Page:Masterpieces of German literature volume 10.djvu/495

 history. A constantly advancing victory over this weakness—that is the development of liberty which history portrays.

In this struggle we should never have taken a step forward, nor should we ever take another, if we had carried it on, or tried to carry it on, as individuals, each for himself alone.

It is the State which has the office of perfecting this development of freedom, and of the human race to freedom. The State is this unity of individuals in a moral composite—a unity which increases a millionfold the powers of all individuals who are included in this union, which multiplies a millionfold the powers which are at the command of them all as individuals.

The purpose of the State, then, is not to protect merely the personal liberty of the individual and the property which, according to the idea of the capitalist, he must have before he can participate in the State; the purpose of the State is, rather, through this union to put individuals in a position to attain objects, to reach a condition of existence which they could never reach as individuals, to empower them to attain a standard of education, power, and liberty which would be utterly impossible for them, one and all, merely as individuals. The object of the State is, accordingly, to bring the human being to positive and progressive development—in a word, to shape human destiny, i. e., the culture of which mankind is capable, into actual existence. It is the training and development of the human race for freedom.

Such is the real moral nature of the State—its true and higher task. This is so truly the case that for all time it has been carried out through the force of circumstances, by the State, even without its will, even without its knowledge, even against the will of its leaders.

But the working class, the lower classes of society in general, have, on account of the helpless position in which their members find themselves as individuals, the sure instinct that just this must be the function of the State—the