Page:Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1889) Vol 2.djvu/267

 him in return. We must desire to be so regarded and so treated by him, I have said; but we are not entitled to expect or demand from him any error in this judgment, and therefore we must actually be, and desire to be, instruments of the State, and that to the same extent as he, although it may be in another sphere.

The complete interpenetration of all its members by the State, and therewith the Equality of all men in the State, is first effected by means of the perfect conformity of the Rights of all; and thus perfect Good Manners consist in the supposition of this Equality of Rights, as at least something which ought to come to pass, and which must come to pass;—in acting towards every man as if this must be the case, and likewise in desiring to be treated in return upon this supposition, and not otherwise. It is thus clear that Inequality of Rights is the true source of Bad Manners; and the tacit assumption that we must continue in this state of Inequality is itself Bad Manners.

To make this clear by farther explanation: In the first place, there stand opposite to each other in Society the opulent and cultivated Citizen-class, and the Privileged Classes. Among the former, it is Bad Manners, either, on the one hand, to set too high a value on the distinctions of the latter, and, going beyond those ordinary conventional forms of respect which every reasonable man concedes, to put on a slavish, submissive, and cringing behaviour towards the Privileged Classes; or, on the other hand, enviously to grudge them the distinctions which they enjoy, to indulge in bitterness of expression towards them, and to represent these distinctions in false and hateful colours, either from real antipathy, or from want of mature reflection. These forms of Bad Manners on the one part, naturally produce other forms of Bad Manners on the other; either by the Privileged Classes not spurning the unseemly homage with fitting indignation, but satisfying themselves with holding in little