Page:Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1889) Vol 2.djvu/251

 necessity. It is quite possible that, in what we have now set forth, we may have merely described that which existing States, who lay claim to high culture, actually do and practise; but we have set it forth with a new significance. We have seen that these things are not done by mere chance, but that these States are compelled to them by necessity; and we have thereby pointed out the guarantee which we possess that they must continue to do these things, and to do them more and more thoroughly, if they would not lose their place in the onward throng of Nations, and be finally vanquished and overthrown.

Finally, there is, in the present Political System of Europe, another purpose given to the State by the same necessity,—namely, that establishment of Equal Rights for all men which has never yet been realized in the world, and the gradual abolition of those social inequalities which still exist in Christian Europe as remnants of the Feudal System. I touch upon this subject in my present position without fear; I believe that I should do wrong to the honourable assembly whom I address were I to harbour the slightest doubt of their willingness to have this subject discussed. Who is there among us who thinks himself superior to the People, who, even with such distinctions, has not, directly or indirectly, reaped advantage from them? It is right that we should accept whatever is offered to us by our Age, but we ought also to be content at all times to relinquish Privileges which the Age can no longer confer.

The necessity which is thus imposed on the State arises in the following way:—Compelled, constantly and regularly, to call forth and appropriate as much of the power of its less favoured citizens as they can devote to it consistently with their own personal freedom and subsistence, it cannot, when there is need of still greater effort, exact more from them than it has already received. There remains no other way of escape from the difficulty, than to call upon the