would be no
guaranty either for its successful exercise or for the non-violation of the
legal limit--but devolves upon the state. The state takes its origin in
the common will of all to unite for the safeguarding of their rights, and
determines by positive laws (intermediate between the law of right and
legal judgments) what shall be considered rights. Thus there result three
subjects for natural right: original rights or the sum of that which
pertains to freedom or personality (inviolability of the body and of
property), the right of coercion, and political right. The aim of
punishment is the reform of the evil doer and the deterrence of others.
Fichte is in agreement with Kant concerning the principle of popular
sovereignty (Rousseau) and the exercise of the political power through
representatives; but not so concerning the guaranties against the violation
of the fundamental law of the state. Instead of the division of powers
recommended by Kant he demands supervision of the rulers of the state by
ephors, who, themselves without any legislative or executive authority,
shall suspend the rulers in case they violate the law, and call them to
account before the community. Every constitution in which the rulers
are not responsible is despotic. Fichte did not continue loyal to this
principle, that the state is merely a legal institution. He not only
demands a state organization of labor by which everyone shall be placed in
a position to live from his work, in the _Natural Right_ and the _Exclusive
Commercial State_, but, in his posthumous _Theory of Right_, 1812, he makes
it the chief duty of the state to lead men, by the moral and intellectual
training of the people, to do from insight what they have hitherto done
from traditional belief. Through the education of the people the empirical
state is gradually to transform itself into the rational state.

%3. Fichte's Second Period: his View of History and his Theory of
Religion.%

Fichte's transfer to Berlin brought him into more intimate contact with
the world, and along with new experiences and new emotions gave him new
problems. While a vigorously developing religious sentiment turned his
speculation to the relation of the individual ego to the primal source of
spiritual life, empirical reality also acquired greater significance for
him, and the intellectual, moral, and political situation of the time
especially attracted his attention. The last required philosophical