Page:Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1889) Vol 2.djvu/180

 power which is known and accessible to the State is necessary to it for the furtherance of its purpose:—its purpose is Culture, and in order to maintain the position to which a State has already attained, and to advance still further, it requires at all times the exertion of every available power;—for only through the united power of All has it attained this position. Should it not take the whole into account, it must recede instead of advancing, and lose its position in the ranks of Culture: and what would further arise out of this we shall see at another time. Secondly, I ask,—What would the Citizens do with the remaining power which should in that case be left for their free use?—Shall they remain idle and leave this power unemployed? This is contrary to every form of Culture and is in itself Barbarism; the cultivated man cannot be inactive or unemployed beyond the necessary period of rest required by his sensuous nature, and this period of rest the State in any case would have left to him. Or shall they apply this power for the advancement of their individual purposes? In a Perfect State no just individual purpose can exist which is not included in the purposes of the Community, and for the attainment of which the Community does not provide. Should it finally be said,—This power may be applied by the Individual for the purpose of his own private and undisturbed Culture;—then my answer would be,—There is no kind of Culture which does not proceed from society, that is from the State, in the strictest sense of the word; and none on which it is not incumbent to strive to return to the State again: this Culture is therefore itself a purpose of the State, and its advancement in each Individual according to his degree must have already been taken into account in the Perfect State. We shall afterwards take care that this shall not be misunderstood in its application to the Actual State: here we speak only of the Perfect State, and to it the