8903. WAR, Peace vs.—[continued].
The cannibals of Europe are going to eating one another again. A
war between Russia and Turkey is like the
battle of the kite and snake. Whichever destroys
the other, leaves a destroyer the less
for the world. This pugnacious humor of
mankind seems to be the law of his nature,
one of the obstacles to too great multiplication
provided in the mechanism of the Universe.
The cocks of the henyard kill one another
up. Bears, bulls, rams, do the same.
And the horse, in his wild state, kills all the
young males, until worn down with age and
war, some vigorous youth kills him, and takes
to himself the harem of females. I hope we
shall prove how much happier for man the
Quaker policy is, and that the life of the
feeder is better than that of the fighter; and
it is some consolation that the desolation by
these maniacs of one part of the earth is the
means of improving it in other parts. Let
the latter be our office, and let us milk the
cow, while the Russian holds her by the horns,
and the Turk by the tail.—
To John Adams. Washington ed. vii, 244.
Ford ed., x, 217.
(M.
1822)
