The primitive ideal of honour and nobility – rooted in that first of sins, ‘Superbia’ – is superseded in more advanced phases of civilization by the ideal of justice, or rather, this ideal attaches itself to it and, however miserably put into practice, henceforth becomes the recognized and desiderated norm of human society, which has now grown from a huddle of tribes to an association of great nations and states. The ‘law of nations’ derives from the agonistic sphere as the consciousness, or voice of conscience, which says: ‘this goes against honour, is against the rules.’ Once a thorough-going system of international obligations based on ethics has been developed, there is hardly any room for the agonistic element in the relations of states, for the system tries to sublimate the instinct of political struggle in a true sense of justice and equity