Note 53 — Chapter XX · On Punishments.

Nothing forms a more striking contrast between ancient and modern war, then the personal animosities, which seemed to operate upon the combatants in the former, and the public and national objects, WITHOUT ANY PERSONAL CONCERN, upon which the latter are undertaken. Peruse any ancient historian, or the battles in Homer and Virgil, WHICH THOUGH FICTIONS, DESCRIBE THE MANNERS OF THE AGE, and you see combatants engaged, on whom the laws of nature and of nations seem to have lost their force. Read the accounts of modern warfare and you find hostilities commenced, not from private animosity, but from some great and national object, in the prosecution of which the feelings of the individuals appointed to conduct them are not the only springs of action.