origins of this ideal are clear. It is ancient as life, and
before man was, it was. It is the transference to the sphere of States
of the deepest instinctive yearning of all being, from the rock to the
soul of man, the yearning towards peace, towards the rest, the immortal
leisure which, to apply the phrase of Aristotle, the soul shall know in
death, the deeper vision, the unending contemplation, the _theoria_ of
eternity. The error of its enthusiasts, from Saint-Pierre and
Vauvenargues to Herbart and Count Tolstoi, lies in the interpretation
of this cosmic desire, deep as the wells of existence itself, and in
the extension to the Conditioned of a phase of the Unconditioned.

Will War then never cease? Will universal peace be for ever but a
dream? Upon this question, a consideration of the ideal itself, of the
forms in which at various epochs it has presented itself, and of the
crises at which, appearing or reappearing, it most profoundly engages
the imagination of a race, is instructive.

In Hebrew history, for instance, it arises in the hour of defeat, in
the consternation of a great race struck by irretrievable disaster.
"How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth
good tidings, that publisheth peace!" In this and in other splendid
pages of Isaiah we possess the first distinct enunciation of this ideal
in world-history, and with what a transforming radiance it is invested!
In what a majesty of light and insufferable glory it is uplifted! But
it is a vision of the future, to be accomplished in ages undreamed of
yet. It is the throb of the Hebrew soul beyond this earthly sphere and
beyond this temporal dominion, to the immortal spheres of being,
inviolate of Time. Yet even this vision, though co-terminous with the
world, centres in Judaea--in the triumph of the Hebrew race and the
overthrow of all its adversaries.

Similarly, to Plato and to Isocrates, to Aristotle and to Aeschines, if
peace is to be extended to all the earth "like a river," Hellas is the
fountain from which it must flow. It is an imperial peace bounded by
Hellenic civilization, culture, laws. It is a peace forged upon war.
Rome with her genius for actuality discovers this.

"Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee.
Peace be within thy walls, and prosperity within thy palaces. For my
brethren and companions' sakes, I will now say, 'Peace be within
thee.'" Substituting Hellas for Jerusale