member, but it is no proof of every member's power. On the contrary, it is a question of Destiny, who makes the law and for whom it is made. There are subjects and there are objects in the making of laws, although everyone is an object as to the validity thereof — and this holds good without distinction for the inner law of families, guilds, estates, and states. But for the State, which is the highest law-subject existing in historical actuality, there is, besides, an external law that it imposes upon aliens by hostilities. Ordinary civil law is a case of the first kind, a peace treaty of the second. But in all cases the law of the stronger is the law of the weaker also. To "have the right" is an expression of power. This is a historical fact that every moment confirms, but it is not acknowledged in the realm of truth, which is not of this world. In their conceptions of right, therefore, as in other things, being and waking-being, Destiny and Causality, stand implacably opposed. To the priestly and idealistic moral of good and evil belongs the moral distinction of right and wrong, but in the race-moral of good and bad the distinction is between those who give and those who receive the law. An abstract idea of justice pervades the minds and writings of all whose spirit is noble and strong and whose blood is weak, pervades all religions and all philosophies — but the fact-world of history knows only the success which turns the law of the stronger into the law of all. Over ideals it marches without pity, and if ever a man or a people renounces its power of the moment in order to remain righteous — then, certainly, his or its theoretical fame is assured in the second world of thought and truth, but assured also is the coming of a moment in which it will succumb to another life-power that has better understood realities.
So long as a historical power is so superior to its constituent units — as the State or the estate so often is to families and calling-classes, or the head of the family to its children — a just law between the weaker is possible as a gift from the all-powerful hand of the disinterested. But Estates seldom, and states almost never, feel a power of this magnitude over themselves, and consequently between them the law of the stronger acts with immediate force — as is seen in a victor's treaty, unilateral in terms and still more so in interpretation and observance. That is the difference between the internal and the external rights of historical life-units. In the first the will of an arbiter to be impartial and just can be effective — although we are apt to deceive ourselves badly as to the degree of effective impartiality even in the best codes of history, even in those which call themselves "civil" or "bürgerlich," for the very adjective indicates that an estate has possessed the superior force to impose them on everyone.[1] Internal laws are the result of strict logical-causal thought centring upon truths, but for that very reason their validity is ever dependent upon the material power of their author, be this Estate or State. A revolution that annihilates this
- ↑ Hence such codes throw out the privileges of nobility and clergy and sustain those of money and intellect, and display a frank preference for movable as against real property.
