Man is not better treated by nature in his first start than her other
works are; so long as he is unable to act for himself as an independent
intelligence she acts for him. But the very fact that constitutes him a
man is that he does not remain stationary, where nature has placed him,
that he can pass with his reason, retracing the steps nature had made
him anticipate, that he can convert the work of necessity into one of
free solution, and elevate physical necessity into a moral law.
When man is raised from his slumber in the senses he feels that he is a
man; he surveys his surroundings and finds that he is in a state. He was
introduced into this state by the power of circumstances, before he
could freely select his own position. But as a moral being he cannot
possibly rest satisfied with a political condition forced upon him by
necessity, and only calculated for that condition; and it would be
unfortunate if this did satisfy him. In many cases man shakes off this
blind law of necessity, by his free spontaneous action, of which among
many others we have an instance, in his ennobling by beauty and
suppressing by moral influence the powerful impulse implanted in him by
nature in the passion of love. Thus, when arrived at maturity, he
recovers his childhood by an artificial process, he founds a state of
nature in his ideas, not given him by any experience, but established by
the necessary laws and conditions of his reason, and he attributes to
this ideal condition an object, an aim, of which he was not cognizant in
the actual reality of nature. He gives himself a choice of which he was
not capable before, and sets to work just as if he were beginning anew,
and were exchanging his original state of bondage for one of complete
independence, doing this with complete insight and of his free decision.
He is justified in regarding this work of political thraldom as
non-existing though a wild and arbitrary caprice may have founded its
work very artfully; though it may strive to maintain it with great
arrogance and encompass it with a halo of veneration. For the work of
blind powers possesses no authority before which freedom need bow, and
all must be made to adapt itself to the highest end which reason has set
up in his personality. It is in this wise that a people in a state of
manhood is justified in exchanging a condition of thraldom for one of
moral freedom.
Now the term natural condition can be applied to every political body
which owes its establishment originally to forces and not to laws, and
such a state contradicts the moral nature of man, because lawfulness can
alone have authority over this. At the same time this natural condition
is quite sufficient for the physical man, who only gives himself laws in
order to get rid of brute force. Moreover, the physical man is a
_reality_, and the moral man _problematical_. Therefore when the reason
suppresses the natural condition, as she must if she wishes to
substitute her own, she weighs the real physical man against the
problematical moral man, she weighs the existence of society against a
possible, though morally necessary, ideal of society. She takes from man
something which he really possesses, and without which he possesses
nothing, and refers him as a substitute to something that he ought to
possess and might possess; and if reason had relied too exclusively on
him she might, in order to secure him a state of humanity in which he is
wanting and can want without injury to his life, have robbed him even of
the means of animal existence, which is the first necessary _condition_
of his being a man. Before he had opportunity to hold firm to the law
with his will, reason would have withdrawn from his feet the ladder of
nature.
The great point is, therefore, to reconcile these two considerations, to
prevent physical society from ceasing for a moment _in time_, while the
moral society is being formed in the _idea_; in other words, to prevent
its existence from being placed in jeopardy for the sake of the moral
dignity of man. When the mechanic has to mend a watch he lets the wheels
run out; but the living watchworks of the state have to be repaired
while they act, and a wheel has to be exchanged for another during its
revolutions. Accordingly props must be sought for to support society and
keep it going while it is made independent of the natural condition from
which it is sought to emancipate it.
This prop is not found in the natural character of man, who, being
selfish and violent, directs his energies rather to the destruction than
to the preservation of society. Nor is it found in his moral character,
which has to be formed, which can never be worked upon or calculated on
by the lawgiver, because it is free and _never appears_. It would seem,
therefore, that another measure must be adopted. It would seem that the
physical character of the arbitrary must be separated from moral
freedom; that it is incumbent to make the former harmonize with the laws
and the latter dependent on impressions; it would be expedient to remove
the former still farther from matter and to bring the latter somewhat
more near to it; in short, to produce a third character related to both
the others—the physical and the moral—paving the way to a transition
from the sway of mere force to that of law, without preventing the
proper development of the moral character, but serving rather as a
pledge in the sensuous sphere of a morality in the unseen.