philosophy of history. _Historical Causes_ Historical causes of war are in part the sequences of events that the political causes of war produce (political as the causes inherent in the wills of nations), and we must suppose they are mainly this. History, from this point of view, is the working out of the motives or the desires contained in these national wills. The causes of our late war, for example, are to be sought mainly in the wills of the great powers that are concerned in it. Economic forces, the laws of the growth of nations (both psychological and physical laws), the conditions of the geographical distributions of peoples over the earth--all these are involved in the cause of wars. There are also great personages whose actions must to some extent be considered apart from these general laws; these personages contribute factors to the causation of any given war that are not entirely inherent in the laws of growth or the psychology of nations. Shall we say also that there are fortuitous factors, historical causes that are not contained in any logic of human desires? Can we say, perhaps, that these fortuitous causes are indeed the main causes--in a word that wars are not desired, mainly, but are the product, indeed, either of the mere logic of chance, or of a design that transcends human will altogether? Are wars willed, or are they the results of the complex, the illogical and uncontrollable factors of the world's existence and movement? These may not be practical problems, but they are serious problems, since in the end they implicate the whole of philosophy. What place shall we give, in the laws of history, to the sudden and chance turn of affairs; to the quick shift of the wheels of fortune; to the incidents, the accidents, the mis-judgments of rulers and the slips of the diplomats? Are wars after all a product of the logic of life, or are they mere fortuitous syntheses of events which in their particular combination make a total that is not involved, either as desire or as tendency, in the sum of the particulars that enter into the whole? How completely, in a word, do the interests and purposes of nations determine wars? May we speak of motives that always tend to produce wars, but never seem to will them?