ABSTRACT

We can decide which advantages we wish our present worldwide society to ensure and

which ends we wish it to promote. An understanding of the workings of international

societies in the past helps us to translate our wishes realistically into practice, by showing

us what modifications of our present international society are practicable, what

advantages they might bring and at what price. A realistic understanding is very difficult

to obtain if we remain imprisoned in the conventional legitimacies and half-conscious

assumptions of our own time. We need a broader base of comparison. As the natural

sciences and medicine look for many examples of a phenomenon in order to understand it

well enough to modify it, so history can enable us to distinguish the area of necessity

from the area of choice.