We do not suggest, then, that the action of States is beyond moral criticism, nor that action of individuals in their interest is above or below morality, except in the sense in which one moral claim has constantly to be postponed to another. But we {328} deny that States can be treated as the actors in private immoralities which their agents permit themselves in the alleged interest of the State; or, again, can be bound by the private honour and conscience of such agents; and we deny, moreover, that the avowed public acts of sovereign powers, which cause loss or injury, can be imputed to individuals under the names of private offences; that someone is guilty of murder when a country carries on war, or of theft when it adopts the policy of repudiation, confiscation, or annexation. 8. It is obvious that the idea of humanity, of the world of intelligent beings on the surface of our earth, conceived as a unity, must hold such a place in any tolerably complete philosophical thinking, as in some way to control the idea of particular States, and to sum up the purposes and possibilities of human life. The idea of humanity is universal, and whatever limits we have tacitly in mind--whatever limits the Greek thinker had in mind while he based his ethics on the distinction between man and beast--yet, when we rely on the idea of man as man, we are committed to treat in some way of the world of mankind. _(a)_ The first point which forces itself upon our attention is, that the idea which we tacitly entertain when we refer to humanity, is not true of the greater part of mankind. No doubt, we are quite aware of imperfection and inconsistency in the family and the State. But here, in the case of mankind, the problem reaches an acuter form. According to the current ideas of our civilisation, a great part of the lives which {329} are being lived and have been lived by mankind are not lives worth living, in the sense of embodying qualities for which life seems valuable to us. [1] It is true that, in all to whom we give the name of man, we suppose a possibility of such living, in the sense that they have an intelligence distinguishable from that of animals. But it is a possibility which, for the most part, has been very slightly realised, and which involves no conscious connection, so far as we can see, with any realisation. Our idea of man is not formed by simple enumeration, but by framing a law which explains the less perfect and consistent facts with reference to the more perfect and more consistent facts. [1] This idea is embodied in the doctrine of Salvation confined to the few, and contains perhaps a similar error. But it has a _prima facie_ truth.