[p. 547]
|547| estates that concluded the Peace of Westphalia would have believed themselves insulted by the mistrust if one had spoken to them of the possibility that with such a separation they would and could lose sight of the best of the whole and each act for his own interest, even if it did not agree with the general interest but contradicted it. The general connection, the obligations of the individuals towards the whole, the best of the whole is most solemnly acknowledged and safeguarded, and at every difference over this, even if it has broken out into the most terrible wars, each of the two parties has justified itself from the side of right by thorough manifestos and deductions.
Hereby the matter is played over from the sphere of the will and of one’s own interests into the sphere of insight, and with the general will to act for the best of the whole it would be the understanding that would have to find out the mode of action most conducive to the general best; and if this is determined by the majority, then the minority would necessarily have to submit to it, – which, however, is not and cannot be the case, not only because no state power is present, but because the individual has the right, according to his own insight into the general best, to make alliances, peace, etc. If, upon the occurrence of disunion and war, someone really – necessarily a private person, for a minister cannot get to that – were so honest as to believe that the war had its ground only in the lack of general insight whether something was in accordance with the best of Germany, and held out to himself the hope of bringing about unanimity by working on this conviction, he would effect nothing further than making himself ridiculous by his good nature; he would rather have to seek to bring about the insight that a mode of action which was to be general would be in accordance with the particular interest of each individual.
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