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134
THE EGO AND HIS OWN
nobleman's son, or even as heir of an official whose
office belongs to me by inheritance (as in the Middle
Ages countships, etc., and later under absolute royalty,
where hereditary offices occur). Now the State has an
innumerable multitude of rights to give away, e. g.
the right to lead a battalion, a company, etc. ; the
right to lecture at a university; and so forth; it has
them to give away because they are its own, i. e.
State rights or " political " rights. Withal, it makes
no difference to it to whom it gives them, if the re-
ceiver only fulfils the duties that spring from the dele-
gated rights. To it we are all of us all right, and--
equal,--one worth no more and no less than another.
It is indifferent to me who receives the command of the
army, says the sovereign State, provided the grantee
understands the matter properly. " Equality of polit-
ical rights " has, consequently, the meaning that every
one may acquire every right that the State has to give
away, if only he fulfils the conditions annexed there-
to,--conditions which are to be sought only in the na-
ture of the particular right, not in a predilection for
the person (persona grata) : the nature of the right to
become an officer brings with it, e. g., the necessity
that one possess sound limbs and a suitable measure of
knowledge, but it does not have noble birth as a con-
dition; if, on the other hand, even the most deserving
commoner could not reach that station, then an in-
equality of political rights would exist. Among the
States of to-day one has carried out that maxim of
equality more, another less.
The monarchy of estates (so I will call absolute roy-
alty, the time of the kings before the revolution) kept
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 135
the individual in dependence on a lot of little mon-
archies. These were fellowships (societies) like the
guilds, the nobility, the priesthood, the burgher class,
cities, communes, etc. Everywhere the individual
must regard himself first as a member of this little so-
ciety, and yield unconditional obedience to its spirit,
the esprit de corps, as his monarch. More, e. g.,
than the individual nobleman himself must his family,
the honor of his race, be to him. Only by means of
his corporation, his estate, did the individual have re-
lation to the greater corporation, the State,--as in
Catholicism the individual deals with God only
through the priest. To this the third estate now,
showing courage to negate itself as an estate, made an
end. It decided no longer to be and be called an es-
tate beside other estates, but to glorify and generalize
itself into the " nation." Hereby it created a much
more complete and absolute monarchy, and the entire
previously ruling principle of estates, the principle of
little monarchies inside the great, went down. 1 There-
fore it cannot be said that the Revolution was a revo-
lution against the first two privileged estates: it was
against the little monarchies of estates in general.
But, if the estates and their despotism were broken (the
king too, we know, was only a king of estates, not a
citizen-king), the individuals freed from the inequality
of estate were left. Were they now really to be with-
out estate and " out of gear," no longer bound by any
estate, without a general bond of union ? No, for
the third estate had declared itself the nation
only in order not to remain an estate beside other es-
tates, but to become the sole estate. This sole estate