Page:Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1889) Vol 2.djvu/107

 hovering between authority and mere emptiness is a necessary step in the progress of our Race, whereby it may first be set free from blind constraint, and then be impelled towards Knowledge by the oppressive sense of its own vacuity. Let these men, then, with their pretensions about unlimited Freedom of Thought and unrestrained Public Opinion, make what demands they please; and let no man hinder them from degrading themselves as far, and making themselves as ridiculous, as they please;—this must be permitted them. And who should desire to hinder them? Not the State,—at least no State that understands its own interest. The State has charge of watching over the outward actions of its citizens, and ordering these actions by means of imperative laws which, if they are rightly adapted to the nation and imposed without distinction upon all, must, without danger of failure, secure and maintain the order which is contemplated. The opinions of the citizens are not actions;—let these opinions be even dangerous, still if crime is sure of its threatened punishment it will be suppressed despite of opinion. The State may either attempt to change the opinions of its citizens for its own advantage:—and in this case it partly undertakes a thing which it cannot accomplish, and partly shows that its laws are not adapted to the existing condition of the nation to which this system of opinion belongs; or, that the governing power is inadequate, and, being unable to trust to its own resources, needs the aid of a foreign power which yet it cannot incorporate with itself. Or, the State may attempt,—perhaps with the purest intentions, and from the warmest zeal on the part of its administrators for the advancement of the dominion of Reason,—it may attempt to combat the prevailing opinions by means of external power;—and in this case it undertakes a thing in which it can never succeed, for all men feel that it then takes the form of injustice, and the persecuted opinion, being thus to a