Wilhelm von Humboldt

“ To regard war in this light, in which alone it can be considered as either beneficial or necessary, seems to indicate, in my opinion, the nature of the policy to be observed by the State with respect to it. In order to cherish and promote the nobler spirit which it engenders, and to diffuse it throughout the whole body of the nation, it will be evident that freedom is the prime condition. ”

“ But the memory of the past is ever dimly receding from our eyes in the distances of oblivion; and while the number of those who fondly cherish its teaching is always diminishing in a nation, its influence even on them tends also gradually to decline. We seldom acknowledge, moreover, in other pursuits, however difficult or perilous, that inherent idea of greatness and glory so inseparably associated with warlike achievement—an idea, based as it is on the conception of superior power, which is far from being chimerical or imaginary. ”

“ Our standing armies carry war, so to speak, into the very bosom of peace. Now, a warlike spirit is only honourable in union with the fairest virtues which bloom out from peace, and military discipline, only when allied with the highest feeling of freedom ”

“ Neither have I selected the most favourable position in the case of war, nor regarded the finer manifestations of its high-souled enthusiasm. Let me recall the Spartans at Thermopylæ, and ask what influence such an illustrious example of heroism in its sons is likely to exercise on the general character of a nation. I do not deny that such a spirit of daring devotedness and self-sacrifice can find room for manifestation in any form or position in life, nor that it actually does thus exhibit itself ”

“ 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 thinker in his solitary cell. ”

“ They are a significant portion of the whole—the vast web, which has been woven, not by any plans of vain human reason, but by the sure hand of destiny; and the picture that would represent us by the side of our ancestors, fully and fairly delineated in all the complex phases and workings of our modern life, would have to show how mightily they operate on every other characteristic of our age, and how they share with them the praise and blame of all the good or bad that distinguishes it. ”

“ Even now—a single year of European history proves it—we enjoy the fruits of peace, but not a spirit of peacefulness. Human forces, which are ever striving towards an activity that is infinite, either merge in union when they encounter each other, or clash in direct collision. ”

“ Perhaps it is in nothing so strikingly manifest as in the institutions to which we now refer, that with the progressive development of the theory of human enterprises, their utility declines as regards the immediate agents concerned. It cannot be questioned that the art of war has made incredible strides in advance in modern times, but it is equally unquestionable that the nobler characteristics of the warrior have proportionately disappeared, and that it is only in antiquity that we find them flourishing in graceful and consummate beauty ”

“ Least of all would we look for such a spirit in antiquity, where as yet the thing itself was superior to the name, and the reality of the present more highly prized than the shadowy uncertainty of the future. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Men may not measure strength;" [1]
—deliverance is not victory; the boon which fate beneficently offers, and of which human courage and susceptibility only avail themselves, is not the fruit or the earnest of superior power. ”

“ But I cannot divest myself of the belief, that as everything spiritual is but the more exquisite bloom and development of the corporeal, so too, in war, the noblest forms of action and daring are crowned with the fairest moral issues. ”

“ And as to the bracing discipline of ordinary life I would observe that, with all that I have heard of evils more terrible than death, I never yet knew any, save the enthusiast, who, while in the full fruition of all the joys of existence, could really afford to despise it. ”

“ My view of the warrior, then, does not apply to such as were trained up and devoted to warlike pursuits in Plato's Republic, [2] but to men who take life and death, like other things, for what they really are, and who, having the highest in view, can dare to set the highest at stake. Lastly, it is to be observed that all those situations in which contrasting extremes are most closely and variously intermingled, are the deepest and richest in interest, and conduce most remarkably to human development ”

“ 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 extend the various possibility of freedom to its people, and a neighbouring nation may enjoy a like degree of freedom, which is the only soil where war and every other healthful manifestation of human power arises naturally to meet the necessity and occasion. Men, in every age, are men ”

“ I am far from overlooking their great and undoubted usefulness, which checks and counterbalances the headlong tendency to ruin, towards which their faults and disadvantages would inevitably hurry them like everything else on earth. ”