CHAPTER V.
ON THE SOLICITUDE OF THE STATE FOR SECURITY AGAINST FOREIGN ENEMIES.
If it were not conducive to the clearness of our principal idea to apply it successively to single objects, it would not be essential to the present inquiry, to make any reference to the subject of security against foreign enemies. But this brief digression is the less to be regretted, and indeed may not be without illustrative importance, so long as I confine my attention to the influence of war on national character, and regard its institutions from the same point of view that has suggested the master-principle of the whole investigation.
Now, when thus regarded, war seems to be one of the most favourable manifestations for the culture of human nature; and I confess, it is not without regret that I see it disappearing more and more from the scene. However fearful in some aspects, it is still the extremity through which all that active daring—all that endurance and fortitude are steeled and tested, which afterwards work themselves out into such various and beautiful results in the ordinary conduct of life, and which alone impart to its whole form and character that elastic strength and rich diversity, without which facility is feebleness, and unity, inanity.
It may, perhaps, be argued that there are many other means of securing this invigorating discipline in the school of trial and danger—that there are a thousand forms of employment full of mere physical peril, and innumerable crises of moral conflict which assail the firm, unfaltering statesman in the silence of the cabinet, and the free and fearless
