the principle of abiding by one’s duty (to the State at large).  An Athenian citizen did what was required of him, as it were from instinct; but if I reflect on the object of my activity I must have the consciousness that my will has been called into exercise.  But morality is duty—­substantial right, a “second nature,” as it has been justly called; for the first nature of man is his primary, merely animal, existence.

The development in extenso of the idea of the State belongs to the philosophy of jurisprudence; but it must be observed that in the theories of our time various errors are current respecting it, which pass for established truths and have become fixed prejudices.  We will mention only a few of them, giving prominence to such as have a reference to the object of our history.

The error which first meets us is the direct opposite of our principle that the State presents the realization of freedom—­the opinion—­that man is free by nature, but that in society, in the State, to which nevertheless he is irresistibly impelled, he must limit this natural freedom.  That man is free by nature is quite correct in one sense, namely, that he is so according to the idea of humanity; but we imply thereby that he is such only in virtue of his destiny—­that he has an undeveloped power to become such; for the “nature” of an object is exactly synonymous with its “idea.”  But the view in question imports more than this.  When man is spoken of as “free by nature,” the mode of his existence as well as his destiny is implied; his merely natural and primary condition is intended.  In this sense a “state of nature” is assumed in which mankind at large is in the possession of its natural rights with the unconstrained exercise and enjoyment of its freedom.  This assumption is not raised to the dignity of the historical fact; it would indeed be difficult, were the attempt seriously made, to point out any such condition as actually existing or as having ever occurred.  Examples of a savage state of life can be pointed out, but they are marked by brutal passions and deeds of violence; while, however rude and simple their, conditions, they involve social arrangements which, to use the common phrase, “restrain freedom.”  That assumption is one of those nebulous images which theory produces, an idea which it cannot avoid originating, but which it fathers upon real existence without sufficient historical justification.

What we find such a state of nature to be, in actual experience, answers exactly to the idea of a merely natural condition.  Freedom as the ideal of that which is original and natural does not exist as original and natural; rather must it first be sought out and won, and that by an incalculable medial discipline of the intellectual and moral powers.  The state of nature is, therefore, predominantly that of injustice and violence, of untamed natural impulses, of inhuman deeds and feelings.  Limitation is certainly produced