22 CRITIQUES AND ADDRESSES. [1. 



me to he, not only to enforce the renunciation of the 

 anti-social desires, but, wherever it may be necessary, to 

 promote the satisfaction of those which are conducive to 

 progress. 



The great metaphysician, Immanuel Kant, who is at 

 his greatest when he discusses questions which are not 

 metaphysical, wrote, nearly a century ago, a wonderfully 

 instructive essay entitled &quot;A Conception of Universal 

 History in relation to Universal Citizenship,&quot; 1 from which 

 I will borrow a few pregnant sentences : 



&quot;The means of which Nature has availed herself, in order to bring 

 about the development of all the capacities of man, is the antagonism 

 of those capacities to social organization, so far as the latter does in 

 the long run necessitate their definite correlation. By antagonism, I 

 here mean the unsocial sociability of mankind that is, the combina 

 tion in them of an impulse to enter into society, with a thorough 

 spirit of opposition which constantly threatens to break up this 

 society. The ground of this lies in human nature. Man has an 

 inclination to enter into society, because in that state he feels that he 

 becomes more a man, or, in other words, that his natural faculties 

 develop. But he has also a great tendency to isolate himself, because 

 he is, at the same time, aware of the unsocial peculiarity of desiring 

 to have everything his own way ; and thus, being conscious of an 

 inclination to oppose others, he is naturally led to expect opposition 

 from them. 



&quot;Now it is this opposition which awakens all the dormant powers 

 of men, stimulates them to overcome their inclination to be idle, and, 

 spurred by the love of honour, or power, or wealth, to make them 

 selves a place among their fellows, whom they can neither do with, 

 nor do without. 



&quot;Thus they make the first steps from brutishness towards culture, 

 of which the social value of man is the measure. Thus all talents 

 become gradually developed, taste is formed, and by continual en 

 lightenment the foundations of a way of thinking are laid, which 

 gradually changes the mere rude capacity of moral perception into 



1 &quot; Idee zu cincr allgemeinen Geschiolite in weltbiirgerliclicn Absiclit,&quot; 1784. 

 This paper Las been translated by DC Quincey, and attention has been recently 

 drawn to its &quot; signal merits &quot; by the Editor of the Fortnightly Review in his 

 Essay on Condorcet. (Fortnightly Review, No. xxxviii. N.S. pp. 130, 137.) 



