must necessarily exist in the first nation that really acquires true freedom,—in such a state of society, evil will present no advantages, but rather the most certain disadvantages, and self-love itself will restrain the excess of self-love when it would run out into injustice. By the unerring administration of such a state, every fraud or oppression practised upon others, all self-aggrandizement at their expense, will be rendered not merely vain, and all labour so applied fruitless, but such attempts would even recoil upon their author, and assuredly bring home to himself the evil which he would cause to others. In his own land,—out of his own land,—throughout the whole world, he could find no one whom he might injure and yet go unpunished. But it is not to be expected, even of a bad man, that he would determine upon evil merely for the sake of such a resolution, although he had no power to carry it into effect, and nothing could arise from it but infamy to himself. The use of liberty for evil purposes is thus destroyed; man must resolve either to renounce his freedom altogether, and patiently to become a mere passive wheel in the great machine of the universe, or else to employ it for good. In soil thus prepared, good will easily prosper. When men shall no longer be divided by selfish purposes, nor their powers exhausted in struggles with each other, nothing will remain for them but to direct their united strength against the one common enemy which still remains unsubdued,—resisting, uncultivated nature. No longer estranged from each other by private ends, they will necessarily combine for this common object; and thus there arises a body, everywhere animated by the same spirit, and the same love. Every misfortune to the
