Page:Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1889) Vol 2.djvu/250

 for outward expansion. With reference to external affairs, it is a part of this policy to take the weaker neighbouring States under its protection, and thereby make its interest in its own preservation likewise theirs, so that, in possibly succeeding wars, it may be able to calculate upon their power as well as its own. With reference to internal affairs, there are likewise other cares which belong to this policy,—besides the methods which we have already pointed out, of attracting new dwellers to the country, and retaining its old inhabitants;—namely, the care for the preservation and increase of the Human Race, by encouraging marriage and the rearing of children, by sanitary regulations, &c.,—the promotion of the dominion of man over Nature, which we have already sufficiently described, by the systematic and progressive improvement of Agriculture, Manufactures, and Commerce, and by the maintenance of the necessary equilibrium between these three branches of Industry; in short, by all that may be comprehended in the idea of Political Science, when that idea is thoroughly understood. Those who deride such endeavours under the name of Economy, have only looked upon the outward vesture, and have not penetrated to the essential nature and true meaning of these forms of Industry. Among other questions, this one too has been proposed:—Whether the population of a State may not become too large? In our opinion, the indolent and unproductive Citizen is at all times, and in every state of the population, superfluous and unnecessary; but when, with a growing population, Agriculture, Manufactures, and Commerce also increase in suitable proportions to each other, then the country can never have too many inhabitants; for the productiveness of Nature, when systematically cultivated, may be regarded as inexhaustible.

All these measures are, as we have shown above, the proper and natural purposes of the State;—in the present Political System, however, they are even forced upon it by