Proclamation of the imminent conclusion of a treaty of perpetual peace in philosophy (1796)

Summary

Section One

Happy Outlook for Imminent Perpetual Peace From the Lowest Level of Man's Living Nature to his Highest, that of Philosophy

Chrysippus says, in his pithy Stoic way: “Nature has given the pig a soul, instead of salt, so that he should not become rotten.” Now this is the lowest level of man's nature, prior to all cultivation, namely that of mere animal instinct. But it seems as if here the philosopher has thrown a prophetic glance into the physiological systems of our own day; save only that now, instead of the word ‘soul’, we have taken to using that of living force (and rightly so, since from an effect we can certainly infer to the force that produces it, but not forthwith to a substance specially adapted to this type of effect); we locate life, therefore, in the action of animating forces (life-impulse) and the ability to react to them (living-capacity), and call that man healthy in whom a proportionate stimulus produces neither an excessive nor an altogether too small effect: while conversely, the animalic operation of nature will pass over into a chemical one, which has decay as its consequence, so that it is not (as used to be thought) decay that must follow from and after death, but death that must follow from the preceding decay.