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.