THE mcaiER INTERCOURSE BETSVEEN NATIONS. 81 



i(, I acknowledge tluit he has dealt "with the nations of 

 the cartli witli a higher respect than they have some- 

 times used toward tliemselves. He has wislied them to 

 he free and sovereign phe lias given them into no mor- 

 tal hands, hut only to his Son, when he said to him, 

 '' Ask of me, and I will give thee the nations for thine 

 inheritance, the uttermost parts of the earth for thy 

 possession.''* 



The Word made flesh has asked of the Father. The 

 Word of righteousness and truth has received the king- 

 dom. The question is settled. The nations, liberated 

 by this Word, belong only to themselves, and God. 



Part Second. — The Moral Bond. 



[Having proved that tlie nations are not, among themselves, 

 in a state of political society, Father Hyacinthe proposes to sho^v 

 that they are united in natural society by moral bonds. The 

 idea of the " social compact" is as false for nations as for individ- 

 uals ; and it is of sovereign importance, in the present question, 

 not to confound the " state of nature" with the savage state.] 



Before the foundation of civil societ}', individuals 

 were not in ^-'the state of nature," but in the state of 

 domestic society. It was the familiçs which, for lack 

 of some higher bond, dvrelt together in the state of 

 nature. And yet their relations were not left to the 

 control of violence and cunning — to the reign of barba- 

 rism. On the contrary, this vras the noble period of 

 the patriarchs. The various families, free l^'om the 

 trammels of social life and from the passions which it 

 engenders, pure and happy in their manners, grand, and 

 simple in their way of living, realized the golden age of 

 domestic society. • Xations, with respect to each other, 

 are in a situation analogous to that of families not yet 



* Tèv.\n\ ii. 8. 



