritik d. Urteilskraft_, I. Book ii. § 28.) “when conducted in an orderly way and with reverence for the rights of citizens has something of the sublime about it, and the more dangers a nation which wages war in this manner is exposed to and can courageously overcome, the nobler does its character grow. While, on the other hand, a prolonged peace usually has the effect of giving free play to a purely commercial spirit, and side by side with this, to an ignoble self-seeking, to cowardice and effeminacy; and the result of this is generally a degradation of national character.” [A] Cf. K. v. Stengel: _Der Ewige Friede_, Munich, 1899; also Vaihinger: _Kantstudien_, Vol. IV., p. 58. This is certainly an admission that war which does not violate the Law of Nations has a good side as well as a bad. We could look for no less in so clear-sighted and unprejudiced a thinker. Kant would have been the first to admit that under certain conditions a nation can have no higher duty than to wage war. War is necessary, but it is in contradiction to reason and the spirit of right. The “scourge of mankind,” “making more bad men than it takes away,” the “destroyer of every good,” Kant calls it elsewhere. (_Theory of Ethics_, Abbott’s trans., 4th ed., p. 341, _note_.) [59] Cf. _Idea for a Universal History_, Prop. 8; _Perpetual Peace_, pp. 142, 157.