ondly, a contrivance for
calling the members of the State together, for taking the votes, and for
performing the arithmetical operations of reckoning and comparing the
number of votes for the different propositions, and thereby deciding
upon them. The State is an abstraction, having even its generic
existence in its citizens; but it is an actuality, and its simply
generic existence must embody itself in individual will and activity.
The want of government and political administration in general is felt;
this necessitates the selection and separation from the rest of those
who have to take the helm in political affairs, to decide concerning
them, and to give orders to other citizens, with a view to the execution
of their plans. If, for instance, even the people in a democracy resolve
on a war, a general must head the army. It is only by a constitution
that the abstraction--the State--attains life and reality; but this
involves the distinction between those who command and those who obey.
Yet obedience seems inconsistent with liberty, and those who command
appear to do the very opposite of that which the fundamental idea of the
State, viz., that of freedom, requires. It is, however, urged that
though the distinction between commanding and obeying is absolutely
necessary, because affairs could not go on without it, and indeed, this
seems only a compulsory limitation, external to and even contravening
freedom in the abstract--the constitution should be at least so framed
that the citizens may obey as little as possible and the smallest
modicum of free volition be left to the commands of the superiors; that
the substance of that for which subordination is necessary, even in its
most important bearings, should be decided and resolved on by the
people, by the will of many or of all the citizens; though it is
supposed to be thereby provided that the State should be possessed of
vigor and strength as a reality--an individual unity. The primary
consideration is, then, the distinction between the governing and the
governed, and political constitutions in the abstract have been rightly
divided into monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy; this gives occasion,
however, for the remark that monarchy itself must be further divided
into despotism and monarchy proper; that in all the divisions to which
the leading idea gives rise, only the generic character is to be made
prominent, it being not intended thereby that the particular category
u