University of Virginia Library

WAR.

The first conflict between man and man was the mere
exertion of physical force, unaided by auxiliary weapons,
—his arm was his buckler, his fist was his mace, and a
broken head the catastrophe of his encounters. The battle
of unassisted strength was succeeded by the more rugged
one of stones and clubs, and war assumed a sanguinary
aspect. As man advanced in refinement, as his faculties
expanded, and his sensibilities became more exquisite,
he grew rapidly more ingenious and experienced in
the art of murdering his fellow beings. He invented a
thousand devices to defend and to assault—the helmet,
the cuirass, and the buckler, the sword, the dart, and the
javelin, prepared him to elude the wound, as well as to
launch the blow. Still urging on, in the brilliant and
philanthropic career of invention, he enlarges and heightens
his powers of defence and injury.—The aries, the
scorpio, the balista, and the catapulta, give a horror and
sublimity to war; and magnify its glory, by increasing its
desolation. Still insatiable, though armed with machinery
that seemed to reach the limits of destructive invention,
and to yield a power of injury, commensurate even with
the desires of revenge—still deeper researches must be
made in the diabolical arcana. With furious zeal he dives
into the bowels of the earth; he toils midst poisonous minerals
and deadly salts—the sublime discovery of gunpowder
blazes upon the world—and, finally, the dreadful art
of fighting by proclamation seems to endow the demon
of war with ubiquity and omnipotence.

This, indeed, is grand!—this, indeed, marks the powers
of mind, and bespeaks that divine endowment of reason,
which distinguishes us from the animals, our inferiors.
The unenlightened brutes content themselves with the

native force which providence has assigned them. The
angry bull butts with his horns, as did his progenitors before
him—the lion, the leopard, and the tiger, seek only
with their talons and their fangs to gratify their sanguinary
fury; and even the subtle serpent darts the same venom,
and uses the same wiles as did his sire before the flood.
Man alone, blessed with the inventive mind, goes on from
discovery to discovery—enlarges and multiplies his powers
of destruction; arrogates the tremendous weapons of Deity
itself, and tasks creation to assist him in murdering his
brother worm.