If we regard the life of the individual or of the nation as something
purely material, as an incident which terminates in death and outward
decay, we must logically consider that the highest goal which man can
attain is the enjoyment of the most happy life and the greatest possible
diminution of all bodily suffering. The State will be regarded as a sort
of assurance office, which guarantees a life of undisturbed possession
and enjoyment in the widest meaning of the word. We must endorse the
view which Wilhelm von Humboldt professed in his treatise on the limits
of the activity of the State.[D] The compulsory functions of the State
must be limited to the assurance of property and life. The State will be
considered as a law-court, and the individual will be inclined to shun
war as the greatest conceivable evil.

[Footnote D: W. von Humboldt, "Ideen zu einem Versuch, die Grenzen der
Wirksamkelt des Staates zu bestimmen."]

If, on the contrary, we consider the life of men and of States as merely
a fraction of a collective existence, whose final purpose does not rest
on enjoyment, but on the development of intellectual and moral powers,
and if we look upon all enjoyment merely as an accessory of the
chequered conditions of life, the task of the State will appear in a
very different light. The State will not be to us merely a legal and
social insurance office, political union will not seem to us to have the
one object of bringing the advantages of civilization within the reach
of the individual; we shall assign to it the nobler task of raising the
intellectual and moral powers of a nation to the highest expansion, and
of securing for them that influence on the world which tends to the
combined progress of humanity. We shall see in the State, as Fichte
taught, an exponent of liberty to the human race, whose task it is to