[p. 537]
|537| subsist through it, and only its degeneration, that is, the loss of its true essence, has destroyed the constitution of France, but not it as a state. It came from Germany, but it is a higher law that the people from which a new universal impulse is given to the world itself perishes in the end before all the rest, and that its principle, but not it itself, endures.
[7. The Independence of the Estates]
Germany did not develop for itself the principle which it gave to the world, and has [not] known how to find its preservation in it. It did not organize itself according to it but, in that it did not develop the feudal constitution into a state power, and wanted rather to remain wholly true to its original character of the independence of individuals from a universal, the state, it disorganized itself. It has fallen apart into a multitude of states whose manner of subsisting is settled among themselves by solemn treaties and guaranteed by great powers. This manner of subsisting, however, does not rest on its own power and strength, but is dependent on the policy of the great powers.
What true guarantee would remain to this existence of the individual states?
Since true state power is lacking to it, this guarantee could rest only on the venerableness of the rights in and for themselves, which, by a duration of centuries, by a multitude of solemn peace treaties, would have been raised to the impossibility of being touched, and it is in general the common tone to make the manner of the political subsistence of the individual states into a moral power and to plant their sanctity in people’s minds, so
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