Page:Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1889) Vol 2.djvu/212

 in the public undertakings, as well as the honour arising from them, fell to the lot of the governing people; the members of the subdued nations being generally excluded from all participation in the government; but the ruling power was still far from being even thoroughly acquainted with all the powers of the governed, and still farther from being able to lay claim to their services without limitation or forbearance. That the so-called great King of the Persians, the ruler of this immense territory and of these countless nations, was yet almost wholly unaided by them is evident from the long series of years which were requisite to complete the armament against Greece; and still more from the disgraceful result of that expedition.

This condition of things was, in our opinion, the first form of the State:—The subjugation of free nations for certain purposes of a governing nation;—not as yet a complete subjugation proceeding upon any regular and fixed rule; but only as suggested by the pressure of necessity, the facility of enforcing it, or the accidental presence of a satrap or a pacha; in other respects combined with perfect freedom or at all events with anarchy in their other relations on the part of the governed people:—or in one word, ; the essential nature of which does not consist in mere barbarity of conduct, but only in the existence of a governing race, and of subdued nations excluded from participation in the government and, with reference to the means of their subsistence, left wholly to themselves; whose participation in the burdens of this relation is determined only by caprice and not by rule, as is also the case with the direction of civil policy and legislation; there being consequently no established law whatsoever:—Despotism, as this relation still exists in Europe, under the eye of the observer, in the Turkish Empire which, amid the general progress of surrounding nations, remains to this moment in the very earliest Epoch of the development of the State.