and to compel one another. But if, in this way, action and reaction, stand and resistance, are equally strong, then the power on both sides is reduced to equilibrium, and thereby all activity, expression of will, and acting are sublated; whether the reduction is thought of positively or negatively—whether action and reaction are thought of as existing and effective, or whether they are posited negatively, the equilibrium consisting in there being as little acting as reacting present. Wanting to remedy this death by extending the immediate standing-opposed into a circle of effects, so that the midpoint of contact—the point at which the reduction of the opposed terms appears—is apparently sublated by the deceptive leaving-empty of this midpoint, is likewise no true way out. Against the hierarchy of coercion descending, through its ramifications, from the supreme power down to every particular, there is supposed to rise up, from these particulars, an equal and opposite pyramid, ascending to a supreme apex of counter-pressure against the descending one, so that the whole curves round into a circle, in which the immediacy of contact would vanish, the forces, insofar as they form a mass, would be kept apart, and, through intermediate links, that artificial difference would be produced, so that no link would react immediately upon that by which it is moved (which is what produces the reduction to equilibrium), but always upon something other than that by which it is moved, so that the first would move the last, and this last would in turn move that first. But such a perpetuum mobile, whose parts are all supposed to move round in a series, instead of moving, sets itself at once into perfect equilibrium, and becomes a perfect perpetuum quietum; for pressure and counter-pressure, compelling and being compelled, are perfectly equal to one another, and stand just as immediately opposed to one another, and bring about precisely the same reduction of forces as in the first conception; pure quantity is not to be deceived by such a mediation, through which no difference, or true infinity and form, is in any way brought into it, but it remains, as before, a wholly undivided, pure, shapeless power. In this way, no coercion is possible against the power, to make it conform to the concept of universal freedom, for no force is to be found outside it, and no separation can be posited within it itself.

For this reason, refuge is then taken in an entirely formal distinction: actual power is indeed posited as one and united in the government; but what is set over against it is possible power, and this possibility, as such, is supposed to be capable of compelling that actuality. To this second, powerless existence of the common will, namely, is supposed to belong the judgment as to whether the power has abandoned the former, with which it is bound up, whether the

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