पृष्ठ 622 / 1391

The necessity for the establishment of an Universal Empire is

proved partly by a priori arguments such as the unity of God and

the unity of the family or nation; partly by perversions of

Scripture and history, by false analogies of nature, by

misapplied quotations from the classics, and by odd scraps and

commonplaces of logic, showing a familiar but by no means exact

knowledge of Aristotle (of Plato there is none). But a more

convincing argument still is the miserable state of the world,

which he touchingly describes. He sees no hope of happiness or

peace for mankind until all nations of the earth are comprehended

in a single empire. The whole treatise shows how deeply the idea

of the Roman Empire was fixed in the minds of his contemporaries.

Not much argument was needed to maintain the truth of a theory

which to his own contemporaries seemed so natural and congenial.