A just enemy would be one to whom I would
do wrong in offering resistance; but such a one would really not be my
enemy.
61. Perpetual Peace and a Permanent Congress of Nations.
The natural state of nations as well as of individual men is a state
which it is a duty to pass out of, in order to enter into a legal
state. Hence, before this transition occurs, all the right of
nations and all the external property of states acquirable or
maintainable by war are merely provisory; and they can only become
peremptory in a universal union of states analogous to that by which a
nation becomes a state. It is thus only that a real state of peace
could be established. But with the too great extension of such a union
of states over vast regions, any government of it, and consequently
the protection of its individual members, must at last become
impossible; and thus a multitude of such corporations would again
bring round a state of war. Hence the perpetual peace, which is the
ultimate end of all the right of nations, becomes in fact an
impracticable idea. The political principles, however, which aim at
such an end, and which enjoin the formation of such unions among the
states as may promote a continuous approximation to a perpetual peace,
are not impracticable; they are as practicable as this approximation
itself, which is a practical problem involving a duty, and founded
upon the right of individual men and states.
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