Page:Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1889) Vol 2.djvu/254

 state of things at least in those countries where the State has attained the highest degree of Culture, i.e. the greatest internal strength, and the greatest amount of commanding influence upon the Christian Republic of Nations. We have explained unequivocally enough, and so as to place our meaning beyond the reach of misconception, that this interpenetration of the Citizen by the State, and the changing of his whole outward activity into an instrument of the State, is not here made the subject of censure, as it has been by a certain visionary scheme of unrestricted freedom, which sometimes calls itself Philosophy; but, on the contrary, we have shown it to be a necessary purpose of the State and of Nature. We do indeed desire Freedom, and we ought to desire it;—but true Freedom can be obtained only by means of the highest obedience to Law. How it necessarily arises therefrom, we have, I think, clearly shown on two different occasions, in the course of these lectures. And we have not forgotten to show likewise, that the State having once obtained possession of the National Power,—a possession which indeed it will never relinquish,—it will yet not always employ this Power for the narrow and exclusive purpose of its own preservation,—a purpose imposed on it only by the faults of the time;—but when that Endless Peace shall be born to which we must surely come at last, it will then direct it towards worthier aims.

The most cultivated State in the European Republic of Nations is in every Age without exception the most active and enterprising; and each State strives most energetically in that Epoch of its existence when it is no longer under the necessity of struggling to maintain its relative position among other Nations, but now rather endeavours to acquire sufficient strength itself to direct and modify, or even at pleasure to destroy, the general Balance of Power; the latter power being impossible without the former;—and these efforts will be the