[p. 472]
|472| operating with mechanical necessity4), that the activity of each individual be coerced by the universal will, is how this universal will is necessarily real in the subjects who are its organs and administrators – a task whose presupposition is the opposition of the individual will to the universal will; oneness with the universal will can hence not [be] grasped and posited as an inner absolute majesty, but as something that is to be brought about through an external relation or coercion. Here, however, in reality, in the progression of coercing and supervising that is to be posited, one cannot proceed into infinite series and leap from the real to the ideal; there must be a highest positive point from which the coercing according to the concept of universal freedom begins. But this point, like all other points, must be coerced into coercing thus according to the concept of universal freedom; a point that was not coerced in this universal system of coercion would step out of the principle and would be transcendent. The question is thus now how this highest will is likewise, through coercion and supervision, to become adequate to the concept of the universal will, and so the system remain wholly immanent and transcendental. This could happen in no other way than by the might of the whole being distributed to the two sides that stand opposite one another, so that the governed are coerced by the government and the government by the governed. If the might, and hence the possible coercion, is posited on both sides in unequal strength, then, by as much as the one part has more power than the other, or by the surplus of both, only the one part and not the opposed one is coerced, which is not supposed to be. But strictly the overmighty alone is the mighty, for, for something to be a limit for the other, it must be equal to it; the weaker is therefore no limit
4) Editors: Naturrecht, T. I, S. 169 ff.; SW, Bd. III, S. 142 ff.
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