species will have the same facilities as
particular portions now have; the communication of knowledge will extend
from one to another, and thus reach the whole. By the law of imitation,
the example of one people will be followed by others, who will adopt its
spirit and its laws. Even despots, perceiving that they can no longer
maintain their authority without justice and beneficence, will soften
their sway from necessity, from rivalship; and civilization will become
universal.

There will be established among the several nations an equilibrium of
force, which, restraining them all within the bounds of the respect due
to their reciprocal rights, shall put an end to the barbarous practice
of war, and submit their disputes to civil arbitration.* The human race
will become one great society, one individual family, governed by the
same spirit, by common laws, and enjoying all the happiness of which
their nature is susceptible.

* What is a people? An individual of the society at large.
What a war? A duel between two individual people. In what
manner ought a society to act when two of its members fight?
Interfere and reconcile, or repress them. In the days of
the Abbe de Saint Pierre this was treated as a dream, but
happily for the human race it begins to be realized.

Doubtless this great work will be long accomplishing; because the
same movement must be given to an immense body; the same leaven must
assimilate an enormous mass of heterogeneous parts. But this movement
shall be effected; its presages are already to be seen. Already the
great society, assuming in its course the same characters as partial
societies have done, is evidently tending to a like result. At first
disconnected in all its parts, it saw its members for a long time
without cohesion; and this general solitude of nations formed its
first age of anarchy and childhood; divided afterwards by chance into
irregular sections, called states and kingdoms, it has experienced
the fatal effects of an extreme inequality of wealth and rank; and the
aristocracy of great empires has formed its second age; then, these
lordly states disputing for preeminence, have exhibited the period of
the shock of factions.

At present the contending parties, wearied with discord, feel the want
of laws, and sigh for the age of order and of peace. Let but a virtuous
chief arise! a just, a powerful people appear! and the earth will raise
them to sup