[Introduction] The order of development of the subject matter through which a philosophy of humanity and a universal history of the nations are formed at one and the same time

399. With the aid of the foregoing necessary discoveries, this Science becomes a philosophy of humanity in virtue of the series of causes it provides, and a universal history of the nations in virtue of the sequence of effects it traces. It takes as its subject matter such nations as have their own religions and laws, cultivating the language appropriate to them, and which they defend with their own arms, for such nations alone are properly free. But Providence ordains that when nations lack these things, rather than annihilate themselves in the rash of civil wars that break out when peoples trample on their laws and religions, they proceed to submit themselves to preservation under other better nations. Hence, in the ‘Idea of the Work’, the whole of this book was comprehended under the expression foedera generis humani [‘treaties of mankind’], which explains how, by passing from one nation to another, the natural law of the gentes preserves mankind itself to the highest degree possible.

[Chapter I] The uniformity of the course that humanity takes among the nations

400. The uniformity of the course that humanity takes among the nations can readily be seen from a comparison of two very dissimilar nations, the Athenians and the Romans, one a nation of philosophers, the other a nation of soldiers.