How may the principles of the Jus Gentium be known and recognised? They are displayed, first, in the usages of the best nations, and secondly in the testimony of the wisest men. But which are the best nations, and who are the wisest men? There again, as in the case of the Jus Naturale, the best are those who act as Grotius himself thinks they should, and the wisest are such as agree with his opinions. Hence the distinction between Jus Naturale and Jus Gentium tends to vanish away. The standard of international morality and the criterion of international custom become one and the same, viz., the conscience and the common sense of Grotius himself. Thus the De Jure Belli et Pacis is essentially the judgment of Grotius concerning what is allowable in war and proper in peace. The numerous opinions quoted are those of which Grotius approved; the rest he rejects. The frequent examples cited are those which support his plea for mercy and moderation; those which do not support it are either ignored or are condemned as the barbarities of nations other than the best. Thus the argument travels in a circle, and it ultimately returns to the point whence it started, viz., the conscience and the common sense of Grotius. The weakness of so-called International Law has always been the absence of any extraneous standard. The Jus Naturale has no objective existence, and the Jus Gentium is a mere code of custom devoid of moral quality. Thus International Law lacks determinate source, lacks precise formulation, lacks sanction, lacks effective tribunals. Hence in times of severe stress, as for example in the autumn of 1914 and increasingly during the course of the Great War, it breaks down, and shows itself powerless to prevent a recurrence of precisely those barbarities which stirred Grotius to attempt his great task. To say that, however, is not to say that Grotius and his successors laboured in vain. It is not for nothing that a general set of rules has been framed, even though the force necessary_to ensure their observance has hitherto been wanting. For gradually but certainly there is coming into being an International Authority-a Concert of Europe; a Council of Great Powers; a Hague Tribunal; a Geneva Court; a League of Nations which in due time will give to the moral precepts and the customary practices which the conscience and the common sense of the great jurists have formulated, the force and the majesty of a genuine and operative International Law. THE EDITOR. BIBLIOGRAPHY A. PRIMARY SOURCE GROTIUS, HUGO: De Jure Belli et Pacis Libri Tres, accompanied by an abridged translation by William Whewell. 3 vols. 1853. B. SECONDARY SOURCES CARMICHAEL, C. H. E.: "Grotius and the Literary History of the Law of Nations" (Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature, Second Series, vol. xiv). FRANCK, A.: Réformateurs et publicistes de l'Europe. 1864. HELY, D.: Etude sur le droit de la guerre de Grotius. 1875. WALKER, T. A.: History of the Law of Nations. 1899. I VII THOMAS HOBBES CAN give you no better introduction to the way of thought, the method, and the temper of Thomas Hobbes than the brief life of him by his friend John Aubrey. Aubrey did not think of him as a man of immense learning. "He had very few books . . . he had read much if one considers his long life"-Hobbes was born in 1588 at Malmesbury, a plebeius homo who talked broad Wiltshire; he died in 1679"but his contemplation was much more than his reading. He was wont to say that if he had read as much as other men he would have known no more than other men.' "He thought much, and with excellent method and stedinesse, which made him seldom make a false step." As he thought, so he lived. "He was (generally) temperate, both as to wine and womenet hæc tamen omnia mediocriter," says Aubrey in a whimsical sentence. During his long old age he kept to a careful régime which included singing prick-song in his bed for his lungs' sake, and playing tennis three times a year. The simple worldliness of his ways is shown by an odd note on the fly-leaf of an early copy of his De Corpore Politico in All Souls Library. "I have heard of Mr Hobbs that when amongst those that weer strangers to him, he ever applyed himselfe to him that wore most clothes on taking him to be the wisest man." For a great part of his life he chose the unheroic but comfortable career of companion tutor to noblemen's sons; but he lived in an age when, if ever, the English upper class had both a sense of noble living and a care for knowledge. It was in this great country-house society that in middle life he made the discovery of the new mathematics. Aubrey says, "He was 40 yeares old before he looked on geometry; which happened accidentally. Being in a gentleman's library Euclid's Elements lay open, and 'twas the 47 El. libri I. He read the proposition. By G-,' sayd he, 'this is impossible.' So he reads the demonstration of it, which referred him back to such a proposition; which proposition he read. That referred him back to another which he also read. Et sic deinceps, that at last he was demonstratively convinced of that truth. This made him in love with geometry.' Once discovered, geometrical reasoning became his pattern of sound thinking. He took a certain pride in his own knowledge, and met, at some time during his life, the greatest scientists of his day-Bacon, Descartes, Gassendi, Galileo. But though the experts generally found his theories ingenious, he was never so learned as he took himself to be, and in old age made himself ridiculous by thinking he had squared the circle. The bent of his mind lay rather in the application of scientific principles to the study of man in society. Man in society was interesting enough in the sixteen-thirties and sixteen-forties, and Hobbes might well forget his mathematics. In Aubrey's words, " After he began to reflect on the interest of the King of England as touching his affaires between him and the Parliament, for ten yeares together his thoughts were much, or almost altogether, unhinged from the mathematiques; but chiefly intent on his De Cive [published in 1642], and after that on his Leviathan [published in 1651-the fullest exposition of his views]: which was a great putt-back to his mathematicall improvement-quod N.B.-for in ten yeares (or better) discontinuance of that study one's mathematiques will become very rusty.' Hobbes might well reflect on the affairs between the King of England and his Parliament. His was no abstract interest. He thought, without sufficient grounds it would seem, but, as he said, "he and fear were born twins"-that he had endangered his head by rash frankness in controversy, and" went over into France, the first of all that fled." By this flight an end was put to his commodious living in great houses; his exile was “to his damage, some thousands of pounds deep." For eleven years Hobbes stayed in Paris, while his countrymen were engaged in civil war and political experiment which must have seemed more destructive of peace to the exiles in France than to the inhabitants of Malmesbury. Hobbes' ideas had developed before the outbreak of the war. In 1640 it was twelve years since he had fallen in love with geometry. At some time, probably during these years, he had suddenly (after dinner, it is said) come to the conclusion that the principle of motion gives a sufficient solution of the cause of all human activity. Beginning from this principle, and employing the method of reasoning he had found so cogent in mathematics, Hobbes thought he could reduce to a few simple formulæ the complicated turmoil of living, and build up again upon certain, simple, and infallible rules a reasonable way of life. If men but knew these rules they would heed them, and if they heeded them the incommodities of civil war, "the seditious roaring of a troubled nation," would be avoided. The circumstances of the civil war did not then originate Hobbes' principles, but provided a wondrous confirmation of them. These principles are laid down, these deductions are made most clearly in the Leviathan. Aubrey was told by Hobbes how the Leviathan was written. He walked much" (in the good hours of the day between seven and ten of the morning) "and contemplated, and he had in the head of his staffe a pen and inke-horne, carried alwayes a note-booke in his pocket, and as soon as a thought darted, he presently entred it into his booke, or otherwise he might perhaps have lost it. He had drawne the designe of the booke into chapters, etc., so he knew whereabout it would come in. Thus that booke was made." So Hobbes' first principles are taken from what he took to be the reasoned conclusions of positive science-science being the knowledge of consequences and are justified in their application to men by the observation of the nature and behaviour of mankind. Hobbes begins by assuming that all man's conscious life is built up from sensations, and that all sensation is a form of motion. From this he concludes that man is determined by God, the first cause of all motion, to respond in a certain way to the excitements from without. Man therefore is not free in the sense of being himself a first cause; such freedom as he has is nothing but absence of opposition-" by opposition, I mean external Impediments of motion." This freedom may belong no lesse to Irrationall and Inanimate creatures, than to Rationall." It is the freedom of water to run downhill if it be not checked. "Liberty, and Necessity are Consistent; As in the water, that hath not onely liberty, but a necessity of descending by the Channel; so likewise in the actions which 66 |