Page:Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1889) Vol 2.djvu/262

 much to be desired that internal disorder, carried to the highest extreme, and the frustration of its most cherished and well-considered schemes by means of this disorder, should force it to return to the path of Wisdom.

It may be remarked, with reference to Judicial Procedure, that whatever respect may be due to the endeavour absolutely to prevent the possibility of an innocent person being convicted, and although this endeavour must never cease to be made; yet the opposite duty,—to take care that no guilty person remain undiscovered and unpunished,—is by no means a less important task; that there is nothing to hinder the solution of both;—nay, that without the solution of the latter that of the former cannot be attained, but on the contrary that, in such a case, the State would be found hindering and obstructing the accomplishment of its own purposes.

At this point, I, as an individual, have nothing further to say, but you yourselves must judge how far this influence of Legislation upon Manners has actually proceeded in Europe, and particularly in those parts of Europe where the State is most thoroughly cultivated; wherein the defect, if defect there be, consists; and thus in what direction the New Age must proceed in its onward course.

But be it as it may with this influence of Legislation upon the negative side of Public Morality, yet Public Manners, wherever they exist, in turn exert a powerful influence upon the State, and upon the mode and form of its Legislation. This, which we shall immediately prove, being presupposed, it is obvious that a course of action thus directed, adopted by the State in its Legislation, is itself but a part of the Morality of the Age, since it proceeds solely from the Manners of the Citizens, and is determined by them and not by Legislation as such; and,—since in that case it does not even restrain the State from injustice, such injustice being already wholly inconsistent with Legislation, but only guides this Legislation