Immanuel KANT, 1784: 'Idea for a universal history from a cosmopolitan point of view'. (English translation, Lewis White BECK), In: Ernst BEHLER ed., 1986, Philosophical Writings, New York: Continuum.
The means employed by Nature to bring about the development of all the capacities of men is their antagonism in society, so far as this is, in the end, the cause of a lawful order among men. [p. 252.]
The history of mankind can be seen, in the large, as the realization of Nature's secret plan to bring forth a perfectly constituted state as the only condition in which the capacities of mankind can be fully developed, and also bring forth that external relation among states which is perfectly adequate to this end. [p. 258.]