[p. 113]
|113| and the ninety-millionth part of the one of the three branches of the power which gives laws.
The individual hardly pictures to himself the insignificance of his effectiveness in these numbers, but has none the less the definite feeling of this quantitative unimportance of his vote, and the quantitative, the number of votes, is here alone what is practical and decisive. The qualitative lofty points of view of freedom, of the duty of exercising the right of sovereignty, of the share in the universal affairs of the state, may well be brought forward against the slackness; common sense likes to keep to what is effective; and when the commonplace is put before the individual, that if everyone thought so slackly, the continuance of the state and still more freedom would come into danger, he must just as much recall the principle upon which his duty, the whole right of his freedom, is built, – namely that he should let himself be determined not by the consideration of what others do but only by his own will, and that his individual arbitrary will is the last and precisely the sovereign thing that belongs to him and is accorded to him. – Besides, this influence, so insignificant in itself, is restricted to persons and becomes infinitely more insignificant still in that it does not relate to the matter, this being rather expressly excluded. Only in the democratic constitution of France of the year I under Robespierre, which was accepted by the whole people, but, to be sure, all the less came to any execution, was it ordained that the laws on public affairs too should be laid before the individual citizens for decision. – The electors, further, are not even principals who would have to give instructions to their deputy; the cahiers which the members of the National Assembly had received with them on their
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