Even two generations ago Ludwig Vincke, like the
careful president he was, explained to his Westphalians
how to set about building a high-road by means of a
company, on the English plan.
careful president he was, explained to his Westphalians
how to set about building a high-road by means of a
company, on the English plan.
Treitschke - 1914 - Life and Works
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? FREEDOM 295
classes of England, which, since the days of Richard II
have preferentially represented our country's inner essence,
its spiritual work, both in good and bad respects, both by
an earnest desire for truth and by a gloomy, fanatical zeal
in religious belief. He has become a rich man since he
discovered and recognised the most precious jewel of
our people, German idealism. Speaking from that free
watch-tower he utters words of reproach, bitter words,
against his fellow-countrymen's confused thinking; and
unfortunately, also, against the present generation, bitter
words such as only the honoured national economist
would dare to speak unpunished. But, like a true-born
Englishman, as a pupil of Bentham, he tests Kant's ideas
by the standard of the useful, the " well-comprehended,
permanent" utility of course, and therein shows in his
own person the deep abyss which will always separate
the two nations' intellectual activities. He wavers
between the English and German views of the world--
in his book on liberty, just as in his latest work,
"Utilitarianism "--and finally gets out of the difficulty
by attributing an ideal meaning to Bentham's purely
materialistic thoughts, which brings them close to the
German view. With the help of the apostle of German
humanity he contrives to praise the North American
State-methods, which owe little, or nothing, to the beauti-
ful humanity of German-Hellenic classicism. Laboulaye,
on the other hand, belongs to that small school of keen-
sighted Liberals, which feels the weakness of their country
to reside in French centralisation, and endeavours to
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? 296 TREITSCHKE: HIS LIFE AND WORKS
re-awaken the germs of German civilisation which are
there slumbering under the Celtic-Roman regime. The
talented author deals with historical facts, rather boldly
than thoroughly; briefly, he is of opinion that Christianity
was the first to recognise the worth and dignity of the
individual. Well, then, our glorious heathen Humboldt
must be a downright Christian philosopher, and with
the nineteenth century the age must be approaching
when the ideas of Christianity shall be completely realised,
and the individual, not the State, shall rule. The French-
man will only convince a small group of believers among
bis numerous readers. Mill's book, on the other hand,
has been received with the greatest applause by his fellow-
countrymen. They have called it the gospel of the nine-
teenth century. As a fact, both works stiike notes which
have a mighty echo in the heart of every modern man;
it is therefore instructive to investigate whether they
really expound the principles of genuine freedom.
Although we have learnt to assign a deeper foundation
and a richer meaning to the words of the Greek philo-
sopher, no thinker has surpassed the interpretation of
freedom which Aristotle discovered. He thinks, in his
exhaustive, empirical way, that freedom embraces
two things: the suitability of the citizens to live
as they prefer, and the sharing of the citizens in
the State-government (ruling, and at the same time
being ruled). That one-sidedness, which is the lever of
all human progress, brought it about that the nations
have hardly ever aspired to the full conception of freedom.
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? FREEDOM 297
It is, on the contrary, well known that the Greeks
preferred political freedom in a narrower sense, and
readily sacrificed the free activity of the individual to
a beautiful and sound existence as a community. The
love of political liberty on the part of the ancients
was certainly by no means so exclusive as is generally
believed. That definition of the Greek thinker proves
that they were by no means lacking in the comprehension
of a life lived after its own will and pleasure, of civic,
personal freedom. Aristotle knows very well that a
State-administration is even thinkable which does not
include the national life, taken in sum; he expressly
declares that States are particularly distinguished from
each other, by the question whether everything, or nothing,
or how much is shared by the citizens. At any rate, the
idea was dominant in the mature State of antiquity
that the citizen is only a part of the State, that true virtue
is realised only in the State. Political thinkers among
the ancients, therefore, occupy themselves solely with the
questions: Who shall rule in the State? and, How shall
the State be protected? Only occasionally, as a slight
misgiving, is the deeper question stirred: How shall
the citizen be protected from the State? The ancients
were assured that a power which a people exercises over
itself needs no limitation. How different are the German
conceptions of freedom, which lay chief emphasis on the
unlimited right of personality! In the Middle Age the
State began everywhere, with an implacable combat of
the State-power against the desire for independence on
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? 298 TREITSCHKE: HIS LIFE AND WORKS
the part of individuals, guilds, classes, which was
hostile to the State; and we Germans experienced in our
own persons with what loss of power and genuine
freedom the libcrtat of the minor princes, the
"freedoms of the honourable classes" were bought.
If, at length, in the course of this struggle, which in later
times was gloriously settled by an absolute Monarchy,
the majesty, the unity of the State was preserved, a
transformation would take place in the people's ideas of
freedom, and a fresh quarrel would start. No longer
is the attempt made to separate the individual from a
State-power whose necessity has been understood. But
there is a demand that the State-power should not be
independent of the people; it should become an actual
popular administration, working within established
forms, and bound by the will of the majority of the
citizens.
Everybody knows how immeasurably far from that
goal our Fatherland still is. What Vittorio Alfieri
proposed to himself as his object in life nearly a hundred
years ago:
"Di far con penna ai falsi imperj offesa,"
is still a difficult, toilsome task for the Germans. On
the Fulda, on the Leine, and probably also on the
Spree, a pusillanimous German might even to-day repeat
Alfieri's question: Ought a man who is steeped in the
feeling of civism to take the responsibility of bringing
children into the world under the yoke of a tyranny?
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? FREEDOM 299
Ought he to generate beings who, the more sensitive
their conscience the stronger their sense of justice, are
bound to suffer the more severely beneath that perversion
of all ideas of honour, justice, and shame, whereby a
tyranny poisons a people? What, however, Alfieri
himself experienced did not happen in the case of the
peoples. When, having reached grown-up age, he
published the savage pamphlet "On Tyranny," which
he had once written in holy zeal as a youth, he was
obliged himself to confess: To-day I should be wanting
in the courage, or, more correctly speaking, the fury,
which was requisite for the authorship of such a book.
The nations to-day regard with similar feelings the
abstract hatred of tyrants of the past century. We no
longer ask: "Come si debbe morire nella tirannide,"
but we stand with determined, invincible confidence
in the midst of the fight for political freedom, the result
of which has for a long time not been in question. For
the common lot of everything human has dominated
this struggle too, and this time, also, the thoughts of the
nations largely anticipated actual conditions. How poor
in vitality, in fruitfulness, are the partisans of absolutism
when confronted with the people's demand for freedom!
When two mighty streams of thought dash roaring at
one another, a new middle-stream quietly separates at
last from the wild confusion. Nay, rather, a stream rages
against a strong breakwater and makes itself a way
through thousands and thousands of fissures. Every-
thing new that this nineteenth century has provided is
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? 300 TREITSCHKE: HIS LIFE AND WORKS
the work of Liberalism. The foes of freedom are only
able to utter a cool negative, or to revive the ideas of long-
forgotten days so that they may seem alive again, or
finally they borrow the weapons of their opponents.
In the tribunals of our Chambers, by means of the
free Press, which they owe the Liberals, by means of
catchwords which they overhear from their adversaries,
they are championing principles which, if put in opera-
tion, would be bound to annihilate all the freedom of
the Press, all Parliamentary life.
Everywhere, even in classes which fifty years ago
were still closed to all political ideas, there is a calm and
firm belief in the truth of those great words, which,
with their deliberate definiteness, mark the boundary
of a new period; belief in the words of the American
Declaration of Independence: "The just powers of
governments are derived from the consent of the
governed. " So indisputable is this idea to modern
men that even Gentz had reluctantly to agree with
the detested protagonists of freedom when he said that
the State-power could only claim sacrifices from the
citizen so long as the latter could call the State his
State. And these problems of freedom are so old, so
thoroughly examined in all their aspects, so near a
decisive issue, that as regards most of them a concilia-
tion and purgation of opinions has already been achieved.
It was at last understood that the fight for political
freedom is not a dispute between Republic and Monarchy,
because the people's " ruling and at the same time being
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? FREEDOM 301
ruled " is equally realisable in both forms of the State.
Only one single corollary of political freedom is even
to-day the cause of embittered, passionate discussion.
If, namely, the people's moral consciousness is in very
truth the final, just foundation of the State, if in very
truth the people rules according to its own will, and for
its own happiness, a longing for the national isolation
of the State arises of its own accord. Because it is
only where the vital, unquestioning consciousness of
belonging together permeates all members of the State
that the State is what it ought to be, according to its
nature, an organised people in unity. Thence the desire
to exclude foreign elements, and, in divided nations,
the impulse to get rid of the smaller of the two " father-
lands. " It is not our intention to describe to how many
necessary limitations this political liberty is subject.
Suffice it that there is everywhere a demand for the
government of the peoples in harmony with their will;
it is more general and uniform than ever before in history,
and will at last be as surely satisfied as the peoples'
existence is more permanent, more justified, and stronger
than the life of their powerful opponents.
However, let us look things in the face, let us con-
sider how entirely our ideas of freedom have changed
in this Protean fight in which we ourselves are spec-
tators and actors. We no longer meet the problems of
freedom with the overbearingness, with the vague
enthusiasm of youth. Political freedom is freedom
politically limited--this phrase, which was blamed as
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? 302 TREITSCHKE: HIS LIFE AND WORKS
servile even a few decades ago, is to-day admitted by
everybody capable of political judgment. And how
ruthlessly has harsh experience destroyed all those mad
ideas which hid themselves behind the great name of
Liberty! The ideas of freedom which prevailed during
the French Revolution were a vague blend of Mon-
tesquieu's ideas and Rousseau's half-antique conception.
The construction of political liberty was believed to be
complete if only the legislative power were separated
from the executive and the judicial, and every citizen
were, on equal terms, to help in electing the deputies
of the National Convention. Those demands were
fulfilled, most abundantly fulfilled, and what was the
end of it all? The most disgusting despotism Europe
ever saw. The idolatry which our Radicals displayed
all too long for the horrors of the Convention is at last
beginning to die out in the presence of the trifling reflec-
tion: If an all-mighty State-power forbids me to open
my mouth, compels me to belie my faith, and guillotines
me as soon as I defy such insolence, it is a matter of
perfect indifference whether that tyranny is exercised
by a hereditary prince or by a Convention; both the one
and the other is slavery. But the fallacy in Rousseau's
maxim that, where all are equal, each one obeys himself,
seems really too obvious. It is much truer that he
obeys the majority, and what is to prevent that majority
from behaving quite as tyrannously as an unscrupulous
monarch?
If we consider the feverish convulsions which have
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? FREEDOM 303
shaken for seventy years the nation on the other side
of the Rhine (which is, despite all, a great nation), we
are ashamed to find that the French, in spite of all their
enthusiasm for liberty, have only known equality, and
never freedom. But equality is a shallow idea, which
may as well signify an equal slavery of all as an equal
freedom of all. And it certainly means the former
when it is aspired to by a people as the sole, highest
political good. The highest conceivable degree of
equality--communism--is the highest conceivable degree
of serfdom, because it assumes the suppression of all
natural inclinations. Assuredly, it is not an accident
that the passionate impulse for equality is especially
rife in that people, whose Celtic blood is ever and ever
again finding pleasure in flocking, in blind subjection,
round a great Cassarean figure, whether his name be
Vercingetorix, Louis XIV, or Napoleon. We Germans
insist too proudly on the limitless right of the individual
for us to be able to discover freedom in universal suffrage;
we reflect that even in several Ecclesiastical Orders
the heads are chosen by universal suffrage; but who
in the wide world has ever sought for freedom in a con-
vent? Truly it is not the spirit of liberty which speaks
in Lamartine's declaration, in the year 1848: "Every
Frenchman is an elector, therefore a self-ruler; no
Frenchman can say to another, 'You are more a ruler
than I. '" What instinct of mankind is gratified by
such words? None other than the meanest of all--
envy I Even Rousseau's enthusiasm for the civism of
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? 304 TREITSCHKE: HIS LIFE AND WORKS
the ancients will not stand serious examination. The
civic glory of Athens rested on the broad substratum
of slavery, of contempt for all economic activities; whilst
we moderns base our fame on respect for all men, on
our acknowledgment of the nobility of labour. The
most bigoted aristocrat in the modern world seems like
a democrat by comparison with that Aristotle who
coolly lays it down with horrible hardness of heart:
"It is not possible for a man who lives the life of a
manual labourer to practise works of virtue. "
Deeper natures were impelled, long ago, by such con-
siderations to examine more carefully on what prin-
ciples the much-envied freedom of the Britons rests.
They found that in that country no all-powerful govern-
ment determines the destinies of the most remote
communities, but every county, however small, is
administered by itself. This acknowledgment of the
blessings of self-government was an extraordinary
advance; for the enervating influence on the citizens
of a State that looks after everything can hardly be
depicted in sufficiently dark colours; it is, therefore, so
uncanny, because a morbid state of the people is only
revealed in its full extent in a later generation. So long
as the eye of the great Frederick watched over his Prus-
sians, a simple glance at the hero raised even small
souls above their standard; his vigilance was a spur to
the sluggards. But when he passed away he left a
generation without a will, accustomed--as Napoleon III
boasts of bis Frenchmen--to expect from the State all
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? FREEDOM 305
incitement to action, disposed to that vanity which
is the opposite of real national pride, capable on occasion
of breaking out in fleeting enthusiasm for the idea of
State-unity, but incapable of commanding itself--
incapable of the greatest task which is laid upon modern
nations. Only those citizens who have learnt, by self-
government, to act as statesmen in case of need are able
to colonise, to spread the blessings of Western civilisa-
tion among barbarians. The management of the business
of the community by paid State officials may be techni-
cally more perfect and may be better than the principle of
the division of labour; yet a State which allows its citizens,
of their own free-will, to look after districts and com-
munities in honorary service, gains moral force by the
self-consciousness, by the living, practical patriotism,
of the citizens--forces which the sole rule of State
officialdom can never evolve. Assuredly this admission
on our part was a significant deepening of our ideas of
freedom, but it by no means contains the ultimate
truth. For, if we inquire where this self-government
of all small local districts exists, we discover with as-
tonishment that the numerous small tribes in Turkey
enjoy this blessing in a high degree. They pay then-
taxes, for the rest they live as they please, look after
their pigs, hunt, kill each other, and find themselves
quite happy with it all--until suddenly a Pasha visits
the tribe, and proves to the dullest understanding, by
means of impalement and drowning in sacks, that the
self-government of the communities is an illusion, if the
U
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? 306 TREITSCHKE: HIS LIFE AND WORKS
highest powers of the State do not operate within fixed
limits of the laws.
Thus, finally, we come to the conclusion that political
freedom is not, as the Napoleons assert, an ornament
which may be set upon a perfectly-constructed State
like a golden cupola; it must permeate and inspire the
whole State. It is a profound, comprehensive, extremely
consistent system of political rights which tolerates
no gaps. There can be no Parliament without free
communities, no free communities without Parliament;
and neither can be permanent if the middle factors
between the top of the State and the communities,
namely, the various districts and departments, are not
also administered by a concentration of the personal
activity of independent citizens. We Germans have
felt these gaps painfully for a long time, and are just
now making the first modest endeavours to fill them.
Nevertheless, a State dominated by a government
carried on by the majority of its people, with a Parlia-
ment, with an independent judiciary, with districts and
communities which administer themselves, is, despite
all, not yet free. It has to set limits to its operation,
it has to admit that there are personal properties of so
high and unassailable a nature that the Statej;must
never subject them to itself. Let no one sneer too
presumptuously at the fundamental principles of the
more recent Constitutions. In the midst of phrases
and silliness they contain the Magna Charta of personal
freedom, with which the modern world will not again
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? FREEDOM 307
dispense. Free movement in religious faith, and in
knowledge and in affairs generally, is the watchword of
the times; in this domain it has had the greatest effect;
this social freedom is developing the essence of all
political desires for the great majority of men. It may
be asserted that wherever the State resolved to let a
branch of social activity grow unhindered its self-
control was gloriously rewarded; all the predictions
of timorous pessimists fell to the ground. We have
become a different nation since we have been drawn
into closer intercourse with the world and its ways.
Even two generations ago Ludwig Vincke, like the
careful president he was, explained to his Westphalians
how to set about building a high-road by means of a
company, on the English plan. To-day, a dense net
of associations of every kind is spread over German
territory. We know that through his merchants the
German will, at the least, share in the noble destiny of
our race, and fructify the wide world. And it is even
now no empty dream that an act of government will
presently result from that intercourse with the world,
compared with whose world-embracing outlook all the
activities of modern Great Powers will seem like sorry
provincialism, so immeasurably rich and many-sided
is the essence of freedom. Therein lies the consoling
certainty that it is never impossible at any time to work
for the victory of freedom. For should a government
temporarily succeed in undermining the people's partici-
pation in legislation, men of to-day, with their impulse
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? 308 TREITSCHKE: HIS LIFE AND WORKS
for freedom, would simply throw their energies with
the more violence into economic or spiritual activities,
and the results in the one sphere influence the other
sooner or later. Let us leave it to boys, and those
nations which ever remain children, to hunt for freedom
with passionate haste, like some phantom that dissolves
at the touch of its pursuers. A mature people loves
liberty, like its lawful wife; she is part of us, she enrap-
tures us day by day with fresh charms.
But new, undreamed-of dangers to freedom arise
with the growth of civilisation. It is not only the
State-power which may be tyrannical, but also the
unorganised majority of a society may subject the
minds of its citizens to odious compulsion by the slow
and imperceptible, yet irresistible, force of its opinion.
And it is beyond doubt that the danger of an intolerable
limitation of the independent development of personality,
by means of public opinion, is especially great in demo-
cratic States. For, whilst during the absence of freedom
under the old regime, at least a few privileged classes
were allowed, without hindrance, to develop, brilliantly,
their individual gifts, whether for good or for evil; the
middle classes, who will determine Europe's future,
are not free from a certain preference for the mediocre.
They are justly proud of the fact that they are trying
to drag down to their own level everything that rises
above them, and to raise up to the level all those that
are beneath them ; and they may base their desire to be
determining factors in the lives of States on a glorious
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? FREEDOM 309
title, on a great deed which they, together with the old
Monarchy, have achieved, namely, on the emancipation
of our lower classes. But woe to us if this tendency
to equality, which has ripened the most precious fruit
in the domain of common right, goes astray in the
domain of individual evolution! The middle classes
hate all open, violent tyranny, but they are much in-
clined to nullify, by the ostracism of public opinion,
everything that rises above a certain average of culture,
of spiritual nobility, of audacity. The love of liberty
which distinguishes them and makes them, as such,
the most capable political order, is liable to degenerate
only too easily into idle complacency, into an unthinking,
sleepy endeavour to blink and gloss over all the con-
tradictions of intellectual life, and only to tolerate alert
activity in the sphere of material operations (of "im-
provement ! "). We are not here giving utterance to
vain hypotheses. Far from it. The yoke of public
opinion presses heavier than elsewhere in the freest
great States of modernity--in England and the United
States. The sphere of what the community permits
the citizen to think and to do as an honourable and
decent being is there incomparably narrower than with
us. If you have knowledge of the memorable discus-
sions about the Constitution at the Convention of
Massachusetts in the year 1853, if you know with
what spirit and passion the doctrine was then cham-
pioned that "a citizen may certainly be the subject
of a party, or an actual power (! ), but never the subject
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? 31o TREITSCHKE: HIS LIFE AND WORKS
of the State," you will not underrate the peril of a lapse
into conditions of harsh morality and weakened rights--
the danger of the social tyranny of the majority. Mill
has excellently pointed this out, and therein lies the
significance of his book for the present time. He in-
vestigates, quite apart from the form of government,
the nature and limits of the power which Society should
suitably exercise over the individual. Humboldt saw
danger for personal liberty only in the State; he scarcely
thought that the society of beautiful and distinguished
minds, which associated with him, could ever hinder
the individual in the complete evolution of his personality.
However, we know now that they may be not only a
"free sociability " but also a tyrannical public opinion.
In order to understand to what extent Society should
use its power over the individual it is best, first of all,
to throw gleefully overboard a question over which
political thinkers have unnecessarily spent many un-
happy hours, namely: Is the State only a means for
furthering the objects in life of the citizens? Or is it
the sole object of the citizens' well-being to bring into
existence a beautiful and good collective life? Hum-
boldt, Mill, and Laboulaye, and the collective Liberalism
of the Rotteck-Welcker school, decide for the former;
the ancients, as is well known, for the latter. We
think the one opinion is worth as little as the other;
for the whole world admits that a relation of reciprocal
rights and duties connects the State with its citizens.
But reciprocity is unthinkable between entities which
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? FREEDOM 311
are related to one another simply as means and object.
The State is itself an object, like everything living;
for who can deny that the State lives quite as real a life
as each of its citizens? How wonderful that we Ger-
mans, with our provincialism, have to admonish a
Frenchman and an Englishman to think more highly
of the State! Mill and Laboulaye both live in mighty
respected States; they take that rich blessing for granted
and perceive in the State only the terrifying power
which threatens the liberty of man. We Germans
have had our esteem for the dignity of the State for-
tified by painful experience. When we are asked by
strangers about our "narrower Fatherland," and a
scornful smile plays around the lips of the hearers at the
mention of the name of Reuss, of the younger line, or
Schwarzburg-Sondershausen's principality, we feel in-
deed that the State is something bigger than a means
for lightening the burdens of our private lives. Its
honour is ours, and he who cannot look upon his State
with enthusiastic pride, his soul is lacking in one of the
highest feelings of man. If to-day our best men are
trying to build up a State for this nation which shall
deserve respect, they are inspired in their task, not only
by the desire to spend their personal existence hence-
forth in greater security, but they also know they are
fulfilling a moral duty, which is imposed upon every
nation.
The State that protected our forefathers with its
justice; which they defended with their bodies; which
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? 312 TREITSCHKE: HIS LIFE AND WORKS
the living are called upon to build further, and higher-
developed children, and children's children, to inherit;
which, therefore, is a sacred bond between many genera-
tions--the State, I say, is an independent order, which
lives according to its own laws. The views of rulers
and ruled can never altogether coincide; they will
assuredly reach the same goal in a free and mature
State, but by widely divergent paths. The citizen
demands from the State the highest possible measure
of personal liberty, because he wants to live himself
out, to develop all his powers. The State grants it,
not because it wants to oblige the individual citizen,
but it is considering itself, the whole. It is bound to
support itself by its citizens; but in the moral world
only that which is free, which is also able to resist, sup-
ports. Thus, truly, the respect which the State pays the
individual and his liberty gives the surest measure of
its culture; but it pays that respect primarily, because
political freedom, which the State itself acquires, is
impossible with citizens who do not themselves look
after their most private affairs without hindrance.
This indissoluble connection between political and
personal liberty, especially the essence of liberty, as of
a closely-cohering system of noble rights, has not been
properly understood by either Mill or Laboulaye. The
former, in full enjoyment of English civic rights, silently
assumes the existence of political freedom; the latter,
under the oppression of Bonapartism, does not dare
even to think about it. And yet personal freedom,
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? FREEDOM 313
without the political, leads to the dissolution of the
State. He who only sees in the State a means for
obtaining the objects in life of the citizens must, con-
sequentially, after the good mediaeval manner, seek
freedom from the State, not freedom in the State. The
modern world has outgrown that error. Still less,
however, may a generation which lives predominantly
for social aims, and is only able to devote a small part
of its time to the State, fall into the opposite error of
the ancients. This age is called upon to resume in
itself, and to further develop, the indestructible results
of the labours of culture, and, likewise, of the political
work of antiquity and the Middle Age. Thus it arrives
at the harmonising and yet independent conclusion
that there is a physical necessity, and a moral duty, for
the State to further everything that serves the personal
evolution of its citizens. And, again, there is a physical
necessity, and a moral duty, for the individual to take
his part in a State, and to make even personal sacrifices
to it, which the maintenance of the community demands,
even the sacrifice of his life. And, indeed, man is subject
to this duty, not merely because it is only as a citizen
that he can become a complete man, but also because
it is an historical ordinance that mankind build States,
beautiful and good States. The historical world affords
superabundant evidence of such conditions of reciprocal
rights, of reciprocal dependence; everything condi-
tioned appears in it at the same time as a conditioning
entity. It is precisely that fact which often makes the
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? 314 TREITSCHKE: HIS LIFE AND WORKS
comprehension of things political difficult to arrive at
mathematical minds, which, like Mill, are fond of reaching
conclusion by means of a radical law.
Mill now tries to draw the permissible limits of the
operation of Society with the sentence: The interference
of Society with personal liberty is only justified when it is
necessary, in order to protect the community itself,
or to hinder injury by others. We shall not contradict
this saying--if only it were not so entirely futile! How
small is the effect of such abstract maxims of natural
law in an historical science! For is not the " self-protec-
tion of the community " historically capable of change?
Is it not the duty of a theocratic State, for the sake of
self-protection, to tyrannously interfere, even with the
thoughts of its citizens? And do not those common
labours, which are "necessary for the community,"
which the citizen must be compelled to discharge, vary
essentially according to time and place? There is no
absolute limit to the State-power, and it is the greatest
merit of modern science that it has taught politicians
to reckon only with relative ideas. Every advance of
civilisation, every widening of national culture, necessarily
make the State's activity more varied. North America,
too, is experiencing that truth: the State and Society
in the big towns there are also being obliged to develop a
manifold activity, which is not needed in a primeval forest.
The much-vaunted voluntarism, the activity of free
private associations, is not by any means sufficient in
all cases to satisfy the needs of our Society. The net of
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? FREEDOM 315
our intercourse has such small meshes that a thousand
collisions between rights and interests necessarily occur;
it is the duty of the State in both instances to intervene
conciliatingly as an impartial power. In the same way
there exist in every highly-civilised nation big private
powers which actually exclude free competition; the
State has to restrain their selfishness, even if they do
not injure any rights of third parties. The English
Parliament some years ago ordered the railway companies
not only to attend to the safety of the passengers, but
also to allow a certain number of so-called Parliamentary
trains to run at the usual rates for all classes of carriages.
Nobody can say that there is an exceeding of the sensible
limits of the State-power in this law, which makes
travelling possible for the lower classes. But if you see in
the State merely an institution for safety you can only
defend the measure by means of very artificial and
unconvincing argument; for who has a right to demand
that he should be carried from A to B for three shillings?
The railway company has certainly no monopoly by
law, and it is free to anyone to construct a parallel line!
No, the modern State cannot do without an extensive
positive activity for the people's benefit. In every nation
there are spiritual and material properties, without
which the State cannot exist. A constitutional State
assumes a high average of national culture; it may
never leave it to the pleasure of parents whether they
want to give their children the most needful education;
it requires compulsory education. The sphere of these
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? 316 TREITSCHKE. HIS LIFE AND WORKS
benefits, which are requisite for the community's existence,
is inevitably widened by the growth of civilisation.
Who would seriously propose to shut up the precious
art institutions in our States? We old cultured nations
shall certainly not relapse into the crude conception which
sees a luxury in art; it is like our daily bread to us. In
point of fact, the demand for the extremest limitation
of State-activity is the more loudly urged in theory
to-day the more it is contradicted by practice, even in
free countries. The school of Tocqueville, Laboulaye, and
Charles Dollfus grew up in combat with an all-embracing
State-power which wanted, not to guide, but to replace
Society, under the Second Empire--a school which goes
beyond its mark, and discerns in the State simply an
obstacle, an oppressing force. Even Mill is dominated
by the opinion that the greater the power of the State
the smaller the freedom. The State, however, is not the
citizens' foe. England is free, and yet the English police
have a very great dicretionary power and is bound
to have it; it is enough if a citizen may make any
official answerable in a law-court.
Luckily, another historical law is operating in opposi-
tion to the increasing growth of State-power. In propor-
tion as the citizens become riper for self-government the
State is under obligation--nay, is physically obliged--
to operate in a more varied way so far as comprehensive-
ness is concerned, but more moderately so far as method
is concerned. If the immature State was a guarantee for
individual branches of national activity, the guardian-
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? FREEDOM 317
ship of the highly-developed State embraces the sum
total of national life, but it operates, as far as possible,
only as a force that spurs on, instructs, clears away
impediments. A mature people must therefore demand
these things of the State for the assurance of its personal
liberty: The most fruitful outcome of the metaphysical
fights for freedom during the past century, namely,
the truth that the citizen must never be utilised by the
State merely as a means, should be recognised as a true
fundamental principle. Next, all activity on the part
of the Government is beneficial which brings forth,
furthers, purifies, the individual activity of the citizens;
all Government activity is evil which suppresses the
activity of individuals; for the whole dignity of the
State rests ultimately on the personal worth of its
citizens, and that State is the most moral which
combines the powers of the citizens for the purpose
of accomplishing the greatest number of works beneficial
to the Society, and yet permits each one, honestly
and independently, to pursue his personal development
untouched by compulsion on the part of the State and
public opinion. Thus we agree with Mill and Laboulaye
in the final result--in the desire for the highest possible
degree of personal liberty--although we do not share their
view of the State as an obstacle to freedom.
And what significance do these reflections on personal
liberty possess for us? The presentiment of a great
and decisive movement is permeating the world, and
imposing on every nation the question, what value it
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? 318 TREITSCHKE: HIS LIFE AND WORKS
puts on personal freedom, on the personal independence
of its citizens. We Germans in particular cannot evade
the question, we, whose whole future rests, not on the
established power of all our States, but on the personal
thoroughness of our people. The historical facts are
dominant that only a nation which is imbued with a
strong sense of personal freedom can win, and keep poli-
tical freedom, and that the well-being of real personal
freedom is only possible under the protection of political
freedom, since despotism, in whatever shape it may
appear, is only able to give rein to the lower passions,
to commerce^ and commonplace ambition.
The most precious and especial possession of our
nation, which will yet constitute the German State a new
phenomenon in political history, is the Germans' invin-
cible love of personal freedom. Many will smile at this,
and put the bitter question: Where are the fruits of
this love? And indeed we redden as we confront that
stately line of legislative measures which the Anglo-
Saxon race has passed for its personal freedom. Mill
is far from deifying our nation; as has been said of him
with some justice, he inwardly feels his near kinship
with the German genius, but he is afraid of the weaknesses
of our temperament; he deliberately avoids penetrating
too deeply into German literature, and holds to French
models. And the same man confesses that in no country,
except Germany alone, are people capable of understanding
and aspiring to the highest and purest personal liberty,
the all-sided evolution of the human spirit!
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? FREEDOM 319
Our science is the freest on earth; it tolerates no compul-
sion, either from without or within; it aims at the truth,
nothing but the truth, without any prejudice. The
opinionativeness of our learned men became a by-word,
yet it goes very well together with a frank acknowledg-
ment of an adversary's scientific importance. A free
mind, which goes its own way, and not the well-worn way
of the schools, and reaches important results, may with
certainty finally count upon cordial agreement. The
most stupid police tutelage did not succeed in breaking
down the Germans' ardour for personal idiosyncrasy.
It is a conviction which has taken firm root in the lowest
strata of our nation, that in all questions of conscience
every man must decide for himself alone.
? FREEDOM 295
classes of England, which, since the days of Richard II
have preferentially represented our country's inner essence,
its spiritual work, both in good and bad respects, both by
an earnest desire for truth and by a gloomy, fanatical zeal
in religious belief. He has become a rich man since he
discovered and recognised the most precious jewel of
our people, German idealism. Speaking from that free
watch-tower he utters words of reproach, bitter words,
against his fellow-countrymen's confused thinking; and
unfortunately, also, against the present generation, bitter
words such as only the honoured national economist
would dare to speak unpunished. But, like a true-born
Englishman, as a pupil of Bentham, he tests Kant's ideas
by the standard of the useful, the " well-comprehended,
permanent" utility of course, and therein shows in his
own person the deep abyss which will always separate
the two nations' intellectual activities. He wavers
between the English and German views of the world--
in his book on liberty, just as in his latest work,
"Utilitarianism "--and finally gets out of the difficulty
by attributing an ideal meaning to Bentham's purely
materialistic thoughts, which brings them close to the
German view. With the help of the apostle of German
humanity he contrives to praise the North American
State-methods, which owe little, or nothing, to the beauti-
ful humanity of German-Hellenic classicism. Laboulaye,
on the other hand, belongs to that small school of keen-
sighted Liberals, which feels the weakness of their country
to reside in French centralisation, and endeavours to
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? 296 TREITSCHKE: HIS LIFE AND WORKS
re-awaken the germs of German civilisation which are
there slumbering under the Celtic-Roman regime. The
talented author deals with historical facts, rather boldly
than thoroughly; briefly, he is of opinion that Christianity
was the first to recognise the worth and dignity of the
individual. Well, then, our glorious heathen Humboldt
must be a downright Christian philosopher, and with
the nineteenth century the age must be approaching
when the ideas of Christianity shall be completely realised,
and the individual, not the State, shall rule. The French-
man will only convince a small group of believers among
bis numerous readers. Mill's book, on the other hand,
has been received with the greatest applause by his fellow-
countrymen. They have called it the gospel of the nine-
teenth century. As a fact, both works stiike notes which
have a mighty echo in the heart of every modern man;
it is therefore instructive to investigate whether they
really expound the principles of genuine freedom.
Although we have learnt to assign a deeper foundation
and a richer meaning to the words of the Greek philo-
sopher, no thinker has surpassed the interpretation of
freedom which Aristotle discovered. He thinks, in his
exhaustive, empirical way, that freedom embraces
two things: the suitability of the citizens to live
as they prefer, and the sharing of the citizens in
the State-government (ruling, and at the same time
being ruled). That one-sidedness, which is the lever of
all human progress, brought it about that the nations
have hardly ever aspired to the full conception of freedom.
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? FREEDOM 297
It is, on the contrary, well known that the Greeks
preferred political freedom in a narrower sense, and
readily sacrificed the free activity of the individual to
a beautiful and sound existence as a community. The
love of political liberty on the part of the ancients
was certainly by no means so exclusive as is generally
believed. That definition of the Greek thinker proves
that they were by no means lacking in the comprehension
of a life lived after its own will and pleasure, of civic,
personal freedom. Aristotle knows very well that a
State-administration is even thinkable which does not
include the national life, taken in sum; he expressly
declares that States are particularly distinguished from
each other, by the question whether everything, or nothing,
or how much is shared by the citizens. At any rate, the
idea was dominant in the mature State of antiquity
that the citizen is only a part of the State, that true virtue
is realised only in the State. Political thinkers among
the ancients, therefore, occupy themselves solely with the
questions: Who shall rule in the State? and, How shall
the State be protected? Only occasionally, as a slight
misgiving, is the deeper question stirred: How shall
the citizen be protected from the State? The ancients
were assured that a power which a people exercises over
itself needs no limitation. How different are the German
conceptions of freedom, which lay chief emphasis on the
unlimited right of personality! In the Middle Age the
State began everywhere, with an implacable combat of
the State-power against the desire for independence on
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? 298 TREITSCHKE: HIS LIFE AND WORKS
the part of individuals, guilds, classes, which was
hostile to the State; and we Germans experienced in our
own persons with what loss of power and genuine
freedom the libcrtat of the minor princes, the
"freedoms of the honourable classes" were bought.
If, at length, in the course of this struggle, which in later
times was gloriously settled by an absolute Monarchy,
the majesty, the unity of the State was preserved, a
transformation would take place in the people's ideas of
freedom, and a fresh quarrel would start. No longer
is the attempt made to separate the individual from a
State-power whose necessity has been understood. But
there is a demand that the State-power should not be
independent of the people; it should become an actual
popular administration, working within established
forms, and bound by the will of the majority of the
citizens.
Everybody knows how immeasurably far from that
goal our Fatherland still is. What Vittorio Alfieri
proposed to himself as his object in life nearly a hundred
years ago:
"Di far con penna ai falsi imperj offesa,"
is still a difficult, toilsome task for the Germans. On
the Fulda, on the Leine, and probably also on the
Spree, a pusillanimous German might even to-day repeat
Alfieri's question: Ought a man who is steeped in the
feeling of civism to take the responsibility of bringing
children into the world under the yoke of a tyranny?
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? FREEDOM 299
Ought he to generate beings who, the more sensitive
their conscience the stronger their sense of justice, are
bound to suffer the more severely beneath that perversion
of all ideas of honour, justice, and shame, whereby a
tyranny poisons a people? What, however, Alfieri
himself experienced did not happen in the case of the
peoples. When, having reached grown-up age, he
published the savage pamphlet "On Tyranny," which
he had once written in holy zeal as a youth, he was
obliged himself to confess: To-day I should be wanting
in the courage, or, more correctly speaking, the fury,
which was requisite for the authorship of such a book.
The nations to-day regard with similar feelings the
abstract hatred of tyrants of the past century. We no
longer ask: "Come si debbe morire nella tirannide,"
but we stand with determined, invincible confidence
in the midst of the fight for political freedom, the result
of which has for a long time not been in question. For
the common lot of everything human has dominated
this struggle too, and this time, also, the thoughts of the
nations largely anticipated actual conditions. How poor
in vitality, in fruitfulness, are the partisans of absolutism
when confronted with the people's demand for freedom!
When two mighty streams of thought dash roaring at
one another, a new middle-stream quietly separates at
last from the wild confusion. Nay, rather, a stream rages
against a strong breakwater and makes itself a way
through thousands and thousands of fissures. Every-
thing new that this nineteenth century has provided is
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? 300 TREITSCHKE: HIS LIFE AND WORKS
the work of Liberalism. The foes of freedom are only
able to utter a cool negative, or to revive the ideas of long-
forgotten days so that they may seem alive again, or
finally they borrow the weapons of their opponents.
In the tribunals of our Chambers, by means of the
free Press, which they owe the Liberals, by means of
catchwords which they overhear from their adversaries,
they are championing principles which, if put in opera-
tion, would be bound to annihilate all the freedom of
the Press, all Parliamentary life.
Everywhere, even in classes which fifty years ago
were still closed to all political ideas, there is a calm and
firm belief in the truth of those great words, which,
with their deliberate definiteness, mark the boundary
of a new period; belief in the words of the American
Declaration of Independence: "The just powers of
governments are derived from the consent of the
governed. " So indisputable is this idea to modern
men that even Gentz had reluctantly to agree with
the detested protagonists of freedom when he said that
the State-power could only claim sacrifices from the
citizen so long as the latter could call the State his
State. And these problems of freedom are so old, so
thoroughly examined in all their aspects, so near a
decisive issue, that as regards most of them a concilia-
tion and purgation of opinions has already been achieved.
It was at last understood that the fight for political
freedom is not a dispute between Republic and Monarchy,
because the people's " ruling and at the same time being
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? FREEDOM 301
ruled " is equally realisable in both forms of the State.
Only one single corollary of political freedom is even
to-day the cause of embittered, passionate discussion.
If, namely, the people's moral consciousness is in very
truth the final, just foundation of the State, if in very
truth the people rules according to its own will, and for
its own happiness, a longing for the national isolation
of the State arises of its own accord. Because it is
only where the vital, unquestioning consciousness of
belonging together permeates all members of the State
that the State is what it ought to be, according to its
nature, an organised people in unity. Thence the desire
to exclude foreign elements, and, in divided nations,
the impulse to get rid of the smaller of the two " father-
lands. " It is not our intention to describe to how many
necessary limitations this political liberty is subject.
Suffice it that there is everywhere a demand for the
government of the peoples in harmony with their will;
it is more general and uniform than ever before in history,
and will at last be as surely satisfied as the peoples'
existence is more permanent, more justified, and stronger
than the life of their powerful opponents.
However, let us look things in the face, let us con-
sider how entirely our ideas of freedom have changed
in this Protean fight in which we ourselves are spec-
tators and actors. We no longer meet the problems of
freedom with the overbearingness, with the vague
enthusiasm of youth. Political freedom is freedom
politically limited--this phrase, which was blamed as
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? 302 TREITSCHKE: HIS LIFE AND WORKS
servile even a few decades ago, is to-day admitted by
everybody capable of political judgment. And how
ruthlessly has harsh experience destroyed all those mad
ideas which hid themselves behind the great name of
Liberty! The ideas of freedom which prevailed during
the French Revolution were a vague blend of Mon-
tesquieu's ideas and Rousseau's half-antique conception.
The construction of political liberty was believed to be
complete if only the legislative power were separated
from the executive and the judicial, and every citizen
were, on equal terms, to help in electing the deputies
of the National Convention. Those demands were
fulfilled, most abundantly fulfilled, and what was the
end of it all? The most disgusting despotism Europe
ever saw. The idolatry which our Radicals displayed
all too long for the horrors of the Convention is at last
beginning to die out in the presence of the trifling reflec-
tion: If an all-mighty State-power forbids me to open
my mouth, compels me to belie my faith, and guillotines
me as soon as I defy such insolence, it is a matter of
perfect indifference whether that tyranny is exercised
by a hereditary prince or by a Convention; both the one
and the other is slavery. But the fallacy in Rousseau's
maxim that, where all are equal, each one obeys himself,
seems really too obvious. It is much truer that he
obeys the majority, and what is to prevent that majority
from behaving quite as tyrannously as an unscrupulous
monarch?
If we consider the feverish convulsions which have
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? FREEDOM 303
shaken for seventy years the nation on the other side
of the Rhine (which is, despite all, a great nation), we
are ashamed to find that the French, in spite of all their
enthusiasm for liberty, have only known equality, and
never freedom. But equality is a shallow idea, which
may as well signify an equal slavery of all as an equal
freedom of all. And it certainly means the former
when it is aspired to by a people as the sole, highest
political good. The highest conceivable degree of
equality--communism--is the highest conceivable degree
of serfdom, because it assumes the suppression of all
natural inclinations. Assuredly, it is not an accident
that the passionate impulse for equality is especially
rife in that people, whose Celtic blood is ever and ever
again finding pleasure in flocking, in blind subjection,
round a great Cassarean figure, whether his name be
Vercingetorix, Louis XIV, or Napoleon. We Germans
insist too proudly on the limitless right of the individual
for us to be able to discover freedom in universal suffrage;
we reflect that even in several Ecclesiastical Orders
the heads are chosen by universal suffrage; but who
in the wide world has ever sought for freedom in a con-
vent? Truly it is not the spirit of liberty which speaks
in Lamartine's declaration, in the year 1848: "Every
Frenchman is an elector, therefore a self-ruler; no
Frenchman can say to another, 'You are more a ruler
than I. '" What instinct of mankind is gratified by
such words? None other than the meanest of all--
envy I Even Rousseau's enthusiasm for the civism of
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? 304 TREITSCHKE: HIS LIFE AND WORKS
the ancients will not stand serious examination. The
civic glory of Athens rested on the broad substratum
of slavery, of contempt for all economic activities; whilst
we moderns base our fame on respect for all men, on
our acknowledgment of the nobility of labour. The
most bigoted aristocrat in the modern world seems like
a democrat by comparison with that Aristotle who
coolly lays it down with horrible hardness of heart:
"It is not possible for a man who lives the life of a
manual labourer to practise works of virtue. "
Deeper natures were impelled, long ago, by such con-
siderations to examine more carefully on what prin-
ciples the much-envied freedom of the Britons rests.
They found that in that country no all-powerful govern-
ment determines the destinies of the most remote
communities, but every county, however small, is
administered by itself. This acknowledgment of the
blessings of self-government was an extraordinary
advance; for the enervating influence on the citizens
of a State that looks after everything can hardly be
depicted in sufficiently dark colours; it is, therefore, so
uncanny, because a morbid state of the people is only
revealed in its full extent in a later generation. So long
as the eye of the great Frederick watched over his Prus-
sians, a simple glance at the hero raised even small
souls above their standard; his vigilance was a spur to
the sluggards. But when he passed away he left a
generation without a will, accustomed--as Napoleon III
boasts of bis Frenchmen--to expect from the State all
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? FREEDOM 305
incitement to action, disposed to that vanity which
is the opposite of real national pride, capable on occasion
of breaking out in fleeting enthusiasm for the idea of
State-unity, but incapable of commanding itself--
incapable of the greatest task which is laid upon modern
nations. Only those citizens who have learnt, by self-
government, to act as statesmen in case of need are able
to colonise, to spread the blessings of Western civilisa-
tion among barbarians. The management of the business
of the community by paid State officials may be techni-
cally more perfect and may be better than the principle of
the division of labour; yet a State which allows its citizens,
of their own free-will, to look after districts and com-
munities in honorary service, gains moral force by the
self-consciousness, by the living, practical patriotism,
of the citizens--forces which the sole rule of State
officialdom can never evolve. Assuredly this admission
on our part was a significant deepening of our ideas of
freedom, but it by no means contains the ultimate
truth. For, if we inquire where this self-government
of all small local districts exists, we discover with as-
tonishment that the numerous small tribes in Turkey
enjoy this blessing in a high degree. They pay then-
taxes, for the rest they live as they please, look after
their pigs, hunt, kill each other, and find themselves
quite happy with it all--until suddenly a Pasha visits
the tribe, and proves to the dullest understanding, by
means of impalement and drowning in sacks, that the
self-government of the communities is an illusion, if the
U
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? 306 TREITSCHKE: HIS LIFE AND WORKS
highest powers of the State do not operate within fixed
limits of the laws.
Thus, finally, we come to the conclusion that political
freedom is not, as the Napoleons assert, an ornament
which may be set upon a perfectly-constructed State
like a golden cupola; it must permeate and inspire the
whole State. It is a profound, comprehensive, extremely
consistent system of political rights which tolerates
no gaps. There can be no Parliament without free
communities, no free communities without Parliament;
and neither can be permanent if the middle factors
between the top of the State and the communities,
namely, the various districts and departments, are not
also administered by a concentration of the personal
activity of independent citizens. We Germans have
felt these gaps painfully for a long time, and are just
now making the first modest endeavours to fill them.
Nevertheless, a State dominated by a government
carried on by the majority of its people, with a Parlia-
ment, with an independent judiciary, with districts and
communities which administer themselves, is, despite
all, not yet free. It has to set limits to its operation,
it has to admit that there are personal properties of so
high and unassailable a nature that the Statej;must
never subject them to itself. Let no one sneer too
presumptuously at the fundamental principles of the
more recent Constitutions. In the midst of phrases
and silliness they contain the Magna Charta of personal
freedom, with which the modern world will not again
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? FREEDOM 307
dispense. Free movement in religious faith, and in
knowledge and in affairs generally, is the watchword of
the times; in this domain it has had the greatest effect;
this social freedom is developing the essence of all
political desires for the great majority of men. It may
be asserted that wherever the State resolved to let a
branch of social activity grow unhindered its self-
control was gloriously rewarded; all the predictions
of timorous pessimists fell to the ground. We have
become a different nation since we have been drawn
into closer intercourse with the world and its ways.
Even two generations ago Ludwig Vincke, like the
careful president he was, explained to his Westphalians
how to set about building a high-road by means of a
company, on the English plan. To-day, a dense net
of associations of every kind is spread over German
territory. We know that through his merchants the
German will, at the least, share in the noble destiny of
our race, and fructify the wide world. And it is even
now no empty dream that an act of government will
presently result from that intercourse with the world,
compared with whose world-embracing outlook all the
activities of modern Great Powers will seem like sorry
provincialism, so immeasurably rich and many-sided
is the essence of freedom. Therein lies the consoling
certainty that it is never impossible at any time to work
for the victory of freedom. For should a government
temporarily succeed in undermining the people's partici-
pation in legislation, men of to-day, with their impulse
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? 308 TREITSCHKE: HIS LIFE AND WORKS
for freedom, would simply throw their energies with
the more violence into economic or spiritual activities,
and the results in the one sphere influence the other
sooner or later. Let us leave it to boys, and those
nations which ever remain children, to hunt for freedom
with passionate haste, like some phantom that dissolves
at the touch of its pursuers. A mature people loves
liberty, like its lawful wife; she is part of us, she enrap-
tures us day by day with fresh charms.
But new, undreamed-of dangers to freedom arise
with the growth of civilisation. It is not only the
State-power which may be tyrannical, but also the
unorganised majority of a society may subject the
minds of its citizens to odious compulsion by the slow
and imperceptible, yet irresistible, force of its opinion.
And it is beyond doubt that the danger of an intolerable
limitation of the independent development of personality,
by means of public opinion, is especially great in demo-
cratic States. For, whilst during the absence of freedom
under the old regime, at least a few privileged classes
were allowed, without hindrance, to develop, brilliantly,
their individual gifts, whether for good or for evil; the
middle classes, who will determine Europe's future,
are not free from a certain preference for the mediocre.
They are justly proud of the fact that they are trying
to drag down to their own level everything that rises
above them, and to raise up to the level all those that
are beneath them ; and they may base their desire to be
determining factors in the lives of States on a glorious
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? FREEDOM 309
title, on a great deed which they, together with the old
Monarchy, have achieved, namely, on the emancipation
of our lower classes. But woe to us if this tendency
to equality, which has ripened the most precious fruit
in the domain of common right, goes astray in the
domain of individual evolution! The middle classes
hate all open, violent tyranny, but they are much in-
clined to nullify, by the ostracism of public opinion,
everything that rises above a certain average of culture,
of spiritual nobility, of audacity. The love of liberty
which distinguishes them and makes them, as such,
the most capable political order, is liable to degenerate
only too easily into idle complacency, into an unthinking,
sleepy endeavour to blink and gloss over all the con-
tradictions of intellectual life, and only to tolerate alert
activity in the sphere of material operations (of "im-
provement ! "). We are not here giving utterance to
vain hypotheses. Far from it. The yoke of public
opinion presses heavier than elsewhere in the freest
great States of modernity--in England and the United
States. The sphere of what the community permits
the citizen to think and to do as an honourable and
decent being is there incomparably narrower than with
us. If you have knowledge of the memorable discus-
sions about the Constitution at the Convention of
Massachusetts in the year 1853, if you know with
what spirit and passion the doctrine was then cham-
pioned that "a citizen may certainly be the subject
of a party, or an actual power (! ), but never the subject
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? 31o TREITSCHKE: HIS LIFE AND WORKS
of the State," you will not underrate the peril of a lapse
into conditions of harsh morality and weakened rights--
the danger of the social tyranny of the majority. Mill
has excellently pointed this out, and therein lies the
significance of his book for the present time. He in-
vestigates, quite apart from the form of government,
the nature and limits of the power which Society should
suitably exercise over the individual. Humboldt saw
danger for personal liberty only in the State; he scarcely
thought that the society of beautiful and distinguished
minds, which associated with him, could ever hinder
the individual in the complete evolution of his personality.
However, we know now that they may be not only a
"free sociability " but also a tyrannical public opinion.
In order to understand to what extent Society should
use its power over the individual it is best, first of all,
to throw gleefully overboard a question over which
political thinkers have unnecessarily spent many un-
happy hours, namely: Is the State only a means for
furthering the objects in life of the citizens? Or is it
the sole object of the citizens' well-being to bring into
existence a beautiful and good collective life? Hum-
boldt, Mill, and Laboulaye, and the collective Liberalism
of the Rotteck-Welcker school, decide for the former;
the ancients, as is well known, for the latter. We
think the one opinion is worth as little as the other;
for the whole world admits that a relation of reciprocal
rights and duties connects the State with its citizens.
But reciprocity is unthinkable between entities which
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? FREEDOM 311
are related to one another simply as means and object.
The State is itself an object, like everything living;
for who can deny that the State lives quite as real a life
as each of its citizens? How wonderful that we Ger-
mans, with our provincialism, have to admonish a
Frenchman and an Englishman to think more highly
of the State! Mill and Laboulaye both live in mighty
respected States; they take that rich blessing for granted
and perceive in the State only the terrifying power
which threatens the liberty of man. We Germans
have had our esteem for the dignity of the State for-
tified by painful experience. When we are asked by
strangers about our "narrower Fatherland," and a
scornful smile plays around the lips of the hearers at the
mention of the name of Reuss, of the younger line, or
Schwarzburg-Sondershausen's principality, we feel in-
deed that the State is something bigger than a means
for lightening the burdens of our private lives. Its
honour is ours, and he who cannot look upon his State
with enthusiastic pride, his soul is lacking in one of the
highest feelings of man. If to-day our best men are
trying to build up a State for this nation which shall
deserve respect, they are inspired in their task, not only
by the desire to spend their personal existence hence-
forth in greater security, but they also know they are
fulfilling a moral duty, which is imposed upon every
nation.
The State that protected our forefathers with its
justice; which they defended with their bodies; which
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? 312 TREITSCHKE: HIS LIFE AND WORKS
the living are called upon to build further, and higher-
developed children, and children's children, to inherit;
which, therefore, is a sacred bond between many genera-
tions--the State, I say, is an independent order, which
lives according to its own laws. The views of rulers
and ruled can never altogether coincide; they will
assuredly reach the same goal in a free and mature
State, but by widely divergent paths. The citizen
demands from the State the highest possible measure
of personal liberty, because he wants to live himself
out, to develop all his powers. The State grants it,
not because it wants to oblige the individual citizen,
but it is considering itself, the whole. It is bound to
support itself by its citizens; but in the moral world
only that which is free, which is also able to resist, sup-
ports. Thus, truly, the respect which the State pays the
individual and his liberty gives the surest measure of
its culture; but it pays that respect primarily, because
political freedom, which the State itself acquires, is
impossible with citizens who do not themselves look
after their most private affairs without hindrance.
This indissoluble connection between political and
personal liberty, especially the essence of liberty, as of
a closely-cohering system of noble rights, has not been
properly understood by either Mill or Laboulaye. The
former, in full enjoyment of English civic rights, silently
assumes the existence of political freedom; the latter,
under the oppression of Bonapartism, does not dare
even to think about it. And yet personal freedom,
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? FREEDOM 313
without the political, leads to the dissolution of the
State. He who only sees in the State a means for
obtaining the objects in life of the citizens must, con-
sequentially, after the good mediaeval manner, seek
freedom from the State, not freedom in the State. The
modern world has outgrown that error. Still less,
however, may a generation which lives predominantly
for social aims, and is only able to devote a small part
of its time to the State, fall into the opposite error of
the ancients. This age is called upon to resume in
itself, and to further develop, the indestructible results
of the labours of culture, and, likewise, of the political
work of antiquity and the Middle Age. Thus it arrives
at the harmonising and yet independent conclusion
that there is a physical necessity, and a moral duty, for
the State to further everything that serves the personal
evolution of its citizens. And, again, there is a physical
necessity, and a moral duty, for the individual to take
his part in a State, and to make even personal sacrifices
to it, which the maintenance of the community demands,
even the sacrifice of his life. And, indeed, man is subject
to this duty, not merely because it is only as a citizen
that he can become a complete man, but also because
it is an historical ordinance that mankind build States,
beautiful and good States. The historical world affords
superabundant evidence of such conditions of reciprocal
rights, of reciprocal dependence; everything condi-
tioned appears in it at the same time as a conditioning
entity. It is precisely that fact which often makes the
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? 314 TREITSCHKE: HIS LIFE AND WORKS
comprehension of things political difficult to arrive at
mathematical minds, which, like Mill, are fond of reaching
conclusion by means of a radical law.
Mill now tries to draw the permissible limits of the
operation of Society with the sentence: The interference
of Society with personal liberty is only justified when it is
necessary, in order to protect the community itself,
or to hinder injury by others. We shall not contradict
this saying--if only it were not so entirely futile! How
small is the effect of such abstract maxims of natural
law in an historical science! For is not the " self-protec-
tion of the community " historically capable of change?
Is it not the duty of a theocratic State, for the sake of
self-protection, to tyrannously interfere, even with the
thoughts of its citizens? And do not those common
labours, which are "necessary for the community,"
which the citizen must be compelled to discharge, vary
essentially according to time and place? There is no
absolute limit to the State-power, and it is the greatest
merit of modern science that it has taught politicians
to reckon only with relative ideas. Every advance of
civilisation, every widening of national culture, necessarily
make the State's activity more varied. North America,
too, is experiencing that truth: the State and Society
in the big towns there are also being obliged to develop a
manifold activity, which is not needed in a primeval forest.
The much-vaunted voluntarism, the activity of free
private associations, is not by any means sufficient in
all cases to satisfy the needs of our Society. The net of
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? FREEDOM 315
our intercourse has such small meshes that a thousand
collisions between rights and interests necessarily occur;
it is the duty of the State in both instances to intervene
conciliatingly as an impartial power. In the same way
there exist in every highly-civilised nation big private
powers which actually exclude free competition; the
State has to restrain their selfishness, even if they do
not injure any rights of third parties. The English
Parliament some years ago ordered the railway companies
not only to attend to the safety of the passengers, but
also to allow a certain number of so-called Parliamentary
trains to run at the usual rates for all classes of carriages.
Nobody can say that there is an exceeding of the sensible
limits of the State-power in this law, which makes
travelling possible for the lower classes. But if you see in
the State merely an institution for safety you can only
defend the measure by means of very artificial and
unconvincing argument; for who has a right to demand
that he should be carried from A to B for three shillings?
The railway company has certainly no monopoly by
law, and it is free to anyone to construct a parallel line!
No, the modern State cannot do without an extensive
positive activity for the people's benefit. In every nation
there are spiritual and material properties, without
which the State cannot exist. A constitutional State
assumes a high average of national culture; it may
never leave it to the pleasure of parents whether they
want to give their children the most needful education;
it requires compulsory education. The sphere of these
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? 316 TREITSCHKE. HIS LIFE AND WORKS
benefits, which are requisite for the community's existence,
is inevitably widened by the growth of civilisation.
Who would seriously propose to shut up the precious
art institutions in our States? We old cultured nations
shall certainly not relapse into the crude conception which
sees a luxury in art; it is like our daily bread to us. In
point of fact, the demand for the extremest limitation
of State-activity is the more loudly urged in theory
to-day the more it is contradicted by practice, even in
free countries. The school of Tocqueville, Laboulaye, and
Charles Dollfus grew up in combat with an all-embracing
State-power which wanted, not to guide, but to replace
Society, under the Second Empire--a school which goes
beyond its mark, and discerns in the State simply an
obstacle, an oppressing force. Even Mill is dominated
by the opinion that the greater the power of the State
the smaller the freedom. The State, however, is not the
citizens' foe. England is free, and yet the English police
have a very great dicretionary power and is bound
to have it; it is enough if a citizen may make any
official answerable in a law-court.
Luckily, another historical law is operating in opposi-
tion to the increasing growth of State-power. In propor-
tion as the citizens become riper for self-government the
State is under obligation--nay, is physically obliged--
to operate in a more varied way so far as comprehensive-
ness is concerned, but more moderately so far as method
is concerned. If the immature State was a guarantee for
individual branches of national activity, the guardian-
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? FREEDOM 317
ship of the highly-developed State embraces the sum
total of national life, but it operates, as far as possible,
only as a force that spurs on, instructs, clears away
impediments. A mature people must therefore demand
these things of the State for the assurance of its personal
liberty: The most fruitful outcome of the metaphysical
fights for freedom during the past century, namely,
the truth that the citizen must never be utilised by the
State merely as a means, should be recognised as a true
fundamental principle. Next, all activity on the part
of the Government is beneficial which brings forth,
furthers, purifies, the individual activity of the citizens;
all Government activity is evil which suppresses the
activity of individuals; for the whole dignity of the
State rests ultimately on the personal worth of its
citizens, and that State is the most moral which
combines the powers of the citizens for the purpose
of accomplishing the greatest number of works beneficial
to the Society, and yet permits each one, honestly
and independently, to pursue his personal development
untouched by compulsion on the part of the State and
public opinion. Thus we agree with Mill and Laboulaye
in the final result--in the desire for the highest possible
degree of personal liberty--although we do not share their
view of the State as an obstacle to freedom.
And what significance do these reflections on personal
liberty possess for us? The presentiment of a great
and decisive movement is permeating the world, and
imposing on every nation the question, what value it
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? 318 TREITSCHKE: HIS LIFE AND WORKS
puts on personal freedom, on the personal independence
of its citizens. We Germans in particular cannot evade
the question, we, whose whole future rests, not on the
established power of all our States, but on the personal
thoroughness of our people. The historical facts are
dominant that only a nation which is imbued with a
strong sense of personal freedom can win, and keep poli-
tical freedom, and that the well-being of real personal
freedom is only possible under the protection of political
freedom, since despotism, in whatever shape it may
appear, is only able to give rein to the lower passions,
to commerce^ and commonplace ambition.
The most precious and especial possession of our
nation, which will yet constitute the German State a new
phenomenon in political history, is the Germans' invin-
cible love of personal freedom. Many will smile at this,
and put the bitter question: Where are the fruits of
this love? And indeed we redden as we confront that
stately line of legislative measures which the Anglo-
Saxon race has passed for its personal freedom. Mill
is far from deifying our nation; as has been said of him
with some justice, he inwardly feels his near kinship
with the German genius, but he is afraid of the weaknesses
of our temperament; he deliberately avoids penetrating
too deeply into German literature, and holds to French
models. And the same man confesses that in no country,
except Germany alone, are people capable of understanding
and aspiring to the highest and purest personal liberty,
the all-sided evolution of the human spirit!
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? FREEDOM 319
Our science is the freest on earth; it tolerates no compul-
sion, either from without or within; it aims at the truth,
nothing but the truth, without any prejudice. The
opinionativeness of our learned men became a by-word,
yet it goes very well together with a frank acknowledg-
ment of an adversary's scientific importance. A free
mind, which goes its own way, and not the well-worn way
of the schools, and reaches important results, may with
certainty finally count upon cordial agreement. The
most stupid police tutelage did not succeed in breaking
down the Germans' ardour for personal idiosyncrasy.
It is a conviction which has taken firm root in the lowest
strata of our nation, that in all questions of conscience
every man must decide for himself alone.
