were joined in alliance, and were allies against Prussia. The first Partition of Poland was the dying testament of the old Europe, and from Corsica, the cherished island of Rousseau's expectations of right established in a State, there came the great disturber of the peace, the rights, and the equilibrium of the States of Europe, and the destroyer of the Germanic body. Both Rousseau and the Abbé de Saint-Pierre might well seem to have been the dreamers of an empty dream—empty but for the heaviness of the consequences of a slothful overtrust for their fellow-men.
To expect men and nations to conform their actions to reason may be the utmost irrationality. Everything, however, that can be urged for the establishment of a League of Nations to prevent aggression, the domination of force, and injustice, has been said in principle, and even in much of the particulars, by Rousseau. He was endeavouring to ally reason and interest. He recognizes that life for a society is adjustment and harmony of organism and environment. It is his fault, as it is that of his imitators and inferiors, that he does not adequately analyse, nor adequately allow for, the influence of the environment, and that of the past in the present. His error was much less a deficiency of knowledge than an excess of faith. We cannot perfectly agree to everything that was related by Raphael; yet there are things in the commonwealth of Utopia that we rather wish than to-day can hope to see followed in our government. But the call for a high courage is more required than the call to a form of prudence and caution that abandons hope and may never drive business home. A high courage that dispenses with exact and intimate knowledge and regard for facts will be futile and dangerous. But high courage inspired by knowledge and sustained by circumspection is required to counteract the influence of the multitude of men who are 'prudent' because they are timid, who, without
