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solidarity of interests, community and reciprocity in development.
In accordance with this difference, the Bourgeoisie conceive the moral object of the State to consist solely and exclusively in the protection of the personal freedom and the property of the individual.
This is a policeman's idea, gentlemen, a policeman's idea for this reason, because it represents to itself the State from a point of view of a policeman, whose whole function consists in preventing robbery and burglary. Unfortunately this policeman's idea is not only familiar to genuine liberals, but is even to be met with not unfrequently among so-called democrats, owing to their defective imagination. If the Bourgeoisie would express the logical inference from their idea, they must maintain that according to it if there were no such thing as robbers and thieves, the State itself would be entirely superfluous.[1]
Very differently, gentlemen, does the fourth estate regard the object of the State, for it apprehends it in its true nature.
History, gentlemen, is a struggle with nature; with
- ↑ This idea of the State, which in fact does away with the State, and changes it into a mere union of egoistic interests, is the idea of the State as regarded by liberalism, and historically was produced by it. It forms by the power which it has necessarily obtained and which stands in direct relation to its superficiality, the true danger of spiritual and moral decay, the true danger, which threatens us at this day, of a "modern barbarism." In Germany happily it is strongly opposed by the ancient learning which has once for all become the indestructible foundation of German thought. From this proceeds the view "that it is necessary to enlarge the notion of the State to the fullest extent to which in my opinion it is possible to enlarge it, that the State should be the organisation, in which the whole virtue of man should realise itself." (Augustus Boeth's address to his University of the 22nd March, 1862.)
