Page:Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1889) Vol 2.djvu/182

 powers to the arbitrary will of his master; who therefore cannot be the head of a family, but is a member of a foreign family, and a bondsman for life; his master having no other reason for maintaining him but that his maintenance is more profitable than his destruction. Freemen, I said, as such, and on the supposition that they still remain free, must subject themselves to a foreign will;—and I said so for this reason:—It belongs to the Idea of a State, that the subjected may at least themselves become a purpose; and this can only occur when in their subjection they still remain free within a certain sphere, and this sphere of their liberty afterwards comes within the purpose of the State when the State advances to higher Culture;—but the Slave as such, and in the case of his never attaining freedom, cannot himself become a purpose; he is at best, like every other animal, a mere instrument of his master’s purpose; but by no means a purpose himself. In this subjection of Freemen to the oversight and rule of other Freemen, there are then two, or, if we reckon otherwise, three cases possible: and,—as this subjection is the origin of the State,—there are just as many possible fundamental forms of the State, through which it must pass towards its accomplishment; and I entreat you to observe well, and even to commit to memory, these fundamental forms, as the foundation upon which we intend to rest all our subsequent disquisitions upon this subject.

Namely,—by this subjection the general mass of individuals who have thereby come into combination, considered as a completed Whole, are either All without exception subjected to the Whole, that is, to the common purpose of All,—as it should be in the Perfect State; or they are not All subjected to the Whole. The latter case, where All are not subjected to the Whole, can only be supposed possible in this way,—as the subjected at least are All subjected,—that the subjectors have not, on