Idea for a Universal History with Cosmopolitan Purpose: Fourth Principle

I mean by antagonism the asocial sociability of man, i.e., the propensity of men to enter into a society, which propensity is, however, linked to a constant mutual resistance that threatens to dissolve this society. This propensity apparently is innate in man. Man has an inclination to associate himself because in such a state he feels himself more like a man capable of developing his natural faculties. Man has also a marked propensity to isolate himself because he finds in himself the asocial quality to want to arrange everything according to his own ideas. He therefore expects resistance everywhere, just as he knows of himself that he is inclined to resist others. This resistance awakens all the latent forces in man that drive him to overcome his propensity to be lazy, and so, impelled by vain glory, ambition and avarice, he seeks to achieve astanding among his fellows, whom he does not suffer gladly, but whom he cannot leave. Thus the first steps from barbarism to culture are achieved; for culture actually consists in the social value of man. All man's talents are gradually unfolded, taste is developed. Through continuous enlightenment the basis is laid for a frame of mind that, in the course of time, transforms the raw natural faculty of moral discrimination into definite practical principles. Thus a pathologically enforced coordination of society finally transforms it into a moral whole. Without these essentially unlovely qualities of asociability, from which springs the resistance that everyone must encounter in his egoistic pretensions, all talents would have remained hidden germs. If man lived an Arcadian shepherd's existence of harmony, modesty and mutuality, man, good-natured like the sheep he is herding, would not invest his existence with greater value than that his animals have. Man would not fill the vacuum of creation as regards his end, rational nature. Thanks are due to nature for his quarrelsomeness, his enviously competitive vanity, and for his insatiable desire to possess or to rule, for without them all the excellent natural faculties of mankind would forever remain undeveloped. Man wants concord but nature knows better what is good for his kind; nature wants discord. Man wants to live comfortably and pleasurably but nature intends that he should raise himself out of lethargy and inactive contentment into work and trouble and then he should find means of extricating himself adroitly from these latter. The natural impulses, the sources of asociability and continuous resistance from which so many evils spring, but which at the same time drive man to a new exertion of his powers and thus to a development of his natural faculties, suggest the arrangement of a wise creator and not the hand of an evil spirit who might have ruined this excellent enterprise or spoiled it out of envy.

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