nd
words--for the opinions, because they are mine and my mental property,
and for the words, because they are the free expression and use of that
property. And yet the basic principle remains that injury to the honor
of individuals generally, abuse, libel, contemptuous caricaturing of the
government, its officers and officials, especially the person of the
prince, defiance of the laws, incitement to revolt, etc., are all
offenses and crimes of different grades.

However, the peculiar and dangerous effect of these acts for the
individuals, the community, and the State depends upon the nature of the
soil on which they are committed, just as a spark, if thrown upon a heap
of gunpowder, has a much more dangerous result than if thrown on the
mere ground, where it vanishes and leaves no trace. But, on the whole, a
good many such acts, though punishable by law, may come under a certain
kind of nemesis which internal impotence is forced to bring about. In
entering upon opposition to the superior talents and virtues, by which
impotence feels oppressed, it comes to a realization of its inferiority
and to a consciousness of its own nothingness, and the nemesis, even
when bad and odious, is, by treating it with contempt, rendered
ineffectual. Like the public, which forms a circle for such activity, it
is confined to a harmless malicious joy, and to a condemnation which
reflects upon itself.

MEANING OF WAR

There is an ethical element in war. It must not be regarded as an
absolute ill, or as merely an external calamity which is accidentally
based upon the passions of despotic individuals or nations, upon acts of
injustice, and, in general, upon what ought not to be. The recognition
of the finite, such as property and life, as accidental, is necessary.
This necessity is at first wont to appear under the form of a force of
nature, for all things finite are mortal and transient. In the ethical
order, in the State, however, nature is robbed of its force, and the
necessity is exalted to a work of freedom, to an ethical law. The
transient and negative nature of all things is transformed in the State
into an expression of the ethical will. War, often painted by edifying
speech as a state in which the vanity of temporal things is
demonstrated, now becomes an element whereby the ideal character of the
particular receives its right and reality. War has the deep meaning that
by it the ethical health of the nations is preserved and their