rth by the scientific spokesmen
of the _bourgeoisie_. This is the doctrine of its political leaders,
of liberalism. But this theory is in a high degree inadequate,
unscientific, and at variance with the essential nature of the State.

The course of history is a struggle against nature, against need,
ignorance and impotence, and, therefore, against bondage of every kind
in which we were held under the state of nature at the beginning of
history. The progressive overcoming of this impotence,--this is the
evolution of liberty, whereof history is an account. In this struggle
we should never have made one step in advance, and we should never
take a further step, if we had gone into the struggle singly, each for
himself.

Now the State is precisely this contemplated unity and cooeperation of
individuals in a moral whole, whose function it is to carry on this
struggle, a combination which multiplies a million fold the force of
all the individuals comprised in it, which heightens a million fold
the powers which each individual singly would be able to exert.

The end of the State, therefore, is not simply to secure to each
individual that personal freedom and that property with which the
bourgeois principle assumes that the individual enters the state
organization at the outset, but which in point of fact are first
afforded him in and by the State. On the contrary, the end of the
State can be no other than to accomplish that which, in the nature of
things, is and always has been the function of the State,--in set
terms: by combining individuals into a state organization to enable
them to achieve such ends and to attain such a level of existence as
they could not achieve as isolated individuals.

The ultimate and intrinsic end of the State, therefore, is to further
the positive unfolding, the progressive development of human life. In
other words, its function is to work out in actual achievement the
true end of man; that is to say, the full degree of culture of which
human nature is capable. It is the education and evolution of mankind
into freedom.

As a matter of fact, even the older culture, which has become the
inestimable foundation of the Germanic genius, makes for such a
conception of the State. I may cite the words of the great leader of
our science, August Boeckh: "The concept of the State must," according
to him, "necessarily be so broadened as to make the State the
contrivance whereby all human virtue is to be re