ABSTRACT
There is no more striking expression of that change of view which has led to the idea of an universal commonwealth of law embracing all humanity than the significance which the conceptions of war and peace have assumed in modern legal theory. The idea of the legal commonwealth of humanity has transformed the sea into the great territory of the international commonwealth. For humanity as a whole, a society will always be the highest form of union possible, at least within any future that we can now anticipate. The idea of humanity is not primitive, but a product of gradual development, and still in process of growth. The intellectual life took its rise in isolated and disconnected beginnings. The intellectual nature of the commonwealth of humanity is apparent in the fact that its conscious expression, the idea of humanity, was originally not the product of commercial and economic interests, but the outgrowth of intellectual forces.
