THE THEORY OF THE " RECHTSSTAAT " 451 



Thus, for Kant, the very conception of the State is an essen- 

 tially moral one, and based on the categorical imperative. It is 

 the same for Fichte : " Limit thy liberty by the concept of the 

 liberty of all those persons with whom thou comest into contact," 

 he says.^ Disciple as well as master saw in the State only a means 

 to an end, and that end is the protection of the individual. It 

 is to protect individual rights against the Wilkurherrschaft of 

 State despotism that Kant proclaims the necessity of RecMs- 

 gesetzen. And let it be remarked that neither Kant nor Fichte 

 saw in the individual anything but the individual per se. There 

 was no thought of the strong individual, or of the fittest and his 

 survival. On the contrary, the whole idea of the Rechtsstaat is 

 based on the idea of the protection of the weak ; it is in order to 

 safeguard the interests of those who are not strong enough to 

 defend themselves if left to their own resources that the Rechts- 

 gesetze are to be created— as solemn guarantees of individual 

 right. 



It is on this idea of the Rechtsstaat, of the impregnable and 

 sacred rights of the individual, that the whole polity of 

 LiberaHsm is avowedly based. According to Kant, the essential 

 attributes attached to the quality of citizenship are, in the 

 first place, liberty, or the faculty of obeying only those laws to 

 which the individual has himself consented ; in the second 

 place, equality, which consists in the recognition of superiority 

 only in those on whom one can impose certain judicial obligations, 

 in exchange for the obhgations which they have the right to 

 impose on others ; and, in the third place, independence, which 

 consists in the fact that one is dependent on oneself alone for 

 one's existence and maintenance. ^ This being the ideal, what 

 were the means by which Liberalism proposed to realise it ? 

 With imanimous accord the philosophers and economists of 



1 Fichte, Die Orundlage des NaturrecMs in Werke, iii. 10. Berlin, 1845. 



2 Kant, Rechtslehre in Oesammdte Werke, vol. v., pp. 145-149 (first 

 edition Hartenstein). Leipzig, 1838-39. 



29—2 



