n political justice. The
establishment of such a society is the highest problem for the human
species. Kant contemplates, as the political goal, a confederation of
states in which the utmost possible freedom shall be united with the
most rigorous determination of the boundaries of freedom.

Is it reasonable to suppose that a universal or cosmopolitical society
of this kind will come into being; and if so, how will it be brought
about? Political changes in the relations of states are generally
produced by war. Wars are tentative endeavours to bring about new
relations and to form new political bodies. Are combinations and
recombinations to continue until by pure chance some rational
self-supporting system emerges? Or is it possible that no such condition
of society may ever arrive, and that ultimately all progress may be
overwhelmed by a hell of evils? Or, finally, is Nature pursuing her
regular course of raising the species by its own spontaneous efforts
and developing, in the apparently wild succession of events, man's
originally implanted tendencies?

Kant accepts the last alternative on the ground that it is not
reasonable to assume a final purpose in particular natural processes and
at the same time to assume that there is no final purpose in the whole.
Thus his theory of Progress depends on the hypothesis of final causes.

It follows that to trace the history of mankind is equivalent to
unravelling a hidden plan of Nature for accomplishing a perfect civil
constitution for a universal society; since a universal society is
the sole state in which the tendencies of human nature can be fully
developed. We cannot determine the orbit of the development, because the
whole period is so vast and only a small fraction is known to us, but
this is enough to show that there is a definite course.

Kant thinks that such a "cosmopolitical" history, as he calls it, is
possible, and that if it were written it would give us a clew opening up
"a consolatory prospect into futurity, in which at a remote distance we
shall discover the human species seated upon an eminence won by infinite
toil, where all the germs are unfolded which nature has implanted and
its own destination upon this earth accomplished."

3.

But to see the full bearing of Kant's discussion we must understand its
connection with his ethics. For his ethical theory is the foundation and
the motive of his speculation on Progress. The progress on which he lays
stres