Treitschke, his doctrine of German destiny and of international relations : together with a study of his life and work |
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FREEDOM. |
 | FREEDOM. Treitschke, his doctrine of German destiny and of international relations : |  |
FREEDOM.
WHEN shall we see the last of those timid
spirits who find it needful to increase the burden
of life by self-created torture, to whom every
advance of the human mind is but one sign more of
the decay of our race—of the approach of the Day of
Judgment? The great majority of our contemporaries
are again beginning, thank Heaven! to
believe quite sturdily and heartily in themselves,
yet we are weak enough to repeat some, at least,
of the gloomy predictions of those atrabilious
spirits. It has become a commonplace assumption
that all-conquering culture will at last supplant
national morality by a morality of mankind, and
transform the world into a cosmopolitan, primitive
pap. But the same law holds good of nations, as
of individuals, who show less differentiation in
childhood than in mature years. In other words,
if a people has vitality enough to keep itself and
its nationality going in the merciless race-struggle
of history, every advance in civilization will certainly
bring its external life in closer contact with
other peoples, but it will bring into clearer relief
its more refined, its deeper idiosyncrasies. We all
follow the Paris fashions, we are linked with neighbouring
nations by a thousand different interests;
British intellectual world is concerned, are undoubtedly
more independent than they were seven
hundred years ago, when the peasant all over
Europe spent his life fettered by patriarchal
custom, whilst the ecclesiastic in every country
derived his knowledge from the same sources,
and the nobility of Latin Christendom created for
itself a common code of honour and morality
under the walls of Jerusalem. That lively exchange
of ideas between nations, on which the
present generation rightly plumes itself, has never
been a mere give and take.
We are fortified in this consoling knowledge when
we see how the ideas of a German classic about
the highest object of human thought—about
freedom—have recently been developed in a very
individual way by two distinguished political
thinkers of France and England. When Wilhelm
von Humboldt's essay on the limits of the operations
of the State appeared for the first time in
complete form, a few years ago, some sensation
was caused by that brilliant work in Germany
too. We were rejoiced to get a deeper insight
into the evolution of one of our chief men. The
more refined minds delightedly detected the
inspiring breath of the golden age of German
humanity, for it is indeed only in Schiller's nearly-related
letters on the æsthetic education of the
human race that the bright ideal of a beautiful
humanity, which fascinated Germans during that
and distinction. The gifted youth who had just
had his first look into the self-complacent red-tapeism
of Frederick William II's bureaucracy,
and had turned away, chilled by its lifeless formalities,
in order to live a life of æsthetic leisure
at home—he was certainly to be forgiven for
thinking very poorly of the State. Dalberg had
asked him to write the little book—a prince who
had the intention of lavishing profusely on his
country all the good things of life by means of an
administration that would know everything, and
look after everything. The young thinker emphasized
all the more keenly the fact that the
State is nothing but an institution for purposes of
security; that it must never again interfere, directly
or indirectly, with a nation's morals or character;
that a man was freest when the State was least
active. We, of the present generation, know only
too well that the true cause of the ruin of the old
German State was that all free minds set themselves
in such morbid opposition to the State
that they fled from it like young Humboldt,
instead of serving it like Humboldt when grown to
a man, and elevating it by the nobility of their
free human development. The doctrine which
sees in the State merely a hindrance, a necessary
evil, seems obsolete to the German of to-day.
Curiously enough, though, this youthful work of
Humboldt's is now being glorified by John Stuart
Mill, in his book On Liberty, and by Edward
mine of political wisdom for the troubles of the
present time.
Mill is a faithful son of those genuinely German
middle classes of England, which, since the days
of Richard II have preferentially represented our
country's inner essence, its spiritual work both
in good and bad respects, both by an earnest desire
for truth and by a gloomy, fanatical zeal in religious
belief. He has become a rich man since he
discovered and recognized the most precious jewel
of our people, German idealism. Speaking from
that free watch-tower he utters words of reproach,
bitter words, against his fellow-countrymen's
confused thinking; and unfortunately, also, against
the present generation, bitter words such as only
the honoured national economist would dare to
speak unpunished. But, like a true-born Englishman,
as a pupil of Bentham, he tests Kant's ideas
by the standard of the useful, the "well-comprehended,
permanent" utility of course, and therein
shows, in his own person, the deep abyss which
will always separate the two nations' intellectual
activities. He wavers between the English and
German views of the world—in his book On Liberty,
just as in his latest work, Utilitarianism—and
finally gets out of the difficulty by attributing
an ideal meaning to Bentham's purely materialistic
thoughts, which brings them close to the
German view. With the help of the apostle of
German humanity he contrives to praise the
or nothing, to the beautiful humanity of German-Hellenic
classicism. Laboulaye, on the other
hand, belongs to that small school of keen-sighted
Liberals, which feels the weakness of their country
to reside in French centralization, and endeavours
to re-awaken the germs of German civilization
which are there slumbering under the Keltic-Roman
régime. The talented author deals with
historical facts, rather boldly than thoroughly;
briefly, he is of opinion that Christianity was the
first to recognize the worth and dignity of the
individual. Well, then, our glorious heathen Humboldt
must be a downright Christian philosopher,
and with the nineteenth century, the age must be
approaching when the ideas of Christianity shall
be completely realized, and the individual, not
the State, shall rule. The Frenchman will convince
only a small group of believers among his
numerous readers. Mill's book, on the other
hand, has been received with the greatest applause
by his fellow-countrymen. They have
called it the gospel of the nineteenth century.
As a fact, both works strike notes which have
a mighty echo in the heart of every modern man;
it is therefore instructive to investigate whether
they really expound the principles of genuine
freedom.
Although we have learnt to assign a deeper
foundation and a richer meaning to the words of
the Greek philosopher, no thinker has surpassed
discovered. He thinks, in his exhaustive, :empirical
way, that freedom embraces two things: the
suitability of the citizens to live as they prefer,
and the sharing of the citizens in the State-government
(ruling, and at the same time, being
ruled). The one-sidedness, which is the lever
of all human progress brought it about that the
nations have hardly ever aspired to the full conception
of freedom. It is, on the contrary, well
known that the Greeks preferred political freedom
in a narrower sense, and readily sacrificed the
free activity of the individual to a beautiful and
sound existence as a community. The love of
political liberty, on the part of the ancients, was
certainly by no means so exclusive as is generally
believed. That definition of the Greek thinker
proves that they were by no means lacking in the
comprehension of a life, lived after its own will
and pleasure, of civic, personal freedom. Aristotle
knows very well that a State-administration is
even thinkable which does not include the national
life, taken in sum; he expressly declares that States
are particularly distinguished from each other,
by the question whether everything, or nothing,
or how much is shared by the citizens. At any
rate, the idea was dominant in the mature State
of antiquity, that the citizen is only a part of the
State, that true virtue is realized only in the State.
Political thinkers among the ancients, therefore,
occupy themselves solely with the questions:
State be protected? Only occasionally, as a slight
misgiving, is the deeper question stirred: How shall
the citizen be protected from the State? The
ancients were assured that a power which a people
exercises over itself, needs no limitation. How
different are the German conceptions of freedom,
which lay chief emphasis on the unlimited right
of personality! In the Middle Age the State
began everywhere, with an implacable combat of
the State-power against the desire for independence
on the part of individuals, guilds, classes, which
was hostile to the State; and we Germans experienced
in our own persons with what loss of power
and genuine freedom the "Libertat" of the minor
princes, the "freedoms of the Honourable classes"
were bought. If, at length, in the course of this
struggle, which in later times was gloriously
settled by an absolute Monarchy, the majesty,
the unity of the State was preserved, a transformation
would take place in the people's ideas of
freedom, and a fresh quarrel would start. No
longer is the attempt made to separate the individual
from a State-power, whose necessity has
been understood. But there is a demand that
the State-power should not be independent of the
people; it should become an actual popular administration,
working within established forms, and
bound by the will of the majority of the citizens.
Everybody knows how immeasurably far from
that goal our Fatherland still is. What Vittorio
nearly a hundred years ago:
"Di far con penna ai falsi imperj offesa",
On the Fulda, on the Leine, and probably also
on the Spree, a pusillanimous German might
even to-day repeat Alfieri's question: Ought a
man who is steeped in the feeling of civism, to take
the responsibility of bringing children into the
world, under the yoke of a tyranny? Ought he
to generate beings who, the more sensitive their
conscience the stronger their sense of justice, are
bound to suffer the more severely beneath that
perversion of all ideas of honour, justice, and
shame, whereby a tyranny poisons a people?
What, however, Alfieri himself experienced, did
not happen in the case of the peoples. When,
having reached grown-up age, he published the
savage pamphlet, On Tyranny, which he had once
written in holy zeal as a youth, he was obliged
himself to confess: To-day I should be wanting
in the courage, or, more correctly speaking, the
fury, which was requisite for the authorship of
such a book. The nations to-day, regard with
similar feelings the abstract hatred of tyrants of
the past century. We no longer ask: "Come si
debbe morire nella tirannide," but we stand with
determined, invincible confidence, in the midst of
the fight for political freedom, the result of which
the common lot of everything human has dominated
this struggle too, and this time, also, the
thoughts of the nations largely anticipated actual
conditions. How poor in vitality, in fruitfulness,
are the partisans of absolutism when confronted
with the people's demand for freedom! When two
mighty streams of thought dash roaring at one
another, a new middle-stream quietly separates
at last from the wild confusion. Nay, rather, a
stream rages against a strong breakwater and
makes itself a way through thousands and thousands
of fissures. Everything new that this nineteenth
century has provided, is the work of
Liberalism. The foes of freedom are able to utter
only a cool negative, or to revive the ideas of
long-forgotten days so that they may seem alive
again, or, finally, they borrow the weapons of their
opponents. In the tribunals of our Chambers,
by means of the free press, which they owe to
the Liberals, by means of catchwords which they
overhear from their adversaries, they are championing
principles which, if put in operation, would
be bound to annihilate all the freedom of the
press, all Parliamentary life.
Everywhere, even in classes which fifty years
ago were still closed to all political ideas, there is
a calm and firm belief in the truth of those great
words, which, with their deliberate definiteness,
mark the boundary of a new period; belief in the
words of the American Declaration of Independence:
from the consent of the governed." So indisputable
is this idea to modern men that even Gentz
had, reluctantly, to agree with the detested protagonists
of freedom, when he said that the State-power
could claim sacrifices from the citizen only
so long as the latter could call the State his State.
And these problems of freedom are so old, so
thoroughly examined in all their aspects, so near
a decisive issue, that as regards most of them a
conciliation and purgation of opinions has already
been achieved. It was at last understood that
the fight for political freedom is not a dispute
between Republic and Monarchy, because the
people's "ruling and at the same time being ruled,"
is equally realizable in both forms of the State.
Only one single corollary of political freedom is,
even to-day, the cause of embittered, passionate
discussion. If, namely, the people's moral consciousness
is in very truth the final, just foundation
of the State, if in very truth the people rules
according to its own will, and for its own happiness,
a longing for the national isolation of the
States arises of its own accord. Because it is
only where the vital, unquestioning consciousness
of belonging together permeates all members of
the State, that the State is what ought to be,
according to its nature, an organized people in
unity. Thence the desire to exclude foreign
elements, and, in divided nations, the impulse
to get rid of the smaller of the two "fatherlands."
necessary limitations this political liberty is
subject. Suffice it that there is everywhere a
demand for the government of the peoples in
harmony with their will, it is more general and
uniform than ever before in history, and will at
last be as surely satisfied, as the peoples' existence
is more permanent, more justified, and stronger
than the life of their powerful opponents.
However, let us look things in the face, let us
consider how entirely our ideas of freedom have
changed in this protean fight, in which we, ourselves,
are spectators and actors. We no longer
meet the problems of freedom with the overbearingness,
with the vague enthusiasm, of youth.
Political freedom is freedom politically limited—
this phrase, which was blamed as servile even
a few decades ago, is, to-day, admitted by everybody
capable of political judgment. And how
ruthlessly has harsh experience destroyed all
those mad ideas which hid themselves behind the
great name of Liberty! The ideas of freedom,
which prevailed during the French Revolution,
were a vague blend of Montesquieu's ideas and
Rousseau's half-antique conception. The construction
of political liberty was believed to be
complete if only the legislative power were separated
from the executive and the judicial, and
every citizen were, on equal terms, to help in
electing the deputies of the National Convention.
Those demands were fulfilled, most abundantly
most disgusting despotism Europe ever saw. The
idolatry which our Radicals displayed all too long
for the horrors of the Convention, is at last beginning
to die out in the presence of the trifling
reflection: If an all-mighty State-power forbids
me to open my mouth, compels me to belie my
faith, and guillotines me as soon as I defy such
insolence, it is a matter of perfect indifference
whether that tyranny is exercised by a hereditary
prince or by a Convention; both the one and the
other is slavery. But the fallacy in Rousseau's
maxim that, where all are equal, each one obeys
himself, seems, really, too obvious. It is much
truer that he obeys the majority, and what is
to prevent that majority from behaving quite as
tyrannously as an unscrupulous monarch?
If we consider the feverish convulsions, which
have shaken for seventy years the nation on the
other side of the Rhine (which is, despite all, a
great nation), we are ashamed to find that the
French, in spite of all their enthusiasm for liberty,
have only known equality, and never freedom.
But equality is a shallow idea, which may as well
signify an equal slavery of all, as an equal freedom
of all. And it certainly means the former, when
it is aspired to by a people as the sole, highest,
political good. The highest conceivable degree
of equality—communism—is the highest conceivable
degree of serfdom, because it assumes the
suppression of all natural inclinations. Assuredly,
for equality is especially rife in that people, whose
Keltic blood is ever and ever again finding pleasure
in flocking, in blind subjection, round a great
Cæsarean figure, whether his name be Vercingetorix,
Louis XIV, or Napoleon. We Germans
insist too proudly on the limitless right of the
individual, for us to be able to discover freedom
in universal suffrage; we reflect, that even in
several Ecclesiastical Orders, the Heads are
chosen by universal suffrage; but who in the wide
world has ever sought for freedom in a convent?
Truly it is not the spirit of liberty which speaks
in Lamartine's declaration, in the year 1848:
"Every Frenchman is an elector, therefore, a
self-ruler; no Frenchman can say to another, `You
are more a ruler than I.' " What instinct of
mankind is gratified by such words? None other
than the meanest of all—envy! Even Rousseau's
enthusiasm for the civism of the ancients will not
stand serious examination. The civic glory of
Athens rested on the broad substratum of slavery,
of contempt for all economic activities; whilst
we moderns base our fame on respect for all men,
on our acknowledgment of the nobility of labour.
The most bigoted aristocrat in the modern world
seems like a democrat, by comparison with that
Aristotle, who coolly lays it down with horrible
hardness of heart: "It is not possible for a man
who lives the life of a manual labourer to practise
works of virtue."
Deeper natures were impelled, long ago, by
such considerations, to examine more carefully
on what principles the much-envied freedom of the
Britons rests. They found that in that country
no all-powerful government determines the destinies
of the most remote communities, but every
county, however small, is administered by itself.
This acknowledgment of the blessings of self-government
was an extraordinary advance; for
the enervating influence on the citizens of a State
that looks after everything can hardly be depicted
in sufficiently dark colours; it is, therefore, so
uncanny, because a morbid state of the people is
revealed in its full extent only in a later generation.
So long as the eye of the great Frederick watched
over his Prussians, a simple glance at the hero
raised even small souls above their standard, his
vigilance was a spur to the sluggards. But when
he passed away, he left a generation without a
will, accustomed—as Napoleon III boasts of his
Frenchmen—to expect from the State all incitement
to action, disposed to that vanity which is
the opposite of real national pride, capable on
occasion of breaking out in fleeting enthusiasm for
the idea of State-unity, but incapable of commanding
itself—incapable of the greatest task which is
laid upon modern nations. Only those citizens
who have learnt, by self-government, to act as
statesmen in case of need are able to colonize,
to spread the blessings of Western civilization
among barbarians. The management of the
may be technically more perfect and may be
better than the principle of the division of labour;
yet a State which allows its citizens, of their own
free-will, to look after districts and communities
in honorary service, gains moral force by the self-consciousness,
by the living, practical patriotism,
of the citizens—forces which the sole rule of State
officialdom can never evolve. Assuredly, this
admission on our part was a significant deepening
of our ideas of freedom, but it by no means contains
the ultimate truth. For, if we inquire where
this self-government of all small local districts
exists, we discover with astonishment that the
numerous small tribes in Turkey enjoy this blessing
in a high degree. They pay their taxes; for
the rest they live as they please, look after their
pigs, hunt, kill each other, and find themselves
quite happy with it all—until suddenly a pasha
visits the tribe, and proves to the dullest understanding,
by means of impalement and drowning
in sacks, that the self-government of the communities
is an illusion, if the highest powers of the
State do not operate within fixed limits of the
laws.
Thus, finally, we come to the conclusion, that
political freedom is not, as the Napoleons assert,
an ornament which may be set upon a perfectly
constructed State like a golden cupola; it must
permeate and inspire the whole State. It is a
profound, comprehensive, extremely consistent
There can be no Parliament without free communities,
no free communities without Parliament;
and neither can be permanent if the middle factors
between the top of the State and the communities,
namely, the various districts and departments,
are not also administered by a concentration of
the personal activity of independent citizens. We
Germans have felt these gaps painfully for a long
time, and are just now making the first modest
endeavours to fill them.
Nevertheless, a State dominated by a government
carried on by the majority of its people,
with a Parliament, with an independent judiciary,
with districts and communities which administer
themselves, is, despite all, not yet free. It has to
set limits to its operation; it has to admit that there
are personal properties of so high and unassailable
a nature that the State must never subject them
to itself. Let no one sneer too presumptuously
at the fundamental principles of the more recent
Constitutions. In the midst of phrases and
silliness, they contain the Magna Charta of personal
freedom, with which the modern world will
not again dispense. Free movement in religious
faith, and in knowledge and in affairs generally,
is the watchword of the times; in this domain it
has had the greatest effect; this social freedom is
developing the essence of all political desires for
the great majority of men. It may be asserted
that wherever the State resolved to let a branch
was gloriously rewarded; all the predictions of
timorous pessimists fell to the ground. We have
become a different nation, since we have been
drawn into closer intercourse with the world and
its ways. Even two generations ago, Ludwig
Vincke, like the careful President he was, explained
to his Westphalians how to set about building
a high-road by means of a company, on the English
plan. To-day, a dense net of associations of
every kind is spread over German territory. We
know that through his merchants, the German
will, at the least, share in the noble destiny of
our race, and fructify the wide world. And it is,
even now, no empty dream that an act of government
will presently result from that intercourse
with the world, compared with whose world-embracing
outlook all the activities of modern
great Powers will seem like sorry provincialism
—so immeasurably rich and many-sided is the
essence of freedom. Therein lies the consoling
certainty that it is never impossible at any time
to work for the victory of freedom. For should a
government temporarily succeed in undermining
the people's participation in legislation, men of
to-day, with their impulse for freedom, would
simply throw their energies with the more violence
into economic or spiritual activities, and the
results in the one sphere influence the other sooner
or later. Let us leave it to boys, and those nations
which ever remain children, to hunt for freedom
dissolves at the touch of its pursuers. A mature
people loves liberty, like its lawful wife; she is part
of us, she enraptures us day by day with fresh
charms.
But new, undreamed-of dangers to freedom,
arise with the growth of civilization. It is not
only the State-power which may be tyrannical,
but also the unorganized majority of a society
may subject the minds of its citizens to odious
compulsion by the slow and imperceptible, yet
irresistible, force of its opinion. And it is beyond
doubt, that the danger of an intolerable limitation
of the independent development of personality,
by means of public opinion, is especially great in
democratic States. For, whilst during the absence
of freedom under the old régime, at least a few
privileged classes were allowed, without hindrance,
to develop, brilliantly, their individual gifts,
whether for good or for evil, the middle classes,
who will determine Europe's future, are not free
from a certain preference for the mediocre. They
are justly proud of the fact that they are trying
to drag down to their own level everything that
rises above them, and to raise up to the level all
those that are beneath them; and they may base
their desire to be determining factors in the lives
of States on a glorious title, on a great deed, which
they, together with the old monarchy, have
achieved, namely, on the emancipation of our
lower classes. But woe to us, if this tendency
fruit in the domain of common right, goes astray
in the domain of individual evolution! The
middle classes hate all open, violent tyranny, but
they are much inclined to nullify, by the ostracism
of public opinion, everything that rises above a
certain average of culture, of spiritual nobility,
of audacity. The love of liberty which distinguishes
them, and makes them, as such, the most
capable political order, is liable to degenerate only
too easily into idle complacency, into an unthinking
sleepy endeavour to blink and gloss over all
the contradictions of intellectual life, and to tolerate
alert activity only in the sphere of material
operations (of "improvement!"). We are not
here giving utterance to vain hypotheses. Far
from it. The yoke of public opinion presses
heavier than elsewhere in the freest great States
of modernity, in England and the United States.
The sphere of what the community permits the
citizen to think and to do as an honourable and
decent being is there, incomparably narrower
than with us. If you have knowledge of the
memorable discussions about the Constitution at
the Convention of Massachusetts, in the year 1853;
if you know with what spirit and passion the
doctrine was then championed, that "a citizen
may certainly be the subject of a party, or an
actual power (!), but never the subject of the
State," you will not underrate the peril of a lapse
into conditions of harsh morality and weakened
majority. Mill has excellently pointed this out,
and therein lies the significance of his book for the
present time. He investigates, quite apart from
the form of government, the nature and limits of
the power which society should suitably exercise
over the individual. Humboldt saw danger for
personal liberty only in the State; he scarcely
thought that the society of beautiful and distinguished
minds, which associated with him, could
ever hinder the individual in the complete evolution
of his personality. However, we know now,
that they may be not only a "free sociability,"
but also a tyrannical public opinion.
In order to understand to what extent society
should use its power over the individual, it is best,
first of all, to throw gleefully overboard a question,
over which political thinkers have unnecessarily
spent many unhappy hours, namely: Is the State
only a means for furthering the objects in life of
the citizens? Or, is it the sole object of the citizens'
well-being to bring into existence a beautiful
and good collective life? Humboldt, Mill, and
Laboulaye, and the collective Liberalism of the
Rotteck-Welcker school, decide for the former;
the ancients, as is well-known, for the latter. We
think the one opinion is worth as little as the other.
For the whole world admits that a relation of
reciprocal rights and duties connects the State
with its citizens. But reciprocity is unthinkable
between entities which are related to one another
an object, like everything living; for who can deny
that the State lives quite as real a life as each of
its citizens? How wonderful, that we Germans,
with our provincialism, have to admonish a
Frenchman and an Englishman to think more
highly of the State! Mill and Laboulaye both
live in mighty respected States; they take that
rich blessing for granted and perceive in the State
only the terrifying power which threatens the
liberty of man. We Germans have had our
esteem for the dignity of the State fortified by
painful experience. When we are asked by
strangers about our "narrower fatherland," and
a scornful smile plays around the lips of the hearers
at the mention of the name of Reuss, of the
younger line, or Schwarzburg-Sondershausen's
principality, we feel, indeed, that the State is
something bigger than a means for lightening the
burdens of our private lives. Its honour is ours,
and he who cannot look upon his State with enthusiastic
pride, his soul is lacking in one of the highest
feelings of man. If, to-day, our best men are
trying to build up a State for this nation, which
shall deserve respect, they are inspired in their
task, not only by the desire to spend their personal
existence, henceforth, in greater security,
but they, also, know they are fulfilling a moral
duty, which is imposed upon every nation.
The State—which protected our forefathers
with its justice, which they defended with their
further; and higher-developed children and children's
children to inherit which, therefore, is
a sacred bond between many generations—the
State, I say, is an independent order, which lives
according to its own laws. The views of rulers
and ruled can never altogether coincide; they will,
assuredly, reach the same goal in a free and mature
State, but by widely divergent paths. The
citizen demands from the State the highest possible
measure of personal liberty, because he wants
to live himself out, to develop all his powers.
The State grants it, not because it wants to oblige
the individual citizen; but it is considering itself,
the whole. It is bound to support itself by its
citizens; but in the moral world, only that which
is free, which is also able to resist, supports. Thus,
truly, the respect, which the State pays the individual
and his liberty, gives the surest measure
of its culture; but it pays that respect primarily
because political freedom, which the State itself
acquires, is impossible with citizens who do not,
themselves, look after their most private affairs
without hindrance.
This indissoluble connection between political
and personal liberty, especially the essence of
liberty, as of a closely-cohering system of noble
rights, has not been properly understood by either
Mill or Laboulaye. The former, in full enjoyment
of English civic rights, silently assumes the existence
of political freedom; the latter, under the
to think about it. And yet personal freedom,
without the political, leads to the dissolution of
the State. He who sees in the State only a means
for obtaining the objects in life of the citizens,
must, consequentially, after the good mediæval
manner, seek freedom from the State, not freedom
in the State. The modern world has outgrown
that error. Still less, however, may a generation,
which lives predominantly for social aims, and is
able to devote only a small part of its time to the
State, fall into the opposite error of the ancients.
This age is called upon to resume in itself, and to
further develop, the indestructible results of the
labours of culture, and, likewise, of the political
work of antiquity and the Middle Age. Thus it
arrives at the harmonizing and yet independent
conclusion, that there is a physical necessity, and
a moral duty, for the State to further everything
that serves the personal evolution of its citizens.
And, again, there is a physical necessity, and a
moral duty, for the individual to take his part in
a State, and to make even personal sacrifices to
it, which the maintenance of the community
demands, even the sacrifice of his life. And, indeed,
man is subject to this duty, not merely because
it is only as a citizen that he can become a complete
man, but also because it is an historical
ordinance that mankind build States, beautiful
and good States. The historical world affords
superabundant evidence of such conditions of
conditioned appears in it at the same time
as a conditioning entity. It is precisely that
fact which often makes the comprehension of
things political difficult to keen, mathematical
minds which, like Mill, are fond of reaching
conclusion by means of a radical law.
Mill now tries to draw the permissible limits
of the operation of society with the sentence:
The interference of society with personal liberty
is only justified, when it is necessary, in order to
protect the community itself, or to hinder injury
by others. We shall not contradict this saying—
if only it were not so entirely futile! How small
is the effect of such abstract maxims of natural
law in an historical science! For is not the "self-protection
of the Community" historically capable
of change? Is it not the duty of a theocratic
State, for the sake of self-protection, to tyrannously
interfere, even with the thoughts of its
citizens? And do not those common labours,
which are "necessary for the community," which
the citizen must be compelled to discharge, vary
essentially according to time and place? There
is no absolute limit to the State-power, and it is
the greatest merit of modern science, that it has
taught politicians to reckon only with relative
ideas. Every advance of civilization, every widening
of national culture, necessarily makes the
State's activity more varied. North America,
too, is experiencing that truth; the State and
obliged to develop a manifold activity, which is
not needed in a primeval forest.
The much-vaunted voluntarism, the activity
of free private associations, is not by any means
sufficient in all cases to satisfy the needs of our
society. The net of our intercourse has such small
meshes, that a thousand collisions between rights
and interests necessarily occur; it is the duty of
the State in both instances to intervene conciliatingly
as an impartial power. In the same way
there exist in every highly-civilized nation, big
private powers which actually exclude free competition;
the State has to restrain their selfishness,
even if they do not injure any rights of third parties.
The English Parliament some years ago ordered
the railway companies, not only to attend to the
safety of the passengers, but also to allow a certain
number of so-called Parliamentary trains, to run
at the usual rates for all classes of carriages.
Nobody can say that there is an exceeding of the
sensible limits of the State-power in this law, which
makes travelling possible for the lower classes.
But if you see in the State merely an institution
for safety, you can defend the measure only by
means of very artificial and unconvincing argument.
For who has a right to demand that he
should be carried from A to B for three shillings?
The railway company has certainly no monopoly
by law, and it is free to anyone to construct a
parallel line! No, the modern State cannot do
people's benefit. In every nation there are spiritual
and material properties, without which the
State cannot exist. A constitutional State assumes
a high average of national culture; it may
never leave it to the pleasure of parents, whether
they want to give their children the most needful
education; it requires compulsory education.
The sphere of these benefits, which are requisite
for the community's existence, is inevitably
widened by the growth of civilization. Who would
seriously propose to shut up the precious art
institutions in our States? We old cultured
nations shall certainly not relapse into the crude
conception which sees a luxury in art; it is like
our daily bread to us. In point of fact, the demand
for the extremest limitation of State-activity
is the more loudly urged in theory to-day, the
more it is contradicted by practice, even in free
countries. The school of Tocqueville, Laboulaye,
Charles Dollfus, grew up in combat with an
all-embracing State-power which wanted, not to
guide, but to replace society, under the Second
Empire; a school which goes beyond its mark,
and discerns in the State simply an obstacle, an
oppressing force. Even Mill is dominated by the
opinion that the greater the power of the State,
the smaller the freedom. The State however is
not the citizen's foe. England is free, and yet the
English police have a very great discretionary
power and is bound to have it; it is enough if a
law-court.
Luckily, another historical law is operating in
opposition to the increasing growth of State-power.
In proportion as the citizens become riper for
self-government, the State is under obligation,
nay, is physically obliged, to operate in a more
varied way so far as comprehensiveness is concerned,
but more moderately so far as method is
concerned. If the immature State was a guarantee
for individual branches of national activity, the
guardianship of the highly-developed State embraces
the sum total of national life, but it operates
as far as possible, only as a force that spurs on,
instructs, clears away impediments. A mature
people must therefore demand these things of the
State for the assurance of its personal liberty:
The most fruitful outcome of the metaphysical
fights for freedom during the past century, namely,
the truth that the citizen must never be utilized
by the State merely as a means, should be recognized
as a true fundamental principle. Next:
all activity on the part of the government is
beneficial which brings forth, furthers, purifies,
the individual activity of the citizens; all government
activity which suppresses the activity of individuals
is evil. For the whole dignity of the State
rests ultimately on the personal worth of its citizens,
and that State is the most moral, which
combines the powers of the citizens for the purpose
of accomplishing the greatest number of works
one, honestly and independently, to pursue his
personal development untouched by compulsion
on the part of the State and public opinion. Thus
we agree with Mill and Laboulaye in the final
result: in the desire for the highest possible degree
of personal liberty, although we do not share
their view of the State as an obstacle to freedom.
And what significance do these reflections on
personal liberty possess for us? The presentiment
of a great and decisive movement is permeating
the world, and imposing on every nation the
question, what value it puts on personal freedom,
on the personal independence of its citizens. We
Germans in particular cannot evade the question;
we, whose whole future rests, not on the established
power of all our States, but on the personal thoroughness
of our people. The historical facts are
dominant, that only a nation which is imbued with
a strong sense of personal freedom can win and
keep political freedom, and that the well-being
or real personal freedom is only possible under the
protection of political freedom, since despotism,
in whatever shape it may appear, is able to give
rein only to the lower passions, to commerce, and
commonplace ambition.
The most precious and especial possession of
our nation, which will yet constitute the German
State a new phenomenon in political history, is
the Germans' invincible love of personal freedom.
Many will smile at this, and put the bitter question:
we redden as we confront that stately line of
legislative measures which the Anglo-Saxon race
has passed for its personal freedom. Mill is far
from deifying our nation; as has been said of him
with some justice, he inwardly feels his near kinship
with the German genius, but he is afraid of
the weaknesses of our temperament, he deliberately
avoids penetrating too deeply into German
literature, and holds to French novels. And the
same man confesses that in no country except Germany
alone, are people capable of understanding
and aspiring to the highest and purest personal
liberty, the all-sided evolution of the human
spirit!
Our science is the freest on earth; it tolerates
no compulsion, either from without or within;
it aims at the truth, nothing but the truth, without
any prejudice. The opinionativeness of our
learned men became a by-word, yet it goes very
well together with a frank acknowledgment of an
adversary's scientific importance. A free mind,
which goes its own way, and not the well-worn
way of the schools, and reaches important results,
may, with certainty, finally count upon cordial
agreement. The most stupid police tutelage did
not succeed in breaking down the Germans'
ardour for personal idiosyncrasy. It is a conviction,
which has taken firm root in the lowest
strata of our nation, that in all questions of conscience
every man must decide for himself alone.
the character of any other people, the ideal of free
human development is preached to the youth,
namely, the fearless seeking after truth, the evolution
of character from within outwards, the harmonious
growth of all human gifts. And, as
freedom and toleration necessarily go hand in
hand, nowhere is the tolerance of different opinions
so much at home as with us; we learned it in the
hard school of those religious wars, which this
nation fought for the salvation of the whole of
humanity. Ours, too, is the noblest blessing of
inward freedom: beautiful moderation. The most
daring thoughts about the highest problems which
trouble mankind are uttered by Germans. Human
respect for everything human became second
nature to the German.
Let nobody believe that the free scientific activity
of the Germans is a welcome lightning-conductor
to the existing State authorities. All
intellectual gains, of which a nation can be proud,
influence the State-life as one pledge more for its
political greatness. We are slowly proceeding
from intellectual to political work, as Germany's
recent history clearly shows, and we may expect
with certainty that the independent courage of
German learned men in the search for truth will
react on the whole nation. Inclination, and capacity
for self-government are abundant among
us. Towns like Berlin and Leipzig are at least
on level terms with the great English communities
common feeling dominating their inhabitants.
And how much natural talent and inclination for
genuine personal liberty dwell in our Fourth Estate
is revealed more clearly every year in the trade
unions.
The last and supreme requisite of personal
freedom is that the State and public opinion must
allow the individual to develop in his individual
character, both in thought and in act. What
Mill announces to his fellow-countrymen as a
new thing, has long been common property in
Germany, namely Humboldt's doctrine of the
"individuality of capacity and culture," of the
"highest and harmonious evolution of all capacities,"
which thrives by means of freedom and
multiplicity of situations, that unique combination
of the Platonic sense of beauty and Kant's severity,
which marks the zenith of German humanity.
| FREEDOM. Treitschke, his doctrine of German destiny and of international relations : | |