114 Proceedings of the Royal Society 
point out two principles, the realisation of which can be shown to 
be impossible, and which have, nevertheless, been sought to be 
realised in conjunction with every scheme of international organisa- 
tion which has yet been propounded. These principles are : — 
1. Finality . — In national politics this principle has been ex- 
hibited in those arbitrary, and, in some states, impassable lines 
between classes, which science has long ago condemned, and which 
practical men are everywhere engaged in obliterating. In schemes 
of international organisation, it has sought to manifest itself in 
the establishment of final and permanent international relations, 
or in the maintenance of what is technically called a status quo. 
2. Absolute equality of rights and obligations . — In internal politics 
this principle is the basis of the form of government called 
Democracy. In international politics it has exhibited itself in 
the custom of assigning equal votes to all the members of the 
family of nations, not absolutely excluded from the European 
council board, however widely they might differ in real power and 
importance. 
As regarded the first of these principles, the absurdity of attempt- 
ing to stereotype the map of Europe will be readily admitted. 
With reference to the second, there is much difference of opinion, 
both as to the possibility and the justice of recognising, or de- 
claring absolute political equality, whether within the state or 
in the wider commonwealth of nations. Now this diversity of 
opinion, great as it is, and terrible as have been, and may yet 
be its effects, is traceable to a defect in the popular mind, on 
which Aristotle, with his usual perspicacity, put his finger more 
than two thousand years ago. “ The vulgar,” he says, “ do not 
distinguish,” and in modern Europe, for nearly a century, they 
have lost sight of a distinction which Aristotle did them the farther 
favour to point out. 
The distinction is that between absolute and relative or propor- 
tional equality. 
The two are, in truth, neither more nor less than two different 
manifestations of the principle of justice. They differ not in them- 
selves, but in the manner of their application, and in the subject 
matter with which they deal. Following, and giving definiteness, 
as usual, to Plato’s conception of what, in its origin, was probably 
the teaching of Socrates, Aristotle gave to these two forms of applied 
