The German Constitution

[p. 582]

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[Parallel passages to the constitutional essay]

1.

29)We can call a multitude of human beings a state only if they are united for the common defence of their property in general. It goes without saying, yet it needs to be remarked, that this union must not be an empty word; namely, this union for common defence must not be a union through which nothing is defended and the property is left to an enemy without attempt at defence, but through this union for defence an actual defence must come about. The arrangement for this actual defence is the state power; this must partly be sufficient [to protect] the state against internal or external enemies, partly to maintain itself against the general pressure of individuals. As regards the latter, each individual indeed wishes to live by means of the state in security of his property, but the state power appears to him, especially in a great people, as something alien, present outside him; he lets this which is to be found outside him look after itself, as he looks after himself, and his contribution towards so enormous a whole must seem to him so disproportionate that he does not hold it important, and so easily satisfies his conscience about his negligence.

29) Hegel’s footnote. [before this, deleted:] The publicists themselves no longer venture to call Germany a state; but it is still, they suppose, one Empire, one body of state; and even these names are still too full of meaning for the slight relations in which the German lands stand to one another.

Against this natural centrifugal tendency of individuals the state must have power enough to maintain itself, and if otherwise only the state is organized at all and lays claim only to the duties prescribed by law, then order and strictness here take effect at first without further recourse to actual power. But if the power of individuals is so great that they

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