69. Science cannot, however, be genuinely positive unless it is impartial and free from political animosities and national bias. To believe that it really is at present impartial is a great deception. Whoever compares the writings of the publicists of the several states runs up against the contrary at every step. There is no state which in the past has not allowed itself to be guilty of offences against international law, but its writers on international law seldom admit that this has been the case. They perceive the mote in the eye of other nations, but not the beam in the eye of their own nation. Their writings teem with ungrounded complaints against other nations, but scarcely throw the slightest blame on their own country. By such a method problems are not brought nearer to solution, but only shoved on to one side. What is wanted, is that an ear should be lent to the principle _audiatur et altera pars_, that the opponent should be heard and his motives weighed. It will then often turn out that what was believed to merit reprobation, as a breach of law, will show itself to be a one-sided but forceful solution of a disputed question. And even where a real breach of law has been committed it will be worth while to weigh the political motives and interests which have driven the perpetrator to it. It must ever be kept in mind that at the present day no state lightheartedly commits a breach of the law of nations, and that, when it does commit such a breach, it is generally because it deems its highest political interests to be in jeopardy. Such a weighing of motives and interests does not mean excusing the breach of law, but only trying to understand it. [Sidenote: The science of international law must free itself from the tyranny of phrases.] 70. It is also indispensable that the science should free itself from the tyranny of phrases. As things are, there is scarcely a doctrine of the law of nations which is wholly free from the tyranny of phrases. The so-called fundamental rights are their arena, and the doctrines of state-sovereignty and of the equality of states are in large measure dominated by them. Any one who is in touch with the application of international law in diplomatic practice hears from statesmen every day the complaint that books put forth fanciful doctrines instead of the actual rules of law. Now it is often not difficult to push the irrelevant to one side and to extract what is legally essential from the waste of phrase-ridden discourse. But there are entire areas in which the tyranny of phrases so turns the head that rules which absolutely never were rules of law are represented as such. Two conspicuous examples may serve to illustrate this statement. [Sidenote: The meaning of '_Kriegsräson geht vor Kriegsmanier_'.]