 Introduction. On the popular judgement, that may be right in theory, but does not hold good in the praxis. This is the LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are on the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Editor's Note. For the purpose of this recording, in order to reflect the complete essay as written by Kant, and at the same time to render it as intelligible as possible, I have recorded the introduction and first section from John Robertson's 1798 translation of this work. However, for parts two and three, I have used Hastie's translation from 1891 from his book Kant's Principles of Politics, including his essay On Perpetual Peace, A Contribution to Political Science. The reason for this is that Hastie in his work does not present the essay as a whole, and further uses subject headings which detract from the unity of the work. However, Hastie's translation is far more accessible to the modern reader or listener, and is therefore much preferable for this kind of work. D. E. Wittkauer, 6th February 2007. End Editor's Note. On the popular judgment, that may be right in theory, but does not hold good in the praxis. Introduction. From Essays and Treatises on Moral, Political, and Various Philosophical Subjects. By Emanuel Kant. Translated by John Richardson, 1798. Introduction. The aggregate of even practical rules is denominated theory when these rules as principles are thought in a certain universality, and thereby is extracted from a multitude of conditions which necessarily have influence on their exercise. Conversely, not every handicraft, but only that attaining of an end, is named praxis, which is thought as the observance of certain principles of procedure represented in the general. It is evident that between the theory and the praxis, a medium of connection and of transition from the one to the other is still required, but the theory be ever so complete. For to the conception of understanding, which comprises the rule, must be super-added an act of judgment, whereby the practitioner discriminates, whether something be the case of the rule or not. And as rules, by which the judgment could take its measures in the subsumption, cannot always be given, because that would go to the infinite. There may be theorists who never in their lives can become practitioners, because they want judgment. For instance, physicians or lawyers who may have prosecuted their studies successfully, but who, when they are to give advice, do not know how to proceed. Why this gift of nature is even to be met with? There may yet be a want of premises. That is, the theory may be incomplete, and the complement of it obtained perhaps, but by experiments and experiences to be made still, from which the physician, the farmer, or the financier, on quitting his school, are to abstract rules for himself, and render his theory complete. The theory, however, was not to be blamed if it did not suffice to the praxis, but the fault was that theory enough did not exist, which the man ought to have learned from experience, and which is real theory, though he is not able to communicate it, and as a teacher to propound it systematically in universal positions. Consequently, can lay no claim to the title of a theoretical physician, farmer, etc. Nobody, therefore, can pretend to be practically versed in a science and at the same time despise the theory without exposing himself to be held and ignorant in his own province. Believing, by groping in experiments and experiences, without collecting for himself certain principles, which constitute that properly named theory, and without having reflected on his business as a whole, which, when one proceeds in this methodically, is termed a system, to make more progress than the theory would permit. It is, however, more supportable that an ignorant should give out theory as unnecessary, and which may be dispensed with in his opinionative praxis, than that a skillist should admit of it and of its use in the schools, in order to exercise the understanding only, but maintain at the same time that the praxis is quite of another nature, that when one quits the school and goes into the world, one perceives void ideals and philosophical reveries to be followed. In a word, that which is right in theory is of no validity for the praxis. It is often expressed thus, this or that position is valid, it is true in thesy, but not in hypothesis. Were empirical mechanists to pronounce in this manner on universal mechanics, or bombardiers on the mathematical doctrine of the throwing of bombs, that the theory in these sciences is indeed nicely ex-cogitated, but is not at all valid in the praxis, because in the execution experience gives quite other results, they would be but laughed at, for if to the former were super-added the theory of friction to the latter, the resistance of the air, consequently, but more theory in general, they would harmonize perfectly with experience. But the case is quite different with the theory, which concerns objects of intuition than with that, in which objects are represented but by conceptions, with objects of mathematics and of philosophy, the latter of which perhaps may easily be thought and without censure on the part of reason, but perhaps not at all given, but may be void ideas merely, of which no use whatsoever would be made in the praxis, or use even disadvantageous to it. Therefore, that popular judgment may in such cases be perfectly correct, but in a theory which bottoms upon the conception of duty, the apprehension on account of the void idealness of this conception ceases entirely, for it would not be duty to proceed on a certain effect of the will if this were not possible in experience too, whether it be thought has accomplished or continually approaching to the accomplishment, and this sort of theory only is the subject of the present treatise, for it is not seldom pretended of it to the scandal of philosophy that what may be right in it is however not valid for the praxis, and indeed in an imperious, disdainful tone full of presumption, willing by experience to reform reason in that even in which it places its greatest honour, and with an arrogated wisdom and moles' eyes which are fixed on experience, imagining to be able to see farther and better than with eyes which have fallen to the share of a being made to stand erect and to behold the heavens. This maxim become very common in our times, rich in sentences but poor in facts when it concerns anything moral, duty of law or of ethics, occasions the greatest mischief, for here we have to do with a canon of reason in the practical field, where the value of the praxis rests entirely upon its suitableness to the theory upon which it is built, and all is lost when the empirical and by consequence fortuitous conditions of the execution of the law are made conditions of the law itself, and thus a praxis, which is calculated on a probable issue according to a precedent experience, becomes entitled to master the theory subsisting of itself. This treatise is divided according to the three different stations from which the man of honour, accustomed to pronounce so boldly on theories and on systems, is want to judge his object. Consequently in a threefold quality, first as a private man but a man of business, second as a statesman, third as a man of the world, or a citizen of the world in general. These three personages are unanimous in falling upon the schoolman who elaborates theory for them all and for their greatest good in order, as they believe themselves better qualified to send him to his school, ilase yaque in aula, as a pedant who spoiled for the praxis but stands in the way of their experienced wisdom. We shall therefore represent the relation in which the theory stands to the praxis in three sections. First, in moral in general, with a view to the good of every man. Secondly, in politics, with reference to the good of states. Thirdly, in a cosmopolitical consideration, with a view to the good of the human species in general, so far as it is engaged in advancing to that good in the series of generations of all future times. But the titles of the sections will be expressed for reasons which unfold themselves in the treatise itself by the relation of the theory to the praxis in moral, in the law of states, and in the law of nations. End introduction. On the popular judgment that may be right in theory but does not hold good in the praxis by a manual count. This recording is in the public domain. Section 1 of On the popular judgment that may be right in theory but does not hold in the praxis. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. On the popular judgment that may be right in theory but does not hold good in the praxis by a manual count. Section 1 of The relation which the theory bears to the praxis in moral in general. In answer to a few objections started by Professor Garfe. Footnote. Confer essays on different subjects, moral and literary by Professor Garfe. Volume 1. Pages 111 to 116. I name the disputing of my position's objections of this worthy man's to that in which he, I hope, wishes to agree with me. Not a tax, which as positive assertions would provoke to a defence. For which it is neither the place here nor have I the inclination. End footnote. Before I come to the proper point of dispute concerning what may be valid in the use of the same conception for the theory merely or for the praxis. I must compare my theory as I have represented it elsewhere with a representation which Mr. Garfe gives of it in order previously to see whether we understand one another. Heading A. By way of introduction I explained moral as a science which teaches not how we shall become happy but how we shall become worthy of felicity. Footnote. The worthiness of being happy is that quality of a person resting upon the proper will of the subject in conformity to which a universally legislative reason for nature as well as for the free will would harmonize with all the ends of this person. It is therefore totally different from the address in procuring happiness to one's self. For he is not worthy of this even, and of the talent which nature has lent him for that purpose when he has a will that does not accord with what only is suitable to a universal legislation and cannot be comprehended therein, that is, which is repugnant to morality. End Footnote. At the same time I did not neglect to observe that it thereby was not required of man that, when the observance of duty was concerned, he should renounce his natural end felicity. For he cannot do that no more than any finite rational being in general, but he must, when the commandment of duty is in question, totally abstract from the consideration of felicity. He must by no means make it the condition of the observance of the law prescribed to him by reason. Nay, as much as it is possible for him, even to endeavor to become conscious to himself that no springs derived from that source shall imperceptibly mix themselves with the determination of duty, which is effectuated by representing duty combined rather with sacrifices which its observance, virtue, costs, then with the advantages it yields us. In order to represent to ourselves the commandment of duty in its whole consequence or importance, requiring unconditional obedience, enough for itself and standing in need of no other influence whatever. Subheading A. Mr. Garfe expresses this, my position, thus. That I maintained that observance of the moral law is, entirely without consideration of felicity, the only scope of man, and it must be considered as the sole end of the Creator. Perenn, according to my theory, neither the morality of man of itself nor felicity of itself only, but the highest good possible in the world which consists of the union and harmony of both is the only end of the Creator. End Perenn. Heading B. I observed farther that this conception of duty has no occasion to bottom upon any particular end, but rather brings about another end for the will of man, namely to contribute to the utmost to the highest good possible in the world. The universal felicity conjoined with the purest morality and that felicity conformable to this morality in the universe, which, as it is indeed in our power on one side but not on both sides taken together, extorts from reason in a practical view the belief in a moral sovereign of the world and in a future life. Not as if the universal conception of duty should receive support and stability but on the presupposition of both, that is, a shore ground and the requisite strength of a spring, but that it may receive an object but in that ideal of pure reason. Footnote. The need or necessity of supposing a highest good possible by a cooperation in the world as the scope or final end of things is not a need for want of moral springs but in external relations in which only conformable to these springs an object can be produced as end in itself as moral scope. For no will can be without all end, though, when legal necessitation of actions merely is concerned, it must be abstracted from and the law only constitutes the determinative of the will. But every end is not moral, for example, that of proper felicity is not. But this must be disinterested and the need of a scope given by pure reason comprehending the whole of all ends under one principle, a world as the highest good possible by a cooperation, is a need of the disinterested wills extending itself beyond the observation of the formal laws to the production of an object, the chief good. This is a determination of will of a peculiar sort, namely by the idea of the whole of all ends, where this is laid as a foundation to it, that when we stand in certain moral relations to things in the world, we must everywhere obey the moral law. And more than that, the duty still servings to cause with all our might that such a relation, a world suitable to the moral chief ends, may exist. In this, man cogitates himself according to the analogy with the deity, which, though subjective, stands in need of no external thing. However, it cannot be thought that he should shut himself up within himself, but is destined to produce the chief good without himself, even by the consciousness of his all sufficiency, which necessity, which in man is duty, in the supreme being, cannot be represented by us, but as a moral need. With man, therefore, the spring that lies in the idea of the highest good possible in the world by his cooperation, is not the proper felicity thereby intended, but only this idea as end in itself, consequently its observance as duty, for it contains not a prospect of happiness absolutely, but a proportion between it and the worthiness of the subject, whatever it be. But a determination of the will, which limits itself in its design to belong to such a whole, to this condition, is not interested. End footnote. For duty in itself is nothing but limitation of the will to the condition of a universal legislation possible by an assumed maxim, but the object or the end of the will be what it pleases, consequently even felicity. But from which, and from every end that one may have, it is hereby totally abstracted, in the question concerning the principle of moral, the doctrine of the chief good as ultimate end of a will determined by it and suitable to its laws, may then, as episodicel, be passed over in silence, as it will appear in the sequel, that, where the proper point of dispute is concerned, no regard whatever is paid to it but merely to the universal moral. Subheading B. Mr. Garfe reduces these positions to the following expressions, that the virtuous neither can nor dares lose sight of that point of view, proper felicity, because otherwise he would totally lose the transition to the invisible world, that to the conviction of the existence of God and of immortality, which however, according to this theory, is absolutely necessary to give the system support and stability. And concludes, in order to comprehend in a small space the sum of the assertions ascribed to me, the virtuous, in consequence of those principles, aspires incessantly to be worthy of felicity, but insofar as he is really virtuous, never to be happy. Paren, the expression insofar occasions here an ambiguity which must first be removed. It may mean, in the act, in which he as virtuous subjects himself to his duty, and in that case, this position harmonizes completely with my theory. Or, when he is but virtuous in general, and even where duty is not concerned and impugned, the virtuous shall pay no regard at all to felicity, and that contradicts my assertions entirely. These objections, therefore, are nothing but misunderstandings, for I do not choose to hold them misinterpretations, whose possibility would seem very strange did not the human propensity to follow the train of thought to which it is once accustomed in even the judgment of others' thoughts, and thus to transfer that to this sufficiently explains such a phenomenon. A dogmatical assertion of the opposite follows this polemical treatment of the above moral principle. Mr. Garfe concludes analytically thus, a law presupposes motives, but motives presuppose a previously perceived difference of a worse state from a better. This difference is a good state, and a series of such good states is the most general conception which the word felicity expresses. Again, a law presupposes motives, but motives presuppose a previously perceived difference of a worse state from a better. This difference perceived is the element of the conception of felicity, etc. Again, from felicity, in the most general sense of the word, spring the motives to every pursuit, therefore to the observance of the moral law. I must first know in general that something is good before I can inquire whether the observance of the moral duties belongs to the rubric of the good. Man must have a spring that puts him in motion before an aim can be set up to him to which this motion shall be directed. That is exactly what I insist on. The spring which man can previously have before an aim end is set up to him can evidently be nothing but the law itself, by the reverence which it, undetermined, what ends one may have and may attain by their observance, inspires. For the law, in regard of the formal of the arbitrement, is indeed the only one that remains when we have abstracted from the matter of the arbitrement the aim, as Mr. Garfe names it. End footnote The maxim of an unconditional observance of a categorically commanding law of the free arbitrement, that is, duty. Having no regard at all to ends as a foundation is, essentially, that is, according to the species, different from the maxim to observe that end, which is named felicity in general, pointed out to us by nature itself as a motive to a certain mode of action. For the first is good in itself, but the second by no means. It may, in the event of the collision with duty, be very bad, whereas, when a certain end is founded upon, consequently no law commands unconditionally, but only on the condition of this end, thus two opposite actions may be both good in a conditional manner, only one better than the other, which latter would therefore be named comparatively bad, for they are not different from one another according to the sort, but merely according to the degree. And of this nature are all actions whose motive is not the unconditional law of reason, duty, but an end arbitrarily laid by us as a foundation. For this belongs to the sum of all ends, whose attainment is denominated felicity, and one action may contribute more, another less, to my felicity. Consequently, be better or worse than the other. But the preferring of the one state of the determination of the will to the other is an act of liberty merely, res mere facultatis, as the jurists say, in which it is not at all taken into consideration whether this, determination of the will, be good or bad in itself. Therefore it is, in respect of both, equipollant. A state of being in connection with a certain given end, which I prefer to every other of the same sort, is a comparatively better state in the field of felicity, which can be acknowledged as good by reason, but in a conditional manner, so far as one is worthy of it. But that state, in which, in case of the collision of any of my ends with the moral law of duty, I am conscious to myself to prefer this, is not only a better state, but that state only good in itself. A good from a quite other field, where we have no regard at all to ends, which may present themselves to us, consequently, to their sum, felicity, and where, not the matter of the arbitrement, an object upon which it bottoms, but the mere form of the universal legality of its maxim constitutes its determinative. Therefore it cannot by any means be said that I can reckon every state which I prefer to every other mode of being to felicity, for I must first be certain that I do not act contrary to my duty, as I am but then allowed to look out for felicity, and to see how much of it I can unite with that, my morally, not physically, good state. Felicity comprises all, but nothing more than, that with which nature can supply us, but virtue, that which nobody but man himself can give himself or can take. Did one on the contrary say that, by deviation from virtue, man may incur at least reproaches and pure moral self-censure, therefore discontentment, consequently, may make himself unhappy, that may perhaps be granted? But the virtuous only, or he who is on the way to become so, is capable of the pure moral discontentment, not from the consequences of the action pernicious to him, but from its illegality itself. Therefore this discontentment is not the cause, but only the effect of his being virtuous, and the motive for being virtuous could not be taken from this misfortune, if one chooses so to name the pain occasioned by a misdeed. End footnote. The will must certainly have motives, but these are not certain designed objects preferred to the physical feeling, as ends, but nothing but the unconditional law itself, for which reason the receptability of the will to find itself under that law, as an unconditioned necessitation, is termed moral feeling, which is therefore not the cause, but the effect of the determination of the will, of which we would not have the smallest perception in us if that necessitation in us did not precede. Hence the old song, that this feeling, consequently a pleasure, which we make our end, constitutes the first cause of the determination of the will. Of course, felicity, to which that pleasure belongs as element, the ground of all objective necessity of acting, therefore of all obligation, pertains to the reasoning toyings. When, in alleging a cause to a certain effect, one cannot cease inquiring, thus at last one makes the effect the cause of itself, at present I come to the point which properly occupies us here. Namely, to try by examples and to prove the interest of the theory and of the practice opinionatively jarring in philosophy. Mr. Garfe, in his above mentioned essay, gives the best testimony of this. First says he, speaking of the distinction which I find between a doctrine, how we shall become happy, and that how we shall become worthy of felicity. I from my part acknowledge that I perfectly comprehend this partition of ideas in my head, but that I do not find this partition of the wishes and aspirations in my heart. That it is even incomprehensible to me how any one person can be conscious to himself of having purely separated his desire for felicity itself, and therefore discharged his duty quite disinterestedly. I first reply to the latter. Namely, I willingly grant that no man can with certainty be conscious to himself of having discharged his duty quite disinterestedly, for that belongs to internal experience, and to this consciousness of the state of his mind would belong a thoroughly clear representation of all the collateral representations and considerations associating themselves with the conception of duty. By imagination, a suitude, and inclination, which cannot be required in any case, the non-existence of something cannot be an object of experience, consequently an advantage thought in secret cannot. But man is conscious to himself with the greatest distinctness that he ought to discharge his duty quite disinterestedly, and must totally separate his desire for felicity from the conception of duty in order to have it quite pure. Or did he believe not to be conscious of this, it can be required of him that he be so, as far as it is in his power, because just in this purity is to be met with the real value of morality, and he must therefore be able to do so. Perhaps no man may have ever quite disinterestedly discharged, without a mixture of other springs, his duty, acknowledged, and even honored by him. Perhaps no one, notwithstanding the greatest efforts, will ever reach so far. But as much as he can perceive in himself by the most careful self-examination to be conscious to himself, not only of no such cooperating motives, but rather of self-denial with regard to many things opposing the idea of duty, consequently of the maxim, to aspire to that purity, that he is able to do so, and that is enough for the observance of his duty. Whereas, to adopt as a maxim the favoring of the influence of such motives under the pretext that human nature does not allow such a purity, which however he cannot maintain with certitude, is the death of all morality. As to the laconic confection of Mr. Garfe, to wit, not to find in his heart that partition, more properly, separation, I make no hesitation to contradict him directly in his self-accusation, and to protect his heart against his head. He, honest man, always found it actually in his heart in the determination of his will. But they would only not accord for the behoof of speculation, and for the comprehending of what is incomprehensible, inexplicable, namely, the possibility of categorical imperatives, such as those of duty are, in his head, with the common principles of psychological explications, which collectively bottom upon the mechanism of the necessity of nature. Footnote. Professor Garfe, in his observations on Cicero on duties, page 69, 1783 edition, makes this remarkable confession, which is at the same time worthy of his ingenuity. Liberty, according to my most intimate conviction, will always remain inextricable, and will never be explained. A proof of actuality cannot absolutely be met with, either in an immediate or immediate experience, and one cannot assume it without all proof. As a proof of it cannot be given from theoretical grounds merely, for these must be sought in experience. Therefore, from practical positions of reason merely, but not from technically practical ones, for these would require grounds of experience. Consequently, but from morally practical positions, it is surprising that Professor Garfe had not recourse to the conception of liberty, in order to save the possibility, at least, of such imperatives. End Footnote. But when Mr. Garfe, at last says, such fine distinctions become obscure in reflecting on particular objects, but they are lost entirely when acting is in question, when they are to be applied to appetites and views, the simpler and quicker the step is, by which we pass from the considerations of the motives to real action, and the more divested of clear representations, the less it is possible to cognize precisely and certainly the determinate weight which every motive has added to direct the step. So, and not otherwise, I must be allowed to contradict him flatly, and with an audible voice. The conception of duty, in its whole purity, is not only beyond all comparison simpler, more perspicuous, more conceivable, to everybody for practical use, and more natural, than any motive taken from felicity or mingled with it and having regard to it. Which always requires great art and reflection. But, in the judgment of even the most common human reason, when it is but brought to this, and with separation from, nay, even in opposition to these, to the will of man far more energetical, penetrating, and promises more success, and all the motives borrowed from the latter interested principle. Let us, for example, put the case, that a certain person has in his hands another's property, which was entrusted to him, depositum, whose proprietor is dead, and that his heirs neither know nor can ever hear of that property. Let this case be propounded even to a child of eight or nine years old, and at the same time, that this detainer of this deposit is, without his fault, exactly at this instant, totally ruined in his circumstances, and sees around him a wife and a numerous family of helpless children, melancholy, and dejected through want, from which, distressing situation, he would be immediately relieved, should he appropriate that deposit to himself. Let him, at the same time, be humane and beneficent, but that ere opulent and uncharitable, and in the highest degree luxurious and prodigal, so that this addition to his fortune would be like throwing a drop of water into the ocean. And were it now asked whether the detainer, under these circumstances, can be allowed to apply this deposit to his own use, the answer would certainly be no. And instead of all grounds, nothing but that it is wrong, that is, repugnant to duty. Nothing is clearer than this, and indeed, not that the detainer promotes his own felicity by giving up the deposit, for, if he expected the fixing of his resolution from the view to felicity, he might reason thus. If I return this deposit to its proper owner, without it being demanded, I shall in all probability be rewarded for my honesty, or should I not be rewarded, I shall acquire a good reputation, which may be highly advantageous to me. But all this is very uncertain. On the other hand, many doubts occur. If I should keep the deposit, in order to relieve my distresses at once, I would, should I make a speedy use of it, incur suspicion. And everybody would inquire how I came to better my fortune so suddenly. But, were I to proceed in this slowly, the misery would increase to so high a degree that it would not be possible afterwards to remedy it. The will, therefore, according to the maxim of felicity, hesitates between its springs, what it shall conclude, for it looks to the consequence, and that is very uncertain. It requires a good understanding to disentangle oneself from the crowd of arguments and counterarguments, and not to deceive oneself in the summing up. Whereas, when one questions oneself, what is duty here? One is at no loss at all what answer to give, but is immediately certain what ought to be done. Nay, if the conception of duty has any weight with us, we even feel an aversion to enter but on the calculation of advantages which might arise to us from the transgression of our duty, as if we still had the choice here. It therefore contradicts, even proper experience, that these distinctions, which, as shown above, are not so fine as Mr. Garvey fancies, but are written in the most legible characters in the soul of man, are, as he expresses himself, totally lost when acting is in question. It does not, indeed, contradict that experience which exhibits the history of the maxims, drawn from the one or from the other principle, for there it evinces, unfortunately, that they for the most part flow from the latter self-interest. But the experience, which can be but internal, that no idea elevates the human mind more and animates it to ecstasy even, than that of a pure moral sentiment revering duty above all, struggling with the innumerable evils of life and even with its seducing allurements, and yet overcoming them, as it is supposed with reason that man is able to do it. That, man is conscious to himself, that he can do this, because he ought to do it, opens in him a depth of godlike predispositions which makes him feel, in a manner, a solemn shudder, and reflect on the grandeur and sublimity of his real destination, and where he frequently made attentive and accustomed to disburden virtue totally of all the riches and spoil of the advantages which it can make from the observance of duty, and to represent it to himself in its whole purity were it a principle in the private as well as in the public instruction to make constant use of it, a method of inculcating duties which has almost always been neglected. The morality of men would soon be on a better footing. That the experience of history has not yet had the good consequence, which moralists wish to evince, is the fault of the false presupposition that the spring derived from the idea of duty in itself is far too fine for the common conception, whereas the coarser spring taken from certain advantages to be expected in this world, nay, even in a future, from the observance of the law, without attending to it as a spring, would act more forcibly on the mind, and that to give the aspiring to felicity the preference to that which reason makes the highest condition, namely the worthiness of being happy, has hitherto been made the principle of education and of the propounding from the pulpit. For precepts, how one may make himself happy, or at least avoid his disadvantage, are no commandments. They bind nobody absolutely, and he, after he has been warned, may choose what pleases when he is content with suffering, whatever may happen to him. He has then no reason to consider the evils which may arise to him from the neglect of the advice given him as punishments, for these reach only the free, but the wrongful will, but nature and inclination cannot give laws to liberty. Quite differently circumstanced is the idea of duty whose transgression, without having regard to the disadvantages arising to men therefrom, acts immediately on the mind and renders them in their own eyes culpable and punishable. Here is now a clear proof that in moral all that is right in theory must be valid for the praxis too. In the quality of a man, as a being subjected to certain duties by his own reason, everyone is a man of business, and as he, as a man, never grows too tall for the school of wisdom, he cannot, as opinionatively better versed by experience in what a man is, and what can be required of him, with arrogant contempt send back to the school the adhears to the theory. For all this experience does not help him to avoid the precept of theory, but only to teach how it, when it is adopted as a principle, may be better and more generally put in execution, but which pragmatical address is not the subject of the present discussion. End section one of the relation which the theory bears to the praxis in moral in general. From On the popular judgment that may be right in theory, but does not hold good in the praxis by Immanuel Kant. This recording is in the public domain. Section two On the popular judgment that may be right in theory, but does not hold good in the praxis. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. On the popular judgment that may be right in theory, but does not hold good in the praxis by Immanuel Kant. Section two of the relation which the theory bears to the praxis in the law of state against Hobbes. This recording being taken from Hastie's translation, 1891, in his book, Kant's Principles of Politics, including his essay on perpetual peace, a contribution to political science. Title as given in Hastie's translation, The Principles of Political Right, considered in connection with the relation of theory to praxis in the right of the state. The establishment of a civil constitution in society is one of the most important facts in human history. In the principle on which it is founded, this institution differs from all the other forms of social union among mankind, viewed as a compact and compared with other modes of compact. By which numbers of men are united into one society, the formation of a civil constitution has much in common with all other forms of social union in respect of the mode in which it is carried out in practice. But while all such compacts are established for the purpose of promoting in common some chosen end, the civil union is essentially distinguished from all others by the principle on which it is based. In all social contracts we find a union of a number of persons for the purpose of carrying out some one end, which they all have in common. But a union of a multitude of men, viewed as an end in itself that every person ought to carry out and which consequently is a primary and unconditional duty amid all the external relations of men who cannot help exercising a mutual influence on one another. Is it once peculiar and unique of its kind? Such a union is only to be found in a society which, by being formed into a civil state, constitutes a commonwealth. Now the end, which in such external relations is itself a duty and even the highest formal condition, the konditio sine qua non, of all other external duties, is the realization of the rights of men under public compulsory laws by which every individual can have what is his own assigned to him and secured against the encroachments or assaults of others. The idea of an external right, however, arises wholly out of the idea of human freedom or liberty in the external relations of men to one another. As such, it has nothing specially to do with the realization of happiness as a purpose which all men naturally have, or with prescription of the means of attaining it. And it is absolutely necessary that this end shall not be mixed up with the laws of right as their motive. Right, in general, may be defined as the limitation of the freedom of any individual to the extent of its agreement with the freedom of all other individuals insofar as this is possible by a universal law. Public right, again, is the sum of the external laws which make such a complete agreement of freedom in society possible. Now, as all limitation of freedom by external acts of the will of another is a mode of coercion or compulsion, it follows that the civil constitution is a relation of free men who live under coercive laws without prejudicing their liberty otherwise in the whole of their connection with others. For reason itself wills this. By reason is here meant the pure innate law-giving reason which gives no regard to any end that is derived from experience, such as are all comprehended under the general name of happiness. In respect of any such end, or in what any individual may place it, men may think quite differently so that their wills could not be brought under any common principle nor consequently under any external laws that would be compatible with the liberty of all. The civil state then, regarded merely as a social state that is regulated by laws of right, is founded upon the following rational principles. First, the liberty of every member of the society as a man. Second, the equality of every member of the society with every other as a subject. Third, the self-dependency of every member of the commonwealth as a citizen. These principles are not so much laws given by the state when it is established, as rather fundamental conditions according to which alone the institution of a state is possible in conformity with pure rational principles of external human right generally. First, the liberty of every member of the state as a man is the first principle in the constitution of a rational commonwealth. I would express this principle in the following form. No one has a right to compel me to be happy in the peculiar way in which he may think of the well-being of other men. But everyone is entitled to seek his own happiness in the way that seems to him best, if it does not infringe the liberty of others in striving after a similar end for themselves when their liberty is capable of consisting with the right of liberty in all others according to possible universal laws. A government founded upon the principle of benevolence towards the people after the analogy of a father to his children, and therefore called a paternal government, would be one in which the subjects would be regarded as children or minors unable to distinguish what is beneficial or injurious to them. These subjects would be thus compelled to act in a merely passive way, and they would be trained to expect solely from the judgment of the sovereign, and just as he might will it, merely out of his goodness, all that ought to make them happy. Such a government would be the greatest conceivable despotism, for it would present a constitution that would abolish all liberty in the subjects and leave them no rights. It is not a paternal government, but only a patriotic government that is adapted for men who are capable of rights, and at the same time fitted to give scope to the goodwill of the ruler. By patriotic is meant that condition of mind in which everyone in the state, the head of it not accepted, regards the Commonwealth as the maternal bosom, and the country as the paternal soil out of and on which he himself has sprung into being, and which he also must leave to others as a dear inheritance. Thus and thus only can he hold himself entitled to protect the rights of his fatherland by laws of the common will, but not to subject it to an unconditional purpose of his own at pleasure. This right of liberty thus belongs to him as a man, while he is a member of the Commonwealth, or in point of fact so far as he is a being capable of rights generally. Second. The equality of every member of the state as a subject is the second principle in the constitution of a rational commonwealth. The formula of this principle may be put thus. Every member of the Commonwealth has rights against every other that may be enforced by compulsory laws, from which only the sovereign or supreme ruler of the state is accepted, because he is regarded not as a mere member of the Commonwealth, but as its creator or maintainer, and he alone has the right to compel without being himself subject to compulsory law. All, however, who live under laws in a state are its subjects, and consequently they are subjected to the compulsory law like all other members of the Commonwealth, one only, whether an individual sovereign or a collective body constituting the supreme head of the state, and as such being accepted as the medium through which alone all rightful coercion or compulsion can be exercised. Four. Should the head of state also be subject to compulsion, there would no longer be a supreme head, and the series of members subordinate and superordinate would go on upwards at infinitum. Again, where there in the state two such powers as persons exempt from legal compulsion, neither of them would be subject to compulsory laws, and as such the one could do no wrong to the other, which is impossible. This thoroughgoing equality of the individual men in a state as its subjects is, however, quite compatible with the greatest inequality in the extent and degrees of their possessions, whether consisting in corporeal or spiritual superiority over others, or in the external gifts of fortune, or in rights generally of which there may be many in relation to others. Thus the prosperity of the one may greatly depend on the will of the other, as in the case of the poor in relation to the rich. One may even have of necessity to obey and another to command, as in the relation of children to parents and of wife to husband. Again, one may have to work and the other to pay, as in the case of a day labourer and so on. But in relation to the involved law of right, which as the expression of the universal will of the state can be only one, and which regards the form of the right and not the matter or object to which the right refers, in all cases the persons as subjects are to be regarded as all equal to one another, for no one has a right to compel or coerce anyone whom so ever in the state, otherwise then by public law and through the sovereign or ruler executing it, and anyone may resist another thus far and through the same medium. On the other hand, no one can lose this right as a title to proceed by legal compulsion against others except by his own fault or a criminal act. Nor can anyone divest himself of it voluntarily or by a compact, so as to bring it about by a supposed act of right that he should have no rights but only duties towards others. For in so doing, he would be depriving himself of the right of making a compact, and consequently the act would annul itself. Out of this idea of the equality of men as subjects in the Commonwealth, there arises the following formula. Every member of the state should have it made possible for him to attain to any position or rank that may belong to any subject to which his talent, his industry, or his fortune may be capable of raising him. And his fellow subjects are not entitled to stand in the way by any hereditary prerogative, forming the exclusive privilege of a certain class in order to keep him and his posterity forever below them. For all right just consists in restriction of the liberty of another to the condition that is consistent with my liberty according to a universal law. And public right in a Commonwealth is only the product of actual legislation conformable to this principle and conjoined with power, in virtue of which all who belong to a nation as its subjects find themselves in a rightful state, status, juridicus, constituted and regulated by law. And as such, this state is in fact a condition of equality in as much as it is determined by the action and reaction of free wills limiting one another according to the universal law of freedom. And it thus constitutes the civil state of human society. Hence, the inborn right of all individuals in this sphere, that is, considered as being prior to their having actually entered upon juridical action, to bring compulsion to bear upon any others, is entirely identical and equal throughout, on the assumption that they are always to remain within the bounds of unanimity and concord in the mutual use of their liberty. Now birth is not an act on the part of him who is born, and consequently it does not entail upon him any inequality in the state of right, nor any subjection under laws of compulsion other than what is common to him with all others as a subject of the one supreme legislative power. And therefore, there can be no inborn privilege by way of right in any member of the commonwealth as a subject before another fellow subject. Nor, consequently, has anyone a right to transmit the privilege or prerogative of the rank which he holds in the commonwealth to his posterity, so that they should be, as it were, qualified by birth for the rank of nobility. Nor should they be prevented from attaining to the higher stages in the gradations of social rank by their own merit. Everything else that partakes of the nature of a thing and does not relate to my personality may be bequeathed, and since such things may be acquired as property, they may also be alienated or disponed. Hence, after a number of generations, a considerable inequality in external circumstances may arise among the members of a commonwealth, producing such relations as those of master and servant, landlord and tenant, etc. These circumstances and relations, however, ought not to hinder any of the subjects of the state from rising to such positions as their talent, their industry, and their fortune may make it possible for them to fill. For otherwise, such a one would be qualified to coerce without being liable to be coerced by the counteraction of others in return, and he would rise above the stage of being a fellow subject. Further, no man who lives under the legalized conditions of a commonwealth can fall out of this equality otherwise than by his own crime, and never either by compact or through any military occupancy. For he cannot by any legal act, whether of himself or of another, cease to be the owner of himself or enter into the class of domestic cattle, which are used for all sorts of services at will and are maintained in this condition without their consent as long as there is a will to do it, although under the limitation, which is sometimes sanctioned even by religion as among the Hindus, that they are not to be mutilated or slain. Under any conditions, he is to be regarded as happy who is conscious that it depends only on himself, that is, on his faculty or earnest will, or on circumstances which he cannot impute to any other and not on the irresistible will of others, that he does not rise to a stage of equality with others who, as his fellow subjects, have no advantage over him as far as right is concerned. Third, the self-dependency of a member of the commonwealth as a citizen or fellow legislator is the third principle or condition of right in the state. In the matter of the legislation itself, all are to be regarded as free and equal under the already existing public laws, but they are not to be all regarded as equal in relation to the right to give or enact these laws. Those who are not capable of this right are, notwithstanding, subject to the observance of the laws as members of the commonwealth, and thereby they participate in the protection which is in accordance therewith. They are, however, not to be regarded as citizens but as protected fellow subjects. All right, in fact, depends on the laws. A public law, however, which determines for all what is to be legally allowed or not allowed in their regard, is the act of a public will, from which all right proceeds and which therefore itself can do no wrong to any one. For this, however, there is no other will competent than that of the whole people, as it is only when all determine about all that each one, in consequence, determines about himself. For it is only to himself that one can do no wrong, but if it be another will that is in question, then the mere will of any one different from it could determine nothing for it which might not be wrong, and consequently the law of such a will would require another law to limit its legislation. And thus no particular will can be legislative for a commonwealth. Properly speaking, in order to make out this, the ideas of the external liberty, equality, and unity of the will of all are to be taken into account, and for the last of these, self-dependency is the condition, since the exercising of a vote is required when the former two ideas are taken along with it. The fundamental law thus indicated, which can only arise out of the universal united will of the people, is what is called the original contract. Now, anyone who has the right of voting in this system of legislation is a citizen, as distinguished from a burgess. He is a citizen as distinguished from a bourgeois. The quality requisite for this status, in addition to the natural one of not being a child or a woman, is solely this, that the individual is his own master by right, Sui Juris, and consequently that he has some property that supports him, under which may be reckoned any art or handicraft or any fine art or science. Otherwise put, the condition in those cases in which the citizen must acquire from others in order to live is that he only acquires it by alienation of what is his own and not by a consent given to others to make use of his powers, and consequently that he serves no one but the commonwealth in the proper sense of the term. In this relation, those who are skilled in the arts and large or small proprietors are all equal to one another. As in fact each one is entitled only to one vote. As regards proprietors, the question might be considered as to how it may have happened by right that anyone has got as his own more land than he can himself use with his own hands, for acquisition by military occupation is not primary acquisition, and how it has happened that many men who otherwise might have altogether been able to acquire an independent possession have been brought to the position of merely serving such a one in order to be able to live. But without entering here upon the consideration of this question, it is manifest that it would at once be contrary to the previous principle of equality if a law were to invest such persons with the privilege of a class so that their descendants should either always continue to be great proprietors of land in a manner of fiefs, without such being able to be sold or divided by inheritance and thus coming to be applied for the use of more of the people, or if, even in carrying out such divisions, that no one but he who belonged to a certain class arbitrarily regulated in this connection could acquire any part of such land. The great possessor of an estate does in fact annihilate as many smaller owners and their voices as might occupy the place he takes up. He does not vote in their name, and he has consequently only one vote. It thus must be left to depend merely on the means, the industry, and the fortune of each member of the Commonwealth that each one may acquire a part of it, and all its members the whole. But these distinctions cannot be brought into consideration in connection with the universal legislation, and hence the number of those qualified to have a voice in the legislation must be reckoned by the heads of those who are in possession and not according to the extent of their possessions. Furthermore, all who have this right of voting must agree in order to realize the laws of public justice, for otherwise there would arise a conflict of right between those who are not in agreement with it and the others who were. And this would give rise to the need of a higher principle of right that the conflict might be decided. A universal agreement cannot be expected from a whole people, and consequently it is only a plurality of voices and not even of those who immediately vote in a large nation but only of their delegates as representative of the people that can alone be foreseen as practically attainable. And hence even the principle of making the majority of votes suffice as representing the general consent will have to be taken as by compact, and it must thus be regarded as the ultimate basis of the establishment of any civil constitution. We have next to consider what follows by way of corollary from the principles thus enunciated. We have before us the idea of an original contract, as the only condition upon which civil and therefore wholly rightful constitution can be founded among men, and as the only basis upon which a state can be established. But this fundamental condition, whether called an original contract or a social compact, may be viewed as the coalition of all the private and particular wills of a people into one common and public will, having a purely juridical legislation as its end. But it is not necessary to presuppose this contract or compact to have been actually a fact, nor indeed is it possible as a fact. We have not to deal with it as if it had first to be proved from history that a people into whose rights and obligations we have entered as their descendants did actually on a certain occasion execute such a contract and that a certain evidence or instrument regarding it of an oral or written kind must have been transmitted so as to constitute an obligation that shall be binding in any existing civil constitution. In short, this idea is merely an idea of reason, but it has undoubtedly a practical reality. For it ought to bind every legislator by the condition that he shall enact such laws as might have arisen from the united will of a whole people, and it will likewise be binding upon every subject insofar as he will be a citizen so that he shall regard the law as if he had consented to it of his own will. This is the test of the rightfulness of every public law. If the law be of such a nature that it is impossible that the whole people could give their assent to it, it is not a just law. An instance of this kind would be a law, enacting that a certain class of subjects should have all the privileges of hereditary rank by mere birth. But if it be merely possible that a people could consent to a law, it is a duty to regard it as just, even supposing that the people were the moment in such a position or mood that if it were referred to them, their consent to it would probably be refused. Footnote. If, for example, a proportioned war tax were imposed on all the subjects, they are not entitled because it is burdensome to say that it is unjust because somehow, according to their opinion, the war was unnecessary, for they are not entitled to judge of this, whereas because it is at least always possible that the war was inevitable and the tax indispensable, it must be regarded as rightful in the judgment of the subject. If, however, in such a war certain owners of property were to be burdened by imposts from which others of the same class were spared, it is easily seen that a whole people could not concur in such a law and it is entitled at the least to make protestation against it because it could not regard this unequal distribution of the public burdens as just. And footnote. This limitation, however, manifests the applies only to the judgment of the legislator and not to that of the subject. If then, under a certain actual state of the law, the people should conclude that the continuance of that law would probably take away their happiness, what would they have to do? Would it not be a duty to resist the law? The answer can only be that the people should do nothing but obey. For the question here does not turn upon the happiness which the subject may expect from some special institution or mode of administering the commonwealth, but the primary concern is purely that of the right which has thus to be secured to every individual. This is the supreme principle from which all the maxims relating to the commonwealth must proceed and it cannot be limited by anything else. In regard to the interest of happiness, no principle that could be universally applicable can be laid down for the guidance of legislation. For not only the circumstances of the time, but the very contradictory and ever-changing opinions which men have of what will constitute happiness make it impossible to lay down fixed principles regarding it. And so the idea of happiness, taken by itself, is not available as a principle of legislation. No one can prescribe for another as to what he shall find happiness in. The principle Salus Publica Suprema Civitatis Lex Est remains undiminished in value and authority. And the public wheel, which has, first of all, to be taken into consideration, is just the maintenance of that legal constitution by which the liberty of all is secured through the laws. Along with this, the individual is left undisturbed in his right to seek his happiness in whatever way may seem to him best, if only he does not infringe the universal liberty secured through the law by violating the rights of other fellow subjects. When the sovereign power enacts laws which are directed primarily towards the happiness of the citizens out of regard to their well-being, the state of the population and such like this is not done from its being the end for which the civil constitution is established, but merely as a means of securing the state of right, especially against the external enemies of the people. The government must be capable of judging and is alone to judge whether such legislation belongs to the constitution of the Commonwealth and whether it is requisite in order to secure its strength and steadfastness both within himself and against foreign enemies. But this is not to be done as if the aim were to make the people happy even against their will, but only to bring it about that they shall exist as a Commonwealth Footnote Here belong certain prohibitions of imports in order that the means of acquisition may be promoted in the best interests of the subjects and not for the advantage of strangers and the encouragement of the industry of others. Because the state without the prosperity of the people would not possess sufficient power to resist external enemies or to maintain itself as a Commonwealth and Footnote In thus judging whether any such measure can be taken prudently or not the legislator may indeed err but he does not err insofar as he considers whether the law does or does not agree with the principle of right and in doing so he has an infallible criterion in the idea of the original contract viewed as an essential idea of reason and hence he does not require, as would be the case with the principle of happiness to wait for experience to instruct him about the utility rather than the rightness of his proposed measure for if it is only not contradictory in itself that a whole people should agree to such a law however unpleasant may be its results in fact it would as such be conformable to right if a public law be thus conformable to right it is irreprehensible and hence it will give the right to coerce and on the other hand it would involve the prohibition of active resistance to the will of the legislator the power in the states which gives effect to the law is likewise irresistible and no rightful commonwealth exists without such a power to suppress all internal resistance to it for such resistance would proceed according to a rule which have made universal would destroy all civil constitutionalism and would annihilate the only state in which men can live in the actual possession of rights hence it follows that all resistance to the sovereign legislative power every kind of instigation to bring the discontent of the subjects into active form and rebellion or insurrection of every degree and kind constitute the highest and most punishable crimes in the commonwealth they would destroy its very foundations the prohibition of them is therefore absolute so that even if the supreme power or the sovereign as its agent were to violate the original contract and thereby in the judgment of the subject to lose the right of making the laws yet as the government has been empowered to proceed even thus tyrannically no right of resistance can be allowed to the subject as a power antagonistic to the state the reason of this is that in the actually existing civil constitution the people have no longer the right to determine by their judgment how it is to be administered for suppose they had such a right and that it was directly opposed to the judgment of the actual head of state who would there be to decide with which of them the right lay evidently neither of them could do this as it makes them judges in their own cause there would therefore have to be another sovereign head above the sovereign head to decide between it and the people but this is a contradiction nor can some supposed right of necessity which is at best a spurious thing such as is the right to do wrong in an extreme physical necessity come in here as a lever for the removal of the barrier thus limiting the voluntary power of the people for the head of the state may just as well think to justify his hard procedure against the subjects by the fact of their obstinacy and intractability as they to justify their revolt by complaining against him about their undue suffering who shall decide between them it is only he who is in possession of the supreme public administration of right or who is otherwise the head of state who can do this and no one in the commonwealth can have the right to contest his possession of the power to do it nevertheless I find excellent men asserting such a right on the part of the subject to resist the higher authority under certain circumstances among these I shall only now refer to Achenwal a very cautious, distinct and careful writer in his doctrine of natural right he says if the danger which threatens the commonwealth from longer toleration of the injustice of the sovereign is greater than what may be anticipated from taking up arms than the people may resist such a sovereign and in order to maintain their rights they may break their compact of submission and dethrone him as a tyrant and hence he infers that in this way the people return to the state of nature in relation to their previous head I am willing to believe that neither Achenwal nor any of the worthy men who agree with him in this sort of reasoning would have ever given their advice or consent in any case to enterprises of so dangerous a nature nor can it be well doubted that if the revolutions by which Switzerland the United Netherlands and even Great Britain acquired the political constitutions now so celebrated had failed the readers of history would have seen in the execution of the leaders now so highly lauded only the punishment deserved by great political criminals the result thus usually becomes intermingled with our judgment of the principles of right in question although the former is always uncertain in fact whereas the latter are always certain in themselves it is however clear that as regards these principles the people by their mode of seeking to assert their rights commit the greatest wrong even if it be admitted that the rebellion might do no wrong to the ruling sovereign who had violated the actual compact upon which his relation to the people was founded in a sort of joyous entree for if this mode of conduct were adopted as a maxim all rightful political constitution would be made uncertain and a natural state of utter lawlessness would be introduced in which all right at least would cease to have effect with regard to this tendency in so many thoughtful writers to encourage the people to their own detriment I will only observe that there are two influences commonly at work in determining it it is partly caused by the common illusion which substantiates the principle of happiness as the criterion of judgment on the principle of right is really in question and again where there is no record of anything like compact actually proposed to the commonwealth or accepted by the sovereign or sanctioned by both these thinkers have assumed the idea of an original contract which is always involved in reason as a thing which must have actually happened and thus they suppose that the right was always reserved to the people in the case of any gross violation of it in their judgment to resile from it at pleasure footnote however the actual compact of the people with a ruler may be violated the people cannot in fact directly offer opposition as a commonwealth but only by mutiny and rebellion for the heather to existing constitution is then broken through by the people whereas the organization of a new commonwealth has still defined place in these circumstances the state of anarchy arises with all the abominations which are thereby at least made possible and the wrong which thus ensues is what is inflicted by one party upon another in the people thus from the example referred to above it is seen how the rebellious subjects of that state strove at last to force on each other a constitution which would have been far more oppressive than the one they abandoned as it would have led to their being consumed by clergy and aristocrats instead of their waiting for more equality in the distribution of the burdens of the state under an all controlling head and footnote it thus becomes evident that the principle of happiness which is properly incapable of any definite determination as a principle may be the occasion of much evil in the sphere of political right just as it is in the sphere of morals and this will hold good even with the best intentions in the part of those who teach and inculcated the sovereign acting on this principle determines to make the people happy according to his notions and he becomes a desperate the people will not give up their common human claim to what they consider their own happiness and they become rebels now if at the outset it had been asked what is right and just by regard to the established principles of reason without regard to the notions of the empiric the idea underlying the theory of the social compact would always have incontestable authority but it would not be correct to treat it as an empirical fact as Danton would have it for he thought that apart from this fact all rights found in any existing civil constitution and all property would have to be declared null and void the idea in question is only to be taken as a rational principle for the estimation and judgment of all the public rights existing under a political constitution and so regarded it then becomes evident that prior to the existence of a common will the people possess no right of coercion in relation to their ruler because they can only bring such coercion to bear as a matter of right through him and when this will does exist no coercion can be exercised by the people against him because this would make them to be themselves the supreme ruler hence a right of compulsion or coercion in the form of a resistance in word or deed against the sovereign head of state can never belong of right to the people further this theory sufficiently confirmed in practice in the constitution of Great Britain the people form such an important element that it is represented as a model for the whole world and yet we find that it is entirely silent about any right pertaining to the people in case the monarch should transgress the contract of 1688 and consequently since there is no law upon the subject if there is any right of rebellion against him should he violate the constitution it can only be thereby secret reservation for it would be a manifest contradiction that the constitution should contain a law providing for such a case that would be to justify the overthrow of the subsisting constitution from which all particular laws arise which would be absurd even on the supposition that the contract was violated such a constitution would be contradictory for this reason that it would necessarily have to include a publicly constituted counter power which consequently would be a second sovereign in the state and its function would be to protect the rights of the people against the other sovereign footnote no law or right in the state can be as it were maliciously concealed by a secret reservation least of all the rights which the people claim as belonging to the constitution because all its laws must be conceived as having sprung from a public will if the constitution allowed insurrection it would therefore publicly have to define the right to it as well as the way in which it was to be put in practice and footnote but the existence of this second sovereign would likewise require a third whose function would be to decide between these two and to determine on which side right and justice lay hence such guides or rather let us say guardians of the people perplexed by the possibility of such an accusation should their enterprise fail in any way have rather contrived for the behoof of a monarch who might be scared away by them a voluntary power of demitting the government than claimed a presumptuous right of deposition but this view manifestly puts the constitution into contradiction with itself now if in presence of these assertions the objection is not raised against me as it certainly should not utter the monarch too much by this view of his inviolability I may hope to be also spared another objection from the opposite side in a word I hope to be spared the contrary objection that I assert too much in favor of the people when I say that they have also their own inalienable rights as against the sovereign of the state although these cannot be justly regarded as rights of coercion and strength Hobbes is of the opposite opinion in his view the sovereign as head of state is bound in nothing to the people by compact and can do no wrong to the citizens however he act towards them this proposition would be quite correct if by wrong we understand that kind of lesion which allows to the injured party a right of coercion against the one who does the wrong so it is in this special relation but taken generally the proposition is repulsive and appalling any subject who is not utterly intractable must be able to suppose that his sovereign does not really wish to do him wrong moreover every man must be held to have his own inalienable rights which cannot give up though he wish to do it and about which he is himself entitled to judge but the wrong in question which in his opinion is done to him occurs according to that view only from error or ignorance of certain consequences that will ensue from the laws laid down by the sovereign power consequently the right must be conceded to the citizen and with the direct consent of the sovereign that he shall be able to make his opinion publicly known regarding what appears to him to be a wrong committed against the commonwealth by the enactments and administration of the sovereign for to assume that the sovereign power can never err or never be ignorant of anything what amount to regarding that power is favoured with heavenly inspiration and as exalted above the reach of mankind which is absurd hence the liberty of the press is the sole palladium of the rights of the people but it must be exercised within the limits of reverence and love for the constitution as it exists while it must be sustained by the liberal spirit of the subjects which the constitution itself tends to inspire and it must be so limited by the wise precautions of those who exercise it that their freedom be not lost to refuse this liberty to the people amounts to taking from them all claim to right in relation to the supreme power and this is the view of Hobbes but more than this is involved as the will of the sovereign only commands the subjects as citizens on the ground as he represents the general will of the people to deprive the people of this liberty would be to withdraw from the sovereign power all knowledge of what he would himself alter if he only knew it and it would thus put him into contradiction with himself moreover to instill an anxiety into the sovereign that independent thinking and public utterance of it would of themselves excite trouble in the state amount to exciting distrust against his own power or even awakening hatred against the people there is then a general principle according to which the people may assert their rights negatively so far as merely to judge that a certain thing is to be regarded as not ordained by the supreme legislation in accordance with their best will this principle may be expressed in the following proposition what a people could not ordain over itself ought not to be ordained by the legislator over the people for example the question may be raised as to whether a law enacting that a certain regulated ecclesiastical constitution shall exist permanently and for all time can be regarded as issuing from the proper will of the law giver according to his real intention in dealing with it the position which first arises is whether a people may make a law to itself to the effect that certain dogmas and external forms of religion one once adopted shall continue to be adopted for all time and therefore whether it may prevent itself in its own descendants from advancing further in religious insight or from altering any old errors when they have become recognized as such it will thus become clear that an original contract of the people which made such a position a law would be in itself null and void because it is inconsistent with the essential destination and purposes of mankind consequently a law enacted to such an effect is not to be regarded as the proper will of the monarch and counter representations may therefore be made to him against it in all cases however even when such things have been ordained by the supreme legislation resistance is not to be offered to them in word or deed but they are only to be opposed by the influence of general and public judgments in every commonwealth there must be obedience to course of laws relating to the whole people and regulated by the mechanism of the political constitution but at the same time there must be a spirit of liberty among the people for everyone needs to be convinced by reason and things relating to universal human duty that such coercion is in accordance with right without this he would be in contradiction with his own nature obedience without the spirit of liberty is the cause and occasion of all secret societies for there is a natural tendency implanted in mankind to communicate to one another what is in them especially in what bears upon man generally such societies would therefore fall away if such liberty were more favored and how can governments obtain the knowledge which is necessary for furthering their own essential object otherwise than by giving scope in its origin and in its effects to this estimable spirit of human liberty there is a certain practical spirit that professes to disregard all principles of pure reason and it expresses itself nowhere with more presumption regarding theoretical truth than in reference to the question as to the requisites of a good political constitution the cause of this is that where there has been a legal constitution long in existence the people have been gradually accustomed to take that state in which everything has hitherto advanced in a quiet course as the rule by which to judge of their happiness as well as their rights on this account they have not been accustomed to judge of their condition in these respects according to the conceptions which are furnished by reason regarding them and thus they come rather to prefer a continuance of their passive states to the dangerous position of seeking for a better for here too the maxim which Hippocrates lays down for the physician finds application judgment is uncertain experiment is dangerous thus it is that all constitutions that have subsisted for some length of time whatever may be their defects agree amid all their differences in one result namely in producing a certain contentment with everyone's own hence when regard is given merely to the prosperity of the people theory has properly no place that everything rests upon the practice that follows experience but the question arises whether there is anything in reason that can find expression in the term political right and whether this conception is a binding force in the case of men who stand in antagonism to use each other in virtue of their individual liberty this involves the question as to the objective and practical reality of such a principle of right and whether it can be applied without regard to the mere well-being or ill-being which may arise from it the knowledge of which can only rest upon experience if there be such a basis of political right as has now been maintained it must be founded upon the principles of pure reason for experience cannot teach what is right and just in itself and if it be so there is a theory of political right and no practice is valid which is not in conformity with it against this position objection could only be taken in the following way it might be alleged that although men have in their minds the idea of rights as belonging to them they are still on account of their obtuseness and refractoriness incapable and unworthy of being treated in accordance with it and hence it might be maintained that a supreme power proceeding merely in accordance with rules of expediency should and must keep them in order this is a leap of despair a salto mortale and it is of such a kind that since might only and not right comes into consideration the people may then also be justified in trying their best by force and all legal constitution is thus made uncertain if there be no human right which compels respect directly by its rationality then all influences put forth to control the arbitrary will and liberty of men will be found unavailing but if along with the sentiment of benevolence the principle of right speaks aloud human nature will show itself not to be so degenerate that its voice will not be heard with reverence we may say of it in the words of Virgil tum piatate gravum meretisque si forte virum quem conspexere silent retisque arubus ad stant and section 2 of the relation which the theory bears to the praxis in the law of state from on the popular judgment that may be right in theory but does not hold good in the praxis by Immanuel Kant this recording is in the public domain