[p. 599]
|599| another separation, at least some parts of it, and thereby given force to certain principles that are necessary conditions of the existence of a state. In that the Protestants wove their religious rights into the state, in that they made [the] most important parts of public law dependent on religion, 2 religions were nevertheless thereby interwoven into the state and thereby an independence of the state from the church was in part not at all established, but yet prepared; there always lies in it the principle, to which indeed in fact quite the opposite has been done, that, despite different religions, a state is possible.
Much more important for the state, however, is another separation, through which the concept of the state as a univ[ersality] was raised. The deliberations and resolutions of the Imperial Diet rested, especially when the princes still appeared in person, on the person of the prince; they voted and resolved as princes of their country; princes of different countries had yet only one vote; their person and their country did not appear separated in this, or the concept of distinguishing them as princely persons and as representatives of their country did not become visible. In the so important matter of religion, however, this distinction soon emerged; for how, if the prince and his country were of different religion? For his person the Catholic prince of a Protestant country was on the side of the Catholics; but his country, which was Protestant? Here the feeling of the distinction awoke also with regard to the general bond of the state. To be sure, as state power he should have been on neither side or on both sides. That was not possible, however, for those times; the prince of Palatinate-Neuburg, whose country was Evangelical and who became Catholic in the 17th century, was counted among the Catholic votes in the Imperial Diet as well as with regard to the Imperial Chamber Court. On the other hand, at the end of the same century, upon the change of religion of the Elector of Saxony, his vote remained Evangelical, as also happened in the foll[owing] [century] with other changes of religion, with Württemberg and Hesse. Although even before that only princes who had land and people to govern had seat and vote in the Imperial Diet, so that the country seemed inseparable from the concept of an estate in the Imperial Diet, this distinction only now became legal also with regard to the general German state; and the separation in this respect was found more easily and unsought where the separation of the interest of the prince and his subjects within a country had taken place and been previously established in accordance with the constitution by
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