[p. 465]
|465| in it strives, through words, with the force of concepts, to adapt the two to each other. The concept, however, which includes the rest, is that Germany is still now in general a state, because it was formerly a state and the forms from which the animating element of them has fled are still present.
The organisation of this body, which is called the German constitution of the state, had been formed in a quite different life than that which afterwards and now dwells in it; the justice and force, the wisdom and the bravery of bygone times, the honour and the blood, the well-being and the need of long-decayed generations and of customs and relations that perished with them, is expressed in the forms of this body. The course of time, however, and of the culture developing in it, has cut off the fate of that time and the life of the present from each other. The edifice in which that fate dwelt is no longer borne by the fate of the present generation and stands, without share and necessity for its interest and its activity, isolated from the spirit of the world. If these laws have lost their old life, the present vitality has not known how to grasp itself in laws; each has gone its own way, has established itself for itself, and the whole [has] fallen apart, the state is no more.
This form of German public law is deeply grounded in that by which the Germans have made themselves most famous, namely in their drive for freedom. It is this drive that, after all the other European peoples had submitted to the dominion of a common state, did not let the Germans become a people submitting to a common public power. The obstinacy of the German character has not let itself be overcome to the point that the individual parts would have sacrificed their particularities
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.