THE USE OF THE HISTORICAL METHOD 3. In Part IV of this book we show the historical development of the doctrine of war: we consider how the same matter has been viewed at different times by various peoples. This will help us to understand how men came to think as they now do about these subjects. We shall see how the main truths came to be more and more clearly possessed how errors arose and were in course of time shown to be errors. For the practical purpose of promoting right international relations we must take the truth and leave the error: we must consider the best that is now known to reason. This we do in the first part of this book. Similarly a doctor, though he study the history of medicine, will not think of applying ancient remedies now known to be injurious: nor will a sanitary engineer employ primitive methods of drainage now discarded. We take the best we can find to-day but history helps us to appreciate the best. Editor's Note. My grateful thanks are due to the Rev. J. Keating, S.J., the Rev. V. Moncel, S.J., and Mr. F. F. Urquhart for contributing sections to this Primer: also to the Literary Sub-committee of the Catholic Social Guild and to Canon William Barry, D.D., for many valuable criticisms and suggestions. PART I INTERNATIONAL MORALITY IN GENERAL1 (BY THE EDITOR) (A) DEFINITIONS AND DIVISIONS 4. THERE exist to-day a number of different States. By a State we mean an independent political community with a fixed territory and a single government. Each of these States is a united, organized whole, with a civil government which represents it, and which thinks and acts for it. It is not a mere collection of people who happen to live in a certain country. A State is one thing, though it may be a very complex thing. States as we shall see have rights and duties one to the other. Just as the subjects of any one State are bound to one another and to their State as a whole by moral obligations, so the various States are bound to one another by ties which may be summed up under the titles of International Law and International Morality. 1 In this Part much use has been made of Theodore Meyer's Institutiones Iuris Naturalis, vol. ii. |