This articles examines Henry Maine’s arguments about the prospects of achieving a lasting and comprehensive peace. In a series of lectures on International Law , Maine famously held that ‘war is as old as mankind but peace is a modern invention’. The sentence situates Maine within a long-standing debate on the state of nature. The article reconstructs the meaning of the sentence by interpreting it in light of Maine’s broader theoretical framework and comparative-historical approach. An important conclusion of the article is that Maine never meant the sentence to express a gullible evolutionist perspective on the problem of war and peace. The invention of peace would not, Maine understood, solve the problem of war. Another important finding concerns the centrality of historical arguments to the debate on the state of nature. Proper historical consideration, the article concludes, does not resolve the problem of the state of nature, but dissolves it.

中文翻译：

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亨利·缅因州与现代和平发明

本文探讨了亨利·缅因州关于实现持久全面和平的前景的论点。在一系列有关国际法的演讲中，缅因州著名地宣称“战争与人类一样古老，而和平却是现代发明”。该句子将缅因州置于关于自然状态的长期辩论中。本文根据缅因州更广泛的理论框架和比较历史学方法对句子进行解释来重构句子的含义。这篇文章的一个重要结论是，缅因州从未打算用这句话来表达对战争与和平问题的灵活的进化论观点。缅因州理解，和平的发明无法解决战争问题。另一个重要发现涉及历史论证在自然状态辩论中的中心地位。