r, is then narrowed to a league or two on either side of the
Bosphorus.

Sec. 2. DEFINITION OF WAR

To push the survey further would but add to the instances, without
deepening the impression, of the measureless power of the ideal element
in war, alike in the history of the great races of the past and of the
present. Even the wars which seem most arbitrary and, to the judgment
of their contemporaries, purposeless, acquire, upon a deeper scrutiny
and in after ages, a profound enough significance. Behind the
immediate occasion, trivial or capricious, sordid or grandiose, the
destiny of the race, like the Nemesis of Greek Tragedy, advancing
relentlessly, pursuing its own far-off and lofty ends, constantly
reveals itself.

War, therefore, I would define as a phase in the life-effort of the
State towards completer self-realization, a phase of the eternal nisus,
the perpetual omnipresent strife of all being towards self-fulfilment.
Destruction is not its aim, but the intensification of the life,
whether of the conquering or of the conquered State. War is thus a
manifestation of the world-spirit in the form the most sublime and
awful that can enthrall the contemplation of man. It is an action
radiating from the same source as the heroisms, the essential agonies,
+agoniai+, conflicts, of all life. "In this theatre of a world," as
Calderon avers, "all are actors, _todos son representantes_." There
too the State enacts its tragedy. Nation, city, or empire, it too is a
_representante_. Though the stage is of more imposing dimensions, the
Force of which each wears the mask is one with the Force which sets the
stars their path and guides the soul of man to its appointed goal. A
war then is in the development of the consciousness of the State
analogous to those moments in the individual career when, in Hamlet's
phrase, his fate "crying out," death is preferable to a disregard of
the Summoner. The state, the nation, or the empire hazards death, is
content to resign existence itself, if so be it fulfil but its destiny,
and swerve not from its being's law. Not to be envied is that man who,
in the solemn prayer of two embattled hosts, can discern but an
organized hypocrisy, a mockery, an insult to God! God is the God of
all the earth, but dark are the ways, obscure and tangled the
forest-paths, in which He makes His children walk. A mockery? That
cry for guidance in the dread ordeal, that prayer by the hosts, which