To stage human progress towards universal harmony as some Manichean tussle between the better and the worse angels of our nature from which (we hope) perpetual peace might ultimately emerge, is a mistake. Peace is not the goal, not a resting place, not some easeful eschaton we may at last contrive for ourselves. We shall define peace other than in contradistinction to war, value it not as an interval in which great things may be achieved, nor write it as a happy lull between historical events, but rather grasp peace as a movement that consolidates all that is best in us. Our efforts to create works of literature, painting, music, architecture, a just society, don’t require peace, but embody peace itself: they are the substance of our will to peace, whose immanent principle we recognise as an irenic force for good. Let us conceptualise peace as bountiful, propulsive, creative; and violence as its parasite. This is the mission of The Irenaut.