further as to the development of the principle I propose. I might, perhaps, go on to classify the possible positions which reality may assume, and illustrate the manner of its application to those. But in attempting this, I should only contradict my own principles; for I have observed, that every such application requires a commanding view of the whole and all its parts in their closest inter-connection, and such a whole can never be exhibited by any mere process of hypothesis.
If we add to this rule, which we have laid down for the practical guidance of the State, those laws which are imposed on it by the theory we previously developed, we shall conclude that its activity should always be left to be determined by necessity. For the theory we have advanced allows to it only the solicitude for security (since security alone is unattainable by the individual man, and hence this solicitude alone is necessary); and the practical rule we have proposed for the State's direction serves to bind it strictly to the observance of the theory, in so far as the condition of the present does not necessitate a departure from the course it prescribes. Thus, then, it is the principle of necessity towards which, as to their ultimate centre, all the ideas advanced in this essay immediately converge. In abstract theory the limits of this necessity are determined solely by considerations of man's proper nature as a human being; but in the application we have to regard, in addition, the individuality of man as he actually exists. This principle of necessity should, I think, prescribe the grand fundamental rule to which every effort to act on human beings and their manifold relations should be invariably conformed. For it is the only thing which conducts to certain and unquestionable results. The consideration of the useful, which might be opposed to it, does not admit of any true and unswerving decision. It presupposes calculations of probability, which (even setting
