Page:Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1889) Vol 2.djvu/177

 or will; which order might be called the Art of Nature: and in this sense alone I call the State, in the first Ages of the Human Race, an artistic institution. What we have already set forth as the dedication of all individual powers to the purpose of the Race, is the Absolute State according to its form; i.e. the existence of a State at all depends simply on the dedication of the individual powers to a purpose of the Race whatever that purpose of the Race may be. It remains, however, quite undecided by this definition of the State, how many purposes of the Race to the attainment of which the individual power is to be dedicated can be prosecuted in particular States;—and it remains just as undecided by this definition what is the absolute purpose of the Race, by the disclosure of which the material of the State,—the true meaning and purpose of it,—might be described.

And now, after these preliminary definitions, to examine more closely the Idea which we have announced: In the first place, the State which has to direct a necessarily finite sum of individual powers towards the common purpose, must regard itself as a completed whole; and, as its common purpose is identical with that of the Human Race, it must regard the aggregate of its citizens as the Human Race itself. It is not irreconcilable with this view that it may also entertain purposes connected with others who are not numbered among its Citizens: for these purposes will still be its own, undertaken merely on its own account,—those, namely, to the attainment of which it directs the individual powers of its own Citizens;—and in every case, therefore, it devotes these powers to itself, considered as the Highest, as the Race. It is therefore the same thing whether we say, as above, that the State directs all individual powers towards the life of the Race; or, as here, that it directs them towards its own life as the State: only that this latter expression first acquires its true meaning through the former, as we shall soon see.