Page:Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1889) Vol 2.djvu/252

 Privileged Orders and Classes. Although this may occur at first only in a passing emergency, the desire to command, at all times and by right, the power which it has once commanded, will easily be excited; and the way to its accomplishment, once discovered, will be readily found again. Add to this, that even the unprivileged members of the State would render more efficient service to it if they were not forced to be subservient to the Privileged Orders. A State which constantly seeks to increase its internal strength, is thus forced to desire the gradual abolition of all Privileges, and the establishment of Equal Rights for all men, in order that it, the State itself, may enter upon its own true Right,—to apply the whole surplus power of all its Citizens, without exception, for the furtherance of its own purposes. The truest and most fruitful view of these Privileges, would thus, in our opinion, be the following:—They are a public treasure, committed by the infant State, which neither required to employ its whole powers nor knew how to employ them, to the hands of its more cultivated members, to be freely employed by them, according to their best judgment, for the promotion of free Culture. The more fully and efficiently this purpose has been carried out, the more is the internal strength of the State gradually increased through the services of these privileged members, and the longer may they be left in possession of the trust which they so faithfully administer. But should a time arrive when this free Culture must give place to an Artificial Civilization proceeding according to Laws; and when the State must undertake the direct administration, by its own hands, of this capital hitherto deposited with them; then it must demand restitution of these Privileges, but in such a manner that no sudden overthrow of existing relations may ensue,—and therefore a gradual restitution. The truly Free and Noble will readily make this sacrifice as an offering on their