Page:Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1889) Vol 2.djvu/215

 us, their latest political descendants, and against which we have here guarded ourselves by the preceding distinctions. This, I say, does not concern us at present:—what the Greeks sought, and what they obtained, was Equality of Right for all Citizens. In a certain sense, we might even say Equality of Rights, for there was no race favoured by the constitution more than another;—but there existed a great inequality of power, which indeed arose only by accident and not by the constitution of the State, but which nevertheless the State could not remedy;—and in so far there did not exist Equality of Rights.

In this way, that which we have set forth as the second stage in the development of the State,—Equality of Right for all,—has arisen in Europe; not by a previous passage through the first stage, that of Despotism, but only because the State began its existence in Greece under other conditions than those amid which it first appeared in Central Asia.

In a still wider circle and under the most interesting circumstances, was this condition of Equality of Right developed in the second country of Europe which became civilized,—namely, in Italy. Here, in our opinion, the first founders of civilization were not individual families, as in the early history of Greece, but actual Colonies;—that is, assemblages of many families from Ancient Greece. Where these Colonies remained by themselves, as occurred in Southern Italy, forming exclusive States out of elements furnished by their own people, they were but a mere continuation of Grecian existence, and had nothing new about them; and on that account have no place in our inquiry. But where these Colonies mingled with the savage native tribes and joined with them in the formation of States, as occurred in Central Italy, wholly new phenomena necessarily ensued. By exactly the same means which were employed by the