The Project Gutenberg EBook of An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The
Terms Of Its Perpetuation, by Thorstein Veblen

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Title: An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation

Author: Thorstein Veblen

Release Date: February 27, 2007 [EBook #20694]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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AN INQUIRY INTO

THE NATURE OF PEACE

AND

THE TERMS OF ITS PERPETUATION

BY

THORSTEIN VEBLEN

New York
B.W. HUEBSCH
1919

_All rights reserved_

COPYRIGHT, 1917.
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Published April, 1917:
Reprinted August, 1917.

New edition published by
B.W. HUEBSCH.
January, 1919.

PREFACE

It is now some 122 years since Kant wrote the essay, _Zum ewigen
Frieden_. Many things have happened since then, although the Peace to
which he looked forward with a doubtful hope has not been among them.
But many things have happened which the great critical philosopher, and
no less critical spectator of human events, would have seen with
interest. To Kant the quest of an enduring peace presented itself as an
intrinsic human duty, rather than as a promising enterprise. Yet through
all his analysis of its premises and of the terms on which it may be
realised there runs a tenacious persuasion that, in the end, the regime
of peace at large will be installed. Not as a deliberate achievement of
human wisdom, so much as a work of Nature the Designer of
things--_Natura daedala rerum_.

To any attentive reader of Kant's memorable essay it will be apparent
that the title of the following inquiry--On the nature of peace and the
terms of its perpetuation--is a descriptive translation of the caption
under which he wrote. That such should be the case will not, it is
hoped, be accounted either an unseemly presumption or an undue
inclination to work under a borrowed light. The aim and compass of any
disinterested inquiry in these premises is stil